Ready, Set, GOALS!

Take advantage of Microsoft Dynamics 2011 CRM Goals Area to set Short and Long Term Goals for your Sales and Service.  You can track In-Progress and Actual Revenue Goals against target, as well as, statistical Goals for Individuals, Teams, and Organization.  Almost anything you enter into Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 can be tracked in the Goals area.   You can stop tracking your goals manually and utilize the robust functionality of your Microsoft Dynamics CRM system.

Below is a quick start “simple” demonstration to set-up Revenue Goals for a team.

Select Sales on the left-hand navigation pane.  Select Goals about half-way down under Sales Pane.  In the top ribbon of your screen, select new to create a new Goal. 

The first goal we will create is the Parent Goal.  This Goal will be the Team or the Organization Goal.  If you have individual goals, you could have three different goals.  One for the individual, One for the Team, and One for the Organization.  The Organization Goal is the Parent Goal of the Team.  The Team Goal is the Parent Goal of the Individual.    We will start with the Organization Goal, such as,  “Jan 2012 Total Sales”.  

Type into the Name Field  Jan 2012 Total Sales.  Since this is the parent Goal, you will not select a Parent Goal. 

The Goal Owner should be the individual who is tracking all the goals for the organization, such as, the Sales Manager’s user name.

The next field is the Metric field. Your Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 is already set-up with some basic metrics for tracking Goals.  For this example, we will be utilizing the Revenue. Select Revenue.

The next tab on the goal is the Time Period.  Select Fiscal Period.  Select January.  Select Fiscal Year FY2012 Fiscal Year.   If any of the fields look different, your Fiscal Period System Settings are set-up differently then the example I am demonstrating to you.  You do not need to change the system settings to configure the goals.  Your selection criteria may just be a little different that this view.  If you need to change the system settings, see your system administrator.

Just below the Time Period Tab, there is a Tab titled Targets.  In the Field Target (Money),  type in the Target Revenue Figure of $2,500,000.  At this point, your screen should look like the below screen.

 

As you scroll down the Goal, disregard the Child Goals for now.  They will be automatically added to the Parent Goal when we set up the Child Goal.   You can also disregard the Actuals Tab. 

On the Goal Criteria Tab, select Yes on the field titled Roll Up Only from Child Goals. 

As for the other fields, we will not use those fields for this demonstration.  They are used for more advanced Goal Setting. 

On the top Ribbon of the record, select Save and Close.

 

 

We will now set-up two Child Goals.  We will want to repeat the steps above to create a new Goal except we will change four fields. 

You will select New in the ribbon.  Repeat steps above except for below fields should be as stated below.

Child Goal #1

1.  The name should be Jan 2012 Deborah Burgesser Sales Goal.

2.  Select the Parent Goal using the Lookup.   The Parent Goal will be Jan 2012 Total Sales Goals.

3.  In the Field Target (Money), type in the Target Revenue Figure of $1,250,000.

4.  Leave NO selected on the field titled Roll Up Only from Child Goals.

Child Goal #2

1. The name should be Jan 2012 Brian Begley Sales Goal.

2. Select the Parent Goal using the Lookup. The Parent Goal will be Jan 2012 Total Sales Goals.

3. In the Field Target (Money), type in the Target Revenue Figure of $1,250,000.

4. Leave NO selected on the field titled Roll Up Only from Child Goals.

Once you have created these three goals, your My Goals for this Period should look like the view below.  Remember, if you are not the Goal Owner you will not see it in the view below.  You will need to change your view to Active Goals.

 

 

The next step will be to Select the Goal Name Jan 2012 Total Sales Goals.  Scroll down to the Child Records to confirm the two Goals are listed.

At this point, you can Recalculate the Goal.  Select Recalculate in the top ribbon of the record.

 

 

Once you Recalculate, you will see figures in the fields below on the the Parent, Team and Individual Goals respective to their figures. 

These records will be automatically recalculated based on your system settings.   Below are the default system settings in your Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011.   You can change it if you so desire.

You can see progress on your goals on the All Goals View.  Below is an example, utilizing Goals for Teams.  You can see the Target, Actual, and In-Progress side by side in this view.

