January 2008 - Posts

• Look and feel > Navigation link missing!

  This blog has moved. Click here to open the new site. I am currently creating a site for a customer. He decided to use Document Center template. We started to build this site and created initial structure. Then I decided that quick launch would be useful so I went to customize its look and feel. To my amazement there was no option to customize navigation on the site settings page. The problem here is: Document Center template does not have this feature. Since we already did some customization on the site I did not want to go back and create a new site. Here is a simple workaround for this problem: To customize Navigation simply go to: http://<your_site>/_layouts/AreaNavigationSettings.aspx :) Another question, very similar to this one bothers me: I have a site that is based on the News template. I want to create a blog on the home page. I would like to use all the fancy features of Blog site template on home page. I cannot replace current site since it has a lot of content. What can I do? Posted Jan 23 2008, 05:47 PM by toni with 11 comment(s) Filed under: navigation, quick launch

• Enhancing duplicate detection in CRM 4.0

  This blog has moved. Click here to open the new site. In my previous post I mentioned that duplicate detection could be better in CRM 4.0. Few days ago I found a nice article on how to enhance Duplicate detection. It describes how to use the Soundex algorithm for duplicate detection. Soundex will detect 3 duplicates in my “Coca Cola problem”. Soundex is a phonetic algorithm for indexing names by sound, as pronounced in English, so its use for other languages is questionable. In my example I decided to use double duplicate detection. I am using Soundex for phonetic detection but also a strip algorithm that will remove all non characters from a crm entity name. Strip algorithm will also remove all company type abbreviations. Algorithm is able to detect duplicates for first 4 names in my “Coca Cola problem”. Coca Cola Beverages company is still undetected. By using the same principle you can create your own duplicate detection algorithms.   This blog has moved. Click here to post a comment. Posted Jan 14 2008, 11:41 PM by toni with 3 comment(s) Filed under: crm, duplicate detection

• MindJet rocks!

  A few years ago a friend of mine recommended me MindManager 1.0. I instantly fall in love with the product. Last year my company purchased MindManager 6.0. I installed it but never found time to test it properly. I liked the concept from day one, but never really had the time to evaluate it properly. Two weeks ago, while I was getting ready to write "What's new in CRM 4.0 - Part 1" I decided to use the trial version of MindManager 7.0. With it I created a mindmap that contains all the new features of CRM 4.0. Couple of hours after I published the blog post, MindJet customer service contacted me. They told me that my CRM product map is very cool and that they would like to offer me a complimentary upgrade to MindManager 7.0. Yes, I am now the proud owner of MindManager 7.0. Thank you MindJet!!! My next mission is to find out how to integrate it with Outlook/SharePoint/Project Server/Groove. There are some cool tools I have already found, so this will be fun Posted Jan 06 2008, 04:26 PM by toni with 4 comment(s) Filed under: crm, mind manager, sharepoint

• Search Server 2008 first impressions, roadmap and opportunities

  Back in November Microsoft announced Microsoft Search Server 2008 (MSS). It is built on SharePoint search technology but it does not include any other features. I have been testing it internally ever since and I must say that I am quite impressed with the results. The search engine is quick, reliable and fast. With the release of MSS 2008 SharePoint for Search will be retired and a special enterprise search feature pack will be issued for MOSS 2007 to add newly developed features: •    Federation •    Unified administrative dashboard •    Improved crawl monitoring and history •    And a host of improvements for performance and reliability MSS will be offered in two editions: Express (FREE) and Standard. The two products will differ only in high availability which will only be available for Standard edition. MOSS Enterprise 2007 will still be the most superior edition in the search family. It will offer everything as MSS does, along with people search and LOB search. Planned release date for MSS is March 1st 2008. MSS 2008 Express is definitely the most interesting edition in the product line. It will allow MS Partner ecosystem to offer affordable search solutions for SMB businesses. Here are some facts about search according to researches done by Versus, IDC and Forrester: •    Knowledge workers spend 30% of time searching •    Average person searches 20 times/day •    55% of all searches are initiated within an organization With MSS you will definitely have a good tool to address some of the problems mentioned above. I am definitely looking forward to MSS release date. Posted Jan 02 2008, 11:55 PM by toni with no comments Filed under: search, mss

