What do you do for the user who says, “It takes too many clicks to…?” The following is a checklist of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 tools and settings for that increase efficiency for end users, including things each user can do to decrease clicks with minimal effort and no administrative privileges.
Set Personal Options
The user can access this in either the Outlook Client or IE. Changes made in one will carry through to the other.
Accessing Personal Options
- Outlook: File menu | CRM | Options
- IE: File menu | Options
- Change the user’s CRM home page to a page that frequently use. This dictates the first thing the user sees when they open CRM.
- Increase the number of records shown per page in any list of records to 250. This decreases the number of paging they need to do to see all the records in a view.
- Change the default mode in Advanced Find to Detailed. This auto selects the Details button when they open Advanced Find.
Set as Default (Web Client)
In the web client each user can set the default view that displays when they click on a record type or an area of CRM. This is awesome because some of the out of the box default views are not relevant to all users. For example, the out of the box default view for Accounts is “My Active Accounts.” What if they don’t own any Accounts? They have to change the view every time they navigate there.
- Navigate to the record type or area you want to change (i.e. Accounts, Opportunities or Dashboards)
- Change to the view you want to see when you click on the area.
- Click on View in the Ribbon (you can skip this step for Dashboards)
- Click on Set as Default
Pin Views (Outlook Client)
The Outlook Client doesn’t have the Set as Default button, but you can change your default view for each record type by selecting the view and clicking on the pin.
Copy / Email Link of a record (Outlook and Web clients)
Each record in CRM boasts the Copy a Link and Email a Link button in the ribbon. The user to whom you provide this link will navigate directly to the record.
Copy / Email Link of view or selected items in the view (Outlook and Web clients)
Same concept as what’s in the record except the user will have multiple links or one link that navigates directly to a view.
Jump Tabs (Web Client)
Each record contains a jump tab. Clicking on the arrow closes the current record and opens the next record in the view. This is especially handy if you have to update a number of records, and have a view that contains all the records containing what you have to update.
Create Relevant Dashboards
Dashboards are a mix of charts and grid views. With a mix of the right elements, a dashboard can be a one stop shop for any click adverse user. Think about how the work it takes to create a dashboard can reduce the amount of clicks a user or team has to do to see and open relevant records.
These little details play a huge role in increasing user acceptance which ultimately results in better data for your company. Brought to you by your friendly CRM Experts at PowerObjects.
Happy CRM’ing!
JoeCRM
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