Chapter at a Glance
The previous chapters covered a lot of the background information about Microsoft Dynamics CRM. In this chapter, you’ll start working with customer records. Accounts and contacts are two of the most important and frequently used types of records in the system. As you learned in Chapter 1, CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management, and capturing the relationships between the accounts and contacts that work with your organization is one of the most valuable benefits of the Microsoft Dynamics CRM software.
In Microsoft Dynamics CRM, an account is a company or other business entity that interacts with your organization. If your business sells products and services to other businesses, accounts might represent your customers. Contacts in Microsoft Dynamics CRM represent specific individuals, who might or might not have a relationship with an account record. Contacts records can be managed within the system without any association to specific account records, which you might find useful if your organization’s target customers include consumers. In addition to tracking customers, you might also want to track the other organizations and people that interact with your company, such as competitors, consultants, partners, suppliers, and vendors. This chapter will teach you how to distinguish between these different types of records. You’ll also learn how to link contacts to accounts so that you can track how each person relates to a different business. By capturing as much data as possible about accounts and contacts, you can begin to develop a 360-degree view of each person and business related to your organization. When you understand all of the interactions with each account and contact, you will be able to work more efficiently, make better decisions, and provide improved customer service.
For example, assume that you’re a sales representative who is using Microsoft Dynamics CRM, and you want to approach an existing customer about purchasing an additional product from your company. Before you pick up the phone to call the customer, it would be ideal for you to know whether the customer is experiencing any problems or issues with the product he or she purchased from you last year. A happy customer without any service issues will be more likely to purchase from you than a customer who is experiencing a lot of problems. Now let’s assume that your customer service department is also using Microsoft Dynamics CRM and tracking all of the service requests in the same system you’re using to track sales and marketing activities. When you view the customer record in Microsoft Dynamics CRM, you will be able to easily view all of your sales information and all of the customer service requests. If sales and service were using two different systems, you might have to make multiple phone calls or check in two different places to get the full picture of a customer’s dealings with your organization. Microsoft Dynamics CRM allows you to quickly review a customer record to understand the whole picture before you approach the customer about purchasing additional products or services.
In this chapter, you will create accounts and contacts within Microsoft Dynamics CRM, then work with them to track business relationships, attach related files, and share permissions to the customer data with another member of your team.
Note
Practice Files Before you can complete the exercises in this chapter, you need to copy the book’s practice files to your computer. The practice files you’ll use to complete the exercises in this chapter are in the Chapter03 practice file folder. A complete list of practice files is provided in Using the Practice Files at the beginning of this book.
Important
In this chapter, you will work with accounts and contacts by using the web client, not the Microsoft Dynamics CRM for Outlook client. Both clients share almost all of the concepts and steps for working with accounts and contacts. However, Microsoft Dynamics CRM for Outlook includes some additional account and contact functionality. One of the most important benefits of Microsoft Dynamics CRM for Outlook is the ability to synchronize contacts from Microsoft Dynamics CRM with your Microsoft Outlook contact list. You can then synchronize your Microsoft Dynamics CRM contacts in Outlook to a mobile or handheld device. Chapter 5, discusses the Outlook synchronization process in detail.
Important
The images used in this book reflect the default form and field names in Microsoft Dynamics CRM. Because the software offers extensive customization capabilities, it’s possible that some of the record types or fields have been relabeled in your Microsoft Dynamics CRM environment. If you cannot find the forms, fields, or security roles referred to in this book, contact your system administrator for assistance.
Important
You must know the location of your Microsoft Dynamics CRM website to work the exercises in this book. Check with your system administrator to verify the web address if you don’t know it.
Accounts represent businesses or organizations in Microsoft Dynamics CRM. You can access account information from the Sales, Marketing, and Service areas. The Account form consists of multiple sections, each of which contains data fields.
