Why Enterprise Social Networking? Connecting People to Purpose

Although it has been around for many years now, there are still a lot of misconceptions about what Enterprise Social is all about.  Leaders don't know if it is a valuable business tool, or something that might waste a lot of time.  So today, let's take a closer look at Enterprise Social Networking.

Intranet Shark Tank: How a Better Intranet Could Have Helped Mark Cuban

Every time I read the news, it seems there is another organization rocked by scandal. And, like Mark Cuban, it is often a leader who may otherwise be ethical, but who is out of touch with what is really going on inside of their organization.  Read on to learn how building a better intranet could have helped the Shark Tank entrepreneur avoid a scandal.

Comparing Microsoft’s Social Options - Teams, Groups, Yammer and More

You're using Office 365, and you're wondering if you should use Outlook Groups, Yammer, Microsoft Teams - or all 3.  Join the crowd!  This article helps you to understand the differences between the options, and which option might be right for your team.

6 Ways an Intranet Fosters Collaboration

Is your team frustrated with too many meetings, struggling to find the information they need to get their jobs done, and become increasingly disengaged? Then it's time to consider a new (or upgraded) intranet. This article lists the top 6 benefits of a modern intranet.

6 Ways the LinkedIn Acquisition Will Improve Microsoft Dynamics CRM

A look at 6 areas where Microsoft Dynamics CRM will improve as a result of the LinkedIn acquisition.

Why Microsoft Social Engagement Could be a Game Changer

Microsoft Social Engagement comes as an evolved form of Microsoft Social Listening, and the name change reflects a changed sentiment of the tool. It Is no longer about simply listening, Social Engagement is now about reaching into the social media world to engage with customers and prospects on a level that has never been reached before.  From setting up watches to know who is talking about your company or product, to monitoring complaints to create prospects, Social Engagement offers a way to keep one eye on your company’s social pulse and the other on prospective customers.

Measuring Enterprise Social Collaboration

The days of the production-line worker, the inbox/outbox process and any other repetitive task for humans to perform – are vanishing quickly. With automation, apps and robotics replacing humans at an unprecedented rate, our ability to collaborate to innovate, inspire, inform and to discover new insights might be one of the last ways to differentiate human labor from an automated workforce. But there is a problem. Most organizations have only a vague notion of how they are doing with social collaboration – let alone a vision and measurable goals for how they will make improvements.

Dynamics CRM Roadmap – Spring 2015 and Beyond

Get ready ... CRM 2015 just came out, but the spring release is just a few months away.  Microsoft is including a lot of new features in this release that you'll want to take advantage of including: new (easier) navigation, OneNote integration and Power BI dashboards.

Why Collaboration?

 

There is a lot of discussion about collaboration in the workplace, but little explanation as to why it is becoming increasingly important.  This infographic explains the four primary business-drivers behind the movement towards collaboration between employees, customers and suppliers.  

From CRM 2011 to CRM 2015: 9 New Form Features

Welcome to the third in a six-part series on the new features available to you if you are upgrading from CRM 2011 to CRM 2015, with a focus on changes made to CRM forms.

In this article, we will look at 9 new features available on the forms within Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2015.

Microsoft Convergence 2014: Humanize the Enterprise

Members of our team recently had the pleasure of attending Microsoft Convergence, a premier conference for the Microsoft Dynamics community. What really struck me about the conference is that, for a gathering of people seeking more powerful ways to use technology, the common theme always lead back to people, and to building better relationships.

Microsoft Convergence 2014: Humanize the Enterprise

Members of our team recently had the pleasure of attending Microsoft Convergence, a premier conference for the Microsoft Dynamics community. What really struck me about the conference is that, for a gathering of people seeking more powerful ways to use technology, the common theme always lead back to people, and to building better relationships.

Sales Intelligence Options for CRM Solutions

The Internet and tighter budgets have forever changed how prospects are making buying decisions.  Research in the book The Challenger Sale tells us that prospects are over 50% of the way through the buying process by the time they initiate contact with a vendor. 

