So even with the launch and subsequent rollup’s from Microsoft there is no easy way to send a quote or order confirmation out from Microsoft CRM 2011 with the click of a button. I thought I’d take the time to document the process and then suggest some of the benefits of the ePDF solution from the end user.
The functionality to do this is in CRM but if you want to go from creating the Quote record to getting an email to send with the quote or order attached this would be the process
Create E-mail and Attach Quote PDF or Order PDF
The CRM 2011 Way
1. Click Run Report Dropdown
2. Select the report to run
3. Click „Export‟ button
4. Select Acrobat (PDF) file
5. Select where to save report
6. Close Report Screen
7. Click on the „Add‟ tab
8. Click on E-mail
9. Click on Save
10. Click on Attach File
11. Click Browse
12. Find where you saved PDF and click Open
13. Click Attach
As you can see from the 13 steps not exactly time efficient or best use of a Sales Persons time. I then looked for another approach, and this would be to use the CRM mail merge functionality which when I did, I ended up with about 18 different steps to get a word doc attached to my email and to be honest found this quite confusing.
In projects gone by and that sounds really bad but I have seen a range of solutions offered most involving the purchase of more licences for another 3rd party tools that would integrate in CRM, which from an end user point view is not ideal as you then working in several different interfaces.
So after much investigation and not being able to find a solution I set about working with the team here at MyCRM to see if something could be done, not only for our customers but for me, as I use CRM 2011 all day long.
The Solution
Building on what we had learnt with CRM 4.0 we successfully, after a few updates released a solution called ePDF
The ePDF solution is an addition or extension to the way CRM works and extends the following record types in Microsoft CRM 2011.
The ePDF solution allows the creation of a PDF attached files on an email to be created through a very simple process and extends the following record types.
1. Quote
2. Order
3. Invoice
4. Account
5. Contact
6. Service Activity
7. Contract
8. Lead
Working with the team I wanted to help make the process as easy and as straight forward as possible and to be honest anything that reduced the 13 steps above had to improve my working environment, so this is what we got the process down to
The ePDF way
1. Click Create PDF Report button on the entity tool bar
2. Select the report to run from the pop up screen
3. Click Create E-mail and Attach PDF from the pop up screen
4. Email window opens with PDF attachment of related quote or report generated.
So in a nutshell that was the reason behind ePDF and you can find more from the link below and download a trial for 14 days if you, like me, need to send quotes quickly.
http://downloads.mycrmgroup.com/ePDF.aspx
Alistair (mycrm)