hari.mallampati

Thursday 30 May 2013

how to combine Microsoft CRM and Social Media

how to combine Microsoft CRM and Social Media

Posted on 16/07/2010 by FrankvanDelden

Customer satisfaction is an integral part of company growth and success. Customer relationship management (CRM) systems offer businesses a way to keep current customers satisfied, as well as a way of finding new customers. Social Media can play a huge role in both these endeavors.

Many companies incorporate Microsoft CRM in order to manage and organize all the contact it has with both existing and prospective customers.

By combining social technology and Microsoft CRM a powerful tool arises..T he benefits of combining Microsoft CRM and Social Media are countless. Companies can use social media for providing better customer service to their already large customer base. By storing this information in Microsoft CRM, service and product quality can be improved.

Marketeer can use social media to reach more people and spread the word of their products and services. In the end, the main goals of both CRM and Social Media are providing better customer service and attracting new customer.

If you want to combine social media and Microsoft CRM, there are 2 principles:

1. Interface. Data from social media will not be stored in the Microsoft CRM database. Microsoft CRM will only show the social media information.

2. Integration. Using the Social Media platform API, data from the Social Media will be extracted and stored in Microsoft CRM.

Table below states some possibilities of bot principles.

	Interface	Integration
Data in CRM Database	No	Yes
Reporting on Social Media data	No	Yes
Workflows social media (status) updates	No	Yes
Complexity	Simple	Complex
Contact can update (own) contact information	No	Yes
3rd degree relations available	No	Yes

Of course a hybrid solution is also a possibility.

How to integrate Facebook, LinkedIn, twitter with MSCRM 2011

How to integrate Facebook, LinkedIn, twitter with MSCRM 2011:

Ref Link:

Discussion on Social integration in MCRM

http://social.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/crm/thread/7d896f6e-31b4-435f-9737-dc746c0cb5e5

Third party solution for Social mscrm: Parrot

http://garethtuckercrm.com/2012/04/27/social-integration-for-microsoft-crm-2011-with-parrot/

Third party solution for Social mscrm :Sonama _Linked in

http://blog.sonomapartners.com/2011/06/integrate-microsoft-crm-with-linkedin.html

Videos Giving some Info regarding Social MSCRM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJ0_FsZLXrg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Aj4MAJEAII

Third party solution for Social mscrm: Pinpoint cost $349.00

http://pinpoint.microsoft.com/en-in/applications/social-media-connector-for-microsoft-dynamics-crm-2011-12884945439

https://www.iotap.com/productdetails/tabid/788/ProductID/27/Default.aspx

Yammer integration in MSCRM 2011

Intro about Yammer in MSCRM 2011:

RefLink: http://crmbusiness.wordpress.com/2012/10/08/what-is-yammer-and-how-should-you-use-it/

Highlights:

What is Yammer and how should you use it

The quick answer is Yammer is social networking for your company, a bit like a Facebook and twitter for a company. Only company domain users can access the company Yammer site.

Yammer is designed for private communication for members of an organisation/company

The purpose of Yammer is to enable and improve efficiency regarding company communication, collaboration, file sharing, knowledge sharing and team efficiency.

Yammer in MSCRM 2011:

RefLink: http://blog.sonomapartners.com/2013/03/previewing-yammer-for-dynamics-mscrm-2011-online.html

Highlights:

A handful of features trickled out for CRM Online after the December Update or Polaris release. Both the iPad Sales Experience and now an integration with Yammer were released in what we’re calling “Polaris Plus”. These two new features, along with the Polaris release, are available for CRM Online only. These components should be available for On Premise deployments when Orion is released later in 2013.

First off, you must have a Yammer Enterprise account to be able to enable the Yammer integration with CRM. I can see this requirement going away in the future, but for now, the Enterprise account needs to be obtained first which comes with a $3 per user per month price tag.

Another important thing to note is that if you enable the Yammer integration, then Activity Feeds for user posts go away. Activity Feeds are still used for system posts, but for user posts, Yammer will replace the Activity Feeds that used to display. Also, once you enable Yammer, you cannot disable it and go back to using Activity Feeds for user posts. Therefore, be absolutely sure you want to update your organization to integrate with Yammer before you do so.

One limitation is that there currently is no migration plan to move the old Activity Feed User Posts to Yammer User Posts. User posts in Activity Feeds will still be in the CRM database, but will not display in the CRM UI.

When individual users hit a Yammer page for the first time in CRM, they’ll be prompted to log in. The Yammer email address used to log in must match their CRM User’s email address

Some of the features that you can perform with Yammer within CRM are:

· Like and reply to messages

· See where the message was created from

· Click on the thread to view within Yammer.com

· Preview docs, download docs, and even add comments to certain documents (such as Word) that other users will see when they preview the document.

· Follow / Unfollow specific records (e.g., Opportunities) from CRM – This will automatically follow and unfollow the record in Yammer

· Post to specific Yammer Groups or Users

· Mention Users in posts using @

MS Dynamics CRM 2011 Activity Feeds and Yammer: http://gotcrm.blogspot.in/2012/06/ms-dynamics-crm-2011-activity-feeds-and.html

Highlights:

Activity feed vs Yammer

Feature	CRM 2011 Activity Feed	Yammer
Social Networking	Users are CRM 2011 users. Can mention a user to get them into a conversation. Can create a conversation thread. Personalization is available using picture upload feature.	Yammer provides User profiles, and a searchable member directory. The Org Chart gives you a peek at the company structure. Gamification is in play, with recognition badges for employees and leaderboard stats for thing like replies and liked messages. Users can create Polls, organize Events and ask question over the network. For conversations that are confidential, Private Messages enable a private dialog with one of more coworkers.
Team Collaboration	There is no concept of teams or groups for the Activity Feed itself. Access to records in the feed is controlled by CRM security. Activity feeds are at the organization level.	Groups can be leveraged to collaborate on files in the context of projects, get feedback and track versions. The concept of Pages is used to display team goals, compile notes, and draft documents together online. Broadcast announcements to your group, see popular files or Pages and enable sharing between related groups.
Content Collaboration	Cannot share files or attach files in a conversation. CRM records can be mentioned. No search available as of UR9.	Files, Versioning and Pages help teams work together seamlessly. In addition, one of the great features is a full text search, which provides categorized results immediately as search terms are entered. Files can be emailed directly from the team workspace.
Mobile Access	Access to Activity Feeds through CRM Mobile app	Yammer has native apps for the following: iPhone and iPad Windows Phone Andriod phone and tablet Blackberry In addition, there is a windows desktop application available.
External Integration	Possible using SDK - need to write code to use the CRM webservice.	Yammer is tightly intergrated with multiple productivity applications. Dynamics CRM is one of them, with updates on accounts, opportunities, campaigns, leads, and more funneled to the Ticker. These records are then surfaced in Universal Search results. There is a whole bunch of them listed here, from Sharepoint to TripIt.

Availability of Yammer For IFD :

Ref Link: http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/crmdevelopment/thread/1c8adca2-044d-4223-bec4-0ca055b40d68

Highlights: Yammer is Online only at the moment

Configuration of Yammer in Online :

Ref Link: http://www.powerobjects.com/blog/2013/03/08/configure-microsoft-dynamics-crm-online-with-yammer

http://rc.crm.dynamics.com/rc/2011/en-us/online/5.1_osdp/help/source_sf_yammer_install.htm

Highlights: step by step Installation

How to get latest version of Activity fedd solution for On premise OR IFD

Activity feeds are giving error in Firefox "While your organization is being updated, you can only view Activity Feeds in Internet Explorer. After the latest Activity Feeds solution is installed, it will work in all supported browsers."

Solution for on premise or IFD:
1.check the version of installed Activity feed
2.if it is 1.0.1.20302( available solution in MS Site) then update to latest version "ActivityFeeds.cab
1.0.3.21214"
3. To get the latest version for on premise or IFD by following the below steps.

Download and run the UR12 Server update from the Microsoft download site on the CRM server, you only need to get as far as the extraction complete / welcome screen not all the way through.
Use windows explorer to look through your hidden temp files for *activityfeed* and it will come up with a couple of CAB files ('ActivityFeeds_1.0.1.CAB' and 'ActivityFeeds.CAB')
Import the 'ActivityFeeds.cab' as a solution and it should tell you that this will update the one that is already there. The version number of this new one should be indicated as 1.0.3.21214
Make sure that you overwrite existing customisations (best to test this in a dev environment before doing this on any form of live solution as you can overwrite changes you have made elsewhere with this!)

OR
4.
just run the downloaded UR packache with /extract:<path>, for example I created C:\Temp\CRM and called the package like this:

CRM2011-Server-KB2791312-ENU-amd64.exe /extract:C:\temp\crm
then I found the file needed in as c:\Temp\CRM\Actions_Org\Install\Solutions\ActivityFeeds.cab

Saturday 27 April 2013

CRM 2011 Embed Report in IFrame and Pass Parameters from the Form

In CRM you can insert SubGrid and Chart. However this functionality is limited in a way that it can only grab the related entities that have direct relationship to that entity. If we want to get the other related entities from the related entity, it's not possible using the OOTB Subgrid and Chart.

In my case I want to display a chart in an Engagement Plan entity. This Engagement Plan is associated with an Account (N:1). The Account has 1:N relationships with Production History and Contract History entities that have information about commodity and tonnes produced. I want that chart to be shown on the Engagement Plan form. The parameters for this chart will be the Account Id and the Season Id located on the form.

The Steps:

Create a custom SSRS Report to display this chart, taking @CRM_AccountId and @CRM_SeasonId as parameters.
Insert an IFRAME on the form and give dummy Url. Also uncheck 'Restrict Cross Site Scripting' to allow cross scripting between servers.

Create a javascript that is triggered in Form_OnLoad, Account_OnChange, and Season_OnChange:

// JScript source code

function Form_onload() {

    loadChart();

}

function loadChart() {

    var growerLookupItem = new Array();

    growerLookupItem = Xrm.Page.getAttribute("new_growerentityid").getValue();

    var seasonLookupItem = new Array();

    seasonLookupItem = Xrm.Page.getAttribute("new_seasonid").getValue();

    var serverUrl = Xrm.Page.context.getServerUrl();

    var url = serverUrl + "/crmreports/viewer/viewer.aspx?action=filter&helpID=CommodityTonnes.rdl&id=%7bB135D3F7-65C1-E011-A653-005056A10003%7d";

    SetReportUrl(url, "IFRAME_CommodityTonnes", growerLookupItem, seasonLookupItem);

}

function SetReportUrl(reportUrl, iFrame, growerLookupItem, seasonLookupItem) {

    if (growerLookupItem == null || seasonLookupItem == null) {

        Xrm.Page.getControl(iFrame).setVisible(false);

    }

    else {

        Xrm.Page.getControl(iFrame).setVisible(true);

        var growerId = growerLookupItem[0].id;

        var seasonId = seasonLookupItem[0].id;

        Xrm.Page.getControl(iFrame).setSrc(reportUrl + "&p:CRM_AccountId=" + growerId + "&p:CRM_SeasonId=" + seasonId);

    }

}

The method for the form OnLoad is 'Form_onload'
The method for the field Onchange is 'loadChart'