Sales Intelligence solutions, integrated with CRM, are a part of the answer to this dilemma.  In this article, we will take a look at the top sales intelligence solutions on the market today.

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.

SharePoint 2013 - A SharePoint Conference Recap and The Exciting Road Ahead

Last week, C5 Insight attended the annual SharePoint Conference in Las Vegas. It was a very full and eventful week, which was the primary reason I did not blog each evening on the daily events as I have in the past. My goal for this blog post is to summarize the overall conference highlights and some of the features that we see as very promising in SharePoint 2013.

Quick Tip: Finding the Activity Feed Solution

It has come to our attention that the Activity Feed solution is temporarily unavailable for download from the Microsoft Marketplace (the link for the download had been: http://pinpoint.microsoft.com/en-us/applications/microsoft-dynamics-crm-activity-feeds-12884926310).

Fortunately, we had downloaded a recent copy of this for a client deployment. If you need a copy of the file, please contact us (click here) and request the file and we will email it to you. To install it:

1. Be sure you are running UR6 or later (we have tested it on UR8)
2. Import the .cab file into CRM as a solution

It is provided without warranty, but we have installed it in a test environment and it works without an issue. If you become aware of the download becoming available again, please reply to this post so we can update it accordingly.

Thanks!

 

UPDATE 6/11/2012: The solution is now available from the Microsoft Marketplace again. You can now visit the above link to download it directly. Cheers!

Adding a Twitter Feed to CRM Leads

When reviewing a lead, account or contact prior to a sales call, it is always helpful to have as much context about a company prior to making the call.  Putting a Twitter feed on the CRM record for a lead can put this information in a place where it is easy for a sales person to quickly see it.  By passing in the name of the company dynamically, the feed can show relevant information about the specific company.

Twitter makes it pretty easy to generate the “base” code for integrating with CRM (or any website) as a widget.  You can find their tools for generating widgets here.  Even if you use my code, below, as a starting point, you’ll likely find this link helpful as you start to fine-tune your code a bit.

Activity Feeds, CRM 2011 Online and Windows Phone

Activity Feeds are a great new social feature in CRM 2011 that was made available with the November 2011 update.  Many organizations using CRM 2011 have begun to gain tremendous benefit by enabling Activity Feeds and training their users on how to take advantage of them.  Not as many, however, have started to use the Activity Feeds app for their Windows Phones yet.  This app has some great features, but it also takes a few tricks to get it working with CRM 2011.  This post will focus on the specifics of using Activity Feeds on a Windows Phone – and fixing a known bug with CRM 2011 Online and Activity Feeds on your Windows Phone.

Connections: Dynamics CRM 2011 Gets Social

 

Customer relationship management systems typically handle relationships between records in a linear format. For example, in the image to the left, an account (aka a company) may have a relationship with one or more contacts (aka the employees of that company).  Similarly, the account may also have one more more opportunities associated with it.

In the strictest sense, this is how the business views the relationships.  Everything is nice and tidy and linear.

Get Social: More Options for Following Us

Our blogs, on-demand videos and events lists have expanded so much in the last year, that we’ve been asked if we can provide some options to follow selected topics only.

So if you would like to focus on information by product (Salesforce.com, Dynamics CRM or Microsoft SharePoint) or by role (Business or Technical) – you have options to do that.  You also have options to choose which channel you want to follow us on (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIN, RSS or e-mail).

If you’re already following C5 Insight – THANKS.  Take a few minutes today to visit the new follow us page and update the way you follow us so you will get only the information that you want.

If you’re not following us yet, now is the perfect time.  Follow us to keep up with the latest tips, techniques, best practices, on demand videos and live events.

AND … to sweeten the pot … we will be giving away 5 copies of our forthcoming book, “Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Administration Bible” to a randomly selected list of those who are following us.  More details are in the full posting.

All it takes is two or three quick clicks.