I’m starting a 5-part series on the best features about CRM 2011. Each post will cover 3 new things that I didn’t know I couldn’t live without!
I’ll be honest, was tough to use at times. It felt like you had to go through so many clicks to get where you needed. Modifying fields was a bear. Remembering where to go for this and that was also difficult, unless you were modifying things every week (which I wasn’t). So I can’t tell you how happy I am that it seems Microsoft sat down with users and developers and had a real-life conversation. I think they might even have looked at competitors’ products. All with the goal of giving us the best of breed. Here are my first three faves:
- The Look and Feel (or User Interface for you techies). You know how I mentioned all those clicks? Well goodbye layers and layers of screens, hello one-page wonderful. CRM 2011 has a significantly improved window – set up more like a web page with links to content on the sides, and an option to “freeze panes” or have key data stay at the top of your window. Brilliant.
- Dashboards made EASY. Gone is the language that you can “easily create your own dashboards using webparts and sharepoint". Sure, if you are an experience developer or have one on staff. Guess what? I'm not and I don’t. So no dashboards for me. Until now. Pre-built dashboard come out of the box and you can see sample data in them to give you the idea of what your data will look like. How cool is that?
- Field-Level Security. Many of our customers have requested this feature. Microsoft must have been listening. Not only can you specify which fields a user sees based on his role (its super simple to do), but you can do it to both standard and custom fields. Whoo-hoo! My customers are excited, and while it’s not the most glamorous thing in the world, it’s USEFUL. I haven’t seen this much buzz over a feature in a long time.
Stay tuned for my next post which will include 3 more great features (what's next? – Audit Trails and One- Click exporting!)
Happy Valentines’ Day early. In lieu of flowers, please send your CRM 2011 comments! Donna Krizik [email protected].
Submitted by Feterick & Associates, Inc –Microsoft .
