Five Questions to Ask your Microsoft Dynamics CRM Provider

/in

Microsoft Dynamics CRM can often create headaches for even the savviest of IT professionals, regardless of whether your CRM installation is on-premise or online. As with any external relationship, due diligence in vendor selection will eliminate many of the issues that can arise with a Dynamics CRM instance before they occur. Here are five critical questions to ask your potential Dynamics CRM providers to ensure a headache-free installation and an effective working relationship:

What is Your Dynamics Support Response Time?

Twenty four hours can feel like an eternity when faced with a deadline. Sales teams need CRM data to help close deals, finance teams use Dynamics instances to track overdue contracts, and account managers rely on Dynamics CRM to help ensure the health and satisfaction of their customers. If a CRM provider is unable to respond to requests or cases in a timely fashion, you may find that your Microsoft Dynamics CRM is being under-utilized (i.e. a resource wasted).

How Many Experiences Do You Have with Dynamics CRM?

It may seem obvious, but the breadth of experience a CRM provider has provided a strong window into their ability to serve you and your team as effectively as possible. All instances of Microsoft Dynamics CRM are unique and customized to the myriad purposes of the tool’s users. A provider with strong installation and service experience over multiple years is more likely to have faced, and solved, your issue in the past. CRM providers that have worked in your industry or function are much more likely to have a successful solution in place more quickly.

How Many CRM Installation References Can You Provide?

As a continuation of your provider’s experience, their ability to provide references is a natural next step. Speaking to previous or current clients will give you a clearer picture of your potential Dynamics CRM provider’s ability to foster positive working relationships, along with real-world examples of problem-solving and customer service. Don’t be afraid to ask for references that closely mirror your own organization’s profile.

How Reliable and Robust is Your Product Knowledge?

Is your potential provider an expert on all aspects of the Microsoft Dynamics CRM? Are they aware of the latest developments and updates for the product from Microsoft? Are they familiar with the most common bugs that occur with your specific Dynamics instance and, more importantly, the most effective solutions? These are the types of questions for which any successful provider should have answers.

What are Your Dynamics CRM Support Options?

Many businesses no longer operate on a standard Monday to Friday, 8:30 to 5:30 schedule, while IT teams have become accustomed to working what has become close to a 24-hour-a-day job. The provider of your Microsoft Dynamics CRM instance should not only understand the unique schedule on which your team operates, but also be willing to provide direct and responsive support in a way which fits your business and allows your staff to successfully resolve any issues. As with response time, immediate support can mean the difference between success and failure.

While there are no guarantees with any third-party vendor, especially when it comes to IT relationships, addressing these matters before the contracts are signed will alleviate the unnecessary stress that can come with a Microsoft Dynamics CRM instance. The next step following a successful installation is to explore helpful add-ons, like Report Scheduler, to make your Dynamics CRM instance work for you.

Microsoft – Putting People at the Center of Everything We Do

/in

It’s winter, the time of year when every gathering seems to be centered on sharing food, warmth, and time together. These simple traditions have been humanity’s best defense against once-lethal long nights and freezing temperatures since time immemorial. From a business standpoint, this season is a fascinating example of how effective human kindness can be.

I’m particularly interested in creating a warm and inviting atmosphere for everyone right now because in the last few years there’s been a sharp upswing in “brand switching,” or customers leaving one brand for another. Many of these customers cite poor service among their reasons for leaving.

In the US alone, this “switching economy” has increased by roughly 30 percent in the last five years. That means that 1.6 trillion consumer dollars are waiting to be won over. In India that number is$331 billion, with a whopping 88 percent of customers stating they’d swap brands due to poor service. Here are just a few ways to help make your company the inviting place customers are looking for.

Marketing:

  • A personal touch can go a long way toward winning customers over. Unfortunately, simple segmentation doesn’t do the trick anymore. No longer are customers impressed that you know they buy socks. Knowing they buy seasonal socks every third Thursday, on the other hand, allows you to add personalized value to your campaigns.
  • No two customers are alike when it comes to shopping and doing research. Knowing which channels different folks like to frequent allows you to focus in and talk to clients on their own terms.

