Richard Knudson’s Microsoft Dynamics CRM Trick Bag

Security for CRM 2011 On-Demand Processes

Richard Knudson — Fri, 07 Dec 2012 01:49:28 GMT

December 6, 2012 – Here’s article 2 of my 2-part mini-series on security for CRM 2011 processes. Article 1 was on security for automatic processes; this one – on-demand processes – applies to both on-demand workflow processes and to dialog processes...(read more)

Security for CRM 2011 Automatic Processes

Richard Knudson — Thu, 06 Dec 2012 18:16:18 GMT

December 6, 2012 – I just finished a presentation at the December meeting of the CRMUG Midwest chapter, and I was asked a couple questions about security for CRM 2011 workflow and dialog processes. I knew I’d written about that in my book (www.CRMBizBook...(read more)

My Favorite New CRM Add-Ons

Richard Knudson — Sat, 17 Nov 2012 21:50:09 GMT

Nov. 17, 2012 — I’ve written plenty of articles about add-ons for Dynamics CRM…but it occurred to me recently that most of them have been in the marketing automation category. Over the last couple of months a happy coincidence of client requirements...(read more)

December 2012 Service Update

Richard Knudson — Sun, 04 Nov 2012 22:23:18 GMT

November 4, 2012 — Last week’s big news for Dynamics CRM was the official announcement of the December 2012 Service Update. The most substantive official document is the Release Preview Guide, available here: http://crmpublish.blob.core.windows...(read more)

Spooky CRM 2011 Currency Gotcha

Richard Knudson — Thu, 01 Nov 2012 23:21:41 GMT

November 1, 2012 – Suppose you’re in charge of the Dynamics CRM deployment for the Federal Oligarchy of Ontologia. And suppose further that your currency is pegged to the dollar at the exchange rate of 1 to 1. Since your currency isn’t officially...(read more)

CRMUG Summit 2012 Wrap-Up

Richard Knudson — Thu, 25 Oct 2012 01:53:02 GMT

October 24, 2012, Chevy Chase MD – A week ago, as I was leaving the Washington State Convention Center and CRMUG Summit 2012, I started on my CRMUG Summit 2012 Wrap-Up. I didn’t quite finish it before I got home, and then I had to spend most of...(read more)

Goal Criteria and Dynamic Goals

Richard Knudson — Sun, 14 Oct 2012 23:49:49 GMT

October 14, 2012 – Recently I’ve given presentations at Extreme CRM 2012 and the CRMUG Summit on various aspects of goal management. Judging by the questions I’m asked, the concept of goal criteria is one of the most confusing things...(read more)

Greetings from Las Vegas

Richard Knudson — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 17:41:03 GMT

Extreme CRM 2012 Wrapup October 3, 2012 – Another October, another Extreme CRM. This was my third Extreme, and their best attended conference yet with nearly 500 attendees. John Verdon, Bryan Tuttle et al: thanks for the best Extreme yet! I presented...(read more)

Upcoming Conference Sessions, Fall 2012

Richard Knudson — Sat, 11 Aug 2012 23:48:11 GMT

August 11, 2012 – We’re all too busy, no doubt about that. I was invited a couple of months ago to present a couple of sessions at the Extreme CRM 2012 Las Vegas show, and just this week, thanks in part to people like Mitch Milam and Shan MacArthur...(read more)

Dynamics CRM Sales Process Customizations

Richard Knudson — Mon, 30 Jul 2012 11:25:53 GMT

July 30, 2012 — In a recent article , I explained that Dynamics CRM does not implement any particular sales process out of the box, and discussed some of the most important concepts to consider when building your own sales process mojo on the CRM...(read more)

Designing Sales Processes in Dynamics CRM

Richard Knudson — Wed, 18 Jul 2012 12:15:23 GMT

By default, Dynamics CRM does not implement any particular sales process. It’s a customizable platform on which you can build a sales process, but it doesn’t contain one out of the box. This can be a little confusing for new users, for a couple...(read more)

Dynamics CRM Activity Parties

Richard Knudson — Sat, 14 Jul 2012 12:41:18 GMT

July 13, 2012 – It’s probably not coincidental that the longest ever gap between Trick Bag articles also featured a noticeable drop in page views. For example, courtesy of ClickDimension s in-CRM analytics, one of my favorite dashboard charts looks...(read more)

Dynamics CRM and the Trouble with Time Zones

Richard Knudson — Tue, 19 Jun 2012 14:16:05 GMT

Beware of Time Zone Differences with “Date Only” Date Fields June 19, 2012 – On vacation at the Jersey shore, so just as soon as I got done hanging out with Snookie & the crew, what else would a diligent CRM consultant do besides update...(read more)

It’s 3:00 AM. Do you know what your Sales Pipeline Velocity is?

