CRM – Page 2 – Mike Hammons

May 30, 2014

Dynamics CRM Spring Wave 14 Rolling Out

The Dynamics CRM Spring Wave 14 is rolling out.

The notifications started hitting administrator’s email in-boxes early this week. So, the release is actually a little early! Fine by me as I like nice surprises like this.

You can find more details and getting ready steps here: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics/crm-customer-center/get-ready-for-the-next-release.aspx

As a Friday Tip the following is what you can expect as part of the upgrade notice. This update isn’t exactly following the previously communicated process of CDU’s (Customer Driven Update). Microsoft was going to provide 90, 30, 15, and 7 day notices of upgrades once they were scheduled. In this case, the notifications just started showing up in email inboxes. Technically Microsoft applied a UR (update rollup) and you have the option of completing the steps for the actual CDU.

As a refresher, going forward a UR will be bug fixes and performance improvements, and will be automatically applied. A CDU will have functionality improvements and notifications and potentially additional steps are required from the customer/user.

In any case here is what the email will look like. if you haven’t received yours already.

Once you receive your notification, login to your CRM application and go to Settings, Administration.

Start with selecting the “Install Product Updates” link. This will take you to a nicely done additional details screen. Check out the materials here as Microsoft did a nice job.

Here is what you find if you click the More links on this page.

Now it’s time to click the Update button; you will get a chance to back out of your don’t want to start the process just yet.

Once you click OK on this page though, it’s too late. The upgade begins but you get to watch a nice little video while you wait. The update time varies, most are taking between 10-20 minutes.

That’s it! You are done.

After the upgrade is complete you will see the following changes to your system.

And here are the admin settings for configuring all the new Customer Service capabilities.

You are now ready to enjoy the Dynamics CRM Spring Wave 14 Updates.

Next tip I’ll cover the Social Listening and Marketing updates that are also included in this wave. There are a few more steps required to add those capabilities.

May 27, 2014

Dynamics CRM Mobile Apps Updated

Good news for those of you that are using the Dynamics CRM 2013 Mobile Apps. Microsoft just posted an update that includes the ability to reconfigure the apps to different URL’s and organizations.

Those of you using these apps may already know, it’s been “challenging” to switch the apps to a different URL, e.g. a test instance and production instance. The only option was to delete the app from the device, then re-install it. Yeah, not pretty or friendly. If you haven’t been using the Mobile Apps, stop what you are doing right now and go download the apps. This is a free option and a great addition to easily access your Dynamics CRM data and applicaiton while on the go.

Mobile Features Include:

Access to your activities, accounts, contacts, leads, and opportunities
Easy-to-use interactive dashboards
Simply tap to quickly enter customer data
Access your personal views to see your most important data
Pin records as tiles to your Start screen to instantly access your most important information

Reconfiguring the Mobile App

To reconfigure your app, start the app on your device. From any screen, swipe up or tap the ellipses … to find the reconfigure option.

This will take you to the initial screen where you can enter a new URL.

Thank you Microsoft. This makes things so much easier!

The apps are available now in the respective app stores.

May 22, 2014

Sharing Saved or Personal Views ? Dynamics CRM 2013

Sharing Saved or Personal Views

Sharing Saved or Personal Views that you or your users have created is a great way to encourage adoption and use of Dynamics CRM. With some of the UI/UX changes in CRM 2013 the question of how to share Views has come up several times recently. Oddly the ability to share a View or List you create in CRM is a little ?hidden?. To shine some light on these great views that are worth sharing, follow the steps below.

Navigate to Advanced Find.
1. E.g. go to Opportunities
2. Click the ellipsis
3. Click Advanced Find

On the Advanced Find form, click the Saved Views button.
Select the View (or multiple views) you want to share.
The Share button becomes enabled, click it. The Share saved view form is displayed.
Select the users or teams you want to share the view with.
Select the type of access you want the others to have. In most cases, leaving the default Read is fine for most needs. Click Share and you?re done! The selected users will now have access to the view.

If you haven’t checked out Dynamics CRM lately, or use a different CRM, check out Dynamis CRM 2013 here:?http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics/crm.aspx

May 19, 2014

Dynamics CRM 2013 Spring Release Preview Guide

The Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 Spring Release Preview Guide is now available.

