When reviewing CRM systems to consider for your business you may have preconceived ideas about what you are looking for.  A good CRM system will allow a strong working relationship between your customers and company from the salesmen and marketers to the customer service team.  Even if every part of your CRM desires are met, there are other aspects to consider when in the market for a new CRM system. Microsoft products are widely used within businesses whether it's Powerpoint, Word, Outlook, Access, or Publisher.  Microsoft has designed their products to have standard functions, which makes them easy to learn and use.  This means that if a new user with past experience in a Microsoft product is using Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 for the first time, they are well on their way to understanding how to use this CRM system.  Because Salesforce is a company that is only CRM, their system is unfamiliar to many new users. Depending on the needs and wants of a company, they may want to handle their CRM system on their own on premise or they may want Microsoft to handle this for them by using Dynamics CRM in the cloud.  Dynamics CRM users have the flexibility of choosing which solution works better for their needs.  Salesforce users are not given this choice and are forced to use CRM in the cloud only. Because Microsoft is a large company that has the ability to handle multiple platforms and technologies including the .NET Framework that is used by a wide variety of technological professionals, there is a native integration between Dynamics CRM and these platforms and technologies.  Salesforce, being much smaller, must create each platform specifically for CRM purposes which is a tall order for a small company.  Since Salesforce uses Visualforce, a technology specific to Salesforce, customizations can only be made by a Salesforce professional who is familiar with Visualforce. When shopping for a new CRM, keep in mind that there is more to consider than key features.  Dynamics CRM not only has an extensive list of features that engage all aspects of a business's customers into a single place but it has been designed to meet the needs of CRM for all types of businesses.  For more information on this topic download:  Comparing the xRM Application Framework and Force com - A Guide for Technical Decision Makers.pdf (672.30 kb)

Parrot is Webfortis’ Social Media solution for Microsoft Dynamics CRM and is currently being used in 32 countries worldwide spanning six of seven continents.  Parrot has a large adoption range of industries as well as cultures, allowing companies to globally market their businesses, provide customer service and conduct research.  In addition, Social Media is becoming a worldwide phenomenon that is spreading throughout the industry, making Parrot the optimal tool to bring Social Media into your Dynamics CRM no matter your location.  Our team of Parrot professionals are available virtually for demos or questions.  For more information on Parrot as well as a free download, go to http://www.webfortis.com/webfortis-social-media-solutions.aspx .  

I've come across a number of projects here at Webfortis that utilize Notification Emails by Workflow(i.e. a system process that has a defined trigger to implement a system task). A lot of industries require utilizing this because it is very valuable. Here is an example: I was working with a scientific consulting company that dealt with the handling and research of blood. They had both a Sales team and a Science team. The Sales team was in charge of the business management aspect and client base,while the Scientific team oversaw the internal processes for the actual blood. There were certain phases of the processthat required a CRM system to track all of their clients and products due to the fact that the company was rapidly growing to the point where it was difficult to organize. The solution was to have an option set in the Opportunities Entity to have the different stages itemizedfor the whole business process. Each stage in the process triggered a Workflow upon Save to send out an email stating what stage the opportunity was in to members of a specific team. That solution worked well until I found out that they only had four licenses. I set aside time to speak to our expert engineers, and with some arduous work, we came up with a solution. Only users could be assigned to Teams, but this client did not need the extra user licenses because they would only be receiving emails on where they were in the business process.  They would have no visibility to the administrative side of the company. To resolve this, we first added a Team lookup to the Email entity. We then created a N:N relationship between Contacts and Teams.  By creating a workflow to open an Email and populate the Email with the message, it would then be sent to the appropriate Team. Then, we created a plugin to fire off when the Team field is populated in the Email. It would then look for the emails of the Contacts assigned to that team, populate the "To" field with those emails, and send the email. This solution is now being utilized in a couple of different projects. It is a very convenient way to meet a client business requirement, and is also a very good selling point that can be applied to a lot of CRM customers.  

CWR Mobility, the top provider of mobility solutions for Microsoft Dynamics CRM and a partner of Webfortis, released their newest version of their CWR Mobile CRM 2011.  In addition to the features of the previous version which integrated with customer’s Dynamics CRM 2011 systems, either in the cloud or on-premise, the latest version of the mobile CRM delivers native Microsoft Dynamics CRM dashboards using iPad, iPhone, Blackberry and Windows Phone 6.5 mobile devices.  For more information, visit CWR’s website at http://www.cwrmobility.com/ or read the full article at http://www.cwrmobility.com/cwr-mobility-launches-mobile-crm-dashboards.  

