Finally! Easy document distribution from Microsoft CRM

Distributing invoices from our Microsoft CRM system used to take me two minutes per invoice but, as the number of customers grew, it was taking me a day every month to finish the job of sending all the invoices. Distributing documents from Microsoft CRM can be painfully slow, and there had to be a better way. Unfortunately, even with the improvements in CRM 4.0 workflow, attaching files to workflow emails is still limited.

Recently I tried using Draycir Spindle Professional 2009 SP1. Spindle Pro acts as an intelligent printer driver that will distribute CRM documents by print, e-mail and fax and archive a copy on a file server, in a SharePoint document library and your CRM system. It took me about a day to configure Spindle Pro to email the invoice to each customer as a PDF attachment, save a copy on our file server and archive a copy of the invoice in our CRM system. Now the whole job of sending invoices to our entire customer base each month takes me two minutes. So I’m saving 478 minutes every month!

How to Send Invoices (Before Spindle Pro)
So here was my challenge. Every month we invoice our customers for their hosted Microsoft CRM service. And since we use Microsoft CRM to manage orders and invoices, I use CRM to generate an invoice report then send it to the customer.

Here's my old procedure for sending an invoice from Microsoft CRM:

1. On the Invoices grid in CRM, highlight the invoice I want to send
2. Click on the Reports button
3. Select the Invoice report
4. Choose The selected records
5. Click Run Report
6. Wait for the report to be generated
7. Select Acrobat (PDF) file as the format
8. Click Export
9. Click Open
10. Click File > Save a Copy
11. Navigate to our file server and find the folder where we file invoices
12. Rename the file
13. Click Save
14. Close Adobe Acrobat Reader
15. On the Invoices grid in CRM, double-click to open the invoice I want to send
16. Select Actions > Add Activity > E-mail
17. Change the From address to our Billing queue, not my user account
18. Change the To address to the billing contact, not the customer account
19. Click Insert template and select the Invoice as the template target and click OK
20. Select the appropriate e-mail template depending on the customer's payment method, click OK
21. Save the e-mail
22. Click Notes, and then click New E-mail Attachment
23. Click Browse and navigate to the folder where we file invoices and find the right invoice
24. Click Attach, then click Close
25. Finally, click Send

This monstrous, awkward procedure involves dozens of clicks and keystrokes and takes me a few minutes for each invoice. But with a bit of mundane practice, I've managed to nail it down to about 2 minutes per invoice. That was OK when we started and we had a few dozen customers, but now the invoicing job can take me an entire day! There had to be a better way.

Then in December 2008 we got a call from Draycir, an ISV based in Leicestershire. They wanted some help testing the latest release of Spindle Professional with partner-hosted Microsoft Dynamics CRM with the internet facing deployment (IFD) configuration. So we fired them up a test instance of CRM, and they kindly provided us with a copy of Spindle Pro.

In January I finally got around to testing Spindle Pro to see what it could do. Spindle Pro is a locally installed Windows application that acts as a very intelligent printer driver. In Spindle Pro Tools, you configure various document automation rules that tell Spindle Pro what to do with documents that you send to it. For example, you can combine the document with a letterhead, print the document to any network printer, e-mail the document as a PDF or TIFF attachment to internal or external recipients, archive the document on a file server or in a SharePoint document library, and save a copy of the document in Microsoft CRM.

Configuring Spindle Pro
Here’s how I configured Spindle Pro to handle our invoices:











Print
As you might expect, simply printing the document is really easy. I configured Spindle Pro to print a copy of each invoice to the printer next to our accountant. You simply select the network printer that you want to print to, and Spindle Pro will even allow you to control the printer trays used, and provides options for duplex printing and collation. With a bit of imagination, you could even use ViaPost or iMail to have your documents printed, packed, posted and delivered to your recipient.

E-mail
I configured Spindle Pro to distribute invoices to the billing contact by email and send a copy to our billing mailbox. I used a simple text box with mail merge data such as “Dear ##FirstName##” in the email body. I haven’t tried using the HTML email formatting option or some of the other advanced email management features yet. My CRM invoice report gets merged with a invoice letterhead form and then attached to the email as a PDF with a file name that Spindle Pro allows me to configure, such as “Invoice ##InvoiceNumber## ##CompanyName##”. The emails get sent from Outlook but I’ve configured Spindle to override my email address with billing@increasecrm.co.uk.

