Microsoft Dynamics 365 Community

Now if your CRM Home page does not inspire you, what should you do? Well, you should set it to the area in CRM that is most important to you. For example, maybe you want to look at your opportunities. Here is what you do.

Go to your personal settings by clicking on the gear in the upper right corner of the CRM screen. Choose Options. When the Set Personal Options screen opens, the first choice is to set the default Pane and Default Tab. Set the Default Pane to Sales, and the Default Tab to Opportunities.

Refresh CRM, and you should start CRM at the Opportunities view.

Now let's say that the Opportunities view you see doesn't meet your needs - perhaps the view is All Opportunities and you want to see My Open Opportunities. Well, you can change this setting easily by just changing to the selected view and clicking on the thumbtack icon next to the view name. This will set the selected view as your default view for this entity. In a future blog entry, we will discuss how to create a personal view with the columns and sort order that meets your needs.

You can also choose to open to a Dashboard from Set Personal Options, just choose Dashboard as the Default Tab. You can also personalize the default dashboard you see by using the same thumbtack tip discussed above.

OK - Your CRM home page is set - What Next?

So that's a pretty simple way to personalize Dynamics 365 CRM to make using CRM simpler. For more tips, please subscribe to our blog. To discuss how enCloud9 can make CRM better for you and your users, please contact us at 402-235-8540 or fill out our webform. We look forward to hearing from you!

What have we Learned from Customers?

If you give them an inch, they will take a mile. In the past, if a RapidStart CRM customer told us they had a need for managing projects for example, we would immediately say, “No problem, we can build a custom entity for that, “post-RapidStart”. Some customers frowned, while they might not know what an “entity” is exactly, they did know it was going to cost something to build it. I was following up with a customer who had just completed his RapidStart, and had previously mentioned needing project management, to see if he was ready to move forward with that additional work. He said “I already built it with your Wizards”. Hmm, I said “We don’t have a Wizard for that”, and he said, “Ya I know, but I used the Wizard for the Opportunity, and modified it into an Opportunity/Project record.” My first thought was that he was pretty sneaky, using something we built, for a purpose other than what was intended. He offered to let me take a look. He had added all of his Project related fields to the Opportunity record, and modified the process to not end at the close of the sale, as it typically does, but rather to continue until completion of his project. I said “You can’t do that! It won’t work” and he said “I did, and it does”.

Leads are Dirt

Another customer, in the land acquisition business said they did not have a need for Leads in their business model. However, they said they would like to circle back after their RapidStart and look at building a custom entity for the thousands of properties that they need to import for possible purchase analysis. Just like before, I reached out after they completed their RapidStart to discuss the addition of a Properties entity, and they said they did not need it anymore. I said, “Did you change business model?”, and she said, “No we re-purposed the Lead for that, using the Wizards”.

A Pattern Starts to Form

It has become amazing what people are able to do with four out-of-the-box entities (Leads, Opportunities, Contacts and Accounts) and two processes (Lead Process and Opportunity process) when they are empowered with an accessible way to easily modify them. For the most part, Accounts and Contacts are still Accounts and Contacts, but suddenly Leads and Opportunities and their corresponding processes are being twisted into all sorts of other things.

Why is this Happening?

Customers don’t know what they don’t know. Nobody ever told them that an Opportunity is a specific “thing” for example. They are just seeing it as a record that is already attached to Contacts and Accounts. They are showing a blatant disregard for what Microsoft intended an Opportunity to be! I thought “we need to tighten this up and keep this from happening otherwise all kinds of bad things will happen like… uh…umm… I got nuthin”. Necessity is the Mother of Invention, and in this case, the necessity is to not spend any more money than they have to. Clearly showing little regard for my boat acquisition plans, customers have built their own Travel Booking, Property Management, Solar Energy Construction and other solutions using just these few blocks… ugh.

Perfection is the Enemy of Good

I have used that phase before, it is a good one. Certainly any CRM Partner could look at what one of these customers did to pervert their Opportunity or Lead to serve their other needs and say “That could have been done better with a custom entity”. This is no doubt true, but at a cost. The goal of our RapidStart CRM solution was to allow a customer to get Dynamics 365 off the ground, and adopted, at the lowest possible cost. Some of them have just figured out how to get it farther off the ground than we anticipated… damn sneaky customers.

If you want to be sneaky too, contact one of our over 300 Global Resellers here.

Why should you automate your Accounts Payable process?

Paper-based, manual processes are inefficient and risky. Technology helps other parts of the business move forward. And you know that you can add more value than chasing down approvers and paying bills.

Still unsure? Here are a few reasons why AP Automation should be a priority for your business in 2017.

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Constant accessibility. No matter where your team is, they can easily route invoices for approval or authorize payment on-the-go.
Greater security. 2-factor authentication, 2-factor payment verification and segmentation of duties give you better control of your cash flow. And, our solution offers fraud loss protection up to $100,000 per year.
Multi-entity support. Have more than one business entity? Don’t worry, MineralTree makes it easy to manage your business entities in one system.
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