With the release of Microsoft CRM 2011 Beta all informamtion about the product is now available for public discussion. Below is the link to down load the on premis version of the 2011 beta.
Download the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Beta.
Sometimes after setting up a new organization it may be necessary to change the display or friendly name as show in the CRM Masthead.
To change this name open the Deployment Manager with the default Deployment Administrator or an added Deployment Administrator.
1. Select the Organization you wish to change the friendly name
2. On the right, choose Disable to allow for this Organization to be edited as shown below. (Note: this should be done when there are no users on the system otherwise disabling will prevent access to the Organization)
3. Once disabled, selected the Organization and choose on the right Edit Organization and change the Display Name.
4. Once the name has been updated continue with the wizard without changing any other settings.
5. When the wizard is complete, highlight the Organization and choose Enable on the right to allow users to access the system again.
At this point your system will reflect the new display name entered.
Known Issue: If you have not installed any rollups you may run into an issue with a friendly name that contains spaces and and plugins you have running on the system. The lastest accumulated rollup will address this issue.
I recently needed to create an audit trail for new and existing activities. This was accomplished by triggering a workflow to create a new record within an associated entity to our Contact record. The workflow is triggered anytime an new activity is created or updated.
Steps
1. Create a new entity, in this case we called it Activity Stage.
2. Create a 1 – M relationship from Contact to the Activity Stage entity.
3. Create the Activity Stage attributes, populate the form and associated list view, these will populate from the workflow.
4. Create a date\time attribute for a time stamp of the activity change, we will use the Workflow Execution time for the time stamp.
5. Create a workflow for each type of activity you want to audit, in our case we created one for Task, Phone Call and Appointment. In addtion we created a picklist set to the type of activity based on which type of workflow activity is triggered.
6. Within the workflow, set the Scope to Organization
7. Set the Starts When to Record is Created and Record Attribute Changes, in our case Modified On.
8. Add a Create Record step and Choose Activity Stage as the entity.
9. Map the appropriate attributes from the Activity as show below.
Within the new Activity Stage entity, anytime an activity is created or updated a new Activity Stage record will be created. The new entity is then set to readonly for the end users or further restricted by role.
