CRM in The Real World

Microsoft CRM 2011 New Feature –Remove Add Existing Button

noreply@blogger.com (Karl Iuel) — Thu, 28 Oct 2010 12:05:00 +0000

I have repeatedly been asked by customers if I can remove the “Add Existing” button from associated views in CRM 4.0. There are times where it just does not make sense. There was no supported way to do this, although there were various JavaScript solutions which were a little (lot) messy.

Now with Dynamics CRM 2011 we have a fully supported way to interact with and change most aspects of the ribbon, including removing the add existing button. For today’s article I’ll step through how to remove the “Add Existing” button from the Contacts Associated view. First we will create a new solution to house our changes and add the Contact entity to this solution.

Navigate to Settings, Solutions and create a new solution. Give your solution a name, add a publisher, version and click save. I’ve called mine “Remove Add Existing Button”.

Next add the contact entity to your solution. We do this by navigating to Components within the solution and clicking “Add Existing” and Entity. Select the Contact Entity.

We are now ready to export your solution and edit the customisation.xml file. Click “Export Solution” and follow the prompts (Don’t select any other items to export as you navigate the prompts and select unmanaged as your package type).

Navigate to where you saved your solution zip file and unzip the it. Your unzipped directory should look like this.

Open the customisations.xml file. I would suggest using Visual Studio or an xml editor to edit this file. Search for the following section in the customisations.xml file:

We are going to replace the <CustomActions /> element with the following:

Once we’ve done that, save and close your customisations.xml and add it back to your solution zip file, overwriting the existing customisations.xml file.

We can now re-import our solution file. Navigate back to CRM and Settings, Solutions and click “Import”

Step through the prompts and your solution will be re-imported. Once your import is successful, click “Publish All Customisations”

If you navigate to Accounts, select an account and then navigate to the associated contacts, you will see that the “Add Existing” button has been removed. Below you can see the “Add Existing” button in the Associated Contact view before we removed it.

and after we removed it.

You can use this concept for any entity. Repeat the above steps for the entity /entities you wish to remove the “Add Existing” button for and in the customisations.xml file for each entity replace “contact” with the name name of you entity under that entities <RibbonDiffXml> element as per the below.

<CustomActions>
          <HideCustomAction Location="Mscrm.SubGrid.<entity name here>.AddExistingStandard"
         HideActionId="Sample.Mscrm.SubGrid.<entity name here>.AddExistingStandard.HideAction" />
        </CustomActions

For your reference I have attached the solution file I created for this example here: RemoveAddExistingButton_1_0_0_0.zip

I love the solution concept in 2011! Be warned this is an unmanaged solution and hence you cannot roll it back. Put it in a test or dev environment first!

Microsoft CRM 2011 New Features–Dynamic Marketing Lists

noreply@blogger.com (Karl Iuel) — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 22:46:00 +0000

Over the course of the next few weeks I would like to review some of the new features of Microsoft CRM 2011. But rather than going through some of the major changes, such as the new ribbon interface, solutions etc, I’m going to focus on the smaller less advertised new features. Each of these will be very short basic overviews to demonstrate the breadth of new features in the product. This way I hope to get at least a few of these up every week. Interspersed with the short articles I also hope to have some more in depth articles on some business uses for these new features.

Today’s feature is simple but I can see lots of uses for it. You now have the ability to create Dynamic Marketing Lists.

When you set the Type to Dynamic, you only have the ability to use q query to define your Member list. This means that any record that meets the filter criteria will automatically be added to the marketing list.

The one downside to be aware of is that Dynamic Marketing Lists do not appear in the Marketing List Associated View of Account / Contact or Lead and are not returned in Advanced Find queries.

