Here are the general details surrounding each Quote Status:

Draft – When a Quote is first saved, this is the system Status and changes can be made to the Quote. You would keep the Quote as a draft while you add products/services, adjust pricing, and prepare the Quote for the customer.

Active – When a Quote is ready to be presented to the customer, Activate the Quote, which makes the Quote read-only. You can print the Quote using the “Print Quote for Customer” button in the ribbon, which allows you create a Quote document using Mail Merge. Or you can click the “Run Report” button in the ribbon, which creates the out-of-the-box Quote report that you can either save or print.

Closed – Closing a Quote will close the Quote in CRM with a status reason of lost, cancelled, etc., reflecting in the system that the Quote is no longer valid and updating the system Status to “Closed.” The Quote form will become read-only and no changes can be made.

Revise – Revise isn’t an actual Quote Status, but if the Quote requires changes after being activated or closed, click the “Revise” button in the ribbon. The Status will change back to Draft and changes can be made again. A revision number will also populate in the “Revision ID” field. This process allows you to keep track of how many different Quotes were presented to the Customer and the differences between each Quote.

Won – When a Quote has been accepted by the customer, the next step would be to select the “Create Order” button in the ribbon. This allows you to reflect that you’ve “Won” the Quote and also update the Opportunity record (only if the Quote was created from the Opportunity). An Order record will be generated, the Quote Status will change to Won, and no changes can be made to the Quote.

Here are some other fun facts regarding Quotes in CRM:

• Multiple Quotes can be created for the same Opportunity.
• Price Lists and System Calculated Pricing play a serious role in how Quotes are created and managed.
• A Quote can be created independently of an Opportunity or within the Opportunity, which associates the Quote to that Opportunity and pulls the price list through if one is selected on the Opportunity record.
• The “Get Products” button in the ribbon bar of an independently created Quote allows you to pull the products from an existing Opportunity record as long as the Quote and Opportunity have the same price list associated.

We’ll have more on Quotes in future blogs. Happy CRMing!

After being majorly (and behind closed doors, vocally) disappointed for the last couple months with the lack of information available to Partners, we finally got a clear and concise look at the initiatives and plans for Dynamics CRM this year and beyond.

With the Polaris release in February – bringing the promise of cross-browser support and a cleaner, flatter UI – we saw a hint of what was in the works. I say “a hint” because the new look and “Flow UI” was only brushed on a few forms and there seemed to be pieces missing. It was finally explained that Polaris was really just a taste – almost a proof of concept – of what was to come. For new users that had not worked with the product before, they would love it. Users that had worked with Dynamics for a while would miss a couple of subtle features.

The next release is really a full version release, code-named Orion, and is scheduled for “second half of 2013.” This week I have heard June, Summer, Summer or Fall, and H2 so take it as you will. The slide I snapped with my phone shows the Major Themes included in the Orion release.

Since this was a Customer and Partner conference and these were in a General Session, I have no problems sharing them – other than the mediocre picture quality.

There is a continued focus on the flattening of the UI which is crucial for full mobility – or the poorly named “Ubiquitous access” as the slide says. We were shown several of the mobile clients coming with Orion and I was very happy to see they were quick and User role focused.

There is also new navigation – moving to the top of the page and a single window experience, meaning no pop-up windows. Very smooth, very slick and designed to allow users to increase efficiency while improving usability. The slide below shows some of that. (I apologize for the poor quality, If I can get a better shot, I will switch it out.)

All in all, I was very impressed with what I heard and saw. The team is doing a great job preparing our product for the future. Not so good communicating to us Dynamics CRM Partners about it though…

Lots of other info for another post later but I will end with some numbers.

Dynamics CRM now has over 3,000,000 users from 39,000 companies. Over 60% of new customers choose Online vs. On Premise. And finally – Dynamics CRM has experienced 34 consecutive quarters of double digit growth.

Recently we’ve encountered a “glitch” when using a Date/Time field in CRM. The issue occurred when a user entered a date in a date-only field. Then another user from a different time zone viewed the record, and the date reflected as a day earlier than it should have been.

Normally this would go unnoticed, but the incorrect date was a Sunday, which raised the red flag since our offices are usually closed on Sunday. We realized that the users are in different time zones, and that was what was causing the issue.

As we researched further, we found that when a date-only field is entered, CRM stores that data as a Date/Time field in the SQL Server database. Because there isn’t a time entered on the form, the time stored in the database defaults to midnight of the day the original user entered the data (midnight being the start of the day).

CRM takes into account the settings of the user viewing the record, and the time will be adjusted accordingly. If the user who entered the date is on the East Coast and the user viewing the record is on the West Coast, CRM will adjust the time by moving the time back three hours, and three hours before midnight = yesterday. For example, a user on the East Coast enters a date field of 1/25/13. The database records in the background a time of 12:00am on 1/25/13. Then a user on the West Coast opens that record and the date defaults to their time zone, which is reflected as 1/24/13 because the time associated in the background with that date field is now 9:00pm on 1/24/13. Make sense?

