The team over at xRM Consultancy have just released another add-on for Microsoft Dynamics CRM. Hot on the heels of the extremely popular CRM Timeline component the Tagging component (available from today) gives you the ability to tag / categorise content in CRM. The component uses native functionality to achieve this through ‘connections’ so you retain all the functionality you expect. xRM consultancy have layered a great user interface on top of the pre existing functionality. I can think of many great uses cases for this, my favourite is, wait for it: ‘multiple regarding’. Veterans of CRM will know exactly what I mean. With these tags you can now tag your meetings and appointments against multiple topics (see below):

Tags allow me to add multiple topics against meeting and emails

Effective tagging means you can do some clever analysis on the topics and trends in your business that you might otherwise have missed. The tagging functionality is so similar to Twitter, Facebook and Yammer that I’d imagine that users will require almost no training (beyond telling them that it is there). You’ll need to think about the the topics you want to capture and encourage the users to use it, though it is so easy to use particularly if you are replacing a long list of check boxes, your users should be happy.

Once you are capturing topics you can get great dashboards like this which is included in the solution:

This is an example of an account record:

And if you really want proof that this retains the out of the box connection functionality:

Setup  & Installation

1. Download the solution file here.
2. Import the solution file: Navigate to Settings > Customization > Solutions and choose Import from the grid menu.
3. Add the Tagging component to the form(s) required:
   • Open the form editor for the required form
   • From the ribbon select Insert > Web Resource tab
   • Search for the Tagging.html web resource and configure the settings on the General and Formatting tabs exactly as below

4. Save & Publish your form

5. Assign one or more of the appropriate security roles (Tag Reader, Tag Associator, Tag Writer) and your done!
6. From the ribbon select Insert > Web Resource tab

Tagging for Microsoft Dynamics CRM is current free for 250 tagged connections, head over to xRM Consultancy to download the solution and find out more.

If you find this add-on useful and you have some interesting use case, please leave a comment, I would love to hear them.

This posting is provided “AS IS” with no warranties, and confers no rights.

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