Category: CRM

Configure PowerPhone with Cisco phones

We’ve started rolling out PowerObjects’ PowerPhone. Users love the functionality and it’s lead to more CRM use overall.

We researched a few different CTI solutions. Getting it setup in CRM is a breeze, but when it comes to configuring things on user computers it’s actually harder than I originally thought. It took us about two months and too many hours to figure out. So I’m sharing the necessary steps so you don’t have to feel the same pain.

YESSSS

There are assumptions we have to make before we proceed:

Assumptions

  • You are on Cisco’s UCM (Unified Communications Manager) platform 9.0 or above.
    • UCM 9 supports Windows 7
    • UCM 10 and 10.5 support Windows 8.1
  • You have already downloaded the TAPI install files from UCM – (Note: there is no other way I know of to get the install files)
  • You have already uploaded the PowerPhone solution in your CRM instance and enabled it – found HERE.

Steps for installing the PowerPhone agent on user computers

  1. Double click the TAPI installation (be sure to choose the correct version – x86 vs x64). Note: Just “next” the whole way through
  2. If not installed, install .NET framework 4.5
  3. A restart may be required at this point
  4. Download the PowerPhone Agent from HERE
  5. Open the zip file and copy the entire “PowerPhone_1_3_2_5_agent” directory to the user’s C: drive
  6. Once copied, open the directory and pin the PowerPhone.exe file to the task bar. This will help the user when logging in to the phone.
  7. Log in to Unified Communications Manager
  8. Go to User Management > End User
  9. Search for the User. Once found open the end user configuration by clicking on their name
  10. Scroll to the bottom and click “Add to Access Control Group”Add to Access Control
  11. A pop-up will open, search for “Begins with ‘Standard CTI'”Choose Role
  12. Assign the user the “Standard CTI Enabled” role
  13. Hit Save on the End User Configuration record
  14. Go to Start > Launch TSP
  15. Right click the TAPI driver in the notification area and choose “Cisco TAPI configuration”
  16. Once open, make sure the instance is selected and choose “Configure”Configure
  17. On the User tab, have the user enter their Cisco username and password – if you have LDAP you would enter your AD credentials hereLogin
  18. On the CTI Manager tab, enter the IP address(es) of your Cisco serversIPs
  19. Make sure the user has PowerPhone rights in CRM before proceeding
  20. Open PowerPhone and configure the connection:PowerPhone1
  21. Select the phone line and add in the connection info to your CRM instance. If the phone line doesn’t appear in the dropdown then something hasn’t been configured properly with the TAPI driver.
  22. Once connected, click on settings and set the outgoing number (9 in our case)PowerPhone2
  23. Last step (at least for us) we had to make an outgoing call from PowerPhone so the TAPI driver will make the proper connection to the phone system. YMMV on this.

CRM + SharePoint * Excel Services = Epic Awesomeness

What’s the best way to get someone to eat their vegetables? Force feed them 😉

All kidding aside, CRM can be a pretty powerful tool and when people don’t want to use it we have to find creative ways to get them to use CRM. In addition to CRM usage, we have people who are absolutely married to Excel. And these aren’t your typical Excel files. These are files that legends are made of. Crazy formulas, vlookups galore; you name it, we use it. To make matters worse, they e-mail these Excel reports around all day, every day as attachments. So let’s kill two birds with one stone. We stop a big group of people from e-mailing Excel attachments and we get them to use CRM. Win-win for everyone (or at least that’s the hope).

  1. Save Excel file in an easy to find, easy to access place in SharePoint – doing this in SharePoint gives us all the doc mgmt benefits that we’ve come to know and love
  2. Configure your Excel REST API URL – I’ve made it pretty clear that I love SharePoint’s REST APIs in the past and the Excel API is no exception. You can read more about it here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee556413(v=office.14).aspx
  3. Create a new Web Resource in CRM – we’re going to iframe our Excel REST API URL call
  4. Choose Web Page (HTML) as the Type and then click “Text Editor”
  5. Click the Source tab
  6. Paste in your iframe code between the <body> tags. Your code should look like this: 
    https://dude.com/sites/site1/_vti_bin/ExcelRest.aspx/Documents/Document.xlsx/Model/Ranges('Scorecard')?$format=html
    • Note the frameborder, height, and width attributes. These are needed to eliminate the nasty border and to make scrolling work correctly. iframe’s aren’t perfect and getting them to work feels “hacky” but the user won’t know the difference and it should perform relatively seamless in all browsers.
  7. Click Publish
  8. Now, navigate to the desired dashboard and add your new Web Resource, click Save, and Publish.

Users should now see the Excel spreadsheet in their dashboard:

If users do not have access to the spreadsheet they should encounter an Error:Access Denied prompt or a blank screen depending on the browser they use.