In accounts, contacts, or any other type of record in Microsoft Dynamics CRM, required attributes are marked with a red asterisk (*) to the right of the field name. The red asterisk indicates that you must enter a value in that field before you can create or save the record. If you try to create or save a record in which a required field does not contain data, Microsoft Dynamics CRM will prompt you to enter data in the field, and it will not save your changes.
A blue plus (+) symbol to the right of a field’s name indicates that the field is recommended. You can still create or edit records without entering data in a recommended field.
In this exercise, you will create a new account record.
Note
SET UP Use the Windows Internet Explorer web browser to navigate to your Microsoft Dynamics CRM website before beginning this exercise.
In the Sales area, click Accounts.
In the ribbon, click the New button to launch the New
Account form.In the Account Name field, enter Sonoma Partners. If your system includes additional required fields (as indicated by a red asterisk), you will need to enter values into those fields as well.
In the Street 1 field, enter 525 W. Monroe St.
In the City field, enter Chicago.
In the State/Province field, enter IL.
In the previous example, you created a new account named Sonoma Partners. Now let’s assume that Sonoma Partners is a division of a much larger organization named Contoso. Knowing that a relationship exists between Sonoma Partners and Contoso might be beneficial when you’re working with either company. Microsoft Dynamics CRM allows you to capture and record this type of relationship by using parent accounts and sub-accounts. In this example, you would specify Contoso as the parent account of Sonoma Partners. When you do so, Microsoft Dynamics CRM automatically denotes that Sonoma Partners is a sub-account of Contoso.
Important
You can use parent accounts and sub-accounts to record a link between two organizations. Specifying one account as the parent account automatically makes the other a sub-account. Each account can have only one parent account, but you can specify as many sub-accounts as necessary.
Most companies that use Microsoft Dynamics CRM use parent accounts and sub-accounts to denote a legal or ownership relationship between two accounts. When one or more sub-accounts are related to a parent account, all activities and history for the sub-accounts are rolled up to the parent account. Therefore, when you’re looking at the history of the Contoso account, Microsoft Dynamics CRM also displays the history of records attached to the Sonoma Partners account. This provides a complete picture of the interactions between the various records in your system, allowing your organization to understand your customers and tailor your sales, marketing, and customer service efforts accordingly.
Note
See Also For more information about how to track activities, see Chapter 4.
In this exercise, you will create a new Contoso account and link it to the Sonoma Partners account created in the previous example.
Note
SET UP Use the Internet Explorer web browser to navigate to your Microsoft Dynamics CRM website, if necessary, before beginning this exercise. You need the Sonoma Partners account record you created in the previous exercise.
On the ribbon, click the File tab, and then select the New Record menu and click Account. A new, blank account form opens.
In the Account Name field, enter Contoso.
Enter values in any other required fields
marked by a red asterisk, and then click the Save & Close button.In the application navigation pane, click Accounts, and then double-click the Sonoma Partners record.
In the Parent Account text field, enter Contoso, and then press the Tab key.
Microsoft Dynamics CRM automatically resolves the text you entered to the Contoso record, indicated by the underline and blue text color of the parent account name.
Click the Save button.
Tip
Alternatively, you also could have selected Contoso as the parent account by using the Lookup button located on the right side of the Parent Account text box. For a quick refresher on using lookups, see Chapter 2.
Contacts represent the various people with whom you do business. For each contact record, you can specify one (and only one) account as its parent customer. Most companies use the Parent Customer field to record the contact’s employer, but you are not obligated to do so.
By specifying a parent customer for a contact, you create a relationship between those two records. When you create relationships between accounts and contacts, you can view all of an account’s contacts by clicking the Contacts link in the Account’s entity navigation pane. This list of contacts related to the account is known as the contact associated view.
In addition to viewing all of the contacts associated with the account, you can click the view selector to choose different contact filters. Each of the different views can have its own unique filter criteria and display different columns of data. Note that the filter will only display contacts associated with the account you’re viewing. For example, if you select the Inactive Contacts view, Microsoft Dynamics CRM will show you all of the inactive accounts associated with the account record you’re viewing.
