Beginners Guide to Dynamics CRM 2011

Jaime Smith, 26 October 2011

I recently started here at Magnetism and have found myself feeling like I am listening to a whole new language when I sit in the developer’s office!  I began to think that there must be others like me who are new to the world of CRM development and need someplace to start….

So here is my beginners guide to CRM terminology:

CRM: Customer Relationship Management System - originally created to assist with managing the interactions between organisations and customers and has traditionally been used in the Sales and Marketing environment however in recent times it has been moving into Service and Recruitment Industries among others

Entity: When someone refers to an entity in CRM they are talking about a record type.  An example of this is a Contact Entity, within this entity will be multiple fields that will contain information about the record (See picture below, the entity is highlighted in Green)

Field/Attribute:  A field is where the information about a record is recorded such as the Contact’s First Name and Last Name (See picture below, the field is highlighted in Mauve)

There are a few ways to enter information into fields these include:

Look Up:  Searches for information from a different area within CRM i.e. in the picture below the Price List option is a look up field and is indicated by this icon 

Option Set:  An option set is field related and will provide the user with a set list of options from which to choose an answer.  You will know it is an option set as it will have a drop down arrow at the end of the field box, like this 

Radio Buttons: These are small circles that generally provide and either/or option for answering the field (See picture below, radio button is highlighted in Yellow)

Tick box:  This is often used to mark if that field is true (See Picture below, the tick box is highlighted in Blue) 

I will follow up with more definitions next week that will help us navigate through the world of Dynamics CRM!