Business: Technology & Systems

Microsoft Dynamics has a rich interface with a lot of options for customization.  The out-of-box configuration is ideal for most businesses, but lacks global search functionality.  In order to search across multiple entities you can purchase a solution from The Marketplace or develop your own solution.  Most of the documentation I’ve come across describes creating a custom entity which links to each of the other entities you would like to query.  While this is a solid option, it requires a lot of setup and if you want it to be easily configurable for a non-developer, you will have to build code for a GUI.  The other option is to purchase a solution from the Marketplace.  The solutions that are out there have implemented the custom entity method.  That means that you will have to click into that Custom Global Entity to be able to search.  This may slow down some users if they are working primarily out of Leads/Contacts/Accounts/Opportunities/Etc.., because they have to click into this entity to search from it.  I’m going to show you how to enhance the built-in Quick Search of an entity to look up records across your organization so your users don’t have to leave the entity they work out of.

Who is this for?

• Organizations that start their business process from the Lead Entity
• Businesses that have all users take inbound calls and need to locate the
  owner of a record to transfer the call

Customize Quick Find Functionality – LEAD ENTITY

Step 1. Navigate to Lead
Step 2. Click the Customize Tab on The Toolbar
Step 3. Click System Views to Open the Views of That Entity (Leads)
Step 4. Double Click “Quick Find All Leads”
Step 5. Click “Edit Filter Criteria: Under the ” Common Tasks” Pane on the Right
Step 6. Clear the Default Filter

When you qualify a lead, it creates an Account/Contact/Opportunity.  Each of the entities references the originating lead.  Since the lead is never actually removed/deleted from Leads it is possible to search through the organization to find out basic information, like; Owner, Name, Phone, etc.  When a user takes a phone call and needs to find out who owns the record in order to transfer the call to the appropriate agent/user, they can now use the Lead Quick Find search bar to lookup a client even if they are no longer in leads.  This simple change opens the ability to query ALL leads regardless of status.

Step 7. Click “Save and Close”
Step 8. Publish All Customizations

Summary

Now you can use Leads search box to lookup customers even if they have been converted and determine owner, contact info or anything else you want to see.   This provided a solution for businesses that have their users take inbound calls and need the ability to lookup who owns the record so they know where to transfer the call.  You can tweak the Quick Find in each of the entities to not only change the Filter Criteria, but also update which fields in the entity are queried.  Since you can reference lookup fields in the find filter, you can effectively search across the organization in cases where a relationship has been established with an entity.  Since the out-of-box configuration builds the relationship for qualifying leads, you can effectively search across the org from leads or backwards from opportunities.

Thymio Barbatsis
Solution Architect | Company Built, Inc.

Get PDF Version w. Pictures HERE

In our first Beyond Computer Repair article we discussed how costly computer repair issues can be controlled by putting into place proactive computer maintenance and optimization plan. We also discussed how removing a user’s local administration rights give us a trifecta effect on creating and keeping a stabilized dependable computing environment.

We would like to get a little deeper into how one can setup a computer maintenance and optimization plan for your system. Depending on how heavily the system is used this program should be run once a month or quarter. The more heavily a system is used the more often system maintenance and optimization should be performed.

System maintenance and optimization is handled in a variety of ways, typically it starts with closing all running applications and turning off ones anti-virus which will allow the system to run its cleanup and optimization programs more quickly. We typically like to go through and close all running items that are running in the system tray as well. The next steps involve cleaning out the systems temporary files, uninstalling any non-essential applications, performing system updates then running a defragmentation on the systems hard disk drives. A reboot is used to reset the system and ensure that the proper applications start back up and that the system is again running in proper
working order along with complete anti-virus protection.

There are a variety of ways to go about performing system maintenance and optimization; we find the following to be the easiest more direct methods that work for our needs. You could perform the process using various built in tool sets like the Windows System Tools like Disk Clean Up or other third party tools, but here is our approach and you can feel free to use it.

• Uninstall non-essential applications: Add/Remove Programs – Control Panel Programs & Features
• Perform System Updates – perform all critical updates and any optional updates you think are necessary
• Perform Disk Clean Up – Manually
  • Delete all files out of c:\windows\temp
  • Delete all temporary files off of the system (from a command prompt run c:\del *.tmp  /s)
  • Delete all temporary files from browsers using their Delete Browsing History options, but please make sure to choose the appropriate options for your needs.
  • Delete unnecessary User Profiles
  • Clean up all other User Profile temp directory. Delete the files out of c:\users\profile name\local settings\temp
  • Perform hard disk drives defragmentation using: System Tools – Disk Defragmenter
  • Reboot when the Disk Defragmentation iscomplete.

As you can tell it does require a little knowledge about your computer system and its usage to perform routine system maintenance and optimization.  A small amount of time spent will pay dividends on system longevity and usability.