Similar to linking sub-accounts and parent accounts, linking contacts to an account allows you to view the contacts related to an account, including a roll-up of the activities from the related contacts to the parent account. Therefore, if you log a phone call activity with the Mike Snyder contact record, whose parent account is Sonoma Partners, you will be able to view that phone call record when you’re looking at the Sonoma Partners record.
Tip
By default, Microsoft Dynamics CRM lists the contact’s full name and business phone number when you’re looking at the contact associated view related to an account. Your system administrator can customize this contact associated view to include additional columns, such as title, city, or email address.
As with accounts, there are several methods for creating a contact:
Create a contact from the ribbon by clicking the File tab, and then selecting the New Record menu and clicking Contact.
Create a contact by navigating to a contact view and then clicking the New button on the ribbon.
Create a contact by clicking the Add New Contact button in the grid toolbar of the contact associated view of an account.
Create a contact by clicking the New button in the contact Look Up Record webpage dialog box.
One benefit of creating a contact from the associated view is that Microsoft Dynamics CRM will automatically populate several fields on the contact record based on the account record you’re currently viewing. For example, if you have the Sonoma Partners account record open and you then click the New Contact button in the associated view, Microsoft Dynamics CRM will fill out many of the fields on the new contact record—Street 1, City, State/Province, and others—with data from the Sonoma Partners account record. Microsoft Dynamics CRM will also automatically fill out the Parent Customer field of the new contact as Sonoma Partners. This concept of pre-populating data fields is known as field mapping. Your system administrator can determine how fields are mapped between two types of records.
Tip
Creating a new contact from the associated view will automatically fill out the mapped fields, such as the Parent Customer field and the address fields. Using this technique will save you time if the contact shares the same address information with the account.
Tip
If you create a new contact record by using one of the first two methods described above, Microsoft Dynamics CRM will not automatically fill out the mapped fields for you. This can be useful when the contact has different address information than the account (as could be the case when an employee works from home).
Although field mapping will pre-populate the contact record with data from the parent account, it will not maintain an ongoing link between the two records. If the account address changes because the business moves to a new office, you will need to explicitly update the address of the contacts related to that account. The edit feature located on the ribbon of the associated view allows you to update the address of multiple contacts at the same time.
For each account record, you can specify a primary contact. As you would expect, the primary contact denotes the individual that your organization should initiate interactions with. Although most of the time the primary contact works for the account organization as an employee, this is not a requirement. You can select any contact in the database as the primary contact for an account. Consequently, assigning a primary contact to an account does not automatically map the data fields and pre-populate the mapped values.
In this exercise, you will create two new contacts for the Sonoma Partners account. First, you will create a contact from the associated view, which will pre-populate certain values for the contact. Then you will use a different method, in which Microsoft Dynamics CRM does not pre-populate the mapped fields.
Note
SET UP Use the Internet Explorer web browser to navigate to your Microsoft Dynamics CRM website, if necessary, before beginning this exercise. You need the Sonoma Partners record you created earlier in this chapter.
Navigate to Accounts and open the Sonoma Partners record.
In the entity navigation pane, click the Contacts link.
On the ribbon, click the Add New Contact button.Microsoft Dynamics CRM opens a new window. Note that the following fields already contain data: Parent Customer, Street 1, City, and State/Province.
In the First Name field, enter Ben, and in the Last Name field, enter Burton.
Click Save and Close.
You’ll see that the Ben Burton contact now appears in the contact associated view of the Sonoma Partners account record.
In the main application window, click the File tab, and then click New Record and click Contact to launch the New Contact form.
In the First Name field, enter Alan, and in the Last Name field, enter Jackson.
In the Parent
Customer text box, click the Lookup button to launch the Look Up
Record webpage dialog box.In the Search box, type Sonoma Partners, and then press Enter.
