You may occasionally need one or more of these URLs for integration with other applications or components such as the e-mail router, or you may need your Organisation name to licence a third party plugin or solution (which is a rather annoying GUID if you use CRM Online, rather than the actual name of your Organisation as it appears in your URL).

Whether you are using CRM Online or have CRM 4.0 or 2011 installed on your own servers or hosted by a partner, you can find all the URLs you might need by going to Settings > Customization > Developer Resources as shown in the screenshot below:

When you click on the link you will see something like this:

Notice that the Discovery Service endpoint is the same for all CRM Online implementations in your territory, starting https://dev.crm… Outside the US replace “crm” with “crm4” for EMEA and “crm5” for Asia Pacific. The Organisation Services for SOAP and OData both use your organisation’s “friendly name” rather than the GUID.

Earlier information made it clear that the key aspects of this update would be to make CRM available to a wider range of clients, specifically by providing cross-browser, cross-platform support. Whispers had also indicated that some form of ‘real’ client for one or more mobile operating systems. Today’s press release is titled “Microsoft Unveils Microsoft Dynamics CRM Mobile” and the opening lines confirm the rumours:

Next Microsoft Dynamics CRM service update will include a new, cloud-based, cross-platform, native mobile application…This service update will deliver the capability for customers to access the complete functionality of Microsoft Dynamics CRM on virtually any device with a new cloud-based, cross-platform, native mobile client service for Windows Phone 7, iPad, iPhone, Android and BlackBerry mobile devices.

So, before discussing the news any further, the first thing to do is go and read some of the official information. The new General Manager for Dynamics CRM, Dennis Michalis published an article on the CRM Community blog entitled “CRM Anywhere” which looks like it will become the shorthand phrase to describe many of the changes being delivered in this next update.

A more lengthy and detailed discussion of the full range of features expected to be included in R8 can be found in the Release Preview Guide (aka February 2012 Roadmap). There is also some great information and various screenshots at the roadmap page of the CRM microsite.

So, the key features of the release will be:

• Cross browser support including Firefox 6+ on Windows and Mac OS-X, Chrome 13+ on Windows and Safari on OS-X and iOS 5 (iPad 2). Oh, and a little thing called Internet Explorer 7+ on Windows.
• Native mobile client for Windows Phone 7.5, iPhone 3GS / iPad (iOS 5), Google Android 2.2, RIM Blackberry 6 / 7
• Support for SQL Server 2012 when it is released
• Extended functionality of the “social CRM” features in R7 based around Wall Posts / Activity Feeds
• Support for custom workflow assemblies in CRM Online, previously not an option and for some customers a reason to go with an on-premises deployment instead.
• New UI options to give users a more responsive experience when doing read-only operations.
• “Template” solutions for a variety of vertical industries

Multiple supported browsers

One of the most common requests from customers will finally be answered with support for the most popular browsers on a range of operating systems. These do not require the latest versions in most cases, and although no Linux systems are specifically supported, it may well be that appropriate browsers will work anyway.

Native mobile client

This is the big one in business terms. A ‘real’ application that can be run on various smartphone devices for the users that need a much richer experience on the move than has previously been provided by the Mobile Express service or via a browser. Crucially, the apps are planned to provide for offline access to data for when network connections are unavailable. This won’t be a free option however, but is expected to be charged on a monthly basis per user, pricing not yet finalised.

For most customers this is likely to be an option reserved only for those who really need it, and of course may require an investment in devices not already used in the business. Ironically, the one platform which won’t have offline capability on day one is Windows Phone 7

Of course, there are other vendors in this “mobility” space such as CWR Mobility, Resco and Ten Digits. They already have existing customers and partners and flexible development platforms which will help them to retain some market share, but inevitably some new customers may not look any further than Microsoft themselves to provide an end-to-end service.

More tomorrow when I’ve digested the rest of the details.

I also wrote about how you can get qualified in CRM  through the MS Dynamics CRM 2011 Certification Tracks and Exams. Again, some of this was getting out of date so I have included information in this single post about the courses and the exams to take if getting certified in CRM 2011 is your goal.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 is going through a period of very high adoption, with many CRM 4.0 customers upgrading their on premises system to CRM 2011, or switching to a cloud solution with CRM Online. People with skills in Dynamics CRM are in high demand as a result, as well as internal staff looking for ways to get their knowledge updated to the latest version.

Microsoft Official Courseware (MOC) courses for CRM 2011

Although there are four main exams (Applications, Customization, Installation, Extending) there are many more courses, most of which are already released, others around the corner. All of these are discussed in this article.

