Chapter 6. Working with Customers
Customers are defined in several different ways. When working in a conventional environment, customers are individuals or organizations that you have conducted business with. When considering an xRM deployment of Microsoft Dynamics CRM, your customers are usually whatever the x designation is. Examples might include the following:
Vendors
Employees
Recruits
Grantee
Patients
Suppliers
Note
An xRM deployment requires a thorough understanding of the base entities in Microsoft Dynamics CRM. We recommend that you thoroughly read this book in its entirety to gain the required level of understanding before attempting a buildout of an xRM deployment. Knowing when, where, and why to use native entities versus custom ones can help you create a deployment that’s significantly easier to support and maintain in the long term.
For more information about xRM deployment, review Chapter 3, “Customizing and Designing Applications Within Dynamics CRM 2016 (xRM).”
When working with customers in Microsoft Dynamics CRM, you become familiar with two entities: Account and Contact. Both of these entities can contain records that organizations may consider customers. In fact, when associating parent/child records with customers—as on a contact form under Company Name (previously Parent Customer)—you select either an Account entity or a Contact entity. Therefore, you can consider customers in Microsoft Dynamics CRM to be equal to either of these entities.
Tip
It may be helpful to rename the Account entity Company and the Contact entity Customer. You can easily do this by editing the display name of each under Settings and Customization.
For more information about settings and customization, SEE CHAPTER 22, “Customizing the System.”
We often hear customers ask whether leads can be considered customers in Microsoft Dynamics CRM. It is important to remember that leads are potential customers—not actual customers. Although we have in rare cases seen the Lead entity used for customers, it is not common.
Note
Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2016 does not require a reference to an existing customer (that is, an account or a contact) when working with opportunities. You can create “orphan” opportunities and associate them with customers at a future date if required.
SEE CHAPTER 7, “Working with Sales,” for more details on working with opportunities and leads.
Working with Accounts
In general, users should consider accounts as businesses or organizations. Some accounts have many contacts associated with them (such as a normal customer that has two dozen employees with whom you have contact on some level). Other accounts have no contacts associated with them (the U.S. government, for example).
You can use the Account entity not only for businesses you sell to but also for vendors you purchase from, to track contacts that work for the vendor.
Finally, although not generally common, another use for the Account entity is to track competitors. This situation arises if you have a lot of information about competitors (such as individual employee data) or if the existing Competitor entity (found in the Sales area) in Microsoft Dynamics CRM is not sufficient for your needs.
The most common types for the Account entity can be found in the Relationship Type drop-down list (see Figure 6.1):
Competitor
Consultant
Customer
Investor
Partner
Influencer
Press
Prospect
Reseller
Supplier
Vendor
Other
The Relationship Type field is not on the Account form by default in Dynamics CRM 2016; it has been added here to show the types available out of the box. (But keep in mind that you can easily update/manage the relationship types.) For more information about adding fields to forms, see Chapter 22.
Tip
We don’t usually recommend using the Account entity to track competitors. Instead, we recommend augmenting the out-of-the-box Competitor entity found in the Sales area with customizations, as necessary, and using it. When you close opportunities in Microsoft Dynamics CRM, you have the option to tie lost opportunities to only the Competitor entity (and not Account or Contact). Therefore, you effectively lose visibility into competitors’ win/loss metrics related to your opportunities when you don’t use the Competitor entity.
Required Fields for Accounts
When working with accounts, only two fields are required by default: Account Name and Owner. (However, you can easily customize the form to make other fields required.) Because Account Name is the first field shown on the default account list view (see Figure 6.2), it is important to be descriptive here. The Owner field is prefilled with the user who created the record, so even though it is required, it has a value by default. You can change this by selecting another user in the system, if desired.
As with the previous version of Dynamics CRM, you can assign record ownership to not just users but also teams. This has a significant impact in that multiple users’ rights to records can be set or shared by using the Owner field.
Tip
Be sure that the user has permission to view a record. If not, you receive a security warning prompt indicating that the user doesn’t have the necessary security permissions to access the record, in which case you cannot assign it to him or her.
