Looking for self-paced training for Microsoft Dynamics CRM?

Check out the CRM Basics eBook for a quick run-down of essentials for new users. The Microsoft Dynamics CRM Basics guide contains the essentials you need to know to navigate the system, enter data, and move your customers through the sales cycle or resolve a service issue successfully.

We only included just what you need to know to get productive right away, and we kept every topic as short as possible.

Get valuable learning even if your system has been customized

Even if your system has been customized to match your business (and you use different names or your screens look different), you’ll still find the CRM Basics guide useful, because we only included tasks that anyone using the system would do, no matter how the screens have been changed.

You can read the guide straight through in order, or only read the topics you’re interested in. Or, if you’re the person responsible for training people at your organization, you can walk through the topics in the training sessions you do with employees.

Use this guide to create your own training materials, if you want

To make it easier for you to create your own training materials, we’re even giving you a link to our editable files, so that you can replace screen shots, change the text, or use your own logo – whatever works to make the training materials match your system and style. You can use an editable Word version of the eBook as your starting point, and customize it to create your own instructor-led training.

The Training and Adoption Kit also includes other great content that you can customize to fit your needs.

Find more answers and training online

To find more eBooks, videos, and other great content to help you get the most out of Microsoft Dynamics CRM, check out the CRM Customer Center from a connected computer, tablet, or phone.

With Microsoft Dynamics Marketing you can unleash your marketing potential. You can easily plan, execute, and measure campaigns from start to finish. Bring your marketing vision to life—engage customers across channels, build pipeline, and demonstrate the impact of your marketing.

Now you can spin up your own free 30 day trial of Dynamics Marketing - just go to http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics/marketing-test-drive.aspx and we will get you started quickly.

Click either "Brand Manager" or "Campaign Manager" under "Microsoft Dynamics Marketing" (1) and then click "Start TestDrive"

You are presented with the TestDrive offering - a guided click-through showing some of the features in Dynamics Marketing. To start the test drive click the yellow dot (1) and follow the steps

After the test drive you can click "Start Free Trial" (1) to spin up a free 30 trial of Dynamics Marketing

Fill in the information (the below screens is from a danish trial experience, my native language - you'll be presented with dialogs according to your language)

When the information and authentication is done you are taken to the admin area of the Office 365 tenant.

IMPORTANT

You'll notice that the "Marketing" link in the blue navigation bar (2) is inactive.
You will need to access the Dynamics Marketing Settings page to set a default currency and accept the license agreement in order to activate the "Marketing" link

To access the Dynamics Marketing Settings page, open a new tab in your browser and type:

https://(your tenant name).marketing.dynamics.com

A minimum requirement is for your to provide the currency (3), and accept the license agreement (4). When that is done you can click "Submit" (5) without being presented with warnings

You are now ready to pick the role you'll play in Dynamics Marketing (eg. Media Buyer) (1) and start your Dynamics Marketing experience (2)

For at series of blog posts to help you explore the features of Dynamics Marketing click here

As always I'd encourage you to contact your preferred Microsoft partner for a managed trial experience.

Enjoy.

Note:

• if you want to skip right to the trial you can click http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=399078&clcid=0x409
• If you are presented with an error message when you click the trial link you can try pasting the above link into a browser in which you are in a private/incognito session

With Microsoft Dynamics Marketing you can unleash your marketing potential. You can easily plan, execute, and measure campaigns from start to finish. Bring your marketing vision to life—engage customers across channels, build pipeline, and demonstrate the impact of your marketing.

Read more about Dynamics Marketing in this series of blog posts

One question I get a lot is - how do I set up users and security in Dynamics Marketing. In this blog post I'll cover user types, priveleges, and access levels in Dynamics Marketing

User Types

In Microsoft Dynamics Marketing there are three types of users that require an Office 365 user account:

1. Regular User
2. Media Buyer
3. Web Portal User

A fourth user type is "Public" users, which are individuals that do not require being added to Office 365 to access select publically available Microsoft Dynamics Marketing functions.

"Regular User" and "Media Buyer" users are created by an Office 365 portal administrator and must be assigned a Dynamics Marketing license. "Regular User" is the default user type. You can change this to "Media Buyer" on the Microsoft Dynamics Marketing user form if the user requires advanced media buying or planning roles. The user Type defaults to Regular. "Web Portal" users are created by creating the user in Office 365 as well but not assigning a license.

Users without priveleges in Dynamics Marketing can not log into the application.

Setting up a user

1. Add a user record to the Office 365 admin portal (you'll need to be a portal Administrator to do this)

Next you must must assign a role or privileges to the new user before he/she can log into the application

2. Click Settings and then Users

3. Double click the user to open the priveleges dialog

4. In the upper right select the user Type. Note since I didnt provide the user any licenses in O365 I cannot select the user Type - its preset to "Web Portal"

For each of the areas in the left side of the dialog (eg "Media") you can set one or more priveleges (eg. to work with "Tear Sheets"). A privilege includes an access level associated with a specific function.

There are five access levels. Not all privileges have all five levels of security.

1. "View My": View records belonging to the user
2. "Edit My": Create and edit records belonging to the user (also requires View My)
3. "View All": View all records
4. "Edit All": Edit all records (requires View All)
5. "Approve all": the user can approve all Component Requests, Project Requests, and Equipment Requests.

5. Set the priveleges and access level needed and then click Submit

When a user is created in Office 365, Microsoft Dynamics Marketing does two things. First, a contact record is created. Then, a user record is created and associated to the contact record. Data is associated with the contact record. If a user record is deleted from Office 365, the Microsoft Dynamics Marketing contact record remains intact along with the data.  A contact record cannot be deleted if a user record is associated with it. User detail is edited in the admin portal, such as First Name, Last Name, and Display Name.

Contacts added through Office 365 are added to the Staff contact group in Dynamics Marketing

The following fields are read-only in Microsoft Dynamics Marketing and must be updated in Office 365: First Name, Last Name, Display As, Title, Address 1, City, State/Province, Zip/Postal Code, and Country/Region. Office Number and Mobile Number fields are added to the contact form for Users and are also read-only. Phone 1 (Primary) and Email 1 (Primary) are available to complete in Office 365 and are also editable in Microsoft Dynamics Marketing.

User Experience

In the above example I added the user "Anders" as a web portal user (which doesnt require a MDM license - note in the O365 screen its says No licenses). I can grant Anders a few priveleges, eg to Notes

When Anders logs into MDM his user experience will look like this

He sees no widgets, he has no ability to add widgets, and can only access "Notes" in the "Projects" area.

I can go on and provide Anders with priveleges to the "Files" area too

Now when Anders logs back into MDM his user experience will look like this

Now he has the widget "Site Favorite Files", and access to "Files", "File Libraries", and "File Usage" under "Assets & Media" too.

Licensed user

Lets look at another user, Jesper, who is a licensed user in Dynamics Marketing

Jesper has the "Regular User" role, and as such has (only) a few "Media" priveleges

Now if I change Jespers user role to "Media Buyer" I can provide Jesper with several additional "Media" priveleges

I hope this gives you an idea about how you can work with user types, priveleges, and access levels in Dynamics Marketing.

