Tip #439: Prevent duplicate Outlook contacts

Frequently in the various CRM forums, someone will ask a question about how to prevent getting duplicate contact records in their Exchange/Outlook contacts when using CRM for Outlook.

There is no magic answer to totally avoid outlook contacts getting duplicated. One of the best things you can do is use server based Exchange synchronization rather than Outlook synchronization. The reason is because when you don’t use server synchronization, every time you reinstall or reconfigure the client you will re synchronize the contacts, which will duplicate any that are already in your contacts. Also, change the user’s contact sync filter prior to enabling synchronization or installing outlook client. The default synchronization filter is contacts I own, and if the user owns many contacts in CRM, this will probably give him more contacts than he really wants to get, and increase the chances of duplicating one that he already has in outlook contacts.

Tip #437: Should I create private notes in CRM?

Generally, no.

Occasionally I will come across a requirement to allow for some CRM notes to be private and only readable by the person who creates them. In my opinion, this is generally a bad idea.

In CRM 2013 and 2015, the user interface for notes does not allow users to open the note form. They must be interacted with from the social pain (mis-spelling intentional). This interface does not give us access to share, run workflow, or any custom fields on the note record, and therefore limits the typical options that we will use to provide selective security to records.

The bigger issue is that by providing the ability for some notes to be private, it is very common for users to start marking all notes as private. The result will be that CRM will be a less collaborative platform, and what’s the point of putting data in CRM if I’m the only one that can see it?

If you must use private notes, my recommendation is to use a custom entity to hold the private notes, then set the permissions on that entity appropriately. But make sure that you set expectations and train your users that only truly private information should go there, so that the non-private data can still be viewed by all users.

Tip #435: Oldies but goodies

The Dynamics CRM team has done a great job of producing documentation for CRM 2015. The ebook and video library are top notch.

But there are still some classic whitepapers that you should keep in your library. The following are my three favorite classic whitepapers that I still refer to on a regular basis:

  1. Offline and online synchronization in Microsoft Dynamics CRM: This “nuts and bolts” whitepaper was written for CRM 4, but it is still unparalleled in explaining from a technical level how synchronization works in CRM. Most of its content still applies 7 years later.
  2. Optimizing and Maintaining the Performance of a Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Server: This whitepaper was written for Dynamics CRM 2011, but most of its content still applies to CRM 2015, including recommendations for CRM and SQL Server settings. And also get the related client whitepaper.
  3. Improving Microsoft Dynamics CRM Performance and Securing Data With Microsoft SQL Server 2008: This document details supported encryption and compression features that can be used to encrypt data or improve performance, and is very useful for discussions with DBA’s.

These are my favorites that I still refer to on a regular basis. Got any more classics? Leave them in the comments.

Tip #434: Recommended security for queues

CRM 2013 SP1 introduced private queues, but the private functionality only works correctly if your user security role permissions are set correctly.

The recommended security role settings is:

  • BU level read permission for queues
  • Append To privileges for queues.

If users still see other user’s queues or other queues that you don’t want them to,  then set all the personal queues and old/legacy queues to private. That should give them visibility for all queues that they are a member of that are private as well as all public queues. 

You can also deactivate any user queues or legacy public queues that you do not want to see in the list.

Tip #433: Tipsters guide to Office 365 Groups: Administration

It’s Video Friday again. We continue our explorations of CRM Online new features with this week introduction to Office 365 Groups and what do you need to do to get it up and running.

YouTube player

Give us your feedback, all of it: good, bad, and ugly, I’m sure we can take it. Suggest new topics either in comments or by sending your ideas to jar@crmtipoftheday.com.

Tip #432: Make your emails look nice, really nice

tl;dr

Today’s post is not about CRM at all, it’s about CTRL + 0 combination in Outlook and Word. Go on, try this shortcut when typing your next email or document.

Boring details

I’m all about style. Not in clothes, in that department I’m hopeless and prefer to delegate. I’m talking about CSS in HTML or styles in Word. I’m firmly in the camp that content should be about content and styling should be done separately by the people who know what they are talking about.

One of my pet hates is when people add extra lines to separate the content. Yes, I told you it’s a pet hate. But then I discovered the CTRL + 0 keyboard shortcut. It flips on/off extra 12pt of space before the current paragraph and makes it stand out, that is all. I use it when I need to break the text flow, to start a new thought.

From where I stand, it does make your emails and documents look more professional. But then, again, why would you take any styling advice from a dude whose definition of the best item to wear is synonymous with “the nearest”.

Bonus

If you get carried away with the formatting and accidentally press this combination in a browser, fear not – it resets the zoom level to the default 100%. Surprisingly, all major browsers support the shortcut.

Tip #431: Avoid Silverlight when living on the Edge

If you ever wondered whether the move of CRM development team under Scott Guthrie is a good idea, now we have the proof. That’s right, details about the support for the upcoming versions of OS, browser and Office have already emerged.

Some vigilantes, like Jason “Scintillating” Lattimer, have kept their cool heads and pointed out the small print:

I thought I had read Edge won’t support Silverlight. Not a terribly big deal immediately as Windows 10 is supposed to ship with IE 11 as well but thinking long term, people will need to starting thinking about converting any Silverlight to HTML/JS.

Oops.

While the book and some Silverlight-based tools are still out there, the writing, according to Jim “Mr SDK” Daly, is on the wall in the SDK:

Microsoft Silverlight web resources remain supported in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2015 and Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online 2015 Update for backwards compatibility. For components that will be able to be presented on all clients, we recommend using HTML web resources with HTML5 instead of Silverlight.

TODO: find all those .xap resources and start planning the replacement.

Tip #430: Read Only Users and CRM for Outlook

So you have users that have a read only/limited user access type. But you want to have them use CRM for Outlook to provide consistent user interface with your other users for consistency in your training and user documentation.

The problem, however, is that the configuration wizard for CRM for Outlook requires write access to CRM during the configuration, as it updates user settings during the configuration process. This means that if the user had a read only access mode, the configuration of CRM for Outlook will fail.

If you want to have users with read only access type use CRM for Outlook, you will need to give them read/write access mode during configuration, then you can change to read only/limited after the client is configured.