Here at Webfortis, we use a standardized and well documented methodology for our CRM Design to help maintain quality control in our CRM projects [More]

When CRM 2011 was rolled out, so was a new method of CRM JavaScript. Now available are libraries, solutions, web resources, etc. that you can use to attain fine-grained control over all of your customizations. With the introduction of web resources you can now load any number of compartmentalized libraries into your forms that can give you that extra feature or business logic that you need. OnLoad, OnSave, OnChange ... what is that? (CRM 4 Customizers Can Skip This) OnLoad: JavaScript programmers will be used to seing something similar to this. This is the event that is triggered when your form is loaded but before any data begins to show. All form fields, aside from subgrids and iFrames, are available to you through the DOM. OnSave: The OnSave event is triggered when the form Save or Save & Close button is clicked. OnChange: The OnChange event is triggered when the field loses focus after the contents are modified. Additional methods will be explained in a future blog post as advanced events are beyond the scope of this post. Form Customization We will be begin by examining the form customization options on a form. It is important to note that you should use solutions rather than modifying the base system directly; however, for the sake of brevity we will save the topic of solutions for a later post. Once you have opened an entity form to customize, you will see a navigation bar at the top, aka the "Ribbon," which will aid you in all of your customizations. Currently we are only interested in form properties.     The form properties window will allow you to add additional scripts, aka "libraries," to your form. It also allows you to manage event handlers for the entire form, most notably OnLoad, OnSave and OnChange. CRM 4 Developers should take note of their new location. If we click the add button in the form libraries section, we will see all available libraries that we can add to the form and can create a new library if we wish. NOTE: Script libraries are managed in the Web Resources section of your solution.   Namespaces Xrm.Page - Xrm.Page is the new crmForm, or if you are just starting: Xrm.Page is the JavaScript namespace where you can access CRM form Components ( UI Elements ) and fields. Xrm.Page.ui - This namespace contains functions for manipulation of the form UI. This includes tabs, sections and fields. Xrm.Page.context - Provides access to the context object. The context object provides methods to retrieve information specific to an organization, a user, or parameters that were passed to the form in a query string. ( http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg328399.aspx ) Xrm.Page.data.entity - Provides methods to retrieve information specific to the record displayed on the page, the save method and a collection of all the attributes included in the form. Attribute data is limited to attributes represented by fields on the form. ( http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg334720.aspx ) * Note: There are more methods, namespaces and general objects, but these are sufficient for an introduction.   * Note: Calling crmForm from the IE debugging tools no longer functions as it once did. To obtain the old functionality for debugging purposes, use:   crmForm = window.frames[0].crmForm; Xrm = window.frames[0].Xrm;   It is also important to note that when developing for CRM 2011, you should use the "Xrm" methods rather than the older crmForm methods in your javascript.     Xrm.Page ( formerly crmForm ) Xrm.Page is the new crmForm, or if you are just starting: Xrm.Page is the JavaScript namespace where you can access CRM form Components ( UI Elements ) and fields. Almost everything that you need to do to the CRM form you can get to through here. Of note, crmForm still does exist and can be used within scripts. Xrm.Page.getAttribute("new_field"); This function returns an attribute on the form using the lowercase schema name. The object that it returns can be used to update the field data, fire onChange, tell if it is dirty, add additional CRM appropriate events, etc. Xrm.Page.getControl("new_field"); This retrieves a control of a field, which can be used to change visibility, enable or disable the field, get the type, etc. Xrm.Page.ui Xrm.Page.ui.getFormType(); This returns a numeric value for the type of form that is currently being displayed, i.e.: update, create, etc. (The exact numbers corresponding to each type are not covered in this post.) Xrm.Page.ui.getViewPortWidth(); Returns how many pixels wide the view is. Xrm.Page.ui.getViewPortHeight(); Returns how many pixels high the view is. Xrm.Page.ui.getCurrentControl(); Returns the current active control. Xrm.Page.ui.controls.get("new_field"); Works just like Xrm.Page.getControl() except the Xrm.Page.ui.controls namespace has a few more functions for dealing with controls. Xrm.Page.ui.tabs.get("tabName"); This works like getControl except that it is for tabs. It will return a tab object that you can use to change the properties of the tab, the most useful of which include the visibility and the sections object. Xrm.Page.context Xrm.Page.context.getUserId(); This will return the GUID of the current user Xrm.Page.context.getUserRoles(); Returns the current user's role/roles. Xrm.Page.context.isOutlookClient(); Returns whether or not a user is in the Outlook client. If you need to use a different version of a javascript function or Outlook does not support a particular feature, you can use this. Xrm.Page.context.isOutlookOnline(); For the times when you need to determine if the outlook client is online, use this. e.g.: If you have an oData call to retrieve certain data from somewhere else in the system or you have mapping code that depends on an external web service, use this to determine if you're online. Xrm.Page.context.getOrgUniqueName(); Returns the unique org name for the current active organization. This is helpful for On-Premise installations that have multiple organizations or online instances. Xrm.Page.context.getServerUrl(); Returns the url of the server. Xrm.Page.context.getAuthenticationHeader(); Returns the authentication header required to make SOAP calls. Xrm.Page.data.entity Xrm.Page.data.entity.getId(); Returns the current entity's GUID Xrm.Page.data.entity.getEntityName(); Returns the current entities schema/logical name. Xrm.Page.data.entity.save(); Forces a manual save of the entity. - Note: this function can also take an "Action" Xrm.Page.data.entity.getIsDirty(); Determines whether or not the form is dirty, i.e. if there are any unsaved changes.   Additional references for the Xrm.Page.* objects/namespaces can be found at: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg334351.aspx

