Read More…

Running a Quick Campaign for bunch of marketing list members is a lot more efficient than going through your entire database and individually selecting records to add to your quick campaign.

1. Click Marketing in the Navigation Pane, and then click Marketing Lists.
2. Double-click a marketing list.
3. Click the Create Quick Campaign button on the toolbar and click Next.
4. Give your Quick Campaign a name and click Next.
5. Select the type of activity you’d like to create for your quick campaign and choose who will own these activities.
6. Add specific information for the type of activity that will be created and click Next.  This activity (either a task, e-mail, letter, etc.) will be created for each marketing list member.

Mail merge in Microsoft CRM is best done using Microsoft Office Word, so you won’t have to change your existing business process.

1. Highlight any records that you want to be included in your mail merge.
2. Click the Microsoft Word button on the toolbar.
3. Select a mail merge type, a template, and a merge range of records.
4. Click OK.  A Word document will open directly to the Word mail merge wizard.
5. Complete the wizard to run your mail merge.

• At the end of the mail merge, the system will prompt you to upload your template into the CRM system.  This is a good idea if you will run a similar letter in the future.

This feature is really only useful if CRM is automatically integrated into your accounting system.

1. Open an order.
2. Click the Create Invoice button on the toolbar.

• If your CRM system is not integrated into your accounting system, then you may set up a workflow to automatically send your accounting department an e-mail whenever an invoice is created in CRM.  This way, they’ll know to send the customer a bill.

In CRM, you can generate an order from any activated quote.  Creating an order shows the system that your customer has accepted the quote, and it will tell your fulfillment department that there is an order ready to ship.

1. Open a quote.
2. Click the Create Order button on the toolbar.
3. Click OK.

• Once you create an order for a quote, you should go back and close your originating opportunity.  Mark it as having been won.

Once activated, the quote will be set to read-only in the system.  If you need to change anything in the quote after you’ve reactivated it, you should create a new quote from the opportunity.

1. Open a quote.
2. Click the Actions button on the toolbar, then Activate Quote.

• Invoices can only be generated from an activated quote.

• You should activate your quote before you print it.  (Instructions for printing the quote are on the next page.)

Quotes in Microsoft Dynamics CRM are automatically generated as a Word Document.

1. Open an existing opportunity.
2. Click Quotes on the left.
3. Click New Quote on the Actions Toolbar.
4. Make sure the sales information is correct.  (It will pull product information from the opportunity into this quote.
5. Click Save and Close.

• For advanced quoting with CRM 4.0, check out Experlogix.  www.experlogix.com

You can get around this problem by creating views of certain opportunities.  This way, you can have different views to view different types of opportunities.

1. Click Sales on the Navigation Pane, and then click Opportunities.
2. Click the Advanced Find button on the toolbar.
3. Configure your Advanced Find to search for a subset of your opportunities.
4. Click the Edit Columns button to configure the columns that will appear in your view
5. Click the Save As button to save your Advanced Find as a view on the opportunity screen.

• Check out the Search chapter of this book for more information on the Advanced Find feature.

By configuring CRM Mobile Express, you will be able to customize which entities and forms show up when you access your CRM database from your phone.

1. Click Settings on the Navigation Pane, and then click Customization.
2. Click Customize Mobile Express.
3. Add any entities that you want to show up in CRM Mobile Express.  Click Publish All when you are done.

• CRM Mobile Express is compatible with most current smartphones. iPhone, Palm Pre, Android, and just about any phone that has a finger push-screen will work with Mobile Express.

If I were on a conference call with investors, that’s probably what I’d say, too…but if you dig a bit deeper into the actual patent violation suit, this may pose a big problem for Salesforce and its ability to retain its user interface and current feature set.  Eight patents are included in the lawsuit.  None of the patents violated really have anything specifically to do with CRM itself of anything in the Dynamics line.  The patents in question are for pretty basic things — like the automatic updating of software.  Here’s the summary from one of the patents:

Creators of computer software provide the most up-to-date versions of their computer software on an update service. A user who has purchased computer software calls the update service on a periodic basis. The update service automatically inventories the user computer to determine what computer software may be out-of-date, and/or need maintenance updates. If so desired by the user, the update service computer automatically downloads and installs computer software to the user computer. By making periodic calls to the update service, the user always has the most up-to-date computer software immediately available. The update service may also alert the user to new products (i.e. including new help files, etc.), and new and enhanced versions of existing products which can be purchased electronically by a user from the update service.

So, back on December 1, 1998 when this patent was granted, automatic updates for software wasn’t something that everyone had.  Back in 1998, it’s possible that you didn’t have high-speed internet at your office, and it’s likely that you didn’t have it at home.  Microsoft pioneered that technology, and automatic updates provide one of Salesforce.com’s biggest strengths.  The whole “no software” concept is centered around their ability to deliver updates quickly and without the users intervention. 

The eight other patents in the Microsoft suit deal with a variety of underlying web and computing technologies, including “Method and system for mapping between logical data and physical data,” and “System and method for providing and displaying a web page having an embedded menu.”

We’ll see how this lawsuit plays out, but I suspect that Salesforce has picked a fight that it should have tried to avoid.  This fiscal year, Microsoft spent 9.5 billion (with a ‘b’) on research and development.  That’s more money than Salesforce has made.  Ever.