Note

• Users without priveleges are blocked and will display a red icon next to their name
  
• The User dialog also presents you with a "Roles" button and dropdown.
  
  Roles are predefined collections of privileges, collected and named to map to real-world roles within a marketing organization. They make it fast and easy for you to set up a new user with exactly the right collection of features. They also enable you to manage that role centrally so that when you update a role with new (or fewer) privileges, your changes will instantly apply to all users that have that role. You can fine-tune access permissions for specific users by adding more than one role and/or granting specific privileges using the Privileges tab. Privileges are added together, never subtracted, so a given user will receive the sum of privileges from all roles and privileges granted to them.

See and manage which messages are reaching your contacts in the new Seller Portal

The Seller Portal in Dynamics Marketing gives you an overview of which marketing messages are reaching which specific contacts. This is important information for salespeople, making sure that they are well informed about which communications their customers have been receiving when they meet with them.

The portal also enables salespeople to remove specific contacts from campaigns and/or emails that they think will not interest those contacts. The display is similar to the marketing calendar in Dynamics Marketing and includes much of the same functionality, plus extra features designed for salespeople (see also Keep track of company-wide projects with the marketing calendar).

The seller portal is designed to be accessible by Microsoft Dynamics CRM users, with handy links and integrated functionality available inside CRM. If you are a CRM user or administrator, then see Dynamics Marketing for Dynamics CRM users for an overview of how to set up the integration and find those features of Dynamics Marketing that are most likely to be useful and available to you.

To open the "Contacts Seller Portal"

Use the "Contacts Seller Portal" to view and manage marking communications targeted at each contact. You can access it from Dynamics CRM as well as Dynamics Marketing

To open it, do one of the following:

If you are working in Dynamics CRM
x

1. Go to Sales -> Contacts in CRM and filter to find the contacts you wish to inspect
   
2. Mark the contact(s) you wish to inspect
   
3. Click the More button (...) at the top of the screen to open a menu and then click View Marketing Portal
   
   x

If you are working in Dynamics Marketing

1. Go to Marketing Execution -> Marketing Database -> Marketing Contacts to view a list of all marketing contacts in the database.
   
2. Mark the check boxes for each contact you want to inspect
   
3. Click the "Seller Portal" button in the toolbar.
   

The "Contacts Seller Portal" page opens.

You'll see a a Gantt chart with a linear calendar next to a column that lists the contacts you selected. See below for tips and details for working with the portal.

To open the "Accounts Seller Portal"

The "Accounts Seller Portal" looks very similar to the "Contacts Seller Portal", but focuses on companies rather than individuals. An important difference is that you can view all of the individual contacts associated with a given company and also choose which of them should be included in a given campaign.

Just like the "Contact Seller Portal" you can access it from Dynamics CRM as well as Dynamics Marketing

To open it, do one of the following:

• If you are working in Microsoft Dynamics CRM
  1. Go to Sales -> Accounts in CRM and mark the Accounts you wish to inspect.
  2. Click the More button (…) at the top of the screen to open the menu
  3. Click View Marketing Portal

• If you are working in Dynamics Marketing
  • Go to Marketing Execution -> Marketing Database -> Marketing Companies to view a list of all companies in the database.
  • Mark the check boxes for each company you want to inspect 
  • Then select the Seller Portal button  in the toolbar

The "Accounts Seller Portal" page opens, which displays a Gantt chart with a linear calendar next to a column that lists the companies you selected. See below for tips and details for working with the portal.

Working with the seller portals

View, scroll and zoom the Gantt chart

Both the "Accounts Seller Portal" and the "Contact Seller Portal" display a Gantt chart showing a linear calendar next to a column that lists the companies or contacts you selected to inspect. Adjust the view options so that you can see all of the information you need as follows:

• Use the time-range controls (Today, Year, Quarter, Month, or Week) to control how many days you can see in the chart, essentially zooming in and out.
  
• Use the left and right scroll arrows, located above the upper right corner of the chart, to slide the view forward or backward in time.
  
  
• Use the Filter button to adjust the set of campaigns displayed as needed.
  
  

Drill down to view campaign and messaging details

Both the "Accounts Seller Portal" and the "Contact Seller Portal" provide the following features:

• Each of company or contact targeted by at least one campaign displays an Expand button (+) to the left of their name in the left column.
  
  
  
• Select the Expand button (+) to expand the display of all campaigns that target the listed company or campaign. A timeline for the campaigns will now be shown as a Gantt chart on the calendar.
  
  
  
• You can continue to drill down into a campaign either by using the Expand buttons (+) in the left column or by selecting the down-arrow in the Gantt chart. Here you will be able to see any emails and other communications that have or will be sent to contacts.
  
  
  
  
• Hover the mouse pointer over any item in the Gantt chart to see a tooltip displaying summary details for that item.
  
  
• To see complete details about any campaign, email, or other campaign element select its name in the left column or on the Gannt chart. The details will open in a fly-out window, so you can view the details without leaving the Seller Portal.
  
  
  
  
• Past and future emails are handled slightly differently. All emails scheduled for future delivery are shown for each contact or company. However for emails already sent, the portal only shows those mails that were actually received; bounced emails and emails blocked due to cross-campaign rules will not be shown.

Special features of the "Accounts Seller Portal"

The "Accounts Seller Portal" focuses on companies, each of which may have one or more contacts working for them. However, not all campaigns targeted a given company are necessarily of interest to all of that company's contacts. Therefore, you are able to see a list of contacts working for each company and to block specific contacts from campaigns that have not yet started, thus preventing all associated mails and other initiatives from reaching them.

Each campaign includes an Edit block list button to the right of its name in the left column (the button also shows a number indicating how many contacts are blocked);

You can select this button to open a pop-up that displays all of the contacts from that company and campaign.

The window includes two columns: contacts in the left column will-receive/have-received communications about that campaign, while contacts in the right column will-be/have-been blocked. For future campaigns, you are able to move contacts between the columns; to do so, select a contact and use the arrow buttons between the columns to move contacts back and forth as needed.

To view a summary of all the ways a given contact has engaged with your marketing messages, select the contact's name in the blocked/not-blocked pop-up. A fly-out will open showing that contact's Marketing Engagement. See also See how contacts are engaging with your campaigns for more information about this display.

Special features of the "Contacts Seller Portal"

The "Contacts Seller Portal" focuses on individuals rather than companies, and therefore provides a more detailed engagement analysis for individuals while also enabling you to remove individuals from campaigns and/or messages that are unlikely to interest them.

• To view a summary of all the ways a given contact has engaged with your marketing messages, select the contact's name in the left column. A fly-out will open showing that contact's Marketing Engagement. See also See how contacts are engaging with your campaigns for more information about this display.
• You are able to remove specific contacts from campaigns that have not yet started, thereby preventing all associated mails and other initiatives from reaching them. Campaigns that were/will-be sent to a given contact show a Check button to the right of its name in the left column; campaigns that were/will-be blocked for a given contact show a Blocked button  here. For future campaigns, you can select this icon to toggle the blocked/not-blocked status for a given contact and campaign; for past campaigns, this is read-only.