We recently encountered an issue where we needed to import a large data set from CRM 4.0 to CRM 2011. In CRM 2011, there are no methods available in the SDK that will allow you to modify the createdon, createdby, modifiedon, modifiedby fields. The baton was passed to me to write a TSQL script that would loop through all the rows in a bridge table and find correlating records in a CRM 2011 target then update certain system protected fields before moving to the next row of data. The first part of the solution was to have Scribe write this information to a temporary table. The second part is to read this information and populate the necessary fields in CRM.  Our bridge table had the following schema: Scribe writes to this table whenever it performs an insert. So, when the scribe import is done running, you have all of the necessary information stored in this table. It is then just a matter of moving it from the temp table to CRM. Here is the script we used to accomplish this. The idea is to cursor through the rows and update as necessary in CRM. The script was built to run in multiple different environments (development, QA, production) with having to change only the variables at the top.     After running this little gem, we were able to open any of the records and see verified historic data across the board! Win one for the good guys.

  In CRM Javascript Development you may run into the case where you have to close an entity record window when you attempt  to open it and only want a record to be created or viewed when certain conditions are met.  A good example of this is when you close a form when it is not opened from a related entity form. The way to do this has changed slightly from CRM 4 to a new similar method in CRM 2011. Let’s look at the method in CRM 4:  window.open() window.close() So these methods worked in CRM 4 since the popup window was your main window. However this Is not the case in CRM 2011. In CRM 2011 notice that the new interface is made up of different IFrames instead of one window due to the ribbon. Therefore in order to close the correct window we must change out code a little bit to have our close method to control the correct window.  We can do this by specifying the correct IFrame to close by using the following methods: Parent.window.open() Parent.window.close()  

Are you still on the fence about the best CRM system for your organization?  Not only does Microsoft Dynamics CRM offer the most bang for your buck, now they are offering new Dynamics CRM customers an unprecedented $200 per user cash back to your company! Contact Beth at Webfortis at beth@webfortis.com or (916) 813-3140 to learn more about how Dynamics can improve your business "and" how you can get paid from Microsoft for choosing Dynamics CRM.

Power your business with Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011!  Dyanmics CRM now has 500 new features to help improve marketing, drive sales and improve customer service.  Help make your employees be more productive and spend less time searching for information   This is a software that is familiar and encourages an effective and familiar experience by inserting Microsoft Dyanmics CRM directly into Outlook.  Personalized views save time and role based forms only allow for relevent information to be accessable.  Improve insite into your business.  Easily track sales piplines, open cases and other key metrics in real time.  Have access to real time analytics that allow for insite into built in visualizations using few clicks. Connect with others and maximize the value of relationships.  Make it easier to work collaboratively of accounts, contracts, opportunities, cases, and more with team-based ownership of records.  Track key influencers to better identify and leverage ony business relationship. For more information go to:  http://www.webfortis.com/documents/whats_new_in_crm.aspx

We have just been notified that the New CRM 2011 Update Rollup 2 has been recalled and removed from the Microsoft Download Center.  A re-release will occur some time next week.  Stay tuned for more information. 