 

 

I would love to help you set your Goals for 2012 so you can monitor your monthly and annual Revenue and/or Statistical Target, In-Progress, and Actual Goals.

If you have questions about setting up Goals within Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011, please do not hesitate to give me a call at 480-318-5860.   Deborah Burgesser, XRM Services or you can reach me by email at dburgesser@xrmservices.com.

What I did this summer…

It has been a busy summer at XRM services, and now that autumn is here, we want to let you know what we have been up to.

Brian has been engaged on a six month project in Omaha, assisting an organization with upgrading their CRM system from 4.0 to 2011.  It has been a great experience to work within an Agile project structure.  Completing your work in three weeks sprints has been a great way to keep from biting off too much of the apple at a time.

Debbie has been working on a couple of our larger clients in NYC.  Adding new features and functionality to an existing CRM 4.0 system has proven to be a bit disheartening, as we see all the benefits that CRM 2011 could bring to the client, but at this point they are not ready to move forward with the upgrade.

In addition we have identified two new resources who will be joining us to ensure that we provide our customers with the high level of support they deserve. One will be an additional Business Analyst with several years of CRM experience.  The other will be a .net developer who will assist in the development of plugins, Silverlight controls and custom workflow activities.

On the certification front, we continue to work towards obtaining Silver Certification for Microsoft CRM.  We are plugging the few open holes in our certifications – several of our exams were of the 3.0 flavor and are no longer relevant.  So it is off to CRM 2011 exams with their new formats. Thanks to Neil Benson for posting this valuable follow-up to Richard Knudson’s blog post of last week. I am planning on taking MB2-867 later this week.  In the meantime, Debbie and I have both passed MB5-858 “Managing Microsoft Dynamics Implementations.”  That was a tough one, but learning and using Sure Step has increased our client’s satisfaction.

Another certification was earned recently by Debbie – She is now an MCT – a Microsoft Certified Trainer. If you are looking for classroom training on Dynamics CRM, give us a call!

Finally, Brian is attending ExtremeCRM next week in Las Vegas – looking forward to renewing friendships with other CRM Partners.

So it has been a busy, busy summer here.  We look forward to the Autumn. More blog posts, more clients and building a better CRM partner to server Nebraska and the rest of the United States!

Independent Study details extensive quantitative savings and efficiencies from implementation of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011

The Microsoft News Center  is reporting that it has released the results of a Microsoft-commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting, “The Total Economic Impact of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011,” which captured and quantified the voice of the customer relative to the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Investments.   Forrester Consulting identifies several measureable benefits of implementing Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 in areas of personal and process productivity.  These benefits include the following:

• Multiple deployment options with cloud, on-premises and partner-hosted deployment models.
• Increased sales productivity of 5 percent resulting from ease of use of Microsoft Dynamics CRM and interoperability with Microsoft Outlook.
• Streamlined processes and operations leading to lower cost of sales, which enables technical consultants to shorten time spent on the proposal process by 10 percent.
• Acceleration of sales conversion cycle by 50 percent and corresponding revenue gain as a result of improved collaboration and connections across systems, processes and geographies.
• Marketing cost savings of more than $200,000 due to more real-time insights and improved campaign management from better analytics.
• Productivity savings of 16 man-hours per month due to the better reporting tools, data consolidation, reporting automation and richer dashboard capabilities.

Forrester Consulting point out in their study notes that “companies looking to implement Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 can anticipate significant productivity gains and cost savings.” 
For more information on the study, click here.  The Total Economic Impact of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011. 

Please email us at getXRM@xrmservices.com for your free 30-day Trial and a complimentary demonstration using your own information to test the system.  You can reach us at 480-318-5860.  Subscriptions for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 start at just $34 per user.

CRM 2011 Update Rollup 2 is available - Build Number 5.0.9688.1155

Go Here for the bits:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2466086

Build number and file names for this update rollup

The build number of the update packages for the following components is 5.0.9688.1155.

• Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Server
• Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 for Microsoft Office Outlook
• Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 E-mail Router
• Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Report Authoring Extension
• Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Language Pack
• Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Reporting Extensions

The file names for the 32-bit versions of the update rollup packages are as follows:

• CRM2011-Client-KB2466086-LangID-i386.exe
• CRM2011-Router-KB2466086-LangID-i386.exe
• CRM2011-Bids-KB2466086-LangID-i386.exe
• CRM2011-Mui-KB2466086-LangID-i386.exe

The file names for the 64-bit versions of the update packages are as follows:

• CRM2011-Server-KB2466086-LangID-amd64.exe
• CRM2011-Client-KB2466086-LangID-amd64.exe
• CRM2011-Mui-KB2466086-LangID-amd64.exe
• CRM2011-Router-KB2466086-LangID-amd64.exe
• CRM2011-Srs-KB2466086-LangID-amd64.3exe

Download the 2466086 package now.

Issues that are resolved in Update Rollup 2 for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011

Update Rollup 2 is a cumulative update rollup that includes all the fixes for the issues that are documented in Update Rollup 1.

For more information about Update Rollup 1 and the issues that it resolves, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

2466084  (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2466084/ ) Update Rollup 1 for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 is available

Update Rollup 2 contains the following additional fixes. None of these fixes are documented in a separate Knowledge Base article.

• Assume that you perform a POC migration on a Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 organization. A multiple auditing error occurs when one of the following scenarios is true:
  • You create a new record for an entity when the auditing setting is enabled.
  • You change an existing record for an entity when the auditing setting is enabled.
  • You disable the auditing setting.
• Assume that you browse to the Accounts page. Then, you click Accounts on the navigation bar. In this situation, an increase in memory usage occurs.
• If you create a workflow that has a wait condition, the workflow is delayed incorrectly in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011.
• When you upgrade Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 to Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 by using a non-English base language, you receive the following error message:
  'XPKLocalizedLabel'. Cannot insert duplicate key in object 'MetadataSchema.LocalizedLabel'.
• If you open the Resource Group Creation page by using Internet Explorer 9 in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011, you cannot close the page as expected.
• Assume that you have many custom entities that have relationships to activities in a Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 deployment. When you try to set the Regarding field for an activity, you receive the following error message:
  Page Not Found.
  Additionally, when you click the Regarding lookup button, the Lookup dialog box does not open successfully. 
• When you install or delete the sample data in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011, an unhandled exception error occurs.
• Assume that you install Update Rollup 1 for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011. If the update fails, the version information in the registry is updated incorrectly.
• When you use Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 for the Japanese language, the Dynamics marketplace is not localized to Japanese language.
• No throttling mechanism exists for send requests that are sent from Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 clients for Microsoft Office Outlook in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011. Therefore, too many background send requests can be sent to the server at the same time. In this situation, you experience reduced server performance.
• Consider the following scenario in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011:
  • You create a new email message template that has an unsubscribe link.
  • You create a new email message in Microsoft Office Outlook.
  • You insert the template into the email message.
  • You send the email message.
  • You click the unsubscribe link in the email message.
  In this scenario, the To field and the Subject field are populated incorrectly.
• Assume that you customize the Access Mode attribute for the SystemUser to have a default value of Read or of Administrative. When you add a user by using the user invitation wizard, the wizard fails with an exception error.
• Assume that you enable Verbose tracing in an organization in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011. When you run the UpdateContractStates job, the async service fails with an exception error.
• Assume that you create a sync task that reports to you when a job is finished in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011. When the job is finished, you receive an email message that contains an incorrect URL. However, the URL should link to your organization.
• Assume that you have multiple organizations in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011. Each organization has different custom entities. In this situation, if each organization has the same object type codes, an error occurs with the parameter filtering.
• Assume that you have multiple entities that have identical display names in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 and that duplicate detection is enabled. In this situation, you cannot open the duplicate detection rule form.
• Assume that you have an entity that has duplicate detection rules that are published in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011. When you save a record in the entity, you receive some unhandled exception error messages.
• After you install Update Rollup 1 for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011, "Update for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011" instead of "Update Rollup 1 for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011" is displayed in the Add or Remove Programs list.
• After you install a Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 client for the Finnish language, "Microsoft Dynamics CRM 5.0 for Microsoft Office Outlook" and not "Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 for Microsoft Office Outlook" is displayed in the Add or Remove Programs list.
• The French translation of the form preview is incorrect in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 for the French language.
• There is no batch load mechanism for loading ribbon caches in the caching infrastructure in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011.
• The client API cannot access subgrids in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011.
• The French translation for the Referential, Restrict Delete type in the Behavior option in the "1:N Relationship" form is incorrect in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 for the French language. The type is translated as "delete restriction" instead of "restrict deletion." 
• Assume that you have some roles that support multiple record types in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011. When you create a connection that uses the roles, you receive the following error message:
  Record types are not defined for use with the selected connection roles.
• After you upgrade to Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011, some old Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 files are not deleted as expected.
• When you add users in a multiple-site domain in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011, the save process takes longer than expected.
• When you upgrade or import a database whose name contains a hyphen in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011, the upgrade or import fails. 
• Assume that you have a subgrid that has an autoexpand control set in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011. Another autoexpand control is set for the subgrid side-by-side. In this situation, the size of the container of the subgrid does not respect the size that is specified in the form editor. A white space is displayed unexpectedly under the data in the subgrid container. 
• Assume that you create a record that is a duplicate of another record but without accent symbols in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011. In this situation, the duplicate record is detected. However, the duplicate record is not displayed.
• After you uninstall Update Rollup 1 for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011, the version number of the product is incorrect.
• Assume that you install Update Rollup 1 for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011. Then, you start the uninstall process for Update Rollup 1 for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011. When you cancel the uninstall process, an empty dialog box appears unexpectedly.
• Assume that you import and update an organization from Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 to Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011. If the length of a system attribute exceeds a value of 100, the import fails.
• When you publish a rule in the Duplicate Detection Rules dialog box in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 for the Japanese language, the Status Reason field is displayed incorrectly.
• The Severitycode field and the Prioritycode field are translated to the same Japanese words in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 for the Japanese language.
• When you delete the sample data in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011, an unhandled exception error occurs.
• Assume that you create a new mail merge template in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 by using Internet Explorer 9. Then, you reopen the mail merge template. In this situation, when you save the mail merge template, you receive an error message that states that the name field has to have a value.
• If the Data field in a bulk delete async operation is null, the async service crashes.