To add a new Account entity, navigate to Sales, select Accounts, and then click the + (for new) on the command bar. The new account form opens.
Besides the two required fields previously indicated, the following are a few of the recommended fields to consider when building Account entity records:
Account Number (must be added to the form)—This free-form entry field can be used to enter any number or alphanumeric combination. This field can be tied to existing enterprise resource planning (ERP), accounting, or other systems for quick-and-easy reference. In that case, we recommend setting the value to read-only or similarly controlling it so that it can be modified only through an approved business process.
Caution
As noted earlier for the Account Name field, duplicate entries are not checked on the Account Number field by default. Therefore, unless you have a duplicate detection rule running here, it is possible for a user to enter the same account number multiple times.
Parent Account—The Parent Account field is used when the account rolls up to another account. An example of this is a customer that has several different business units that report to a corporate entity.
Primary Contact—The Primary Contact field ties to the Contact record. This is not a required association, but the primary contact is shown on the Account quick view by default and can make identifying and working with similar accounts easier.
Currency—The Currency field enables users to select the primary currency that the entity deals with. You must select a currency option here in order to work with other attributes of the form (such as the Annual Revenue field on the Details tab).
The currency options shown are only those that the system administrator has set within the system. Note that the Currency field automatically populates with the default currency specified when CRM was first installed. However, you can change it as required on an account-by-account basis.
For more information about currency, SEE CHAPTER 17, “Settings.”
Phone and Fax—These free-form entry fields accept any alphanumeric value. Because any value is accepted here, you might want to enforce entry standards by using business rules or scripting.
For more information about adding custom data validation, SEE CHAPTER 25, “Plug-ins.”
Website—The Website field accepts any value and automatically formats it as a URL by prepending the entered value with http://. Users can click the entered value to go directly to the website, which opens in a new window, or a new tab, depending on the browser settings.
Tip
When you are working with the Website field, if the entered value already has http://, Dynamics CRM does not add it again.
Credit Hold and Payment Terms—Users can select these fields when setting up the account, and you can change them during the account’s life.
Note
When integrating CRM into an existing ERP or other accounting system, the fields in the Billing Information section typically receive special attention. For example, field-level security is important for viewing or modifying data.
Credit Limit—As with to the Annual Revenue field, you must select a currency value before you can enter a number in the Credit Limit field.
Contact Methods—When you select this field, the system defaults all values to Allow. This field is extremely helpful when you’re doing bulk activities such as email campaigns because you can exclude accounts that do not want to be contacted by specified methods.
When working with the Contact Methods field, if you have selected Do Not Allow for email, you get the error message shown in Figure 6.3 when you try to send the account an email from CRM.
Note
Although the system prevents you from sending an email from CRM to an account that has Do Not Allow set for email in CRM, nothing prevents users from sending email to that account directly from Outlook (provided that the email is not tracked).
In addition, the system recommends the following fields in the header section, located near the Owner field:
Annual Revenue—The Annual Revenue field is a free-form field that requires you to enter the base currency for the account. If you leave it blank, it auto-populates with the default base currency. If you have selected a currency and entered a value here and then try to change the currency, you get an error message saying that you must remove the entered value before setting the currency again.
No. of Employees—This field is used for metrics related to the potential size of the account.
Top Menu Options for Accounts
After you save a record, you are presented with new navigation bar options, as shown in Figure 6.4, which you access using the drop-down arrow near the newly saved account name in the navigation bar. Here is where you go to work with related records and view record particulars such as audit history.
By default, the navigation bar provides the following options:
Activities—Adding new activities to the account
Social Profiles—Capturing social identities for Twitter, Facebook, etc.
Contacts—Associating additional contacts
Documents—Integrating OneNote and SharePoint for document management
Connections—Creating associations to other objects within CRM
Audit History—Showing the audit history of a record
Entitlements—Showing whether the customer has this service option
Opportunities—Showing associated opportunities
Cases—Showing related cases
Marketing Lists—Showing marketing lists related to the account
Contacts Associated with Accounts
The Contact area shows the contacts that are associated with the selected account. This is different from the regular Contact area, which has all contacts, regardless of whether they are associated with an account.