Microsoft CRM Multi Select Picklists, Many to Many Relationships and Advanced Find

noreply@blogger.com (Karl Iuel) — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 23:44:00 +0000

I love using the many to many (n:n) relationship in Microsoft CRM 4.0. I most often use it to create a solution for a multi select picklist requirement. For example I may have a requirement to track which industries an account belongs to. The problem is an account can be linked to more than one industry – I need a multi select picklist. Now there are a multitude of solutions out there for multi select picklists, most are really elegant when it comes to the UI and usability but pose all sorts of problems when it comes to searching using Advanced Find. That’s where the n:n relationships can provide a great solution.

Continuing our example above I have created a new entity called industry and linked it to the account entity using an n:n relationship. The result is Industry now appears as a new menu item appears on the left hand navigation bar in the Account screen.

Many users however would rather have the Industry listing on the form itself rather than as a menu item. To solve this I place the n:n related entity in an IFrame on the form using the great solution CRM 4.0 Many 2 Many IFrame Viewer by Adi Katz. The best thing about Adi’s solution is that the IFrame is automatically refreshed after updating your selections.

To make the solution a little cleaner I would like to remove the Industries menu item on the left hand navigation bar. Now you can achieve this by setting the Display Option in the n:n relationship settings to Do Not Display as shown below.

However this will remove the relationship in the Advanced Find and I can no longer search industries as a Related Entity to Accounts in the Advanced Find screen. Strangely enough this is only a problem with an n:n relationship.

Industries will only appear as a Related entity in Advanced Find if the display option is set to “Use Plural Name” or “ Use Custom Label” If you use the latter the entity name will be what ever you used as your Custom Label.

To solve this problem rather than removing the menu item from the left hand nav bar by setting the Display Option to Do Not Display, you can remove it by using some simple JavaScript in the form onload event.

function ShowHideLeftNav(strNavItemID, blnVisible)
{
    try
    {
    var NavItem = document.all["crmNavBar"].all[vstrNavItemID];
    NavItem.style.display = (blnVisible == true) ? "inline" : "none";
    }
    catch (e)
    {
    }
}

ShowHideLeftNav('navnew_new_industry_account', false);

Typically the strNavItemID parameter is the name of the n:n relationship prefixed with nav. So in our example it is 'navnew_new_industry_account'. You can also use the IE developer toolbar (now built in to IE 8) to retrieve this.

Now you have a great solution for a multi select picklist on the form, have not confused users with multiple locations to update the list and have maintained the Advanced Find functionality :)

Creating a Sub Lookup in Microsoft CRM 4.0

noreply@blogger.com (Karl Iuel) — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 23:45:00 +0000

Quite often there is a requirement to have the values of one picklist or lookup be determined by the value of another picklist or lookup. As most of you will know Microsoft CRM does not have the concept of sub picklists or sub lookups. I’ve often seen this requirement solved through the use of picklists and JavaScript. Yuk! This solution means that every time a new value is added to either the parent or child picklist, the JavaScript code needs to be changed. Not a great solution for system administrators who have no knowledge of JavaScript.

Here is a simple solution using lookups rather than picklists with some simple, generic (and warning: unsupported) JavaScript.

For my example today lets presume I need to add a Primary Industry lookup to the Account form. I also need add a Sub Industry lookup where the values shown are determined by what I select as the Primary Industry.

First I need to create two new entities, Primary Industry and Sub Industry. Next I need to create a 1:n relationship between the two new entities with Primary Industry as the Primary Entity. As you can see in the image below I have also set Primary Industry relationship attribute as Business Required so all Sub Industries must have a Primary Industry.

Next I add the Primary Industry attribute to the Sub Industry form.

In order to be able to filter the Sub Industry lookup based on the selected Primary Industry value I need to add the Primary Industry attribute as a find column in the Sub Industry Lookup View. I can now publish my two new entities.

I add some values to my Primary Industries and my Sub Industries.

Now I need to add the Primary and Sub Industry lookups to my Account form. I create a n:1 relationship between the Account entity and my Primary Industry and Sub Industry entities. In each case the Account Entity will be the Primary Entity. I can then add the created Primary Industry and Sub Industry lookup attributes to the Account form as shown below.