What’s Missing?

November 2011 saw the R7 release, which was also rolled into Update Rollup 5 (and UR6). This included new features such as the Activity Feeds / Posts / “What’s New” wall for internal social-media style following of updates. Other highlights included changes to charting capability through the UI (multiple series for example) and some additional field types being supported in dialogs (lookups and dates in particular), as well as record URL values being available to Workflows without extra code.

None of the official courses cover this material yet, and none of the exam requirements list the need to know about it, although in the real world you may want to get familiar with these areas in order to get the most out of the features available.

Unchanged CRM 2011 courses

What’s New in CRM 2011

The “What’s New in Dynamics CRM 2011” course 80289A is probably a little bit “old hat” now and I don’t expect many people would sign up for this one-day introduction to CRM 2011. Note, this course does not cover new features in the R7 release (see above), it covers things which were new compared to CRM 4.0. Having said that, none of the courses below have been upgraded to cover this content yet either, but it’s the “what’s new” title which could be misleading here.

Applications Courses

The big difference from the CRM 4.0 approach is the splitting up of Applications into four separate one day instructor-led course:

80290A: Marketing Automation in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011

80291A: Sales Management in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011

80292A: Service Management in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011

80293A: Service Scheduling in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011

80290 covers Marketing Lists, bulk (aka Direct) e-mail, Templates, and Campaigns. 80291 includes sales-oriented Goals, Reports, exporting to Excel, some charts, dashboards and Workflow processes. 80292 deals with Service Cases, Contracts, Queues, using Workflows with Queues, service-related Goals, Dashboards and Reports. 80293 specifically looks at service activities, services, resources and booking these using built in scheduling tools and conflict checking.

These four courses, plus some real-world experience, should provide you with the necessary knowledge to pass exam MB2-868 – Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Applications.

Installation and Deployment

80296A: Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Installation and Deployment is two-days of instructor-led material, during which you will actually install CRM 2011 from scratch (in a Virtual Machine environment).

Coverage includes different installation and upgrade scenarios including internet-facing deployments (IFD), how all the components fit together, including things like the e-mail router and Reporting Services. This course gives you the core information you need to prepare for exam MB2-867 – Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Installation and Deployment.

New or updated courses and exams

New version of 80294  Customisation course

80294B: Customization and Configuration in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 is a three-day classroom based course which is designed to prepare you for exam MB2-866 – Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Customization and Configuration.

I taught this updated B revision for the first time last week and it was a huge relief compared to the A version with almost all the kinks and errors ironed out. This is a pretty full three days, so come prepared for long hours and lots of information. Even if you have some knowledge of CRM 4 there is sufficient new material covering the new features to make this course really worthwhile if you are considering an upgrade. Theoretically the course covers all the skills needed to build and customise your CRM 2011 deployment to meet your business requirements.

There’s lots of coverage of the organisational and security model (business units, security roles, users and teams, and field security), other key features such as managing auditing and using solutions, and plenty of material on customising entities, fields and relationships and on the front-end user interface components such as views, charts and forms.

What you won’t cover is anything to do with processes (workflows and dialogs), how to use JScript for client-side event-driven interaction, Reports, .Net plugins etc. Lots of areas which may feel like “customisation” are intended for end-users to do for themselves and so are covered on the applications courses (eg workflows, reports), others are seen as “developer” topics and are dealt with on the Extending course 80295 (see below).

New! Workflow and Dialog Processes in CRM 2011

Course 80444 Workflow and Dialog Processes in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 has been announced for release in March. I am pleased this is still a one-day course and kept separate from customisation as there is a key target audience here for super-users and business managers to be able to build their own workflows or dialogs to help manage their day-to-day processes within specific areas of the organisation.

It would make sense for some people to do the four applications courses or 80294B followed straight on by this new Processes course. I would certainly not suggest anyone take this course as a starting point if they do not already have a good grasp of CRM (4 or 2011), how entities and relationships between them work, and the types of data and business processes they need to manage.

Given the timing of this course release, it does look very likely that it will include coverage of the latest R7 features such as using lookups and date time fields in Dialogs, allowing users to go back through a Dialog without losing answers they already provided, and using dynamic values in Workflows to create Activity Feed posts with “mentions”, and including URLs in e-mails which provide links to records for the recipient. Once the course actually arrives I’ll confirm these and update this post.

This course does not have a specific exam associated with it, although it will help give a deeper understanding of Processes, which are included on exam MB2-868 Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Applications.