In the results, click the Sonoma Partners record.
Click the OK button to close the webpage dialog box.
Click Save and Close.
You will see that now both Ben Burton and Alan Jackson are linked to the Sonoma Partners account record, but Microsoft Dynamics CRM only pre-populated the mapped fields on the Ben Burton record because you created it from the associated view.
In addition to entering information about accounts and contacts in the forms, you also can attach files (such as a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet or an Adobe Acrobat PDF file) with the record. Microsoft Dynamics CRM allows you to easily upload and save files related to accounts and contacts so that you can refer to them later.
In this exercise, you will save a file as an attachment to an account and download it for viewing. You can follow a similar sequence of steps to attach a file to a contact record.
Note
SET UP Use the Internet Explorer web browser to navigate to your Microsoft Dynamics CRM website, if necessary, before beginning this exercise. You need the Sonoma Partners account record you created earlier in this chapter and the Orders1.xlsx practice file.
Navigate to the accounts view and open the Sonoma Partners record.
On the ribbon, click the Add tab, and then click the Attach File button to launch the Manage
Attachment dialog box.Click Browse and navigate to the Chapter03 folder.
Select Orders1.xlsx and click Open.
The navigation window closes.
Click the Attach button to upload the file to the account.
Click the Close button.
On the Sonoma Partners record, click the Notes & Activities link in the entity navigation pane. If necessary, scroll down to the Notes section.
You can now see that Microsoft Dynamics CRM has attached the Orders1.xlsx file to the account record. Microsoft Dynamics CRM has automatically recorded the name of the user who uploaded the attached file, in addition to the date and time.
To open the attachment, click the file name and select either Open or Save.
Most of the records in Microsoft Dynamics CRM include values for status and status reason. A record’s status defines the state of the record, and the most common status values are Active and Inactive. However, some types of records include additional status values. For example, case records can have a status value of Active, Resolved, or Canceled. Records that do not have a status value of Open or Active are considered to be deactivated (also referred to as Inactive). Microsoft Dynamics CRM retains deactivated records in the database; it does not delete them. However, inactive records will not appear in several areas throughout the user interface, such as in Quick Find searches or in lookup windows.
Important
Microsoft Dynamics CRM removes inactive records from parts of the user interface. In addition, you cannot edit an inactive record by using its form.
A record’s status reason provides a description of the record’s status. The status reasons vary depending on the type of record and the status value. In the case example, a record with an Active status could have one of multiple status reasons: In Progress, On Hold, Waiting For Details, or Researching. The following table illustrates how status and status reason values can vary by record.
Record type | Status value | Status reason value |
|---|---|---|
Account | Active | Active |
Inactive | ||
Contact | Active | Active |
Inactive | Inactive | |
Case | Active | In Progress On Hold Waiting For Details Researching |
Problem Solved | ||
Canceled | ||
Phone Call | Open | Open |
Made Received | ||
Canceled | Canceled |
When working with accounts and contacts, you might want to deactivate records for multiple reasons. For example, you might want to deactivate a record if:
A contact has changed companies or does not work for the account anymore.
An account has gone out of business.
A duplicate of the account or contact record already exists in the system.
You do not want to continue tracking interactions with the account or contact.
In this exercise, you will deactivate a contact record and then reactivate it.
Note
SET UP Use the Internet Explorer web browser to navigate to your Microsoft Dynamics CRM website, if necessary, before beginning this exercise.
In the Sales area, click Contacts.
You will see the Ben Burton record in your
results. Click the record to select it. On the ribbon, click the
Deactivate button. When a dialog box opens, asking you to
confirm the deactivation, click OK.
Microsoft Dynamics CRM deactivates the record.In the Quick Find box, type Burton and then press Enter.
You will not see the Ben Burton record in your results because you deactivated the record. Microsoft Dynamics CRM does not include inactive records in the Quick Find results.
