Saturday, April 12, 2014

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 New Features

Quick Create form – this very basic form allows you to quickly enter a record. For example, if you’re on the phone with a Lead and want to quickly capture their name and phone number in CRM without having to navigate to the lead entity, this new feature is a great addition. You can customize these forms to include the type of information you would want to quickly enter.

Quick View forms – this feature allows you to bring in data from related entities. For example, if you are working on a Case record and want to view basic Account information on the Case form, you can use a Quick View form to do that. This is a read only mode view, but we anticipate this being an area that Microsoft expands in the future. Wouldn't it be great to update related record information on one form?

Portable Business Logic / Business Rules – this great addition provides an intuitive way to write simple code that was otherwise reserved for someone with development / coding experience. You can do things like set field values, show/hide fields, set required/recommended fields and validate field data. This is a really cool addition to CRM 2013.

Guided Processes – a new visual process display can be made available that guides the user through pre-defined processes. Multiple processes can be added to each record type - think sales process for inside sales vs. outside sales. A sales organization can make sure each required step in each pipeline phase is completed before moving to the next pipeline phase.
Real time / Synchronous Workflows – processes in CRM 2011 always ran in the background requiring a user to reload the form to see the end result of the workflow. CRM 2013 now introduces processes that run immediately and update the form in real time.

Auto Save – once you’ve created a record, this new feature automatically saves information on your form triggering every 30 seconds as well as when you leave the form. This batch updates any changes made to the form without having to remember to hit the Save button. This is a system wide setting, so you either use Auto Save on all forms or you don’t.

MoCA – otherwise known as “Mobile Client Application”. MoCA refers to the (free) mobile app that can be downloaded to your phone, tablet, or even desktop. This new mobile app renders your existing CRM forms as mobile forms. These mobile forms are limited and are restricted to 5 tabs or 75 fields and 10 lists, whichever one comes first. Also, IFrames are not supported. Global search is supported in the mobile client so you can now search across multiple entities, whereas, in the full web client the ‘Quick Find’ only searches within a specific entity.