Many of the industries in which we work have been asking for an easy-to-consume interface that allows a CRM User to understand the value of a CRM Contact within a few moments. This post will focus on utilizing Dynamics CRM 2011’s new Sub-Grid and Chart features to implement a dashboard on the CRM Contact record. This dashboard was built using point and click (no code!) and works for CRM 2011 Online and On-Premise using Charts, Views, and Sub-Grids.  Instead of displaying a traditional list of boring data, a chart is displayed.   How to build Dashboards on the CRM Contact record Create a Chart within the Entities you want to display.  The dashboard we’re building displays data from Invoices, Cases, Allocations, and RMS Wine Clubs; therefore we need to create a Chart within each of those Entities. Charts require a bit of testing and allow you to X/Y axis many fields. Within CRM, navigate to Settings-> Solutions-> [Pick your solution]-> Entities-> Invoice-> Chart-> click the New button to create a new Chart. Then select the options below, then click Save & Close.   You'll need to repeat the steps above for each CRM Entity you want to display on the contact record dashboard. Also, you will need to create new CRM Views if you wish to use a filtered view of data that doesn't already exist.  By default, the "All" views that exist for all Entities will automatically filter data on the Contact that's open. Create a new Tab/Section on the Contact record and make it 4 Columns wide – this is where we’ll be adding 4 Sub-Grids. Within CRM, navigate to Settings-> Solutions-> [Pick your solution]-> Entities-> Contact-> Forms-> [Pick the Main form]. Once the Main form opens, click the Insert link at the top of the page-> Add a 1 Column Tab [optional]-> Add a 4 Column Section.   Your form should now look similar to the following:       Select the section and then within the insert area in the toolbar, select Sub-Grid.  Populate this form similar to the following screenshot:     Be sure to set the formatting.  12 rows seems to be a good height: Click Ok when done. Repeat these steps for any other entities you want to show in your Dashboard. Save your changes and then Publish All customizations in CRM. Your CRM Contact record should now look like the following:   This type of data delivery makes for easy consumption by end users, and since Dynamics CRM makes it so easy, it should be one of the first things implemented in any CRM 2011 implementation.

  Original publication can be found atMircosoft.com REDMOND, Wash. — Feb. 16, 2011 — Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq “MSFT”) today announced that Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 for on-premises and partner-hosted deployments has been completed and released for customer download. This release complements the latest version of Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online, which delivers Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 as an on-demand service from Microsoft’s datacenters and was launched into 40 markets and 41 languages in January. With a single multitenant code base across cloud and on-premises deployment models, Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 delivers the Power of Productivity to sales, service and marketing organizations worldwide. Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 is now globally available and existing customers with active Microsoft Software Assurance agreements can access the new version immediately via theMicrosoft Download Center. In addition, Microsoft announced the new release scaled to 150,000 concurrent users in a single instance while delivering sub-second response times, once again raising the bar for performance and scalability in the CRM industry. The new benchmark results will be detailed in a Microsoft Dynamics CRM performance and scalability white paper that will be delivered in the coming weeks. “The need to build deeper and more profitable relationships on a global scale remains a CIO top priority,” said Mark Barrett, senior vice president, CRM, Avanade. “The combination of Avanade’s deep experience in solution development and Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 enables us to deliver comprehensive CRM capabilities to our clients through on-premises deployments as well as a software-as-a-service offering. Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 provides a platform for us to help companies strengthen customer and partner relationships, increase productivity, and collaborate across the organization.” Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 provides customers and partners with a wide range of benefits, including point-and-click configurability, enterprise scalability, and easy interoperability to existing applications and databases. It delivers the Power of Productivity for users in organizations of all sizes through its focus on the following:   • Familiar experiences through a next-generation native Microsoft Outlook client, browser-based and mobile access, RoleTailored design, and advanced user personalization, improving user adoption and giving users easy access to the information they need to be successful. • Intelligent experiences through guided process dialogs, inline business intelligence for performance and goal management, and real-time dashboards, providing the most up-to-date information critical to enabling sales, service and marketing professionals to do their jobs effectively. • Connected experiences through flexible cloud development, Windows Azure interoperability, contextual Microsoft SharePoint capabilities and the new Microsoft Dynamics Marketplace, making it easy for customers and partners to configure and customize Microsoft Dynamics CRM to meet specific business needs.   “Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 brings a whole new level of productivity to sales, marketing and customer service departments,” said Terje Laugerud, CEO, CIBER International. “The focus on familiar, intelligent and connected experiences appeals to our customers and provides an ideal platform for CIBER to deliver innovative CRM solutions to customers in a range of industries.” Integrated within Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011, theMicrosoft Dynamics Marketplaceis available today in 20 markets and currently offers more than 1,400 partner offerings for solutions and services. This online catalog is an easy way for partners to market and distribute solutions to Microsoft Dynamics customers, whether online, on-premises or partner-hosted. The marketplace enables customers to quickly search, discover and apply industry-specific applications and solution extensions from Microsoft and its partners to help them accelerate and extend their CRM and ERP implementations. Microsoft Dynamics Marketplace is available in Austria, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Denmark, Germany, France, India, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, Portugal, Russia, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States. More information about partners and customers deploying Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 can be found at http://crm.dynamics.com. Those who want to follow and engage with the Microsoft Dynamics CRM community can do so at @MSDynamicsCRM, #crm2011. About Microsoft Dynamics Microsoft Dynamics is a line of simple to learn and use ERP and CRM solutions that work with your existing technology and scale as you grow to give you long-term value. By using software and online services that work the way people and organizations work, businesses are better able to make informed decisions and adapt to rapid change. Microsoft Dynamics helps your people be more productive and your investments in existing systems last longer, while enabling your business to derive the insights necessary to respond quickly and have a competitive edge in an ever-changing world of business. Original publication can be found at Mircosoft.com