Rose Business Solutions Dynamics CRM

We are making a lot of use of the workflow functionality in CRM for  www.mygpcloud.com

We are using it to distribute a substantial amount of content for new users to assist them in getting Dynamics GP up and running effectively and quickly.

I used these workflow step types several times within the workflows:

• Wait Condition
• Check Condition
• Send E-mail

I set up a workflow based on the Contact record. 

I used the Wait Condition steps to space out messaging over a period spanning 30 days. 

I used the Check Condition step to make sure the Account record to which the Contact was associated was a prospect or customer.  Because we also have partners in the CRM database, I didn’t want to send them the end-user messaging.

I used the Send E-mail steps to send specific messages to end-users.  I decided to use e-mail templates instead of just e-mails so I could modify the e-mail message content without having to stop and restart the workflow.  Because the workflow spans 30 days, stopping and starting the workflows would cause havoc with our objective to nicely send helpful information to our new users.

I created this vide to show how I did it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GT6LQOQyXtk

For awhile I’ve had a problem with CRM that I’ve been hoping to solve with out-of-the-box functionality.  I finally came up with some quick customizations that will do it.

So, this is the problem:  I want an easy way to select a small number of contacts so that I can include them in a Quick Campaign to send out an e-mail merge.

I could set up a Marketing List, add the Contacts to that, and then run the Quick Campaign.  But that seemed like too much.  So, this is what I did:

• I created a customized field on the Contact record to indicate whether a Contact was on the “QuickList” or not
• I created a new query to view all Contacts on the “QuickList”
• I created a Workflow to set the “QuickList” value back to “No” when I’m done with the list

This is how I use it:

• For the Contacts I want to include on my “QuickList” I select “Yes” for the “QuickList” field
• I select the “QuickList” view, and the designated Contacts are included
• I create a Quick Campaign to execute the e-mail merge
• I run the Workflow on the “QuickList” view when I’m done, to set the “QuickList” value back to “No” for the Contacts

I created this short video to show some of the set up, and how I use it.

I recently made use of the two types of N:N relationships available in CRM 4.0:

• Native N:N Relationship – CRM automatically creates the relationship between two entities.
• Manual N:N Relationship – A combination of two N:1 relationships that share a common intersect entity.

I created a custom entity to represent network events that I attend at which I meet new or known contacts.  I want to track which events I attend and when, as well as the people I have the opportunity to spend some time with during the event.  For this I used the native N:N relationship.  I just created the custom entity and then created a new N:N relationship with the contact record.

Here’s my simple custom entity.  The contacts list is represented in the details section as “attendees”.

Here is a view of the Network Event from the Contact’s perspective.  If I had met with this contact at several network events, they would all be listed:

Here are the details of the N:N relationship that was created by CRM:

I also created two custom entities to track which ISV products our clients own.  I set up a manual N:N relationship for this because I wanted to not only identify which ISV products a client has, but also some specific information about the product registration, e.g. user count, renewal date, etc.

Here is a diagram of the custom entities and the relationships:

Here is an example of the ISV Product Registration that has specific information about the client’s registered products:

The product is Mekorma MICR, and the client is A.L. Wizard.  There is specific information about the client’s registration of this product.

This allows me to easily track ISV product registrations and create workflows and views that help manage this part of our business.

I have wanted to have information about the last activity for any specific contact to be displayed on the contact record and in various views, and found an easy way to do it.  I was helped a great deal by this post by Joel Lindstrom.

The first thing to do is create new fields and add them to the Contact form.  I created a date field to display the date of the last activity, and a text field to display the subject of the last activity.

My objective is to show the date and subject of the last activity that was completed for each contact.  So the next step is to create individual workflows for each specific type of activity in CRM, e.g. Task, Phone Call, Appointment, E-mail.

This is how the workflow for Phone Calls looks:

The entity is, Phone Call; and I want to update the Contact.  I chose to have the workflow activate when the Actual End date changes (signifying that the activity is complete).  I also chose to allow the workflow to run on demand so that I could run it against the past month’s worth of Phone Call activities.

There are just two properties I’m going to update on the contact, the date, and the subject of the Phone Call.  I also am going to add a bit of text before the subject to indicate what type of activity it is.

Once I complete a Phone Call, this is what the contact record looks like:

You can create separate workflows for each of the different types of activities that you want to update the record.  I had to experiment a bit in order to determine what attribute(s) I wanted to use to trigger the workflow.

