Microsoft Dynamics CRM, now part of Dynamics 365, is one of the most popular CRM applications available. A company can use CRM in a vastly different way from any other company also using the application. Additionally, there are a variety of users within a company performing various roles. Because of this every user interacts with the system differently. To make the day to day interaction easier there are five customizations each user can set up.
Give Your Profile a Smile.
Within CRM you are able to add an image to your profile. In a large organization and even smaller ones it is always great to be able to put a name with a face. By setting up your profile with a professional picture of yourself, that image will be added throughout CRM as you update or create various records in the application. This goes a long way to personalize the environment especially in the posts section when chatting with other users or seeing updates on Opportunities they may have won.
There are two simple ways to do this. The first is to update the image on the user record. By navigating to Settings and then Security you can select the user’s entity. From here you can select your user and by clicking on the image it will provide a pop-up window where you can browse to a file on your computer to use as your image.
The second way is a bit faster. From any location in CRM, up in the top right of the black ribbon there will be a little icon of a grey person. Click on this and it will bring up the same pop-up image that allows you to select a file on your computer to upload. It is that simple to get going with a stylish profile.
Luckily enough, the next four quick customizations can all be made from the same screen. These changes are made by making changes to your options page. To access the options menu, you will want to select the gear icon in the top right of the black ribbon near your image icon. From this you will see a list of selections, one of which being Options.
Build Your Home.
From the options menu, you are able to select a homepage. This homepage is the first page you will see when you log into CRM and serves as a place to come back to from anywhere in the application by selecting the “Dynamics 365” in the top left of the black ribbon. It is helpful to set this up as based on your role in the organization to access the information that is most important to you.
For example, a salesperson may want a reminder of what sales they are currently working on and therefore will want to see Opportunities. Whereas a support technician would be better served seeing the cases that are open. All of the entities are subdivided by their respective “Panes” or categories such as Sales, Support, and Marketing. After selecting the necessary pane, the tabs that would be most relevant are able to be chosen.
Broaden Your View.
As we are still on the options menu all you need to do is make a quick adjustment to the Records Per Page option. There is nothing worse for me than to query records to review just a few results then have to click next page and wait for the page to reload, over and over and over again to find the one record you need.
Microsoft sets the default records per page to 50 which is fine if you don’t have many records in your system, but this is your CRM and it is meant to hold everything. Whenever I log into a CRM environment for the first time the first thing I do is switch the records per page to 250. Not only is this helpful for scrolling through views but also when using advanced finds to review records within your filtered criteria.
Go For the Details.
This modification is very minor, and most people do not understand what it does, but I find it very useful. CRM defaults the Advanced Find Mode to Simple. What this means is that whenever you open up Advanced Find you are going to use existing views and their parameters to return the data you are looking for.
If you want to alter the existing filtering parameters or add a new one you need to select the “Details” button from the Query section in the Advanced Find toolbar. When you set the Advanced Find Mode to Detailed it saves you the hassle of having to select the Details button in order to change the filter parameters. As I mentioned before it is a small modification but if you run Advanced Finds frequently this will help speed things along a little more.
Show Me The Money.
Many times, a company will only be operating in one currency. Because of this, users will often not pay attention to the Default Currency option. Additionally, Currency fields might be hidden on a form as it is not something the Users would ever need to select.
Even if this is the situation, take a moment and select a default currency in your options. This will ensure that whatever record you create that might have currency fields on it you will not receive errors in those fields. When a record is created, and no currency type is selected, all of the currency fields (think estimated revenue on an opportunity) will give you errors if a value is entered there. Setting your default will help make sure you never encounter this issue.
That’s it! Just five simple customizations that set up Microsoft Dynamics CRM to make working easier.
To learn more about Dynamics 365 and what would fit your individual company’s needs, contact our Account Managers at KTL Solutions today. We’ve been a certified Microsoft partner since 2001 and have the experience needed to make the perfect solutions for your company.