Now I need to add the JavaScript to filter the value of the Sub Industry lookup based on what is selected as the Primary Industry. On the change event of the Primary Industry lookup I add the following JavaScript:

var lookupItem = new Array;

lookupItem = crmForm.all.new_primaryindustryid.DataValue;
var searchVal = lookupItem[0].name;
crmForm.all.new_subindustryid.additionalparams = ‘search=' + searchVal;

I can now publish all my changes and test the result. As you can see below because I selected Finance as the value for my Primary Industry, when I click on the lookup for the Sub Industry it is “pre-filtered” and only shows the Sub Industries that relate to Finance.

New Tool for for Comparing Customization

noreply@blogger.com (Karl Iuel) — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 22:25:00 +0000

The one thing I promised myself when I started this blog is that I wouldn’t use it to simply re-blog about recently released service packs, tools etc. but … this release is just to exciting not to blog about so I’m going to break my rule just this once!

Microsoft in collaboration with Sonoma Partners have just released a tool to compare customisation files! http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd442453.aspx

This from the Sonoma Blog (Permalink):

“Customization Comparison Utility
The Customization Comparison Utility allows you to take two exported customization files (either xml or zip) and display all the differences between the files. You can review any two valid customization files and also export the results to Excel for additional analysis or documentation needs. Similar to many source control systems, the tool displays to you the following:

What is identical between the systems
What has changed between the systems
Exists in the source system, but not the target
Exists in the target system, but not the source "

This is going to be a very very useful tool, especially on larger more custom intensive projects :) Now if we can just have a tool that allows us to consolidate configuration from multiple config files, that would be great :)

Changing the schedule for the Deletion Service

noreply@blogger.com (Karl Iuel) — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 23:24:00 +0000

I came across this tool the other day when I was asked by a client if it was possible to force the deletion service to run. When you delete a record in Microsoft CRM, most often the record is not deleted from the database but rather the deletionstatecode is set to 2 (This is not always the case so be careful in using this for reporting etc). When the deletion service runs it will remove the record from the database. After some investigation it looks like the deletion service runs every 24 hours. This means that when writing reports you need to make sure you exclude deleted records as it is likely there will be records with a deletionstatecode of 2 in the database.

Currently the only way I know to force the deletion service to run on Microsoft CRM 4.0 is to stop and restart the Asynchronous Service. I have since found this tool that allows you to change the schedule and frequency of when the deletion service runs: http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/ScaleGroupJobEditor. This is useful when you need to ensure deleted records are quickly removed from the database :)

What is xRM?

noreply@blogger.com (Karl Iuel) — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 04:44:00 +0000

First it was CRM (Customer Relationship Management), then came PRM (Partner Relationship Management), ERM (Employee Relationship Management) and a host of other ?RM solutions. The problem was in most cases there were specific applications that met each type of requirement. While managing relationships was at the heart of each strategy, the nuances around each was such that no one application was flexible enough to meet all the functionality requirements. Microsoft Dynamics CRM seems to have finally met this challenge and quite often you will hear Microsoft refer to Microsoft CRM as a xRM platform.

So what exactly is meant by xRM and how is Microsoft CRM an xRM platform? The “x” in xRM is a placeholder for anything, so essentially xRM means the management of any type of relationship. This might be for example, the management of a company’s relationship with its employees. Now it can be argued that an HR system fills this function, but most often the HR system misses the subtleties of managing a relationship and more importantly it lacks the flexibility to be configured to meet the company’s ever changing strategies around this relationship. Microsoft CRM however has the core functionality to track manage the relationship aspect and the flexibility to be configured to meet changing Employee Relationship Strategies. Now I can feel the wrath of the HR Managers bearing down on me as they say “Karl are you honestly saying Microsoft CRM is an HR solution?” No absolutely not! What I am proposing is that Microsoft CRM together and integrated with (whether the integration is technical or strategic) an HR system can be used as a very effective Employee Relationship Management solution.

