TIDBITS on Microsoft Dynamics CRM

The World of Dynamics CRM Help

Microsoft has a world of "XRM" within Dynamics CRM and as more and more of the framework matures we will see growth.

On my latest deep dive I have been looking at modifying Dynamics CRM Help and the general structure around how changes to Dynamics CRM help are supported in a multi-tenant world. In summary they are not (yet). The help files are stored with the application files.

But luckily there is some great reading material to get started with changes you might want to make to help in a single tenant world and customizing help is supported. You can read the complete Microsoft Dynamics CRM Configuration Guide on Technet and when talking HELP you can focus on this section.

Third Parties

I have been keeping an eye on what some of the third party vendors have been doing that run parallel or within the world of customer relationship management software. 

Take for instance HOOVERS - For anyone in sales, Hoovers is one of those resources that at some point over the life time of their career they have probably had access to it. A wealth of core information on public companies to support the Enterprise sales effort.

Well Hoovers has been busy and is now offering both touch points of import/export on key company information from Hoovers to Dynamics CRM and the ability to serve up the Hoovers information in the Dynamics CRM Resource center.

To read about what is new with Hoovers take a browse at some of their new white papers - Oh and before you roll your eyes and think now how much more is that going to cost me.. If you are already a Hoover's client you might be very pleasantly surprised ! Now that is what I call customer service - new value add without new value add prices.

Testing the Extended Sales Forecast Accelerator

First - Thanks team for providing both the Installation documentation and the Installation video. The mixed media makes installing the accelerator fairly easy.

Next if you want to install the Accelerator onto the Microsoft VPC to test, try and overall get a feel for the process you might want to add the following to the tail end of the installation instructions:

1) Login into the VPC as Administrator

2) Select All Programs, Windows Administrative Tools - Active Director Users and Computers

3) Change the password on Paul West and so you can login as Paul West, a sales person.

4) Login to CRM as Administrator

5) Turn on the Display Goals and/or Goals Audit in the Sales menu so you can get to the menu items

6) Change the Salesperson security role to include the ability to add goals and access goal audit.

7) Logout of administrator and login as Paul West (Paulw)

- Of note you also have to add some configuration information such as entering a Fiscal Year End Date.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM Accelerators

They might be version 1.0, but the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Accelerators are redefining the concept of click and play. These core bundles basically are developed and released by Microsoft to add enhanced features to your Dynamics CRM environment.

Take for instanced the Extended Sales Forecasting Accelerator which quickly adds the ability to include sales budgets and forecasts for comparative reporting.

Third Party Solution: SalesCentric

One of my newest contacts, Eivind Sandstrand, tickled my "wow" that is needed bone and as such I have spent a considerable time getting to know more about SalesCentric and what the third party solution has to offer users of Dynamics CRM.

In short executive summary: 

SalesCentric offers a graphical view of all the complex relationship data that you can track in Dynamics CRM.

Exchange 2007 and MS CRM v3.0

Was just doing a bit of catchup and caught this post.. Looks like Nathan has announced the release of an/the Exchange router for Exchange 2007.

"Hi All,

For anyone trying to integrate CRM v3 with Exchange 2007 another piece of the puzzle has just been released!

Check out and download the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0-Exchange E-mail Router Update here

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=f7656f0f-4195-4a7d-b654-2786787e1422&DisplayLang=en

Cheers
Nathan "

Quotes

So you managed to realize that you can't really print a detailed quote from CRM. (I know what were they thinking :) The line items are in a seperate table then the summary information and despite the video you are still scratching your head. Using the Single Entity view and Merge to Word doesn't quite do it.

To solve this problem you could jump into the MS Dynamics CRM Sandbox and download the shared code for the Quote Report. It pulls all the Quote data prompting for a specific client, into one report and prints it. If youwant to doctor it up a bit you can then save this to a format that any of the other Office applications can read (you get the choice of many different formats), pull the saved report into an office file and add your logo etc.

What too many steps? Needless to say you have the choice to either write your own Microsoft SQL Report Services quote report and/or get your partner of choice to customize the existing to be unique to you.

It would be a small customization to an existing report.

What have other clients done? They have also chosen to invest in some of the third party specialty products from companies like Quotewerks, MSCRM-Addons, C360 and more. Companies who have focused and released applications specifically for creating beautiful quotes that interface to MS Dynamics CRM. 

QuickBooks Integration

Today I was contacted by a partner who is developing a QuickBooks bridge to MS Dynamics CRM. He had seen my post in one of the forums and had asked about the other vendor solution I knew about. It took me a while to find the reference and I realized I was not utilizing this particular blog as a total CMS Solution. Blogs make great hosted CMS repositories.

Needless to say I plan to correct that.

The Partner who has the QuickBooks to MS Dynamics CRM integration is eBridge Software www.ebridgesoft.com 

To Download the PDF on their product. Download productsheet_mscrm_direct_data.pdf

I have not used their product yet.