Jukka Niiranen

Author: Jukka Niiranen

  • Connections don’t merge, so be careful with duplicate records

    Update 22.3.2012: this has now been fixed in Update Rollup 7 for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 (KB 2600643). Go and get the file here, unless you’re using CRM Online.

    Connections are a nice new feature in Dynamics CRM 2011 that allow you to create ad-hoc relationships between two records of almost any entity type. Additionally, you can specify roles for both the Connected To and Connected From parties, to describe the connection in more detail, as well as provide start and end dates for the connection. These are very handy for recording non-hierarchical relationships between contacts and accounts that tend to exist in the real world. As an example, a person working as the CEO of Company A might be a member of the board in Company B, which means they should be visible under both accounts. Company A would then be the parent account of the contact, whereas there would be a connection between the contact and Company B.

    Another common real life phenomena is that duplicate records find their way into the CRM database. This can be due to data imports from external databases, web forms feeding in new contacts, or simply two users being unaware of each other’s records and entering data with slightly different spelling or email address variations. Luckily Dynamics CRM has a built-in functionality that allows you to merge duplicates from the database. This process will move all the child records from the subordinate record to the master record, thus ensuring that everything remains linked to the active record and not the deactivated duplicate.

    Except that for connections this doesn’t happen! Once the merge is done, all the connections will still be referencing the inactive record, not the master record. In the aforementioned example, you would have effectively lost the information about the contact’s relationship with Company B. Even though you could still see it by opening up Company B’s record and seeing the connection there, how would you ever have known where to look?

    There is an existing feedback item 683301 on Microsoft Connect regarding this functionality:

    Here’s a quote of the comment I’ve posted on the item:

    I think this is a serious flaw that undermines the perceived reliability of the Merge Duplicates feature in the eyes of the end users. The merge screen indicates that all child records related to the subordinate record to be deactivated would be transferred to the master record, but it doesn’t warn that connections would need to be manually checked.

    The merge process works just fine for custom entities, activities and pretty much everything except connections. Why would the user ever want to leave behind some non-duplicate information to the deactivated record? By merging two accounts or contacts the user is effectively declaring that these represent the same object in the real world. If something in the database has a relationship with either of these records, it should be carried over to the active record, as the inactive record no longer serves any other purpose than indicating the prior existence of a duplicate entry and the possible differences in attribute values compared to the current active record.

    If you think connections should be transferred over to the master record when merging duplicates, be sure to log in to Microsoft Connect with your Windows Live ID and cast your vote on this item. In the meantime, if you’re planning to use the connections entity for recording any data related to accounts, contacts, or leads, my suggested options are:

    • Don’t do it. Create a new custom entity for recording this data, as they will merge over to the master record just fine.
    • Develop you own plugin for capturing any merge events and updating the related connection records accordingly.
    While we’re on the topic, I also tested what happens to the old Relationship records that were used for connecting account, contact and opportunity records in versions prior to CRM 2011 (and are still visible in an upgraded organization). The result? When merging two contacts, any relationships referencing the subordinate record are deleted! Yeah, crazy, I know. If you’ve got any insight on what is the reason behind this perplexing system behavior for either connections or relationships when dealing with duplicate records merging, please leave a comment in the box below.
  • CRM 2011 Data Import Wizard in practice

    CRM 2011 Data Import Wizard in practice

    Data migration typically isn’t the most joyful part of a CRM implementation, but you really need to pay attention to carefully importing all the relevant customer data it if you want the users to adopt the CRM system as an integral part of their day to day activities, rather than yet another business application searching for its purpose. When implementing Microsoft Dynamics CRM, the logical place to start planning the import process is having a look at what tools are available in the application itself.

    The Data Import Wizard used to be a curse word among the Dynamics CRM crowd for a long time, but you shouldn’t ignore this option right away, just because of its bad reputation. Sure, there are many limitations with the built-in tool, but it has come a long way since the previous versions. Having recently spent some hands-on time with the CRM 2011 Import Wizard, I decided to put together some of the useful links and pieces of information I discovered during the process. There’s plenty of great blog posts out there on individual data import features, but perhaps this can serve as a “getting started” tookit for planning on how to import data into Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011.

    Mapping related records based on custom ID fields

    The CRM database by definition is primarily a place for storing information about how different objects relate with one another. This means you will almost always be dealing with source data that needs to reference another set of data once imported into the system. In Dynamics CRM these relationships manifest themselves as lookup fields that point from a child record to its parent.

    When you are mapping the lookup fields from a child entity into a parent entity that’s already in the system, you always need to consider the possibility of duplicate values in the list of parent entities. Contact names are not unique, and neither are account names in many cases. Yes, you could import lookup references by using a CRM GUID instead of the primary field (most often the name attribute) of the parent entity, but how often would you have that available in your source data to be imported? Exactly.

    The first and in my opinion the best improvement with the Import Wizard in CRM 2011 is the possibility to reference the parent entity with an alternative field. Yes, if you have a reliable unique value available in your data, such as customer number or contact email address, you’re free to use that to link your records together. Alternatively, you can construct specific import ID’s out of your data that you first import into a hidden field, then later on use that as the reference which connects your related child records into exactly the correct parent record without the risk of import row failure.

    For step by step instructions, check out this blog post by MVP Leon Tribe: Changing the Lookup Reference When Importing Related Data.

    Importing data for multiple entities in one go

    A common format for customer data coming from non-relational systems is a flat file that contains both account and contact data on the same “table”. In these cases you will have multiple instances of the account’s information repeated on each line where there is an individual contact related to that account. You first reaction might be “oh well, guess I’ll have to split that into an accounts file and a contacts file, then remove the duplicates“. Well, good news: you don’t have to anymore!

    Nowadays CRM comes with a built-in data map called  “For Generic Contact and Account Data”, which will allow you to import a file that has data intended for both account and contact records. First of all, you can map some of the source fields into both the target entities. Address information is a good example, as it’s typically stored separately on both accounts and contacts (yeah, data redundancy, but often it’s just more convenient for your everyday CRM usage).