Extra Credit

In our case, the Excel spreadsheet scrolled FOREVER. I wanted to give users a pleasurable experience but I also didn’t necessarily want them resorting to Excel on the client right away. I added a “Click to View in a separate Window” link in the iframe Web resource. Here’s what my code looked like:

<p><a href="https://dude.crm.dynamics.com/WebResources/new_iframe2">Click to View in separate Window</a></p>https://dude.com/sites/site1/_vti_bin/ExcelRest.aspx/Documents/Document.xlsx/Model/Ranges('Scorecard')?$format=html

All HTML Web Resources are web pages, so I linked directly to the web page. But notice I linked to new_iframe2? I didn’t want users seeing “Click to View” on every page so I made an identical web resource, except I removed the hyperlink from the top, making for a seamless experience for the user. There’s all sorts of other things I could have done on the new_iframe2 page. I could have linked to the Excel Web Access or even directly to Excel itself, but we’ll leave it like that for now.

Ultimately, I’ve gotten the report builders to stop e-mailing this specific report as an attachment, and now the audience of the spreadsheet has to go to CRM to view it rather than getting it e-mailed to them. Awesome.

#CONV13

The blog has been quite for a little too long. So much for that blog challenge (point 3 in this blog post)…

This week I’ll be in New Orleans for #CONV13 (aka Convergence 2013); the conference for the Dynamics side of Microsoft. I’m here specifically trolling for CRM content and learning all I can so I can take it back to Trek.

Today’s events so far: Steve and I left MKE at around 1:30 PM and arrived in MSY about 2 hours and change later. Baggage claim took a little while longer than expected. Hopped in a cab and 25 minutes later we’re in our hotel. Figured I’d throw the laptop up and put a blog post together before we head out for dinner.

I’m thinking Acme Oyster house tonight.

Adam Richman from Man vs. Food put down 15 dozen. I don’t think I’ll be taking on that challenge tonight. What I do know is that when Steve and I come to town you’re usually guaranteed a good time.

Overall, I’m pretty stoked for this conference. Should give me a good chance to connect with folks in this space and hopefully learn a thing or two. Might have a libation or two as well Winking smile

If you’re in town give me a shout out on Twitter @spwookiee or shoot me an e-mail at david_peterson@trekbikes.com. I’m always game for a bite and/or a beer.

Dynamics CRM reactions

As the newly minted Dynamics CRM admin at Trek, I feel I’ve got just enough experience to be a danger to myself and others. Therefore, it’s time for a blog post.

We’re using the Microsoft hosted, Online version of CRM and it’s been interesting to find many Microsoft Partners have shied away from that choice. As opposed to SharePoint consultants pushing the Microsoft O365 kool-aid, it seems that many partners are pushing their own hosted versions over Microsoft’s. Very much a departure from what I’m used to.

What’s also interesting is that Microsoft CRM plays second fiddle to Salesforce.com right now. I haven’t done enough research to know who has the larger install base, but it’s definitely clear from a Marketing standpoint that Salesforce is where it’s at right now. In my native world, SharePoint is – hands-down – the king of Enterprise Content Mgmt systems, but with Microsoft CRM it feels like the product is playing catch-up.

Strategy-wise, 3 things have struck me about ensuring success for your CRM deployment:

  1. Know your processes – you have to know how your users are going to use this; “build it and they will come” does not work here
  2. Don’t make CRM a fancy front end to your ERP system – this blog post sums it up for me
  3. Social (just like in SharePoint) is king

Know your processes

I’ve read a lot of blog posts lately about failed CRM deployments that were supposed to “replace Outlook.” Replacing Outlook – while a noble pursuit – is a lackluster strategy if you don’t know how your people actually use Outlook to begin with when it comes to managing customers. It means you have to ask the hard questions and get your hands dirty with your users. Document as much as you can when it comes to process. That way expectations can be set and everyone understands how things should work.

CRM cannot be a fancy front end to ERP

The blog post I linked above did more for me than almost all the others combined. If you want to guarantee an almost certain death to your deployment, make it a front end to your ERP system. While surfacing data from your ERP system is not entirely bad, recreating ALL the data is bad. Why would I go to CRM to do some of the things I can do in my ERP system when I can just go to my ERP system and do everything.

Social is king

If you’re not collaborating in your CRM system, then you’re doing it wrong. Same can be said for SharePoint. Social is only going to get more and more important as time goes on and more people join social networks in their personal life. Obviously Microsoft sees value in Social since they dropped 2 Bil on Yammer, meaning that product is going to be ingrained in all other Microsoft products. Therefore, there are now 3 truths in life: Death, Taxes, & Social in the workplace. Get used to it.

Conclusion

So that’s what I’ve learned so far. I have more opinions on the subject of CRM, but they may/may not be right based on my experience thus far. I’ll post more as I get more “in-the-know.”