Introduction to CRM 2011 – new course

Course 80442 Introduction to Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 provides an introduction to CRM 2011 in a new one-day instructor-led format. This is ideal for people with no previous experience of Dynamics CRM as a foundation for other courses.

It is also aimed at business managers or project teams at an early stage of their implementation (perhaps still undecided if CRM is the right platform) to give them a grounding in the core capabilities of CRM without getting too bogged down in the technical details not taking the several days required for the Applications or Customisation courses.

The course covers key CRM concepts, the Web browser interface, Outlook CRM client, searching and reporting, data import, mail merge, charts and dashboards.

This course does not have a specific exam associated with it.

Extending CRM 2011 – exam now available

Course 80295A Extending Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 was released in August 2011 and is a three-day course aimed at Developers who need to write custom code, plugins and workflow assemblies to provide functionality which is outside the capabilities of the core application itself. This course also covers related areas such as client-side programming with JScript, customising the Ribbon and the Sitemap by editing the XML for a solution and integration with other systems using a variety of techniques.

The related exam MB2-876 Extending Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 was released in December so people who have already taken this course can now finally prove their skills. Now that all the key exams are out, hopefully there will soon be some news on exactly what the requirements are for the various IT Pro Tracks, but at the moment the Microsoft Learning page for Dynamics CRM Certifications is still only listing CRM 4 qualifications and requirements.

Administration in CRM 2011 – still no official news

I have not yet seen any announcements regarding an updated Administration course to match and replace the previous80002 Administration in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0. If I find out anything about plans for this, I’ll update this post.

Problem description / reproduction steps

I created a custom entity in CRM 2011 to use as a joining entity in a manual N:N relationship. In this scenario it was an “Attendance” record to link a Contact to an Event, and enable the business to track the status of the attendance (tentative, confirmed, attended, cancelled) along with relevant dates etc.

To reduce effort on the user’s part I made the primary “description” field on the record auto-filled based on the event and contact name, using jscript web resources. To observe sensible UI practice, I made sure the lookup fields came at the top of the form, then the description which was a result of those, so it should be obvious to the user what to fill in first, then by the time they get to the name field it is already filled in.

A blank new record form is shown below.

So, what went wrong?

When the user creates a new record, they expect to be able to get on with the job of typing in the fields. Although the Event or Contact was automatically filled in if they created the record from the context of the parent record to make life even easier, this still means that sometimes they needed to fill in one or the other field, and that’s where it got strange.

The Event field is first on the form, and you might naturally expect it to take focus when the form loads, ready for typing. No such luck. Even worse, it was not possible to click in this field and start typing to use recent items or wait for the record name to be resolved. Clicking where the mouse is pointing in the screenshot did nothing; the field behaved almost as if it was disabled. Except the lookup button itself was enabled and the user could click here, do a search and choose a record that way, albeit that takes longer.

Nothing I did or could think of would work, the field simply would not take focus at all. This was using IE9 and CRM Online – all latest stuff, surely that should work best?

So how did I fix it?

As it happens I had another bug with IE9. If I got impatient waiting for a form to load, or realised I had clicked in the wrong place and did not want to load the wrong things, I would usually just close the window before it finished loading. This turns out to be a great way to crash IE9 using CRM – if you close a form before it is fully loaded and rendered, it can kill you whole session, which is far from ideal when you have several windows open, especially in the middle of a batch of customisations.

So I logged that bug on the Connect website. And someone from MS helpfully replied with a possible fix, by changing a registry key for IE9, ironically designed to guard against the browser hanging (well, I guess crashing would tend to avoid a hang…)

So I applied the fix:

Create the following Registry Key Value to disable the Hang Resistance feature:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main\
Type: REG_DWORD
Name: HangRecovery
Value: 0

and I still don’t know if it will stop IE9 crashing quite so much, but it sure has helped my ‘broken’ form to work properly. Now it takes the focus on the correct field when I click on it, and even opens the form with the focus already where it should be.

So I sorted it by trying to fix something else altogether. Typical. What’s the best thing you’ve ever managed to get working without actually knowing how?

CRM 2011 Update Rollup 6 has been was temporarily withdrawn

The downloads for UR6 were down for a while but are now back up, showing a published date of 20th Jan 2012 and a build number of 5.0.9690.1992 as opposed to 5.0.9689.1985 as was the case when they were first released. All the links and URLs remain the same, only the actual files to download have changed.

Microsoft still have not published any official information that I can find as to why UR6 was removed from the download center, what faulty behaviour it had and how critical the issue was.