You can download it from here: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/p/?LinkID=395005

The CRM 2013 Spring Release Preview Guide highlights the new features and capabilities that will be released soon. The Spring Wave is one of the biggest updates?to Microsoft Dynamics CRM.?This is going to be HUGE! There are lots?of something for everyone in this release, including marketing, sales and service.

Marketing

Microsoft Social Listening enables you to identify who’s having social conversations about your company, products, competitors or another topics. Track buzz, trends and sentiment related to things like your customers, campaigns and competitors.

Microsoft Dynamics Marketing, provides?email marketing, landing pages, social campaigns and more on par to most of the third party marketing automation systems available today. Quickly and easily deliver qualified leads to your?sales teams and measure the return on marketing investment. It also includes lead nurturing and scoring, improved dashboards and analytics, and an awesome campaign visual designer.

Email Marketing

Send highly personalized E-mail messages to drive improved open rates. Personalize the content per sender, recipient, subject & content allowing you to send fewer emails with greater business results.

Deliver mass and transactional emails scalable to millions of emails to customers per day
Cross campaign rules to build sophisticated nurture and drip email campaigns.
Manage and control how many emails a contact can receive in a given time period to improve email performance.

Sales

For sales teams, there are enhancements to the CRM Tablet apps. We’ll see Social Insights right inside the mobile experience. Social Insights provides real-time company and contact information like financials, breaking news, social buzz and social connections. It’s very powerful for marketing, sales and account management professionals to help you engage more effectively to win more deals and spend less time spent researching and more time selling.

If you are an Android fan, the mobility updates will include a version for Android devices.?As before, the iPad is also supported.

The mobile experience will also be extended to include Customer Service capabilities optimized for people who want to?keep an eye on high priority Cases, monitor Queues?or route items across the queues to deliver amazing experiences no matter where you?are.

Customer Service

There’s lots of new “stuff” for customer service professionals?from the powerful self-service capabilities in the?recently acquired Parature, to the multi-channel capabilities coming in CRM including the Unified Service Desk to empower contact center agents to resolve customer issues with ease.

Parature includes lots of awesomeness including:

Parature Portal: a 24/7 customer support center that is seamlessly integrated into your?current website. It includes a searchable knowledge, submit help tickets, track its progress and receive automatic email notifications.
Parature Mobile Self-Service: Provides mobile friendly, responsive designs of the portal?that work?across desktop and mobile devices.?
Parature Facebook Portal: Seamlessly provides?FAQs and KB searches, or create help desk tickets from inside of Facebook.?
Parature Real-time Chat: provides instant live online support to provide?assisted support online. ?
Parature Knowledgebase: provides quick answers to common questions and support issues, plus essential downloads including forms, how-to videos, product manuals, knowledge base information updates and more.?

Server-side Synchronization Updates

Server-side synchronization allows administrators to easily manage the synchronization of email, tasks, appointments
and contacts between CRM and Exchange. No additional cost….unlike some other solutions out there!

The original release synchronized ?data?between Dynamics CRM and Microsoft Exchange on-premises deployments only. We will now see support for both?Dynamics CRM Online and Microsoft Exchange Online as well as the continued on-premise option. POP3/SMTP3 providers are also supported for sending and synchronization of Email.

SharePoint Integration Enhancements

Simplified integration between CRM Online and SharePoint Online will be managed inside of?Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online. If you have?Dynamics CRM Online and SharePoint Online you will no longer need to install and configure the CRM List Component to enable the Document Management integration. Woo-hoo!

Sandbox Environments

A big request from larger customers and those that prefer dev/test and production environments. It will be point and click simple to configure isolated, non-production online environments. Administrators can make a copy of a CRM Online instance into a Sandbox Instance.

Minimal Copy only includes customizations & schema from source
Full Copy includes all application data, users, and customizations from source
Administrators can reset a Sandbox Instance back to factory settings (e.g. delete and re-provision)
Administrators can take/restore a snapshot of a Sandbox Instance??(only one snapshot per instance at any time)

And lots more good stuff!

