Wow, a non-CRM / work related post

Just thought I would have a little fun today and post a non work related article.  It’s been a challenging 3 months.  Well, more like 6 months

Yep, I think posting a non-work related article is a side effect of decompressing. The good news is that my decompressing takes the form of enjoying myself and finding humor and joy in everyday events.  Somehow, I allowed that to be diminished over the past few months and it is now time to resurrect, so here goes.  Drum roll please………

The other day, my daughter posted this ‘Wisdom for the month of May’ on her Facebook page:

One evening an old Cherokee Indian told his grandson about a battle that goes on inside people.

He said, ‘My son, the battle is between two ‘wolves’ inside us all.  One is Evil. It is anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.The other is good. It is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith.’

The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather: ‘Which wolf wins?’

The old Cherokee simply replied, ‘The one you feed.’ ”

~~A Cherokee tale (A little wisdom brought to you by the month of May)

I left the following comment on my daughter’s post:

“I am trying to feed the peace, love, hope…. wolf but people keep poking the other one. Jeez, it is conspiratorial sabotage. Please stop poking the evil wolf people.”

Here’s to hoping this left you with a smile.  Now go out and have some fun today!

Helping Users with Lookup Options

It is obvious to me that CRM 2011 was designed to help users get to relevant data quickly.  Features like Recently Visited Records, Navigating Grid Records from within Forms, the ability to quickly create Custom Views and Pin those Views are a few of the methods that ensure meaningful data is only a click or two away. 

Another feature that is new to CRM 2011 is filtered views as they relate to lookup fields. System Administrators & Customizers can leverage this feature to ensure that a lookup field on an entity is configured to effectively target applicable data when end users select the lookup icon.

Here’s an example for reference.  In this example, I have a custom entity named Event.  The Event entity has a lookup field to the Account.  The lookup field is labeled Customer.

When I select the field properties of the Customer lookup field, I see that the Show All Views is selected by default. 

Default Setting

Although having all the Views as options to select provides the highest degree of flexibility for the User, it can also be a bit overwhelming for some and may not be the best option.  The good news is that CRM provides us the flexibility to configure this setting.

In this scenario, we want Users to only see the Customer records that are relevant so we want to modify the filter to display Active Customer records only.  This can be quickly achieved by changing the View Selector from ‘Show All View’ to ‘Show Selected Views’

Modified to Display Relevant Data

Once you’ve made that selection, you can then select the Views you want to display  In this scenario, I selected the Active Account view which equates to Active Customer for this CRM Organization. 

Once you’ve completed your selection, save your changes and publish.  It is that easy and fast.

Now let’s take a look at what the user sees when he or she accesses the Customer Lookup field from the Event form. In this screenshot, I’ve selected the Customer lookup icon from an Active Event record and you can see that I am presented with the Active Account view.

When selecting the View drop down, you can see that the two View options I selected when configuring the field are available.

Having fewer and targeted views to select from improves productivity on several levels.  It’s easy to understand the potential productivity gain when you consider the number of entities that contain a lookup field, the average number of lookup fields on an entity form, the number of users accessing CRM, and the number of times per day the lookup field is selected.

Consider the above variables with an average time-saving of 5 – 10 seconds per lookup field accessed.  Depending on the number of users you have in the system, the time savings to get to relevant data can quickly add up.  Better yet, you will increase user satisfaction which in turn increases User Adoption which results in better data in and better data out. 

I encourage you to explore the option of implementing this relatively quick change when configuring lookup fields as it has the potential to pack a nice productivity punch. It is a win for all.

Cheers

Need a Quick Distraction

Today I was looking up some information on the Internet and discovered something that made me smile so I thought I would share. 

I entered my name in a search engine with MVP as I was trying to get to my MVP profile quickly and when I came to the search engine site, I decided to select the “image” link, just out of curiosity, to see what was posted.  After selecting the Image link, I discovered several images of me that have been associated with various profiles (Twitter, Facebook, blog articles, etc.) which made me smile a bit.  I started playing around with the search terms and had some fun finding images of friends, family, co-workers, etc.

Give it a try.  Enter some search terms for yourself, family, friends, etc. and maybe you’ll discover a smile today as well.

Cheers