2003 to 2007 Structured References
Working with formulas and functions has not always been the most intuitive process. In Microsoft Office Excel 2003, multiplying gross revenue by the profit margin might mean typing something like =B7*E14. In Microsoft Office Excel 2007, structured referencing enables you to use the column headers in table data to build your formulas. Instead of cryptic cell locations, you can simply multiply =[Gross Revenue]*[Margin].
To use structured referencing, you first need to format your data as a table.
1. Click Format as Table in the Styles section of the Home tab.
2. Select the My table has headers check box.
3. After you have a table, click the cell where you want to insert the formula, and then type the left bracket ([).
4. Select the column that you want to use from the list that appears, press the TAB key, and then close it with the right bracket (]).
5. Repeat as you build out your formula.
Your Microsoft Dynamics CRM system probably contains sales leads for your company. The 'out of the box' system assigns the ownership of these leads to the creator of the record. As a result you may find that the Sales Administrator who has logged the sales lead from perhaps a phone call initially 'owns' the lead in the system and has to then manually assign it to the correct salesperson based on certain criteria, perhaps by geographical territory, industry expertise or even some kind of 'next available' scenario. With the creation of a simple workflow in Microsoft Dynamics CRM this lead assignment process can be automated. This is both a time saver and also a more accurate way of working.
There are a number of ways to tackle this. In our scenario the lead should be assigned based of geographical territory. For this to take affect you would need to create a new custom picklist on the 'Lead' window containing your territories. You will probably also want to do the same on the 'Account' window and the 'Contact' window as the lead convert process can then map this data to all the relevant windows automatically.
Then you would need replace the existing picklist on your 'Lead' window with your newly created one and create a many to one relationship between your lead and your newly created territory field. Finally you will want to set up your mappings to the 'Account' and 'Contact' window as alluded to above, to allow automatic data updates when the lead is converted. You are now ready to create your workflow.
The workflow needs to check for the territory (this is a 'check condition' workflow stage) and then assign the lead to the relevant salesperson. It could also send an e-mail notification to that person so that they know the lead has just been assigned to them. You should also consider whether the workflow needs to populate the existing picklist field behind the scenes also, as this may be required for other purposes.
Workflows in Microsoft Dynamics CRM are very flexible and relatively straightforward to set-up, while at the same time being pretty powerful. The above is merely an example but hopefully it will prompt further workflow ideas to improve efficiency.
It is worth also bearing in mind that Microsoft also provide a number of free of charge Microsoft Dynamics CRM 'accelerators' adding to the available system functionality. One of these accelerators adds to the workflow functionality by providing additional workflow steps and workflow actions. Each custom action provides additional capabilities around string handling, mathematical functions and HTML hyperlink creation.
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