So it’s 2020 and you’re still unsure of the benefits of a CRM?
Here are 5 things you can do today with a modern CRM system.
Have questions about how a CRM system can benefit your organization? Feel free to reach out to reenhanced! Fill out our Contact Form with details about what you’re working on, or email me directly at nhance@reenhanced.com. Happy training!
There are many schools of thought when it comes to learning styles. One I have found to resonate well with adult learners and the Microsoft Dynamics 365 platform are the VARK learning styles when planning your CRM training. VARK stands for the four main learning styles: Visual, Auditory, Reading & Writing and Kinesthetic.
The VARK theory says that you have a primary learning style. While you may be influenced by other learning styles, there is one primary area where learning comes easier.
Understanding these four key ways adults learn can help us to plan and deliver useful, lasting CRM training to our end users.
As a Dynamics 365 trainer, or as someone tasked with training your end users, your challenge is to balance the training to apply all learning styles. You will likely default to training in your most primary (and also most comfortable) learning style. Make sure to offer training across all learning styles!
How can you use your understanding of the VARK learning styles to CRM training? Easy! Understand what sort of training approach reaches each style and pick and choose to combine into a beautiful training experience for your end users! We will look at each learning style and point out some training techniques and methods that work well for each.
First of all, let’s discuss live training. As you will notice in the chart below, live training can reach all learning styles. This is by far the most effective method of training your end users. If at all possible, provide your end users with some sort of live, in-person training. In a perfect world, everyone will receive live training, supplemented with many of the materials listed below. For some organizations, especially those with an employee base that covers a large geographic area and multiple time zones, this can be difficult. But if should be the first option if possible!
Check out the below graphic for many training tools and techniques. They are split into the VARK columns to make it simple to pick and choose those that will work best for your user base.
Have questions about training? Need our help deciding what’s best for your user group? Feel free to reach out to reenhanced! Fill out our Contact Form with details about what you’re working on, or email me directly at heidi@reenhanced.com. Happy training!
Welcome to the exciting conclusion of the model-driven app series! Today we will look at managing properties in a model-driven app. This series includes six articles that will help you to get to know and use model-driven apps and PowerApps:
A paramount part of designing your app is ensuring that your end users are part of the entire process. Follow user adoption best practices and involve your end user group in every aspect of the planning and design process. Have a few key members try out the app and record their feedback.
Beyond simply involving your end users, how does a model-driven app help them? Here are a few ways model-driven apps are tied to an increase in user adoption:
Following the steps within the blog series and engaging your user group will lead to a nice, streamlined way to access data, with the ultimate goal of increasing user adoption.
As a CRM System Administrator, you have many incredible, out-of-the-box configuration super powers in your toolkit. Today, I want to focus on one of these super powers: field level security.
Field level security gives you the ability to limit user groups who can read, create or update to a field. Here’s how that translates in the business world. In the following scenarios, adding Field Level Security can meet these business and user requirements:
In all of these cases, using simple out-of-the-box field level security can answer these requirements!
There are three steps to set up field level security:
The first thing we need to do is enable field security for a specific field. Open the field, and simply click Enable on Field Security (highlighted below).
Repeat the above process for any fields.
After you have enabled field security on all fields, the next step is to configure a Field Security Profile. We will walk through the process of creating a Field Security Profile using the Maker Experience AND the Classic Experience.
Using make.powerapps.com:
Using Classic Experience
Next Steps
Regardless of which experience you used to create your Field Security Profile, the remainder of the steps are identical:
2. On the left-hand side of the Field Security Profile, you can now add Teams or Users. Add the appropriate users/teams to your Field Security Profile.
Now that you have set enabled Field Security on selected fields, built a Field Security Profile and added users, it’s time to set permissions for each field!
In your Field Security Profile, click Field Permissions on the left-hand side (highlighted below). A list of all fields with Field Security enabled will appear.
There are three permission levels for each field:
To set permissions, open each field individually and set the appropriate permissions:
When you have completed this process for all fields, click Save and Close at the top.