Richard Knudson — Thu, 14 Jun 2012 20:09:37 GMT

June 14, 2012 — Of all the things sales managers lose sleep over, pipeline velocity may be one of the least well defined. Out of the box, most CRM applications are pretty good at pipeline snapshots : what’s expected to close this month,...(read more)

Top Fave Business Process Tips & Tricks

Richard Knudson — Mon, 04 Jun 2012 14:44:36 GMT

June 4, 2012 – On May 31 I presented a webinar cleverly titled My Top X Fave Business Process Tips & Tricks , about some of my favorite Dynamics CRM workflow and dialog process tips & tricks. If you attended, sorry about the audio “issues”...(read more)

Engage Users with Scheduled Reports

Richard Knudson — Thu, 17 May 2012 21:38:38 GMT

Of my top Six Rules for CRM User Adoption , #4 is Engage . By this I mean taking action to proactively engage your user community, rather than waiting for users to go to CRM. One way of doing this is to push information from CRM to users’ corporate...(read more)

The History of Rome

Richard Knudson — Mon, 07 May 2012 01:20:29 GMT

Warning: This article has little to do with customer relationship management. It won’t hurt my feelings if you skip to the end of the article for the gratuitous xRM History of Rome application. May 6, 2012 – Today’s episode wraps up the...(read more)

Trick Bag Browser Watch

Richard Knudson — Wed, 02 May 2012 21:52:12 GMT

May 2, 2012 – Besides being an all-around swell guy, Mitch Milam also has a great blog. As of May 2, his recent poll on which browser his readers expect to use with CRM 2011 had Chrome with 50%, IE with 49%, Firefox with 22% and Safari with 19% (you can...(read more)

User-Configurable Service Level Agreements

Richard Knudson — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 14:23:30 GMT

April 24, 2012 – Agreements between customers and service providers regarding things such as what must happen to resolve a case, or what happens when a case isn’t resolved within some agreed-upon timeframe are often referred to as service...(read more)

Dynamics CRM 2011 Security Roles Revisited

Richard Knudson — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 19:50:20 GMT

April 23, 2012 – Week in, week out, an article I wrote some time ago on Dynamics CRM security roles is the most popular article on the Trick Bag. For example, courtesy of the ClickDimensions analytics features, here are page views for the last 30 days...(read more)

Webinar: My Top X Fave Business Process Tips & Tricks

Richard Knudson — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 21:39:32 GMT

April 17 2012 – I surveyed attendees at a recent webinar to find out which topics they’d like to see in future webinars, and the most preferred by a longshot was also the one with the longest name by a longshot: My Top X Fave Business Process...(read more)

Convergence 2012 Highlights Links

Richard Knudson — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 15:40:40 GMT

The Q2 2012/CRM Anywhere/R8 Release http://crmpublish.blob.core.windows.net/docs/ReleasePreviewGuide.pdf Dynamics CRM and SQL 2012: Better Together http://blogs.msdn.com/b/crm/archive/2012/03/07/microsoft-dynamics-crm-and-sql-server-2012-better...(read more)

Convergence 2012 Highlights Recordings and Resources

Richard Knudson — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 15:40:40 GMT

April 5, 2012 – This is a companion piece to my April 4 webinar, Convergence 2012 Highlights. I posted links to the recordings on the Trick Bag Video page, or you can visit my YouTube channel and watch them there. In the webinar I referred to...(read more)

The Importance of Analytics

Richard Knudson — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 18:40:34 GMT

March 23, 2012 – When I first started doing marketing automation integrated within Dynamics CRM, the only thing I cared about was email tracking . That is, after sending a marketing email, knowing which emails were delivered or bounced, which ones were...(read more)

Convergence 2012: It’s a Wrap

Richard Knudson — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 19:42:21 GMT

This year I planned ahead, so even as Convergence 2012 goes down the home stretch, I wrote up my CRM-centric summary of the proceedings before I forgot everything. And just in case you really wanted to be there but couldn’t, you can attend my Convergence...(read more)