Before I annoy any more HR managers let me give another real world example of how I’ve seen Microsoft CRM used as an xRM platform. In this case it was a Private School. Their Student Management system very effectively allowed them to meet the day to day requirements of managing students. It managed timetables, financials, etc well but it couldn’t identify and track the inter relationships between the students. So for example I couldn’t easily tell that Jimmy’s brother was also at the school, nor that their father was a past alumni and Jimmy’s mum was a bit of a worry wart and emailed / called the school often. By integrating their existing Student Management System with Microsoft CRM, the school was able to effectively manage all aspects of their relationships with their students. Effectively a “S”RM solution :)

In both the above examples Microsoft CRM was configured to meet very different requirements. There was no mention of Accounts, Contacts and the term customer was completely removed. Sometime I do wish that Microsoft CRM was not called Microsoft CRM and rather it was renamed to be what it really is: The Microsoft RM platform. And how cool would it be if it was renamed the Microsoft Office RM platform :) One can always dream!

Simple Audit Tracking in Microsoft CRM 4.0

noreply@blogger.com (Karl Iuel) — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 22:56:00 +0000

Oh dear, what happened to January! It seems I blinked and missed the first month of the year. One of my goals for 2009 was to ensure I had at least 5 to 8 quality blog posts a month. Hmm I’ll have to work harder at that one!

Looking back at my 2008 posts, I seem to have a few that talk about Microsoft CRM’s workflow functionality and how I’ve used it to solve some real world problems. This was never intentional however it does show the power of the workflow functionality and hopefully the simplicity as well. I thought I’d carry on that theme for my first 2009 post and show how I’ve used workflow to create some simple audit tracking. Again this is a zero code example. I’m a firm believer in avoiding writing code unless it is absolutely necessary.

For this example I would like to track each time the estimated close date changes on an opportunity. I want to track who changed it and when. First I need create a new entity to store the audit data in. For this I’ve created a simple entity called Audit History with some additional fields as shown in the image below. Next I created a n:1 relationship between my new entity and the opportunity entity and update the form.

Now I’m ready to create the workflow against the Opportunity entity. I set the workflow to start both when the record is created and on the change of an attribute; namely the Estimated Close Date attribute. I also set the scope to Organisation so it will run for all users.

For my first step I want to check if the opportunity is being created or updated. To do this I create a Check Condition step and check if the opportunity Created On Date equals the Modified On Date. If they are equal I know the opportunity has been created, otherwise its being updated :)

Inside my Check Condition I create a Create Record step and create an Audit History record. Note for this step I set the Change Description to “Opportunity is Created” and copy the various fields from the related opportunity.

For the Default Action step I know if the workflow steps in here the opportunity is being updated so I create a Create Record step and create an Audit History record as above with the only difference being the Change Description which I set to “Estimated Close Date Updated”

The final result would then look like the below image.

I would recommend you set your security for the Audit History entity to be read only so the records cannot be changed. Hopefully this gives you some further ideas for simple audit tracking. For more advanced Auditing where you need to track changes to any field you will have to look at developing a plugin or use an ISV product like the c360 Audit tool.

Wishing Everyone a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

noreply@blogger.com (Karl Iuel) — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 23:23:00 +0000

Well the end of the year really did sneak up on me this year! It seems like just yesterday 2008 was starting full of promise and opportunity. Overall 2008 was a very good year for me personally, with the birth of my beautiful daughter a definite highlight. On the CRM front Microsoft released Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 ( well December 2007 really) which saw the product mature further and become a real challenger in both mid-market and enterprise. This is clearly demonstrated by the release of the Forrester Wave Q3 2008 report showing Microsoft CRM as a leader in both the enterprise and mid-market.

My guess is that, while 2009 will have its challenges (when will the financial crisis bottom out?), it will again be a good year for CRM overall. Having seen some of the sneak previews of Microsoft CRM 5.0 the product will again see some significant improvements and new functionality. This will allow us to push the product harder and create even more innovative solutions. I’m also a firm believer in the value of CRM solutions overall and especially in a downturn market. Organisations that recognise this value while others are cutting back on IT spend are generally, I believe, the ones that come out not only alive, but ahead. I’m looking forward, along with the rest of the CRM community, to being a small part of creating that value.

