In today's hybrid work environment, sales teams are more distributed than ever. Whether they're working from home, on the road, or across multiple time zones, remote sellers need a CRM that's fast, flexible, and built for collaboration. That's where Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales stands out. The Remote Sales Challenge Managing leads, nurturing relati...

Unlocking the full potential of your existing customer base can be the key to driving revenue growth. Cross-selling and upselling aren't just sales tactics, they're strategic opportunities to deliver added value to customers while increasing deal sizes. With Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales, businesses gain powerful tools to identify these opportunitie...

Sales teams face increasing pressure to meet targets, nurture leads effectively, and maintain strong customer relationships. However, common challenges such as disorganized pipelines, lack of insights, and inefficient processes can hinder success. Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales (CRM) provides powerful solutions to overcome these hurdles and drive bet...

Dashboards in Dynamics 365 Sales provide a centralized view of key business metrics, making it easier for sales teams to track performance, monitor leads, and manage opportunities efficiently. However, out-of-the-box dashboards may not always align with your team's specific needs. Fortunately, Dynamics 365 Sales allows you to customize dashboards t...

In sales, every potential opportunity starts as a lead. But without proper tracking and management, leads can slip through the cracks, resulting in missed revenue. That's where Dynamics 365 Sales comes in—offering a structured lead management system to help sales teams capture, nurture, and convert leads efficiently. In this blog, we'll break down ...

Sales can be a tough job. Keeping track of leads, talking to customers, and closing deals takes a lot of work. But with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales, sales teams can work smarter, not harder. This tool helps salespeople stay organized, follow up with leads, and close deals faster. Let's walk through a day in the life of a salesperson using Dynamics...

Manual data entry, disconnected communication, and inefficient workflows slow down sales cycles and impact revenue. Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales automates key processes, allowing teams to focus on closing deals and strengthening customer relationships. This blog explores how automation can streamline your sales operations for greater efficiency and...

Customer retention is a key driver of long-term business success. Acquiring new customers is important, but keeping existing ones fosters loyalty, increases revenue, and reduces marketing costs. Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales provides powerful tools to help businesses strengthen customer relationships, enhance engagement, and improve retention rates....

Understanding the Pain Points of SMBs Small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs) face unique challenges in managing customer relationships, streamlining sales processes, and scaling operations efficiently. Limited resources, disconnected systems, and manual workflows often hinder growth, making it essential to adopt a solution that centralizes data, enh...

Accurate sales forecasting is essential for any organization striving to stay competitive and grow. Yet, many businesses struggle with it due to data silos, lack of real-time insights, and inefficient processes. Enter Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales, a robust solution designed to address these challenges and empower organizations to make confident, da...

Small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) face the constant challenge of driving revenue growth while optimizing operational efficiency. For many, the key to overcoming these challenges lies in leveraging modern technology. Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales offers SMBs a robust solution to streamline their sales processes, enhance customer relationships,...

Microsoft has unveiled its 2025 Release Wave 1 plan for Dynamics 365 Sales, introducing a suite of innovative features designed to enhance sales processes and boost productivity. These updates, scheduled for rollout between April and September 2025, leverage artificial intelligence (AI) to empower sales teams with advanced tools and capabilities. A...

For many organizations, effective lead management remains a persistent challenge. Leads are the lifeblood of sales, yet inefficient processes, fragmented systems, and lack of visibility often result in missed opportunities, wasted time, and frustrated sales teams. Disorganized Lead Management Poor lead management often stems from a lack of structur...

When it comes to managing your customer relationships, the software you choose is important—but even more crucial is selecting the right partner to guide you through the process. Recently, I heard from a business that had invested in a CRM system but was struggling with disconnected systems and operational inefficiencies. Their experience highlight...

I was recently speaking with some like-minded CRMers in the community and we were discussing what we find to be at the top of the list for help desk inquiries. The overwhelming consensus was CRM for Outlook.

Do you ever find yourself faced with CRM for Outlook just not cooperating? Whether it be that you are having undesirable or unresponsive behaviors, the CRM tab is greyed out, or the CRM tab has vanished. Have no fear, you are not alone, and with a few checks and few clicks, more often than not, one of the following suggestions will be your golden nugget for resolution.

Check the following machine related roadblocks for starters...

ü  Ensure that your CRM for Outlook version matches up with your CRM server version. It could be that you are out of sync.