Microsoft plans to deliver the Spring Wave features to CRM online customers as an automatic service update with the option to opt in for additional Customer Service capabilities, and to the on-premises customers as an installable service pack (SP1).

Market smarter. Sell effectively. Care everywhere.

March 28, 2014

Dynamics CRM 2013 Update Rollup 2 Available

The Dynamics CRM 2013 Update Rollup 2 (UR2) is now available for on premise customers. In addition,?all Dynamics CRM Online organizations should already have received UR2 for CRM 2013 Online.?If you use the Outlook Client, you will want to download the update (or get it from Windows Update).

This is a recommended update as it fixes quite a few nagging little nits and a few nice additions.

Some of the more noteworthy additions are, official support for:

Windows 8.1
Internet Explorer 11 (including the Windows app version)
CRM for Tablets (MoCA) and full web client on iPad Air
iOS7 iPad (Safari) full web client
Windows Server 2012 R2

A couple ?of the nagging little nits that are now resolved include:

Subgrids continually displaying the ?Loading?? message (this one was really annoying)
The ?Save and Close? button has re-surfaced on record forms.

See the full release and get the downloads from here:?http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2919956

March 14, 2014

What Customers Want From Partners

I attended a Convergence Pre-Game customer panel session where 4 customers talked about “what customers want from partners”. I heard some really good insights into what customer’s really want and expect from partners.

The session opened with the moderator asking “What one word describes your expectation for a long term, positive relationship with your partner.

Amaze!
Communication
Experience
Initiative

Below are my general notes regarding additional feedback and expectations.

Don’t send in junior consultants that are not experienced, we want people that know what they are doing.
Each customer has changed partners looking for the right fit (this spells opportunity)
Customers generally have their top people engaged, we expect the partners to do so as well.
Customers don’t like it when the courting phase is over. Don’t make it obvious when your energies have switched to other customers, projects, new stuff.
Partners like to trump their experience..they all say we have done thousands of implementations..the customer perspective is then “oh then we are just one if thousands”.
We just helped one of your competitors…that gets our attention.
Pair the right resources…if the customer person is technical then make sure the main person that interacts is technical.

On SOW’s and contracts.

Give good estimates.
Approach with a win win mentality.
Strive for a partnership.
Sign off on all documents.
Get people to sign off on initial project and on any changes.
Make the investment on the front side, drill into the needs then give us the pricing.
If projects are hourly, itemize the billing and don’t be too general.
Giving options is a good thing, but, recommend as well.
Be clear about what the customer can do realistically and what the partner can or should do. Let us know what can be done out of box, or if something is fairly simple. Give us some ownership.
What sources of information do customers find useful: CRMUG, collaborate with the customers, books, blogs, conferences.
Black and Veatch, ALL of their projects and consulting work is fixed fee AND they get a 30 day warranty.
Works best for them to have fixed fee…ranges are a problem.
Requirements must be clear.
A couple are ok with hourly, but for smaller projects and where the requirements may be a little loose.

Best approach from a people/person approach is to have an account manager as a single point of contact. Prefer it. It should not be the consultant or technical resource. It’s a value add person, NOT billable!

Most like over communication…feel like the partner cares…too often partners take too long to respond or provide updates, particularly on issues. Don’t make me call you to get a status update. Even if you say “we are still working on it”, this is ok.

Confront brutal facts and issues up front and head on….don’t wait.

SLAs?

Yes, expected and do track them.

Online tracking systems?

Yes, prefer to have online tracking for anytime, anywhere communication.
Also want to talk to someone Easier for me to wait if i see it online.
When I reach out to you, it’s important!

Training and other best practices

Separate sow for training, implementation and other stuff
Training up front, before the project starts, helps with developing requirements.
Want to see “English” design documents, easy to read, not just technical, execs need to read/understand them
Ask if customer has resources to translate technical docs to simpler docs
Ok with cutting back on some documentation.
Don’t discourage us from using features.
Customer should NEVER be more excited about the product than they are.
The partner should be major proponents and cheer leaders for the product.