    Secondly, you will not get duplicate account records from each of the rows, as the Import Wizard is smart enough to detect the distinct parent accounts needed for the child contacts. Now, in order to get the expected results, it’s also up to you to be smart with your source data and field mapping. If any of the fields you’ve mapped to the parent account have any variation in their contents (such as phone numbers with different spacing formats), you will get duplicates, simply because the system will not throw away any unique data rows. Additionally, your child record imports to those accounts will result in failures, as the parent account lookup field will point to a non-unique value in the database (unless you used the aforementioned method to specify an alternative lookup reference). You should also take into consideration if the source data actually has intentional duplicate values for account names, such as branch offices with only a different address.

    Check out this article for step-by-step instructions on how to import accounts and contacts from a single file. But what if you need to perform the same type of import, only you’re not dealing with accounts and contacts? Say, importing data to custom entities with a parent-child relationship, like “event” and “event attendee”? No problem, you can build a data map just like the “For Generic Contact and Account Data” one, by leveraging the multi-entity data file import mapping feature.

    How much data is too much?

    Even if you are importing only into a single target entity, there’s a good chance that you’ll cross the line of allowed maximum size of the import file for the Import Wizard, which is 8 MB. While the XML data import templates available for download from the CRM UI provide very nice features for ensuring the input data is in the correct format, they have the downside of increasing the file size considerably. Compared to an Excel file (xls, xlsx) the size of a file saved in the Office 2003 XML file format can easily be tenfold.

    One potential way to get around this limitation is to zip up your import files. You can read the requirements for the zip file contents here, but in general your everyday import files should be zip compatible without any extra tricks. This is actually how the multi-entity data file imports are also handled, as there will only be the possibility of uploading a single file into the Import Wizard to be processed, so you’ll need to package your import files into a zip archive.

    In addition to the source data files, you can also include attachments into a zipped import file. Yes, the Import Wizard does support attachment import as well. You’ll need to be careful with the data structure, so have a look at this article for specifications on how to Import attachments with notes. Keep in mind that the 8 MB file size limit does still apply here, so a large number of big file attachments may not be a fun task to perform throug the Import Wizard.

    Field and value mapping made easier

    If you are working with a data set that contains several picklists with lots and lots of values, mapping them could potentially consume a lot of your time. The first thing you want to make sure is that there are matching values in the CRM picklist fields (nowadays known as option sets) for all the distinct values available in your source columns. Auto mapping will do the heavy lifting for you and match the source and target values as long as they are identical in both. One thing you may not initially notice while mapping the data, though, is that the Import Wizard will also automatically append the list of values in the option sets if it encounters new source values. While it sounds like a neat feature, this may mean you end up with an unexpected set of values, duplicates with slight differences in spelling, breaking workflows or plugins due to mismatch of value ID’s etc. In my opinion, it’s much better to plan ahead and be in the driver’s seat of how your CRM is customized, even if the Wizard offers powerful but dangerous new features that can extend the schema with new fields or even entities.

    When you’re working with development, test/QA and production environments, performing the same data mapping procedures time and time again could quickly become a very tedious task. Not only that, but the chances of making a mistake in the process of mapping the fields and values becomes ever more likely if you have to repeat a manual task like that. Luckily Dynamics CRM allows you to save your data maps after you create them (and before you start the actual import job), so be sure to take advantage of this feature. Of course, saving your data map into a test server won’t provide you with that data once you move to production. That’s where the export/import feature of data maps comes in handy. Just create your field mapping once and then take it with you to the next organization you’re working on.

    More handy improvements in the Wizard

    There used to be limitations on some of the entity fields which you weren’t allowed to update in previous versions. A common pain point was the inability to directly set the record owner, so you had to import this information in a temporary field and perform bulk updates on the records after the import. This limitation has now been removed and you’re free to assign the records directly to users or even teams.

    Another caveat of the Import Wizard was that you weren’t allowed to set the state of the imported records, meaning you couldn’t easily import inactive records for historical purposes. Well, now you can, so no more need to leave out information on past activities with your customers, just because you don’t want to re-send all your emails to get them appear as closed activities. Just set your activity status as completed, import opportunities as won/lost or whatever status it is you require.

    One thing to note while importing records is that the status change will actually take place after record creation. Why is this important? Well, the closing event will trigger workflows you may have in the target system. Also with the new Activity Feeds functionality introduced in the Q4 2011 update, there’s a chance you may have activity feeds rules in place that will spam your import actions all over the personal wall of your CRM users. Since no one wants to see hundreds of “activity X closed” notifications in their activity feed, be sure to remember to deactivate all rules which could wreak havoc on your brand new internal collaboration channel.

    How about update existing?

    While creating new records with the CRM 2011 Import Wizard is supported, updating existing records isn’t. In case you would like to only import some new fields for existing customers, by using an identifier field like email address or customer number to locate the records to be updated inside the CRM database, you’ll need to look for alternatives to the Wizard.

    It is supported to perform an “export for import” extraction of data from Advanced Find that provides you an Excel sheet you can import back to update records (by selecting “make this data available for re-importing by including required column headings” option). However, unless you’re willing to dump all your records into this Excel and then match them against your import file with your custom ID field by using a tool like Access, to get the corresponding GUID’s, this won’t be the tool you are looking for.

    I guess you could also create a temporary child entity for the target entity, then import new records here with the required lookup reference linking them to the parent, followed by a set of workflow magic that would transfer the required values from child to parent. It all depends on how much effort you’re willing to put in working with the out-of-the-box data import tool.

    Beyond the Import Wizard: ISV solutions

    There will always be many data migration needs that simply cannot be covered with a wizard like application, no matter how much Microsoft would improve the feature set of the Dynamics CRM Import Wizard. At some point it would have so many parameters and options that it would no longer resemble a wizard at all. Since the out-of-the-box functionality has to remain approachable for the “normal” user who just wants to get a simple Excel list uploaded into the system, I’m pretty certain that the market for 3rd party solutions is not going to go away anytime soon.

    Instead of rooting for one particular vendor, I’m going to provide a list of the data import solutions that I’m aware of and let you evaluate which one best fits your needs.

    As further reading, I recommend everyone to have a look at this awesome article by Joel Lindstrom on Lessons Learned Migrating Data to Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011. In it Joel lists the most important gotchas to be aware of before starting a data migration to Dynamics CRM, even when using a 3rd party tool like Scribe, such as activityparty data handling, record status, removed users etc.