By default, no contacts are associated with a new account, and you have to add either a new contact or an existing contact. To do so, click the + (for adding a new record) on the command bar, and the quick create form is load (see Figure 6.5). On this form, you can perform the functions required to add or edit contacts associated with the account.
Working with Contacts
Contacts are usually individuals that are either customers or in some way related to an account. Although they aren’t required to have a relationship with an account, they often do. An example of a contact without a relationship to an account might be a mail carrier, who you want to keep in the system so that all the employees can get information about him (such as his name or birth date; everyone should wish the mail carrier happy birthday!), but there might not be a reason to have the U.S. Postal Service as an account just for the mail carrier.
When creating/adding new contacts to the system, there are several easy methods:
Navigate to Contacts in the navigation bar (in the Sales, Marketing, or Service sections) and click +. This method enables you to select the account name (if applicable).
In the Accounts form (as explained earlier in this chapter), select Contacts > New Contact. This method prepopulates the account name information for you. (The address information and currency information are populated from the account that spawned the new contact form, and therefore this method is the recommended method.)
In the navigation bar, click + and then select Contact.
Tip
Keep in mind that creating a new contact in the quick create form does not prepopulate the Account Name field (for the parent customer).
Contacts inherit account information only if they are propagated from the Account entity. This is important because different accounts may have different currencies associated with them.
Required Fields for Contacts
By default, contacts have two required fields: Full Name and Owner (see Figure 6.6).
Account Name is also an important field: By populating it, you create a relationship between the contact and the customer. As discussed in the “Accounts” section, earlier in this chapter, if you enter a value in this field (either an account or a contact), the contact you’re working with shows up as a contact (if you enter an account customer) related to that entry. In addition, this relationship facilitates the rollup of all information (activities, opportunities, quotes, orders, and so on) from the contact to the account, so you can get a consolidated view of all activities related to the account and associated contacts.
Tip
In earlier versions of Dynamics CRM, Account Name was Parent Customer or Company Name.
Note
As indicated, the Account Name field can be set to either an account or a contact. This has an interesting effect on the Outlook client, which displays this field as the company: If you set the Account Name field to a contact, Outlook displays that person as the company rather than as a person.
As mentioned previously, in addition to setting Account Name, you should populate the other fields on this form as necessary because they all correlate to a contact in Microsoft Outlook.
Tip
Do not confuse the Phone field with Business Phone, Home Phone, or Mobile Phone—all of which are transferred to the Outlook contact form and vice versa. Phone does not appear in the Outlook contact form, so you can use this field as an extra field for a phone number or not use it at all. This is important because when you synchronize these contacts with Outlook contacts on a mobile device, you will not have the Phone field available—only Business Phone, Home Phone, and Mobile Phone.
The Currency field here has the same purpose as Currency for the Account entity, and it is explained earlier in this chapter.
Additional Fields for Contact Records
Some additional fields for contacts are invaluable when you’re trying to develop a personal relationship. For example, the Personal information fields are of great benefit when you need to know salient details about a contact. The Personal section has fields for general information relevant to the contact that isn’t likely to change (see Figure 6.7).
Note
Using the Birthday field gives you a great excuse for customer contact. Who wouldn’t like to receive a call, an email, or a small gift from a vendor on his or her birthday?
General Information for Either Accounts or Contacts
The information discussed in this section applies to both the Account and Contact entity forms. With many of the entities in the system, some options are available only after the record is saved. The following options are available for the Account and Contact entities prior to saving (and completing the required fields):
New (Lead, Opportunity, Account, and so on from the navigation bar)
Save (on new records only; otherwise, there is a small disk icon in the lower right of the form that functions as a manual save option—though auto save is enabled by default)
Save & Close (on new records only)
Form
Caution
The Form option is the option to open the form in design view. We usually recommend that you avoid allowing this permission to most users; if you do, this option is removed from the interface.
You receive a warning prompt if you attempt to close a record after you have already started to enter data but not filled in required fields (for the Account entity, Account Name and Owner, and for the Contact entity, Last Name and Owner), as shown in Figure 6.8.
