CRM 2011 Online was released January 17 th , 2011. The new release delivers a number of new features and has changed the way much of the application data is displayed. In some cases, the new user interface customization capabilities can lead to an increase in the time it takes to load screens while the...

  One of the advantages of cloud based computing is that you don’t have to manage the hardware and software of the system. Unfortunately , a disadvantage is that you don’t have complete access to the server. In the blog, I’ll describe what I call a client side agent (csa). A CSA allows   you...

Searching across entities is a great feature. I built a web application that integrates with CRM Online to do this. You can enter a phone number, a last name, an account name , or opportunity topic and the application searches for the results. It will give you a list of return items. The edit button...

Have you imported the CRM Sample Data (YES, it works with CRM Online) and tried to add products to an opportunity? Nothing there! You look and see the products have been imported but notice the warning: There are 295 products added as a part of the sample data. You cannot set the default price...

In Microsoft Dynamics CRM there is a feature to automatically set the Do Not Email flag for a contact if the click on an Unsubscribe link in a CRM generated email. In order to enable this functionality, navigate to Settings > Administration > System Settings. Click on the Marketing tab and select...

In the first blog on using Fetch XML , I introduced a tool that I had created that would allow you to execute Fetch XML statements to retrieve CRM data. In this blog, I want to discuss some of the inner workings to executing Fetch XML statements to retrieve more than a single page of records. Here’s...

I recently had the need to add hierarchical state and country picklists to a custom entity. I had configured these fields in another entity and moved them to my new entity following the process in my previous post . I should point out that global picklists are potentially going to be included in CRM...

NOTE: THIS IS AN UNSUPPORTED MEANS OF CUSTOMIZING THE ENTITY. I WILL INVESTIGATE A SUPPORTED SCENARIO AND MODIFY THIS POST. I have been asked many times, “If I customize this entity can I simply copy the attributes to another entity or do I need to create them from scratch?”. The answer has been ...

Building Custom dashboards for Dynamics CRM Online is not as complex of an effort that it's reputation has gotten. It does require some developer skills and this blog will be a great launching pad for you to build your own. Here's a screen shot of a dashboard I built using Visual Studio.net and a free...

NOTE: The information presented below is NOT in the SDK currently available for download or online . This update was posted on the Microsoft CRM Development Forum on April 7th. The following updated information applies to version 4.0.8 of the Microsoft Dynamics CRM SDK. Sample Code Sample...

I created a tool using Visual Studio and the CRM web services that can execute a saved query and then email the results as a CSV file. I've presented in a video at www.democrmonline.com/reportscheduler . There is also sample code at Report Scheduler Sample Code . With a small change, this tool could...

The Microsoft CRM workflow functionality provides very flexible tools to model automated process. A prime example of automated process is assigning a Lead to a particular Sales Representative based on certain criteria. In this post I will provide an overview that demonstrates how to assign the lead,...

Adding documentation management services to Dynamics CRM Online is fairly simple customization that can really enhance your CRM Online application. By modifying the site map, you can add links and references to other web applications. The user can use these web applications without the experience of...

Similar to my recent posts about the On-Premise Accelerators for Extended Sales Forecasting and Event Management , the eService Accelerator contains some customizations that may be useful to import to CRM Online. Unfortunately, the main value-add of the On-Premise eService accelerator is the ability...

The Event Management accelerator gives organizations the ability to manage the planning, execution, tracking and reporting requirements for event campaigns. Designed for CRM 4.0 On-Premise , the installation includes customizations, workflows, plug-ins, reports, code and controls. Although this is an...

With workflow you can easily calculate the total duration of all completed activities rolled up to a main record such as an Account, Contact or Opportunity. This functionality is built into the service module, but for organizations that track number of hours spent on activities prior to service management...

The Extended Sales Forecasting Accelerator for CRM contains two main components to import: 1) a customization .xml file including custom entities, security roles and workflows, and 2) two custom report .rdl files to import.  CRM Online does not allow users to import the custom .rdl files, but everything...

Ever wonder how old that opportunity it is. Here's some script that will display a the age of an opportunity when you open it. Make sure you put the createdon attribute on the form somewhere( admin tab seems the place). Put the script in the OnLoad   var createdon= crmForm.all.createdon.DataValue;...

Browsing through some of the blogs I read yesterday, I came across a handy bit of JScript posted by Jim Steger at Sonoma Partners.  (Jim, as you may know, is the co-author of Working With Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 and Programming Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 ).  Deploying this code as an OnLoad...

Over the last few months, I've presented at 3 conferences ( Tech Ed, IT Pro, ms internal - Tech Ready ) about building software as a service solutions with Microsoft Dynamics CRM. Now that all the conferences are over, I'm making more of this content available. I've created a video repro of the solution...

Recently a customer asked me how to open the Accounts form in a larger window.  It's a simple matter of a little bit of JavaScript that I was lucky enough to locate the answer in Ronald Lemmen's blog . Navigate to the main Account form as follows: Settings > Customization > Customize Entities...

I came across the details on how to do this when reading a blog posting from Matt Wittemann a couple years back.  I still use it and thought you might be interested.  Another capability to demonstrate the flexibility of the configuration options of Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online.   1. Create...

A sales process is a standardized series of activities that occur during a sales cycle. As the sales cycle progresses and activities are completed, the probability of winning the deal gets greater. In Microsoft CRM v 3.0 the sales process functionality was displayed graphically on the Opportunity form...

If you plan and doing integration using the web services, you may find it useful to have access to the entity schema's. https://<org name>.crm.dynamics.com/sdk/list.aspx The entity schemas will give the definition of all the entities in the system. You can use them to help you integrate CRM...

I'm a little embarrassed that it's taken me a while to 'see' this but it's really very simple solution to what has seemed to be a frowner to CRM Live. One of the differences between Microsoft Dynamics CRM hosted by Microsoft and Microsoft Dynamics CRM On-premise is that you can't use plug-ins in the...