Here is our latest Demo solution for Event Invitation tracking within Microsoft CRM

This solution is designed to work with eCampaign to enable organisations to track Events and Event responses directly in #CRM2011 after send the related Accept and Decline Links via an email marketing campaign. 

For more information on eEvent and Invitation tracking please contact sales@mycrmgroup.com or register with http://downloads.mycrmgroup.com/

Thanks Alisatir

What we need is an Image Gallery!!

Having had the opportunity to work on a number of projects and see a whole range of requirements and needs for CRM, I thought I would share this one as this forms part of our new solution ePicture.
I was recently working with a customer, who had a catalogue of images for products that they sold, these happened to be images of Telephone handsets and switches. 

There was a requirement and a need to include these images into CRM so they could be used with Quotes, Orders and web site integration.  It was also made quite clear that there was no apparent budget or desire to introduce a SharePoint instance or integration into the organisation.

As an organisation they wanted to keep everything in one please, one system and one over all solution with one technology, usually a difficult ask, but this is what we delivered to meet the need

ePicture (Images Galleries for CRM 2011)

First we thought about having an area in settings, which can enable the creation of image galleries so that we could easily add images to any record type or entity with in CRM

This way the ePicture solution can be used through simple configuration, any entity in CRM can have an associated picture gallery and the example I use is Contacts and Products. 

Let me explain Why

Online Selling and Online shops is growing at a pace and the old adage “A Picture Paints 1000 Words” rings true, as when you shop online or request a quote you are always more interested when you have a picture of the product your thinking of buying.  With ePicture you can enhance the product library in CRM2011 and send your customers compelling graphical quotes, which are generated through the standard reporting in CRM 2011.
The other use for ePicture here is the use of a solution like this to capture pictures of contacts on your CRM system.

Why you might ask

Well this is great when your organisation is inviting people to an event and you want to issue an ID card you can simple take a web cam and record at registration point the person’s photo for the event purpose, this said you can also use the same feature for leisure or club membership where it is important to capture an image of the individual. 

ePicture comes with an additional resource so that you can add a primary picture to the top level record while you may capture more than one picture for the individual in the image library.

ePicture will be release toward the end of May 2012 via the MyCRM download Site,

Register here http://downloads.mycrmgroup.com/

Thanks Alistair

We are pleased to announce our first Workflow Function Library for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011, in this release we have added 36 new function calls for CRM Workflow that extend the business logic for Business Automation and processing of Data

eWorkflow – Marketing 

                   Function – GetLastCampaignForMember 
                   Function - GetLastCampaignResponseForMember 
                   Function – MarketingSubscribeUnSubscriberMember 
                   Function – UnsubscribeMemberFromAllMarketingLists 
                   Function – IsAMarketingListMember 

eWorkflow – Calculations

                    Function – BasicMath 
                    Function – ConvertTextToNum
                    Function – EquationSolver/SumUp 
                    Function – CalculateMaximum 
                    Function – CalculateMinimum 

eWorkflow – Dates 

                    Function – AddBusinessDaysToDate 
                    Function – AddToDate 
                    Function – DateDifference 
                    Function – DateDifferenceBusinessDay
                    Function – GetDayNameAndNumber 
                    Function – PareseDateFromString 
                    Function – SubtractBusinessDaysFromDate 
                    Function – SubtractDaysFromDate 

eWorkflow – RegEx 

                     Function – RegexMatch 
                     Function – RegexRelpace 
                     Function – RegexReturnMatch 
                     Function – RegexStringFormat 

eWorkflow – Strings 

                     Function – CapitiliseString 
                     Function – PadString 
                     Function – RemoveWhitespace
                     Function – ReplaceString
                     Function – StringLength
                     Function – SubString

eWorkflow – Web 

                     Function –WebURLDecode
                     Function –WebURLEncode

eWorkflow – Sales 

                     Function – CountRelatedRecords (Entities)
                     Function – TotalValueOfInvoices 
                     Function – TotalValueOfOpportunities 
                     Function – TotalValueOfOrders 
                     Function – TotalValueOfQuotes 

eWorkflow – Other 

                     Function – CustomerType

We will be working on a release 2 and release 3 of the eWorkflow Library and will continue to extend the Library functionality, with community and customer feedback.

For further information please contact sales@mycrmgroup.com

Release 11th May 2012, Pre-Register Here http://downloads.mycrmgroup.com/

Since the release on Microsoft CRM 2011 and the release of the Microsoft Online platform we have had many prospects and customers come and ask the same question and that is

Oh can I do that in Workflow?

To date the answer has been you can if your deployment is on-premise but not if you’re online, which usually starts of a conversation with the words “Are You Sure” and the “Sales Person told us it was exactly the same software”
So to clear that initial question or statement “Yes it is the same code build or same software” but and there is always a but, till now or until R8 is released you have not been able to run what are “Sandboxed” custom workflow plugins within CRM online.
Enter R8, R8 has many changes and support for different things but one little snippet we really liked was:-

"CUSTOM WORKFLOW ACTIVITIES IN CRM ONLINE
With the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Q2 service update, developers can build custom .NET Workflow activity assemblies for Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online. These custom assemblies can be developed and deployed as part of a Microsoft Dynamics CRM solution package. Once a custom workflow activity has been deployed, it can then be utilized within the workflow engine for business process management. These new capabilities ensure parity in the developer experience between Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online and on-premises. It also empowers organizations to bring external data, custom actions and integrations into their standard CRM business processes."

This means you will be able to run custom workflow plugins as part of a solution.  This really does bring in line the capability and functionality of CRM 2011 regardless of deployment type.
So why the blog post, well as expected we are now seeing customers come to us with requests for custom workflow plugins and to be honest we could build this on a one by one basis or a bespoke basis, but we have opted to release our full library of workflow extensions for CRM 2011.

eWorkflow
eWorkflow like all our other products and services starts with a download licenced install of a CRM2011 solution, once deployed you can start building extended workflows with the following additional functionality

Marketing
Marketing List Subscribe (/unsubscribe)
Marketing List Remove (all)
Get Last Campaign For Member
Get Last Campaign Response For Member

Sales
Get Total Value Of Opportunities
Get Total Value Of Quotes
Get Total Value Of Invoices
Get Total Value Of Orders

General Functions
Equation Solver
Basic Math
Convert Value
Maximum
Minimum
Add Business Days To Date
Add To Date
Parse Date From String
Subtract Business Days From Date
Subtract From Date
Regex String Format
Regex Match
Regex Replace
Regex Return Match
Capitalize String
Pad String
Replace
String
Substring
Remove Whitespace
URL Decode
URL Encode

See all the new Workflow Helpers 

 
So as you can see from the list above we have introduced a number of additional functions that can be used in CRM2011 but more importantly these are tested and supported to use straight from install.

We anticipate that on release there may be other functions that get added, but this includes the first release.

The eWorkflow Helper Library will ship with a number of tested workflow functions for #CRM2011 for both on-premise or hosted either online or partner hosted and can add a new level of automation to the implementation of CRM.

You can register for a free download account with MyCRM at http://downloads.mycrmgroup.com/

Or email sales@mycrmgroup.com

Regards

Alistair