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Ally Jameson's Articles

Video: Biggest Upgrades Since CRM 2011

Many organizations have not yet upgraded to Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2016 U1. Or those who have may not be fully using it. That's too bad, because there are hundreds of new features. This 4 minute video provides an overview.

Video: Working with Products, Quotes and Orders in Microsoft CRM

This video – just over 3 minutes long – provides an overview of the productivity enhancing capabilities now available in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2016 Online U1.

Video: What’s New in Microsoft CRM 2016 Mobile

Screenshot - Dashboard with lead photo in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2016 mobile Online U1

Microsoft has been quietly expanding the functionality in the mobile version of Microsoft CRM. Now Microsoft CRM Mobile is truly a cross-platform mobile app that any mobile sales, service or marketing worker will want to use. This article and video provide a brief overview of Microsoft Dynamics CRM's mobile capabilities.

Video: 90 Second Overview of Microsoft CRM Interactive Service Hub

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2016 includes the Interactive Service Hub. Dashboards, views, forms and the knowledge base have all received significant upgrades. These features are expected to begin appearing the sales and marketing areas of CRM beginning in 2017. Tune in for this 90 second overview of the Interactive Service Hub.

Video: Word and Excel Integration with Microsoft CRM

Screenshot: Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2016 Mobile Mail Merge using Microsoft WordUsing Microsoft CRM and need to create reports, dashboards, mail-merges or do more efficient data-entry? This article and video summarize the Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Word integration with Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2016.

Get Microsoft CRM Insights from InsideView to Work with Edge and Internet Explorer Browsers

Using Insights by InsideView for Microsoft Dynamics CRM, and tired of having to click "Continue as User"? This article walks you through updating your browser settings for Microsoft Edge or Microsoft Internet Explorer so you can bypass this pesky login process.

Video: Automating Business Process with CRM

If you’re still on CRM 2011 or earlier, you should consider upgrading so your team can benefit from business process flows. If you’ve already upgraded and you’re not using business process flows, you should take the time to upgrade your processes. This 3 minute video provides an overview of business process flows.

Video - Business Process Flows in Microsoft Dynamics CRM

Quick Tip: CRM Theme Color Codes

Want to change the colors in Microsoft Dynamics CRM, but frustrated trying to find just the right color?

Read on for a quick tip on how to update the colors of Your Dynamics CRM layout!

6 Fixes for Lead Qualification in Microsoft Dynamics CRM

Qualify Lead Microsoft CRM 2016 A lot of sales teams are frustrated with how lead conversion works in Microsoft Dynamics CRM.  Starting with CRM 2013, whenever a user clicks the “Qualify” button, an Opportunity is always created.  We were hoping to see a fix in CRM 2016 but, sadly, the process still works the same.

How can an organization reconfigure Microsoft Dynamics CRM to allow sales to qualify a lead without creating an opportunity?  This article offers 6 options.

Creating a Neglected Accounts View in CRM 2015 UR1+

Everyone wants to know which of their accounts have not been followed up recently.  But using the Neglected Accounts report is just sooo 1995.  Nobody uses reports anymore – we want everything as a view, chart or dashboard!  But until the most recent release of Dynamics CRM, the only way you could create a Neglected Accounts view was thru installing add-on products or developing code.

Getting the Website URL When Importing Leads Into CRM

Extract Website URL from Email Address using Excel for Microsoft CRM Salesforce ImportEver received a trade show list after an event that has email address but doesn’t have website, with a request to import it into your CRM solution? You know those website URLs are locked up inside of the email addresses, but you need to get them imported in a hurry, so you just import it without concern for the website. The problem is that the website can contain critical information. This article explains how to use an Excel formula to quickly pull the website URL out of an email address before importing into your CRM solution.

Data Migration from CRM 2011 to CRM 2015

One blog reader recently asked us about affordable options for migrating data from CRM 2011 to CRM 2015 when upgrading.  This article provides a number of options to consider.

Connecting Outlook to Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013

I just spent most of a whole day trying to find clear, straight forward instructions on how to connect my Outlook to our new Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013. Luckily for you, I have decided to compile the following set of instructions that walk you through how to connect yours.

Salesforce 1 – New Mobile App for Salesforce.com

Salesforce 1 was recently announced at Dreamforce ‘13 and this app will make you love being out of the office! It gives you easy access to your data with a great mobile user interface. There are a lot of new features / areas to this new app and we will only begin to scratch the surface with this blog but I wanted to give you a tour so you can have some insight before you begin to use it.

Salesforce A - New Mobile Application

Today I am going to review the “Salesforce A” mobile app. The app was officially announced on 11/19/2013 during the Dreamforce keynote and it was met with an astounding applause among the attendees. Why is this app so special, you ask? Well, previously Salesforce Administrators had no way to manage or assist users that were locked out or disabled when they were away from their desk.  However that’s not the case anymore! Salesforce A allows administrators to do the following while using the app:

 

Reporting on Multi-Select Picklists in Salesforce.com

Even though Salesforce.com enables users to create multi-select picklists directly from the user interface, they do not offer organic functionality for reporting on these types of fields. In order to break out the multi-select picklist field to report on each option selected, we created formula fields for each option (or “topics” in this case) to summarize through reporting.