Add alerts to track contact interactions

Once you have an overview of which contacts will receive which messages in connection with which campaigns, you might also like to receive alerts when key contacts interact with the messages by opening emails, claiming offers, registering for events, etc. See Work with alerts for details about how to configure alerts for these types of events and more.

Note

The seller portal is an add-on solution for the Dynamics to CRM connector. After the connector is installed and set up, you can install the seller portal solution. Please note that MDM and CRM must be in the same tenant for the Seller Portal integration to work.

For more information see Install the Microsoft Dynamics Marketing Seller Portal solution for Microsoft Dynamics CRM

.

Thanks to Dynamics CRM 2015 and Dynamics Marketing, Sales and Marketing are now closer than ever.

See also

• More blog posts on Dynamics Marketing - link
• More blog posts on Dynamics CRM 2015 - link

Dual Use Rights allow CRM Online User Subscription Licenses (USL's) to access on-premises CRM servers - eg. CRM Online Pro includes Pro CAL rights, etc.

All server licenses are still required, as are all other Client Access Licenses (CAL’s) e.g. Windows CAL. Dual use rights are provided by the CRM 2015 Server license

Use Dual Use Rights to:

• Add new on-prem users when planning a cloud migration
• Supplement a CRM Online Deployment with a CRM Server for eg. Dev/Test purposes
• Access a licensed CRM Server instance running in Azure

Microsoft Social Listening (MSL) is a powerful new service that your organization can use to monitor social media channels like Facebook and Twitter. Use Microsoft Social Listening to track products, brands, competitors, and campaigns globally and in real time to gain a true understanding of your customers and your business across the social web.

Dynamics CRM Online customers with 10 or more Pro USLs are eligible to Social Listening licenses for those Pro users.

If you'd like to see the MSL information in your CRM, you will need to configure your CRM to use MSL. Just navigate to Settings -> Administration and click Microsoft Social Listening Configuration (3) to open the Microsoft Social Listening Configuration dialog

In the Microsoft Social Listening Configuration dialog click to dropdown (1) and select your MSL subscription

If you do not see a subscription in the dropdown, it might be because you haven't assigned a Social Listening license to any user in your organization. Then you need to assign one or more users in your organization a Social Listening license and we will set up your solution

In other words - you need to toggle the eligibility criteria check box under licenses for a least one user

Steps in O365

1. Login as O365 Administrator
2. Go to Active Users
   
   
   
3. Select a user to assign a license to
   
4. Click the Edit link
   
5. Toggle the eligibility check box
   
   
   
6. Save the changes for the user
7. Wait until Social Listening is provisioned and then access the Microsoft Social Listening Configuration dialog again. You should now see your MSL subscription listed in the dropdown
   

See more blog posts on Microsoft Social Listening here

Business Process Flows were first introduced in Dynamics CRM 2013 as a new feature. With the release of Dynamics CRM 2015, this feature has been enhanced further to allow more complex and rich Business Processes.

Business process flows define a set of steps (2) divided in stages (1) for you to follow which leads you to a desired outcome. These steps provide a visual indicator that shows you where you are in the defined business process.  For instance, you could be guided through the Lead to Opportunity sales process using Business Process Flows. 

In Dynamics CRM 2013, the experience for Business Process Flow was unique to only Business Process flows.  The UI gave a graphical view of what the process may look like but it required additional navigation to build the entire process.

The experience in Dynamics CRM 2015 has changed a bit. The UI now follows the same as Business Process rules giving you, as a System Customizer, the ability to create a Business Process Flow in a single edit experience. The stage and step configuration, branching rules and the selection for entity relationships are all done on the same Business Process edit window.

In CRM 2013, Business Process Flows were very linear.  You waited until each stage was completed and then you were able to move on to the next stage.

With CRM 2015, it is now possible to have Business Process Flows change the next stage or future stages with your input from the current stage. 

This allows Business Process Flows to be more relevant based on the details you has input.  These changes are done in real-time so it allows you to get instant feedback on the data you've entered within the Business Process. This is done by rule branching and merging.  To branch a Business Process, you can now use If/Else If/Else conditions for Business Rules Logic that was enhanced with CRM 2015.

In the screen shot below a new stage "Incubate" (3) is inserted after the "Qualify" stage if (2) the step "Purchase Timeframe" (1) in the "Qualify" stage is set to the value "This Year".

The condition is defined in a UI similar to the Business Rules UI

So when working the "Lead to Opportunity" process, if I pick "This Year" in the "Purchase Timeframe" step...

....a new stage "Incubation" is inserted after the "Qualify" stage and before the "Develop" stage

Previously in CRM 2013, you could only loop back to the primary entity once. This limited the flexibility for a process to work with other entities and then loop back to the primary entity multiple times. Within CRM 2015, a Business Process can go into and out of the entity loop as many times as it is necessary. 

You can now choose any entity to be a part of the Business Process. There is one limitation here. The entity must be enabled for Business Process Flows (1)

Not all out of the box entities can have this option enabled.  However, all custom entities can.

Unlike CRM 2013, there is no longer a limitation for Business Process flow steps to only be able to use entities that contain a 1:N relationship with the associated entity.  Nor do you even need to define a relationship when defining other entities within a stage. 

Other Limitations

• A branch can only go five levels deep.  The UI will still show the Add branch button but clicking it will not add another branch
• The conditional statements, (if/else if), can only use fields defined in the previous stage.  Even though the editor shows all of the fields as being available, the field within the condition statement is required.  If a field being used in a condition that is not defined in the previous stage, you get an error icon next to the problematic statement upon saving the Business Process.
• Just like with Business Rules Logic, conditions cannot use a mix of AND or OR logical operators.  When defining the second and/or statement and flipping the operator to the opposite operator, the editor will cause all and/or operators to change to the one that was just defined.

I hope you'll enjoy this new capability and build yourself rich and powerful processes that will help you get the desired outcome.

If you (as a CRM Online customer) ever wondered if your organisation did receive an email from Microsoft, it might be helpful to know who is the administrator of your organisation (and hence is on the receiving end of communications from Microsoft). Hopefully these links will be of help:

• Identifying Your Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online Administrator(s) - link
• Managing Email notifications in Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online - link
• Create your Mailbox rule (to set up email notification redirects for your team) - link

In previous versions of Dynamics CRM, calculations required developer support.  It required additional code to be written and deployed through plug-ins, javascript, etc. 

This additional code required developers to maintain and update them which causes additional costs. As more records are is created in Dynamics CRM and as the business logic in these calculations evolves, there is a higher risk for performance degradation.

With the release of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2015, two new fields are being introduced to help some of the more common calculations done in CRM now; Calculated fields and Rollup Fields. Rollup fields and calculated fields can be used independently or complementary to each other.

In this blog post I'll talk about Calculated fields.

Calculated fields lets you, as a System Customizer, define the value of that field by using calculation operators or functions.  A developer no longer needs to write code to accomplish such a task. The calculated fields comprise of calculations that use fields from the current entity or related entities.