“Nuke it from orbit, it’s the only way to be sure”

My recommendation if you already installed the redacted UR6 for the Outlook client is to uninstall the CRM client completely and re-install. It seems happy to keep configuration settings and evens saved credentials (eg for CRM online) so this is relatively painless and much more certain to work.

I previously tried just running setup over the top and was asked if I wanted to uninstall or repair the app, so I chose ‘repair’ but on checking in the Outlook client under File > CRM > About Microsoft Dynamics CRM it still showed the old build number, so I was not convinced this worked very well.*

*your mileage may vary. If you have applied the new build over the top on the server or any other components I’d be grateful if you could share any useful information or experiences in the comments for others to benefit from.

Original and edited blog post…

What is in UR6 and where to download it

A very quick post to get people straight to the information and downloads:

The Support KB article 2600640 about CRM 2011 update rollup 6 and all the fixes included is here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2600640 Note: you can’t uninstall UR6

Downloads of the update rollups for server, router, clients, BIDS, MUI etc. are all here <edit> and are now all updated to build 5.0.9690.1992 :

http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=28712

If you have downloaded some of the updates and are not sure which ones you have, either go and download them again “just in case”, or if you have slow download speeds or limits on your total data volumes you could check the MD5 hashes first:

Outlook client UR6 32 bit (update only) has an MD5 hash of F537E8C3FF3FF1BA76028C07713B50F6, while the 64 bit client is 78CBBD33E035C9DDF5794F13B000243E.

Server is 64 bit only, and the MD5 is 1753B49EB935D051A4B319EFCC7265F3

Install and update ready-rolled

You can also get updated versions of the installation files with UR6 “slipstreamed” in so you can install in new deployments in one step rather than two.

Outlook clients with UR6 built-in can be downloaded here:
http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=27821 (don’t forget you need the 32bit i386 or 64 bit AMD64 version to match your Office install, not your OS version). MD5 hash for 32 bit version which most people are probably looking to install is 426EBAB49CEA5EDEE0018DEB137AB09C

Download Dynamics CRM 2011 server with UR6 built in:
http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=27822

Build number should be 5.0.9690.1992 after you have installed things.

If you are using Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online and download the Outlook client today <edit: this is what I wrote on 12th January when the update was first released>, this is already at UR6 (just in time for go live on my current project as it happens!). For on premises or existing installations, install the UR6 update files or wait for them to come out via Windows Update on January 24th.

<edit: this date has not been changed in the KB article since the re-release of the new build, so it seems like this is still on track>

Happy Rollups!

Just for the record…

Earlier I updated this post because UR6 was pulled for a while, so just for posterity and to make sure any readers have the full picture and are not confuzled, here’s what that edited bit said:

A possible problem seems to have arisen with Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 UR6 and the downloads have been withdrawn from the download centre pending further investigation by Microsoft so the URLs in this blog post do not currently work.

If you have already downloaded UR6 the advice is to not install this and await a later re-release before installing. Since UR6 cannot be uninstalled (other than completely uninstalling CRM 2011 this is a bit of a blow if you have already gone ahead with it, but hopefully the fixed version will be able to install over the top.

According to the article on the “CRM in the Field” blog this affects the Outlook client, so it may turn out not to be an issue for the server or other components:

“A Microsoft CRM 2011 Client for Microsoft Outlook issue has surfaced, and the Update Rollup 6 packages for Client and Server are being temporarily removed from the Microsoft Download Center pending our investigation. Please hold off on downloading Update Rollup 6 until new packages are available.

If you have downloaded UR6 packages for any components, please discard them and wait for an update on our investigation and the release of new packages.  If you have installed them, please note that the issue appears to be related to Outlook Client sync and prepare to install a newer build when it is available.”

Customising the Opportunity form

I have been customising various entities and forms to build the system to suit the particular customer’s requirements. One of the things I was changing was the Opportunity form. I added some of the custom fields, moved some things around and tidied is up generally. Published and everything seemed fine.

Estimated Revenue always read only

Then I noticed that I could not put a value in the Estimated Revenue field. It was dimmed as unavailable, read-only, “move along, nothing to do here…”. Nothing I did would change this, Est. Revenue was always read only.

I had quite deliberately already changed the “IsRevenueSystemCalculated” field default to “User Provided”, and this is the value it correctly showed up on the form.

