Customer Effective Blog

CRM Product Research Sessions at Convergence 2010

Customer Effective and our customer/prospects will be attending Convergence 2010 in Atlanta this April.  We are very excited to participate in the following CRM research sessions.  If you are attending or better yet, thinking about attending Convergence, these sessions might push you over the edge. If you need more info on Convergence 2010, don’t hesitate to email us at info@customereffective.com

Dear Convergence 2010 Attendees,

The Microsoft Dynamics CRM Team are enthusiastically looking forward to meeting you at Convergence 2010, sharing with you our ideas and aspirations for future versions of Microsoft Dynamics CRM, and, as always, learning from you, your experiences and your insights.

Influence Microsoft Dynamics CRM

Between Saturday, April 24^th and Tuesday, April 27^th members of the CRM Research and Development Team will be hosting a series of discussion groups and forward-looking research sessions at the Atlanta Convention Center for Convergence 2010.  During these sessions, we will present prototypes and ideas designed to improve Microsoft Dynamics CRM; we invite you to review and critique designs and discuss your important scenarios and stories so that you can directly influence our investments in a wide array of areas.  *These sessions are limited in size, so please respond early.*

Non-Disclosure Agreement

We will ask you to sign a standard Microsoft Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) so that we can confidentially share our ideas and present our thinking.

Audience

These Microsoft Dynamics CRM Discussion Groups are open to ALL Convergence 2010 Attendees who want to learn about and influence the future of Microsoft Dynamics CRM.

Partners, IT Experts, Developers – (for example) Implementation Partner, Solution Developer, IT Managers

End Users – (for example) Sales Professional, Marketing Professional, Customer Service Representative

Business Decision Makers – (for example) Sales Managers, Marketing Managers, Service Managers

Where

All sessions will be in the Atlanta Convention Center and I will inform you which room when you register for one of the sessions.

Participation

Please review the session titles and RSVP directly to me (James.Johnston@microsoft.com); I will send you an email with the schedule indicating the session date(s) and time(s): Sessions will be repeated so that we can accommodate your schedules at the conference.

I will send you an email confirming your participation in the session(s) you select.

These discussions and research sessions are specifically designed to collect feedback from our customers, users, developers, and partners on our future thinking and aspirations for Microsoft Dynamics CRM.  All Convergence 2010 attendees are welcome regardless of your product focus.   If you are interested in learning more about Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0, our most recent CRM release, we encourage you to take advantage of the other generally available and informative Microsoft Dynamics CRM sessions which are being conducted during Convergence 2010.

Thank you, as always, for your distinctly helpful insights and constructive feedback on Microsoft Dynamics CRM.  We are eager to welcome you and look forward to hearing from you soon.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM Team

I. Visualizing Relationships in Microsoft Dynamics CRM

To participate: Please contact: James.Johnston@microsoft.com

II. Outlook Continues: CRM Information in Outlook

To participate: Please contact: James.Johnston@microsoft.com

III. Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online Service Experience

To participate: Please contact: James.Johnston@microsoft.com

IV. Social CRM

To participate: Please contact: James.Johnston@microsoft.com

V. Authoring and Editing Discussion Steps (e.g., Customer Service Scripts) Using CRM Workflow

To participate: Please contact: James.Johnston@microsoft.com

VI. Mobile Experiences and Scenarios

To participate: Please contact: James.Johnston@microsoft.com

Comag Marketing Group – CRM / xRM Success Story – New Video

Customer Effective is proud to announce a new Microsoft developed video on an outstanding CRM/xRM success story with their client, Comag Marketing Group.  Cheers to the team at CMG, we truly value our partnership with this great group.

Video Link - http://www.youtube.com/user/CustomerEffectiveCRM#p/a/u/0/olTSL2jPi30

Comag Marketing Group (CMG), jointly owned by Conde Nast Publications and The Hearst Corp., provides leading magazine publishers with comprehensive sales, marketing and promotional services. CMG employs a 400-member merchandising staff who are required to collect data and perform a series of in-store condition checks.  CMG provides merchandising services to thousands of US retail locations as well as US airport newsstands.

At airports, data was previously collected via legacy handheld devices with an application designed and deployed in 2003 that was limited in its flexibility to integrate into other CMG corporate systems. The retail merchandising staff used either a manual "bubble form" or entered the data into Excel spreadsheets.  The bubble forms were mailed weekly, and CMG's IS team had to process them into an electronic data warehouse.  The Excel spreadsheets were submitted via email. 

The new mobile solution allows merchandisers to scan barcode information using a .NET custom application. The data are fed in real time into CMG's Dynamics CRM environment, which allows for immediate reporting throughout the company. 

CMG worked with a number of vendors, including Panasonic Toughbook and its VAR Trac2Mobile; Eastridge Technologies, which developed the .NET Application; and Customer Effective, which developed and implemented Microsoft Dynamics CRM. The retail team uses Panasonic Toughbook T8s, while the airport team uses Toughbook U1s.  Both have embedded Gobi mobile broadband cards. 

