A company that might do business with your organization.

A general term used to describe an interaction with a customer or potential customer. An activity can be created to remind a user to communicate with a customer or to record a communication that has already occurred. Eight types of activities exist natively: tasks, faxes, phone calls, email messages, letters, appointments, service activities, and campaign responses. Your organization can also create custom activities in addition to these.

The units of service, such as a case or a range of coverage dates, specified in a service contract to indicate how much access a customer has to customer service.

Text-based content stored in the knowledge base.

A property of an entity with a specific data type. Attributes are analogous to columns in a database table. When attributes are added to an entity form, they are displayed as fields that correspond to their data type.

An activity associated with a specific campaign, such as a letter, fax, or phone call. Campaign activities include campaign-specific information and must be distributed to create the individual activities for users to perform.

A record of the communication you receive from a potential customer in response to a specific campaign.

A customer service issue or problem reported by a customer and the activity that a customer service representative uses to resolve it.

A record in a hierarchical relationship with a parent account, where a reference to the parent account is stored in the child account record. One parent account record can be related to many child account records, or sub-accounts. Child account records have lookup fields in their forms that allow them to be related to a parent record.

A person who represents a customer or potential customer, or an individual related to an account; for example, an individual who purchases products or services for his or her own use, or an employee of an account. A contact might also be a person involved in a business transaction, such as a supplier or a colleague.

An agreement to provide support during specified coverage dates or for a specified number of cases or for a specified length of time. When a customer contacts customer service, the level of support the customer receives is determined by his or her contract.

A line item in a contract that describes the service support to be provided. A contract line often includes pricing information and how support will be allotted.

A framework for a contract that is used to ensure consistent layouts and content in similar contracts.

Turning a qualified lead into an Account, Contact, and/or Opportunity record.

An account or contact with whom business units conduct business transactions.

A way of relating a customer record to other customer records. Customer relationships are reciprocal. The relationship defined for one record is also available in the other customer record.

A file that contains information about how data from a source system corresponds to data in Microsoft Dynamics CRM.

A mass-mailing of the same message that is sent by using Microsoft Dynamics CRM email templates to multiple email recipients.

To create campaign activities for each account, contact, or lead in a marketing list associated with a campaign, and then to assign the activities to the specified owners, or to perform the activities automatically (such as sending email messages).

A value that updates in real time. For example, a dynamic export can be refreshed with the latest data from the Microsoft Dynamics CRM database.

A framework for an email message that is used to ensure consistent layouts and content in similar email messages.

A technique that streamlines data entry when a new record is associated with an existing record. When an entity has an entity relationship with another entity, you can create new related entity records from the associated view that is visible on the primary entity. When the user creates a new record from an associated view, mapped data from the primary entity record is copied to the form for the new related entity record.

The act of disconnecting the Microsoft Dynamics CRM for Outlook with Offline Access client from the Microsoft Dynamics CRM server, which allows you to work with a subset of data while not connected.

The act of connecting back to the Microsoft Dynamics CRM server from the offline client for Microsoft Dynamics CRM.

A list of activities that have been completed or closed. You can access the history for a record in its navigation pane.

A repository of an organization’s customer service information, such as frequently asked questions, data sheets, solutions to common problems, and user guides. This information is stored as articles and is organized by subject.

A potential customer who must be qualified or disqualified as a sales opportunity. If a lead is qualified, it can be converted to an opportunity, account, and/or contact.

A resource through which your company obtains leads.

An account, contact, or lead that is included in a marketing list.

A set of filters that determines the data that will be available offline and stored on the local computer.

A field that allows you to choose a value from data stored in a related entity.

A marketing program that uses multiple communication vehicles and is intended to increase awareness of your company, products, or services.

A list of accounts, contacts, or leads that match a specific set of criteria.

A potential revenue-generating event or sale to an account that needs to be tracked through a sales process to completion.

An account record that is in a hierarchical relationship with a child record, where a reference to the record is stored in the child record. One parent account record can be related to many child records.

A compilation of all products that are available for sale.

A holding container for activities that need to be completed. Some queues contain cases and activities in the Workplace, and other queues contain articles in the knowledge base.

A marketing communication method that creates a single activity for distribution to a group of marketing lists, accounts, contacts, or leads.

A mechanism to quickly search for records in the database.

A formal offer for products or services, proposed at specific prices and related payment terms, which is sent to an opportunity, account, or contact.

Used to link an activity to another record so that you can view the activity from the record. If you create a new activity from a record, this is automatically filled out.

To open a previously closed opportunity for further exploration.

To allow another user or team to have a specified amount of access to a record, such as a case, account, or contract. For example, you can share an account with a team and specify that its members can read the account record but cannot have write access to it.

A value that remains the same and does not update in real time. A static export cannot be refreshed with the latest data from the Microsoft Dynamics CRM database.

A record in a hierarchical relationship with a parent account, where a reference to the parent account is stored in the sub-account record. One parent account record can be related to many sub-account records, or child accounts. Sub-account records have lookup fields in their forms that allow them to be related to a parent record.

Categories used in a hierarchical list to correlate and organize information. Subjects are used in the subject tree to organize products, sales literature, and knowledge base articles.

To create a link between a record in Microsoft Dynamics CRM and a record in Microsoft Outlook. If you change data on a record that is tracked in Microsoft Dynamics CRM, the changes will appear in both Microsoft Dynamics CRM and Outlook.

A filter applied to a list of records. Users can choose different views that contain all the records or activities of a particular type or that are a subset of that type.

The Internet browser–based client for Microsoft Dynamics CRM.

A pane in the navigation pane that contains the work a user has been assigned, is currently working on, and is available in queues to which the user has access. Users can accept, assign, and delete assignments from here. Users can also use the Workplace to access their calendars and the knowledge base.