CRM Online: Reporting Options

Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online is a fantastic CRM platform for most small medium businesses - it is so easy and inexpensive to get started. 

However, one area of challenge for Microsoft CRM Online is custom reporting.  Some background on this.  Unlike Microsoft CRM On-Premise, Microsoft CRM Online does not support uploading of SQL Report Services (SRS) custom reports or accessing the SQL Server Database filtered views.  CRM Online does not allow users to directly access the CRM Application Server or Database Server - this is a good thing to maintain security and the 99.9% uptime for all the companies that is running on Microsoft CRM Online.  In fact, I'm not aware of any other major On-Demand Business Application vendors allowing their users to directly accessing the application or database server.

After working on numerous Microsoft CRM Online deployments, here is what I would suggest as a good practice for reporting:

Start with the "Out of the Box" options such as Default Reports, Advanced Find / Export to Excel, Mail Merge, and Report Wizard to meet your CRM Online reporting needs.  If none of them is "good enough" then go with custom report development (SDK).

Here are some good references/links to the reporting options mentioned above:

Default Reports:
To view the list of default reports that come with Microsoft CRM Online -
from the CRM Client >> Workplace >> Reports

Advanced Find / Export to Excel:
Blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/crm/archive/2008/12/29/poor-man-s-business-intelligence-for-microsoft-dynamics-crm.aspx

Video: Using Advanced Find - Time: 10:02 minutes
This video will show you how to use the Advanced Find feature to find and take action on targeted sets of data. It will also show how to create Saved Views (My Views).
http://www.democrmonline.com/AdvancedFind/

Mail Merge:
Blog: MSCRM 4.0 Mail Merge Basics
http://blogs.msdn.com/crm/archive/2008/01/15/mscrm-4-0-mail-merge-basics.aspx

Blog: Microsoft Dynamics CRM Mail Merge Templates
http://blogs.msdn.com/crm/archive/2008/06/10/microsoft-dynamics-crm-mail-merge-templates.aspx

Blog: Printing Quote for customer
http://blogs.msdn.com/crm/archive/2008/03/12/printing-quote-for-customer.aspx

Video: Mail Merge - Time: 08:03 minutes
This video will show how to create mail merge templates and create emails and Word labels with mail merge.
http://www.democrmonline.com/MailMerge/

Report Wizard:
Blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/dynamicscrmonline/archive/2009/02/16/report-your-lost-opportunities-to-competitors.aspx

Video: Reporting Overview - Time: 15:29 minutes
This video will show the reporting capabilities in Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online.
http://www.democrmonline.com/reporting/

Custom Development (SDK):
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb928212.aspx

Here's a case study regarding custom report development for Microsoft CRM Online:

One of our Microsoft CRM Online clients in the high tech engineering services industry had a need for several reports, some of those reports are used as "summary printouts" to be given to the customer upon service completion.  These reports contain very specific formatting, layout, calculations, and data content from various Microsoft CRM related areas, more than two levels of data relationships.

We had tried to use the "Out of the Box" options to see if it is "good enough", but none of them was acceptable for this case.  The Client loves Microsoft CRM Online but without their critical reports, they will have to either switch to Microsoft CRM On-Premise or to another CRM system.

We decided to build their Microsoft CRM Online reports via custom report development (SDK) - this worked great!   The Client can now click on a report button from either their CRM Online Web Client or Outlook Client to access these custom reports.  The Client got the EXACT reports they are looking for and was able to stay with Microsoft CRM Online without switching to something else.  The effort to build these custom reports was about the same as if we had to build them via SRS custom report development for an On-Premise environment.

In summary, if you have data in Microsoft CRM Online that you would like to report on, and none of the "Out of the Box" reporting options are good enough, then try custom report development (SDK).

Contact us if you need help with any of your Microsoft CRM Online reporting needs.  Free Estimate.