Quickly Create Records in CRM 2013

Roshan Mehta, 09 September 2013

I have been working with Dynamics CRM since version 4.0 and I must admit that one of the headaches is the ability to quickly create records. How many times have you had to create an inbound Phone Call activity in CRM only to find that it is difficult to link it to a Contact since they don’t exist? You then have to create the Contact in CRM then link the Phone Call activity to the newly created Contact. This becomes a nightmare with the excessive browser pop-up windows and can leave your desktop cluttered with windows.

Thankfully, CRM 2013 introduces a brand new “Quick Create” feature which can be found on the new navigation bar. The beauty of these forms is that they are customizable! Let’s take the scenario above and see how it works.

Assume that your phone is ringing and you need to create a new Phone Call activity in CRM. To do this, click on the Create button (located on the right) on the navigation bar, and select the phone call tile. This will open up a new Phone Call activity form.

 

Note: Clicking on any of the activity tiles (Phone, Email, Appointment, Task) will display the full form in CRM.

 

You then identify that the caller (Martin Turner) does not exist as a Contact in CRM, so you need to create a new Contact record. To do this, you could click on the “Quick Create” button on the navigation bar, and then select Contact. BUT there is a much easier way to do this.

Click on the lookup icon next to the Call From field and then click on New.

 

This will drop-down the quick-create form for the Contact entity.

 

I can now collect information about Martin Turner while I have him on the phone and quickly and easily create a new Contact record.

 

Click on Save to create the new Contact record and then continue filling out the details of the Phone Call activity. You will see that it has automatically been linked with the new Contact record you have created!

 

I can also quickly create stand-alone records in which case CRM will ask me if I want to open the newly created record or create another one of the same type.

 

The quick-create form is available out-of-the-box for the following entities but can be customized if you wish. I will cover this is a future post.

• Phone Call
• Email
• Task
• Appointment
• Competitor
• Contact
• Lead
• Campaign Response
• Opportunity
• Account
• Case