More and more news is beginning to surface about CRM 2013. Today we start with a success story and some CRM 2011 tips. Then we move on to learn a bit more about CRM 2013.
DynamicsCafe featured the Success Story of New Belgium Brewing. This is to drive interest in the upcoming webinar featuring the brewing company, however they planned it during CRMUG Summit so that will be a problem for some people. This company uses a “Beer Ranger” app for field agents to work off of. You can learn more about this in Sonoma’s Press Release from when this was initially deployed.
In my experience, the E-mail Router can cause a large amount of heartache. Even though it is going away in CRM 2013, we still need to deal with it now. PowerObject posted a great blog on Email Router Troubleshooting 101. It describes how to identify where the problem exists, checking everyone involved has access to the router and what to do next.
CRM in the Field Talks about Multi-Series Bar Charting. Sometimes when you design a bar chart it will have a secondary y-axis; so some of the bars are related to the primary and others to the secondary. This can be corrected by modifying the chart XML to remove the secondary axis reference.
CustomerEffective discusses the Benefit of CRM Activity Management. In the example presented, the author was in a meeting with a customer and trying to remember who was in previous meetings, what they said, etc. This is an excellent use of CRM. We can keep track of all these details for reference later. You never know how the little details could benefit you in the future.
In CRM 2013, we will be able to include a Bing map for an address in the system. Chris Cognetta discusses how to enable Bing Maps API Integration. First of all you will need to buy your key to use the Bing API. This information is entered into the System Settings area. Then you can simply add the map to the form through the form customization Insert tab.
MSDynamicsWorld reviewed the Favorite Features emerging from CRM 2012 Partners. Here is a list of what is highlighted in more detail in the blog:
- Quick Create vs. Quick Forms
- Real-time/Synchronous Workflows
- Search by Phone Number (simply create a call and enter the number in the “Call To” field and CRM 2013 will search for the corresponding record)
- Access Teams
- Form and Field Notifications
- Improved View Filters
Sonoma Partners wants to make sure we are Ready for 2013 and also get us excited about new Lookup Functionality. The new lookups are very nice in that if we enter text into a lookup box and it displays multiple options, it will also display some information from the record. This will make it easier to choose the correct related record. However, you will not be able experience those fabulous lookups if you haven’t fixed and direct SQL Calls, updated all your endpoints and checked all your custom code passes the Code Validation Tool. Follow Sonoma’s Flow chart to see where you are in the process.
There are lots of new features to be excited for in CRM 2013. I feel like we learn about a new feature every week. It will be a big change, but definitely a welcome and beneficial change.