When working with Contact records in Microsoft Dynamics CRM, you might find it frustrating if someone asks you to send them the address of a particular contact. You either have to re-type it or copy it line by line. To save yourself the headache, use the ISVConfig customizations in CRM 3.0 or CRM 4.0 to add a button to the Contact form that lets you copy the address to the clipboard. The example below illustrates how to do this for the Contact.

1. In the CRM Customizations area, go to "Export Customizations"

2. Export the ISVConfig.xml file and save this file. Make a copy for backup.

3. Edit the XML in Notepad or Visual Studio. Place the following code between the <Entities></Entities> tags:

---

<Entity name="contact">
   <MenuBar>
    &a ... Read More »

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 has built-in duplicate detection which is great, but in 3.0, which many businesses are still using, the only options for duplicate detection were some third-party applications or a a custom-developed one like the minimally functional example in the 3.0 SDK.

[BEST PRACTICES NOTE: Duplicate detection should be only one of the tools in you data quality arsenal. The best approach is  to have some solid practices that govern data entry, and to train users well on things like searching for a record before entering new data.]

Because of the shortcomings of duplicate detection in version 3.0, a lot of these systems have ended up with some data quality issues. If you're running CRM 3.0 and you'd like a quick way to check your duplicates, here's a simple SQL query you can run to find them.

1. Open SQL Server Management Stu ... Read More »
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   CRM MVP Connection

We seem to regulary run into clients who like the idea of converting a Lead into an Account, Contact and Opportunity - but they would also like to be able to convert backwards into a Lead again. 

Why?  Well, maybe someone in the Lead Management group qualified the lead, but when they passed it along to Sales, they could not longer get in touch with the lead.  The options are: (1) make Sales work it until they can get back in touch, (2) train Lead Management to work with Accounts, Contacts and Opportunties, (3) forget about it (which most of them do), or (4) re-create the entire record as a Lead again.

 But now there is another alternative (read the full story for the rest)...

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