MS CRM 2011

The unveiling of Microsoft CRM 2011 was launched at the Microsoft Conference in America last month.  Formerly code named MS CRM 5, Microsoft CRM 2011 will be available as a beta testing release in September 2010.

There are a series of excellent enhancements available in Microsoft CRM 2011 including a great focus of integration with Microsoft Outlook.  The new CRM 2011 release will treat CRM data in the same manner it treats Outlook data – Outlook and CRM 2011 will be a much more deeper experience, with functionality including previews and conditional formatting.  This will result in less clicks, user customizations, grouping of records within CRM 2011 and user ability.  MS CRM 2011 certainly will help users to become more focused on CRM and its high achieving results.

There is a new “ribbon” (tool bars and buttons) for Outlook and web browser user that offers great Microsoft Office navigation.

Real time dashboards that can be role tailored, fully contextual and individually tailored – which will offer great management intelligence for sales pipelines, customer service and service and case management. A great success.

Role tailored client has been incorporated to CRM 2011.  Basically it tailors the client (so the users interface and experiences) to the job they do – so that the users get fast access to the information that they need and then are also prevented from seeing data they do not necessarily need to see.

Now in CRM 2011 it will be possible to have developed code as a hosted option – or in the Cloud as many refer to this.

Impressed so far with Microsoft CRM 2011 – well thats not all.

Other successes to this new release include

• Advanced user personalization creating views and commonly used records by user
• Inline data visualizations which facilitates the ability to create and share inline charts
• Flexible goal management where businesses can define key performance and business health indicators providing a great track and measurement tool against key strategies
• Integration out of the box with SharePoint so they can work together far more easily

These are the initial updates from Microsoft and I m sure that there will be more features to follow  – as soon as we know we will let you know.

*note:- The content of this blog is based on the articles which I read on the net. The images too are copied from the internet.

Records in IFrame from N:N relationships

We had a custom entity “store” which had an N:N relation with contact entity. We had another custom entity named “visit” which had a lookup for “store” and an IFrame named contacts. We were required to display all the contacts which are related to the “store” record which was selected in the lookup field. We had written some javascript code in the OnLoad event of the form. We were able to get records when the “store” had 1:N relation with contact. But it was not working for N:N relation.

Below is the code snip in

if( crmForm.all.new_doorid.DataValue != null )

{

var DoorID = crmForm.all.new_doorid.DataValue[0].id.toString().replace(“{“, “”).replace(“}”, “”);

LinkGrid(“IFRAME_MattressSlots”, 10010, ‘new_new_door_new_mattressslot’, DoorID);

LinkGrid(“IFRAME_Contacts”, 10010, ‘new_new_door_contact’, DoorID);

LinkGrid(“IFRAME_PILLOWS”, 10010, ‘new_new_door_new_pillowsonsite’, DoorID);

}

At first we thought it was an issue with the parameters passed.  The parameters passed are very similar to one to many relationships, except the parameter called “RoleOrd”.

Let’s think the relationship between “Contact” and “Stores”. One contact can purchase products from multiple stores also one store may serve multiple contacts. The “RoleOrd” parameter must be set to “2” in case of an N:N relation. We did set this field but it did not work. We also changed the ObjectTypeId but it didn’t help either.

Finally we got our answer from one of the forums. The solution is that whenever we have an N:N relation, we are required to add a keyword “area” before the relation name, Which is passed as a parameter. So after this change the code looked like:

if( crmForm.all.new_doorid.DataValue != null )

{

var DoorID = crmForm.all.new_doorid.DataValue[0].id.toString().replace(“{“, “”).replace(“}”, “”);

LinkGrid(“IFRAME_MattressSlots”, 10010, ‘new_new_door_new_mattressslot’, DoorID);

LinkGrid(“IFRAME_Contacts”, 10010, ‘areanew_contact_new_door’, DoorID);

LinkGrid(“IFRAME_PILLOWS”, 10010, ‘new_new_door_new_pillowsonsite’, DoorID);

}

This time it worked.