Hello,

CRM really is a great tool with easy-to-use UI designers
and stuff.

But I have to express serious concern about a "forgotten"
functionnality. I looked for reference to my point in the
present newsgroup and didn't seem find any post so here it
is.

How come CRM doesn't implement checkboxes and
multiselection controls?

Such a missing type of control is quite hard to explain.
Let's suppose i'm a software creator, working on an
opportunity and wishing to qualify the technical needs of
my customer.

The most straightforward way would be - with ASP.NET - to
create a ListBox control or a CheckBoxList with this kind
of values in it:
- ASP.NET
- Oracle
- Sql Server
- ASP
- WinForms
- VB 6

Using the standard tools provided with CRM, the easiest
(and blatantly ugly) way to reach identical functionnality
would be to create 6 boolean fields, which would be
displayed as pairs of radio buttons. Quite a waste in
terms of graphical space in the forms :-)

Did someone find any workaround?

Thanks for your advice,
Karim

Hi Karim, yes, it is a bit odd. You could use the CRM SDK to attach a
custom form to any crm form, and in your form you could use checkboxes and
list boxes to read/write values to CRM boolean fields.

Mike

greaterthantwo media
Printable Quotes, Orders and Invoices, with line-item details, now available
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"Karim Zegour" <karim@winwise.fr> wrote in message
news:330301c3fd44$7da318b0$a401280a@phx.gbl...

Yes, multi-select boxes would be nice. (And I think I
read some ISV had it.) But, I think you'll find that
booleans are not a bad way to go here. The problem with
multi-select is that it is hard to extract data from.
(The best storage model appears to be using bitmasks, but
that is tough to query on too.)

You can sell it to users by saying that if you implement
as booleans, then you can easily write an Advanced Find
query to "show me everybody who needs SQL Server and
VB.NET".

If you just create a new section or a new tab on an
opportunity form, slap half a dozen booleans in it, the
users will be fine with it. In fact, most users prefer
multiple booleans to a list box. It is usually faster to
click a bunch of buttons that are in your face, rather
than pore through a list of choices, holding down the
ctrl key to click, etc.

Another way to look at it: Do you want to know anything
else about their need? In other words, make EACH of them
a pick list, and have values like "Must have, Nice to
have, Not important", etc., which would allow you to
retain more information about the need.

Finally, if this is going to turn into some kind of sale
of these products, you could add each one they were
interested in as an opportunity product. (Although that
is a very ugly part of the GUI.) HTH.

Dave