For example, you might want to know the weighted revenue for an opportunity which is based on the estimated revenue from an opportunity multiplied by the probability.

Or, you might want to automatically apply a discount, if an order is greater than $500.

Calculated Fields are not limited to numeric fields.  For instance, a calculated field can set a Phone Number for an opportunity based on the Account or Contact information.

They can also work with date fields as well.

A calculated field can contain values resulting from a various amount of operators.  Let’s take a look at what consists of a calculated field.

Calculated Fields are very flexible in the terms of what Data Types are supported. We support the following data types:

• Single Line of Text
• Option Set
• Two Options
• Whole Number
• Decimal Number
• Currency
• Date and Time

To make a field Calculated you:

1. Pick a Data Type, eg. "Date and Time" or "Currency"
2. Set the Field Type to "Calculated",
3. Click the Edit button next to the Field Type drop down to create the field and open the Editor

Creating a calculated field uses the same editor as Business Rules or Business Process Flows. 

The editor has been enhanced in CRM 2015, specifically for Calculated Fields we've added intellisense. This allows you to type in the logical or display name of a field or function and get suggestions of the available fields or function similar to what has been typed.

When setting the value of a calculated field, you have the ability to choose different functions or operators that allow the data to be modified in certain ways.  We’ll quickly cover the different functions and operators available based on Data Types.

The Math Operators are the typical math operators so we won’t really go into them here.

• = (Equal)
• + (Plus)
• - (Minus)
• / (Divide)
• * (Multiply)

The String Functions are

• CONCAT(single line, single line, single line…)
• TRIMLEFT(single line, whole number)
• TRIMRIGHT(single line, whole number)

CONCAT add single lines of text together. These can be fields or can be actual lines of text. If using lines of text, the text will need to be encased with double quotes.  For instance, we want to concatenate the Contact’s First name with the Account Name. 

If we simply Concatenate those two fields, it would have show SidneyBlue Yonder Airlines (sample) without a space between Sidney and Blue.  You can see below, a space was added in between the two fields.

TRIMLEFT takes a single line of text and trims that number of characters starting from the left and working it’s way to the right.

TRIMRIGHT takes a single line of text and trims that number of characters starting on the right and working it’s way to the left. 

Finally, we have Date Time functions which is going to take a date time and either add or subtract the specified numbers of Hours, Days, Weeks, Months, or Years.

• ADDHOURS(Whole Number, Date and Time)
• ADDDAYS(Whole Number, Date and Time)
• ADDWEEKS(Whole Number, Date and Time)
• ADDMONTHS(Whole Number, Date and Time)
• ADDYEARS(Whole Number, Date and Time)
• SUBTRACTHOURS(Whole Number, Date and Time)
• SUBTRACTDAYS(Whole Number, Date and Time)
• SUBTRACTWEEKS(Whole Number, Date and Time)
• SUBTRACTMONTHS(Whole Number, Date and Time)
• SUBTRACTYEARS(Whole Number, Date and Time)

Example

In this example I've created a custom entity with two custom (Date and Time) fields; AnyDate and OneWeekLater (calculated)

When I created the OneWeekLater field I picked the Data Type (Date and Time), then I chose Calculated for the Field Type, and finally clicked the Edit button to create the field and enter the Editor

In the Editor the Date functions available to me allowed me to calculate the date one week after the date picked in the AnyDate field (using AddDays(7, new_anydate)) and stick that date into the OneWeekLater field

Testing the calculated field

Picking "Dec 25 2014" for AnyDate

Calculated field displays "Jan 1, 2015"

I hope you'll enjoy Calculated Fields in CRM 2015 once its there

Since the official launch of the Dynamics Learning Portal (DLP) on Sept 09th this year, the DLP support team keeps helping the Microsoft Dynamics partners get access to the portal.

The three main issues that prevent partners access on their first visit to the portal are:

1. Valid service plan to access e-Learning i.e., they don’t have a training pack
2. MS account authentication needs attention
3. Employee is not included in PartnerSource Business Center (PSBC) database

In an attempt to reduce the amount of support escalations on both DLP support and MBS IT support teams, we've created a short video (11 minutes) with the steps that partners can follow themselves to resolve their DLP access issues.

Access the video here

After clicking on this link, you will be see the DLP Help area that includes FAQ, Videos and System Requirements. The video is called “Resolutions to common issues when accessing DLP for the first time”.

With the CRM for Tablets application - released in CRM 2013 - we gave sales people compelling and powerful mobility scenarios. Sales people can get their work done from the device and location of their choice.

Data is cached in an Offline Cache (HTML 5 local storage) allowing salespeople to access (read only) previously viewed information in the application when offline. See this blog post "Understanding CRM for tablets offline scenario" for more.

For CRM 2015 we plan to enhance the offline support to enable the following key scenarions in offline mode

1. Add notes to existing records (records already on the server)
2. Add opportunities to existing records using associated grid/lists
3. Add new records for entities (without lookup field support)

When you go offline, you'll see a 'create new' button in the all entities list respectively for which you has create permission.

The Dashboard command bar will have the "+" for global entity create similar to online mode

All records which are created in offline (and not yet saved to server)  will be present in the Drafts Records view.

When clicked a record is opened in the quick create form with the Close and Save draft option. Fields are editable and you can make changes to this draft.

Lookups will not be user editable in offline create/update scenarios. This includes partylist, owner and customer lookups. When you open the offline drafts in online mode, the look-up fields and attachments are enabled again.

The “Add new opportunity" button when clicked from the associated grid for the account and contact will autopopulate the customer lookup (Account or Contact). You cannot edit this lookup field in offline mode and hence the opportunity specific to the context of the customer would be locked.

When you go offline, you can add notes to the existing records which are available offline. Notes can be correctly created and associated to corresponding parent records when the Tablet client goes online again.

Save records to CRM when back online

Once you are back online you can tap the reconnect button on the Tablet app and connect to CRM in the same manner as for CRM 2013.  Using the sitemap you can navigate to the Drafts view where you can see all offline created notes and records in the drafts view and take appropriate action (eg make minor changes and then save to server)

Draft records are removed during Sign Out. The Tablet app will warn you if you try to sign out and still have unsaved drafts

Important Considerations

Creating Drafts

• Only new Draft records can be created (you cannot modify existing records offline)
• New Draft records cannot be added to other Draft records
• Quick create forms are used for Draft create/update experience
• New Draft records cannot be created from a full grid

Lookups

• No lookup/partylist editing support while offline
• Creating record from a parent record can auto populate a lookup field

Save Drafts to Server

• Drafts do not automatically sync once reconnected
• Drafts must be manually saved to the server individually (no Save All option)
• Draft records are removed during Sign Out
• Drafts will block metadata sync

Dynamics CRM 2015 has not been released yet. The above described product capabilities and themes are subject to change.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online has a number of capabilities that allow customers to surface business data that helps them drive decisions and interact with their customers more effectively.

Capabilities that are available within CRM Online include:

• views
• charts
• dashboards
• Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services reports
• Microsoft Office Excel integration that allows users to easily build self-service reports by using the Power BI features PowerView, PowerPivot, and PowerQuery

As the volume of data held within the CRM Online database continues to grow it becomes more important than ever to think about your BI strategy and determine the most effective mechanisms for reporting and visualizing large datasets.

