Thoughts on Convergence 2014 Day 1 - Part III

In the first part of this series, I talked a little bit about how the Dynamics Business suite fits into Microsoft's overarching plan of delivering innovation to the customer, and also discussed some details on the Dynamics CRM roadmap specifically with the Spring and Autumn updates. The second post was all about the marketing tools available within Dynamics CRM as part of the Spring Update.

In this post, the focus will be on the upcoming enhancements to the Customer Service suite through the Spring Update of Dynamics CRM.

CRM 2011 Queue History Report

While working with a recent prospect, there was a very interesting report that they wanted to recreate in Dynamics CRM. The report would give details of the time the object (in this case incident) spent in each queue. For example, if incident "Incident_xyz" was in queue "A" for 5 minutes, and then was moved to queue B 20 minutes ago, then the report should show the time spend in each queue.

In Place Upgrade - CRM 2011 to CRM 2013

Now that the latest and greatest version of Dynamics CRM has been released, I was ready to get hands on with the new features. Since I had my own VM (details on building a VirtualBox VM here) to mess around with, I planned on doing an in place upgrade. Please note that this is not the recommended approach especially in production environments. A new install of CRM 2013 or a migration upgrade would be the best options for stage/ prod setups.

Here are the steps to follow for an in place upgrade from CRM 2011 to CRM 2013.

CRM 2011 Point of View - What is the scope of a deactivated View?

Views are a great way to provide the user with data filtered on a very specific criteria that is easily accessible. The view can be a system level view, which means that all users with the right security role can see the view, or the view can be a personal view, visible only to the user (which can then be shared).

In this post, I want to talk a little bit about the system views and what it means to have a view in the deactivated state.

Bulk import and delete of Subject data - A most excellent adventure

The Subject lookup is very unique in Dynamics CRM due to the fact that it is the only lookup that is formatted in an hierarchical tree structure. The typical use, at least in the out of the box arena, is around incidents and knowledge base articles. Recently I was working with a customer who wanted to leverage the Subject lookup, and had a whole bunch of Subjects (both active and inactive) that needed to be imported. Here are a few things I learnt along the way which might prove useful to you!

CRM 2011 SSRS Drill down reports

While the CRM 2011 OOB report wizard will suffice in many cases, there are specific reasons to go the custom SSRS route. In this post, I will talk you through the creation of a drill down report using a summary table.

Requirement:
Create a summary table of the number of incidents categorized by Subject. The incident count should list the incidents, and the user should be able to open the individual incident by clicking on the ticket number

CRM 2011 native Import wizard - Dealing with humongous data files

While using the native CRM 2011 data import tool, the default file size that is acceptable is 8 MB. Yes, that is correct - 8MB. Not much, isn't it? Here are a few options to consider when the data to be imported exceeds the file import size.

CRM 2011 - Migrating Notes while maintaining history information

Notes in Dynamics CRM 2011 typically provide information about the note text, along with details of when the note was created (or modified) and by whom. If we think of how Notes are used, I think we can all agree that the history information (whom and when) is a critical component of the Note record.

The process of importing Notes and Attachments using the Data Import Wizard is pretty straightforward for the most part. The import wizard however does not map all possible attributes available in the system. For example, we cannot set the created by, modified on or modified by data using the import wizard. The only attribute that can be set (overridden) is the created on field. How do we solve this issue to make sure we are migrating Notes correctly? Here is one option to consider.

Adding Standard text to CRM 2011 Notes

The Notes section in the entity record is a easy way to keep track of changes to the record. The user text is automatically saved on "onblur" - meaning that when the focus is moved away from the editable notes pieces the information is saved to the annotation entity. The onblur feature is actually pretty nifty, as some CRM systems require you to save the note by clicking on a "Save" button. Extra clicks? No thanks!

In Notes, lets consider a scenario where the user needs to enter a few lines of canned text each time. A very common case is a set of instructions for the CSR on what information to capture from the customer. Right now, one option is to have a document with the text, and copy and paste the right sections to the Note each time. Does not sound very appetizing, does it? Here is an alternate approach that might be useful!

Convergence 2013 Day 1 - Dynamics CRM and Netbreeze

It has been a long and eventful day at Convergence 2013 so far. The customer stories were a nice way to kick things off, and Kirill Tatarinov, President of Microsoft Business Solutions Division, did a great job of moderating and keeping the flow going.