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Hotfixes and updates that you must enable or configure manually

Update Rollup 2 for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 contains the following hotfixes and updates that you must enable or configure manually. To enable or configure these hotfixes or updates on the server that is running Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011, follow the instructions in the following Microsoft Knowledge Base article. The article contains steps that you can follow before you install Update Rollup 2 for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 if you want to maintain the functionality of the release version of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011:

2535245  (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2535245/ ) You experience slow performance when you perform RetrieveMultiple queries on large datasets in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011

Do you want to view only the webpage content that was delivered securely?

 

Recently several clients have asked for help with this warning window:

While not strictly a CRM Issue, it does affect usage of CRM as it is one more click of the mouse.

The good news is that this warning message can be prevented in three easy steps.

1. Go to security tab of internet options
2. Choose Custom level
3. Change “Display Mixed Content” from Prompt to Enable

Click OK to Restart IE.  Problem Solved.

Mark your calendars–ClickDimensions Webinar June 1

Our friends over at ClickDimensions are hosting a different kind of webinar on June 1.  ClickDimensions is our favorite tool for integrating CRM with Web Analytics and E-mail marketing.
This live workshop will include examples of real world campaigns where Microsoft CRM was used to:

• Double a newsletter list in two weeks using a unique approach toward email marketing and lead scoring
• Develop an easy way to improve web traffic by understanding the quality of visitors by traffic sources
• Implement a strategy for creating great content that positions your firm as a leader
• Apply simple tips for search engine marketing and search engine optimization
• Provide sales with easy to use automated prospecting and marketing tools to make them more effective and efficient
• Identify how to best use the right social channels to drive business value

In order to make it easy for anyone in different time zones to attend, the webinar will be offered four different times – 8AM, 11AM 2PM and 7PM (all times ET).  So no excuses – sign up today.
Register Here to attend