In a CRM Online environment, the reporting infrastructure is shared and separate from the database. In this architecture, although customers share the resources required to run the report, each report runs against the customers’ individual database instance. Additionally, with CRM Online, users can run as many reports as they need whenever they want to run them to meet business goals. We do not place time restrictions on reports.

The reporting capabilities built in to CRM Online are designed to let users run reports on datasets that span shorter periods of time. Considering this, Microsoft Dynamics CRM has the following fixed settings:

• Reports and queries can execute for up to five minutes. When the maximum period is reached, the report will time-out and a message is returned to the user. Within the five-minute duration, reports and queries are allowed to span large datasets that are beyond 50,000 records, which provides significant flexibility to satisfy most operational reporting needs.
• To improve query response, we recommend that detailed reports minimize the display of large numbers of records. To do this, apply suitable filtering to reduce the number of records that are returned. When you create aggregated or summarized reports, queries should push the aggregation to the query rather than fetch detailed records to perform aggregation in the report. This can be done by using Fetch XML aggregation. More information: Use FetchXML aggregation
• For charts and grids displayed in dashboards, Microsoft Dynamics CRM allows users to run queries that have a dataset that is under 50,000 rows. Should a user run a dashboard query that span a dataset of 50,000 or more rows, Microsoft Dynamics CRM returns the message “The maximum record limit is exceeded. Reduce the number of records.” The dataset practical setting helps to ensure optimal performance of the CRM Online application.

For more on...

• Tips and solutions for reporting
• Third-Party Microsoft Dynamics CRM adapters for SSIS
• ETL tools

... please read on here

See also

• Dynamics CRM OData Feeds and Power Query: What’s the [Record]? - link
• Dynamics CRM 2013 and Power BI for Office 365 – Part 1 and Part 2

In a previous blog post "Visualize hierarchical data in CRM 2015" I showed you how to visualize the out-of-the-box hierarchy for Accounts.

To enable a hierarchy, you need to have at least one self referential 1:N relationship. After creating the relationship, you can select one 1:N relationship as hierarchy relationship. In this blog post I'll show how to do this for the Contact entity

Go to Settings > Customize and select Customize the System.

Fig. 1 - customize the system

x

Expand Contacts

Fig. 2 - Contacts entity

x

Click 1:N Relationships and then New 1-to-many relationship

Fig. 3 - relationships

x

Select Contact as “Related Entity”. Provide a name. Specify this relationship as "Hierachical" . Select “Yes” to “Hierarchical”. Provide a Display Name for the Lookup Field

Click Save and Close

Fig. 4 - define relationship

x

Navigate to Contact > Hierarchy_Settings and click New

Fig. 5 - hierarchical settings

x

Enter unique name and select any card (quick view form - you can customize those)

Click here in the 'Please click here to mark a relationship as hierarchical' string to open the dialog

Fig. 6 - mark as hierarchical

x

Select the newly created referential 1:n relationship and click Done

Fig. 7 - select relationship

x

Note the Hierarchical Releationship box now lists the relationship

Fig. 8 - verify selection

x

Navigate to Forms, and open any form - eg Contacts

Fig. 9 - edit form

x

Add the relationship lookup field ("Parent Contact") to the form, and then publish all customizations

Fig. 10 - add Lookup field

x

Now done with the configuration set the “Parent Contact” for several contact records and see Hierarchy view

Fig. 11 - define parent

x

Fig. 12 - contacts with hierarchy icon

x

Fig. 13 - visualization one branch

x

Fig. 14 - visualization another branch

x

Note: Dynamics CRM 2015 is in beta when writing this blog post. Things can change between now and the actual launch of the service

Model and visualize hierarchical data to gain valuable business insights

Previously, you were able to create hierarchies of related records using self-referential relationships, but you had to iteratively query for the related records.

In Dynamics CRM 2015 - expected to be generally available in the fourth quarter of 2014 - new capabilities will let you query and view the records as hierarchies. To query an entity as a hierarchy you must enable a One-to-Many (1:N) or Many-to-One (N:1) self-referential relationship as hierarchical.

You can gain valuable business insights by visualizing hierarchically related data. The new visualization feature gives you a hierarchical view into the data. You'll be able to enable visuals for specific system entities and custom entities after you have updated the hierarchy settings for the entity.

Users can choose between a tree view, which shows the entire hierarchy, and a tile view, which is a detailed view of a smaller portion of the hierarchy. You can explore a hierarchy by expanding and contracting a hierarchy tree. Also, you can compare the attributes between the records at multiple levels in a tree and perform actions on one or more records right from the tree view.

Once defined, the hierarchy settings enable visualization in the CRM Web application and in Microsoft Dynamics CRM for tablets, but, for the tablets, in a modified format suitable for the smaller form factor. Because these visualizations are solution components, they can be transported between organizations like any other customization. You can configure the attributes shown in the visualization by using the customization tools in the CRM Web application. There is no requirement to write code.

Example

The Account entity is hierarchical by default - I can designate parent and childs to a an account. In the below example I've created the top account "Microsoft Corp", with two childs "Microsoft Europe" and "Microsoft Middle East and Africa (MEA)". "Microsoft Europe" has two childs "Microsoft Denmark" and "Microsoft Sweden", and "Microsoft Middle East and Africa" has one child "Microsoft Turkey" (obviously there are more childs, but this is just an example)

Fig. 1 - Accounts with Hierarchical Icon

If I open Microsoft Europe I can check to see the parent as well as the childs

Fig. 2 - Defining an accounts Parent Account

Fig. 3 - Child Accounts

Before CRM 2015 the above is what we had - now we have a great visualization. Clicking any of the Hierarchical Icons (see Fig 1) will open the visualization.

You can

• navigate the hierarchy by clicking the tiles as well as using the tree view to the left
• nagivate to lower layer by clicking anchor arrow under a card
• open a record by clicking icon on right upper corner.

Fig. 4 - Top of Hierarchy

Fig. 5 - Note the Open Revenue on Microsoft Europe (rolled up from child accounts)

Fig. 6 - Child Accounts of Microsoft Europe

Fig. 7 - Open Revenue on Microsoft Denmark and Sweden - rolled up to Microsoft Europe

Fig. 8 - You can navigate the hierarchy using the left tree view control too

So now its easy for you to traverse and explore the hierarchy. For example, from the hierarchical view for accounts, you can:

• See how an account is doing in overall revenue
• Drill into tiles for sub-accounts to see where the deals are coming from
• Find out who is working an account and enlist help from others by sending email or sharing the account with other salespeople
• View important details about each account, such as credit limit and latest activity posts for the account

See also

• New Microsoft Dynamics CRM breaks down silos between marketing and sales - link
• CRM 2015 Release Preview Guide - link

Sentiment Analysis

If you want to see how the public perceives your company or product, you can use sentiment analysis, which determines people’s attitudes toward a topic. Sentiment analysis reflects the public perception of a post’s content in relation to the keywords that were used to find the post (a post is a eg a Twitter post or a Facebook comment)

Each post that results from your defined search queries is processed by the sentiment engine in the original language and annotated with a calculated sentiment value. Sentiment values are provided for the following languages:

1. English
2. German
3. French
4. Spanish
5. Portuguese
6. Italian

The sentiment value results in a positive, negative, or neutral sentiment for a post. Occasionally, the algorithm identifies positive and negative parts of a sentence and still rates the post as neutral. This happens because the amount of a post’s text identified as positive or negative cancel each other out. A post is also classified as neutral if there are no positive or negative statements detected in it.

