Increase your Strategic Effectiveness by Filtering Views in Microsoft Dynamics 365

Sometimes it is a good idea to deal with your Accounts, Contacts, or Leads individually; focusing on one at a time. But there are plenty of times when you want to work with several as a group. Examples include planning visits to Accounts in the same area or inviting similar Contacts to an event.

That means you want to pull out groups of Accounts or Contacts (etc.) who have things in common like location. CRM offers plenty of sophisticated ways to do this, but it’s just as good at helping you do this on-the-fly.

One great way to tease out common groupings is using CRM pre-built and custom filters available on View Screens. And, it’s easy to do because it works very much like filtering in other products like Excel, so chances are you’ve done this before. You just need to know where to look in CRM.

Here’s how to do it:

In this example, we’ll filter a List View of Accounts to find those who are in the same city. This might be good for planning a sales trip or emailing the group. And remember, filters are available on all lists including Contacts, Leads, and Opportunities too, so there is no limit to the possibilities once you get started.

In your navigation – start by pulling up a list view of active accounts

1. On the Navigation Bar click on Accounts
2. Choose the “Active Accounts” List View and click the Filter icon (figure 2 and circled in red.)
3. This activates down arrows for each column in the View (figure 2)
4. Create a Custom filter for Accounts in Redmond (figure 3)
5. Select one at a time, several, or all filtered Accounts depending on what you want to do. Send email, schedule visits, make edits, invite to an event, or other follow up for example (figure 4)

Figure 1: Navigation Bar including the Accounts Tile

Figure 2: Click the Filter Icon and the down arrow for the Address 1 (City) column. Choose “Custom Filter”

Figure 3: Entering “Begins With” and Redmond will filter for all Accounts located in Redmond

Figure 4: Select the Accounts you want to interact with…and GO! 

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