Tip #40: Forty and twelve

It’s been 40 [business] days since our first post. Is it a coincidence that Western Christians have been waiting and preparing for adventus for the exactly forty days ? May be. While Eastern Christians keep the bodies in check throughout 40 days of the Рождественский Пост, we’ve been feeding your minds a steady, healthy and nutritious, even though illegal in some countries, doze of daily tips. Accidental? Perhaps.

A time to scatter tips and a time to gather tips. A time to hi-five and a time to close the shop.

We will re-open our daily injections of CRM wisdom after exactly Twelve Days, on January the 6th, 2014. Happenstance? Don’t think so.

We wish you Happy Holidays and see you (and your friends and colleagues) in the 2014.

Dynamics CRM Tipper
The Custodians of The Tipping Jar, bringing you tips by a truckload

Tip #39: Custom indexes in CRM Online

A little known secret for CRM Online users and a good reminder from . If you’ve added additional search fields to your Quick find or other views, the underlying entity contains a large number of records, and the response time is slow, you might need a custom SQL index added to improve the performance. While administrators of on premises deployments of Dynamics CRM can add SQL indexes as needed, there is no direct access to CRM Online database. The good news is that Microsoft Support can add required database indexes for you. Just open a support ticket and make the request (of course, you’d better do your homework and be sure that the index will solve the issue and not leave database performance unaffected or, worse, slow down your CRM)

Tipped to the jar by

Tip #38: Get Dynamics CRM SDK 6.02

If you’ve been rigorously following our tips, you should have downloaded Update Rollup 1 for CRM 2013 by now. If you are a developer at heart, you’d want latest Microsoft Dynamics CRM SDK as well and, what do you know, version 6.02 has recently been released.

Despite seemingly unimportant version number, this is no ordinary release as it includes cool new Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 User Interface Integration package which is available as a separate download.

User Interface Integration (UII) for Microsoft Dynamics CRM uses the features of Dynamics CRM to deliver composite applications that share a common user interface. UII includes development and run-time components. Applications built with UII can provide unified access to customer information spread across different systems, and can aggregate different modes of customer interactions or channels. Unlike expensive, rip and replace approaches or risky investments on custom development, UII provides non-intrusive integration with existing systems.

Tip #37: Update user information in CRM Online (Office 365)

If you use CRM Online on the Office 365 platform, you will notice that the main fields on the user record are read only. This is because user information is managed in Office 365 and synchronizes to CRM.

For example, say you have a CRM environment that already contains active users, and you want to change the format of the full name on the records. Say you want to change it from firstname lastname to lastname, firstname. When you change the format setting in CRM, it only applies to new users. Existing users will keep their existing format for full name.

The answer is to have your Office 365 administrator change something about the user’s name in Office 365. The change will synchronize with CRM, causing the full name format to be updated in the process. Just make sure you wait for a little while–it takes a little bit of time for changes to sync from Office 365 to CRM.

Tip #35: Bring back member management for marketing list

When dynamic marketing list is copied to a static one, the new list appears to be disabled and Manage Members button is nowhere to be found. According to our guest tipster , this is because when Dynamic list is copied to a static one, it is marked ‘locked’ by default. If you set Locked to No and save, you can manage members.

Tip #34: CRM Gustronomy – force the workflow order

Shan McArthur, our fellow MVP, asked the other day:

How can we order workflows? For example, I have an auto-number workflow that adds a case number to an entity, and I want that workflow to run before another workflow.

I considered using wait states – i.e.: workflow 2 waits until the case number is not empty then continues. That said, if they are both synchronous workflows, there is no wait condition, so that option is out.

Our guest tipster , probably after reading our tip about using child labor in workflows, immediately chimed in:

You can use a master workflow that fires these other workflows as child workflows – this will enforce the order you are looking for.

So here you have it, another Gustronomical tip!

Tip #33: Create a two-action ribbon button

Do your users have a CRM process that requires them to perform two unrelated actions in CRM? For example, a marketing department needs to run a mail merge and then have a workflow update the same selected records. Since these are separate actions, it can be cumbersome to the users, and can also have a fairly high potential for user error.

One great option is to create a CRM Command Bar/Ribbon button that launches both actions. In this post I’m going to show how to make a single button that launches mail merge and then runs an on demand workflow on the same selected records.

  1. Get the Ribbon Workbech from Develop1. Really. Get it now. Why don’t you have this already?
  2. Add a new button. You can re-use the standard Mail Merge icon by clicking on the standard mail merge button in Ribbon Workbench and copying the path for the two image sizes and pasting into your new ribbon definition.
  3. Right click on the standard Mail Merge button in Ribbon Workbench and select “Customize Command.” This will make a copy of the standard Mail Merge to selected records command that you can edit.
  4. Edit the command and follow the instructions in step 9 of this great post by MVP Scott Durrow to add the action to run the on demand workflow. You don’t need to do the Enable or Display rules–the standard Mail Merge command already includes the appropriate logic to display for only selected records.
  5. Publish and enjoy.

Now when users need to do their combined mail merge/workflow process, they can select the appropriate records, hit the button, do the mail merge, and the run workflow dialog will appear immediately when they are done.

This is just one example of how you could use this idea. You could combine virtually any unrelated function: resolve a case and create a new record, run a workflow and launch a dialog, launch two dialogs and a workflow. The possibilities are almost endless.

Tip #32: Change your CRM Online URL

Stuck with a shortsighted choice of URL for your organization, like choosespain.crm.dynamics.com? Now you can easily change it in Office 365 Admin Center. Simply edit the URL and, if it’s available, it’s yours! Few things to be aware of:

  • Old URL will be available for 24 hours after the change.
  • Advise users of the new URL and, if any of them use bookmarks, include instructions how to change the bookmark.
  • CRM for Outlook users who work offline must synchronize by using the previous URL to avoid loss of data.
  • All CRM for Outlook users must run Configuration Wizard. Offline users must complete the previous step first.

Tip #31: You’ve got instance!

If you have a CRM Online with 25 or more paid Professional user licenses, your subscription includes additional non-production instance. Paid is a keyword here that excludes some types of subscriptions like Partner IUR (Internal Usage Rights) benefits. The other non-obvious step, as told by none other but our guest tipster , is enabling this instance in the administration center. To access your instance, open Office 365 Admin Center, then click Admin->CRM.

This information and more can be found in Manage Your Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online Subscription document.