It’s difficult to escape the Twitter hype nowadays, but in all honesty this “micro-blogging” tool is indeed a great source to be mined. Twitterers can have informed opinions and news regarding some of your top clients, and having access to that information can be very valuable. Disregard this resource at its own risk.
Twitter Search feed in a Microsoft CRM account record form
If your company is interested in learning about what the Twitterscape is chattering about your dearest customers, check out this easy-to-implement iFrame addition to your Microsoft CRM. It’s basically a iFrame coupled with JavaScript that takes your customer’s Account Name and queries it on the Twitter Search page, all within a tab in CRM. You’ll be up and running in 10 minutes or less. You will need at least System Customizer security permissions to implement.
See all the steps to adding this functionality after the jump.
- Navigate to: Settings >> Customization >> Customize Entities >> Account. The Account entity window will open.
- Click on “Forms and Views”, then double-click “Form”. The “Form: Account” window will open.
- Click “Add a Tab” and create a new tab called “Twitter”. Click OK.
- Click “Add a Section” and call it “Twitter”. Click OK.
- Click “Add an IFRAME”.
- In the Name section, call it IFRAME_TwitterSearch.
- Put about:blank as the URL. The JavaScript that we will add later will populate the Twitter Search string.
- Make sure “Pass record object-type code and unique indentifier as parameters” is checked.
- Uncheck “Restrict cross-frame scripting.”
- Click on the Formatting tab, and set it to automaticall expand to use available space.
- Click OK.
- Back at the “Form: Account” window, click on Form Properties.
- Select OnLoad, then click on Edit.
- Check the “Event is Enabled” box, then add the below JavaScript code. Click OK when finished.
- Save all changes to your Account form.
- Don’t forget to publish your changes! At the “Entity: Account” window, click on Actions at the top and select Publish.
- Enjoy!
var CRM_FORM_TYPE_CREATE = 1;
var CRM_FORM_TYPE_UPDATE = 2;
switch (crmForm.FormType)
{
case CRM_FORM_TYPE_UPDATE:
crmForm.all.IFRAME_TwitterSearch.src="http://search.twitter.com/search?q=" + crmForm.all.name.DataValue;
break;
}
Do you have another idea on incorporating Twitter with Microsoft CRM? Let me know in the comments.
Just thought of another great way to leveraging Twitter as a Customer Service tool in Microsoft CRM.
If you are a manufacturer or service provider, why not add this function to your Products in Microsoft CRM? See the live twitter feed about your products in realtime. Find twitterers who are complaining about your product or service, and assist them to improve customer satisfaction. Finally, help spread the word when Twitterers love your product.
Good luck, and let me know what you think!
Turns out Richard at dynamicscrmtrickbag.com also recently reviewed this topic. Check out his take here:
http://www.dynamicscrmtrickbag.com/?p=231
I agree that this is powerfull, and is really interesting for business purpose.
And there are lots of powerfull knowledgebases that people could benefit from improving their customer relationships. Linkedin is another one, and there are probably more hype tools to come.
I usually avoid the iFrame in make it a drop-down menu or a button. So, that you easy can add on as much as you would like. Another issue is that if you do it on form load; you should launch on the tab click event, not to reduce performance.
Great points… less load on the servers, the better. Thanks for your feedback!
[...] did a little digging, and found this sweet little hack to hook up a Twitter account with a customer’s account in Microsoft Dynamics CRM. It seems like a no-brainer to integrate [...]
We like to know what our customers are twittering so I added twitter search to the contact form by
1) adding a new attribute for twitteraccount
2) add the field to the form
3) add this code to the onchange of the twitteraccount field:
// Get the field that fired the event.
var oField = event.srcElement;
// Validate the field information.
if (typeof(oField) != “undefined” && oField != null && oField.DataValue != null)
{
// Remove any left @
var sTmp = oField.DataValue.replace(/@/g,”")
oField.DataValue = sTmp
}
//load twitter search
var CRM_FORM_TYPE_CREATE = 1;
var CRM_FORM_TYPE_UPDATE = 2;
switch (crmForm.FormType)
{
case CRM_FORM_TYPE_UPDATE:
crmForm.all.IFRAME_TwitterSearch.src=”http://search.twitter.com/search?q=@” + crmForm.all.adm_twitteraccount.DataValue;
break;
}
4) add this code to the form onload:
//load twitter search
var CRM_FORM_TYPE_CREATE = 1;
var CRM_FORM_TYPE_UPDATE = 2;
switch (crmForm.FormType)
{
case CRM_FORM_TYPE_UPDATE:
crmForm.all.IFRAME_TwitterSearch.src=”http://search.twitter.com/search?q=@” + crmForm.all.adm_twitteraccount.DataValue;
break;
}
5) save
6) publish