Customize Your Connections to Avoid Confusion for User Friendly Dynamics 365
Posted on: November 22, 2016 | By: Craig Thompson | Microsoft Dynamics CRM
In Dynamics 365 for Sales, the ‘Connections’ entity can be very useful for linking and forming relationships between records. For example, you may have an account with many contacts, but what if you want to attach other contacts and accounts that are indirectly related. If you are within an account and you want to link a lawyer or a consultant to that account, you can do so with Connections.
As shown below, if you are in an account you can click Connect to open the connection form. From here you have the ability to connect to almost any record. Besides the obvious accounts, contacts, and opportunities, you can also connect your record to activities, orders, invoices, users, and the list goes on.
One confusing aspect about this connection form though is that when you choose the role, whether it be ‘Influencer’, ‘End User’, ‘Referral’, etc., the role is listed as a hyperlink. Clicking this hyperlink simply brings you to the Connection Roles form which does not allow you to do much other than choose the connection role, which you just did. What’s more, if the role you choose does not have a matching role then you are unable to choose a role for the ‘Connected From’ portion. For example, you can be connected to an account as a role of ‘Referral’ and that account would be ‘Connected From’ you as the ‘Referred By’ role because those role are matching in the system. You would not have the ability to connect a Former Employee role with a Referred By role because they are not matching. You do have the ability to set up matching connection roles manually but it can be time consuming and cumbersome.
What we at Logan Consulting have found to be helpful is to create custom fields with an option for roles and put these in place of the inherent ‘As this Role’ lookup fields. Most organizations only need a quick glance at the information to see how a user is connected, especially if they are familiar with their data. By putting a field for ‘Role’ as a dropdown it saves confusion as many users click the role link which doesn’t lead to anywhere. Also, it is much faster to use the dropdown because it saves the steps of using a lookup and avoids additional clicks.
By adding two new fields, ‘Role To’ and ‘Role From’ (as shown in the image) you can quickly use the dropdown to add any role you include in your option set field with no restrictions. If you need to add more options for roles down the road just add them to your option set field. You may want to even create a global option set and use this for both the Role To and Role From field, as well as other forms or entities you may want to include for roles. Note though, as you can see in the image the original ‘As this role’ fields are locked and required in the system by the business. That being the case, I have moved them to the bottom of the details form, and unchecked the option for ‘Visible by default’ so that they would be out of the way and out of sight when viewing the form on the front end. With your new fields, you can still search for connection roles and create views to search for particular roles, you just will not have the confusing link that has little positive functionality.
If you think that a CRM system is your next best step for your business, contact Logan Consulting your Microsoft Dynamics CRM partner of Chicago.