  • Activity Feeds are here, so “What’s New” in CRM then?

    Microsoft Dynamics CRM Q4 2011 Service UpdateIt’s been nine months since Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 was released. Given the large number of new features and functionality included in the new version, I’m sure many organizations have been able to keep themselves busy with thinking about how to leverage all of them. Anyway, the time is now upon us when we see the first true deliverable from the new agile development path that the Dynamics CRM product development team has adopted. The “Q4 2011 Service Update”, “November Service Update” or “CRM Online R7”, however you like to call it, gives a taste of things to come, as new features and improvements are now introduced bi-annually instead of a big bang release every 2-3 years.

    There’s lots of neat things included in the update, such as multi-category charts, user access auditing, lookup and date fields for dialogs, ignoring null values and inactive records in duplicate detection rules etc. Have no doubt, though, this release will be remembered from the Activity Feeds, so let’s proceed straight to them.

    More than just an accelerator for CRM

    Microsoft has split the delivery method of the Activity Feeds functionality into two tiers. The platform level changes are delivered with Update Rollup 4, which brings us a selection of new default entities, such as the feed Post. These will provide the building blocks not only for the visible Activity Feeds released now but also web services API enhancements, which are covered in the 5.0.7 update of the SDK.

    The Update Rollups can nowadays be considered pretty much as “business as usual” hotfixes like the ones released for other Microsoft products, both on server and client side, as they are delivered through the common Microsoft Update mechanism. Testing and planning for the Rollups is of course very much recommended still, as significant changes can be included in them, and yes, they do occasionally break compatibility between versions. Furthermore, the Update Rollup 5 required for Activity Feeds to function cannot be uninstalled if things go wrong.

    Anyway, unlike the hotfixes that can be expected to be installed on almost all CRM environments, the Activity Feeds user interface components will probably remain missing from many instances. Why? Because there is no automatic delivery method for them, unless you are using a CRM Online environment that has been provisioned after the R7 release became available. You see, Activity Feeds still are kind of like an accelerator package, as the solution file will need to be downloaded from the Dynamics Marketplace and installed by the system administrator.

    Download the Activity Feeds solution for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 from the Dynamics Marketplace

    Not even installing the solution file and publishing the customizations is enough – you still need to configure them. The menu item for “What’s New” will appear in the UI after the solution installation, but none of the entities in your CRM have yet been enabled for Activity Feed posts. To do this, you’ll need to navigate to Settings and go to Activity Feeds Configuration menu. Create a new Post Configuration record for each entity that you wish to relate posts to. The configuration UI of the solution is not too nice, as you’ll actually need to use the logical name of the entity rather than the display name. So, to enable the new functionality for the user entity (which is the very first thing you must do!) is enter the value “systemuser” and click save. Make sure you check the box for “enable walls for this type of record form” and don’t forget to publish the entity’s customizations after clicking on save.

    Activity Feed Post Configuration

    What’s a “wall”? If you’re on Facebook (and who isn’t), you’ll know this refers to the place where the posts related to a user will be displayed in a descending chronological order. Now, in CRM it’s not only users that can have walls, but any entity for which you have created a Post Configuration entry for. Even your custom entities, like “project” or “event” can be set to have their own Wall. However, bare in mind that not all the system entities are supported for the Activity Feeds functionality, so you can’t have a discussion related to, say, competitor or product records (which kind of sucks, as those are some very common topics for employee discussion around the water cooler, but guess you’ll still need to get away from your desk every now & then). For a complete list of supported system entities, see this page on the SDK.

    Account record wall

    As you can see from the image above, the wall is actually a web part that is presented on a new tab, that is located before the first default tab (general). The tab will be collapsed by default and the form actually scrolls to the general tab right after the form script is loaded, so a user may not notice anything new on the form. However, if you click on the anchor on the left side navigation, the Record Wall will be revealed in all its glory. Here the user will have the option of adding the record into his list of followed CRM records, see who else is following it, and of course post an update on the wall. (By the way: if you have multiple forms per entity, you’ll need to add the Record Wall web parts manually, by following these instructions.)

    There’s also a Personal Wall that shows the user all the content from followed records, and that’s the first entry visible on the updated sitemap for Workplace. What’s really nice is that you have a link right after the “What’s New” header, which will allow you to pop up the wall in a new window. This way you can have the feed view quickly available for you at any time, no matter with which CRM entities you are currently working on in the main application window.

    Activity Feeds personal wall

    Furthermore, every user has a User Record Wall, which would be identical to the concept of a Facebook profile page. Sorry, no timeline design available here yet!

    Not just for mindless chatter: business logic for Auto Posts

    If all that Activity Feeds provided was the ability to chat with your colleagues or manually post updates related to records, then it would have a tough time competing with established enterprise microblogging apps like Yammer. Luckily the Dynamics CRM platform can offer much more than that. By allowing certain events related to CRM records to generate content for the Activity Feeds the system can actually serve as a tool that removes the need for you to email information about business events or type updates into a microblogging app. A traditional way to demonstrate the CRM workflows has been to create email alerts on closed opportunities, but now you can reduce the clutter in your inbox by moving these into the right context (opportunity form) with the ability for users to comment and see others’ comments. (more…)

  • Know your application: the MB2-868 exam for CRM 2011

    You pass! That’s a sight for sore eyes after staring at 75 grey screens full of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Applications certification exam questions for almost 2 hours. I received 750 points out of the required 700 minimum, so not exactly a walk in the park, but who’s going to care about the detailed statistics of how you acquired your MCTS certification?

    During the test I did have to go back to some 15 questions I marked for review during the initial round and spend a fair amount of time rolling the virtual dice in my head. Well, not exactly like that, but rather trying to reverse engineer the process of how the people at Microsoft might have designed the application to function in different scenarios and what reasons and practical limitations lead them to these choices. While many of the questions could well be taken from real life use cases, the way in which you need to be able to solve these problems in the exam is quite far from the normal routines. In real life you experiment, investigate and iterate, whereas here you’ve only got a few words to work on; each of them possibly containing a hint towards the right answer, or alternatively loaded with the malicious intent of leading you astray.