Field Security Profiles are powerful tools to lock down data when needed. If you need help getting started or setting up field security in your organization’s Dynamics 365 organization, feel free to reach out to reenhanced! Fill out our Contact Form with details about what you’re working on, or email me directly at heidi@reenhanced.com. Happy configuration!
As a CRM System Administrator, you have many incredible, out-of-the-box configuration super powers in your toolkit. Today, I want to focus on one of these super powers: field level mapping.
Great question! Field level mapping (or mapping entity fields) allows you to map attributes between entities that have an entity relationship. It’s a tool that allows you to eliminate end users to enter data in multiple places.
Let’s provide an example to illustrate how this could work. Today, your organization is capturing Lead Type on the lead form and also asking for users to select Opportunity Type on the opportunity form. Even though it’s using the same values (Commercial/Industrial or Residential), it is two separate fields that users have to enter.
To simplify the user experience, you can edit the relationship between Lead and Opportunity, apply field level mapping and have the Lead Type value automatically move over to Opportunity Type when the lead is qualified.
Some fields move over automatically using field level mapping on the relationship. One good example is when you add a Contact to an Account. The Contact automatically inherits the address and phone number from the Account. Is it magic? No, it’s field level mapping!
Simple! In a solution file in your Sandbox environment, add the appropriate relationship (1:N or N:1). If a relationship does not yet exist between the two entities, you will have to build one. In the below screen shot, we are editing the Lead to Opportunity relationship. On the left-hand side, click the Mappings icon:
This opens up a new window where you can create field mapping from Lead to Opportunity (or which ever entities you have selected). The left-hand column shows all fields eligible to be mapped from the Source Entity (in our example, the Lead). The right-hand column shows all fields for the Target Entity (in our example, the Opportunity). Select the appropriate field(s) and click OK.
Once you’ve published changes to the relationship, have your user group log in and test to ensure this is all working as you expected it to. With their approval, go ahead and move these changes into Production and celebrate the magic you created!
With all features like this, I think it is extremely important to share the rules and lessons learned. Here are a few things you should know about field level mapping before you get started:
If you need any help with field level mapping, feel free to reach out to us or email me directly at heidi@reenhanced.com. We’re happy to help if you have questions or get stuck. You can also check out this user guide from Microsoft documentation. Happy mapping!!
Dear Software Rescue Specialists,
Mr. Slow Create
One of our Dynamics 365 (On-premise v9.0) users is having a problem with their Quick Create Forms.
Whenever they click to open a Quick Create form from the top navigation or from a sub-grid, the modal that opens shows me the full default form instead of the quick create.
This user is using Google Chrome on a Windows 7 installation.
Dear Mr. Slow Create,
We’ve seen this issue happen when users are using Chrome on Windows 7. The solutions we’ve identified at this time are as follows.
On further digging, we were able to identify this with an error message in the developers console:
Cannot read property 'firstChild' of null
Our investigation discovered no quick fix so we’re diagnosing this as a browser incompatibility specific to Chrome on Windows 7.
Thanks,
Nick
Software Rescue Specialist
Welcome to the fifth and penultimate article in the model-driven app series! Today we will look at managing properties in a model-driven app. This series includes six articles that will help you to get to know and use model-driven apps and PowerApps:
Now that we have reviewed security considerations, understood how to use the App Designer, learned about the controls and power of the Site Map and added components to the app, we can move on to reviewing some of the properties available.
In the App Designer, we have been working in the Components tab. If you click on the Properties tab, shown in the screen shot below, you have access to a number of areas to update and customize.
You can edit the following areas:
If you want to use an image apart from the default Microsoft image (below), you can follow these three simple steps:
There is only one article left in our series: focused on the Users. Stay tuned for the exciting conclusion!
Is my Dynamics 365 implementation built correctly?
Is it really supposed to work like this?
Does everyone else who uses Dynamics have the same pain points?
If so, you might be a good fit for a Dynamics 365 Rescue.
