Microsoft CRM - Bulk Edit Made Easy
I was recently reading the Microsoft CRM Development Team blog when I saw a post by Ilana Smith called "Feature Spotlight: Bulk Edit". I have to admit - I was confused when CRM 3.0 RTM code was released because I "thought" the bulk edit feature was a part of earlier builds of CRM 3.0 and it appeared to have disappeared. Even though I have spent thousands of hours (literally) with CRM 3.0 I had not stumbled upon the bulk edit feature discussed in this blog (shame on me).
We had been using CRM Workflow to create manual rules to bulk update records. This process works well but it does require that you have access to the CRM Workflow Manager (not usually granted to typical CRM users). The Bulk Edit feature of CRM 3.0 is very simple to use yet very functional.
Example: Update Contact Profile Information using Contact Views
Select appropriate records and choose "More Actions - Edit"
Update the appropriate attributes and click "Save"
Example: Update Contact Profile using Advanced Find
If there was one wish I would like to see come true it would be to have the ability to perform in-line edits with CRM. I could see this working within the data view grids. Maybe it would be a feature that is turned off by default but you could click a button to allow in-line editing. This would allow a user to quickly update many records (with different data) while not having to open each record independently. Maybe CRM 5.0 will include this feature. :-)
Thanks to Ilana Smith of the Microsoft CRM Development Team for pointing out this feature of CRM 3.0! This is one of those features that seems pretty basic but yet provides a lot of business value.
:: Ryan ::