    Just because you’ve been working with the Dynamics CRM application on a daily basis for several years, doesn’t guarantee you would pass the MB2-868 exam. Even MVP’s have failed on their first attempt, so beware! The amount of product information covered in the Applications exam is growing all the time as new features are introduced and with CRM 2011 there’s a lot to read, let alone to try out in the application itself. At least when I was going through the training materials, the most time consuming part was when I constantly kept coming up with new ideas about “hey, this is something we must also set up for our presales demos”. Even though I had started digging deeper into the new version functionality already before the beta of CRM 2011 was released (and compiled my findings into two “what’s new” presentations you can find here: pt1 and pt2), preparing for the Applications exam made me realize how much of pre-2011 functionality you also need to keep in mind at the same time.

    So, tell me then, how important is it to remember by heart from which menus a particular standard report can be executed, when they’re A) all available from the Reports menu anyway and B) usually available in the right context for the user? Or what about studying all the different record statuses in which certain actions can be performed, when we’ve got a graphical, context sensitive ribbon persistently available in the UI, gently reminding us of the things we can and cannot (greyed-out/hidden buttons) perform at any given time? Like it or not, this is the direction that these multiple choice exams tend to drift towards: detailed information that’s perhaps nice to know, but won’t matter much in terms of real life skills required while actually using Dynamics CRM.

    If we look at Microsoft’s target audience definition for this exam, it reads:

    This exam is intended for individuals that plan to implement, use, maintain, or support Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 in their organization.  The exam is also intended for service schedulers, administrators, office managers, CEOs, and consultants who want to demonstrate foundational understanding of the application functionality.

    Quite a broad definition then. If you as an end-user or administrator are interested in learning details about the default functionality available in Dynamics CRM 2011, by all means do attend the training courses and download the training manuals from CustomerSource. They contain a wealth of useful information and some nice exercises you can try out in, for example, your very own 30-day trial environment of CRM Online (which may offer you quite a different “vanilla” training environment than your customized production CRM server). However, don’t worry too much about “demonstrating foundational understanding” of Dynamics CRM through the MB2-868 exam. The system is far easier to use in everyday life than how the exam questions portray it, so you’re better off in directing that time and energy towards exploring the possibilities that Dynamics CRM gives you in customizing the system to fit your business data and to automate your business processes. That’s where the real ROI of your CRM system is hiding, after all.

    Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Applications courseware

     

    For those of you who need to take the exam due to MS partner competency requirements, the MB2-868 exam page section “skills measured”  is a useful document to keep by your side when browsing through all the CRM 2011 applications MOC courseware. Checking the topics enables you to better balance your study efforts, to make sure you’re not just diving deep into one module and neglecting another. This is how everything counts:

    • Marketing automation: 27%
    • Sales management: 30%
    • Service management: 24%
    • Service scheduling: 19%

    For example, service scheduling and service contract management have been standard features of the Dynamics CRM product for a long time, yet I find it hard to discover real life use cases of customers having deployed these processes into production use. Either the organization has initially tried using them, but later given up due to the mismatch of the built-in process flow and solved their problem with custom entities instead, or then they’ve gone down the customization route directly. As a result of this, it’s not necessarily an area that CRM consultants would be too knowledgeable on, when considerably more of their time is spent configuring and training the sales process in CRM.

    Does this then mean that these modules should have less emphasis in the exam? Well, at the end of the day, probably not. If you look at things from Microsoft’s point of view, it is in their best interest to have CRM consultants be aware of all the different functionality that their product contains out of the box. Precisely because their common tendency might be to focus on what they already know best and leave out the rest of the story when discussing with potential and existing Dynamics clients, it’s actually a fair exercise to make these specialists step outside of their comfort zones for a while during the certification process. Sure, you may not need the information in the projects you’re working on right now, but you need to have the ability to get up to speed quickly when duty calls.

    Finally, here’s a few practical tips from me on how to prepare for the CRM 2011 Applications exam:

    • Goal management: understand what values are recorded on which entity, the impact of ownership, fiscal year settings.
    • Teams and queues: this is where most of your answers based on experience from CRM 4.0 will guide you down the wrong path, so forget what you know and learn the new CRM 2011 way of working.
    • Charts and dashboards: what the user can do vs. what the admin can do, this should actually be pretty much 101 stuff if you’re well in grips with the solution management side of things. However, you shouldn’t forget about SSRS entirely: open each default report at least once and try them out, just to refresh your memory.
    • Marketing lists: Try building a few dynamic marketing lists to see how they’re different from the traditional static ones, and also how to mix’n match them.
    • Scheduling: you’ll need to understand how capacity management and resource selection rules work from the service and the resource perspectives, there’s just no way around this.
    • Record statuses: trust me, things that require no attention from you in everyday life will be very important here, so play around with as many different entities as you have time for and examine what actions are available on the ribbon in which record status.
    • RTFM: knowing how the system works is not good enough, as some of the questions are clearly derived from how the use cases are described in the training material, and in these kind of exams every word in the questions and answers is significant. So, don’t just play around with the fun tools built into CRM 2011 or trust what a lecturer tells you – also read through the MOC PDF’s.

    And just to close things off, some useful links for seeing what others think about MB2-868:

     

  • Enterprise gone social – how will CRM fit in?

    Enterprise gone social – how will CRM fit in?

    Call it a revolution, call it a bubble, call it what you want. One thing is for sure: social networks are not going away. Even though it still remains important to be able to manage and measure your sales funnel with the help of some tried & tested SFA tools, segment your customer database to build more effective target groups for campaigns, or share information on customer support enquiries across your helpdesk staff, this functionality will not be considered as important as it was during the last decade. In this new age of connected customers and empowered information workers, companies will be searching for applications and processes that go beyond what CRM has traditionally stood for.

    Let’s take a look at some of the recent news surrounding the world of CRM, to gather evidence of where we might be heading towards.