In general this organisation will be quoting their clients as part of longhand written proposals or formal RFPs for very flexible services work which does not lend itself well to using the Product Catalogue, although they may do that later for standard, fixed price, “commodity” services they offer. So their Opportunities will be used to manage the sales pipeline but not to figure out the values for them, and user provided figures are the most sensible way to handle this.

If I changed isrevenuesystemcalculated to “System Calculated” it correctly added in a value (£0.00 at the moment since I have added no line items) and it remained dimmed, as it should. Change it back to “User Provided” and nothing happens, still read only and unavailable. Currency was set, no Price List was added (and none needed as there would be no line items). All very strange.

What else could be causing this?

I had included Est. Revenue in the form header, and thought this might be causing the problem in some way because it would be a read-only field, but I removed it and it made no difference. I checked and rechecked that there were no scripts or anything else that could be affecting this behaviour. Nothing.

But one other thing that I had changed from the default OOBE is the way the field was displayed – rather than a pair of radio buttons I had chosen to save some space on the form by showing isrevenuesystemcalculated as a picklist since the user would only very rarely want to change this.

Switching back to radio buttons fixed the problem.

Why would this be buggy?

So it seems that the built-in functionality which is triggered by changing this field and updating the Est Revenue field accordingly is not particularly flexible. As far as my testing shows, it looks like it explicitly uses the status of the radio buttons as part of the DOM, rather than the underlying value of the bit field to figure out the state of the user selection in the isrevenuesystemcalculated field.

I would argue that this is a bug, since it should be possible to display this field in any way I choose. Albeit if I chose a single check box the label would need to be more explicit than simply “Revenue”, and I have a feeling this would not work in any case as I am not sure if selecting and clearing a checkbox triggers an “onChange” event in the way other operations do.

Have you had any similar experiences where the built-in functionality is very picky about how things are displayed, or where changing the default forms has affected things in strange ways? Please feel free to share via the comments.

You can now properly integrate CRM 2011 with SharePoint online – in other words the SharePoint list component can be installed and configured properly and the previous problem whereby you could not get the SharePoint online server to serve up .htc files which are a vital component of the “seamless” document management experience enjoyed by on-premises customers has been resolved.

This also means by extension that you now use CRM online with SharePoint 2010 online (eg via Office 365) for a totally cloud-based setup. Note this is supported for SharePoint 2007 and 2010, but only 2010 gives the completely integrated look and feel inside CRM.

Thanks to Donna Edwards for tweeting this article by Eric Boocock: CRM Integration with SharePoint online is here

Previous problem is described and documented very well by Jukka Niiranen here: Office 365 launches without Dynamics CRM integration

More information on how to setup SharePoint to work with CRM 2011 is on MSDN:

Official E-learning, classroom training and books

The easiest way to find all the official Microsoft options in one place is to start with the Microsoft Training Catalog for CRM.

This includes Online training courses and instructor-led classroom training which map to the exams, as well as some courses which are more general (such as 80442 Introduction to CRM  2011). The classroom training also provides links to search for training providers near you, although this simply lists partners that may or may not offer the specific courses you are looking for, so you will need to check their own websites to see if they have public scheduled courses to suit you.

You will also find links to the exams with full details of the objectives covered and their weightings. There are also links to “Learning Plans” which guide you to resources specifically aimed at gaining the skills to pass a particular exam, but it seems that all the plans available describe the CRM 4 tracks, not CRM 2011

Confusion over e-Learning course codes

I have seen various comments in blogs and forums about not being able to find the appropriate online training courses which match the available classroom training. it seems that Microsoft sometimes add an “e” on the end of the course code – for example if you look at the preparation materials page for exam MB2-866 CRM 2011 Customization it shows the classroom course 80294A and online training 80294AE.

However, if you visit the CRM training catalogue linked above and try searching for this code, you simply won’t find it. You need instead to search for the “regular” code and it will show the classroom and e-learning options.

As a further tip, I would generally drop the final letter which signifies the “revision” of the course (version number if you like). If you search for revision “A” after the “B” version has been released you may get no results, or worse may be guided to the old revision which has been superseded by an improved, error-corrected and refined version. You will see from the Customisation exam preparation materials page that a B revision is mentioned, but not linked, showing that this is planned and in progress, but not yet released.

Get Microsoft Official Courseware for free!

Yes, it’s true, you can get hold of the Microsoft Official Courseware (MOC) documents for CRM entirely free and perfectly legitimately. All you need to do is become a Microsoft customer for CRM – which you can do simply by signing up for a free 30 day trial of CRM online. Once you are signed up you will get access to “Customer Source” – a portal with all kinds of useful information and resources, and access to download a pdf version of the training courses.

