In Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013, Microsoft introduced the Out-Of-The-Box (OOB) Social Pane, with Notes, Activities and Posts, based on Activity Feeds. The behavior of Activity Feeds is just like Twitter, where users can follow or unfollow some records, mention them on post, and see all posts based on records they follow on their personal wall.
Unlike Twitter, Activity Feeds introduced some "Auto Post Rules" on a few of OOB entities ; on a particular event (let's say when a opportunity is won), a post is automatically created on the record. This feature is great because all the followers are automatically aware, by having a look at their wall, that this opportunity is closed.
Nevertheless, it has some drawbacks (I wouldn't write about it otherwise :) ). First, you cannot create an auto post rule manually (by going to Settings / Auto Post Rules / New for instance). You can only enable or disable existing ones. Second, Activity Feeds does not provide a way to notify (by email for instance) the followers of a record when a post is posted on it (like Yammer does).
As I had to provide this kind of functionality on a CRM 2013 project, I will introduce today a way of having the 2 features that are not included in the OOB Activity Feeds : the Custom Auto Post Rules (using no code, always great to fulfill requirements without code) and the Email Notifications to followers (with a little code, always good to fulfill requirements with a little of coding :) ).
Unlike Twitter, Activity Feeds introduced some "Auto Post Rules" on a few of OOB entities ; on a particular event (let's say when a opportunity is won), a post is automatically created on the record. This feature is great because all the followers are automatically aware, by having a look at their wall, that this opportunity is closed.
Nevertheless, it has some drawbacks (I wouldn't write about it otherwise :) ). First, you cannot create an auto post rule manually (by going to Settings / Auto Post Rules / New for instance). You can only enable or disable existing ones. Second, Activity Feeds does not provide a way to notify (by email for instance) the followers of a record when a post is posted on it (like Yammer does).
As I had to provide this kind of functionality on a CRM 2013 project, I will introduce today a way of having the 2 features that are not included in the OOB Activity Feeds : the Custom Auto Post Rules (using no code, always great to fulfill requirements without code) and the Email Notifications to followers (with a little code, always good to fulfill requirements with a little of coding :) ).
