Microsoft Dynamics CRM Custom Report Development

Microsoft CRM ships with many reports that provide useful business information to the user. You can use these reports as "templates" for creating your own custom reports.  Microsoft CRM includes 40 pre-built reports to empower management and employees in making informed decisions quickly, measure and forecast sales activity, and identify opportunities, trends and problems.

These pre-made reports not only display relevant business data but also can be used as a starting point for development firms, like ours, to develop custom reports. By downloading and modifying an existing standard report, your custom reports follow the established Microsoft CRM style specifications from the start and require reduced effort to develop.

Microsoft CRM provides an enhanced feature set for report development including Advanced Find, data pre-filtering, drill-through to Microsoft CRM, and more. By using these features, your reports will be able to take advantage of the unique and powerful capabilities built into Microsoft CRM.

Report Security

SQL database views, called "filtered views," are provided with the Microsoft CRM database to enable access to business data according to the user's Microsoft CRM security role. When a user runs a report that obtains data from filtered views, the user's Microsoft CRM security role determines the data to be included in the report. Data in filtered views is restricted at three levels: the organization, the business unit, and the owner. Filtered views exist for all Microsoft CRM business objects (entities).

We Work with Complex Queries

Some complex queries must be typed into the Generic Query Designer because of SQL query limitations in Query Builder. Our Microsoft CRM reporting developers use Query Builder to generate an initial simple SQL query and then switch to Generic Query Designer to add more complex query logic.

Our Reports Run Quickly

Reports that return huge data sets can be difficult to use and can cause performance problems. Our CRM custom reporting consulting use techniques such as data filters and SQL indexing to ensure reports display quickly.

Dynamic Drill-Through to Microsoft CRM

Drill-through in a report is used to navigate to a Microsoft CRM Web page that contains business entity information. The general process of dynamic drill-through navigation is as follows:

• An image or value item (such as a text box) is added to a report. The Value property of this item contains code that builds a URL using the base address of Microsoft CRM plus parameters that refer to a specific instance of an entity.
• When the user clicks the report item, a new browser window is opened with the constructed URL passed as the target Web address.
• Microsoft CRM loads the information for the specified entity into a Web form that is displayed in the browser window.

Dynamic Column Sorting

Column list reports in Microsoft CRM are typically set up so that the user can click a column header to sort data by that column or to change the sort direction.

Managing Reports with Report Manager

Some report management tasks are done using Microsoft CRM, and others are done using Reporting Services Report Manager.

In Microsoft CRM, System Settings can be used to define the report categories available. The Reports feature can be used to add, delete, rename, and edit the properties of reports, including where in the user interface the reports should be visible.

Report Manager allows to schedule reports, set up subscriptions for reports, and control access to reports. Report Manager also allows us to view report properties and manage individual subscriptions to reports.

Visibility of a Report in Microsoft CRM

When a report is deployed to the reporting server using Report Manager, the report is listed in the Reports grid of Microsoft CRM under the All Reports and Reports Not Categorized categories.

Report Snapshots

For large reports that need to be run when the Microsoft CRM system is not in use, or for reports where you need an exact snapshot of a particular date and time (such as the end of a quarter), you can schedule the report to run at certain times and post the results as a report snapshot in Microsoft CRM or e-mail the results.

Dashboards

Dashboards is another way of viewing the customer related reports in a graphical presentation. These graphs can be presented in the form of a bar chart, pie chart or trend analysis chart. Dashboards offer a real-time data presentation using graphs and charts as reflected in the CRM applications at that particular moment.

The viewing elements of Dashboards include real-time sales activities, customer inquiries, customer support issues, lost sales or closed deals, etc. By the same token,  you can define any type of dashboard you want.

Report Navigation

Report navigation actions are used to enable a dynamic and interactive reporting experience. Using various types of actions, reports enable the user to navigate to detail reports, Microsoft CRM records, or another Web site.

Microsoft CRM Consultants from Miles Consulting Corp

Our experienced MS Dynamics CRM Experts have gained deep knowledge on installation, optimization, management and support of Microsoft Dynamics CRM. MCC consultants are certified Microsoft Dynamics CRM Professionals who use Implementation Best Practices and know where the pitfalls are before they appear. Contact us so our MS Dynamics CRM Specialists can give you a free assessment.