In the past, data collected in the field took three to four weeks to be reviewed and processed. This data turnaround time only allowed for trending; since most magazines have a shelf life of a week or a month, titles were often off the shelf by the time information was available. That process has been reduced to one to two days.

The total cost of the project (including hardware) was less than $2 million. The company anticipates ROI within three years.  "We can now substantially measure where people go, how much time they spend in store, and we can do an efficiency model or build in route optimization," says Sean Poccia, Senior Director of Information Services with CMG.

Resolution for "Invalid User Authentication" by re-linking a user’s CRM account to Active Directory

There are plenty of situations where a CRM user’s AD account is deleted and re-created. –Such as when a user leaves an organization “Forever!” only to return later – or where where a user’s AD account gets deleted or changed, (due to name change or correction after the user record had already been created in CRM.)

In previous versions of CRM, there wasn’t a way to re-connect that CRM user to a new/different/updated AD account. You would have to disable the existing CRM user record, create a new user record and using SQL edit the ‘domainname’ field of the disabled record to avoid a duplicate (since you can’t delete the old user record.)

I’ve also recently experienced a case where, after an upgrade or migration, a one or more users with seemingly valid CRM Accounts, were unable to log in to CRM – receiving the message “Invalid User Authentication / The User Authentication passed to the platform is not valid”

 

(or with DevErrors turned on: “No Microsoft Dynamics CRM User exists with the specified domain name and user ID” )

 

In CRM 4.0, you can connect a user’s account to a new (or replacement) Active Directory account, by simply changing the domain name to another (non-crm) ad account, saving it and the changing it back to correct user’s account. – You can do the same to re-establish the link between a CRM user and their AD login.

1. Login as a CRM Administrator
2. Go to Settings / Administration / Users
3. Open the CRM User record for the changed/problematic user.
4. Temporarily change the Domain Login Name to another Active Directory user account (one that is not a CRM user.)
5. Save, Then change the Domain Login Name back to the correct user.
6. (The user’s name / details should be refreshed from AD now.)
7. Save and Close.

SQL query to find duplicate values in a column

Here is a useful sql query to help identify duplicate values in a column and return a count of the number of times that value appears.  In this case I am determining duplicate usernames in the contact table.
 
SELECT New_Username, COUNT(New_Username) AS NumberOfTimes
FROM Contact
GROUP BY New_Username HAVING (COUNT(New_Username)>1)
ORDER BY NumberOfTimes DESC

Re-Assigning Records with Mobile Express

I have found myself using Dynamics CRM Mobile Express fairly frequently lately.  I’ve been away from the office and had to address cases or look up company addresses, and it has come in really handy.  If you are not familiar with Mobile Express, it is the free mobile-friendly interface for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0.  If you have Microsoft CRM (post update rollup 5), you have Mobile Express.

I’ve been impressed with how simple the interface is, yet how much functionality is there.  You can do most of the things that you can do through the full CRM interface through Mobile Express—look up records, create records, edit records, or delete records, if your permissions allow.

There are some limitations—screen size naturally limits the number of fields you can realistically display in a user-friendly way, and some functionality, such as reassigning records is not available.  You can see who the owner is, but you cannot edit the record owner field.  In most cases, I don’t think this is an issue, as you would probably want to manage assignments through the full interface anyway.

However, we recently had a use case that made reassignment of records via Mobile Express necessary.  We use CRM to manage our support cases.  We also travel around frequently so Mobile Express is a great tool to help us view/update support tickets while not in front of a computer. 

In managing cases, it is sometimes necessary to escalate the case or reassign it to another user. Since assignment of records is not available in Mobile Express, you can’t do this with the default configuration, but you can with the help of some workflow.

1.  Create a new N:1 relationship between the Case and User entities.  I called the field “Reassign Case Owner” and set the Navigation Item Icon to not display.

2.  Do not add the new User lookup to the form, but add it to the Mobile Express form. 

3.  Create a workflow that fires upon update of the Reassign Case Owner field.  Have the workflow check to verify that the Reassign Case Owner field contains data, and if so,  assign the case record to the user referenced in the Reassign Case Owner field.  I also had my workflow update the case and clear the Reassign Case Owner field after the case is reassigned.

The result is that we can now reassign/escalate Cases while on the go via Mobile Express.  Since the Reassign Case Owner field is not on the Case form, CRM users won’t see or be confused with that field, but Mobile Express users will see it when they edit the record in Mobile Express.  Mobile Express only displays fields that contain data when you view a record, so since we are clearing the field out after reassigning the record, Mobile Express users won’t be confused by that field when they read the record, but it will be available to them when they edit the record.

del.icio.us Tags: Mobile Express,Microsoft Dynamics CRM

Microsoft Dynamics CRM and 24 Hour Clock (Military Time)

In Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0, when working with a Date Time field, when you select the time from the drop-down, you can select times in 30 minute intervals (12:00 AM, 12:30 AM, 1:00 AM . . .).  If the time is not on the top or bottom of the hour, you can also type the time in the time part of the Date/Time field.

