Topic: ‘Personal Options/User Settings’

This toolbar is frequently neglected, and very commonly unnoticed by a large majority of CRM Users. However, if used correctly, this toolbar can save you hours of valuable time down the road.

Here’s a quick highlight of what the Basic CRM Toolbar has to offer:

1. New Activity creation: You can quickly create brand new Activities from this dropdown. A lot of people will create brand new Activities from the Account, Contact, Opportunity, etc. in question. However quick typers and CRM experts can save time by creating them from scratch from this toolbar. Click Save & New at the top of the screen if you’re creating more than one, and you can create 10 Activities in less than 2 minutes.

2. New Record creation: There’s no reason to navigate all the way through the system to find what you’re looking for in order to create a brand new record. By creating a new record from here, you can save time by not hunting for the entity listview.

3. Go To: This allows you to only click once and land on the location to which you want to navigate. Are you going to Duplicate Detection Rules inside of Settings? This would take you three clicks to go to. IF you use the Go To, you only click once – just scroll down to Settings, Data Management, and then Duplicate Detection Rules.

4. Tools: Want to set your personal options? Are you trying to import 500 Leads into the system? Are you wanting to run a Duplicate Detection job in one click? This is where you need to go. No need to travel all the way to the Settings area.

5. Advanced Find: Hands down my absolute favorite part of CRM – Advanced Find (Workflow almost ties for first, but I’ve been on an AF high for a while). You can search for just about anything inside of CRM with a few simple lines of criteria. Editing columns is easy as pie, and you can export anything you pull to Excel in a flash. And it’s real-time….there’s no “wait until the next morning to see the updated results.” Nothing beats instant gratification.

Really like the toolbar, but work from Outlook? The Basic CRM Toolbar is there, too! Just look for the CRM ribbon among your toolbars at the top of Outlook.

Setting your Personal Options is like choosing the right playlist on your MP3 player before going on a road trip. It’s not required, but it’s going to be a pain when you try and choose the playlist going 70 down a four lane highway. Getting your ducks in a row before entering data into CRM will keep inefficiency – and stress – at bay.

I usually advise clients to set at least their basic Personal Options before diving head first into utilizing CRM. Choose your currency, apply the correct Time Zone, select what you want to view as soon as you log into CRM – these are a few of the options on the General tab.

Here are my top three reasons for setting your Personal Options before using CRM:

1. Access Speed: Are you in Marketing? Maybe you would want to view Campaigns, Marketing Lists immediately from your Workplace pane. Are you a sales representative who spends time analyzing Leads? You can select to default to your Active Leads view as soon as you open CRM in the morning.

2. Time Saver: Would you want to fill out the Currency field every time you create an Opportunty? I wouldn’t. Unless you specify your default currency, you will have to enter the Currency field before you populate any monetary fields.

3. Maximum Record Availability: No one wants to spend 5 minutes scanning through a collection of 50 record per page listview. Set the Records Per Page to 250. This will minimize your efforts and maximize your results.

If you set your Personal Options beforehand, you will save time in the future and be a more productive CRM User in the process.

Already using CRM? You can still set your Personal Options. If you’re wondering why you’re still only seeing 50 records per page, it’s because your Records Per Page has not been altered from the default.