    Takeways from #SFDC #DF11

    On the last week of July, Salesforce.com held their annual Dreamforce conference in San Francisco. As a person working with Dynamics CRM for a living, it’s a good idea to keep an eye on where the other CRM solution providers are focusing their development efforts on, and SFDC certainly is one of, if not the main competitor that Microsoft has their eyes on. In his opening keynote, Marc Benioff made it very clear where his team’s focus is on, and that is the concept of a social enterprise. I’ll spare you from the marketing flare and instead present a few screenshots captured from the presentation, highlighting the new feature announcements.

    #SFDC #DF11

     

    So, what’s in the pipeline for Salesforce.com during the winter 2011/2012 then?

    • Contact profiles will be “social enabled” by default, showing public feeds from networks were your customers are present
    • Data.com, previously known as Jigsaw, will power the social data discovery and data import, in combination with D&B’s database
    • Chatter Now extends the functionality from microblogging to instant messaging with presence information
    • You can invite your key customer contacts to specific Chatter networks, or even publish Chatter on the web as a customer service channel
    • Radian6’s technology will monitor those customer complaints that are not targeted at your helpdesk, enabling you to jump in on the conversation
    • All of this follows you everywhere you go, as touch.salesforce.com promises to deliver a HTML5 client that’ll make your iPad or smartphone a full-fledged social CRM control panel

    Even if you leave away some of the over-the-top scenarios presented, like friending the Coke machine or having network routers tweet you on social networks, it’s still clear that with all the promised functionality at your fingertips (once it’s available and working in a reliable manner), the possibilities for you to design and implement new business processes will be dramatically expanded. Whether companies are able to make use of and, more importantly, make money out of these new possibilities is a different question, but it surely does push the boundaries of CRM as we know it.

    Social CRM is where it’s at

    “Social” certainly is an attractive attribute to include in your product description these days. Gartner, for example, has predicted that the market for Social CRM would reach a total value of one billion dollars by the end of next year. Predicting the future with concrete figures is always a challenge, but it’s even more difficult when people don’t even agree on the definition of the market to be predicted. Several analysts have commented on Gartner’s reports, starting from reminders that an SCRM market may not really exist yet, or they have questioned Gartner’s choice of products included in their SCRM Magic Quadrants as including applications aimed at other functions than what CRM systems traditionally are about – managing customer information, that is.

    (more…)

  • First preview of Dynamics CRM Q4 2011 Service Update (and more)

    There’s an immense amount of product news coming up from the WPC 2011 conference, due to the sheer size of Microsoft’s portfolio of different product lines. Luckily also Dynamics CRM had its 15 minutes on the WPC keynote stage and we saw a few bits and pieces of what lies ahead in the upcoming Q4 2011 Service Update that will become available to both CRM Online and CRM 2011 on-premise later this year. I already wrote a post in Finnish about the CRM news from WPC, but I thought I’d also share a few screenshots here to those who haven’t seen the keynote video.

    Social business remains a hot topic and Microsoft will add some of the much needed social aspects into the next release of Dynamics CRM. Activity feeds á la Twitter, Facebook, Yammer, Chatter and the likes will be integrated also into Dynamics CRM, as can be seen in the demo dashboard below.

    In addition to allowing status updates from colleagues, the functionality we saw earlier in CRM 4.0 as the Business Productivity Newsfeed Accelerator (though merely a report) and then later on implemented through 3rd party add-ons like Vibe from Sonoma Partners, now looks to become a core part of Dynamics CRM platform. I’d imagine these automatic feed items are still posted as a result of record updates triggering workflow process rules, like in the aforementioned examples.

    Office 365 will become the new home of CRM Online in Q4 as it integrates into the same infrastructure. In addition to subscription management and authentication provider improvements, there’s some interesting benefits for CRM in the Lync integration provided from the Office 365 cloud. No longer will you be limited to only have chats and video conferencing with your colleagues. If the customer contacts in your CRM database are also users of Office 365, their presence information can be federated across organizations (if they choose to, I’m sure) and presented right inside the CRM forms, allowing you to reach out to them through Lync with one click.

    Azure Data Market is now being marketed as the “one-stop shop for premium data and applications”. The Dynamics CRM demo included a custom button called Azure Enrich, which went out into the Data Market, opened up D&B’s company database and provided the missing address information for the Contoso account. I guess the big news here isn’t how you can retrieve company data through the API, but rather what the existence of a central marketplace can actually do in making data available to a whole new scale of potential customers, from a variety of global players. The cloud is not only for apps anymore.

    In the WPC keynote demo we saw again a Windows Phone 7 client for Dynamics CRM. This time there was also one new screen included, which presents the same activity feed information (labeled as “records feed”). It doesn’t quite compete with the other flashy WP7 Mango demos presented later on in the session, but definitely a useful way for mobile workers to keep an eye on what’s going on in the CRM database while outside the office.

    Oh, and of course there was the tablet app built for running Dynamics CRM on a Windows 7 slate. With all the Metro UI goodness, I’m wondering what the out-of-the-box experience could actually become like once we reach Windows 8…

  • Office 365 launches without Dynamics CRM integration for document management

    Office 365 launches without Dynamics CRM integration for document management

    Today was finally the big day when Microsoft’s cloud productivity platform BPOS was replaced with Office 365, which is now available for subscription. Having played with the beta version for a while now, I’m overall quite impressed with how close the SharePoint Online environment now is to its on-premises counterpart. While the limitations are still somewhat more visible than when comparing CRM Online vs. CRM 2011 on-premises versions, I think it’s already close enough to enable a significant part of traditional business requirements for SharePoint to be fulfilled with the cloud platform.

    Microsoft confirmed already last fall that also Dynamics CRM Online will eventually be migrated onto the same Online Services Delivery Platform as Office 365. In addition to being a natural fit with SharePoint and Exchange, CRM Online should also gain benefits into both its subscription management as well as authentication options as a result of  this migration. However, there’s no official timeline or feature set communicated yet, so we’ll have to keep waiting possibly until Q4/2011, when the next update for Dynamics CRM has been scheduled to become available, as announced in the latest Statement of Direction document.