Sales:

  • Gathering insights into new prospects shouldn’t just be about making that first sale. Forge strong connections through shared contacts and interests and you could be on your way to a lasting relationship. Remember to add these personal details to each client’s profile for the next rep or service agent down the line.
  • Collaborative selling can be a great way to show customers how much their business matters to you. By adding an expert to your video conference or coauthoring proposal documents on the fly, you’ll build customer relationships that matter.

Service:

  • When asked, 32 percent of customers said they switched brands due to being handed off to too many different agents. While you can’t always avoid transferring these folks, you can make sure they don’t have to repeat their basic information each time.
  • Keep detailed customer profiles, and make sure new notes are added to these after each call. You can also use the data in these profiles to match customers with agents that share their interests.

Brand switching is a massive force for change, and lots of customer dollars are at stake. Give customers a warm, inviting environment, however, and you may find that this winter of customer discontent is your favorite season after all.

If you’re looking for more tools designed to help your marketing, sales, service, and social teams keep the customers you have and welcome those you don’t, take a test drive of Microsoft Dynamics CRM.

Written by: Kelly Rigotti

Source: https://community.dynamics.com/b/msftdynamicsblog/archive/2016/01/11/putting-people-at-the-center-of-everything-we-do

Office 365 Brings Significant New Value to Business Customers Worldwide

/in

Today’s post was written by Kirk Koenigsbauer, corporate vice president for Microsoft Office.

Today, we are excited to announce the availability of several new Office 365 communications services designed to modernize voice, video, and meeting experiences, while saving companies substantial costs in their communication infrastructure. Organizations can now replace their legacy meeting and phone systems with innovative services built on the familiar Skype for Business experience, all naturally integrated within Office 365—the world’s most-used collaboration and productivity platform.

We are also excited to announce significant new security and analytics capabilities aimed at dramatically improving our customers’ ability to protect their organizations and glean insights from data.

Communication-powered Productivity

We believe that the heart of productivity is great teamwork, and the heart of great teams is great communication. Productivity today is centered on conversations—sometimes a quick instant message or call, and sometimes a meeting planned in advance including voice, video and content sharing.

With many different avenues of communication, people need tools that allow them flexibility in how they connect. For years, consumers have embraced new ways of communicating, turning “Skype” into a verb synonymous with video calling. But corporate telephony, including PBX systems, and audio and video conferencing systems, has lagged behind—until now. Having Skype for Business as an integrated part of the work people are already doing in Office means greater continuity as they collaborate and communicate throughout their day.

Built on the familiar Skype user interface, Skype for Business makes connecting with colleagues as easy and intuitive as connecting with friends and family on Skype. With the new services, Skype for Business gets even better, for organizations and their people:

  • PSTN Conferencing provides the flexibility to dial into a meeting from a traditional phone, in addition to the existing ability to join a meeting with a single click on your PC or mobile device.
  • Skype Meeting Broadcast makes it easier than ever to produce large virtual meetings for up to 10,000 meeting attendees, who can join from virtually any browser or device (see it in action). Now Skype for Business truly is a single platform for every type of meeting.
  • Cloud PBX enables companies to eliminate separate PBX systems and transition to the cloud with Office 365 as the central location to manage users for communication and
  • With PSTN Calling, Office 365 customers can also subscribe to Microsoft managed to call plans and phone numbers, starting in the U.S. with more markets coming later.

Watch this video to learn more about how the new Skype for Business capabilities can benefit your organization.

Simplify your infrastructure, lower your costs and empower your people

Microsoft is the only company that has built this combination of capabilities—a cloud business phone system including dial tone, and a complete meetings solution including audio, video, content sharing and messaging service—as a core part of a complete productivity and collaboration suite, available across mobile platforms and at a global scale.

Today, over half of our business customers are currently paying for multiple conferencing solutions, and many are still using legacy PBX phone systems. Now they can simplify their infrastructure with one cloud platform for meetings and voice, ultimately reducing the cost, complexity, and effort of maintaining legacy phone and conferencing systems.