I’d like to wish everyone a very happy, merry and safe Christmas. May your stockings be filled with love, kindness and maybe a great gadget or two.

Why analytics is a critical part of any CRM solution

noreply@blogger.com (Karl Iuel) — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 23:39:00 +0000

These days any good CRM application will have some form of analytics as part of the application. Sometimes this is in the form of basic reports, other times it is through interactive excel spreadsheets or dashboards. While this functionality is critical in a CRM application I always shudder when in built analytics (or worse flat reporting) gets sold as CRM analytics! A good CRM analytical solution is so much more than out of the box reporting or dashboards.

For example you will often find in a CRM application that the out-the-box analytical solutions focus on sales and opportunities, with reports such as a pipeline analysis. The initial Microsoft CRM 3.0 Microsoft Dynamics CRM Analytics Foundation and now the Analytics Accelerators for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 have a number of demonstration reports focusing on sales and opportunities. But this will be meaningless, for example, to my education clients where there is no concept of a sales pipeline. They may wish to analyse student enrollment by year level rather.

Any CRM analytical solution needs to be an integral part of the initial planning phase of a CRM project. Quite often the analytical requirements will drive the requirements of the overall CRM solution. For example a client may wish to analyse its customers satisfaction over a period of time. This means there needs to be somewhere in the CRM application to maintain a history of customer satisfaction. A process also needs to be developed to ensure staff know where and how to capture and rate customer satisfaction.

Having relevant analytics available in a CRM application will help drive user take up and use of the application. Staff will know for example, that if they need to see how they are tracking against their targets they can get that information from the CRM application. They also know that in order for the information to appear in the first place they need to capture it in the CRM application. Having said that CRM analytics should never be sold or conveyed as a Big Brother is watching you solution. This is one sure fire way of staff not using or resenting the solution.

Now having said earlier that the Analytics Accelerators for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 has some focus on sales and opportunities it is much much more and is a fantastic starting point to build an analytical solution. However ensure that part of the planning process is focused on the analytics requirements and those requirements are used to develop an analytical solution that provides meaningful data to the right people. I have found almost without fail that if you get this right user adoption sky rockets! Happy analysing :)

Microsoft CRM 4.0 Viewing the Original Lead’s Notes in an Account

noreply@blogger.com (Karl Iuel) — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 23:28:00 +0000

I’ve often been asked by my clients if it is possible to easily view the notes captured against a lead in the created account or contact after a lead is qualified. Unfortunately other than going back to the original lead there is no way to easily achieve this. However there are a few options available to solve this problem and these include:

Develop a plug-in to copy notes from the originating lead to the created account or contact.
Write a Reporting Services Report to show notes from the originating lead and allow the user to run the report from within the account or contact.
Show the originating lead’s notes in an iFrame in the account or contact screen.

I have found #3 the easiest to implement and users generally like it as they don’t need to go outside of the account / contact form to see the originating lead’s notes.

To demonstrate how to achieve this I’ll use the account form in my example but you could just as easily achieve this in the contact or opportunity form. First we will need to customise the account form, adding a new tab and section called Originating Lead Notes and then adding an iFrame called IFRAME_LeadNotes. Set the URL of your iFrame to about:blank and untick Restrict cross-frame scripting. I also set my iFrame to automatically expand to use the available space.

Next add the following JavaScript code to your form onload event":

var lookupItem = new Array;
lookupItem = crmForm.originatingleadid.DataValue;

if (lookupItem != null)
{
crmForm.all.IFRAME_LeadNotes.src="/_controls/notes/notesdata.aspx?id="+ lookupItem[0].id + "&ParentEntity=3&EnableInlineEdit=false&EnableInsert=false";
}
else
{
crmForm.all.IFRAME_LeadNotes.src="about:blank";
}

Publish your changes and you are now able to view the original lead’s notes in your account form.

