Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0: Advanced Find Search Functionality
Posted January 7th, 2010 by Kristen O'Connor / 3 Comments
When working with clients, I get plenty of questions surrounding Advanced Find, especially from companies that are utilizing SSRS Reports. “What can it do for me?” or “How do I do this?” or “I don’t want to have to run this every day. Can I save it?” All of these questions are great for many reasons, including educating the client on things that they can do on a day-to-day basis in terms of informal “reporting,” and generating personalized views to see on a daily basis for personal or group utilization.
Advanced Find, which in my opinion is kind of like an informal BI tool, allows you to manipulate the data in numerous ways, giving you ad-hoc insight into the data you have in your system without having to shell out the big bucks for a SSRS Report. This is something that end users can do anytime of the day without the need for a technical consultant. I am going to highlight a few questions that I am usually asked as well as answers to those questions, and I will also provide some AF ideas for you to use inside of your system.
First of all, here is a quick Q&A:
1. What can it do for me? AF can manipulate the data contained in your system by allowing you to create what are called “clauses.” You can create AND/OR clauses to display conglomerate or mutually exclusive results, or you can create one single clause to display a large amount of data with less specific properties. How many Leads have been created in the past week? Month? Year? How many of these have not been modified in 7 days? 14 days? How many customers do I have in Atlanta, GA? New York, NY? Miami, FL? How many Leads do I have without an email address? As you can see, you can find all of this information easily by adding one or two clauses to the AF query. After you have the results, you can do a number of different things with it: save it as a personal view (or share that view with related parties who are CRM users), export it to Excel, perform a mail merge, etc.
2. Is it easy to use? Yes, it’s very easy to use. Once you get used to the language of the Advanced Find criteria queries, you’ll be fine. But it does take some time to get used to. If you’re a technical user, you may understand it and how to use it the first time. However, some others may find that they need to spend about 20 minutes trying a few different queries before fully understanding it. All I can say it – do not give up if it is frustrating. The value you get from utilizing this ad-hoc search feature is priceless.
3. Can I choose what fields I want to see in the results view? Yes, the columns are completely customizable. Before you click Find to pull the query results, you simply click Edit Columns on the main criteria window view. This will allow you to add or remove columns as you wish. You can add columns from related entities as well (for example, if you’re searching for Contacts, you can add a field from the Parent Customer (or the Account) related to those particular Contacts).
4. What if I don’t want to run this every day? You can save it as a personal view for yourself (it will appear as an option in that entity’s listview options), or you can create it as a personal view and share it with other users. This is handy for regional views – you can create one for each region and share it with the respective users.
I use Advanced Find extensibly on every project, so I’ve been exposed to many view types and criteria. I’ve generated some great view ideas that users can easily generate themselves and use on a day-to-day basis:
1. Lead turnover query: Open Leads created more than 1 month ago
Leads should be in the system no longer than one or two weeks (one if you have a large amount of Leads coming in, two if you have a large amount of Leads coming in). Sometimes Leads may slip through the cracks, and going back and seeing which Leads are past due may not be on your priority list. Having this quickly accessible view on hand will keep you from having to do unnecessary research.
2. Opportunity pipeline queries: Open Opportunities closing in the next three months
There is already an Opportunity view that displays all Opportunities closing in the next month; however this new view allows you to look at a kind of “quarterly” opportunity pipeline. It may not be the exact 1st, 2nd, etc. quarter, but looking at a three month pipeline will give you a good view of future income without looking too far into the future. You can add additional clauses if you would like, or adjust the months.
3. Prospect list: Active Accounts that have an Account Type of Prospect
The out of the box environment does not have views that separate the different Account Types. This view allows you to see all of the current Prospects in the system. You could also streamline this into all of the current prospects that YOU own.
This allows you to easily access an exhaustive, real-time Prospect list within seconds. You could manipulate this view to look at any other Account Type in the system, as well.
As you can see, Advanced Find has the ability to allow you to manipulate data inside of the CRM system. You can create these ad-hoc “reports” almost instantly and without much effort, and the amount of value you can gain from utilizing this functionality is exponential.
