Topic: ‘Dynamics CRM’

Take a closer look at the wizard driven SharePoint integration tool built into CRM, allowing you to share documents easier.

Title: Microsoft Dynamics® CRM 2011: Document Sharing

Speaker: Steve Ivie, I.B.I.S. Senior Consultant

Understanding how to pull various CRM data into your Outlook for CRM 2011 Client from your CRM application is very helpful. Understanding how to do it outside of the defaults is even better.

This recent post on the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Team Blog sheds some light on how to modify what are called Local Data Groups. These settings determine what data is pulled into your Outlook application from CRM. Read the post by clicking here.

It’s official! The first Rollup for the newest version of the Dynamics CRM application, CRM 2011, was released earlier this month.

A recent post by the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Team Blog bulletizes the related KB article and Download Center link, as well as an estimated release schedule for future rollups, general details about the first Rollup, and how to get support for the Rollup if you need it.

Want to go straight to the download center? Click here to visit the official Rollup page.

In today’s economic climate, business productivity has never been more important and your Customer Relationship Management system is an integral part of your organization’s productivity story.  Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 has officially launched, and as your trusted partner of Microsoft, I.B.I.S. is offering our clients a complete view of this exciting new product.  Join us on May 3rd at the Charlotte Microsoft office or May 4th at the Atlanta Microsoft Office to see the powerful changes Microsoft is bringing to market with Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011.

We’ll help you envision your organization reaching unparalleled levels of effectiveness with:

• The fluent Microsoft Office user experience which saves employees time and increases adoption 
• More insightful and actionable dashboard data
• Built in business connections, team management and process collaboration

You will learn:

• What’s new in 2011
• On-premise vs. cloud options with CRM 2011
• How to upgrade with I.B.I.S.
• About new integration options with other Dynamics products

Who should attend?

• Current Dynamics CRM clients
• Anyone trying to drive business productivity with a lacking, or non-existent CRM solution

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Launch Seminar in Charlotte
Date: Tuesday, May 3, 2011
Time: 7:30am-11:30am
Location: Microsoft Office – 8050 Microsoft Way, Charlotte, NC 28273 

Register for the Charlotte Launch Seminar Now

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Launch Seminar in Atlanta
Date: Wednesday, May 4, 2011
Time: 7:30am-11:30am
Location: Microsoft Office – 1125 Sanctuary Parkway, Ste 300, Alpharetta, GA 30009 

Register for the Atlanta Launch Seminar Now

The way the 1:N parental relationships work inside of Dynamics CRM is based upon what’s called “Cascading” Relationship Behavior. For example, when an Account is assigned to a new Owner, by default all child records (including Contacts, Activities, and Opportunities) assign over to the new Owner.

Sometimes this works fine – but there’s definitely a caveat. Let’s say there’s a collection of historical data that has been deactivated inside of the CRM system, or even more importantly, CLOSED. This applies to Opportunity records. Because the Assign and Reparent settings are set to “Cascade All,” any child records of their respective parent in the system, regardless of status, will be reassigned if the parent is reassigned.

In my mind, this creates issues – especially if you have assignment notification worlflows running in the background. Let’s continue with the Account reassignment example, in the case where the Opportunities would be reassigned as well. There are two options here:

OPTION 1 – CASCADE ACTIVE: The cascade setting that most companies would want would be “Cascade Active.” This would only reassign Active (Open) Opportunities to the new Owner, and leave the closed ones alone. This is very helpful for companies where Accounts get reassigned often AND for companies that use Opportunities.

To change to “Cascade Active”:

1. Change Type of Behavior to “Configurable Cascading.”
2. Change Assign to “Cascade Active.”
3. Change Reparent to “Cascade Active.”
4. Publish your changes.

OPTION 1 – CASCADE NONE: If you do not want any Opportunities to be reassigned based upon Ownership change at the Account level, you would need to change it to “Cascade None.” This is more helpful for companies where the Ownership of the Account is not significant, and sales reps would not transfer Opportunities in the case of an Ownership reassignment at the Account level. NOTE in this case, you would need to reassign Opportunity records manually if someone leaves the company, for example. This can be done in bulk through Advanced Find.

To change to “Cascade None”:

1. Change Type of Behavior to “Configurable Cascading.”
2. Change Assign to “Cascade None.”
3. Change Reparent to “Cascade None.”
4. Publish your changes.

NOTE: If you create Opportunities off of the Contact record, you will need to make any modifications from the CONTACT to Opportunity Parental Relationship page, not the Account to Opportunity relationship.

Additionally, you have these cascading options with Share and Unshare (you cannot make these changes for Delete and Merge). I would analyze the common actions made within your company to see if these relationship behaviors need to be altered as well.

I think analyzing these relationship behaviors will be beneficial to almost any company. It will save you from the inevitable “I’m getting a new Opportunity for WHAT now?” conversations with sales reps across the entire company.

The 4.0 version of CRM does not give you the ability to, in a straightforward manner, convert Leads in bulk. The widespread knowledge is that you have to convert them one by one. However, there is a workaround…

This would be through Marketing Lists – it’s a way to exploit the features of the Marketing Lists functionality, without using the Marketing Lists to “market” per se. And there’s another plus – no plug-ins or custom development work required! Read the rest of this entry »

Usually when people talk about integrating GP and Microsoft CRM they think of using an integration tool like Scribe to move the data back and forth.  For items like Accounts and Addresses that is usually OK to do.  The issue comes with integrating items like Orders, Invoices, Payment, Returns, etc.  CRM handles these items differently than GP and when you are in a fast paced environment sometimes the syncing doesn’t happen fast enough.  Because of this we have built custom web pages in CRM that pulls the data directly from GP.  The pages are links in the Account Entity Screen and displays the data related to the specific Account.

The concept of merging inside of CRM is immensely helpful, especially if you are taking data from multiple databases and placing them inside of one database, like Dynamics CRM. Merging allows you to select two records that are duplicates, transfer data from one to the other, and deactivate the secondary record.

While this is helpful, it can also be dangerous – no data will be truly lost, but it will no longer be searchable on the primary record, and it will be tedious and difficult to transfer. Also, without correct planning, you may end up doing more warranty work than you originally signed up for. Read the rest of this entry »