Email Templates v. Mail Merge Templates: What's the Difference?

Posted: Saturday, January 10, 2009 12:37 AM by Laura Robinson

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A question came up recently about email versus mail merge templates - when do you use one over the other?  What are the advantages and disadvantages of each?  In response, I put together a quick grid comparison of different features:

Feature	Email Template	Mail Merge Template
Insert merge fields	X	X
Insert custom attribute lookup fields		X
Are available to send in bulk	X	X
Preview before sending in bulk		X
Edit before sending in bulk		X
Place content in the body of an email	X	X
Respect do not contact rules	X	X
Create personal or organization-wide template	X	X
Can be used in workflow	X
Can be created globally for use across multiple entities	X
Can be created for custom entities		X
Requires the Outlook client to create template		X

Enjoy.

Formatting Mail Merge fields in CRM 4.0 Mail Merge

by Zahara Hirani 01.05.09

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Recently, I had to do some custom formatting for mail merge documents in CRM 4.0 and here are a few format examples:

Formatting a Date:
         {MERGEFIELD "MyDate" \@ "M/d/yyyy" \*MERGEFORMAT}

If you just wanted to add the current date when creating the document:
         {DATE \@ "M/d/yyyy"}
Formatting a number as a currency value:
         {MERGEFIELD "MyAmount" \# "$0.00" \*MERGEFORMAT}

Formatting a number as a percentage value:
         {MERGEFIELD "MyPercent" *100 \# "0%" \*MERGEFORMAT}

Formatting a number with a specific format:
         {MERGEFIELD "MyAccountNumber" \# "00 00 000" \*MERGEFORMAT}

Enjoy!!

How to customize the Marketing List Member view?

The MSCRM BI Team posted this article.
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That's the question often asked by all the people customizing MS CRM. Simply, going to customization area does not allow you to customize the Marketing List Members view. So how to do that?

We should begin with noticing the fact that there are three types of marketing list by default in MS CRM - one for Leads, one for Contacts and one for Accounts. So if you want to customize the Marketing List Mamber view, you will have to know for which entity you would like to customize it. Once you know, it is worth noting somewhere the type codes for these entities, i.e. Account = 1, Contact = 2, Lead = 4. Knowing these values, we can proceed further.

For each entity type there are several views (e.g. "All members"). So you have to decide which one you would like to customize before you begin with the customization.

 Once you have done all this, follow these steps to customize the Marketing List Member view and enjoy all the advantages of MS CRM customization :)

 

1. We assume that we want to customize the All Members view for the Marketing List containing accounts. 

Go to the MS CRM database and use SQL Server Management Studio or Query Analyzer to enter the following query:

SELECT * FROM SavedQueryBasy WHERE name LIKE '%members%

2. You will be presented with the list of views containing members. Find the one that you want to customize and be sure that you look at the one for the entity, you would like to customize. So, in our example, we want to customize the view containing accounts. Thus, find the row that contains 1 in the ReturnedTypeCode column.

3. Once you've done this, copy the GUID of this view from the SavedQueryId column

4. You can leave the Management Studio now and go to CRM web client

5. Go to "Settings" / "Customize entities" and select the Account entity

6.  Go to "Forms and views" and open any view to customize it

7. Now, press CTRL+N on your keyboard to open the address bar

8. In the URL, replace the GUID of currently customized view to the one you have copied in point 3. and press enter to refresh the window

9. Wow! You are now presented with the Marketing List Member view that you would like to customize. Customize it using normal MS CRM mechanisms!

10. Once you finish, "Save & Close" the window and the entity window

11. In the "Customize entities" view click "More actions" / "Publish all customizations"

12. Once the customizations are published, you have your new Marketing List Member view :)

 Happy Customization! :)

You can follow these steps for all other views.

Please note that this customization (simply saying, as any other requiring to query the db and not shown on the web client) is NOT SUPPORTED!