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Add Announcements to the Dashboard in CRM 2011

Post Author: Joe D365 | November 22nd, 2011

Announcements have been in Microsoft Dynamics CRM for years, but few companies really leveraged them because if users didn't set their homepage to the announcement screen, they never saw the notices. The advent of Dashboards has changed the game significantly since those days. You can now bring elements from all over CRM into once place so that you have a true command center to launch your day from! When you add Announcements to the dashboard in CRM 2011, you can reduce email clutter by posting relevant information in one place and ensuring it is broadcasted to all CRM users.

Add Announcements to the Dashboard in CRM 2011

When you click on Announcements in the main navigation menu, the URL is the main CRM URL. So, you cannot point to the URL. This is easily fixed using a Web Resource. You then add the resource to your dashboard.

Note: New announcements are still created from Settings>>Administration>>Announcements.

To create the Web Resource

  1. Type the following code into a text editor and save it as "announcementsondashboard.htm"

  2. In CRM, navigate to Settings>>Customizations>>Customize the System>>Web Resources and press the new button

  3. In the dialog box, enter the name and Display Name "Announcements" and set the Type to Web Page (HTML) and save

To add the Web Resource to the Dashboard

  1. Create a new or edit an existing Dashboard

  2. In the Edit Dashboard Window, press the Web Resource button

  3. In the Web Resources Properties box, search for the new_announcements resource, provide a Label name and save

  4. Save the Dashboard

That's all there is to it! Begin leveraging the power of Announcements today.

Happy CRM'ing!

Joe CRM
By Joe D365
Joe D365 is a Microsoft Dynamics 365 superhero who runs on pure Dynamics adrenaline. As the face of PowerObjects, Joe D365’s mission is to reveal innovative ways to use Dynamics 365 and bring the application to more businesses and organizations around the world.

17 comments on “Add Announcements to the Dashboard in CRM 2011”

  1. Hello, I followed your instructions which worked perfectly. However, once I made a change or added an announcement, the dashboard did not update. Any ideas on how to get it to automatically update on the dashboard for new announcements and remove expired announcements. Please email me.

  2. I'm missing something here. You create the html file "announcementsondashboard.htm", but I don't see where you ever tell CRM to use it. Do you upload it to the web resource dialog in step 3?

  3. Have done this and it works great, thanks!
    Is it possible to set-up announcements for teams or individuals?

    1. Hi Matt - the out of the box announcement is global and we can't do based on teams or individuals. if we do need based on teams or individuals, then best option is to create a custom entity and ditch the out of the box announcements.

      1. Was just coming round to that conclusion after spending the afternoon looking at the issue / reading the little information about announcemnts on the web.
        We do need to send annoncements to teams, emailing the team or individuals may be an option, but would prefer to keep emailing messages to more specific info rather than general information / messages.
        Any info on how I need to go about building this into our solution - we are fairly new to dynamics.

  4. This solution works fine if your CRM server only hosts 1 organization. With multiple orgs it takes only announcements of the default org.

    1. Hi Marc - so it shoudl take the anoucements from the existing organization. Does your server have the latest update rollup? Are you using adfs/ifd or is it ina on prem deployment? If an on prem deployment I wonder if the url in the js shoudl be changed slightly. We'll research and post it here shortly.

  5. The solution works really good for me. But is there a possibility that i can view the createdBy attribute of the announcement

  6. It somehow doesn't work for me, we've got the 2013 online version. what could be wrong?/what do i need to do differently?

  7. Hi,
    I recently wanted to try this for one of my clients who is still on CRM 2011On Prem. I added the solution and it shows the Announcements section. But non of the announcements apper. I tried the same code of the CRM 2013 online instance and it works perfectly. Any reason for it to not work on CRM 2011 Onprem??????????

    1. Hi Sahan - in your crm 2011 environment do you have adfs/ifd running? There are a couple issues if your crm is only using on prem ad authentication.

      1. Could you expound on this please? We are an on premise installation using ad authentication. The Announcement box displays, but the Announcement text does not.
        Thanks

        1. Hi Laura - the issue is related to the url link. I think if you are on prem, with no adfs, all you need is to make sure we are generating the correct url to your web resource. So step 1 above - we want to make sure this is going to a valid url which is your on prem url for this new web resource. I'll this to our list so we can udpate this blog.

  8. To work in multi-org environment this code should be like this (tested in CRM 2013):

    Announcements

    function LoadPage() {
    window.location.href = GetGlobalContext().getClientUrl() + "/home/homepage/home_news.aspx?pagemode=iframe";
    }

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