Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0: Advanced Find Search Functionality
Posted Thursday, January 7th, 2010
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 extensively 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.
Tags: Advanced Find Functionality, Advanced Find Search, AF Queries, AF Search Criteria, CRM 4.0 AF Ideas, Search Queries Advanced Find, Searching with AF
Posted in Advanced Find, Business Intelligence CRM, Dynamics CRM
Need Expert Help With Microsoft CRM?
Get the support you need to effectively manage your business.
Learn more about our Microsoft CRM support options
We are using MS CRM and I am trying to use the advanced find function to find all leads assigned to me which do not have an activity set against them. I have roughly 2000 leads which we are trying to reduce. As it stands we can only identify those that do have an activity. Once we find those without an activity we can quickly remove them. If anyone can help then please let me know. Regards
How do I share an Advanced Find personal view with another CRM user.
Samyra – go into your Saved Views in the Advanced Find window; you will be able to see in a listview all of the AF views that you have created. Highlight the one that you want to share, and then click More Actions. Then click Sharing… This will open up the basic Sharing privileges. Select the user, then toggle the privileges.
thank you-it worked great!
Does anyone know how to create an Advance find to show me active customers that have had no activity (emails, phone calls, etc) in the past X days (ex: 30)
this would be very helpful in seeing customers or prospects who haven’t herd from us in a while.
How do I distinguish between Personal Views I have created, and views that have been shared with me? Somebody has shared a view with me that has an identical name to my own view, and now I can’t tell which is which!
Does the view have the exact same criteria as yours? If so, there’s no need to have more than one view. You could request that they remove sharing privileges for you, based upon the understanding that you already have a view of your own, or you can remove your own view and depend upon their to view the results. If the criteria of the view are truly different, and you need both views, you could rename yours to have a distinguishing prefix at the beginning of the name so that you know it’s yours.
I hope you can help me. I did an “Advanced find” in Companies and edit the columns to display information that I want to see, and saved the view. When I am in this saved view and does a search in “Search” field – the results are not displayed in the format of my view. How can I get the results to display in te format I set-up in my view?
The view you’re triggering by searching inside of the listview area (even if you’re filtering by the view you created) is actually a system view called the “Quick Find Active Accounts” view – it’s a different view than the one that you created. It basically puts the criteria you created for your Advanced Find on a backburner and lets you search by keywords in the search bar. I would stick with your Advanced Find, adding lines of criteria until you find what you want. You don’t need to save it, but just use the Advanced Find view as a “template” until you find what you want.
Hi my question is how can I manage to export more than 10000 lines in excel from a report you create, actually every time I run an Advance Find search criteria and I wanted to exported to an excel file, only ten thousand lines are coming within the same report I could have more than that amount but only the first quantity is what I get.
Is there a way to create a view in advance find that can be pushed down to the CRM users (ie. managers pulling their team members info) without setting up a personal view for each manager?
I think I understand what you’re asking – similar to the “Owner = Current Owner” aspect of Advanced Find? I don’t believe so. However, if you get the first Advanced Find set up, you can leverage that view to create the others. Just save the first view, then change the Team. Save As something else, and then you have another view. Assign out to each manager, and then they can share with their team. If you’re asking if there’s a quicker way to do it, there isn’t as far as I know.
There’s a registry setting in “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\MSCRM” that would need to be modified called “maxrecordsforexporttoexcel”. If it doesn’t exist, make a new DWORD decimal setting. Whether or not you create a new setting or modify an existing one, you would want to specify a higher number of records to export. As you can see, the default is 10,000. Just note that it will take a long time to export any spreadsheets with more records – I wouldn’t expect an immediate return in future Excel files that large.
I am also trying to create a view for leads that do not have a “Phone Call” activity set against them. Any help is appreciated.
to Torry Davison:
there is a wonderful tool for Dynamics CRM – Global Search that allows customize the settings to all users. It depends mostly from user’s needs. Global Search allows for some users customize settings by themselves or have the same settings customized by Global Search Administrator.
For more information follow to http://www.akvelon.com/products/Dynamics%20CRM%20Global%20Search/Demo/default.aspx
Great post. I just want to say that 3rd party solution which provides ability to search all dynamics CRM entities in one click is already done. You can play with crm search functionality (absolutely free) here: http://www.akvelon.com/products/Dynamics%20CRM%20Global%20Search/Demo/default.aspx
Global Search provides ability to search all type of entities and attributes in Dynamics CRM (including searching in custom entities and searching in attached documents content). Also each user can configure his\her own search settings and column in search result window. I recommend to try it.
Hi, is it possible to remove the Add New (record) from the retrieved records Advanced Find view? To remove possible risk of users creating orphan records within the application.
Thanks
Kate
It depends on whether or not you ever need them to create records of that particular type. If you don’t need them to, you would just need to restrict the User’s ability to create new records of that particular type. This can be done inside of their respective Security Role – toggle “Create” down to “None” for the entity. Keep in mind, this would restrict their ability to create new records of that sort entirely – including from scratch on the basic listview or on the New Record dropdown.
Most likely the best option is to make sure that the fields that maintain the Parent:Child relationship are required, so even if they DO create a record from scratch, they have to provide a relationship in order to prevent any orphaned records. Establish that as your business practice, and train you users on how to properly create these records, such as from the parent record initially instead of from Advanced Find.
How do i import an excel file with a list of my companies into advance find, instead of entering them one by one.
You would need to use the Data Import Wizard in order to import records into the CRM system. Based upon which version of CRM you currently have, the process is different. If you have the 4.0 On-Premise version of Dynamics CRM, feel free to review this blog post:
Does anyone know how to create an Advance find to show me active customers that have had no activity (emails, phone calls, etc) in the past X days (ex: 30)
this would be very helpful in seeing customers or prospects who haven’t herd from us in a while.
I have a Saved View which was created by someone who no longer works here. I need to change the way it’s shared, but my System Administrator role won’t allow this – in the Role Maintenance screen, the option for Saved Views can’t be changed. Is there a way to change the Owner of the view?
It depends on the sharing capability that the previous employee gave you. Go to the Saved Views section of your Advanced Find window and try to assign the view to yourself. If you can’t assign the view to yourself, then you were not given those privileges. You could try sharing the view with yourself and see if that works, giving yourself higher privileges in the process. But if the previous employee only gave you read privileges (the default), then you will need to find a way to log into the CRM application as that previous employee and remove the view. If they’re still in Active Directory, you can just reenable their user record in CRM and use their username/password.
This would not be possible within Advanced Find. You could potentially accomplish this if you use the new Download Fetch XML functionality within the 2011 version of CRM, however I am not positive that would be custom enough. You would either need to create an SSRS report utilizing a SQL query, or you would need to incorporate some custom behavior to update a new calendar field on the Account form that would display the “Most Recent Activity” date once any associated Activities are marked as Completed – if Activity records are ONLY associated with Accounts, this could be possible through workflow, but you would most likley need to have a custom plug-in built in order to accomplish this due to the varied associations between customer records and Activity records. Hope this helps, Amanda.