To make the solution even more user friendly rather than show a blank iFrame you may want hide the Lead Notes tab if there is no Originating Lead. This solution can also be used in other areas where you want to show notes from another record on a form. The skies are the limit :)

Opening an Email when double clicking on the email address in Microsoft CRM.

noreply@blogger.com (Karl Iuel) — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 23:44:00 +0000

I’ve often been asked by my clients if they can double click on an email address in the contact screen and have it create a new email in Outlook. I found this solution on Michael Höhne from Stunnware’s blog (found here).

Copy and paste the following code in the load event of the contact form:

if (crmForm.all.<name of text field> != null) {
    crmForm.all.<name of text field>.ondblclick = function() {
var email = crmForm.all.<name of text field>.DataValue;
if ((email != null) && (email.length > 0)) {
            window.navigate("mailto:" + email);
        }
    }
}

Replace the <name of text field> with the schema name of your email field. Normally this is emailaddress1.

Users will now be able to open a contact’s record, double click on the email address and it will open a new email in Outlook. They can then make a decision as to whether they want to track the email by clicking on the Track in CRM button. Simple but very effective and most importantly users love it!

I find that I am often on Michael’s blog using his solutions in the Real World. Check it out if you haven’t yet www.stunnware.com!

Using Workflow to Generate Autonumbers in Microsoft CRM 4.0

noreply@blogger.com (Karl Iuel) — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 00:21:00 +0000

I have encountered many scenarios where clients have required an autonumber on an entity. For example they needed to generate a customer number on an account or a quote number etc. There are a number of ways to generate autonumbers using code usually through plugins. You can find a create example of autonumber code here. Today I’ll take you though how to create an autonumber solution using standard Microsoft CRM Workflow with no coding required.

First create a new entity called “Auto Number” to store the next available number for your autonumber. Next create single integer attribute called next number and place that on your form. Now you will need to create a 1:n relationship to the entity where you want to use the Autonumber. In my example I’ve created an 1:n relationship to the account entity. Ensure you can access your new entity from the settings area and publish your changes. Navigate to your new entity and create a record as shown below. I’ve called my record “Account Auto Number” and I’ve set my next number to 1.

Next create a new integer attribute on the entity where you want to the auto numbering to occur. In my example I’ve created an attribute called Customer Number on the Account Entity.

The next step is to create the workflow against, in my case, the account entity. The workflow will be started on the creation of a new account. Create the following steps in your workflow:

Your first step in your workflow will be an update to the Account. In the Update Account screen select the additional fields tab and find the auto number lookup field created when you created your 1:n relationship. Click on the look up and select “Account Auto Number”
Next create another update to the account step in your workflow. It is important to do this as a separate step as you need to link your account to the “Account Auto Number” record first. In your Update Account screen set your Customer Number field to be a dynamic value. Set your look for to your Auto Number entity and select the Next Number as the field.
Lastly we need to go back and increment the next available customer number by 1. To do this create a new update step. This time you will be updating the Auto Number Entity. In the Update Auto Number field increment the Next Number by 1.

Publish your workflow and that’s it :)

There are a few things to note in using a workflow rather than a plugin to generate a auto number. Firstly a workflow is asynchronous and thus a user will not see the next number update immediately after saving the record. They will need to wait until the workflow has run and re-open the record. Also workflows do not run offline so the user will need to wait until they go online to generate a auto number.

Creating a Relevant Microsoft CRM Demo

noreply@blogger.com (Karl Iuel) — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 22:29:00 +0000

During my time as a Microsoft CRM partner I have both been presented to and have presented a fair number of CRM application demos. Some of those demonstrations have been fantastic and some have been absolutely dreadful! For today’s article I would like to take a look at what a prospective customer should look for in a Microsoft CRM product demo and from a vendors point of view how to not only successfully present Microsoft CRM, but also ensure the demonstration is relevant to the customer’s needs. The following is my top five points on how to create a successful, relevant Microsoft CRM demo:

Create relevant demo data.
One of the easiest traps to fall into in presenting Microsoft CRM, and one that really annoys most, is to use the standard Microsoft CRM demo data. For anyone who hasn’t played with a demo version of Microsoft CRM, the demo data is based on a fictitious company Adventure Works, a bicycle manufacturer. Unfortunately this data is not relevant to most industries. Presenting a solution using the prospective customers own data adds real relevance to the demo. From a customer’s perspective it allows the customer to better understand how the application will work in their own environment.

