Sir Slur

Customer Effective and our customer/prospects will be attending Convergence 2010 in Atlanta this April.  We are very excited to participate in the following CRM research sessions.  If you are attending or better yet, thinking about attending Convergence, these sessions might push you over the edge. If you need more info on Convergence 2010, don’t hesitate to email us at info@customereffective.com

Dear Convergence 2010 Attendees,

The Microsoft Dynamics CRM Team are enthusiastically looking forward to meeting you at Convergence 2010, sharing with you our ideas and aspirations for future versions of Microsoft Dynamics CRM, and, as always, learning from you, your experiences and your insights.

Influence Microsoft Dynamics CRM

Between Saturday, April 24^th and Tuesday, April 27^th members of the CRM Research and Development Team will be hosting a series of discussion groups and forward-looking research sessions at the Atlanta Convention Center for Convergence 2010.  During these sessions, we will present prototypes and ideas designed to improve Microsoft Dynamics CRM; we invite you to review and critique designs and discuss your important scenarios and stories so that you can directly influence our investments in a wide array of areas.  *These sessions are limited in size, so please respond early.*

Non-Disclosure Agreement

We will ask you to sign a standard Microsoft Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) so that we can confidentially share our ideas and present our thinking.

Audience

These Microsoft Dynamics CRM Discussion Groups are open to ALL Convergence 2010 Attendees who want to learn about and influence the future of Microsoft Dynamics CRM.

Partners, IT Experts, Developers – (for example) Implementation Partner, Solution Developer, IT Managers

End Users – (for example) Sales Professional, Marketing Professional, Customer Service Representative

Business Decision Makers – (for example) Sales Managers, Marketing Managers, Service Managers

Where

All sessions will be in the Atlanta Convention Center and I will inform you which room when you register for one of the sessions.

Participation

Please review the session titles and RSVP directly to me (James.Johnston@microsoft.com); I will send you an email with the schedule indicating the session date(s) and time(s): Sessions will be repeated so that we can accommodate your schedules at the conference.

I will send you an email confirming your participation in the session(s) you select.

These discussions and research sessions are specifically designed to collect feedback from our customers, users, developers, and partners on our future thinking and aspirations for Microsoft Dynamics CRM.  All Convergence 2010 attendees are welcome regardless of your product focus.   If you are interested in learning more about Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0, our most recent CRM release, we encourage you to take advantage of the other generally available and informative Microsoft Dynamics CRM sessions which are being conducted during Convergence 2010.

Thank you, as always, for your distinctly helpful insights and constructive feedback on Microsoft Dynamics CRM.  We are eager to welcome you and look forward to hearing from you soon.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM Team

I. Visualizing Relationships in Microsoft Dynamics CRM

To participate: Please contact: James.Johnston@microsoft.com

II. Outlook Continues: CRM Information in Outlook

To participate: Please contact: James.Johnston@microsoft.com

III. Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online Service Experience

To participate: Please contact: James.Johnston@microsoft.com

IV. Social CRM

To participate: Please contact: James.Johnston@microsoft.com

V. Authoring and Editing Discussion Steps (e.g., Customer Service Scripts) Using CRM Workflow

To participate: Please contact: James.Johnston@microsoft.com

VI. Mobile Experiences and Scenarios

To participate: Please contact: James.Johnston@microsoft.com

Customer Effective and our customer/prospects will be attending Convergence 2010 in Atlanta this April.  We are very excited to participate in the following CRM research sessions.  If you are attending or better yet, thinking about attending Convergence, these sessions might push you over the edge. If you need more info on Convergence 2010, don’t hesitate to email us at info@customereffective.com

Dear Convergence 2010 Attendees,

The Microsoft Dynamics CRM Team are enthusiastically looking forward to meeting you at Convergence 2010, sharing with you our ideas and aspirations for future versions of Microsoft Dynamics CRM, and, as always, learning from you, your experiences and your insights.

Influence Microsoft Dynamics CRM

Between Saturday, April 24^th and Tuesday, April 27^th members of the CRM Research and Development Team will be hosting a series of discussion groups and forward-looking research sessions at the Atlanta Convention Center for Convergence 2010.  During these sessions, we will present prototypes and ideas designed to improve Microsoft Dynamics CRM; we invite you to review and critique designs and discuss your important scenarios and stories so that you can directly influence our investments in a wide array of areas.  *These sessions are limited in size, so please respond early.*

Non-Disclosure Agreement

We will ask you to sign a standard Microsoft Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) so that we can confidentially share our ideas and present our thinking.

Audience

These Microsoft Dynamics CRM Discussion Groups are open to ALL Convergence 2010 Attendees who want to learn about and influence the future of Microsoft Dynamics CRM.

Partners, IT Experts, Developers – (for example) Implementation Partner, Solution Developer, IT Managers

End Users – (for example) Sales Professional, Marketing Professional, Customer Service Representative

Business Decision Makers – (for example) Sales Managers, Marketing Managers, Service Managers

Where

All sessions will be in the Atlanta Convention Center and I will inform you which room when you register for one of the sessions.

Participation

Please review the session titles and RSVP directly to me (James.Johnston@microsoft.com); I will send you an email with the schedule indicating the session date(s) and time(s): Sessions will be repeated so that we can accommodate your schedules at the conference.

