Boost Your Productivity with Dynamics 365 Alerts & Notifications

Don’t get me wrong, we all love working with a CRM. There’s nothing like remembering what it was like before the software was implemented into your company and experiencing the difference. It’s like day and night: quick answers, awesome collaboration, increased revenue, and those are only a few of the improvements a CRM provides.

There’s no doubt, working with a CRM improves your processes, your profitability and your productivity. However, there are situations that are out of the reach of your CRM, and they’re just killing your effort to be efficient. Remember when your sales team sold a new project to a client who had an unpaid account? Or the time you moved forward with a project without having a renewed license?

Well, all those things can absolutely delay all the advances you’ve been making with the help of your CRM, and it’s a big drain on your company’s productivity. Let’s have a look at three very common scenarios I have been experiencing with a lot of my clients. You might not even notice them, but these problems are like snowballs.

#1 Signing up new contracts despite unpaid accounts

As a sale person, you might not always notice your clients’ account states. It’s not your job after all to track payments and organize the accounting. However, signing new projects or new contracts without having received all the payments can mean bad business, we all know that.

Not having the resources to continue a project can complicate a lot of your future work with your clients, and this is why we require bills to be paid in order to move forward with other projects. There must be a way for your accounting team to prevent that with your CRM, no?

Maybe Microsoft Dynamics 365 could use an alert & notifications system?

#2 Missing calls from clients

What’s awesome about a CRM is that you can track the communications that have been made with your clients.

Whether you are trying to reach one of them to close a deal or they are communicating with the customer service team regarding some issues, all of this should be found in their file. We all know, in a big company, reaching a specific person can be really complicated.

So, what happens when you are trying to communicate with them but they always return your call through the customer service team? You could lose days, and even weeks, playing phone tag. This is the result of the lack of alerts & notifications in Microsoft Dynamics 365.

#3 Keeping projects going without a license

One of the most important tools you can have with a client is the certainty that they have all the registration and licenses needed to pursue a project.

When the registration or license you sold them is up for a renewal and your team doesn’t follow up, it can be a bad surprise when you set a project in motion while the license hasn’t been renewed.

That could delay some of your planning. So how can the technical team send a memo to the sales team about license and registration renewal? Maybe if Microsoft Dynamics 365 had an alerts & notifications system?

As we all know, Dynamics 365 has a lot of benefits and offers a ton of great features to streamline your business processes.

However, there are some obvious pain points. It’s impossible with Dynamics 365 to set up clear visual alerts & notifications when action is needed on an account. So there’s no way you can customize or create relevant alerts to inform another team member and prevent, for example, the creation of new complications.

Well, it’s not totally impossible. They absolutely could with an App like Pro Alert 365

What is Pro Alert 365? In short, it’s an alerts and notifications application for Microsoft Dynamics 365 that helps you send information that is critical to the advancement of your projects.

You know when sometimes you would like to highlight some things in a client file, or you would like to inform the customer service team of something without having to walk there?

Pro Alert 365 provides guidance and clear indications for your users so they can alert and inform with specific directives or crucial information.

Not only does Pro Alert 365 provide an alerts & notifications system for Microsoft Dynamics 365, but it also gives your users the power to take action to better deal with edge cases and important situations by adding restrictions to the account while setting up the alert.

In short, Pro Alert 365 will help you:

• Clearly inform your team members of critical or important information
• Customize it according to the level of alert you need
• Set up restrictions to the chosen accounts (ex. Creation of new opportunities)
• Keep a record of the alerts on the account

Is it complicated to use, you might ask?

No, not at all, in fact. In Microsoft Dynamics 365, alerts & notifications can be created in a couple of minutes with Pro Alert 365. Just follow 5 easy steps.

1. Go to ProductiviT365 and find ProAlert365
2. Click (+NEW) on the top left corner of the page
3. Fill the form

• Name: The name of the Alert – this will not be presented to users but may be helpful when looking at multiple alerts later.
• Account: Choose the Account to which the Alert needs to be linked.
• Type: Set the level of the Alert (Information, Warning or Critical)
• Expiration date: Optionally set an expiration date for when the alert should no longer be presented (i.e.: after the end of the current quarter)
• Message displayed: This is the message that users will see in the Account, Case or Opportunity yellow ribbon, or modal dialog.
• Where to display: Choose if you want the Alert to be displayed as a Pop-up and/or on the Account and/or on the Case and/or on the Opportunity
• Restriction: Set if you want the Alert to restrict the creation of a new Case or Opportunity.

1. Test the Alert by opening the Account for which you’ve created the Alert.
2. Ensure that the message appears as defined: with the proper text, criticality icon and display mode (ribbon and/or dialog) and that the creation of Cases and Opportunities follows the restrictions as defined in the alert.

As you can see, Pro Alert 365 is an easy and efficient way to quickly send information that could be critical to the advancement of a project. Without it, you can lose a lot of time finding the right person to talk to, trying to make up for mistakes that could have been avoided, and trying to communicate with your clients. In fact, Pro Alert 365 is a real tool to help you make every second count with your CRM and use it to the fullest potential. That way, no more drain on your productivity.