But it’s about more than saving money. People spend nearly a third of their time at work in meetings, yet only 18 percent of information workers actively use conferencing tools that enable rich experiences like video and content sharing. When you consider that nonverbal signals account for nearly 90 percent of the messages we receive during interpersonal communication, it’s clear that moving to modern communication tools can have a dramatic impact on productivity and collaboration.

screenshot1

Desktop sharing during a Skype for the Business meeting.

A Rich Partner Ecosystem

As we release these new capabilities in Office 365, partners will play an integral role in extending the value of our new services. At the forefront are our global systems integrator partners, who have the highest level of experience in delivering communications solutions end-to-end.

We also partner with telco operators who provide secure, high-quality network connectivity and managed services that help customers get the best experience with the new Skype for Business services. These partners include BT Global Services, Orange Business Services, SoftBank, TATA Communications and Telstra.

Key partners like Polycom are delivering innovative new solutions for audio conferencing including the Polycom® RealPresence Trio™ for groups, and Polycom® VVX® desktop phones, which are the first phones qualified for the new Skype for Business services in Office 365.

Application partners like Genesys are also building on our platform to deliver solutions like contact center applications that work with Skype for Business and Office 365.

Deeper value from security and analytics

In addition to the Skype for Business capabilities, we’re releasing new security and data analytics capabilities in Office 365, including:

  • Delve Analytics—Empowers individuals through rich dashboards that provide insights on time and relationships, with the goal of helping individuals get time back and spend it effectively.
  • Power BI—A business analytics service that enables information workers to visualize and analyze data with greater speed, efficiency and understanding through live data dashboards, interactive reports and compelling visualizations.
  • Customer Lockbox—Gives customers new approval rights, transparency, and control over their data in the cloud.
  • Advanced eDiscovery—Integrates Equivio machine learning, predictive coding, and text analytics capabilities, to reduce the costs and challenges that come along with sorting through large quantities of data for eDiscovery purposes.
  • Advanced Threat Protection—Protects against unknown malware and viruses by applying behavioral analysis.

All of the new capabilities are now available and represent significant new value to enterprise customers. We’re excited to see the impact it can have on your organization!

—Kirk Koenigsbauer

Source : https://community.dynamics.com/b/msftdynamicsblog/archive/2015/12/10/licensing-offers-for-microsoft-dynamics-crm-2016

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2016 Now Available: Ushering in a New Era of Intelligent Customer Engagement

/in

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2016 is now available!  The new release is not only our most comprehensive ever, but it also represents a huge leap forward in our journey to deliver intelligent customer engagement.

Over the past few years, we have been focused on transforming our CRM offerings to leverage the full power of Microsoft – harnessing the strength of the intelligent cloud to help companies deliver amazing customer experiences across the breadth of sales, service, marketing, and social engagements.  Our strategy is clear: to enable organizations to personalize customer experiences – engaging customers at the right time, in the right place and with the right content; to give them the tools to be more proactive, and to empower them with the intelligence to be able to predict trends and identify patterns — to know what the customer needs and wants before they do.

Available both as CRM Online and on-premises in 130 markets and 44 languages, Dynamics CRM 2016 is focused on empowering employees to deliver the optimal experiences to customers, as well as engaging customers across all channels.  We’re bringing all Microsoft has to offer in productivity and intelligence into a single experience.  We’re bringing the advanced analytics and machine learning capabilities of the Cortana Analytics Suite to preview our first intelligent, adaptive processes for sales, customer service and social:

  • Intelligent selling with cross-selling recommendations so sales reps can predict which products and services a customer will need during the sales cycle.
  • Intelligent customer service with knowledge articles recommendations to empower service agents with answers to questions so they can more effectively resolve customer cases and solve problems on the spot.
  • Intelligent social with machine learning capabilities powering sentiment analysis, as well as the ability to process significant streams of data to detect social posts that are most likely to be customer service cases or new leads.
  • Intelligent collaboration with Delve functionality to surface trending content that is most relevant to what a person is working on.