Microsoft has spent years working to make Dynamics 365 simple for all users and at the same time powerful enough to meet the needs of many different businesses. When properly customized, it can and should match the needs of your business so that your system provides you with all of the tooling you desire at the time you need it.
Dynamics 365 designed to grow with you. If it is getting in the way of your growth, it is built incorrectly.
Even when perfectly configured, some portion of your organization will struggle to use the software. User Adoption is something almost all users of Dynamics 365 struggle with and Microsoft is vocal about this being an area they want to improve.
Through a combination of training and intelligent system configuration, you can build a plan that will help all of your users realize the benefits of Dynamics 365.
Even though Dynamics 365 can run everything from a small 3 person business all the way to the world’s largest companies, it should only ever feel as large as the company using it needs it to be. It is not normal to have to work with extra entities (like Orders or Entitlements) when they don’t make sense for your company. Your system should only feel as big as your company needs it to be.
Proper configuration should keep those internals out of your way until your company grows large enough to need them.
We’re a specialist firm focused on rescuing struggling Custom Software and Dynamics 365 implementations.
We truly love our customers and we believe the world would be better if companies like ours didn’t need to exist. Let’s work together to make that happen.
Here are 3 tips that can help you avoid becoming our customer.
When building automation into your business it’s vitally important to understand your business processes (and all edge cases) before asking your development partner to automate them. Only when you truly understand your business can you build automation that works the way you expect it to.
Companies that fail to fully understand their business before starting a software automation project (which includes Dynamics 365 implementation) often find that what they end up building does not match the reality of their business.
Realizing the need to change the software after it is built can cost up to 150 times the cost of understanding and planning ahead. Your most important work is to make sure you understand your business and can explain it to others who may know nothing about how your business works. Not always an easy task!
Many partners are happy to do what you ask but not all of them will take the time to understand your business. When you choose to work with a partner who blindly implements what you ask them to do you may save a few dollars at the expense of an architecture that doesn’t match the realities of your business.
There are only two hard things in Computer Science: cache invalidation and naming things.
Phil Karlton
One of the most important pieces of building any software system is to ensure that the relationships between different types of data are modeled after the real world. If you work with a partner who doesn’t take the time or make the effort to understand your business, you miss out on this critical component of your system.
What you might end up with from a partner who isn’t invested in you is a system that looks like it works but because of how it is internally implemented, does not work in a way that will fit your business. Always choose a partner who takes the time to understand why your business works the way it does.
One of the most overlooked areas of Dynamics 365 implementations (and other software systems) is User Adoption. That is, the process of bringing new users of the system online and helping them be effective with the tools they’re given.
There are many different types of people in the world and your organization and userbase will contain a wonderfully varied mix of them. Do you have a plan for helping them understand what you’ve built?
If you aren’t lucky enough to have an internal “champion” who’s taken on the role of guiding new users you’ll need a plan that helps those who are new to your platform come up to speed. This area, above all others, is one of the most difficult challenges of the implementation of any software system.
Welcome to the fourth article in the model-driven app series! Today we will look at the Components in a model-driven app. This series includes six articles that will help you to get to know and use model-driven apps and PowerApps:
If you haven’t already familiarized yourself with the Site Map and how it works, take a moment to read the blog here. After you have created your Site Map, the next step is to add and define the various components on the App Designer.
Components are displayed on the right-hand side of the App Designer:
The Site Map is your foundation and the components are the building blocks you layer on top to build your App. Components are comprised of:
Once you start adding entity assets to your App, you can really work on streamlining and enhancing your end user experience! Always keep in mind who your audience is for this App. What are the only pieces needed for this group of users to do their job? The minimum amount here is key. Give them only what they need in order to successfully do their job and eliminate all of the other noise. This is my favorite part about model-driven apps and Dynamics 365. This sort of thing used to require custom code – and now I can use simple configuration to accomplish the same thing.
Now that you have created a Site Map for your app and added all components to is (both artifacts and entity assets), your model-driven app is really starting to look good! The final two parts of this series will cover properties you can set and why this is important to your end users.