I’ve encountered similar issues when working directly with SLQ tables and attempting to add Date/Time when midnight was involved, and finding a good solution can really get hairy.

I’ve seen several suggested solutions including one I’m not fond of—default all the users to the same time zone. This isn’t a good idea, as the users will have to manually adjust for their time zone for every date and time entry. This disables setting correct times for appointments, tasks, cases, etc., and I believe this will also wreak havoc when correlating records with Outlook because each user’s Outlook time zone setting will not match CRM’s time zone.

Our solution – We decided to set the time of the date field upon entry (or change) to a more appropriate mid-day time, using a JavaScript in a Web service. See the code below.

We call the function “on change” (when the record is changed). This function is passed the field name and sets the time to 8:00am, in our case, leaving the date as is.

While doing our research, we did find other solutions as well as ours. Here’s a list of a few other options that might work for you.

1)      Create a plug-in to capture saving of the record and or displaying of the record, and to adjust accordingly.

2)      Use three different fields to capture the data—use a Month, a Day, and a Year field, instead of the Date/Time field.

3)      Add the time portion to the Date/Time field and instruct the users to enter valid times.

Our solution fits our current needs. Depending on your need, this may not work for you, especially if you have offices/users across the globe and across the international dateline.

Hope our resolution can help your organization!

Caller: “Hi Ken, I’m <her name is redacted to protect the innocent> and I’m your new account executive. Do you have a minute? I want to share with you all the great new stuff we have going on this year.”

Sound familiar?

This call was from a local sports team and it wasn’t bad for an opening line from the new sales lady. I understood this call was probably to get me signed up for their new membership program. I expected her to leverage the wealth of information the team had about me and try to get me to buy season tickets. I figured they knew I was a huge fan since they have been collecting data on me for at least 15 years.

Then there was that long, semi-angry letter I sent them several years ago when I cancelled my season tickets… wait, I digress.

Long story short, after several disappointed years away, my attendance began inching back up and I finally purchased a small 6 game package (for 4) last year in addition to some other tickets. I was ready to be sold.

Alas, the promising intro aside, the call went south pretty quickly.

It appeared that the only information she had about me was my name, phone number, and email address. I actually checked the caller ID to make sure the call was really from the team and not an outside marketing group.

Caller: “Are you familiar with our new membership program?”

Me: “Kind of, I was on your website a couple weeks ago looking at it. What’s the difference between it and when I had season tickets?”

Caller: “Oh, you were a season ticket holder?”

Me: “Uh, yeah.”

Caller: “When was this?”

The rest of the conversation was more of same—me reintroducing myself to an organization I have spent my hard-earned money with for 15 years. As the owner of a software consulting firm that specializes in Dynamics CRM (Relationship Management software), I always look at this kind of interaction as a business owner. If she was my employee and I provided her with horrible data (or no data) and then held her accountable—who is really responsible for the results?

Please don’t get me wrong, she was very nice. She was knowledgeable about their product and offerings, she was pleasant and engaging, and rallied well at the end of the call by inviting me and my wife (she knew I was married and my wife was also a fan by that point because she was listening) down to the ballpark. Solid close to the call with some open dates for a visit and then followed up with an email. She will probably get a sale from me.

I think about all the data the team SHOULD have in their database and I feel sorry for that new sales person. She was good but not having actionable data made her have to work all that much harder.

Let’s think about it. I have been going to games since the mid 1990′s, a previous season ticket holder for 4 or 5 years, same credit card used for almost all transactions, signed up years ago for their fan programs, lived at the same address for 20 years, active on Twitter commenting on the team, attend Spring Training every couple years, attended several invite-only Season Ticketholder events, and met/conversed with many of the executives in the Front Office. Even been on their newsletter distribution list for years, what a shame.

Now, let’s focus on your business. Think about the information you have about your prospects and customers and then about the data available to anyone with an internet connection and a browser. Ask yourself some questions – What do your sales people really know about who they are interacting with? Have you provided them with the data that is locked away in your systems? Have you set them up for success?

Great process + a well-designed system + training = actionable data and a well-prepared sales person ready to meet your goals.

Do your sales, marketing, and customer service teams a favor, contact us today.

xRM3 and Dynamics CRM – Because business is not two-dimensional.

“If I had an hour to save the world I would spend 59 minutes defining the problem and one minute finding solutions.” —Albert Einstein

Define the problem before creating the solution – a simple idea from a true genius that can help us achieve success.