In addition, we are also delivering significant enhancements in productivity, mobility and customer service:

Productivity – Capabilities in CRM 2016 are seamlessly embedded into productivity tools, including Office 365. In CRM 2016, we’ve enhanced the CRM app for Outlook, delivered templates for our immersive Excel experience, simplified the creation of personalized sales documents in Word and enabled seamless access to contextual CRM documents across SharePoint, Office 365 Groups and OneDrive for Business.

Mobility – CRM 2016 features full offline mobile capabilities for phones and tablets, the ability to create task-based mobile apps, Mobile Application Management with Microsoft Intune and next-generation Cortana integration that surfaces CRM data for key sales activities, accounts and deals, and mobile marketing with SMS capabilities available with Dynamics Marketing in four countries.

Unified Service – CRM 2016 delivers a single, unified solution for Customer Service across self-service, agent assisted-service and field service. Building on the integration of Parature knowledge management in spring 2015, we now have a new role driven agent experience with the Interactive Service Hub, native Knowledge Management, surveys to capture the voice of the customer and field service capabilities with our recent acquisition of FieldOne.

The CRM team and I are very excited about capabilities we are delivering today, and we are also looking forward to the next phase of our journey. As we look to the future, we will continue to combine the strength of the intelligent cloud platform to our business application service where organizations will be empowered and proactive – saving costs, increasing customer loyalty and even saving patient lives. For example, combining the field service capabilities from FieldOne with the power of the Azure IoT suite will be able to deliver predictive maintenance right to the user, so companies can move away from a break-fix model to actually provide service before a breakdown.  This will save time while creating efficiencies and predictability and increasing customer loyalty.

Intelligent customer engagement is here with Dynamics CRM 2016. This comprehensive release further strengthens our position as a leader in the CRM market and most importantly, brings even more value to our customers.  We can’t wait for everyone to give our new capabilities a try!

Jujhar Singh, General Manager, Microsoft Dynamics CRM 

SOURCE: https://community.dynamics.com/b/msftdynamicsblog/archive/2015/11/30/microsoft-dynamics-crm-2016-now-available-ushering-in-a-new-era-of-intelligent-customer-engagement

What’s New in CRM 2016?

/in

Are you ready for 2016? Dynamics CRM 2016 focuses on maximizing customer engagement. Dynamics CRM 2015 offered a simple and seamless user experience across the application that focused on improved productivity of customer-facing employees through applications like Exchange, Excel and OneDrive for Business for easier task management. The 2016 version provides several enhancements with intelligence and mobility features, including integration with applications like BI and Office 365.

Dynamics CRM 2016 presents a unique design for you to manage all your customer-facing activities through a single experience. Toggling between different functions in Excel, writing proposals in Word, accessing documents stored in OneDrive for Business, increasing the productivity of your sales team through Delve; you can do all this and more directly from the CRM platform while improving your customer service process.

Below are some of the enhancements that are in store for Dynamics CRM 2016: If you’d like to learn more, check out a video demonstration of the new features.

New Excel Templates:

Dynamics CRM 2015 allows you to conduct analysis in Excel directly within the platform, view sales data in familiar Excel templates, get analysis and insights directly into the sales process and efficiently manage sales forecasts, eliminating time and effort required to switch between applications. In addition, it allows you to export and analyze Excel data from your mobile device with Dynamics CRM 2016 apps for tablets and smartphones.

excel-template

CRM App for Outlook:

Getting key sales capabilities within the Outlook desktop and mobile browser has become more streamlined. You will be able to open documents using different applications like Word or PowerPoint on various devices like iPads and smartphones. Now, you have the option to get contextual information from Dynamics CRM delivered right in your mailbox for quick and easy review.

crm-for-outlook

Improved Outlook Experience:

Harness the power of O365 Groups, in 2016, you can get easy access to Excel templates and create personalized sales documents in Word. Easily track emails and add contacts with the touch of a button from within an email. You can also generate new records to track emails through a web browser on a PC, or a mobile browser on a smart phone