What we expect

Integrity, customer focused, fair, honest, dependable, drive to success, amaze us, be creative, deliver measurable ROI, really understand our processes and help us improve them.

Do more than just implement. Look for partners that talk about CRM, that blog, have good content, do more than just implement.

Shared values. Flexibility. Give us the time and attention based on our needs. It cycles so be flexible.

Be proactive with solutions. Help,me make the right decision.

All in all some really great insights and well worth paying attention to!

February 17, 2014

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 UR16 Available

Dynamics CRM 2011 UR16 Available Now

For all of my Microsoft Dynamics CRM friends that have an on-premise deployment, Update Rollup 16 for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 is available. Keep in mind the release cycles and that UR’s are updates and hotfixes only. There is no new functionality in this release. No new features should not stop you frm deploying this release as there are quite a few fixes and performance improvements.

The link below provides all the details.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2872369/en-us

November 4, 2013

Dynamics CRM 2013 Business Process Overview

One of the amazing new capabilities in Dynamics CRM 2013 are Business Processes. this post provides a Dynamics CRM 2013 Business Process Overview.

Business Processes are new way to help guide users through any type of business process in a simple and intuitive way. The process is presented in stages and steps that are clearly shown to the user and very easy to complete.

What really makes these processes powerful are:

Multiple processes enabled per entity
Multiple entities per process
Stage gating
Role based processes

So what does that mean? I’ve recently been working with a lot of Pharmaceutical and Biotechnology companies Innovation Centers. These are the business units responsible for partnerships, licensing and merger & acquisition activity. In this context, I’ll briefly explain each of the above.

Multiple Processes enabled per entity

An entity is simply the technical word that CRM uses for an organization (account), or contact, or opportunity. It’s the main record you are dealing with. So, multiple processes per entity means that I can have any number of processes for an organization. I might need a processes for an agreement with new potential partner, and a different process for an exiting partner. I could have different processes based on the type of partnership required, is it related to licensing (in or out), an investment, a purchase, or you name it.

Multiple entities per process

This is where things get really powerful. In our partnership example, we might start with a lead from a biotech event. The forst part of the process then is linked with the Leads entity (or records) in CRM. Once the lead has been qualified, the next stage would convert this to an organization record which could kick off an entirely new set of processes (e.g. vetting the partner through legal, compliance, AP/AR, etc.). Once vetted, the next step would then be an opportunity record. Once we come to agreement the next step would then be a Deal or Alliance record (or agreement). Each one of the stages in the process would be linked with a different recod, however, it’s presented to the user as one single connected process….very powerful, efficient and easy.

Stage gating

This is pretty much how it sounds. You can set rules that state all steps in the stage must be completed before moving onto the next stage. So, when starting a new partnership, confidential agreements (CDA) must be in place before the details can be discussed with the partner. This would be a stage gate, CDA must be in place and attached before the next stage is allowed to proceed. So, important stuff is not missed, and it’s all front and center for the user and team members to see exactly where things are in the process.

Role based processes

This too is how it sounds. Processes can be defined by your role in the organization. This is a great way to add security around different parts of the process. Legal may have steps that are very specific to them, and they are the only ones that see those details. The rest of team might just see a status and perhaps a due date. Nice, right!

So that’s it in a nutshell.

I’ve included a video below from Eric Boocock, Senior Product Marketing Manager for Microsoft Dynamics CRM. This video?shows you how business processes help you rapidly respond to changing business needs. it also goes into more detail on how you can quickly and easily create or change processes.

October 28, 2013

Dynamics CRM 2013 Mobile Client Details (MoCA)

Notes from CRMUG Summit 2013 – Dynamics CRM 2013 Mobile Client Details (MoCA)

One of the major new features of Dynamics CRM 2013 is a new mobile client and framework, dubbed internally as CRM 2013 Mobile MoCA (Mobile Client App)

Beth Steinke, Microsoft CRM Mobile Program Manager gave use some insight and details into this amazing new feature…best of all, it’s included FREE in Dynamics CRM 2013 (available now on iPad and Windows 8 app stores!)

