Leon's CRM Musings

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Getting Rid of the Flow Forms in Online

Posted 14 hours ago

by Leon Tribe

As you probably know there are a bunch of features in CRM Online at the moment which have not yet made it to CRM 2011 (On Premise). Some of these I am very keen to see (such as Bing map integration and Yammer integration) while others I am happy to leave...
I Made #55 in the Dynamics World Most Influential People in Dynamics Poll

Posted 11 days ago

by Leon Tribe

http://www.dynamicsworld.co.uk/top-100/ Thanks for voting everyone :)
Electronic Arts: Social Technology But A Less Social Attitude

Posted 13 days ago

by Leon Tribe

In case you missed it last month, The Consumerist , a consumer affairs blog, released their “Worst Company in America” poll . The same company won it last year as well. What was surprising was the company was not one of the usual suspects e.g. pharmaceutical...
Historical Operating Cashflow of Salesforce

Posted 20 days ago

by Leon Tribe

Last month I looked at Salesforce’s end of year financials and talked about how their main source of revenue was staff handing over money for Salesforce shares. I wondered if this has always been the case and therefore thought it is worth looking at how...
Three Limitations of Using Advanced Find

Posted 1 month ago

by Leon Tribe

I got asked a couple of days ago if I knew of a blog which listed the limitations of using an Advanced Find query. I knew of a couple of the limitations off of the top of my head but could not find a blog summarising them. So here it is. Outer Joins In...
Voting Has Started in the Top 100 Most Influential People in Dynamics!

Posted 1 month ago

by Leon Tribe

It's that time of year again when I try to convince (mostly) complete strangers into voting for me in the Top 100 Most Influential People in Dynamics. Today, you are that lucky (mostly) complete stranger. If you have felt swayed by my blog ramblings...
Using Quick Campaigns for Managing Events

Posted 1 month ago

by Leon Tribe

Here is a simple way to manage an event using Quick Campaigns in Dynamics CRM. I have implemented this, or similar, at a couple of clients where the process for the event was: Create an invitation list Call them up to see if they are coming Review for...
Silverlight to be Rewritten into HTML5

Posted 1 month ago

by Leon Tribe

I did not get to go to Convergence this year but it is possible to access the excellent presentations if you registered . As it happens I did not register but an MVP friend of mine slipped me a login and password so I thought I would browse the content...
Salesforce End of Year Financial Results and Subscription Numbers Versus Dynamics CRM

Posted 1 month ago

by Leon Tribe

With the recent release of the Salesforce end of year financials and the release of Dynamics CRM subscription numbers at Convergence, we can kill two birds with one stone and see how Salesforce is going. Unless stated otherwise, all numbers presented...
The Only Surface Pro Review You Need If You Run Outlook

Posted 2 months ago

by Leon Tribe

A little over two weeks ago I bought a Surface Pro, while at the MVP Summit, from the Bellevue Microsoft Store. For the non-Americans reading, the Microsoft Store is like the Apple Store but with Microsoft-related products. Since then I have read a lot...
Using Dialogs to Make a Mechanical Turk

Posted 2 months ago

by Leon Tribe

The original ‘Mechanical Turk’ was a machine made in the late 1700s to play chess. Here is the picture from Wikipedia. I do not think the term was supposed to be racist. I think it was designed to conjure up an image of something exotic and the history...
Reporting From MVP Summit and Answers to your Questions

Posted 2 months ago

by Leon Tribe

I try to get out three blog posts per month and, given it is a short month I am therefore writing a blog post while I sit in an MVP session. I generally shy away from doing this as, frankly it is ‘safer’. Other than telling you I am sitting in a room...
Head, Heart and Hands: Setting Up Your Team For Success

Posted 2 months ago

by Leon Tribe

Apologies for the slow posting this month. I do have a blog post written answering all questions sent for Summit which is with Microsoft for the green light (I do not want to lose my MVP status due to a misplaced sentence) which I intend to post before...
Bad CRM Security Habits To Break

Posted 3 months ago

by Leon Tribe

This time next week I will be on a plane heading to the MVP Summit at Seattle/Bellevue/Redmond. So, if you have any questions for the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Team in Redmond, feel free to add them below. I promise to ask all the questions you post (even...
Monitoring the Skills of Your CRM Team

Posted 3 months ago

by Leon Tribe

This is another one of those ‘CRM manager’ posts that occasionally sneak in, mainly because I am running the local CRM team now. However, it is a tool even a member of a team could use to see where the weaknesses in their team are and decide whether to...
Book Review: Packt Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Customization & Configuration (MB2-866) Certification Guide

Posted 3 months ago

by Leon Tribe

Introduction and Disclaimer As they did this time last year , Packt have asked me to review one of their online books in exchange for a free download of it. Again, if you are interested in buying it, here is the link . I have known the author,...
The Future of the Office and the Cloud (What is the Cloud?: Part 2)

Posted 4 months ago

by Leon Tribe

This follows on from a post I did about 18 months ago called What is the Cloud? and follows on from an excellent discussion I had on the weekend with a good friend of mine who works at VMWare. Back in the “What is the Cloud?” post I described how a computer...
Creating a Strategic Plan

Posted 4 months ago

by Leon Tribe

A few weeks ago my boss asked me to put together a twelve-month plan for the CRM team. He wanted me to identify things like: Areas where the CRM team are weak and strong Ways to align the CRM team to the values of the business Opportunities in the market...
A Couple of Form Security Tricks

Posted 5 months ago

by Leon Tribe

Forms have come a long way in CRM 2011 and here are a couple of tricks I use a fair amount. Hiding Locked Fields Some forms have fields which simply cannot be taken off the form. A good example is the Account Name field on the Account entity. While we...
CRM: Culinary Recipe Management and Socialisation

Posted 5 months ago

by Leon Tribe

In the spirit of my CRM Adventure Game and CRM Hangman I now present using CRM as a recipe database. This is a pre-cursor to my ultimate dream of creating a CRM cocktail database. There is not much of a lesson here (although I do propose a very practical...
Salesforce Third Quarter Results for 2012

Posted 5 months ago

by Leon Tribe

Another quarter and despite it, again, being represented as a solid result, the fundamentals have deteriorated. As usual, I stick mainly to GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Principles) results which Salesforce presents to the Securities and Exchange...
A Stellar Roadmap for Dynamics CRM?

Posted 6 months ago

by Leon Tribe

The past six months have not been the steadiest of courses for Microsoft and their CRM product. Microsoft announced grand and exciting plans, as discussed last month . Dynamics CRM partners and MVPs were frothy at the mouth with the new things coming...
50 Shades of CRM: The True Story of the CRM Field Guide

Posted 6 months ago

by Leon Tribe

This is the history (and a bit of a book review) of the CRM Field Guide ( http://www.crmfieldguide.com ). To paraphrase a much greater tome, to tell the story of the book it is best to tell the story of some of the minds behind it. History On the 9 December...
Making Records Invisible In Dynamics CRM

Posted 6 months ago

by Leon Tribe

CRM security is very powerful but it does have its limitations. One is that while it is possible to give someone access to a record they could not otherwise access, via Sharing, there is no clear mechanism to turn off access to a specific record. For...
An Alternative Method For Data Enrichment

Posted 7 months ago

by Leon Tribe

I recently had a problem with a data import. The data had imported fine but a few hundred contacts were not imported with their email addresses (the client had forgotten to update the source data). The client had an Excel list of email addresses and ID...

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