Enhanced Mobile Experience:

Full offline capabilities are now available for your sales and service professionals on smartphones and tablets across all major operating systems. Quickly complete sales related activities while on the go and streamline important deals, accounts, and activities with verbal instruction to Cortana

enhanced-mobile-experience

SMS Marketing:

Build your sales pipeline and chart out your marketing activities, from planning, and execution to measuring your marketing performance. You’ll be able to create powerful SMS campaigns and integrate them with your multi-channel campaigns. Easily configure inbound SMS campaigns, send outgoing promotional SMS messages and maintain a database of your marketing contacts.

sms-marketing

Cloud Enhancements:

Discover information that’s most relevant and interesting to you. Track documents wherever they are stored (via OneDrive or O365). You will also be able to get a list of trending documents from Delve inside CRM. View a consolidated set of documents across SharePoint, OneDrive for Business and O365 groups. Discover information that can help you with your current opportunities or accounts.

Cortana Integration:

Dynamics CRM 2016 embeds various sales activities, accounts and opportunities into Cortana to provide the most relevant information to your sales team. Get access to advanced data management and advanced analytics capabilities and improve your customer service with the Cortana Analytics Suite.

cortana-integration

Improved Document Generation:

Build personalized sales documents with Document Generation using pre-defined Word and Excel templates with one click. Ultimately, saving you time in building documents. Automatically have CRM data from account summaries, quotes, and invoices, and product sheets extracted.

Enriched Data and Analytics:

Turn business critical data into intelligent action and achieve elevated business transformation. Obtain intelligent product suggestions for cross-selling and recommend solutions to solve customer service issues. You will also be able to gain insights into your business and efficiently predict customer needs with Azure Machine learning.

Microsoft Social Engagement:

Evaluate and drive social engagement within Dynamics CRM 2016. Easily pinpoint leads from social media and understand the social buzz around a product. You’ll instantly gain access to powerful social tools and connect with customers, partners, and prospects on various social media sites. Obtain social insights about your brand and get a true understanding of your position in the industry.

microsoft-social-engagement

Superior Customer Engagement:

Superior customer engagement is the principal goal of Dynamics CRM 2016. By delivering end-to-end customer solutions across field service, assisted service and self-service, Dynamics CRM 2016 drives its entire focus on delivering remarkable customer experiences. Reap benefits of productivity and intelligence through a single platform to personalize experiences and have proactive and contextual interactions with customers to identify and meet their distinct needs. You can also check out the Dynamics CRM 2016 Release Preview Guide here.

CRMUG Summit 2015: Attend IOTAP Happy Hour & Win An Apple iWatch

/in

Early Bird Discount Ends Sept 15th, RSVP For A Chance To Win An Apple iWatch!

Join IOTAP in Reno, Nevada October 13-16 for peer-to-peer training and networking opportunities! CRMUG Summit is the only user-led conference, designed for users by users. It’s your annual opportunity to go deep into your Dynamics CRM questions and find solutions that will maximize your company’s potential to reach the next level.

This year, we encourage you to Go All IN and experience:

 

  • Interactive learning

    Choose from among 120+ educational breakout sessions. Arrive early and take advantage of optional, instructor-led classroom training.

  • Insightful conversations

    Get the practical knowledge and timely tips, tricks, and strategies you can use to get maximum value from Dynamics CRM.

  • Incomparable networking

    Enjoy nearly unlimited ways to meet and learn from other, knowledgeable users.

  • IOTAP Happy Hour

    Join us on Wednesday, October 14th at 5:00 PM at Bistro Napa located at the Atlantis Casino Resort & Spa (across from the Convention Center) for an hour of drinks, food, and fun. RSVP now and enter for a chance to win an Apple iWatch!

