Top 10 New Features of Dynamics CRM 2015

The Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2015 release has so many new and exciting features and enhancements. There are such a multitude of great additions that we have been struggling to pick our favorites. We did our best to keep the list to only 10 features but as you read on, you’ll be able to see there were just too many to choose from!

1. CRM Online Administration Experience. CRM Online Perth markets available is expanding. System Administrators can self-provision instances from O365 and choose from 60 different markets.

2. Enhanced Business Processes. Have you ever wished that you could build branching logic into your Business Process Flows? CRM 2015 allows you to create branching rules and the ability to combine multiple conditions within a rule. Think of the possibilities!

3. Enhanced Mobile Sales. Remember the last time you were in a meeting with a client and unable to add details directly into CRM with yourmobile device because you did not have access to their wireless network? CRM 2015 will allow users to create drafts offline that can easily be synchronized when the user is back online. Additionally, all dashboards can now be enabled for a tablet.

4. Enhanced Business Rules. No need to create multiple business rules for one logic string. Business rules can now contain If/Then logic and the ability to combine expressions using And/Or.

5. Search. You can now search in Dynamics CRM 2015across different record types or configure specific fields on your preferred entities. Simply enter your search criteria in the general navigation search bar and let CRM do the searching for you.

6. Security Enhancements. Allow managers to access records for their direct reports based on Hierarchy across the organization. As a system administrator, this is going to be a huge time saver!

7. Outlook and Sync Enhancements. Additional phone and address fields are available for field level syncing. Another fabulous perk is that end users can add information to a contact note and prevent it from being shared with CRM. Fields that are synced will be flagged so there is no need to guess which fields will be visible in CRM.

8. Sales Product Taxonomy. Have you ever wanted CRM to provide product suggestions? This will now be possible by setting up product hierarchies, creating bundles, product properties and defining product relationships.

9. SLA Enhancements. There is now a specific tab within System Settings for Service. CRM 2015 allows SLAs to be paused based upon the Status Reason. Previously created SLAs will be considered standard SLAs and all new SLAs created in CRM 2015 will be considered Enhanced. All Enhanced SLA will be eligible to use this feature.

10. Fields: Calculated and Rollup with work in harmony with CRM 2015. You will now have the ability to create more complex field calculations that can run based upon a scheduled job and compliments business rules with real time integration. These fields can now be added to Reports, Charts, Views and Forms. A calculator icon is visible next to fields for which this functionality has been applied.

If you would like to know how you can improve your Customer Relationship Management strategy, processes and software and are interested in working with consultants that are local, guaranteed and deliver solutions that are simplified, you should get in contact now to book an obligation-free appointment at  Visit:  http://crmperth.com.au/contact-us/ and do a mail enquiry@CRMperth.com.au you can feel free to call us: (08) 6102 7284.

How to: Approve a Post using PowerSocial

PowerSocial allows Dynamics CRM users to post messages on LinkedIn or Twitter, all from within the comfort of their own CRM system. It’s as easy as choosing a publisher, creating a message, and posting! But, of course, not just anyone can post using PowerSocial. PowerSocial also includes the ability to require approval before posts are blasted out into the wilderness of the social media sphere. PowerSocial also makes it easy to keep a consistent flow of messages going out, by allowing users to schedule messages to post at a specific date and time. With PowerSocial, you can not only post from within your CRM, but you can also monitor specific people, hashtags, groups, companies, etc., plus you’ll be able to turn incoming messages into contacts or leads, and respond to posts or repost from within CRM Solutions. If you are a social media nut, PowerSocial is the add-on for you!

A user may have rights to read and create posts, but only the PowerSocial Admin, and those given extra field security by the PowerSocial Admin, can actually post without needing the post to be approved by the PowerSocial Admin. There is a view to see all unapproved posts.

1.Navigate to PowerPack.

 

2.Navigate to Social Posts.

3.Select the Drop-down arrow next to the currently displayed view. There are many other views that come with the PowerSocial add-on; these views will be accessed the same way that we will choose the view to approve posts. From the Drop-down, select Needs Approval.

The view will look as follows:

4.Once on the view, open the post that is to be reviewed for approval. As the PowerSocial Admin, the details of the post may be edited. Do all edits before you check the box and save. When everything is all set, to approve the post, check the Approvecheck box and then hit Savein the lower right corner.