Note that the sentiment algorithm is not a self-learning system, even if you can edit any post’s sentiment value in the post list.

Understanding the Sentiment Engine 

Lets look closer at the sentiment engine using the example post below, in the context of the search topic "Windows Phone"

The Sentiment Engine breaks the post into two sentences

Then breaks these two sentences into individual words we can then analyze

Now that we've got the words identified we can attribute parts of speech to these words; "Having" is a verb, "An" is a determiner a.s.o

The words are then grouped (or chunked) together into phrases

Finally the phrases are analyzed and polarity are attributed to them. Some positive, some negative and some neutral phrases.

That is then stored in the system and we present the sentiment when we run the application. We retrieve the post with the actual positive, negative and neutral statements and we parse it at context, so since the search topic was "Windows Phone" we would look at this as a positive outcome.

Sentiment Index

The sentiment values from posts with positive or negative sentiment that match your defined filters are normalized and result in the sentiment index for your search topic. This index is calculated as follows

The number of positive posts MINUS the number of negative posts DIVIDED BY the total number of positive and negative posts MULTIPLIED BY 10

The sentiment index is normalized to a value between -10 and 10. All your active filters and parameters are taken into account to define the data set that the sentiment index is calculated for.
• A sentiment index of 10 means that there are no negative posts in your data set.
• A sentiment index of 0 means that there is an equal amount of positive and negative posts in your data set.
• A sentiment index of -10 means that there are no positive posts in your data set.

You’ll find the change in trend next to the sentiment index. Social Listening compares the sentiment index of the five previous time frames to the current value of the sentiment index in your time frame.

Want to know how we secure your data and privacy? Please take a look inside our cloud via these four short videos (links below)

Is your Data Safe at Rest?
When your data is in the Microsoft data centers or within Office 365 services can you trust that it is safe at rest?
Lead Office 365 engineer Vivek Sharma offers a simple walk through of the possible attack vectors and their mitigations at the physical, logical and user layers of Microsoft's defense in depth approach. 3-4 minutes in length.

Who has access to your data in the Office 365 Service?
When your data is in Office 365, who has access to your data? Director of Program Management, Vivek Sharma and Corporate Vice President of Development, Perry Clarke explain the operating principles and no standing access approach to limit access to customer data. Watch as they walk through the Just-In-Time access process called 'Lockbox'.

Why Trust Office 365?
When your data is flowing within our data centers and Office 365 services you expect to retain visibility and control. It's your data which means the freedom to move it, delete it, search it, and archive it. It's also a question of your security, privacy and compliance requirements being met as well as transparency over the health of the services supporting your business. Earning your trust is the focus of our engineering leadership. Hear from Rajesh Jha, Corporate Vice President of Engineering and General Manager of Office 365, Julia White.

How does Office 365 continuously meet your compliance needs?
Shawn Veney, Principal Architect in Office 365 Program Management shares an overview of the Office 365 Compliance Framework that allows for continuous compliance to changing regulatory needs and company compliance requirements. Watch as he shares the broader engineering vision and also unveils the controls available to you to protect company information and perform organizational searches.

Learn more about this topic in our trust centers

• Office 365 Trust Center
• CRM Trust Center

October 30th, 2014 you can get to know the new CRM 2015 better. Just sign up for either the Sales Track or the Technical Track using this link : http://www.microsoftdynamics-virtualevents.com

As always we'll accomodate time zones by offering repeat sessions

1. 07:00 - 10:00 US PDT (7 AM - 10 AM)
2. 17:00 - 20:00 US PDT (5 PM - 8 PM)

Planned topics (agenda available soon):

Customer Service
• CRM Online Admin Improvements
• Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2015 for Microsoft Outlook and Synchronization Enhancements
• Security Enhancements: Hierarchy Security Model
• Security Enhancements: Field Level Security changes
• SLA and Customer Service enhancements
• Business Rules Improvements
• Working with Calculated and Rollup fields
• Global Search Functionality

Sales
• Sales Product Taxonomy Part 1 (What’s new regarding the Product Catalog)
• Sales Product Taxonomy Part 2 (Creating Product Bundles and Families)
• Sales Product Taxonomy Part 3 (Working with products, bundles, and families in opportunities, quotes, and orders)
• Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2015 for Microsoft Outlook and Synchronization Enhancements
• Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2015 for Mobile/Tablets Enhancements
• Hierarchy Visualization Details
• Business Process Flows Improvements
• Social Insights for Microsoft Dynamics CRM On-Premise
• Global Search Functionality

Platform
• CRM Online Admin Improvements
• Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2015 for Microsoft Outlook and Synchronization Enhancements
• Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2015 for Mobile/Tablets Enhancements
• Security Enhancements: Hierarchy Security Model
• Security Enhancements: Field Level Security changes
• Hierarchy Visualization Details
• Business Rules Improvements
• Working with Calculated and Rollup fields
• Global Search Functionality

If you are a Microsoft Partner with access to Microsoft Partner Network (MPN) and Partner Learning Center (PLC) you have access to a bunch of relevant one hour webcasts around CRM Online, Dynamics Marketing, Unified Service Desk and more.

The webcasts are delivered out of Germany (in English) and will provide you with introductionary as well as slightly technical content.

This is a great readiness opportunity for sales as well as presales resources. Below you will find dates, titles and registration links.

Enjoy

• Target Audience: Sales & PreSales Consultants (and optional: Other customer facing roles)
• Duration: 1 hour
• Language: English
• Delivery: Webcast, from Germany
• Technical level: 100 / 200
• Cost: Free of charge to partners with access to MPN and PLC (no advisory hours deducted)

Technical Level 100 (Introduction)

• 2014.09.24  Microsoft Dynamics Marketing – Overview  Registration link - registration link
• 2014.10.08  Unified Service Desk / LEO / Care Everywhere - registration link
• 2014.10.15  Remove Wind from Competitor Sails - registration link

Technical Level 200 (Introduction + Technical Details) - registration link

• 2014.10.22  Integration of Dynamics CRM Online and Office 365, Administration, Pricing & Licensing
• 2014.10.29  Integration of Dynamics CRM Online and Office 365, Exchange (Server-Side-Sync)
• 2014.11.12  Integration of Dynamics CRM Online and Office 365, SharePoint
• 2014.11.19  Integration of Dynamics CRM Online and Office 365, Yammer & Lync & Skype
• 2014.11.26  Integration of Dynamics CRM Online and Office 365, Power BI
• 2014.12.10  Integration of Dynamics CRM Online and Microsoft Social Listening
• 2014.12.17  Integration of Dynamics CRM Online and Microsoft Dynamics Marketing

If you are like me, your days at work are packed: several hours of scheduled meetings, lots of emails waiting to be read and responded to, and usually a lot of folks who need to talk about urgent issues. There just aren’t enough hours in the day. Sound familiar?

