Rodolfo Chavez

Out-of-the box activities that have due dates appear to do well at popping up reminders in Outlook for the user. It would be nice for custom activities to also follow this behavior.

We created a custom activity and used the due date field on the main form. However, even though users do populate the due date/time fields, they are not reminded when that date/time comes. Workaround is to create a parallel task with the custom activity (although that defeats some of the purpose of having the custom activity to begin with).

Currently, you can add custom fields for existing Activities (Emails, Tasks, Appts, etc) as well as custom Activities. However, the issue is that you cannot currently define custom fields that would span all Activity types such that they are visible in the "Activities" views.

This is a problem for consolidated view "special" filtering at the Activities level.

For example, if I want to define Activities associated with a Team (such that all users who are members of that Team can see them by default), I'd like to be able to define a "Related Team" custom field that would be available on all current entities as well as any future custom entities I might add. Assigning the Owner to be the Team creates issues for specific Activity management. So if the Owner of a Task is the Team, for example, a user with delete capability at the user level won't be able to delete the Task (even though they may have created it). So while I can use the Team as the Owner to create "team views" across Activity types, this creates a limitation on the ability for those users to delete the same activities.

This is just one example of where it would be nice to have a place to define custom fields that span all Activity types and are available for general Activity views.

(Note: This enhancement suggestion is related to another I recently posted on Connect regarding Category/Subcategory for Activities).

Currently, there are no "out-of-the-box" ways to auto-default key field values onto forms based on context.

For example, if I am at the Account level, and click the email address of the primary contact, it would be nice if I could define the values that would default for the From, To, Subject, etc based on context and configurable criteria.

How would this be implemented?
This would be particularly useful for Activities, like Emails, Tasks, Appointments, Phone Calls, etc.
So if a configuration screen existed that had the following:
Activity Type, Context, User Role (* = Default/All), Conditional Criteria Rules (like workflow based on context), Field & Default Value lists.

So then, for example, when a user is say at the Context of an Account, is a Customer Service Rep (role), launches an Email form by clicking on a contact's email address, with Criteria of something like Account (Owner) in current user's teams, set Field To = {contact selected}, From = general customer service email address, Subject = {user-defined}, Body = {existing template}, and Set Regarding the Current Account.

What would be the business rationale of having such functionality?
a) USER ADOPTION!!! We are getting many, many, many complaints from our users that there is just too much clicking going on for a simple email, or that for each of the above fields too much has to be manual set when clearly the logic for the values could be easily defined with rules.
b) Time save - did I mention USER ADOPTION?

Only current option is to do development/modifications/plug-ins to support such functionality, but logically that functionality should exist in an enterprise-level CRM product as everyone would benefit from it.

Oh, and by the way, if this functionality is implemented, it would be nice if it is extended to MS Outlook add-in.

Would be nice for MSCRM to have a setting that takes smart matching a step further by creating a SINGLE (collapsable) consolidated "blog" view of Emails in System Views that shows (by default) the last message in the thread.

Here's the workflow:
a) Rep initiates an Email and sets it regarding an Account. Sends email, email is tracked in CRM and "tagged" to that Account
b) Customer responds to Email, smart matching determines the customer's reply is related to the original, and auto-tags the reply to the Account. Now you have two email activities at the account level.
c) Rep proceeds to respond, third email...
d) Chain goes on 2-3 mor times...
e) Now you have lots of email activities at the account level that were related to a single "thread" intermingled with all the other activities.

Not ideal for the end user who has to either sort to find the last email or continuously be deleting the previous emails to keep the account views "clean".

If MSCRM had the option of having a system setting to consolidate emails into a single "blog" thread with the subject showing only the last message, but able to collapse the details of previous messages, that would be more user friendly.

Currently, it appears there is no way to automate the recalculation of goals in CRM.

Scenario: Nightly interface from Business Intelligence system provides Currenty and Prior YTD sales. Because it is updated nightly, it would be nice to trigger the automatic re-calculation of goals in CRM to get progress toward Targets.

Impact: Not ideal for users - affects user adoption of CRM.
Workaround: None - would require development when automation should simply exist in the framework for Goals.

Considering not using CRM Goal functionality simply because no automation exists. May end up going to Business Intelligence, which defeats one of the purposes of having purchased a CRM system for our sales team.