Track Exchange email activities automatically with folder tracking

Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online 2015 Update 1 provides a new and intuitive way to track incoming Exchange email activities. You can set up a tracking folder—use any Exchange folder in your Inbox—and then drag an incoming email message to that folder to track it. You can associate a tracked folder with a specific record, such as an account or opportunity, so whenever you move a message to that folder, it’s automatically linked to that specific record.

Tracked folders work with Exchange Inbox rules, which makes it even easier to manage and track incoming email. For example, you could set up an Exchange Inbox rule that automatically routes email from a Contoso contact to a tracked Contoso folder, linked to a specific opportunity. Tracked folders work on any device that supports Exchange, so you can track email directly from virtually any device.

To use tracked folders, your organization must use server-side synchronization as your email synchronization method. Tracked folders must also be enabled by a system administrator.

Do quick analysis with Excel Online, right from CRM Online

Millions of people use Microsoft Office Excel to analyze corporate data and create reports. Now you can use Microsoft Excel Online to do quick analysis, right from CRM Online. For example, if you’re a sales manager, you might want to analyze the opportunities your team owns and review Key Points of Interest (KPIs) to see how you can assist your team members. If you’re a sales rep, you can open your opportunities in Excel and do what-if analysis for different incentive scenarios.

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Note

You must have an Office 365 subscription to edit Excel documents in Excel Online.

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Export to Excel completely redesigned

We’ve redesigned exporting to Excel from the bottom up to provide for a much smoother experience. With a single click in the web client or in CRM for Outlook, you can export your data as an Excel document, which can be opened anywhere, including the desktop version of Excel (2007 and later), Excel Online, and other Excel clients. When you export, all formatting is preserved, so you can do your calculations in Excel, and then reimport the data to CRM. You can export up to 100,000 records at a time (previous limit was 10,000).

Collaborate with team members, even if they don’t have access to CRM Online

Office 365 users can use Groups to collaborate across Office products. A Group is a workspace that team members can use to share files, email messages, conversations, calendars, and Microsoft OneNote notes. Groups are a great way to collaborate with team members, even if they don’t have access to CRM Online. For example, create a group for your sales team, invite other Office 365 users to join the group, and then share documents, email, conversations, meeting information, and OneNote notes related to specific opportunities.

Take notes in OneNote, directly from CRM Online

Take advantage of all that Microsoft OneNote has to offer, directly from CRM Online. For example, when you’re on the go at a customer site, take notes on your Microsoft Surface or other mobile device while you’re viewing opportunity details. Capture photos, take voice notes, do free-form drawings and more. Everything is automatically linked with the opportunity record in CRM Online.

Enjoy the same great mobile experience, whether you’re using a phone or tablet

The CRM for phones app now provides the same process-driven experience as CRM for tablets. Nurture your leads and opportunities through the sales process with the new intuitive interface. If you have a Windows Phone, use Cortana voice commands to access your CRM data hands-free. More information: CRM for tablets and phones

The previous version of the CRM for phones app is still available in app stores, but it’s now called CRM for phones – Express.

Find the info you need, fast!

With the new navigation bar, it’s easier and faster to find the information you need. When you choose the Main Menu from the nav bar, you can access your work areas, records, or other items with less scrolling and fewer clicks than before.

Take a video tour of the new navigation

Use the Recently Viewed Items button on the new nav bar to get back to your most recently viewed and pinned items. Using this global tool, you can access recently viewed records, views, and even dashboards. Pin the items you use all the time to move them to the top of the list.

If you’re working in a complex form with lots of fields, the new form navigation drop-down makes it easy to get to just the data you need. Choose the drop-down next to the form title, and then select the section of the form you want to go to.

Share the knowledge (base) with Parature

We introduced Parature, from Microsoft, in the 2015 spring wave of releases. Now if you’re a customer service agent, you can take advantage of rich Parature knowledge base (KB) capabilities to reduce issue handling time, directly from CRM Online. For example, while you’re working on a case record, you can:

• View system-suggested KB articles
• Search for relevant KB articles
• Read the content of KB articles inline, including embedded images or videos
• Send KB article links to customers

Speed up customer service with default entitlements

Customer service agents use entitlements to verify the type of support a customer is eligible for and to provide the right level of support. Now service managers or admins can set an entitlement as the default entitlement for a customer. When an agent creates a case, the default entitlement is automatically associated with the case, saving time for the agent.

For cases where service organizations do not want entitlement terms to be deducted (a faulty part is installed, for example), service agents can also credit back entitlement terms so the customer isn’t charged.

Define rules for creating or updating CRM records from incoming activities

In previous versions of Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Service Managers could set up rules to automatically create cases from incoming email or social channels. Now sales, marketing, and service teams can use these same rules to automatically create or update one or more records from any single incoming activity, such as an email, social, or custom activity.

Source: Microsoft customer centre

Note: This topic is pre-release documentation from Microsoft and is subject to change.

Hope it helps!