Present a solution not the product.
Rather than show off the features and functionality of Microsoft CRM, demonstrate how Microsoft CRM can solve the prospective customer’s business problems and how it can be used to create a solution. This will mean that before creating the Microsoft CRM demo, some time will need invested with the prospective customer understanding why they are looking at implementing a CRM application and what business problems they are trying to solve.

Demonstrate Microsoft CRM through a storyline. Following on the previous point demonstrate Microsoft CRM from a particular user’s point of view through a storyline. For example you can demonstrate a “Day in the life” of the Sales Manager and show how he may use the Microsoft CRM to assist him through the day. Again rather than demonstrating features and function you will show how the application can assist the Sales Manager in productively managing his day.

Create a demo script but be prepared to be flexible. Ensure you that have created and printed out a predefined demo script that you can follow during the Microsoft CRM demo. This will ensure that you don’t forget to demonstrate any part of the solution. However you may find that during the Microsoft CRM demo that the customer may want to see a certain area in more detail, or alternatively may want to skip over particular area that is not relevant. Don’t be too attached to your demo script and allow yourself to be driven by the customer’s needs during the demo.

Keep the Microsoft CRM demo short and focused.
Know how long you have for the demo beforehand and ensure that you allow time for questions during and after. Ensure that your demo presents the areas that the customer has expressed interest in beforehand and don’t labour too much on general look and feel and basic functionality. For example the customer will expect that the application can track company and contact information, so while you may mention this, don’t go into detail, rather spend time on how the customer can easily extract and analyse vital sales information, which will help them manage their business.

Microsoft CRM 4.0 and SQL 2008

noreply@blogger.com (Karl Iuel) — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 02:00:00 +0000

The other day I installed Microsoft CRM 4.0 using SQL 2008. I wanted to start using the Microsoft SQL 2008 BI tools to demonstrate a true CRM analytical solution. I also wanted to create multiple CRM Organisations so that I could develop a number of vertical solutions for future Microsoft CRM demos.

Microsoft CRM installed beautifully and all was up and working within the hour. Then I went to create a new organisation in the Deployment Manager and ran into this error halfway through the install: “The specified path is not a metabase path” I was fairly sure it had something to do with SQL 2008 and Reporting Services and some investigation on the web proved me right. It turns out that because Reporting Services no longer using IIS, Microsoft CRM was falling over when it went to validate the Reporting Services URL. In order to get past the error you need to create a website in IIS on your Reporting Services server that matches the URL and port as specified in the Reporting Services Configuration Manager. This solution and other issues with SQL 2008 and Microsoft CRM 4.0 are described in more detail in a knowledgebase article which can be found here.

As an aside I was hoping that Roll up 1 for Microsoft CRM 4.0 would resolve this issue but no luck!

Farewell SDM! You will be missed!

noreply@blogger.com (Karl Iuel) — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 06:55:00 +0000

Friday night was the SDM wake (December 1 spells the end of the SDM brand). It was great to catch up with all the ex SDM’ers, some of whom I haven’t seen for a long time and some I just saw that day! It was also a sad day though as I was saying goodbye to a company that was one of my favourite to work for. I loved my time at SDM and I met some fantastic people there who I know I will keep in touch with for a long time to come. It got me thinking, what made SDM such a great company? How would you go about emulating SDM’s success – and I know many of us will try? For me it comes down to one thing and one thing alone; SDM had extraordinary people. From senior management, to its account management team, project team, to the delivery teams, SDM had fantastic people! There was a passion at SDM that you could actually feel as you walked through the door. Everyone loved what they were doing and did it with contagious enthusiasm. A big difference for me personally was the attitude of the experienced staff at SDM. There was a real belief in mentoring and helping and for many of us that meant learning and growing. I know that I have learnt many valuable lessons that I will use throughout my career thanks to the time that individuals took to help and teach me along the way. And for that I will always be grateful.