Highlights

CRM on the go, wanted a consistent experience, configure once and deploy across applications and devices for seamless experience
User experience.
Dashboards, currently a single dashboard, up to 6 components
Currently does not support web resources or iFrames
Drill down and filtering is supported
Multiple entity search, up to 10

Personalization

Tiles, can pin to start screen of the dashboard (iPad and Win), or the Windows Start screen for Windows 8+
Can change views on lists grids and charts, this is a way to get around the 6 item limit
Sticky columns on views (remembers your changes)

Productivity focus

Reflows the forms (responsive design) in a horizontal experience, more tablet like than just giving a web client experience on the device
All controls are touch friendly
Business process flows work across the clients (woohoo!!!)
Will use quick create forms if available, otherwise it comes from full form
Communication: email and phone aware, on Windows uses Skype, when either phone or email is tapped, an activity form will open for entering notes
Communication form or card, represents a user or contact
Renders on entity forms and dashboard, currently hard coded (will be configurable in feature)
Immediate drill down when touching charts in dashboards or list views

Can search across 10 entities
Using the quick find definition for scratches
Can pin views to dashboard
Resizable columns
Win 8 can do the split thing screen
Quick create available from anywhere
If multiple forms are used in Customization area, it takes the top order one; and does not support multiple forms yet

Configuration

User privilege.entity setting
Tablet dashboard, by default it is called the sales dashboard but can be renamed
Setting up search
Form structure, will get slide that shows this
Availability
Online and onpremise but does require IFD
Currently only iPad and Win 8, smarphones are next, Android “at some point”
Offline is cached and read only at this time
Mobile Express has had some improvements and a UI refresh (actually looks pretty good now, check it out!!

Here is short demo of the new mobile capabilities for Dynamics CRM 2013 – the demo itself starts at 1:50 into the video.

October 24, 2013

CRM 2013 Upgrade Considerations and Key Platform Enhancements

A great session on Dynamics CRM 2013 upgrade considerations and key platform enhancements by Matt Barbour, Microsoft Senior Program Manager.

Discontinuing support for

Windows Server 2003
Windows XP
IE7
Exchange 2003
Reworking some of the accelerators several have been around since v4
This is a one way upgrade
Must upgrade from ur6 or ur14 or higher. CRM 2011 MUST be on one of these patches or the upgrade will refuse to complete
Supporting both in place and migration updates
Base and extension tables are merging in this release
- Reason, improved performance (no joins), less locks, better design
Merge tool is suggested for large data sets. Guidance will be coming on size for when to use merge tool vs during the upgrade
Two new services added, CSS writer and monitoring service
VSS writer – online backup support for CRM, meaning live backup, SCOM support
Monitoring service – health monitoring, will support only 1 test/check for Orion, more tests to be added to future releases, integrates with SCOM pack
Email Connector service – email router v2, this will be part of CRM, no longer need to install email connector separately.
- Today only works on like for like, either online only or on-premise only, this will change in future
Solutions, 2011 will import smoothly into CRM 2013, suggest partners install CRM 2013 dev instance, upgrade the CRM 2011 components and feautes to 2013, then create new 2013 solutions, then use these for updating production systems

CRM versioning system changes (improvements and consistency)

Major.minor.UR/lob.build

CRM 2013 “Orion” is 6.0.0000.xxxx
If second number changes, these are feature changes, adds
If 3rd number changes, these are bands or fixes
R2, service lack, feature lack, mean Minor update
Update roll ups are
Fixes and security only…no more feature adds

Other new adds

OAuth authentic a model, required for IFD deployments
Can’t speak yet about OpenID support
New image data type
Added left outer join to fetchxml (woohoo!!!)

Real time workflow

Transaction aware
Supports both pre and post pipeline support
Security aware
Fits existing workflows can be converted to workflows

Actions / PBL / Business Rules

Access teams (woohoo!!!)

Supports team selling scenarios, enhances security model
Works the way you do
Adding a user records grants them specific access
Can have multiple access teams per entity
E.g. Teams that come in nod do out at different times of a process
Ownership vs collaboration
Does not require team ownership of records
Scalable for large number of dynamic teams
When to use Access teams.
- When number of users are dynamic and fluid, use team ownership
- When number of team’s are fixed, use access teams