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The workplace is changing. Learn new ways of working with Office 365 !
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Make team correspondence even easier by creating Groups in Outlook with the new Office. Send emails to your whole Group with one click rather than adding them in one at a time. Imagine all the time you'll save! Learn more.
Wednesdays with Will: Microsoft Dynamics CRM & Office 365 – Working In Perfect Harmony
By William Marchesano, Technology Advisor & Evangelist
Welcome back! Last week we talked about the recent expansion in Office 365 to include Dynamics CRM. This week we are going to discuss how you can enhance your experience in Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online with Microsoft Office 365. Separately, they work well as standalone solutions, solving different day-to-day challenges. Put them together, though, and you have managed to enhance both of these valuable business tools for the user as well as the administrator.
Over the past 3-4 years there has been prevailing sentiment for businesses to move to Microsoft Office 365. The most common, and logical, starting point for an organization would be their email (Exchange). Gone are the days where you have to buy new server hardware every few years, allocate the space in your office for said hardware, buy new software to upgrade, and pay for an anti-spam solution to keep you safe. Oh, and let’s not forget the maintenance that goes along with keeping it running in good order. All the above challenges have been either eliminated or reduced by Office 365 Exchange Online. There are also other parts to the solution such as file sharing (SharePoint/OneDrive), video conferencing (Skype For Business), crowdsourced collaboration (Yammer), and the tried and true Office Suite (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc.) that can be consumed through Office 365 as well.
As you know, much like Office 365, Dynamics CRM Online is also a platform that was designed to improve efficiencies in accomplishing daily tasks as well as enhance collaboration between your employees. In addition to that, Dynamics CRM is a process driven user experience tool that gathers analytics for business intelligence. These qualities are important when you are looking to implement a sales automation, marketing automation, or services automation solution for your organization. Dynamics CRM was designed to be used for these functions out-of-the-box. Yes, customization is required to make it hum along to the rhythm of your particular business but all the major pieces to make it work are there. But how does it all tie into Microsoft Office 365?
Let’s start with the reasons why your users will love it. All the featured applications I mentioned above (Exchange, SharePoint/OneDrive, Skype For Business, Yammer, and Office Suite) are logically integrated and used throughout the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online experience. Through Dynamics CRM Online you are able to synchronize emails, tasks, contacts, and appointments with Exchange Online and your Outlook. Documents that you save in Dynamics CRM pertaining to an account or opportunity are also synchronized and saved to SharePoint. You have the ability to click on a phone number in Dynamics CRM Online to make a phone call by using Skype For Business. One of the best new features, Office 365 Groups, allows non-Dynamics CRM users a single location to share documents, conversations, meetings, and notes with Dynamics CRM users. This would be helpful in the scenario of sales opportunity where the input of non-CRM users could be instrumental in winning a deal.
From an administrative perspective, Dynamics CRM Online is a familiar experience if you are already using Office 365. This is because Dynamics CRM users can be created and managed through the Office 365 admin center portal. You have the ability to do many other things through here such as manage billing and licenses, manage passwords, view self-serve service health, track planned maintenance, or leverage the Message Center. The Message Center is a great resource because it can tell you how to fix or prevent issues, plan for service changes, or just to stay informed of new or updated features. You can even request service to resolve an issue through the Message Center.
In the coming weeks, we will continue to go deeper into how these tools will apply in different scenarios such as sales automation, marketing automation, and services automation. I hope you enjoyed and found this week’s article informative. If you’re interested in some how-to related CRM material, check out blogs by my colleague Ben Ward here. Till next time…
About the author:
Will has over 16 years of experience in business development, team management, and project management. Will has worked at Managed Solution for over four years and is currently advising businesses on best CRM practices and implementations. Will’s focus is on process improvement and analytics specializing in Customer Relationship Management (CRM). Will is a Microsoft Certified Professional, with certifications in Presales Technical Specialist – Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013, Sales Specialist- Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013, Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2015 Application, Sales Specialist- Office 365, Sales Specialist- SMB Infrastructure and Sales Specialist- Datacenter.
With Office 2016, you regularly get new and improved features. Take a look below to see what's available to you today and come back later to find out what else has been added.
In Word and PowerPoint
Work with others simultaneously on a document regardless of the device you're using.
Learn more about co-authoring in Word and PowerPoint
Simplified Sharing
In Word, PowerPoint, and Excel
Just click the Share button in the Ribbon for easy sharing right from your Office documents. See who has access to a given document and who is currently working in the document, and change individual authoring permissions for any document you own.
Shared Notebooks
In OneNote
Collect any and all relevant information (e.g., photos, videos, clippings, drawings,...) in one central location, work with others, and watch the app sync changes within seconds.
Shared Notebooks
In OneNote
Collect any and all relevant information (e.g., photos, videos, clippings, drawings,...) in one central location, work with others, and watch the app sync changes within seconds.
Real-Time Typing
In Word
As you collaborate with others in a document, see where others are working and view their edits as they happen.
Modern Attachments
In Outlook
Attach a document from your recent items and share them from OneDrive or SharePoint with email recipients. Also configure sharing permissions so that all the recipients have access to the attached file without having to leave the app.
Mail Triage
In Outlook
The Clutter feature learns how you prioritize your mail and then helps you by putting low priority messages in a separate folder (while still giving you a daily summary so you don't miss anything). When on the go, you can also take advantage of this capability by using the Focused Inbox.
Improved Version History
In Word, PowerPoint, and Excel
Refer back to previous snapshots and earlier drafts of documents during the editing process as you collaborate with others.
One-Click Forecasting
In Excel
With one simple click, create forecast charts based on historical data and predict future trends. This new capability uses the industry standard Exponential Smoothing (ETS) algorithm to give you reliable forecasting data.
New Chart Types
In Word, PowerPoint, and Excel
Visualize financial or hierarchical data, and highlight statistical properties of your data with new chart types: Treemap, Waterfall, Pareto, Histogram, Box and Whisker, and Sunburst.
One of the benefits of using an application like Word is that you can add more than just words to your document–you aren’t constrained by what you can type. In addition to inserting things like images and shapes, you can insert symbols and special characters into your document.
To insert a symbol:
•From the Insert tab, click Symbol.
•Choose the symbol that you want from the drop-down list. If the symbol is not in the list, click More Symbols. In the font box, choose the font you are using, click the symbol you want to insert, and select Insert.
To insert a special character:
•From the Insert tab, click Symbol.
•Click More Symbols.
•Select the Special Characters tab.
•Choose the character you want to insert, and select Insert.
