Looking for PowerObjects? Don’t worry, you’re in the right place! We’ve been part of HCL for several years, and we’ve now taken the final step in our acquisition journey: moving our website to the HCL domain. Nothing else is changing – we are still fanatically focused on Microsoft Business Applications!

PowerObjects Blog 

for Microsoft Business Applications


Following Records in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013

Post Author: Joe D365 |

With it being Halloween, the other day I heard the 80's classic "Somebody's Watching Me" by Rockwell. Naturally it made me think of the "Follow" feature in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013.

Record following is part of the social features of CRM 2013. When you follow a record, activity surrounding that record is presented to you in your activity feed. This is a great tool for CRM users who need late breaking information about records they manage.

To follow a record in CRM 2013, you'll need to access the record by opening the form or by selecting it in the home grid, click the ellipses symbol, then click the Follow menu item. To unfollow a record, perform the same action, but select Unfollow.

Following Records in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013

You'll be reminded that you are following a record and that you can unfollow it as well.

Changes to followed records are logged to the activity feed, which can be viewed on the home screen under the What's New section. The types of posts that are created on your activity feed are determined by the configured and enabled post configuration rules as well as posts created by workflow.

Following Records in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013

On the home screen, you can adjust the filter for the What's New feed to include specific record types by entity, to filter posts about yourself, or to see posts about records you own.

A little to the right in the screenshot above, you'll notice that CRM user Rockwell has someone watching him! Beneath his user image is a count of CRM users who are following him. Clicking the number runs the Users Who Follow You view, where Rockwell can see who his followers are. He can also see how many records he is following.

Following Records in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013

The follow feature, when configured for your specific needs, can be quite helpful. Here are some scenarios for effective following:

  • A customer has been having a number of issues, and you'd like to see a post each time a new support case is created or resolved.
  • You are working with a lead on estimating a new sale, and you need to see if they have visited your product webpage using PowerWebTraffic.
  • You've hired a new staff member who has just been trained on CRM, and you want to follow their record creation to make sure they don't need additional training.

Now that you know all about the powers of following records in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013, maybe you're interested in Connecting CRM with Yammer to increase your social capabilities in CRM?

Happy Halloween, Happy following, and 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.

7 comments on “Following Records in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013”

  1. Joe, my Follow buttons are greyed out. Any thoughts on what I can do to enable them? I'm working in CRM 2013 Online.

    Thanks

  2. I think it would be useful if the followers link on the What's New was extended to all records that can be followed so you could see a list of followers. I have tried adding a subgrid to the form of the followed record to show a list of followers which seems to work although you get an add button that throws an error and if you select the record in the view , you get a very 'interesting' version of the followed record form

      1. You have to activate the wall for the entity you want to follow (account, contact etc). You can do that under Settings -> Post configurations.

  3. Is there any way to do some sort of rule or category based follow? Say I have a user who would like to follow all accounts marked as banking/Insurance - is there any way of making that happen without plowing through those accounts one by one?

PowerObjects Recommends