    Ever since Dynamics CRM 2011 was launched with built-in SharePoint document library integration, there’s been a bit of anxiety on when this functionality could be leveraged with the cloud versions of CRM and SharePoint. Since BPOS was built on SharePoint 2007, it wasn’t possible to utilize the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 List Component for Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 in the Online environment. This meant that setting up a document management enabled trial environment with CRM Online required an on-premises SharePoint server, which wasn’t too convenient. Nor was it for any customer looking to go “all in” with their MS applications. Oh well, but now that Office 365 is available, that’s all a thing of the past, isn’t it?

    Wrong! Despite of the better together marketing message surrounding Office 365 and CRM Online, there’s actually still no way to integrate the SharePoint document libraries with the CRM List Component. Sure, you can upload the solution file into a SharePoint Online site and publish it. What you cannot do in the Online version is to take care of the second part of the installation steps, which involves the AllowHtcExtn.ps1 PowerShell script,used for enabling .htc file extensions to be served from SharePoint.

    Why is this important? Because without the .htc support, you can’t actually do anything with the document library. The folder creation can be configured and it flows through as it should when accessing the Documents menu for a new record, such as an account. However, after that you are presented with the following prompt:

    “The action buttons are disabled because the SharePoint server that you are using does not allow HTC component files. To enable the buttons, contact your system administrator.” What this means is that the document library will be rendered nicely inside the CRM entity form, but you can’t upload any documents to it. Clicking on the buttons does nothing, as they’re all disabled.

    How about on the SharePoint side of things then? We can see that the entity specific document libraries are created and also the corresponding folders for each record where the document location has been defined. We can also of course use the native SharePoint UI to upload documents into the library.

    Then when you access the corresponding record through CRM, you can see that the document does appear in the library. But with all the controls disabled, you again cannot do anything with it, like open the document, for example. How nice…

    How did we end up in this situation where the latest and greatest cloud offerings from Microsoft are not working together like they obviously were inteded to? That’s a very good question. The problem with Office 365 SharePoint Online limitations and their implications to Dynamics CRM document management functionality has been a known issue throughout the whole beta phase of Office 365. There are several threads on the Office 365 community forums regarding this. Yet the response from Microsoft has been that this cannot be resolved by GA (general availability) of Office 365 (as in “today”), but rather we’ll have to wait for the first service update, probably. Come on! How can 6 months not be enough to allow one .htc file to perform its work and provide the document integration between CRM and SharePoint? I find it extremely strange that the product management behind Office 365 has allowed such a flaw to be included in the initial release version.

    Of course eventually this issue will be solved and we’ll be able to experience the full document management process flow with Microsoft’s cloud applications.

  • CRM 2011 subgrids ain’t what associated views used to be

    Back in the days before we had Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 available, it was a commonplace customization to show entities related to the parent entity directly on the parent’s form by utilizing an iFrame. Making information such as latest history items (nowadays called closed activities) quickly visible to any user opening the form is often justified, as one key functions of a CRM system is to share information about what interaction has taken place with the customer. Referencing the URL of the related view on the iFrame was not exactly supported, but it was a relatively safe customization to apply nonetheless.

    Due to popular demand, Microsoft introduced an official method for achieving this UI customization in CRM 2011 through the use of the form sub-grid element. As a part of the entity forms redesign, the subgrids have now become an out-of-the-box feature on several default entities, such as accounts, contacts and opportunities.

    Different navigation points, different views

    It’s important to note that subgrids don’t use the entity associated view definition, which is applied when traditionally navigating to the view by using left side menu items on an entity form. Instead they allow you to separately choose a filter to “view only related records”, in combination with any of the system views available for the entity in question (but not the associated views, as those are “special” views). 9 times out of 10 you’ll want to keep the filter on, as showing non-related records on the entity’s form would under normal circumstances defy the standard UI logic of how Dynamics CRM presents records in different windows.

    OK, fair enough, so that’s why the columns in a subgrid aren’t updated after you edit the entity related view, like you used to do in CRM 4.0 and previous versions. We can live with that. In order to provide a consistent user experience, I would recommend that these two views are set up so that they have identical contents. This is because an “oldskool” CRM user may navigate through the left side menu by habbit, whereas a person new to Dynamics CRM will probably prefer to just scroll through the form. Sadly there’s no “save as” functionality available on the entity related view, and you can’t promote a normal view to become a related view (since there’s only one of them). This means you have to manually configure the two views to be indentical in terms of attributes, column order, width, sorting and (in some cases) filters.

    Rolling up the records

    Another thing that may surprise a seasoned Dynamics CRM consultant until he learns the tricks of the latest version is that the aforementioned feature has further implications specific to accounts and opportunities in particular. As we’ve come to know, these entities have special capabilities enabled in the activity views: the roll-up functionality. Instead of being restricted to only activities directly related to a record, we can actually see a bit further. Let’s take a simple example of an account and it’s open activity associated view:

    It’s that “Include Related Regarding Records” selection above the grid which allows us to view activities not only related to the account itself but also the ones regarding a contact of the account and an opportunity related to it. Pretty neat, as it’s often the people working at an account that we associate communication and activities to, such as emails and appointments.

    Now, let’s take advatage of the new CRM 2011 functionalities and look at the activity subgrid that’s conveniently available in the out-of-the-box configuration of an account form:

    Huh? Where did my activities go? They’re still there, but this particular navigation path will not allow you to view them, since you’re on a subgrid and, as we previously concluded, subgrids can’t show the entity associated view. This means there’s no way for you to apply the “Including Related Regarding Records” functionality over here.

    I’ll be the first to admit I’ve fallen for this trap in customer demos more than once. The menu anchor for accessing the Notes & Activities subgrid is just too tempting to click, when what you really intended to do was to view the fully featured activity associated view and access a complete list of the related activities. If the difference between view columns was a minor inconvenience, then this is downright misleading to many users I’m sure.

    The quick solution for this would be to just remove the activity subgrids from the account and opportunity entity forms where the results can be contradicting, thus forcing the user to navigate through the old fashioned menus into the related activities views. Another option would be to perform the old iFrame trick and just embed this view onto a form iFrame, which does sound a bit 4.0-ish. The last option is to go and vote on Dynamics 365 Ideas site, requesting MS to include the full roll-up functionality for subgrid views in a future version of Dynamics CRM. (more…)

  • More agile direction for Dynamics CRM future product releases

    During Convergence 2011 Atlanta we already heard the first pieces of news about an upcoming change in the release cycle of Microsoft Dynamics CRM product versions. Now we have the updated Statement of Direction May 2011 whitepaper in our hands and it lays out a roadmap for more rapid delivery of new features into both CRM Online as well as on-premises and partner hosted instances.