Resetting the AutoNumber Counter Automatically at the Start of the Year or Month in Microsoft Dynamics CRM

/in

The IOTAP CRM Advanced Auto-Number add-on for Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online and On-premise is designed to automatically generate a unique reference ID sequence, based on a format that you may configure as you choose. For example, you could select:

1. Account: ACC-000006-0515 (The prefix, ACC, is chosen as an identifier by the user; the six digits in the middle are a sequential counter, and the suffix displays the month and year)

2. Quote: QUO-002-JU78D6 (Here, the suffix is simply six random characters)

3. Order: PO#00008-021513 (In this example, the suffix displays the month, date, and year)

While the addition of auto-numbering makes your use of Microsoft Dynamics CRM much simpler and more intuitive, what is even better if the counter can reset automatically!

The latest version of Advanced AutoNumber add-on for Microsoft Dynamics CRM allows you to reset the counter automatically at the start of the year or month based on the configuration settings.

For example, you may have a 5 digit auto-number where the first two digits represent the year and the last three digits would be a rolling count of records for a given year.

For 2014, the records would have a sequence such as 14001, 14002, etc… and then for 2015 the first record would be numbered from 15001, and so on. To deliver this, the counter needs to recognize the start of a new year and automatically reset. We’ve made it easy to do this; simply set the “Reset Counter” field to “year” as shown in the screenshot below:

autonumber

Microsoft Dynamics CRM is a great platform to build CRM solutions for small business to an enterprise organization. However, to enhance the platform, add-ons from different partners provide a great way to improve the user experience and improve productivity. Check out the various add-ons that you can purchase from our online store:

The SharePoint App Model

/in

The SharePoint App Model

As a provider of SharePoint Apps like Work365 Suite we are often asked about how our applications are built. This often leads us to the conversation about the SharePoint App Model. What is it? How does it work? When should I use each of the apps? To answer these questions, we will be featuring a multi-part series on the SharePoint App Model, starting with the basics.

What is the SharePoint App Model?

The SharePoint 2013 app model is the next step in the evolution of incorporating user code into the execution of a SharePoint environment.

Early in SharePoint development, IOTAP developed full farm solutions. Our code ran server-side and directly interacted with out of the box features. For better or worse, we could deploy any code we wanted. Often, this wasn’t a good thing leading to security and performance issues.

Microsoft’s first step in addressing these issues was allowing for sandboxed solutions. While this forced us to make design decisions we didn’t always like, it also ensured that the code we wrote wasn’t going to negatively affect the other SharePoint subsystems.  In this model, our code still ran alongside out of the box features. So, the only way that Microsoft could ensure safety was to limit the features to which we had access.

With SharePoint 2013, Microsoft introduced the app model. For us, the app model has been a great step towards having custom code safely run with access to a large variety of SharePoint functionality, including the following:

  • (Almost) Everything in a SharePoint site is an app: This includes lists and libraries. Though the actual implementation of lists and libraries has not changed, they are referred to in user interface as apps, to create a more unified experience.
  • No custom code on SharePoint server: While there are different SharePoint app models, none of them execute code in the process. The different models tackle this in different ways from running client side to running on your provisioned infrastructure. The end result is your code cannot interfere with an otherwise healthy SharePoint farm.
  • Easier to upgrade to future versions of SharePoint: The SharePoint App Model provides a level of abstraction. All calls are made against exposed REST services providing low coupling. You can be assured these will continue to improve since they are the same APIs used by the workflow and other services.
  • Leverage hosting platform features in new apps: If you develop an app which is going to run in another hosted platform (like Windows Azure OR non-SharePoint servers such as IIS server OR any other infrastructure) you can leverage built-in SharePoint features like lists and workflows to speed your development. This allows you to focus on your custom business logic while using the SharePoint features you’ve grown to love. This provides more flexibility  – further than what can be done with farm/sandboxed solutions
  • Provides an additional approach for development: The app model does not replace the solution based approach of development/deployment. It is an additional option. So in SharePoint 2013, for development, we can use any of the following approaches: SharePoint Apps Fully trusted solutions or sandboxed solution.

While these changes enable a lot of new solutions that we couldn’t build before, they come with added complexity. As we model our applications we need to consider SharePoint like a distributed data store. (Look for more on that in a future post.) For now, it is important to know that all app types interact with SharePoint in the same exact way.

