Dynamics CRM 2013: Diving into the sales pipeline – Part 3

In my previous post of this series, we discussed how to implement ACME’s sales pipeline through the creation of a business process flow (BPF) considering both the Lead and Opportunity entities. We created two business processes, one for opportunities that originated from leads, and another for opportunities that did not originated from leads.

In this post we will discuss how to implement ACME’s opportunity probability matrix through the creation of business rules.

Dynamics CRM 2013: Diving into the sales pipeline – Part 2

In my previous post of this series, we discussed some fundamental concepts of the sales pipeline and how Dynamics CRM handles the sales process. While considering the requirements of ACME (a fictitious company), we defined the stages of their sales pipeline, and started to outline the functional specification of the opportunity entity, including the elaboration of an opportunity probability matrix.

In this post we will discuss how to implement ACME’s sales pipeline through the creation of a business process flow. Read more >>

Dynamics CRM 2013: Diving into the sales pipeline – Part 1

No matter how orthodox and customisation-free you want your Dynamics CRM implementation to be, there is always one aspect of Dynamics CRM that must be customised: The Sales Pipeline. Such customisation is required if you want the default sales pipeline to work properly, as well the sales pipeline report.

The issue at hand is, how can we set-up a functional sales pipeline with charts and reports, yet keeping Dynamics CRM as close as possible to its out-of-the-box functionality?

In this series of posts, we will be covering the implementation of a sales pipeline based on the requirements of a fictional organisation, called ACME. Dynamics CRM 2013 provides new tools and functionality that enable us to create a streamlined business processes, including a sales pipeline.

Because there’s so much to discuss here, I’m going to break this up into multiple parts. And in this first part of the series, I’d like to address the fundamental concepts of the sales pipeline and introduce some key points on how to conduct a requirement assessment.

Dynamics CRM 2011: Diving into the sales pipeline – Polaris Addendum

With the release of Dynamics CRM 2011 Update Rollup 12 (UR12, also known as Polaris), Microsoft introduced a lot of new features such as cross-browser support and new forms based on the modern interface (formally known as Metro).

One particular new feature has been driving a lot of traffic to this site, and people emailing me asking for advice: the sales pipeline editor. This new feature allow system customisers to specify the stages within the sales process the steps within through the use of an online editor. Unfortunately, this editor lacks the flexibility and features required to customise a sales process like I have I have discussed in my Diving into the sales pipeline series for Dynamics CRM 2011. The purpose of this post is to serve as an addendum for the series when considering the Polaris update.

Dynamics CRM 2011: Diving into the sales pipeline – Part 3

In my previous post of this series we discussed how to apply our previously defined sales pipeline through the customisation of the Opportunity entity form. We went through the design of the Opportunity form, which included the addition of fields built-in fields which aren’t part of the default form, and we added some scripts for the calculation of our probability matrix.

Important Update: This article series has been written before the release of Dynamics CRM 2011 Update Rollup 12 (also known as Polaris). You might continue to read the articles in this series, but it is strongly recommended that you read this addendum before performing any customisations suggested in the series.

In this final post we will go through the creation of some workflows that will be part of our sales pipeline process.

Dynamics CRM 2011: Diving into the sales pipeline – Part 2

In my previous post of this series, we discussed some fundamental concepts of the sales pipeline and how Dynamics CRM handles the sales process. While considering the requirements of ACME (a fictitious company), we defined the stages of their sales pipeline, and started to outline the functional specification of the opportunity entity, including the elaboration of an opportunity probability matrix.

In this post we will discuss how to apply what have been defined so far by covering the customisation of the Opportunity entity form, including some scripting.

Dynamics CRM 2011: Diving into the sales pipeline – Part 1

No matter how orthodox and customisation-free you want your Dynamics CRM implementation to be, there is always one aspect of Dynamics CRM that must be customised: The Sales Pipeline. Such customisation is required if you want the default sales pipeline to work properly, as well the sales pipeline report.

The issue at hand is, how can we set-up a functional sales pipeline with charts and reports, yet keeping Dynamics CRM as close as possible to its out-of-the-box functionality? Which fields should we use and how should we design our workflows?

Because there’s so much to discuss here, I’m going to break this up into multiple parts. And in this first part of the series, I’d like to address the fundamental concepts of the sales pipeline and introduce some key points on how to conduct a requirement assessment.