Author: Scott Florance

Dynamics CRM: A Team Effort

I’d like to break down the difference between two types of teams found in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013. Most people who are familiar with teams in Dynamics CRM know about what are called, “Owner Teams.” These are the traditional teams that have been around since CRM 4. In Dynamics CRM 2013, Microsoft has introduced a new type of team called an, “Access Team.” The purpose of creating Access Teams appears to be for the benefit of working around and with some of Dynamics CRM’s security features.

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December 19, 2014

Custom CRM Reports with External Data

Perhaps you wish to provide your Sales Reps with the Customer Statement from Dynamics GP or a report which summarizes order history. We would be able to use pre-filtering to only pull orders in GP for the Account in question or if your Sales Rep is on the road, still allow them to print out a Customer Statement without having to us a VPN to access GP. Great! So, I’ll just upload the report I created into CRM and be able access my external data. Not so fast.

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October 2, 2014

CRM Report Permissions

CRM provides a variety of out-of-box reports as well as the ability to import custom built reports. Some of these are beneficial to the entire organization while others are required just for a subset of users such as executives, sales or service managers, or even a specific department such as Finance. These group specific reports might contain information which other groups should not be able to see (e.g. a profit margin report which shows product cost for the Finance team which you do not want Sales Reps to view.) With this scenario you need to set up security around the reports. It’s not always straightforward and easy to figure out.

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September 2, 2014

Running SSRS Service Account as a Domain User

In order to access the variety of reports which CRM provides out of the box, or to access custom built reports from CRM Reporting Extensions (also known as the SRS Connector), you must be installed on a SQL server with SQL Server Reporting Services running. Generally, when setting up SQL Server Reporting Services, the Service Account which runs the service is set to the default of Report Server. When CRM Server and SQL are on two different servers it may produce an error message at the System Checks page when installing CRM Reporting services because of the Service Account. For security reasons, the best option is to have a domain user as the Service Account.

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August 12, 2014