    What has now been labelled as the agile release model for Microsoft Dynamics CRM will mean that an update/upgrade to the core platform will become available every six months. Contrast that to the previous 2-3 years in between major releases and you can see it’s no minor readjustment but rather a whole new way from the Microsoft Dynamics team to deliver products to the business users.

    Funnily enough, the SoD whitepaper claims that CRM 2011 is the fifth major release of the product. While it goes by the 5.0 version number, I guess some of the folks in Redmond have already forgotten that there never was a CRM 2.0 realease, rather we saw the version number incremented from 1.2 to 3.0. Oh well, time flies when you’re having fun working in the field of CRM, so let’s move on…

    The new release cycle is of course a direct result of the Cloud Power in action. No longer can you spend years in designing and developing features for your new product behind closed doors, even if you are Microsoft. Cloud applications have taught us consumers into living in a world of perpetual beta products that constantly get updated with new functionality, without any effort required from us to physically upgrade the apps. If Google can do it for Gmail, then why would the enterprise users settle for working with a standarized XP/2003 toolset for almost a decade? In the scheme of CRM, if you’re competing against Salesforce.com that has a monthly release cycle (or so I’ve heard), delivering a huge box of new features once every three years (which is what 2011 does offer over 4.0) means you’d have to actually keep three years ahead in terms of development, just to avoid slipping behind your competitor again. Doesn’t quite sound like a winning strategy.

    Microsoft Dynamics CRM Statement of Direction May 2011

    During the CTP and Beta phases of the Dynamics CRM 2011 release process there were many times when I found either myself or someone else on the forums & blogosphere expressing their thoughts along these lines: “these new features are really awesome, but I just wish the small details of X and Y could be included before RTM, so I can really truly make the most of the product”. In the world of the old release cycle, hearing MSFT representatives reply back with the words “thanks, we’ll try to include it in v.Next” didn’t give much comfort. If the next version was three years away, it’s effectively the same as “forget about it”, if you contrast it with how fast the world of applications keeps turning these days. Facebook grew from 10 million to 310 million active users during a timeframe like that.

    Smaller packages of new features twice a year should definitely help Microsoft fill the gaps in product functionality that inevitably appear whenever a big release deadline approaches and planned features have to be dropped to meet the real life requirement of shipping a release. At the moment, Dynamics CRM 2011 is lacking some functionality on three distinct areas that the Statement of Direction says will be addressed in upcoming versions to be released within one year:

    • Cross-browser support. Transforming Dynamics CRM from an Internet Explorer only application to a true cross browser app through a new HTML5 UI, thus finally making the platform an option for Mac users as well.
    • Mobile devices support. The Mobile Express client in 2011 is identical to what we had in 4.0, but with more and more iPads and Android/iOS/WP7 smartphones found in the workplace, the out-of-the-box mobile experience should be much better, with possible 3rd party apps taking it on an even higher level (offline data access etc.).
    • Social CRM. There are two dimensions in which a CRM application needs to be “social enabled” these days: 1) internal collaboration on customer information and activity feeds á la Yammer and Chatter, and 2) capturing and enabling a dialog with the customers in social media channels like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn.

    Dynamics Marketplace will also presumably play a role in addressing some of the needs that don’t quite fit into the core product delivered by Microsoft. The accelerators that we saw released for CRM 4.0 were nice proofs of concept, but they weren’t proper add-on products that could have been deployed by the end user organizations without customization and development services provided by MS partners. The solution management framework included in CRM 2011 will make the distribution of apps much easier and I would expect to see development also on the Marketplace functionality as a channel for app delivery (eventually commerce). When the base platform of Dynamics CRM is built on one single product edition (meaning no separate standard/enterprise or sales/service versions), modularity is enabled throug the solution packages. While the verticals will likely remain a partner driven domain, I’m expecting to see some interesting releases coming from Microsoft Dynamics Labs as well.

    (more…)

  • Upgrade gotchas: Outlook client for Dynamics CRM 2011

    Last weekend I finally did my first installation of the RTM versio of CRM 2011 Outlook client onto a machine with Outlook 2010. I had previously only worked with the Outlook 2007 client version, which is lacking a few nice features in the UI, as described in my earlier post.

    I came across a few issues that might cause problems in the installation process, so I decided to link the relevant KB articles and other related content into this blog post to help you save some time when upgrading to the latest version of Microsoft Dynamics CRM on your client machine. I’m using CRM Online here, so some things may differ from the on-premises client version, which no longer has a separate client version, but of course the authentication methods do differ.

    Before you begin: go with 32-bit

    Yeah, I’m sure most of the new business laptops nowadays come with a 64-bit (a.k.a. x64) version of Windows 7. Nevertheless, you should treat 64-bit applications with caution. Why? Well, it’s a bit like with IPv4 vs. IPv6. Everyone knows the old world as we know it is coming to an end, but there simply isn’t a concrete enough reason for developers or companies to go “all in” with the 64-bit apps.

    With Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 the situation was quite nasty, as there was not and there will not be support for the 64-bit versio of Microsoft Office. You simply had to tell the users to “downgrade” their Office, which is not the most optimal starting point for getting someone to adopt a new application such as Dynamics CRM. Now with the arrival of Dynamics CRM 2011 we do in fact have an x64 client for Outlook, so everything should be in order, right? In theory, it is, but if you’re planning to install any fancy RIA apps from the Dynamics Marketplace into your CRM 2011, you should read this blog post from Customer Effective. That’s right, Microsoft hasn’t releases a 64-bit version of the Silverlight add-on for Internet Explorer, which leads us into the following situation:

    KB2500373: Microsoft Silverlight web resources cannot be viewed in the 64-bit version of the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Client for Microsoft Office Outlook

    It’s a fact of life: the world is not 64-bit just yet. With the Office applications there’s not likely to be a significant performance boost from using the x64 version, so take the easy way out and just install the 32-bit Office 2010. Let’s revisit the topic when we all have Windows 8 and Office 2013, shall we?

