Mitch Milam's Dynamics CRM and xRM Discussions

Jim Glass of Microsoft released an article today describing how to increase your productivity within CRM by customizing your Workplace.  Let's discuss other personal options that can be set on an individual basis.

To set personal options, select the Tools menu, then click on Options, as shown below:

As you can see below, the options are broken down into the following categories:

• General
• Workplace
• Activities
• E-mail Templates

General Settings

Set your default start page allows you to change which CRM Pane and Tab will be displayed when you start CRM.  Changing the Default Pane will change the values of the Default Tab.

Set the number of records shown per page in any list of records allows you to set the number of records that will be returned when you click on Entities such as Accounts and Contacts.  The possible values are: 25, 50 (default), 75, 100, and 250.

The default value of 50 is usually more than adequate for most people's needs. Increasing it will slow the display of the record list so you'll need to tweak it based on your data and CRM usage.

Select the default mode in Advanced Find will alter how the Advanced find page is displayed.  Here is the Simple version of the Advanced Find:

and here is the Detailed version:

Set the time zone you are in allows you to set the CRM user's default time zone.

Workplace Settings

Is covered in this article.

Activities Settings

Allow you to modify settings related to your schedule and e-mail-related activities.

Default view allows you to set your default calendar view to Day, Week, or Month.

Set your default work hours allows you to set the hours that you generally work.  This information is used by the various scheduling tools with CRM so that they know when you're available to be scheduled for a job or appointment.

Select the e-mail messages to track in Microsoft CRM allows you to track all messages you receive or only messages that have the CRM token in the subject.

E-Mail Templates Settings

Allows you to manage your personal e-mail templates.

So that's about it.  As a normal CRM user, the most important setting that you need to check is your time zone.  The other settings can be customized as your familiarity with CRM grows and your work patterns become known to you.