Specifically with Dynamics CRM, there were some nice demos around Marketing Pilot and the upcoming release which supports Yammer integration. In this post though, I would like to talk a little bit about what I felt was the most exciting news so far - the acquisition of Social analytics company Netbreeze.

Product Review - North 52 Formula Manager for Dynamics CRM

I am always on the lookout for tools that provides the Business user complete control  to create/ modify business logic, using an interface that is easy and intuitive. One such product is the North 52 Formula Manager. Formula Manager aims to transform custom coding into simple formulas using native Silverlight and HTML Webresource controls that drive a point and click customization tool.

Product Review: InRule® for Microsoft Dynamics® CRM

Business logic can be applied to Dynamics CRM by a combination of these processes:

1. OOB workflows
2. Custom workflows

3. Plugins
4. JavaScript

Other than the OOB workflows (which has its constraints), the rest involve some knowledge of coding, with the plugins and workflows requiring background in C#. So if there is new requirement to create a business rule, typically the request is submitted to the IT/ Development team, and depending on their schedule the rule is created. If the rule needs changing, the business user needs to again reach out to someone outside of his/ her department.

Business Intelligence for CRM 2011 data- Part II - PowerView

In Part I of the two part series, I had talked a little bit about the cool things that can be done with the Excel add on called PowerPivot, with the data feed coming in from a crm 2011 organization. In Part II, we are going to dive in to Power View, which is a browser-based Silverlight application launched from SharePoint  that enables users to present and share insights through interactive presentations.

Business Intelligence for CRM 2011 data- Part I - PowerPivot

In a typical CRM system, there might be huge quantities of data (like case items) that we would want to gain insight into. In the first part of a two part series, I will focus on using PowerPivot to connect to a CRM system, extract data, and present the data in powerful new ways using Excel.

PowerPivot is a powerful data mashup and data exploration tool based on xVelocity in-memory technologies providing unmatched analytical performance. The goal of PowerPivot is to empower users of all levels with new insights through familiar tools, which in this case is Excel.

CRM 2011 Data Import/ Export using Cozy Roc SSIS library

A CRM system is only as good as the data in it. Along with entering data using the UI, there are multiple needs around a CRM supported data import application. For MS Dynamics Crm2011, there are a quite a few options available, like the native CRM Import wizard, Scribe or SSIS applications like Cozy Roc.

In this post I am going to walk through a very basic crm import/ export using the CozyRoc SSIS+ library. CozyRoc SSIS+ library includes Dynamics CRM adapters with support for all three deployment types: Premise, Hosted and Live. A SQL Server license is required to use the library.

Dynamics CRM 2011 R9 update

By now most of us with knowledge of the roadmap know the details of the R8 update coming in Q2 2012. The key new capabilities are under the following basic categories: Mobility, Browser flexibility, Enhanced Social capabilities, Industry Solution Templates, SQL Server 2012 and Certifications.

For more details, you can read the Release Preview Guide from the Microsoft Dynamics CRM website below:
http://crmpublish.blob.core.windows.net/docs/ReleasePreviewGuide.pdf


I was reading this interesting article in zdnet that goes a bit further than R8 and actually starts speculating on what might be available in the R9 release later this year.

Here is the link to the article:
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/microsoft/whats-on-tap-for-microsofts-dynamics-crm-r9-update-later-this-year/11975

CRM 2011 Data Import - Creating custom entities and fields

When building a custom solution, chances are that new entities with multiple fields are going to be created. In this post I am going to take a look at the Data Import wizard in crm 2011 and use it to accomplish those goals. Data can be imported too if needed, but the focus now is going to be able to create new entities and fields quickly. It is also a good idea to have a re-usable data maps to reproduce the process in a new organization.

A few things to note before we start:
a. The import size limit using the CRM 2011 data import wizard is 8 MB, irrespective of the file format.
b. Column names cannot have special characters
c. Enclose data in quotes( " ) if it contains special characters.

The business case is to create a new entity called Events. The fields are Event Name (text), Event Type (optionset), Status (optionset), Account (lookup), From (date), To (date).


1. Open a excel worksheet. The first row should contain the column names. This is the setup I have (remember that for lookup data import, the name should be an exact match). Save the file in csv format.