The options listed here are available after saving and are found in either the navigation bar or under the ellipsis, as shown in Figure 6.9:
All options listed previously (but the save button has moved to the bottom-right corner)
Delete
Deactivate
Assign
Share
Add to Marketing List
Connect
Run Report
Run Workflow
Start Dialog
Relationship
Follow
Email a Link
Form
Word Templates
All the options on the associated top navigation bar
If there doesn’t appear to be any way to send an email or upload a document to an account or a Contact, check to make sure you’ve saved the record.
Account and Contact Reports
By default, the Account entity has the following reports associated with it:
Account Overview
Account Summary
Products by Account
The Contact entity has just one report:
Products by Contact
When you select any of these reports, it opens, displaying the account or contact you’re working by default.
SEE CHAPTER 16, “Reporting and Dashboards,” for more information about reports.
More Addresses
More Addresses is a feature previously available in Dynamics CRM by default, but it has been removed from the base build of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2016 and you need to configure the system to add it back. It is generally used when an account or a contact has multiple locations, such as different departments within an organization, different shipping addresses, or different primary addresses. The Address Name field (not the Address Type field) should differentiate them because it is displayed on the list view.
To add the more addresses back to the form, follow these steps:
1. Open an account record and select Form from the top command bar, as shown in Figure 6.10. The form opens in design mode, as shown in Figure 6.11.
2. Select Navigation from the top menu bar. Notice that the right-side Field Explorer changes to Relationship Explorer, as shown in Figure 6.12.
3. Select Addresses from the list and drag it over to the leftmost column under Common, as shown in Figure 6.13.
4. Click Save then Publish.
When you refresh the form and select the top navigation option for the account, you now see Addresses as part of the related records (see Figure 6.14).
Note
You can move over the other relationships in the Relationship Explorer (Quotes, Orders, Invoices, and so on) to have them displayed. Conversely, you can remove relationships by dragging them out of the Relationship Explorer.
Activities
You can select Activities in the top navigation bar to see all future events. Figure 6.15 shows the activities for a selected Account entity with the default view shown (in this case, Closed Activities).
When a new Activity entity is created (either in CRM or in Outlook, provided that it is tracked to CRM), it is shown here until it is marked as closed.
Caution
Even if you set the date for something as being previous to today’s date, the activity will remain open until it is marked as closed. One way to address this is to create a workflow that automatically closes all activities that have prior dates; however, by doing this, you risk closing items that should remain pending.
Common Closed Activities
After activities are marked as completed, they are shown under Closed Activities (refer to Figure 6.15). Closed Activities have limited properties and offer limited editing options because they become read-only after being marked as completed.
Connections
You can establish connections directly to an account or a contact record from the Connection section, and you can allow users to connect the record to any other entity type that doesn’t have a relationship created. Figure 6.16 shows an example of creating a connection.
Documents
With the inclusion of OneDrive and SharePoint native integration in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013, document libraries are now easily referenced and directly accessible from the Account or Contact entities.
Although document libraries can be created from any entity in CRM, they are created by default on Account, Article, Lead, Opportunity, Product, Quote, and Sales Literature entities.
SEE CHAPTER 27, “SharePoint,” for instructions on setting up SharePoint servers for document library usage.
Audit History
If auditing is enabled and applied to an entity, the audit history for the attributes of that entity will be visible in the Audit History section.
Auditing is extremely useful for determining the old and new values of a particular field as well as the timestamp for a change and the user who made the change. The data stored in timestamps can be a great reference tool for managing changes to a field.
Processes, Workflows, and Dialog Sessions
Any processes (previously referred to as workflows) that have been run or are currently running that affect the account you’re working with are displayed in the Process Sessions area. You can bulk delete, enable/disable filters, cancel, resume, postpone, or pause any process from More Actions, located at the top of the list view.
Summary
In this chapter, we have discussed when a customer is an Account entity or a Contact entity when working with Microsoft Dynamics CRM, as well as how to use these entities.
Understanding how the Account and Contact entities function and relate is important when you’re working with customers, and these two entities usually serve as the cornerstone of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2016.
Refer to CHAPTER 2, “New Features of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2016,” for additional new features.