What’s the catch?

This is a great way to get hold of the training materials and at the same time sign up for a 30 day trial of a live CRM environment where you can try things out to hone your skills. However, the courses include various lab exercises to walk you through the skills being demonstrated, which depend on having the virtual machines installed and set up with this pre-prepared environment which is ready to use. The only way to get access to those is through an approved training provider, so you will have to figure out and work through your own examples to see the same functionality in action, and in some cases this can be a bit of a pain.

Also, if you prefer to read things on paper where you can also scribble and make notes it may cost you quite a lot in printing. Of course it is possible to just write separate notes, or to use software to annotate the downloaded files. Even Adobe’s own Acrobat Reader has a feature to add comments, I’m told, although personally I use Foxit Phantom to edit and comment pdfs. This can get clunky and awkward and works best if you have a dual monitor setup (or two machines).

The biggest downside is that you don’t get free access to a Microsoft Certified Trainer (MCT) who is an expert in their subject to walk you through the course, answer specific questions you may have, help out with areas you are unsure about and add loads of value by incorporating their own real-world experience into their training. If you are trying to learn about CRM 2011 from scratch (ie you are not fully up to speed on CRM 4) then instructor-led training in a classroom environment with all the right virtual machines is definitely the best option. (Of course, I would say that, as an MCT myself.)

User and administrator guides

Microsoft have recently released some documentation which is intended to help users get the most out of their CRM solution. These are Word documents which are simply consolidated and reformatted information from the CRM 2011 Help provided with the on-premises version.

Personally I find these much more useful than the help system if you are trying to actually discover and learn new things about CRM. The online help is sometimes easier if you are simply trying to find an answer to a specific task.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 User’s Guide

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Administrator’s Guide

One tip if you are using Word 2010 is to turn on the Navigation pane – go to the View tab of the Ribbon, and tick the box for this. You will now have the “contents” shown as a hierarchy of all the headings in the document and you can simply scroll and click to navigate, which is much easier than having to go back to the contents pages and click links from there. The Navigation pane also incorporates the search feature, so it appears if you press Ctrl+F as well.

Quick Start Guides

As well as these longer reference documents they have also produced a couple of “Quick start” guides. These are very thin on content and really only of use for people who have signed up for CRM online directly and not had the benefit of working with a Microsoft partner who would (I hope) provide at least this basic level of training as part of a system handover.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Quick Start Guide for Business Users

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 for Outlook Quick Start Guide

Other resources

In a follow up post I’ll provide some links to other resources, including great blogs and online videos to help you get to grips with CRM for your own business or prepare for the exams. In the meantime, please feel free to add more in the comments (but note that my usual zero tolerance policy on “braindump” sites or places hosting illegal copies of copyright material applies).

Of course, like every other exam this was done under NDA, so I can only give some general thoughts and not discuss specific questions or answers.

All change

I find many exams for a new product version like this seem to deliberately ask lots of questions about the new or changed stuff rather than the old elements that have remained largely the same (this was certainly true of the MCAS exams for Office 2007). I can only assume this is to avoid people coasting through on old knowledge from CRM 4, although it does seem to risk not testing some of the core knowledge.

Obviously some features are unchanged and some questions still cover them, but the feeling is that to pass the exam you really need to have studied the new material and properly practiced using these new skills. Of course, in the real world of actually getting on and using CRM 2011, knowledge passed along from previous versions is all very useful as well.

Are we nearly there yet?

In order to avoid worrying about running out of time, what I tend to do is make some very quick and rough calculations when the information comes up at the beginning about how many questions there will be and how much time is allowed. If it’s easy enough to work out in my head, I figure exactly how much time per question. If not, I just figure out for a bunch of them – however many makes the maths easier, say 5 or 6, and likewise round the time down a bit if it makes it easier to figure out, which also gives you some slack time at the end.

If you have 75 questions , you have 1/15 of the time for every 5 questions, and 15 is easy to divide into hours. So for a two hour exam that’s 8 minutes for every 5 questions (15 goes into 60 four times, so into two hours 8 times).

As you progress through the exam, try to answer every question first time through, rather than deferring any until the end. Periodically check whether you are on track for time. If you are, keep going at that pace, if not, then step it up and now consider leaving some until the end. If I hit a tricky question and I know I am ahead on time, I can afford to take a deep breath, go through it one more time and if necessary use up any of the “ahead” time I have to get it answered and still not get behind.