Now that you have deactivated the contact, you will reactivate it. In the view selector, select Inactive Contacts. You will see a list of deactivated contacts, including the Ben Burton record.
Double-click the Ben Burton contact record to open it. Note that Microsoft Dynamics CRM has made the fields on the form unavailable so that you cannot edit the inactive record.
On the ribbon, click the Activate button. When a dialog box opens, asking you to
confirm the activation, click OK.Microsoft Dynamics CRM activates the contact and enables the form fields so that you can edit the record.
Microsoft Dynamics CRM includes a robust security model that allows administrators to set up and configure which users can view or perform actions on the different types of records in a system. For those times when you want to share a particular account or contact record with a user because he or she cannot access it, Microsoft Dynamics CRM allows you to easily share records, assuming that your system administrator has given you permission to do so. Microsoft Dynamics CRM allows your organization to create teams of users, which can be beneficial when your organization wants to share records, because team members can belong to any business unit within your organization.
Important
Microsoft Dynamics CRM allows you to share records on an ad-hoc basis with a specific user or a team of users. When you share records, you can also determine which types of security privileges to grant for the shared record or records. You can grant privileges to other users only if you yourself already have those permissions for the shared record.
In this example, you will share a contact record with two users so that they can view and edit the record. You can follow a similar process to share account records.
Note
SET UP Use the Internet Explorer web browser to navigate to your Microsoft Dynamics CRM website, if necessary, before beginning this exercise. You need the Ben Burton contact record you created earlier in this chapter.
Navigate to a contact view and open the Ben Burton contact.
On the ribbon, click the Sharing button, and then click Share.A new window opens.
In the Common Tasks pane, click Add User/Team.
Because you are sharing this contact record with a user, leave the Look for list value set to User. Select any two active users in your system, and then click the Add button.
Click OK.
Microsoft Dynamics CRM lists the selected users in the sharing window.
Within this window, you can decide what types of privileges to grant to each user for the Ben Burton contact record. Because you want these users to have permission to edit the contact record, select the Write check boxes for both of the users you selected.
Click OK.
Microsoft Dynamics CRM updates the security permissions and closes the sharing window.
To view the current share permissions for a record, click the Sharing button on the ribbon, and then click Share.
A new window appears that displays the share information that you just configured.
Tip
When working collaboratively with other users on a record, you might want to send someone a specific record to review. To simplify this process of referencing a specific record, Microsoft Dynamics CRM offers a web address shortcut (URL) for each record. Users who click the record shortcut address will automatically open that record in the system without being required to look for it in the user interface. To copy the shortcut address to your Microsoft Office Clipboard, click the Copy A Link button on the ribbon. Now you can paste the record’s address into another application, such as an email message or document, by pressing Ctrl+V. Microsoft Dynamics CRM includes shortcuts for almost every type of record in the system, including accounts, contacts, cases, and activities. If you click the Email A Link button, Microsoft Dynamics CRM will launch your default email program with the record shortcut already inside the message.
In addition to sharing records with other users, you can change the ownership of a record. Most of the records in Microsoft Dynamics CRM (such as accounts, contacts, leads, cases, and opportunities) are “owned” by a user or a team, and the record owner is a key component of the security model within the system. Microsoft Dynamics CRM allows you to change the record owner (or assign the record) by using multiple techniques in the user interface. For example, you can:
Regardless of the technique you use, you will follow the same steps to assign account, contact, and most other records in Microsoft Dynamics CRM.
In this exercise, you will change the ownership of a contact record by using the second technique just mentioned to assign it to a different user.
Note
SET UP Use the Internet Explorer web browser to navigate to your Microsoft Dynamics CRM website, if necessary, before beginning this exercise. You need the Ben Burton contact record you created earlier in this chapter.
On the ribbon, click the Assign button.A new window opens.
Click Assign to another user or team.
Select a different user by typing the user name directly in the box or by clicking the Lookup button.