While this may seem to be an obvious statement, over the years I have been brought in to rescue too many CRM implementations that neglected this key first step. This can happen for one of many reasons but is usually due to either the client not being guided towards properly defining the issues or a client telling the consultant exactly what they “need” and the consultant blindly accepting that direction.

I am not suggesting that the client is wrong in either of those scenarios – in fact, I believe the fault lies directly with the consultant. The consultant is tasked with a successful implementation and sometimes feels the way to that goal is doing exactly what the client says. While the client usually knows their business better than anyone else, they need guidance to formulate better processes and then to integrate those processes into an effective solution.

There are great consultants in our industry that can take a solution design and implement it. These same consultants may not be as adept in defining the issues and then designing the solution. That’s okay; just don’t put them in a situation they are not prepared for.

Ok, my 59 minutes are up…

For professional guidance and Dynamics CRM, contact the team at xRM3 today.

~ Think big, start small, act now.

I love the Filter button.

Can you see it buried up in the Ribbon bar? There, on the right next to the Import Data button.

That lovely little button allows me to sort through my data quickly and easily just as I would in Excel. I know, we can build great queries and save them as Views so I can instantly access them, but I am always looking for different ways of viewing my data.

I can create a single view and then use it for many things—just by using my favorite button.

Once I click that button, I can apply field level sorting and return just the data I want to see.

Beautiful. My data just opens up, showing me nuggets I didn’t even know existed. The power at my fingertips is heady. The Force is strong in this one. I love the Filter button.

And you should, too.

If you and your team are doing a great job with all the effort that goes into collecting, maintaining, and governing that data, the Filter button can be your best friend. Simple to understand, easy to use, included in every Dynamics CRM deployment.

To learn more, visit our Web site, follow us on Twitter @xRM3, or subscribe to our newsletter for monthly Dynamics CRM Tips and Tricks.

Dynamics CRM and xRM3—because your business is not two-dimensional.

The following are features of “Campaigns” in CRM:

• Target Marketing Lists –
  • Used to create lists of Leads, Contacts, or Accounts in order to distribute your Marketing content (can also be used for Quick Campaigns).
• Campaign Activities –
  • Are the customer touch points for the Campaign and can either be distributed to the Marketing List members or act as “To Do’s” for the campaign (can also be used for Quick Campaigns).
• Planning Activities –
  • Help you organize all of the activities required for launching and operating the campaign. These are different than “Campaign Activities.” Planning Activities can be any type of activity record and has the same functionality as all other Activities in CRM.
• Target Products –
  • You can add products to a campaign to reflect what the campaign is promoting. This will also reflect what revenue those campaigns generated if the campaign responses are promoted to Opportunities, and then Closed Sales.

• Sales Literature –
  • If the content is about a product or service, Sales Literature can be added to a Campaign to make it easy for follow-up about the Campaign.
• Adding related campaigns –
  • You can add several campaigns to an overall Campaign and see the overall effectiveness of the campaigns together or view them separately.
• Campaign Templates –
  • Can ensure that multiple campaigns driven by different staff members all contain the same activities, product info, etc. and can reduce the amount of time and planning required.
• Campaign Costs –
  • Cost values can be added to a Campaign in order to accurately track the ROI and financial information associated with that Campaign. These cost values include:
    • Budget Allocated – The amount budgeted for the campaign
    • Misc. Costs – Any cost not incurred by campaign activities
    • Estimated Revenue – The expected revenue generated from the campaign
• Campaign Activity Costs –
  • Cost values can be associated with each Campaign Activity in order to track the actual cost of that activity through your Marketing Campaign. These cost values include:
    • Budget Allocated – The amount budgeted for that specific activity; this is not rolled up to the campaign budget allocated
    • Actual Cost – What the actual cost was for that activity

Note—When you save the above cost-related information, CRM calculates and displays the following information in the financial tab of the campaign:

• Total cost of campaign activities = Accumulative cost of all campaign activities
• Total cost of campaign = Campaign activity cost plus misc. costs

More Detail on Campaign Activities:

• There are two types of Campaign activities:
  • Channel Activities – specify the channel of communication
  • Non-Channel Activities – are activities that do not have a channel specified or have “other” for the channel selected. These cannot be distributed. They just act as “to do’s” to track actions. They will remain in the owner’s Activity List until they are changed to Channel Activities, Completed, then closed.

Note—A channel activity cannot be distributed until it has at least one Marketing List is associated with it.

• Channel Activities attempt to create a single activity based on the channel selected to all members in the marketing lists (Leads, Contacts, Accounts)

Note—The CRM Marketing engine takes into account the recorded preferences of the list members, such as bulk email or “do not allow phone fields” when creating campaign activities

• You can choose who owns the activities that are distributed through campaigns to the selected records; the activity is then completed by the owner specified. For example, the Channel Activity could be distributed to all Leads in a particular area code, but the owner of those Channel Activities could be the Sales Person assigned to those Leads. The Sales Person would then be tasked with completing all the Channel Activities for their Leads in that area code.