Our new service Delve (part of Office 365) can bring moments of peace to those hectic days. It cuts through the noise by showing you what you need to know today, and even what’s likely to be important in the near future. You can see information trending that is associated with what you are working on, and the people within your work network. The information is delivered in a way that is easy to consume and quick to scan.

Delve is the next-generation search and discovery – it lets information find you

The goal for Delve was not just to reimagine search, but to help people get their work done in a quicker, more informed, and even delightful manner. After all, your job isn’t just to “search.” You use search as a tool to get your actual job done. This more ambitious goal drove us to ask how we could remove the information silos that exist across applications, better support information discovery, and enable teams to work together as a network. The result is not just a search solution, but a new way of working – proactive, transformational, and delightful. Delve is the first in a new breed of intelligent and social work experiences.

Read more here

See also

• What is Delve - link

Now you can TestDrive:

• Microsoft Dynamics CRM to learn how to manage contacts, put social media insights to work and utilize knowledge bases.
• Microsoft Dynamics Marketing to learn how to plan and manage brand assets, execute automated multi-channel campaigns, and measure marketing ROI.
• Microsoft Social Listening to see how gaining insight about what people are saying on social media can help everyone on your team turn sentiment into opportunity.

Click here to start your TestDrive

The Microsoft Social Listening team has just recently added new features to the service, including

1. Location analysis - please see this blog post
2. News publications as a source to collect posts
   In addition to the existing sources (Twitter, Facebook, blogs and videos), you can now add news to your search topics and collect posts from news publications in English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, and German
3. Sentiment analysis is now available for posts in Italian
   Posts in the Italian language can now be analyzed for positive, neutral, or negative mentions

The easiest way for you to benefit from #2 and #3 in new search topics is to edit your existing Solution Defaults to include "News" and "Italian". You must also edit existing Search Topics to include "News" and "Italian" if applicable.

Editing Solution Defaults

Click Settings and then Solution Defaults

Scroll down to "Search Languages" and click Add to display the "Select Search Languages" dialog

Check the box next to "Italian" and then click Save

Scroll down to "Languages" and check the box next to "Italian" (now added to the list of optional languages), then check the box next to "News" in the "Sources" column and finally click Apply

Editing existing Search Topics

Click Settings and then Search Topics

In the list of existing Search Topics edit the applicable ones. In this example lets edit my exisiting "CRM Online" search topic:

I click the Edit icon to show the "Edit [Search Topic]" dialig

For each of the queries in the search topic I click the expand query icon

I check the checkboxes next to "News" and/or "Italian", click Test Seach Query and then click Close Query

I repeat for each query in Search Topic if applicable and then click Save

My seach topic now has the "News" source added and can start accumulate posts in the languages I've specified, including Italian (in my screenshot below there are no posts from "News" yet, but they will be there soon)

See also

• Microsoft Social Listening User Guide - link
• Microsoft Social Listening Help and Training - link
• The "News" source is availiable as an app in Windows 8 too. To learn about which sources are available in what categories and languages open the app (FAQ)
  
  
  

More blog posts on Microsoft Social Listening

• Are you listening - link
• Are you learning? Analyzing using Microsoft Social Listening - link
• Understanding Average in Microsoft Social Listening - link
• How to Configure Social Listening in CRM Online - link
• New in Microsoft Social Listening - Location Analysis - link
  

Now you can analyze posts from specific countries, regions, or location groups in Microsoft Social Listening and filter your data to see where the posts are coming from.

You can access location analysis by navigating to Microsoft Social Listening > Analytics > Location.

On the Location page, only posts that contain location data (author location or post location) are analyzed. In the page title, you’ll find information on the percentage of the posts that contain location data.

In addition to Trend, Languages, and Sentiment, you’ll see the following visuals:

• Location buzz: Shows the number of posts that contain location data.
• Location type: Shows the ratio of author location and post location from posts that contain location data. If a post contains information on both location types, the post location is taken into account over the author location.
• Locations: Provides a quick overview over the five locations that were most often found in posts of your current data set
  .

If you scroll down you see a nice map, showing you your posts with location data in your current data set as bubbles on a map.

• The bigger a bubble appears, the more posts were found from a specific location.
• For your reference, the legend in the lower left-hand corner of the map shows the size of the bubbles based on the number of posts.
• To see different visualizations, select a map type from the controls below the map.
  • BUZZ counts the total number of posts with location data to draw the bubble on the map.
  • TREND/BUZZ additionally highlights the trend in a specific location in a bubble’s color.
  • SENTIMENT/BUZZ. This map type counts the number of posts with sentiment value and location data. The color of the bubble indicates the sentiment index for this location.

In this example I'm initally showing a group of search topics called "Products". Since I'm showing more than one search topic the sentiments option (SENTIMENT/BUZZ) isnt enabled for my map (sentiments is only served for a specific search topic)

My map is showing the number of posts (BUZZ) for the last week across the globe

If I'm interested in a specific product (e.g. Social Listening) I can filter the map using the dropdown

Now my map shows only post for that specific search topic and and the SENTIMENT/BUZZ option is now added at the bottom of the chart

Clicking SENTIMENT/BUZZ I see that in the UK there is one positive posts on the topic

To see a tool tip with more details on a location, I can hover over the bubble on the map and see there is one (1) post. I can click the bubble

Now I have the details for the author and the location of the post (Windsor), and I can click "Posts" to see the content of the post

The author is kind enough to share with us a link to a site where you can find (free) eBooks, videos and more about Microsoft Social Listening (its here if you'd like to see more)

In the Microsoft Social Listening User Guide you can read more about the nice things you can do with the new Location Analysis in Microsoft Social Listening

See also

• Microsoft Social Listening User Guide - link
• Microsoft Social Listening Help and Training - link

More blog posts on Microsoft Social Listening

• Are you listening - link
• Are you learning? Analyzing using Microsoft Social Listening - link
• Understanding Average in Microsoft Social Listening - link
• How to Configure Social Listening in CRM Online - link

In Dynamics CRM we have three types of User Subscription Licenses (USLs); Professional, Basic, and Essential

1. Professional users has full rights to 'everything' in CRM
2. Essential users has rights to custom entities primarily
3. Basic users sits sort of in-between, in terms of use rights

Note - A fourth USL (Enterprise) is available. Its equivalent to Professional plus Dynamics Marketing, Social Care (specific markets) and Unified Service Desk.

Each of the above licenses has a different price point; if Professional is 4X then Basic is approximately 2X, and Essential is X. Hence its often of interest to the customer to 'get the right mix' between Professional and Basic users, ending up with the optimal average price point.

The Basic user has full access to eg the Account, Contact, Lead, and Case entitites, but have read only/limited use rights to certain entities, eg. Opportunities. Using the Security Role settings in Dynamics CRM you can control what a user can access. Hence mapping the two - the Use Rights of the Basic user to the available Security Role settings - is interesting.

