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.