Sharing Information with Teams in Dynamics CRM 3.0

Posted on September 7th, 2006 mitch  Print 2 comments

In our previous article, we covered how to create a Team in CRM 3.0. Now we're going to put that Team to work.

I think most people start utilizing more of CRM's features as they become more comfortable how the product operates.  One of the features that people have a tendency to discover after using CRM for a while, is the ability to save Advanced Find queries as custom views. 

This is a simple process that really only involves clicking the Save button after you have completed the selection criteria for the Advanced Find query:

Once created, the newly saved View will be available to you on the Saved Views tab:

So, how does that tie into the use of CRM Teams, you may ask.

Well, let's imagine that you have a query that you created to show you all of the service requests that have been created by either our Affiliates or by Warranty repair requests from customers. As it turns out, most of your colleagues need to perform the exact same query on a regular basis.  Rather than providing instructions to on how to create the query, you just decide to share it with them instead.

Again, this is a simple process that start by:

1. Highlighting the view you wish to share,
2. Clicking the More Actions button
3. Clicking the Sharing menu item

As shown below:

This will display a dialog that will allow you to share your view with other CRM users:

Click on the Add User/Team Task to display the user/team selection dialog:

Change the Look for dropdown to Team then click the Find button. This will display all of teams within your CRM system.

Highlight Everyone, then click >> to move it to the Selected records list then click OK.

This will add the Everyone Team to the list of users and teams to share your View with, as shown below:

By default, all users are given Read-Only access to the Saved View.

If you would like to give them unlimited access, perform the following steps:

1. Click the checkbox beside Everyone
2. Click the Toggle All Permissions of the Selected Items task.

Click the OK button and CRM will now share your Saved View with the other users on the Everyone Team.

Using Teams vs. Individual Users:

The reason we shared our Saved View with the Team, and not with individual users, is to keep our maintenance costs low. If we had added each of your coworkers to the share list, each time there was a personnel change, you would have had to edit the Shared list.

What this is not really an issue if you only have one Saved View, what happens when you have 10, or 20, Saved Views?

By sharing our Saved View with the Everyone Team, we limit the maintenance tasks to only adding and removing members to the Everyone Team itself, which just a single maintenance task.

Customization, Dynamics CRM

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Creating a Team in Dynamics CRM 3.0

Posted on September 7th, 2006 mitch  Print 1 comment

One of the things that I recently started adding to my CRM installation process was to create a team called Everyone.

And why, do you ask, do we need a team called Everyone?  Well, it's rather simple. It is less maintenance in the long run to assign shared records within CRM to a Team, than it is to assign them to individual users.

Here is how the Team creation process works:

Creating the Everyone Team:

1) From the CRM Web Client, select Settings, Business Unit Settings, Teams.

2) Specify the Team Name as Everyone and give it a Description, as shown below:

3) Click the Save button.

4) Under Details, Click Members.

5) Click the Add Members button.

6) Enter any search criteria you wish, or leave the Look for: box blank.

7) Click the Find button to display CRM users that match your criteria.

8) Select the users you would like to add to the group ( generally all of them ) and click the >> button.

9) Click OK.

10) When you are returned to the Member List, click the Save and Close button.

That is how you create a Team in Dynamics CRM 3.0.  In the next article we'll discuss how to utilize our newly created team.

Customization, Dynamics CRM, Installation

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Revised: Using JavaScript to populate a CRM field

Posted on September 7th, 2006 mitch  Print No comments

Here is an example of how to use JavaScript within a CRM 3.0 form to combine the values of the First Name and Last Name fields and put the combined values into the Company field:

var firstName = crmForm.all.firstname.DataValue;


var lastName = crmForm.all.lastname.DataValue;


var companyName = "";





if (firstName  != null)


{


  companyName = firstName + " ";


}





if (lastName != null)


{


  companyName = companyName + lastName;


}





if (companyName != null)


{


  crmForm.all.companyname.DataValue =  companyName;


}

This code needs to be placed into the OnChange event of the First Name and Last Name fields.

Note 1: Remember that JavaScript is case-sensitive so you must spell the form field names correctly or your code will either not function properly or it will generate a JavaScript error.

Note 2: Remember to publish the Entity after you have made modifications to the form. Otherwise your users will not see it.

For more information on using JavaScript within CRM 3.0, please review the CRM 3.0 SDK.

Revised 9/8/06 to incorporate checks to ensure we have valid data to add to the company name. Thanks to Matt Wittemann for the suggestion.

Customization, Dynamics CRM

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So which is it?

Posted on September 7th, 2006 mitch  Print No comments

I really wonder about companies sometimes. Take a look at some of the SPAM I received this morning:

So in a period of less than an hour, I went from having the opportunity of receiving Unlimited Virtual Seminars to merely getting 20% off.

Hmmm….

Meanderings

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Using Filtered Views with CRM 3.0

Posted on September 7th, 2006 mitch  Print 4 comments

Some of my customers use Microsoft Excel or Access to pull data from the CRM system in order to produce custom reports, or in one instance, to interface with a third-party bulk-email application.

CRM 3.0 has a set of SQL Database Views, called Filtered Views, that are constructed in such a way that CRM Security roles are maintained and you can retrieve nothing using one of these views that you would not ordinarily see while using the CRM application.

One aspect of using filtered views that you must take into consideration is the fact that all data ( that you have access to ) will be retrieved from the specified Entity.  This means both Inactive and Active records.

If you don't take Inactive records into consideration your result set could be drastically different than what you expected and  you may inadvertently expend resources on inactive customers.

Luckily, CRM provides two data fields that can be used to filter your query:

So, here is how you would use the above:

--


-- Show only active Accounts


--


select * from FilteredAccount where statuscode = 1


 


--


-- Show only active Contacts


--


select * from FilteredContact where statuscode = 1


 

This code instructs SQL Server to return all rows where the statuscode is equal to 1, which is an Active Account or Contact.

Dynamics CRM, Reporting

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