Working with Accounts and Contacts in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011

Hi,

at the end of last post about CRM 2011 I qualified lead to opportunity but today I’ll show you what happen when I convert lead to account or contact.

You will see that entities contact and account are very similar.

Contact is individual who might or might not have a relationship with account record.

Account is a company that interacts with your organization.

When we choose to convert our lead to account and click on OK we will see that lead attributes are locked and lead record get status Qualified (picture 1)

Picture 1

Then if we jump to Accounts we can see that our lead is now in Accounts record list (Picture 2)

Picture 2

The account name attribute is the same attribute company name  from lead record. Now open account record Fajdiga.d.o.o.

Picture 3

Here on picture 3 we have account record Fajdiga d.o.o. and we see that account inherits some fields from lead record.  Except account name, we can see that e-mail field is already filled. Also contact methods are the same as on the lead record.

Let’s see what we can assign to account record from entity navigation pane (Related pane).

• More addresses – we can add more addresses if our account have for example different address for CEO building and different address for sales department.
• Activities – allows you to attach activities to account
  • Closed Activities – we can see all completed or cancelled activities
• Sub-Accounts – allows you to add some sub-accounts to your existing account. For example if you know that account B is division of organization Fajdiga d.o.o. and there is a relationship between two accounts you can use Sub-Accounts to define that relationship.
  • Parent Account – also you can set parent account on General tab.
• Contact – you can add some contacts that are related to account
• Relationships – you can set up relationships with other accounts or contacts based on roles
• Connections – allows you to create connections to other entities such as team, users, accounts, contacts
• Documents – allows you to create a SharePoint folder or to add existing SharePoint folder as a document location
• Audit History – shows you what changes are made over account record

On the sales section in entity navigation pane you can add documents and entities that are related to sales such as opportunities, quotes, orders, invoices

On the  service section in entity navigation pane you can add entities that are related to service such as cases and contracts

On the  marketing section in entity navigation pane you can add entities that are related to marketing such as campaigns and marketing lists

On the  processes section in entity navigation pane you can add entities that are related to process such as workflows and dialog sessions

In General tab we have general information about account.

Under Details tab we can see detailed information about account such as from which Industry account comes, type of ownership. Also we can find information about relationship type (competitor, vendor, press, etc) in which category our account belong and information about paying habits (picture 4).

Picture 4

On Contacts tab we can see and add contacts that are related to account (Picture 5).

Picture 5

If we expand Notes & Activities tab we can add notes about account and assign activities to account.

On Preferences tab  we have information about paying, which contact methods our account prefer. Also we can add information about service information that we provide to our account such  as preferred day and time (Picture 6).

Picture 6

Now if we choose to qualify lead to contact we do the same actions but except account we must choose contact and then navigate to Contacts. You will see your lead converted to the contact (picture 7).

Picture 7

Now open contact to see which fields and related entities we have in contact record (Picture 8)

Picture 8

First I will explain what is difference between account and contact record in entity navigation pane on related tab. Here in contact record we don’t have options to add contact to existing contact, and we can’t add SharePoint folders within documents. All other related entities are the same but refers to contact record.

Now let’s look what we have in General, Details, Notes&Activities and Preferences tabs on contact record.

On General tab (Picture 8) we can see general information about contact such as first, last name, address type, name, city, e-mail. Also we have fields about shipping freight terms and shipping method.

Picture 9

On Details tab (Picture 9) we can add professional information like department in which contact work, manager phone, role etc, and also we can add personal information such as gender, merital status, birthday, etc.

When we expand Notes & Activities Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 allows us to add notes about contact and to assign some activities for contact.

On the Preferences tab we can see a lot of options that we can add to contact (Picture 10)

 Picture 10

Here we have information about paying, which contact methods our contacts prefer, and from which lead we get this contact. Also we can add information about service information that we provide to our contact such  as preferred day and time our contact like to call him, etc.

That’s all for today

Renato