I will send you an email confirming your participation in the session(s) you select.

These discussions and research sessions are specifically designed to collect feedback from our customers, users, developers, and partners on our future thinking and aspirations for Microsoft Dynamics CRM.  All Convergence 2010 attendees are welcome regardless of your product focus.   If you are interested in learning more about Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0, our most recent CRM release, we encourage you to take advantage of the other generally available and informative Microsoft Dynamics CRM sessions which are being conducted during Convergence 2010.

Thank you, as always, for your distinctly helpful insights and constructive feedback on Microsoft Dynamics CRM.  We are eager to welcome you and look forward to hearing from you soon.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM Team

I. Visualizing Relationships in Microsoft Dynamics CRM

To participate: Please contact: James.Johnston@microsoft.com

II. Outlook Continues: CRM Information in Outlook

To participate: Please contact: James.Johnston@microsoft.com

III. Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online Service Experience

To participate: Please contact: James.Johnston@microsoft.com

IV. Social CRM

To participate: Please contact: James.Johnston@microsoft.com

V. Authoring and Editing Discussion Steps (e.g., Customer Service Scripts) Using CRM Workflow

To participate: Please contact: James.Johnston@microsoft.com

VI. Mobile Experiences and Scenarios

To participate: Please contact: James.Johnston@microsoft.com

Customer Effective is proud to announce a new Microsoft developed video on an outstanding CRM/xRM success story with their client, Comag Marketing Group.  Cheers to the team at CMG, we truly value our partnership with this great group.

Video Link - http://www.youtube.com/user/CustomerEffectiveCRM#p/a/u/0/olTSL2jPi30

Comag Marketing Group (CMG), jointly owned by Conde Nast Publications and The Hearst Corp., provides leading magazine publishers with comprehensive sales, marketing and promotional services. CMG employs a 400-member merchandising staff who are required to collect data and perform a series of in-store condition checks.  CMG provides merchandising services to thousands of US retail locations as well as US airport newsstands.

At airports, data was previously collected via legacy handheld devices with an application designed and deployed in 2003 that was limited in its flexibility to integrate into other CMG corporate systems. The retail merchandising staff used either a manual "bubble form" or entered the data into Excel spreadsheets.  The bubble forms were mailed weekly, and CMG's IS team had to process them into an electronic data warehouse.  The Excel spreadsheets were submitted via email. 

The new mobile solution allows merchandisers to scan barcode information using a .NET custom application. The data are fed in real time into CMG's Dynamics CRM environment, which allows for immediate reporting throughout the company. 

CMG worked with a number of vendors, including Panasonic Toughbook and its VAR Trac2Mobile; Eastridge Technologies, which developed the .NET Application; and Customer Effective, which developed and implemented Microsoft Dynamics CRM. The retail team uses Panasonic Toughbook T8s, while the airport team uses Toughbook U1s.  Both have embedded Gobi mobile broadband cards. 

In the past, data collected in the field took three to four weeks to be reviewed and processed. This data turnaround time only allowed for trending; since most magazines have a shelf life of a week or a month, titles were often off the shelf by the time information was available. That process has been reduced to one to two days.

The total cost of the project (including hardware) was less than $2 million. The company anticipates ROI within three years.  "We can now substantially measure where people go, how much time they spend in store, and we can do an efficiency model or build in route optimization," says Sean Poccia, Senior Director of Information Services with CMG.

There are plenty of situations where a CRM user’s AD account is deleted and re-created. –Such as when a user leaves an organization “Forever!” only to return later – or where where a user’s AD account gets deleted or changed, (due to name change or correction after the user record had already been created in CRM.)

In previous versions of CRM, there wasn’t a way to re-connect that CRM user to a new/different/updated AD account. You would have to disable the existing CRM user record, create a new user record and using SQL edit the ‘domainname’ field of the disabled record to avoid a duplicate (since you can’t delete the old user record.)

I’ve also recently experienced a case where, after an upgrade or migration, a one or more users with seemingly valid CRM Accounts, were unable to log in to CRM – receiving the message “Invalid User Authentication / The User Authentication passed to the platform is not valid”

(or with DevErrors turned on: “No Microsoft Dynamics CRM User exists with the specified domain name and user ID” )

In CRM 4.0, you can connect a user’s account to a new (or replacement) Active Directory account, by simply changing the domain name to another (non-crm) ad account, saving it and the changing it back to correct user’s account. – You can do the same to re-establish the link between a CRM user and their AD login.

1. Login as a CRM Administrator
2. Go to Settings / Administration / Users
3. Open the CRM User record for the changed/problematic user.
4. Temporarily change the Domain Login Name to another Active Directory user account (one that is not a CRM user.)
5. Save, Then change the Domain Login Name back to the correct user.
6. (The user’s name / details should be refreshed from AD now.)
7. Save and Close.

Here is a useful sql query to help identify duplicate values in a column and return a count of the number of times that value appears.  In this case I am determining duplicate usernames in the contact table.

 

SELECT New_Username, COUNT(New_Username) AS NumberOfTimes

FROM Contact

GROUP BY New_Username HAVING (COUNT(New_Username)>1)

ORDER BY NumberOfTimes DESC