Archive for category Dynamics CRM
Top 10 Products Dashboard for CRM Accounts
Dynamics CRM users like “At a glance” views of their customers including the products they have purchased in the past.
In this article I will walk you through the steps to create a Top 10 Products dashboard and integrate it with the Account form via IFrame, in order to create a view such as this:
Scribe Insight 7.0 supports multiple targets
Scribe Software recently announced the availability of Scribe Insight 7.0. One of the most important features of this release is the ability to connect to more than one target in the same DTS.
The blog post on Scribe’s web site describes various scenarios where this feature can be valuable. These include:
- If the source record was triggered via a publisher, then the update source feature is not available since the source for that DTS is a message queue and not the original application which triggered the integration.
- The source system uses an adapter which does not support the update source feature.
- The source query is a complex join which update source cannot not support.
- You need to be able to update multiple fields on the source record.
The scenarios 1 and 2 above are applicable in most closed-loop integrations between Dynamics CRM and another ERP system.
For example, because the previous release of Scribe Insight did not support multiple target connections in the same DTS, Dynamics GP to Dynamics CRM template has to use two separate DTSs for CRM to GP Sales Order integration as follows:
- OrderToERP.dts: Sends submitted orders from Dynamics CRM to Dynamics GP
- OrderToERP_Result.dts: Updates the Sales Order in Dynamics CRM based on the result (success or failure) of the OrderToERP.dts
Now, with Scribe Insight 7.0, you can combine both of the above steps in one DTS using both Dynamics GP and Dynamics CRM as targets.
This new feature will be very valuable for addressing many Dynamics CRM and Dynamics GP integration needs as well as the other closed-loop integration scenarios such as the above.
Managing Documents in Microsoft CRM
One of the most common questions we get from users is how to store sales and service documents in Microsoft Dynamics CRM. These documents could be sales related like quotes, work orders, purchase requests, proposals, etc or service related like field service reports, error logs, or other documentation related to a case.
The answer to the questions, of course, is the often missed upload attachment feature
.
Unfortunately this feature does not work for most Microsoft Dynamics CRM document storage needs, for the following reasons.
- There is no version control or document management features
- There is no ability to search the text of documents that are stored
- The documents uploaded are stored in the notes section and not intuitive to find
- Storing documents in MS-CRM will bloat the Microsoft Dynamics CRM database possibly causing performance problems
A better solution is to leverage Microsoft SharePoint for document management within Dynamics CRM. In this way, you get all of the document management features of SharePoint without leaving CRM.
While building such an integration between CRM and SharePoint is a fairly simple exercise, one of Microsoft’s ISV partners has devloped a simple and free version. Statera offers Stratus, a web-based Dynamics CRM and SharePoint integration platform.
An Early Look at CRM 5
Over the past few months the CRM product team at Microsoft have given a few sneak peeks at some of the more interesting new functionaliy that they’re working on. I’ve pulled together this list of some of the videos that they have captured to document their product development.
Overview
In this first video is a chat with Andy Bybee, Humberto Lezama Guadarrama and Allen Hafezipour all program managers on the CRM platform team thinking about programmability and the developer experience. They discuss some of the thinking that’s going into the next release of CRM.
- Have a look at the video here.
Dynamics CRM Online Reporting Options
Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online is a great CRM platform for many small and medium businesses because it is so easy and inexpensive to get started. However, as we have found with some of our CRM Online customers, one area of challenge is custom reporting. Unlike Microsoft CRM On-Premise, Microsoft CRM Online does not support uploading of SQL Report Services custom reports or accessing the SQL Server Database filtered views.
Here are your best options for developing reporting for CRM Online:
Default Reports:
- To view the list of default reports that come with Microsoft CRM Online -
from the CRM Client >> Workplace >> Reports - Blog: Advanced Find / Export to Excel
- Video: Using Advanced Find – Time: 10:02 minutes
This video will show you how to use the Advanced Find feature to find and take action on targeted sets of data. It will also show how to create Saved Views (My Views).
Mail Merge:
- Blog: MSCRM 4.0 Mail Merge Basics
- Blog: Microsoft Dynamics CRM Mail Merge Templates
- Blog: Printing Quote for customer
- Video: Mail Merge – Time: 08:03 minutes
This video will show how to create mail merge templates and create emails and Word labels with mail merge.
Report Wizard:
- Blog: Report on Opportunities Lost to Competitors
- Video: Reporting Overview – Time: 15:29 minutes
This video will show the reporting capabilities in Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online.
Export and Integrate CRM Data to a Local Data Source:
There are two approaches for this. Please note that the two approaches are not supported by Microsoft CRM Support – use at your own risk/support.