• What's new in CRM 4.0 - Part 2

  Microsoft announced CRM4 (Titan) as a very cool product. CRM team has done great improvements, and some of them I listed in Part 1 of this post. The product definitely deserves 4 stars out of 5, but there are some things I would like to change. Here I will list the features I would like to improve: 1.    Integration with SharePoint Although developers of CRM belong to the Office Servers division it seems they have never heard of SharePoint. The new version does not allow you any kind of document management. It is a pity since that would give CRM4 great advantage against other competitors. What am I missing here? - document libraries per CRM entity - document tagging - document search - edit in datasheet - entity versioning 2.    Duplicate detection Yes, it is great that finally CRM4 can detect duplicates. This feature is very cool for marketing materials but it is not so useful for day to day implementations. Since rules are not so flexible, duplicate detection algorithm will not be able to detect that the following accounts are duplicates: - Coca-Cola - Coca Cola - CocaCola - Coca Cola Ltd. - Coca Cola Beverages What am I missing here? - regular expressions support 3.     Firefox Yes, I understand that Microsoft develops Internet Explorer but some rudimental Firefox support should be available. What am I missing here? - Support for Firefox/Opera… 4.    Interface enhancements Interface has been improved a lot, and that’s great. However, one important feature is missing: client side validators. What am I missing here? - ASP.NET client side validators 5.    Set regarding history in Outlook client Set regarding history is cool but it could be better. If I’m sending email to john_wayne@litwareinc.com, than CRM client for Outlook should automatically offer me to track that email as activity for CRM contact of John Wayne. What am I missing here? - The ability of CRM client to automatically recognize/suggest “regarding” for outlook activities 6.    Licensing Licensing has been changed to allow small companies with less than 5 CRM users to purchase a very affordable CRM Workgroup edition. However, CRM is still too expensive for companies with more than 5 CRM users. The problem here is that only named (CAL) licensing is available. You need to purchase a license for every employee that needs to use CRM system. For CRM implementation to be successful, every employee should be able to access the system from time to time (at least to check/update a customer phone number). If a company has 50 employees and only 15 in sales/marketing department, it might be too expensive to purchase 50 CALs. Microsoft should offer concurrent licensing, that would allow companies to license all employees to use the CRM system from time to time. They did introduce same improvements in licensing like read-only CAL and device CAL but I do not find these to be very useful. What am I missing here? - Concurrent user licensing   Posted Jan 02 2008, 07:18 PM by toni with 14 comment(s) Filed under: crm

• What's new in CRM 4.0 - Part 1

  During last few weeks I spent some time with CRM 4.0 which is now in RTM phase. Here are some good blogs that you can use to find out more about CRM4: Microsoft Dynamics CRM Team Blog Philip Richardson Sonoma Partners A Freaky Microsoft Dynamics CRM Blog A list of CRM 4.0 downloads can be found here. I am getting ready for upcoming projects with CRM4 so I spent some time investigating what’s new in CRM4. A very good overview document can be found at PartnerSource (available only for partners). From the information provided in the overview document and other sources I composed a mindmap (powered by MindManager) that lists all the new features. Some of the greatest features are listed here: -    Report wizard – create great looking reports from web interface -    Activity report added to out-of-box reports -    Live CRM – Microsoft hosted CRM4 (available in US/Canada only ) -    CRM Workgroup edition license (great for teams of up to 5 users) -    Enhanced Advanced find -    Workflows (based on Microsoft Workflow foundation) -    Data maps for importing data -    Duplicate detection -    Export/Import customizations -    Multi-tenancy -    Entity relationships enhanced In part 2 of this post I will describe what I am missing in CRM4. Updated: Mind Manager file can be downloaded here.   Posted Jan 02 2008, 06:56 PM by toni with 4 comment(s) Filed under: crm