Overall, I was not pushed for time at all, and had plenty of opportunity to go back and review some questions which I had noted down as maybe deserving more attention, but did not need to change any answers.

Personally, when I read a question I tend to try and come up with the ideal answer in my head, then look for this in the options available. If I get exactly what I was looking for that’s great, and I can choose this answer with a high degree of confidence. Once you start reading the choices available it is easy to be confused by “distractors” – answers which are similar or close to the right one, but missing some important factor (such as they won’t work with a specific version of something mentioned in the question).

If you find an answer you like the look of, even if you can’t be sure why, my advice is always to go with your gut. You can spend a lot of time second-guessing your own answers and not really getting anywhere. There’s nothing more frustrating than going back and changing an answer, yet still not knowing if the original one was right. Trust your instincts, use the Force if necessary, but a subconscious half-memory can sometimes give you those few vital extra marks needed for a pass.

Choose all that apply

Yes, the much-hated “choose all that apply” type of question is back (this is not specific to CRM exams, Microsoft have publicly announced that this question type was being reintroduced). In case you don’t know what I mean, these are multi-choice, multi-answer questions where you don’t even know how many answers to select.

Often these are posed along the lines of “you want to do <some objective>. Which of the following would achieve this goal? (choose all that apply)” Variations might be that you need to choose all the answers that are each one part of an overall solution, or that complete the goal on their own.

Other questions using this style may be aimed at things like system pre-requisites – maybe the answers describe various combinations of hardware and operating system and you have to say which would be suitable to have software X installed (eg CRM server, or Outlook client).

My gut feel is always to select at least two, since it feels like a question with only one answer would not use this type, and I would probably avoid selecting all the answers as I assume at least one is incorrect to trip me up. But this is pure superstition and trying to reverse-psych the person who wrote the question, I have no evidence to say whether this is a sound approach.

CRM 2011 Solutions

One major change to the way CRM customisations are organised, and especially how they are imported and exported is the use of “Solutions”. I felt there were far more questions about this than I would have expected given the  skills measured page shows this objective is considered to be about 13% of the knowledge required.

You may also notice that Solutions are covered by one of the four areas under “Configuring a Microsoft Dynamics CRM Organizational Structure” as well as their own section, so maybe they are worth another 4% from there.

Either way, in order to level things up, all questions are weighted according to those percentage figures, so that even if you had 25 out of 75 questions on that topic, the scores are adjusted to normalise it back down to 13% (plus the extra bit for the overlap in other areas).

I would add that it is important to understand what happens when you layer managed and unmanaged solutions, and remove them again, possibly in a different order. What is the outcome in the real world of importing two solutions which both edited the main Account form?

Also what happens when you import a managed solution with or without managed properties and what can you then change or edit, and how does this affect solutions you import on top. I did not feel the MOC course materials or labs covered this in enough detail, so find some time to play with this a bit to feel comfortable with it.

Richard Knudson has boiled down some information on his CRM Trick Bag blog about how managed properties of managed solutions work, and what options are available, which I wish I had spent more time on as it seemed disproportionately represented on the exam.

A field by any other name

Another minor point for people who already know CRM4 – some of the terminology has changed so make sure you expect the new wording on answers and don’t dismiss these as “distractors”.
So, attributes are now called fields throughout the interface, since most people used to call them this anyway (except hard-core database folks who just call them columns, which may confuse end-users), and when you create custom attributes fields you need to choose the right data type, and the names for these have changed too.

Changes to Data Types for Fields

The data types in CRM 2011 are basically the same as in 4.0 but are now called different things in many cases, mostly more explanatory and verbose. Some might say this is to “dumb down” the techie speak to make more sense to normal people and end-user customisers:

*ntext is effectively deprecated and the new “multiple lines of text” uses nvarchar(max) instead for improved performance (now that CRM 2011 sits on SQL 2008 as a requirement).

I hope these few titbits will help anyone planning to take the exam in the near future. If you have any more tips of your own to contribute, please feel free to add them in the comments, or just use it as an opportunity to claim “bragging rights” when you pass!

PS: comments to this blog are moderated, so if your comment does not appear right away I may not have got round to approving it yet. If you are asking for, offering or linking to brain dumps, exam questions, “pass guaranteed” content or anything similar, don’t be surprised that your comment won’t see the light of day. I reserve the right to remove or edit any such comments as I see fit.

Matt Keenan wrote an interesting post about some of the CRM deadly sins over at his Dynamics Café blog. One of his categories that I particularly see happening all too often is “too much notification”.