The default US English format is 12-hour clock (3:15 PM rather than 15:15).  If you prefer the 24 hour clock format, you can change the setting by going to “Personalize Workplace” –> formats tab –> click the Customize button –> Time tab and changing the Time format to HH:mm.  You can also set the default system setting for time format for new users by going to Settings—>Administration—>System Settings—>Formats.  Note that changes in the CRM System Settings set the default personalization options for new users added after the change, but any existing users will need to be updated through “Personalize Workplace.”

But what if you want to have times display in 12-hour format, but you want to enter them in in 24-hour format?  For example, a user does a lot of data entry, and they want to be able to keep their hands on the keyboard as much as possible.  It takes fewer keystrokes to type in 19:47 than 7:47 PM.  Great  news—you can enter the time in either format. Even if your time format is set to twelve hour time, you can still enter 19:47 and it will become 7:47 PM.

I use “Military Time” loosely here—actually, military time doesn’t include the colon hour:minute separator.  You do have to enter the colon in the time field—It won’t know that 1356 is 1:56 PM, but it will take 13:56.

del.icio.us Tags: Microsoft Dynamics CRM,time,military time

Working with the Parent Customer field in Microsoft Dynamics CRM Data Imports

In Microsoft Dynamics CRM, there is a unique lookup field called “Parent Customer” that is found on system entities such as Contacts and Opportunities.  This is a lookup field that can look up an account or a Contact record.

When importing data into CRM using a tool like Scribe Insight, when you populate the parentcustomerid field, you also have to populate the parentcustomeridtype field.  This field tells CRM whether to link to a contact or an account.  You set it to 1 if it is an account, or 2 if it is a contact.

I recently was writing a data import using Scribe to insert Contacts.  It was succeeding for many records, but for some it would fail on a few records.  The error that I got on the failures was “ (Dynamics CRM) System.FormatException: Guid should contain 32 digits with 4 dashes (xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx).”

In this case I was populating the parentcustomerid field, and I was setting the parentcustomeridtype field to “1.”

After reviewing the failing rows, I realized that these contacts did not have parent companies in the source—the field was null.  I added logic to the parentcustomeridtype field to only import if the parentcustomerid was null.

Lesson learned—if you populate the parentcustomeridtype field, you have to populate the parentcustomerid field.

del.icio.us Tags: Scribe Insight,Microsoft Dynamics CRM

Independent Broker-Dealers Ignoring Advisors’ Tech Needs in 2010

As the race to rake in breakaway brokers continues to heat up, independent brokers are spending less on the areas of technology that matter most to independent advisors: customer relationship management (CRM) and integration.

According to new research from Aite Group, introducing broker-dealers — independent firms that clear through a separate firm — will reduce their focus on CRM software this year, despite advisors putting the improvement of such systems at the top of their priority list.

When asked to rank the business applications that were most important to their business, CRM came in just behind financial planning, with 83% of advisors stating that CRM software is important to how they do business, according to Aite. Nearly 40% said CRM is very or most important.

Nevertheless 66% of broker-dealer executives plan to cut CRM spending or put it on hold this year, according to the study. Instead, at the top of their priority list is broker workstations/advisor portals, account opening and management and direct processing.

Read More At http://www.financial-planning.com/news/CRM-Aite-Bruckenstein-2666041-1.html

Microsoft to spend $9.5 billion on research in 2010 (CRM Highlighted in Article)

Microsoft plans to spend $9.5 billion on research and development this year, which a senior executive said Thursday is more than any competitor.

The figure is $3 billion more than the next closest technology company, said Kevin Turner, Microsoft's chief operating officer, who gave a keynote speech on Thursday at the Cebit trade show. Much of Microsoft's investments center around "cloud" services, or online computing provided to users from hosted data centers.

"Especially in light of the tough difficult macroeconomic times that we're coming out of, we chose to really lean in and double down on our innovation," Turner said.

Turner contended that Microsoft has more cloud services than any other company, ranging from its consumer e-mail service to hosted enterprise products such as its Dynamics CRM (customer relationship management) system to its Azure cloud operating system.

Read More At - http://www.businessweek.com/idg/2010-03-04/microsoft-to-spend-9-5-billion-on-research-in-2010.html

Microsoft CRM Configuration Manager

Daniel Halan, a CRM solutions architect in Sweden, has released a freeware configuration manager for Microsoft CRM.  It has some really interesting capabilities that should be useful for managing multiple environments, such as one click export of customizations between environments, and command line execution of customization import, which can be used to automatically import customzations post import.

I really like how it can force related entities to be included when you export customizations, so you avoid conflicts that can happen when you import incomplete relationships.

Read more about it and download it here

del.icio.us Tags: Microsoft CRM,Customization