Note—In addition, you can add the distributed activities to a queue.

• Email Templates can be used to distribute emails from a Marketing Campaign using Marketing Campaign Activities by checking the “Use Template” box in the email form
• To launch a Campaign, distribute the Marketing Campaign Activities

What is a Marketing Campaign or Quick Campaign used for in CRM?

• Campaigns and Quick Campaigns are used to distribute information to your organization’s Leads, Contacts, and Accounts.
• The distribution lists are called “Marketing Lists” in CRM. Each Marketing List can target only one of the listed member types—Leads, Contacts, or Accounts. But you can use several Marketing Lists within one campaign. Marketing Lists deserve their own blog, which I will create at a later time. But this gives you the general idea on how to reach out to your target members.

What are the similarities and differences between Campaigns and Quick Campaigns?

• Both Marketing Campaigns and Quick Campaigns allow you to do the following:
  • Create Activities
  • Use Marketing Lists for campaigns
  • View Campaign Responses
• Quick Campaigns:
  • Can only have one Campaign Activity assigned
  • Do not have any built-in reports
  • Do not have any financial or ROI information
  • Cannot create planning activities
  • Cannot associate target products or price lists
  • Are created using the “Quick Campaign Wizard”
• Campaigns:
  • Can have multiple Campaign Activities assigned
  • Do have built-in reporting
  • Do have financial and ROI information available (if values are entered into the Campaign form)
  • Can create planning activities
  • Can associate target products and price lists
  • Are created using the standard Campaign form in CRM

The following are features of “Quick Campaigns” in CRM:

· Quick Campaigns are generally used by Marketing and Sales teams as a fast and easy way to distribute content to their Marketing List members.

• You can select members for Quick Campaigns in three ways
  • Select records from Account, Contact, or Lead views; then click “Create Quick Campaign” in the ribbon
  • Use Marketing Lists to select the members; then click “Create Quick Campaign”
  • Use Advanced Find to search records; in the Results area, click “Create Quick Campaign”
• You can assign Quick Campaigns to:
  • Yourself
  • The owner of the records the activity is being distributed to
  • Another User or Team

In Part 2, we’ll be reviewing the deeper functionality of Campaigns. Click Here for Part 2

Alas, that was not to be. Here is the official statement from Dennis Michalis.

Once you get through the marketing-speak and read posts from a few of the MVPs in the community you get a real sense that, while disappointing, this is for the best. This added functionality is key to the continued growth of the product and releasing it before it is rock solid would be a mistake.

So, the Q2 2012 update is now combined with the Q4 2012 update and called the “Fall Update.” There will be a regular Update Rollup sometime in August that will contain the fixes from the delayed Q2 update but not the new functionality.

Sound confusing? To keep track, here is a great blog from the Microsoft Dynamics CRM PFE team. They maintain it and update the schedule as information gets approved for public consumption. Good site to bookmark.

As we get more information, we’ll pass it along. Until then, contact us for a free consultation and we will get you ready for whatever your business needs today.

~Think big. Start small. Act now

Summary of important considerations when working with Queue Items

• Queue Item details
  • The Queue Item is separate from the record added to the Queue.
  • The “Queue Item Details” form is a customizable form and is specifically designed to display info regarding the Queue Item, not the original record. To open the Queue Item details, click “Queue Item Details” inside the Queue Item. To open the original record form, click the link in the Queue Item title column.
• Work on and release
  • “Work On” is used to assign working responsibility of the Queue Item and does not affect the Owner of the underlying record. Once the work is completed, the Queue Item can be released.
• Remove and delete
  • Queue Items can be removed from a Queue at any time by a user with sufficient security.
  • Removing a Queue Item has no impact on the underlying record.
  • Deleting the Queue Item removes the Queue Item from the Queue and also deletes the underlying record.
• Queue Item views
  • CRM has two filter dropdown lists to manage filtering on the views.
  • Queue Items dropdown list allows you to filter by the properties of the Queue Items themselves.
  • Queue dropdown list allows you to select which Queue the Queue Items filter will be applied to.
• When filtering Queue Items, the following “out of the box” views are available:
  • All Items: Shows all Queue Items
  • Items Available to Work On: Shows all Queue Items that do not have a user or team selected in the “Worked By” field
  • Items I Am Working On: Shows all Queue Items that specify the current user in the “Worked By” field.
• You can use the Quick Find feature in the Queue Items grid to search across multiple record types in one search, since multiple records can be added to Queues.

This sums up the key information that I’ve found helpful regarding Queues and Queue Management during the process of learning the MS Dynamics CRM 2011 functionality. Hopefully, you’ll also find these key points useful and possibly even start using the Queue functionality within your own organization.