Why do people do this?

I see this in initial customer specifications and requirements documents quite a lot, usually in the form of “When foo happens, send an email to person/group X”.

This is often born out of naïvety on the part of the person who has been tasked with figuring out how their processes should be managed using a system they have never seen yet. They respond by falling back on what they know and try to use their existing mechanisms (such as email) to tell people when something important happens.

I also find this in existing systems, sometimes where the original consultant has simply felt that if that is what the customer asked for, that is what they should be given. In other cases it is because not enough time has been spent on looking at alternatives or on training end users how to find information for themselves without having it pushed out to them over old channels.

I tend to be a bit more argumentative and ask “why do you want it do that?” “have you considered other options such as…”. Of course, if someone insists loudly enough I deliver what the customer has asked for, but I do at least try to explore with them whether they are taking the best approach.

How to avoid over-notification

WWTJS?

I might start by asking “is this exceptional? does this happen once a week, once a day, dozens of times every hour?”. “Is this simply a normal event that happens as a result of someone doing their job as expected?”.

WWTJS = “What would Tom Jones say”? If the answer is “it’s not unusual”, then notifications are probably not the right option.

If this is not an exceptional event but simply a normal stage of a standard process (winning a deal, closing a service case…), I strongly advocate not using email or similar tools to notify people. Let them come and find this information when they need it and have time to absorb it properly.

What to use instead

Give people a focussed view of the information they need which they can get to in no more than three clicks from anywhere else in the system.

Let the sales manager see in one place all deals closed in the last 24 hours / week / month (actually a view of the last month, sorted by date so the newest items are at the top can be a one-size fits all approach here).

Give account managers an insight into various events relating to one or all of their customers and decide which ones to focus on in more detail.

Make sure the Customer Service manager can see the workloads of their team members to ensure they are all getting things done and no one person is becoming overloaded.

This visibility may be as simple as a filtered list view, or part of a visual dashboard of charts to show high-level information with lots of drill down capability to get at the detail. The tool chosen to do this may be part of the CRM system itself, integrated into other systems or reporting tools, be presented as part of an in-house social network feed or be as simple as a spreadsheet which pulls live data from CRM whenever it is opened. No matter what the mechanism, this is all about self-service.

Using these views should be a natural part of the daily routine for these folks, just like checking their mail and their to-do list. This change of emphasis may need to be pointed out, and they may need encouragement and training to do this, but if they are diligent about their jobs it will make perfect sense.

It is also easier to extend this method to things which may be harder to manage with notifications, such as opportunities which have not yet been won, but are nearing their expected close date, service cases not yet completed but approaching their SLA deadline. Once a manager  is in the habit of checking the “completed things” view, they will easily migrate to then checking the “things not yet completed that might need attention soon”.

When are email notifications appropriate?

Things which are exceptional, outside normal bounds, not part of simple working everyday processes might be events that you really need to wave a flag about.

When a sales person wins a deal (which they hopefully already know about), and their order is processed by the finance team, they should not need to be notified. They can check in later and see the progress of their order through the system.

However, if their order is being rejected or delayed they might need to be alerted so they can help make sure the deal goes through. This might be an issue over outstanding late payments, credit limits needing to be increased, or a lack of funds available (perhaps where a customer uses third-party leasing to finance their purchase).

One other sensible use of email notifications might be if the person who needs the notification is a senior executive who does not “live” in the nuts and bolts of the CRM system all the time and would not necessarily be checking their dashboards often enough to pick up on something that happens in the middle of the day, but the event is exceptional enough that they need to know about it.

Some ideas of the sort of thing I usually have in mind when thinking of these kind of exceptional events:

• The 10 million dollar deal which is past the expected close date and could do with some assistance to secure it by month end.
• The service case for a priority 1 customer which is now 150% of SLA and still not closed. (hopefully middle management will have already been jumping on it at 95% based on the view they use daily).
• The new 5 year contract won away from your biggest competitor (executives like good news too! – maybe they can go pat someone on the back for it as well).
• The existing customer who has given notice that they intend to terminate their multi-million dollar contract. Can something be done to keep their business? Is it a price issue or a problem over satisfaction and service levels? Can this be turned around if given enough attention by the relevant senior people?

In some cases, using mechanisms such as SMS may be a more appropriate technology for alerting people to these kind of exceptions, although the medium is obviously limited compared to email, which can also contain things like links to take the reader directly to the relevant records.

Do you have examples of processes which justify using email notifications in your CRM implementation? Share your thoughts in the comments.