- Setup a Microsoft CRM Online Outlook Client with Offiline Data Synchronization and ensure that all the needed CRM Online data are continuously updated to the local database. Then use the Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Service (SRS) report development tool or other reporting, Business Intelligence (BI) tools to build the custom report against the local SQL Server Express CRM database used by the Microsoft CRM Online Professional Plus edition. Note: 4 GB database limit for SQL Server Express
- Utilize an integration tool to extract CRM data to a local data source and then use a corresponding reporting tool. For example, you can purchase and setup the Scribe Software Insight to integrate between Microsoft CRM Online and the local SQL Server database. The local SQL Server database will mimic the needed CRM Online tables so you can use the Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Service (SRS) report development tool or other reporting, Business Intelligence (BI) tools tools to build the custom report against the local data
Displaying Email Text in a CRM Report
If you have ever built a custom report Dynamics CRM that references the Description field of the email entity, you probably realized that the body of an email is stored in the database in HTML format. Thus your report may have looked something like this:
In order to display an email correctly in an SSRS report you need to add a function into the code library of the report and then reference that function in your data field. To drop in the code, navigate to Report -> Report Properties -> Code. The following function can be used to strip HTML from an input field: Read the rest of this entry »
CRM customized SSRS reports error in DSMain and won’t upload.
I recently modified a report that I downloaded from CRM and began customizing in BIDS. One of the immediate inconveniences that I encountered was that pesky error that says “The Declare cursor SQL construct or statement is not supported.” when you choose the DSMain dataset in the “Data” tab. This error occurs since CRM is using dynamic SQL to generate a select statement. It does this because the CRM filters send their results to a temptable and the name of this temptable is then passed to SSRS as a parameter. Since the name of the temptable is unavailable until the filter is processed the SQL query can’t be generated until runtime. The result of this dynamic SQL is the error that you receive when you choose the DSMain in the “Data” tab.
The Solution:Don’t modify the DSMain. In fact, don’t touch it at all; make sure that you never select it when you go to the data tab since once it’s selected you will be unable to import the report back into CRM. Instead of changing the DSMain take the following steps:
1) Create a report parameter called @IDFromMain. Check the boxes: “Hidden”, “Multi-value”, “Allow blank value”. In the available values choose: “From query” and for Dataset choose “DSMain” and in the value field choose the primary key from DSMain. In the Default values choose: “From query”, choose the same dataset and value field that you did above.
2) Create a new Dataset in the “Data” tab. Create your query to grab the fields that you were considering adding to the DSMain. If you want to get the fields that were in the DSMain then just right click the project and choose “view code”- grab the SQL statement for DSMain out of the XML file and paste it into your new dataset. Feel free to join additional views (use the filtered views!!!!) to get the data you need.
3) In the where statement of the query add “AND ActivityID IN (@IDFromMain)”. Replace ActivityID with the primary key that is being returned by DSMain. Now you can use this dataset for your reports instead of using DSMain.
Looking for the cheapest ERP / CRM software on the market…beware!
The price of software is on the top of minds for companies searching for a new ERP / CRM system in this down economy. For good reason too. There are very few of us who’s companies are growing gangbusters these days and to undergo a major implementation is risky business, yet alone to pay a lot for the software. Based on a study that was conducted a few years ago by Deloitte & Touche, this concern needs to be balanced with your selection of who is providing you with the service. This study lists the top 10 software selection criteria, separating the answers of first time buyers from those of individuals who’ve been through the selection process two or more times. As you can see from the chart below, the service provided by the seller went from 8th on the list to 1st as reported from the veterans who have been through the process before.
| Top Ten Criteria for Selecting Software |
2nd Time |
1st Time |
| Level of support from the solution provider | 1 | 8 |
| Vendor’s track record of performance | 2 | 10 |
| Software’s ability to fit the business | 3 | 4 |
| Growth potential of software | 4 | 7 |
| Price of the software | 5 | 1 |
| Quality of documentation | 6 | 9 |
| Functionality of the software | 7 | 5 |
| Ease of use | 8 | 3 |
| Ease of implementation of the new system | 9 | 2 |
| Software works with existing hardware | 10 | 6 |
Here is the link to the full article if you are interested in reading further.
Recurring Service Activities in Dynamics CRM
We recently ran into a customer requirement for the ability to schedule weekly recurring service activities in Dynamics CRM 4.0. We realized that this new functionality could be quite useful for companies that schedule regularly recurring activities with their customers. A range of businesses from physical therapy to facility maintenance might be able to take advantage of such a feature.
The solution that we delivered used JavaScript built into the Service Activity entity form, that will determine if a given Service Activity is to be repeated and for how long. It will then call web services to create the resulting Activities. For those interested, here are the steps required to implement this feature.
Create Custom Attributes
Two customer attributes were created to determine if a Service Activity should be repeated and for how long:
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new_recurringactivity – bit attribute type
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new_recurringenddate – datetime attribute type
We then added these two fields to the Service Activity form as shown.
Add Form-based JavaScript
Next two pieces of JavaScript were created and loaded onto the Service Activity form.
The first, which is triggered off the OnSave event, checks to see if the current activity has been marked as recurring and also saves the end date of the recurring services. The script then calls the CRM web service to create multiple Activities with the same parameters as the original.
The second piece of JavaScript, that runs OnLoad, checks to see if the Service Activity is already part of a recurring series, and if so, disables the recurring detail controls.
Anyone interested in the actual JavaScript code can download the file from this link.
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