ü  Could you possibly have add-ins that are not playing nicely with one another? Begin to disable your add-ins one by one and see if CRM for Outlook is positively affected.

The newest mobile app released by Microsoft for Dynamics CRM takes the user experience to a whole new level. The newest release is compatible with Dynamics CRM 2015 Update 1 and above. Below are some notable tips and tricks for navigating the mobile app.

Choose your app carefully.When you search in your mobile device’s app store, the familiar, Dynamics CRM for phone express, and the newbie Dynamics CRM for Phones, will be available to select from. The simplest identifier is their distinct logos.

You want to choose Dynamics CRM for Phones.

This app exemplifies the catch phrase, “Write once, deploy everywhere.” The experience you have grown so used to in your web client is essentially replicated in your mobile experience. As you navigate the mobile app, screens intuitively reformat, making it far more conducive to the smaller real estate, without losing a bit of functionality, including business process flows. As you swipe right and left, you are presented with all the data and all of the fields that are relevant to the entity you are working within.

The main navigation in the CRM 2016 ribbon not only altered its look, it also made functional changes, vastly improving the end user experience. The Main Menu Button now replaces the CRM logo. Clicking this button enables the user to switch between each of the functional areas without waiting for the page to reload. 

To add, a functional area can be selected where sub-areas are neatly organized in rows by category to easily view and select from. The fluid transition and absence of endless scrolling make for ease of navigation.

A sleek button, aptly referred to as MRU (Most Recently Used) presents the user with up to 30 of their MRU Records and Views.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM is set to see a substantial update this spring, with the release of Carina. This will serve as the first major update to the new CRM 2015.  Although an exact date for its release is yet to be determined, CRM users and partners are abuzz with the features and added functionality that Carina promises. Here are some notable features that can be expected:

1. Enhanced Excel Integration

The new update will allow Excel users to open their data in spreadsheets within CRM. This serves as a valuable feature for quick visibility and analysis of data, and eliminates any compatibility issues that may arise should you have a different version of Excel installed.

2. OneNote Online Integration

Users can now take notes, create voice memos, capture photos and clip web pages from any mobile device (such as iPads or Android phones) and attach them to CRM using OneNote.

In today’s digital world, it is vital for you to manage your relationships with your customers systematically by taking advantage of new technology efficiently and profitably. The traditional linear customer relationship management is being replaced by a multidimensional digital journey.

Salespeople’s and marketer’s focus has been shifted from selling products and services through a website to a targeted customer experience. While it is true that you can get hints of a visitor’s intent on your website, nothing can give you a clearer picture of their needs than a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) System, like Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013..

A CRM system can offer your business a powerful competitive advantage by capturing all the different states of a customer’s lifecycle, from visiting your website and downloading an e-book to signing up for a demo and buying a monthly subscription. In turn, you will be able to take action based on rich insight and not just assumptions about your costumers, i.e. find out how to retain existing customers, get new ones and increase your sales.

Here are some of the main benefits that a CRM system can offer to your customer experience journey: Identifying and anticipating your customers’ needs Forecasting and planning your sales Closing and following up sales Measuring your sales force performance and setting targets Managing customer service

The quality of the customer experience on your website is the starting point of any new customer relationship and then everything can be centered on your CRM system. This is basically your company’s integrated framework to fill in any information gaps about your customers track lead activities, measure customer satisfaction and provide excellent after-sales support at any given time. Also, CRM software can help you identify opportunities, automate your sales and marketing processes and provide an overall unified customer experience.

Retrieving data and metadata for reports In Microsoft Dynamics CRM can be done using SQL views. In Dynamics CRM, users can run queries on SQL views that are automatically created. As the image below shows, names within the SQL views are easy to identify. A Microsoft tip sheet notes that SQL-based reports in Dynamics CRM use the filtered views provided for each entity to retrieve data for the reports. 

To obtain the query, users can download the SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) online. 

Apart from being automatically created, Filtered Views offer the benefit of being updated for custom entities, having security embedded in the view, and being supported after patches, service releases and upgrades.

To learn more about how WebSan Solutions can support your Dynamics CRM projects and implementation, visit our Solutions page or contact us. 

Linz Tan, Web Marketing Assistant, WebSan Solutions Inc. a 2014 Ontario Business Achievement Award Winner for Service Excellence.