Any useful CRM system will have thousands of contact, account, and activity records. In reality, though, most users work with only a small subset of these records at a given time, and usually they need the same records over and over again. Previous versions of CRM helped users narrow the list by defaulting a user's view to so-called "My-" views: in "My-" view, you're only looking at the records that you the user own. If you regularly need a list of records that you don't own and/or that are based on additional filters, previous versions of CRM also allowed you to create custom views by defining and saving the selection criteria of an Advanced Find.

CRM 2011 goes a step (or maybe, a leap) further by giving the user the ability to see where he or she has "been" in the system (Which views, and even which records, were accessed last?) and to jump to these pages quickly.

Click on any section in the left navigation pane, and you'll see the name of the section, the home page icon, and a graphic that looks like .

Clicking the last icon opens up the Recently Visited menu, which shows you a real-time view of the records and views you last opened:

Clicking on any item in the listing will immediately take you to that record or view.

The Recently Visited menu is an example of how CRM 2011's user interface has been developed with an eye to the more familiar Office applications: it is almost identical to the Recent Documents menu you would see in Word or Excel:

Similar to the Office applications, you can "pin" a record to the menu by clicking the pin icon next to the record name. In the illustration below, the 123 Company account record has been pinned and will remain on the list until I choose to "unpin" it by clicking the pin again.

So now if I'm working heavily with a particular record for a period of time, I can pin that record so it stays on the list. And since the Recently Visited menu is accessible from any of the left navigation sections, I will have easy access to that record no matter where I am in CRM: I no longer have to do a Quick Search for that record.

If you have additional questions about CRM2011 or want to get your hands on it early, give the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Experts at PowerObjects a call!

Just another reason to love the new MS CRM!

Happy CRM'ing