Upgrading to Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2015 Compatible Add-ons

/in

We are happy to let you know that all our add-ons are now compatible with Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2015.

2015-Add-ons-banner

This 2015 compatible version has been released as a separate solution file which the keyword “2015” in the file name for easy identification.

Our existing add-on customers who are on the active support are entitled to a free upgrade to the 2015 version!

Before upgrading to the newer version of the add-on, following points are to be noted:

Add-On Zip file – The add-on zip file contains user-guide and 2 solution files. The solution file with 2011 in file name work in CRM 2011 as well as CRM 2013 whereas file with 2015 in the name work in CRM 2015 only.

License activation – In order to start using the add-on, you will need to get the license activated. We have now introduced online license activation in all our add-ons. For detailed instructions refer to user-guide section 2.5 Activating a paid license.

 

Upgrade path- We have made some major technical changes to our code-base, hence there is no direct upgrade path for the 2015 compatible add-ons. Before installing this newer version, you will need to delete any existing older version solution. Please note that on deletion of an existing solution, the add-on related configuration settings will be lost.

All IOTAP CRM add-ons are managed solution, hence the un-installation is direct and clean. However, there are few important points to consider when uninstalling which have been listed down by each add-on below:

  • Record Clone: If you have manually added clone button to any additional entity (other than those which were already available out-of-box) then you will need to first remove the clone button from those entities. Once the dependencies are removed then the add-on can be uninstalled directly.
    Further to let you know that we are presently working on a newer version of a clone which makes adding cloning to any entity in CRM very easy (to be released mid-march 2015). This is a good news for our clone customers who need to use cloning across many entities other than the ones on which cloning is provided by default.
  • Advanced AutoNumber: Before deleting the solution, the autonumber configuration records need to be deleted. Only then the autonumber solution file can be uninstalled.
  • Report Scheduler: If you have too many scheduled records then you can export those records (RS Scheduled entity) and re-import it back after installing the newer version by following the instructions in report scheduler user-guide section 2.18 Upgrading to a higher version of the add-on.
  • Email 2 Case Automation: The configuration settings will be lost on uninstalling. Kindly make a note of the current settings before uninstalling.

Feel free to email [email protected] if you have any questions or need help with the upgrade.

Never Forget Birthday Greetings Ever Again- Microsoft Dynamics CRM Customer Loyalty and Retention Tip

/in

One of the most effective ways to impress your Contacts is to remember their birthdays. A simple wish from you on their birthdays is proven to show your attention to them, leading to personal openness to you and subsequent success of sales. The problem is how you manage to remember each and every client’s birthday?

The standard functionality of Microsoft Dynamics CRM does not allow you to filter out the contacts with Birthdays, month-wise or date-wise. Birthday Reminder add-on for Microsoft Dynamics CRM bridges this gap by providing this ability.

BirthdayReminder

CRM Birthday Reminder add-on helps Sales and Marketing team keep track of birthdays of CRM Contact by displaying the Upcoming Birthdays on the Dashboard. It displays the Contact Name, Day – Month and Age.

Features:

  • Be notified on the Dashboard as the birthday of each Contact approaches
  • CRM Users can select contact whose Birthday reminder needs to be activated
  • Ability to browse to Contact details form directly from the Birthday reminder panel in Dashboard

Perhaps the best part of Birthday Reminder Solution is that it is completely free to use!! 

To download and try the solution, visit the Birthday Reminder license request page

Further, if you would like to receive Birthday Reminder notification’s in your email, then feel free to check-out CRM Report Scheduler add-on! This add-on will automatically email you a list of Contacts who’s Birthday or Anniversary is approaching.

ScheduleUpcomingBirthday

And if that’s not enough, then the next release of Report Scheduler add-on will have enhanced functionality to send automatic Birthday Wishes to your customers on their Birthday!

CRM Dynamics is the great platform to build CRM solutions for small business to an enterprise organization. However, to enhance the platform, add-ons from different partners provide a great way to improve the user experience and improve productivity.