If you would like to know how you can improve your Customer Relationship Management strategy, processes and software and are interested in working with consultants that are local, guaranteed and deliver solutions that are simplified, you should get in contact now to book an obligation-free appointment at  Visit:  http://crmperth.com.au/contact-us/ and do a mail enquiry@CRMperth.com.au you can feel free to call us: (08) 6102 7284.

Definitions of ‘Append’ and ‘Append To’ in Dynamics CRM

Before we dig into just what Append and Append To mean, let’s review how security roles work in CRM. CRM comes with fifteen default security roles and one root Business Unit. These security roles grant various levels of access for a variety of roles, ranging from Customer Service Representatives to Vice Presidents to System Administrators.

In Dynamics CRM, security roles are cumulative, meaning that one user may have one or more security roles. If a user has two or more security roles, these roles will layer on top of one another and the user will be granted the fullest access and privileges across the roles. Once in a user record, System Administrators may add security roles to users by clicking on the ‘manage roles’ button in the command bar and selecting which roles to apply to that particular user.

A security role is three dimensional and answers the following questions:

• What actions can a user perform?This is represented by the Action columns in the security role and include: Create, Read, Write, Delete, Append, Append To, Assign, and Share (See blue box).
• On which records or system features?This is represented by the tabbed buckets across the top and the Entity rows along the left hand column (See red boxes).
• And what is the depth of their access within the system? This is represented by the circle at the intersection of each action and entity/record type. The options serve as scoping mechanisms based upon record ownership and include: None, User, Business Unit, Parent:Child Business Unit, and Organization (See orange box and lines). 

 

Security roles best practices:

Do not use the out of the box security roles. Wait. What? Why?

• Do not assign the out of the box security roles directly to people, modify Create a copy of the role most similar to the role you want to assign to your users and then modify the copy. Original security roles have numerous security privilege nuances that are hard to replicate if creating security roles from scratch.
• This allows the original security roles to serve as a reference whenever you need or want to create additional roles in the future.

• Keep in mind that as soon as you hit ‘save’ on an active role, it will update to all child business units. This is another reason why it is important to work off of copied security roles and not the original security role. If you hit ‘save’ you will never again have access to the out of the box role with all of its nuances.
• Never break best practice unless you need to grant privileges and access to something rather small, such as ‘Export to Excel’ or ‘Run abc Report’. In this case, you can create a security role that grants this small bit of access and assign it to the appropriate users as an additional role or layer. The users other security roles should grant them access to the entire system.

Okay, now what is Append and Append To all about?

Since Append and Append To are already configured in the out of the box CRM security roles, you may never need to be concerned with their exact meaning. But if you’re inquisitive about all things CRM or modifying security roles…

Append and Append To work as a pair and are located next to one another in the security configuration window. However, it is not as simple as working left to right along a row. One way of thinking conceptually about Append and Append To is to think of ‘Append Me‘ and ‘Append To Me‘.

Here’s the big secret: Think ‘Append Me‘ and ‘Append To Me‘

In order to successfully append record A to record B, the security privileges must be set to allowboth sides of the agreement. Consider the following metaphor, Append ‘knocks on the door’ of another entity and Append To is needed to ‘open the door’ to that entity. For example, if you want to qualify a lead and begin working the opportunity as set in your business process flow, you must have to rights to append the lead (record A) and the rights to append to the opportunity (record B).

 

If you had only granted append privileges to the lead, but not append to on the opportunity, this will land you a big fat ‘business process error’ screen.

 

And we certainly don’t want that! Therefore, when configuring privileges regarding append and append to, first get yourself into the perspective of a cute little entity like ‘lead’ and as you work across the actions and get to Append and Append To, ask: Do I need to append me to any other entities? Do I need to append other entities to me? Think about any processes that your business may have (qualifying leads, moving activities created on the lead to the opportunity, or linking a task to a case) and set accordingly.

If you would like to know how you can improve your Customer Relationship Management strategy, processes and software and are interested in working with consultants that are local, guaranteed and deliver solutions that are simplified, you should get in contact now to book an obligation-free appointment at  Visit:  http://crmperth.com.au/contact-us/ and do a mail enquiry@CRMperth.com.au you can feel free to call us: (08) 6102 7284.