Let’s take a look inside CRM Online 2011 with Advanced Find: Part 2

If you’ve been following the xRM.com blog, then you’re probably eager to dive into Part 2 of our Advanced Find series. In one of our previous posts we took a quick dive into one of the more powerful tools found in Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online 2011, Advanced Find. First we broke down the finer details of operating an Advanced Find query, and then we showed you how to save that query for later.

Now that you have learned to search using Advanced Find, we’re going to show you how to quickly arrange and analyze the data that you find.

No special permissions are necessary to use Advanced Find in Microsoft CRM Online, although you will only be able to view data that you have permission to read. This blog post also continues where Part 1 left off, and will be using an Advanced Find query that was saved in Part 1.

Let’s get started. Click Advanced Find in the ribbon (see below).

The Advanced Find window opens (see below). Open the Use Saved View drop-down menu, select “Los Angeles”, and click Results.

If you look below, you’ll see the result of the Advanced Find query that we created in our previous post. This query is returning a list of all Accounts that are located in Los Angeles. Did you notice that only the Account Name, Primary Contact, and Main Phone columns are visible?

If you were to share this list as-is with your service representative traveling to Los Angeles, that person may find the information provided a little scarce. Let’s increase the amount of information being displayed in this view by adding some columns to the view.

Click the Advanced Find tab in the ribbon (see below) and click Edit Columns.

The Edit Columns window opens (see below). This is the tool we use to add or remove columns from the results of the Advanced Find. Click Add Columns.

The Add Columns window opens (see below). This window contains a list of every entity attribute that can be added to the list of columns returned by your Advanced Find. Any custom attributes created during Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online customization and configuration will also be listed. Check the box next to “Address 1: Street 1” and “Address 1: Zip/Postal Code” and then click the OK button.

The Edit Columns window refreshes with your changes (see below). “Address 1: Street 1” and “Address 1: Zip/Postal Code” are now included in the columns of your view. Let’s re-arrange the order of the columns in a slightly more logical fashion. We’ll select the columns in the view below and move them around using the green, left- and right-facing arrow buttons.

Scroll sideways in the window until you see the “Primary Contact” column listed. Click on the “Primary Contact” column to select it and then click on the green, left-facing arrow twice to position it to the left of “Address 1: Street 1”.

Your Edit Columns window refreshes and should now look just like the image below. If not, you may need to continue rearranging your columns by selecting them and then using the green arrow buttons. Once you’re happy with how your columns are arranged, click the OK button.

The Advanced Find window refreshes (see below). Click Results in the ribbon.

The results of your recently modified Advanced Find query are returned (see below). Although we only added two columns of data, this view is much more useful to a service representative traveling in Los Angeles.

In the interest of your attention span, we’re going to wrap this post up! Let’s finalize our changes though before we do. Click the Advanced Find tab in the ribbon and then click Save.

Your “Los Angeles” Accounts saved view is now saved with your most recent changes. So what can we do with this saved view now? We can share it with others privately; publish it for all of your users to use, or export data directly from it! If you want to learn how to do all those things, you’ll just have to keep watching this space as that is exactly what one of our upcoming posts will be covering. Can’t wait? Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online Video Training led by a CRM Online 2011 specialist may be the perfect choice for you!