How to Download a SharePoint Content Type Template

SharePoint content type template
Let’s say you have a SharePoint document library configured with a custom content type that uses a custom document template. Now you need to edit that template. Normally, you can edit the file via the UI. When you go to the library settings and look in the advanced settings, you see the image to the left. Clicking Edit Template should let you do what you need to do, however, when you click Edit Template you get an error.

Using Goals, Goal Metrics and Rollup Queries in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011



The Dynamics CRM 2011 Goals feature makes it easy to set business Goals,
assign Goals to individual teams or employees, and track and measure results against your targets. To begin using Goals in Dynamics CRM, just follow my simple instructions. You can also access my full Step-by-Step Guide for Using the Goals Feature in Dynamics CRM 2011.


Is Your CRM 2011 Ready for the Next Update (UR12, aka Polaris)?

Microsoft will be rolling out Update Rollup 12 (UR12), also known as the Polaris update, for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Online and On-Premise in January, 2013.  This update contains some exciting new functionality that your users will love.  But it may also require that you make updates to the JavaScript on your CRM forms or you may experience errors.  Be careful - if you're not prepared, your CRM 2011 could stop working as expected and slow your team down!

This article was updated on 1/23/2013 with additional information about UR12.

This article contains the information you need in order to make sure that your CRM is ready for this update.

CRM 2011 Sitemap issues where it removes the Organization Name from a URL

 

Recently while performing a client upgrade from CRM 4.0 to 2011 I ran into an issue with the SiteMap stripping out the Org Name in a URL. This particular client’s 4.0 environment had a SiteMap entry that brought them to a report to view. During a review of the system post upgrade I found that these links were broken. After further investigation I found CRM was stripping out the Org Name even though it was in the URL inside of the SiteMap. I struggled with this for quite some time. I discussed this with a few of my colleagues and we threw around some suggestions such as creating a dashboard which would then reference the report via an iFrame. However, this client had some special security policies around the SiteMap and we all know that there is zero security controls around a system dashboard so I kept digging. After some testing I figured out a way to get this to work 2011 without CRM stripping the Org Name out.

CRM 4 On-Premise to CRM 2011 Online Data Migration – C5 Insight Is LIVE!

Well it’s official, C5 Insight has officially migrated our data from CRM 4 On-Premise to CRM 2011 ONLINE!! I am sure a lot of you are asking well how did you do this? As you may or may not know Microsoft has not released any upgrade path for current or any new Dynamics CRM customers to move their data to cloud hosted.

When we first started thinking about doing this we wanted to be on the forefront of this new release and go “Online” as quick as possible. However we also wondered how we would get our data migrated since Microsoft did not have any published avenue for us to follow. As a Scribe MVP, Scribe Insight (www.ScribeSoft.com) was the product of choice to get this migration successfully completed. With that said we did have to overcome a few obstacles throughout the way which I will mention later on, but overall we had great success. 

Thanks to UR9 - You can update CRM data using Excel!

When CRM 4.0 was first released you could update CRM data via the Import wizard. But then, for no apparent reason, they took this feature away with UR1.

Well, they've added it back, apparently with Update Rollup 9.  Read full blog for additional information...

Review: Scribe Insight 7.0 for Dynamics CRM Integration

Scribe Insight 7.0 was released just a few days ago. As many of you know, Scribe is an outstanding tool for data migration and systems integration with Microsoft Dynamics CRM as well as for Salesforce.com.  I had the opportunity to get access to this release early and have been happily surprised by what I've seen.  This posting provides a brief overview of some of the updates and details on some of my favorite new functionality.

Connecting Microsoft Outlook to your Salesforce.Com Test or Sandbox Instance

After downloading the Salesforce.Com Connector for Outlook I noticed that it was hardcoded to what SFDC server I could connect to. I needed to do some testing and struggled to find where I could change the URL.  My end goal was to change the Server URL to point to https://test.salesforce.com/services/soap/c/10.0

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Blog Topics

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CPR for CRM Study

The complementary paper includes over 12 years of research, recent survey results, and CRM turnaround success stories.

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SharePoint Readiness Assessment

This 60-second assessment is designed to evaluate your organization's collaboration readiness.

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CRM Self Assessment

Learn how you rank compared to organizations typically in years 1 to 5 of implementation - and which areas to focus on to improve.

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SharePoint Feedback Solution

This is a sandbox solution which can be activated per site collection to allow you to easily collect feedback from users into a custom Feedback list.

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SharePoint Upgrade Checklist

Whether you are upgrading to SharePoint Online, 2010, 2013 or the latest 2016, this checklist contains everything you need to know for a successful transition.