Click OK.
The window closes, and Microsoft Dynamics CRM updates the record owner to the value you selected.
When working with account and contact records in Microsoft Dynamics CRM, you might notice that two or more records appear very similar. For example, your database might contain multiple contact records for the same person in your system. Although you obviously wouldn’t knowingly enter two records for the same person, it is possible that your system might contain duplicate records.
Note
See Also Microsoft Dynamics CRM includes multiple tools to help your organization avoid creating duplicate records in your database. For more information on configuring the duplicate check features, contact your system administrator to enable and configure Microsoft Dynamics CRM’s duplicate checking functionality.
Even though Microsoft Dynamics CRM contains powerful tools to help you avoid duplication, you will undoubtedly find a few duplicate records within your database. Fortunately, Microsoft Dynamics CRM includes a merge tool that allows you to consolidate two different records into a single merged record.
When merging two records, you specify one record as the master record, and Microsoft Dynamics CRM treats the other record as the child record. The software will deactivate the child record and copy all of the related records (such as activities, notes, and opportunities) to the master record. During the merge process, Microsoft Dynamics CRM presents you with a dialog box that allows you to select data from individual fields in the child record so that you keep data from specific fields with the surviving master record.
Tip
You can merge lead records, in addition to merging accounts or contacts. However, you cannot merge two different types of records together. You can only merge leads with other leads, accounts with other accounts, and contacts with other contacts..
By merging duplicate records, you will maintain a clean customer database, which will help with sales, marketing, and service productivity.
In this exercise, you will create a new contact record and merge it with an existing contact record. You would follow this same process for merging account and lead records.
Note
SET UP Use the Internet Explorer web browser to navigate to your Microsoft Dynamics CRM website, if necessary, before beginning this exercise.
On the ribbon, click the File tab, and then select the New Record menu and click Contact.
In the First Name field, enter Ben, and in the Last Name field, enter Burton. In the Fax field, enter (312) 555-1212.
In the Parent Customer field, click the Lookup button to launch the Look Up Record webpage dialog box.
In the Search field, enter Sonoma Partners, and then press Enter.
In the results, click the Sonoma Partners record.
Click the OK button to close the webpage dialog box.
On the ribbon, click Save and Close.
In the Sales area, click Contacts.
In the Quick Find text box, enter Burton, and then press Enter.
Microsoft Dynamics CRM lists the contact you just created and the Ben Burton contact record you created previously in this chapter.
Holding the Shift key down, click both Ben Burton records in the grid so that they are highlighted. On
the ribbon, click the Merge button. The Merge Records dialog box appears.In this dialog box, you choose the master record by clicking the button next to the appropriate contact record. You can also select which data fields you want to keep from the child record and transfer onto the surviving master record. Click (312) 555-1212 in the Fax field. When you do so, Microsoft Dynamics CRM will keep this fax data on the final record.
Click the OK button.
Microsoft Dynamics CRM will merge the two records together by updating the master record and deactivating the child record. When the process is complete, Microsoft Dynamics CRM will display an alert window telling you that the selected records are merged and the subordinate record is deactivated.
Click OK to close the Merge Records dialog box.
You can create accounts and contacts by clicking the New button on the ribbon or by using the New Record option located by clicking the File tab on the ribbon on the main screen.
You can link multiple accounts together by specifying one account as the parent account, which automatically makes the other a sub-account.
Each account can have only one parent account, but accounts can have as many sub-accounts as you need.
Microsoft Dynamics CRM allows you to upload file attachments to many records, such as accounts and contacts.
Sharing accounts with other users or teams allows you to grant security privileges to groups that might not otherwise have access.
Most records in Microsoft Dynamics CRM, such as accounts and contacts, have a single user as the record owner. Record ownership helps determine security settings. You can change record owners by assigning a record to a different user or team.
You can use the merge tool to consolidate duplicate records into a single record while preserving the history of both records.