Gareth Tucker's Microsoft CRM Blog

I have found that frequently there will be one key entity in CRM that users spend most of their time on.  Sometimes its Cases, other times its Opportunities.  No matter which entity it is you can improve the user experience by providing faster access to that entity by adding a toolbar button via CRM’s ISV config settings.  Here’s how…

Firstly, this is how it looks.   I’ve added a “My Opportunities” button to the CRM toolbar.  When clicked, a new Internet Explorer window is launched displaying the Opportunity entity, and specifically, displaying the My Open Opportunities view.  Not only have I given my users a 1-click navigation solution but I have also given them a way of launching this key view in a separate window where it can remain open and easily accessible whilst they jump around between other entities back in the main CRM window.    This works in the Outlook client and the web client, but the gains are probably felt more when using the Outlook client as you no longer ‘lose your place’ as you flick back to your Inbox or over to your Calendar.

Here’s what the ISV config entry looks like:

This sits under the <ToolBar> node.

The Button Icon attribute defines the relative path to the button’s image file.   You can create you own image files and point to those but I find you can normally find something useful in the _imgs folder on the CRM server.

The URL attribute is where we specify the URL of the view.   Easiest way to determine the URL of a view is:

- Navigate to the view in CRM

- From the More Actions menu, select Copy Shortcut Of Current View…

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- Paste this into Notepad

Quick and easy, but makes CRM just that little bit more enjoyable to work with.