So what has this got to do with CRM? Well probably not a lot and admittedly this is a bit of write and release but there is similarity between successfully managing customers and employees. The broad definition of CRM is “A strategy to assist an organisation in managing relationships with customers to maximise profit”. The same can go for employees. In order to maximise company profit you need to find superior talent, build solid relationships with the acquired talent and help that talent grow. The hard part in all of that, in my experience, is finding and keeping the right talent. The right talent doesn’t always mean the best money can get, but rather its more about getting the mix right. It’s about finding passionate people who complement each other and can cover for the areas that they are weaker. I believe this is where SDM really got it right. They had a good mix of techies, business and sales all of whom complimented each other.

Farewell SDM, you will be missed! I hope to work for you again someday!

Bloggers Block and training experiences

noreply@blogger.com (Karl Iuel) — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 22:48:00 +0000

I have resisted creating a blog for many years mostly because there are so many great CRM blogs out there and I didn’t want to simply repeat what was already being written. However having worked with CRM and ERP software for a while now (13 years next Feb!) I have been privileged to see many creative uses of CRM as well as some fantastic solutions. I felt it was time to share my experiences.

Another reason I’ve resisted creating a blog is the fear that I’ll fall into the trap of blogging like crazy for the first week or two and then never updating it again. I’ve found that the most useful bloggers are the ones who regularly update their blogs no matter how busy they get. I’ve always believed that in creating a blog you’re making a pact with your readers that firstly you’ll write something worth reading and secondly you will post that useful information on a regular basis. So take the fact that I’m now finally capitulating and entering the bloggerspeare that I will endeavour to do both.

So what do you write about in your first entry that is both useful and worthy of your very first blog post? That’s probably another reason I haven’t started a blog, the pressure of that first article seems to lead to bloggers block! To get past my bloggers block (BB for short?) I thought rather than write an epic Pulitzer winning novel, I would keep my first post simple and talk about what I believe is the most important aspect of a CRM solution.
So what makes a CRM project successful? There are many things that lead to a successful CRM project such as strong executive sponsorship, ensuring the technology doesn’t distract from your CRM strategy, ensuring you have a well planned and thought out change management strategy. I’m not saying any of those or other items are not really important but I have found that almost without exception the one absolutely vital element of any CRM project is this: Training!

Far too often training is something that happens at the end of a project. The solution has been designed, built, tested; change management has been put in place. Right we’re ready let’s go train! Far from being something that should only occur at the end of the project, training should form part of initiation of the project as well. How often I have heard during a training session someone in the initial project team pipe up, “Wow if only I knew the application could do that! That would have solved this problem”. By starting your project with even simple application training you’re ensuring the project team has a better understanding of what the CRM application can and can’t do and how it can achieve their objectives. By training at the start of the project you’re empowering your project team with knowledge.

Another successful training strategy I have used in the past is to break your training sessions into a number of short focused courses rather than a few long sessions. I never like to have a course go for more than an hour and half or cover more than two major topics. Keeping it short and focussed helps ensure the content is relevant to your students. For example you can narrow the course content down to purely the marketing functionality for the marketing team or managing the sales process for the sales team. By keeping my sessions short and focussed I have found that my students are far more receptive and end up using a lot of what they have learnt out in the Real World of CRM.

In the end all of this means you need a sound training strategy in place right at the start of your CRM project. The more thought and focus you put into your training strategy the more successful your CRM project will be.

As an aside, as I struggled with my bloggers block, I turned to my good friend Google to see what he had to say on the matter and found this article “10 tips for beating bloggers block”. I loved tip #1!