Use Rights for the Basic USL

Appendix A in the "Licensing and Pricing Guide, June 2014" maps CRM Online Use Rights to the Pro, Basic and Essential USL's. 

Security Roles

A security role in Dynamics CRM defines how different users, such as salespeople, access different types of records. To control access to data, you can modify existing security roles, create new security roles, or change which security roles are assigned to each user. Each user can have multiple security roles.

To access the security roles click Settings -> Administration -> Security Roles

In the "New Security Role" dialog you can control what a user with that new role can do in CRM using the various tabs and settings (priveleges and scope) in the dialog.

The tabs are

• Core Records
• Marketing
• Sales
• Service
• Business Management
• Service Management
• Customizations
• Custom Entities

The access right/priveleges are

• Create - create a record
• Read - read a record
• Write - make changes to a record
• Delete - delete a record
• Append - associate a record to another record
• Append To - associate entity record to this record
• Share - give access to a record to another user while keeping your own access
• Reparent - assign a different parent to entity record

The scopes are

• None Selected = No access is allowed
• User = This access level gives a user access to records he or she owns, objects that are shared with the user, and objects that are shared with a team of which the user is a member
• Business Unit = This access level gives a user access to records in the user's business unit
• Parent: Child Business Unit = This access level gives a user access to records in the user's business unit and all business units subordinate to the user's business unit
• Organisation = This access level gives a user access to all records within the organization, regardless of the business unit hierarchical level to which the instance or the user belongs

Mapping Use Rights to Security Role settings for the Basic USL

In the table below I've taken the first steps trying to map the Basic USL to CRM Security Role settings. Please note: the below table is a my personal suggestion and by no means authoritive.

The tab has six columns:

1. "Appendix A - Subject" = The left most column ("Use Rights" in the Appendix A above, sorted alphabetically
2. "Basic"  = Appendix A - Basic User Use Rights (1=Full, 0=None)
3. "Focus" = What I consider being the deciding context
4. "USL" = Lists if Basic user has Full or Read access to the entity to the left (the "Focus" Column) according to the simple chart (an interpretation of Figure 5 in the Licensing and Pricing Guide)
5. "Security Tab" - name of the tab in CRM Security Roles where the setting is to be done
6. "Security Setting(s) - suggested" = which settings I suggest you look at on the tab

See also

• Create or edit a security role - link
• CRM Online Service Description - http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/microsoft-dynamics-crm-online-service-description.aspx

Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online (CRMOL) and Microsoft Social Listening (MSL) are Better Together – you can add MSL data into CRMOL Dashboards and record forms for convenient and proactive social insights

In this blog post I'll take you through the steps needed to setup the integration between the two services.

Pre-requisites

• In CRMOL you must have the security role of System Customizer or Systems Administrator
• MSL must be deployed in the same tenant as CRMOL (Important)
• MSL is setup with Search Topics (please see my blog post "Are you listening?" for how-to)
• Your CRM org is configured with Spring Wave Updates (Click Settings > Administration > Install Product Updates)
  

One time Setup

1. Login to Dynamics CRM Online
2. Click Settings > Administration
   
   
3. Click Microsoft Social Listening Configuration
   
   
4. Select the MSL Solution to connect to in the drop down (1) and then click Select (2)
   
5. Now you are all set to use MSL widgets in CRMOL

Configuring a CRM Online Dashboard

You can easily configure a CRM Online dashboard to display information from MSL.

Create a new dashboard

1. Click Settings > Customizations > Customize the System
   
   
2. Dashboards > New
   
   
3. Choose a Layout > click Create
   
4. Click the MSL widget "Insert Social Insights" (note: this widget will only appear, once you have performed the setup above)
   
5. Setting each MSL widget in the dashboard up is a three step guided process. First step is to decide between a Search topic (1) or a Search topic category (2) - for definitions please see notes at the end of the blog post
   
6. In this example I'll pick a Search Topic and click Next (in the above screen) to step ahead to step #2 - "pick a seach topic" (the below screen). I pick the search topic "CRM Online" in the list and click Next
   
7. Finally MSL prompts you for how you want your widget displayed in CRM. Click the drop-down to pick a visual. In my example I'll go for the "Sentiment Share of Voice"
   
   
   
   
   
8. Click Finish to finalize the widget, and repeat for the rest of the widgets in the dashboard.
   x
   The completed dashboard could end up looking like this
   
   You see the sentiment distribution, the sentiment history, the sources history (Twitter, Facebook etc) and a nice summary. Any part of the dashboard is clickable and will take you to MSL for further analysis.

.
 
Configuring CRM Entity Forms

Its equally easy to configure a CRM Online form to display information coming from MSL. In this example I'll create a new entity and modify the form to display a social insights widget

Create an entity and edit the form. Once you are in the Insert tab, you will see the new Social Insights control.

1. Click the Social Insights control to display the "Add Social Insights" dialog
   
   
   
2. Optional: change settings for the control (eg # lines)
   x
   Click OK
   
   
   
3. The control is inserted to the form
   
4. Click Save and Publish
   x
5. The configuration is completed the first time you bring up a new record
   x
   Create a new record
   
6. Click Configure Social Insights
   
7. The steps for configuring Social Insights on a form are similar to the steps on adding social insights to a dashboard
   
8. The form could look like this
   
    
   Note: The user who is accessing CRM needs to have a MSL license assigned or else they will get an error on the page.

Notes

• Search Topic = the individual search term in MSL
• Search topic category: When you create a search topic in MSL you are placing that under a category and the entire category will be summarized
• A sentiment can only be specified for a search topic, so if you select search topic category no sentiment analysis will be displayed in CRM

More blog posts on Microsoft Social Listening

• Are you listening - link
• Are you learning? Analyzing using Microsoft Social Listening - link
• Understanding Average in Microsoft Social Listening - link
• New in Microsoft Social Listening - Location Analysis - link

My collegue Paul Collinge has performed numerous Office 365 Network assessments and reactive visits to resolve issues for customers and to him its apparent that the vast majority of issues are seen time and time again.

Hence he has compiled his top 10 tips for you to optimize your O365 network performance and prevent issues from occurring in future.

1. TCP Window Scaling
2. TCP Idle time settings
3. Latency/Round Trip Time (RTT)
4. Proxy Authentication
5. DNS performance
6. Proxy Scalability
7. TCP Max Segment size
8. Selective Acknowledgement
9. DNS Geo location
10. Application Level troubleshooting

Read Pauls full blog post "Top 10 Tips for Optimising & Troubleshooting your Office 365 Network Connectivity" here

On TechNet you can also find a brilliant article on how client computers connect to Office 365 tenants, depending on the location of the client computer and Office 365 tenant datacenter.

For example, when you sign in to Office 365, you’re usually connected to the closest datacenter in your region. Then, say you open an email - to show you what’s in the email - a second connection might be opened between that datacenter and the datacenter where your tenant is. Datacenter-to-datacenter connections are very fast, so using that type of connection to get your email content from the Exchange server is quick.

Read the full article "Reference: Client connectivity" here