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Mass-Disqualifying CRM Leads
One of my customers needed to disqualify about 700 dead leads that had been imported from their previous CRM solution. Unfortunately, there isn't any automatic way to do this, but after Googling around a bit, I found a fairly good solution that doesn't require any coding. Follow these steps:
As the CRM Administrator:
1) From the CRM Server, launch the Workflow Manager.
2) Create a Manual Rule on the Leads Entity called Disqualify Lead that will contain the following actions:
3) Save and Activate the rule.
As a CRM User:
1) Perform an Advanced Find on the Leads Entity to identify the Leads you wish to Disqualify.
2) When the results display, select those records you wish to Disqualify.
3) From the Leads Grid toolbar, select More Actions, Apply Rule….
4) From the Workflow Process dropdown list, select the Disqualify Lead rule you created earlier.
5) Select OK and CRM will change the status of the Lead from Open to Disqualified.
6) Open the Closed Leads view to check your work.
Note: This process ( steps 3-6 ) will work with any list of Open Leads that you may be viewing, not just after performing the Advanced Find operation.
Dynamics CRM
(No Ratings Yet)945 views
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Dynamics CRM 3.0 Laptop Client Tip
I have noticed on a few occasions that the CRM Laptop client can get horribly confused by something that happened to it. Many times, it's rather difficult to determine the root cause, so we just go directly to the remove and reinstall procedure, since it will save time and money. ( Hopefully with little or no data loss. )
Being that laptop users are laptop users and have a tendency to be away from their office, it is now part of my standard CRM Laptop Client installation process to copy the Laptop Client Installation files to the user's local hard drive.
For CRM 3.0 Professional
Just copy CD #2 to a directory.
For CRM SBE
Locate the LaptopClient directory under the MSCRM directory found in the ClientApps share.
Scott, one of the guys at NetVision Consulting ( local MS partner ), suggested that we put the files in a directory called CRM INSTALLATION FILES – DO NOT DELETE since users sometimes have a fits of housecleaning that could render your careful preparation null and void. Great tip Scott.
Dynamics CRM, Outlook Client (No Ratings Yet)1,855 views Loading ... -
CRM and Active Directory User Synchronization Consideration
I ran into an interesting issue at a customer yesterday that I thought may be of interest to everyone.
Scenario:
The customer has temporary administrative staff brought in to handle overflow work during peak times. Instead of creating a unique user name and login for these users, they decided to just create a user called Staff, which would be used for the temp staff.
This is an excellent practice and one that I've successfully used at many customers. If you have more than one temporary user, just append a number to the login name: Staff1, Staff2, Intern1, Intern2, etc.
The Problem:
Instead of creating a new Staff user, they just renamed the account for the last temporary staff user since she already had the necessary security and access privileges. That is where things went a bit bonkers with CRM.
The CRM Administrator had Disabled the CRM user for the person who had just left and when she attempted to create the new Staff user, she received an error message informing her that she was attempting to add a user who was already in the system.
The Cause:
When CRM adds a user to the CRM system, it also records the Active Directory GUID, which is a unique identifier assigned to each user within the Windows Active Directory. This information is used to guarantee that we have unique Active Directory ( Windows ) user.
We were attempting to add a CRM user with a new Active Directory user name, MYSERVER\STAFF, but since we already had a Disabled CRM user with the same Active Directory GUID, the operation failed.
The Solution ( Supported ):
If you want to implement such a system, just create a new user, add that user to CRM, and assign security access rights in both Active Directory and CRM. This is the cleanest method for implementing the solution.
The Solution ( mostly unsupported, but possibly necessary ):
In this particular instance, the customer had already started using the new Staff person and since we didn't wish to loose any work they may have already been completed, by creating a new Active Directory user login, I decided to correct the problem by modifying the CRM database directly.
The first thing I did was to Reactivate the Disabled CRM user and changed the user information to match that of the renamed Staff user.
As you probably know, you can't change the user's Windows login ID after they have been added to CRM. Since the old user's ID was MYSERVER\SALLY, and I needed it to be MYSERVER\STAFF, I had to manually update the CRM systemuser table to change the login name from MYSERVER\SALLY to MYSERVER\STAFF for that user.
Again, modifying the CRM database directly is unsupported by Microsoft and should be done with extreme care. You also can't blame me. :)
Good luck.
Dynamics CRM (No Ratings Yet)1,203 views Loading ... -
Using Dynamics CRM 3.0 with IE 7
[Via Susan Bradley]
It seems Dynamics CRM 3.0 has issues with IE 7 when combined with Office, as documented in the following Knowledgebase article.
You need to not run CRM in "Application Mode."
To use the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 Web application together with Internet Explorer 7, you must turn off the application mode setting for the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 Web site. If you do not turn off the setting, Internet Explorer 7 closes when you start a Microsoft Office program from the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 Web site.
By default, the application mode setting is on for the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 Web site. When the setting is on, the Internet Explorer 7 toolbars are not displayed when you are using Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0. When you turn off the setting, the Internet Explorer 7 toolbars are displayed when you are using Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0. This is true even if you are using Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.
Dynamics CRM (No Ratings Yet)921 views Loading ... -
Giving myself the finger
or actually, a finger. Back.
About a year and a half ago, I stuck my left middle-finger into a very large piece of woodworking equipment and lopped off the left corner. Very irritating, let me tell you.
Anyway, my body reconfigured the nerves at the end of the finger during the healing process and I lost the sensation at the very tip. In case you've never thought about it, a touch-typist needs to feel their finger in order for them to know what key it is resting on and hitting while typing.
I used to type about a billion words a minute, but no more.
While my finger was on vacation, I trained my left index finger to do the work of the middle finger. This was not exactly a smooth transition and it drives me crazy. As an example, I type the last word in the previous sentence as follows: finged, figer, finget, finger.
This has reduced my typing to around a million words a minute. Way too slow for my taste, and productivity.
I also have most of the sensation back in the tip of my finger so I guess this week I'll start retraining my hand to work as it did before.
Wish me luxk. :)
Meanderings (No Ratings Yet)888 views Loading ... -
Using the Advanced Find for FetchXML builder
Ronald Lemmen published two really neat tricks for developers, CRM or otherwise.
The first deals with obtaining the FetchXML code used by CRM internally to perform searches using the Advanced Find feature. This is really great because it will save CRM developers tons of time. Instead of creating the query by hand, you can utilize CRM itself to create and test the query, then take the FetchXML code used by the query and integrate it into your own code.
Ronald's second tip can be used by just about anyone using Microsoft Windows:
But with Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 you can copy all text on the popup by clicking somewhere on the popup (not on the button "OK" of course) and pressing ctrl+c.
This copies the contents of the MessageBox to the clipboard. You can then paste the code into any other program you wish.
As an example, here is what happens when you perform the above operation on the following MessageBox:
—————————
Notepad
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The text in the Untitled file has changed.Do you want to save the changes?
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Yes No Cancel
—————————Is that no cool or what?
Customization, Dynamics CRM (No Ratings Yet)1,531 views Loading ...
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