Classify It with the Subject Tree

Classify It with the Subject Tree

The Subjects Tree in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 helps classifying records to subjects. Classifying records allows users to easily find data and can be used to produce quality reports. Out of the box, the Subjects Tree is used to classify Cases, Products, Sales Literature and Knowledge Articles.

Many legacy applications use a combination of 3 related combo fields to fully classify records. This force the user to go through a long series of clicks which usually ends with meaningful value in the first field and random data in the other (which means low quality reports). Many users don’t see the purpose of this time consuming process which cramp their performance statistics.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Subjects Tree a great improvement: it allows the user to navigate down a tree to select one subject or to just write it (if they know the subject name) using auto-complete feature of the Lookup field.

I have only recently discovered the the Subject entity (representing the Subjects tree)  can be related to other entities via N:1 relationship (1 Subject tree to many other entity records) The opposite relation is not available. I am not sure if this type of relation was always available or was added in one of the rollup packages.

This means almost any business entity (custom entities included) can be related to the Subject Tree. Once you have related the Subject Tree to another entity, added the Subject Lookup to the related entity form and published, clicking the Subject lookup will open the subject tree.
Actually, you can related entities to the Subject Tree in more than one relation, allowing the subjects tree to be used more than once on the same record.

Reporting with Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 - Harnessing the Dynamic Pivot Table

Reporting with Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 - Harnessing the Dynamic Pivot Table

Excel Pivot Table is an incredibly powerful reporting tool, as it allows any user to quickly design a report that reveals valuable insights by combining different dimensions of an otherwise flat data table. Combined with Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 dynamic Pivot Table feature, it supplies a powerful reporting option.

Once a user has built a dynamic report using Excel, he can attach the file as a CRM report and share it with other users or the entire organization. This report can than be consumed via the Microsoft Dynamics CRM application. Of course, any CRM user that will open the report will receive only the data he is authorized to. 

Any Excel Report sheet can be also saved to the desktop or sent by email and whenever opened will show the opening user the data he is authorized to view. Take, for example, the higher management layer, which usually is interested in the business bottom line. Such managers can be given a Dynamic Excel report which will always display them with the summarized data without ever opening the Microsoft Dynamics CRM application. Of course they still need a user in the application in order to view the report data.

In my last workshop ‘Reporting with Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Workshop’, I demonstrated building a live Service oriented dashboard report using Excel Pivot Table in just about 20 minutes. Here is how the final result looks like:

These charts present live data from Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 application. Behind each chart there is a matching Pivot Table which extracts data from the CRM data exported to Excel.

Now show me a developing tool that can do that in 20 minutes!