CRM 2013 – The New Navigation Bar

Roshan Mehta, 05 September 2013

When you first login to Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013, one thing you will notice is that the navigation pane has disappeared! But don’t panic, as it has been replaced with a new navigation bar located at the top of the screen. The navigation bar is nicely tucked away allowing more screen real estate for the most important parts of CRM such as dashboards, forms and views and “slides down” when users hover over specific options. This is all part of the new flat UI and touch-optimised user interface which is designed to help users work with the application in a more efficient way.

When collapsed, the navigation bar displays a number of functions to navigate the application. These are Microsoft Dynamics CRM, the Home button, Sales, Dashboards as well as a number of options specific to the current logged in user.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM

Hovering over this navigation item displays a “pop-down” menu representing each of the functional areas in your CRM system.

The “Home” Button

Clicking on this button will take you back to the home page as defined in your personal user options. The default option takes you to the Dashboards area of the Sales module.

The “Sales” Link

Hovering over the “Sales” navigation item displays a “pop-down” menu representing each of the entities that make up the sales module in CRM. The link may differ depending on the default options set by each user as well as any customizations to the SiteMap that have been implemented.

The “Dashboards” Link

This option displays the dashboards which are available for the selected area. For example, we have selected the Sales area so we can choose from two sales-related dashboards.

User-specific Options

There are a number of functions that can be performed with the user-specific options on the navigation bar.

One of the new features of CRM 2013 is the ability to sign-out of CRM. Previously we could only sign out when using CRM 2011 Online, but this is now available for online and on-premise implementations for CRM 2013. Users can also set their personal options, execute a print preview, run the getting started tutorial, or view information about the CRM deployment

There is also the “Quick Create” button which is a brand new feature of CRM 2013. We will cover this new feature in a later blog.