    Favorite folders no more

    KB2494600: There is no option to add Microsoft Dynamics CRM entities to favorites in Microsoft Office Outlook 2010

    The Solutions Module is a new feature that has become available in Outlook 2010, as described here in the MSDN library article. It allows developers to integrate their applications directly into the Outlook navigation pane, which is what Dynamics CRM 2011 Outlook client is doing to achieve the seamless integration into the native Outlook navigation items.

    What’s the downside? Unfortunately the add-on solution folders cannot be added to the Outlook favorite folders group. Bummer. This was one of the first things I always instructed people to do when training them on how to use Dynamics CRM. There’s no better way to drive CRM adoption that getting the list of the company’s accounts and contacts to be available right below the Outlook inbox folder, where most people start their day at the (MS) office. Even though the CRM folders are now more visual and available under the CRM navigation pane tab, there’s still likely to be tens of entities visible for most CRM users, out of which they typically access just 3-4 most popular ones. I, for one, hate navigating through hierarchical folders that require you to expand them to see the what’s hidden on the next level, so always visible one-click navigation is how I prefer to arrange my working environment, be it SharePoint workspaces or CRM menus in Outlook.

    Following the instructions in the KB article, you can achieve the old favorite folders functionality also in Outlook 2010, but this will require you to disable the Solutions Module. Which, if I’ve understood correctly, will again turn the flashy CRM folder icons into the generic folders that we see in Outlook 2007 or Outlook 2003. Guess we’ll just have to figure out which is a bigger loss for the end user experience and make a choice, until there is a feature enhancement available for the Outlook 2010 Solutions Module (I hope there’s no technical limitation on why this couldn’t be implemented in a future service pack).

    Clashes with Windows Live Essentials

    KB2498892: Unable to Configure the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Client for Outlook against Dynamics CRM Online

    Seems like the Windows Live ID authentication in CRM Online has some issues with the “consumer products” for Windows Live. This might not be a big issue in big corporate environments with locked-down client machine configurations that don’t allow using consumer targeted services such as Hotmail or Skydrive. However, as Dynamics CRM Online is clearly making the former enterprise level applications like Customer Relationship Management suites available to even the smallest organizations with its low monthly cost per user and ease of deployment, there’s likely to be more and more users who’ll be transitioning from Microsoft’s consumer product lines to the new cloud-based business product lines, such as CRM Online and Office 365.

    Basically you’ll need to run a repari install on the Windows Live ID Sign-in assistant or Windows Live Essentials 2011 to make it compatible with the Outlook client for CRM Online, which is also using Windows Live ID to connect you to the CRM server. That should do the trick.

    But wait, isn’t Dynamics CRM Online a business product? Why is it using the WLID authentication method meant for the consumer products? For comparison, here’s an aswer from Allen_MSFT on the Office 365 FAQ to a question regarding weather using Office 365 will require WLID.

    “Re Windows Live ID, you don’t need a Windows Live ID to use Office 365 or to use your Windows Phone 7 with Office 365.  Windows Live services are for consumers, so they are not linked within the Office 365 portal.”

    Indeed. I’m waiting for the day when also Dynamics CRM Online will be migrated over to the new Microsoft Online Services Delivery Platform, which will hopefully give us better tools for managing CRM user accounts and authentication.

    Missing Outlook ribbon after CRM client installation

    KB2494581: The Outlook and CRM ribbons disappear from Microsoft Outlook when you use the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Client for Microsoft Office Outlook

    I had this one happen to myself, since I had been using a previous beta version of the CRM 2011 client on my machine. I had uninstalled both Office and CRM, but there still remained a few lines in the registry that needed to be removed to get the Outlook ribbon to reappear.

    I have to tell you, Outlook 2010 really looks naked when the ribbon is gone (not just hidden). I’m not sure if there even was a way to do any basic Outlook operations like sending emails with the ribbon completely blank, so I started googling around immediately and came up with the instrcutions that pointed to the following steps required to restore the ribbon:

    • Run Regedit.exe
    • Locate the HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\TypeLib\{2DF8D04C-5BFA-101B-BDE5-00AA0044DE52} key
    • Delete the 2.4 key that’s found under it. It’s not needed anymore, there should only be 2.5
    Update Nov 9th 2011: Since this appears to be quite a popular post on my blog, I decided to append this information here. Today I was creating a new Windows user profile on a PC that already had the CRM 2011 Outlook client installed on a different user profile. When launching Outlook for the first time as this user, the ribbon was missing from the CRM menus (not the whole Outlook as in the aforementioned case), even though everything was working fine for the previously configured user account. In this particular occasion the client was linked to a CRM Online organization which had received the R7 update (a.k.a. Q4 2011 Service Update), but the Outlook client was still on Update Rollup 3 level. After I deployed Update Rollup 5 on the machine and rebooted, the ribbon was restored for this new user profile. So, be sure to check that the client and server hotfix levels match if you encounter a ribbon display problem.

    Reading pane always shows the contact layout

    Dynamics CRM Deployment Forum: CRM 2011 reading pane error in Outlook 2010

    Unfortunately this one doesn’t have a knowledge base article or a fix yet. I encountered this issue briefly when installing the Beta version of CRM 2011 Outlook client. Back then, all it needed was a reboot and the reading panes and icons were restored. With the RTM version of CRM 2011 client, the issue is more persistent. Each and every CRM entity appears as if it was a contact, presented in a business card layout that only contains the entity primary field (name) and not any other data. Click the image below to see an example of the account record shown as a business card with the contact icon.

    Update Nov 10th 2011: Thanks to Wimco’s post on Dynamics CRM Forums, I was finally able to fix the reading pane layout problem on my PC. I simply uninstalled the Office 2007 Primary Interop Assemblies, after which I also applied the latest Update Rollup package and voilá: the reading pane now shows the fields specific to each entity.

    Further update, March 23th 2012: The EMEA Dynamics CRM Support has published an article, where they suggest another fix for the Outlook client preview pane problem. Apparently an existing DisableFormRegions registry key can cause the contact form to be shown instead of the correct entity form.