You can also include the new fields in your views and advanced find searches.  It was easy to do, and a good example of how to use simple workflows in CRM 4.0.

We are excited about this new integration, so we jumped right in, and installed it on our production systems. Our systems engineer is a genius, and what follows are his comments related to his experience. Consider this an experiential addendum:

1. Must have GP 10 SP4 applied. (There are caveats to sp4 so be aware)

2. Must have at least rollup5 for CRM applied. (Rollup6 was out in Oct 2009 so I used rollup6)

3. Must have GPwebservices for GP10 sp4 and Management tools sp4 installed.

– Had issues with the GPwebSerice not showing up in Dynamics Security console.

– Ran a repair on the GPWebServices and the management tools and it resolved the issue.

4. Must have Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 Service Pack 1 Redistributable Package ATL Security Update applied to same server GPwebservices is installed. http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID;=766a6af7-ec73-40ff-b072-9112bab119c2#filelist

5. Must have domain service accounts created. You can determine how many you need. Recommend at least 3 svc_gpweb, svc_gpcrmadmin, svc_gpcrm.

6. GPWebservice Account – Permissions granted during install.

7. Installation account – The account that installs the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Adapter for Microsoft Dynamics GP.

a. Be a domain user and a member of the Local Administrators group on the server where Microsoft Dynamics CRM Adapter for Microsoft Dynamics GP is to be installed.

b. Be assigned at least the dbcreator and securityadmin server roles on the SQL server where the MSDI database is to be stored

8. Integration account – The account that the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Adapter Service runs as. Permissions granted during install of Dynamics GP CRM adapter.

9. Configuration account – The account that runs the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Configuration Utility.

a. This account must be able to modify the membership of the CRM PrivUserGroup Security Group in the domain that the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Servers are joined to.

b. If this account is not in the db_datareader and db_datawriter roles for the Microsoft Dynamics CRM organization databases, you must use a SQL Server user name and password to update the Microsoft Dynamics CRM organization databases.

10. Integration GP account – The account that the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Adapter for Microsoft Dynamics GP uses to connect to Microsoft Dynamics GP Web Services. a. Permissions granted in the Dynamics Security Console

11. Integration CRM account – The account that the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Adapter for Microsoft Dynamics GP uses to connect to Microsoft Dynamics CRM Web Services. a. This account must belong to a Microsoft Dynamics CRM User that has organizational-level read privileges for system user on the CRM Organization that you plan to integrate.

12. CRM Deployment Administrator account – The account that the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Configuration Utility uses to retrieve a list of Microsoft Dynamics CRM organizations and apply customizations to the Microsoft Dynamics CRM organizations.

13. GP Adapter configuration – Had an error: application domain …… Only way to fix it was uninstall adapter and remove MSDI database. (just removing database may have fixed it but just uninstall did not)

Occasionally a sales prospect will ask for customer references, and we are always happy to comply. But because we value our existing customers so much, we don’t want to “wear them out” with repeated requests, so we try to spread the requests around. The problem then is to always recall whom we have already asked to provide a reference.

What we’ve started to do is to track these requests by setting up Customer Relationships in CRM. For the prospect account record, we create a new Customer Relationship for each contact that has agreed to provide a customer reference. The Party 2 field can be an Account or a Contact. We’ve added an additional value for Role 2, to include, “Customer Reference”.

I just installed the new CRM Accelerator for Enterprise Search onto the standard VPC image for CRM. It was easy to do, and I learned a bit more about MOSS.

This functionality is immediately useful to a client of ours. The client has Dynamics GP and Dynamics CRM. We were either going to customize a search routine, or create our own Business Data Catalog. But now we’ll just use this. Perfect.

This accelerator offers these basic functions:

• View and edit any Microsoft Dynamics CRM data such as accounts, contacts, opportunities, sales orders, invoices, service cases and any custom entity data through MOSS.
• Launch a MOSS search which can return documents, emails, web content and Microsoft Dynamics CRM data.

I think the Enterprise Search functionality in MOSS is undervalued. It is huge! It will save your employees hours of time.

The accelerator is available here:

http://www.codeplex.com/crmaccelerators/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=21449

I did have some trouble importing the BDC into a non-standard VPC image because the image has a different server name, database name, and CRM site name. The documentation has directions on how to modify the XML file to handle this, but I could not get it to work. However, I have very little knowledge of XML, so it’s not a big surprise.

The documentation is very good for implementing on the standard CRM VPC image.

Try it out. You will be able to set it up in less than 20 minutes.