Archive
Next, I configured Spindle Pro to save the invoice documents in the invoices folder on our file server with the same file name: “Invoice ##InvoiceNumber## ##CompanyName##”. I haven’t tried using Spindle Pro to archive the invoices to our SharePoint server yet, and it would be interesting to see if I could configure it to save the invoice in the customer’s document library so that it shows up in the CRM account’s Documents tab.

CRM
Finally, I configured Spindle Pro to save a copy of the invoice in a Note on the customer Account record. Personally, I would have preferred to have the invoice e-mail that gets sent to the customer tracked in CRM and set regarding the CRM invoice record. I’ve contacted Draycir with my request and hopefully we’ll see this level of Microsoft CRM integration in a later release.

How Does Spindle Pro Work?
Spindle Pro does processes my document using various commands that I inserted into the CRM invoice report. The commands get interpreted by Spindle Pro, but they don’t get included in the document when it is generated. It’s probably best if I show you can example...

Invoice Report from CRM
Here’s our new Invoice report that we designed in SQL Reporting Services and published in CRM:










Using the handy Spindle Pro user guide, our report designer and I figured out how to use the Spindle Pro commands merged with CRM data to pass information to Spindle Pro about how to handle the document. These commands appear at the top of each invoice in the report, but aren't printed when you send the report to Spindle Pro.

• ##CFG## - identifies this document type so that Spindle knows what to do with it. So you could also use Spindle Pro to distribute quotes, orders, letters or any document that you wanted to from CRM or just about any application that can print.
• ##EMAIL## - identifies the billing contact’s email address that Spindle Pro uses to distribute the document by email.
• ##CRMFNAME## - this is the billing contact’s first name and gets used in the email body when we email the invoice to the billing contact.
• ##CRMCOMPANY## - this is the CRM account name, used for archiving the invoice in Microsoft CRM.
• ##VAR1## - we used one of Spindle’s custom commands for the invoice number. This gets used in the file name when we create the PDF attachment and archive the file, and in the email subject line and body when we send the email to the customer’s billing contact.
• ##VAR2##, ##VAR3## and ##VAR4## - a few more custom commands used for the invoice due date, invoice value and account manager that I used in the email body.

Then I print the report to the Spindle Pro printer driver and the rest is completely automated. Here’s what the results look like:

Invoice Emailed to Customer Billing Contact
Spindle Pro sends the invoice as a PDF attachment to the billing contact and sends a copy to our Accounts Receivable mailbox. The email subject and body text use merged data to personalise the email for each customer.

Invoice PDF Attachment
Spindle Pro takes the invoice PDF attachment takes the CRM invoice report and combines it with an invoice letterhead form that I had previously configured using Spindle Pro.














Invoice Archived in CRM
Spindle Pro saves a copy of the invoice in the Notes tab of the customer Account record in our CRM system.

How To Send Invoices (Using Spindle Pro)
Now that I’ve configured Spindle Pro, and shown you how it works, I thought it would be interesting to compare the previous procedure (takes two minutes, has 25+ steps, and involves dozens of keystrokes and mouse clicks) with the new procedure using Spindle Pro:

1. On the Invoices grid in CRM, highlight the batch of invoices I want to send
2. Click on the Reports button
3. Select the Invoice report
4. Choose The selected records
5. Click Run Report
6. Wait for the report to be generated
7. Click Print
8. Select Spindle Pro as the printer
9. Click OK

So now I send out a couple of hundred invoices in less than two minutes with about 10 clicks and zero keystrokes. Yippee!

So, Any Downsides?
As you can probably tell, I’m really impressed with Spindle Pro. It’s saved me hours of repetitive, boring work every month. I can imagine lots of our customers using it, and lots of other Microsoft CRM customers using it too.
However, there are already a couple of things on my wish list for the next release:

• Custom CRM workflow action or a CRM plugin to print a report to Spindle. It would be great if I could fully automate document distribution by using a workflow rule or a plugin to interact with Spindle in the background without any user intervention at all.
• Improved CRM archiving options. Spindle Pro can attach the document in the Notes tab of the contact or account, but the Notes tab doesn’t really seem like the best place to me for recording customer communications. As I mentioned earlier, I’d like to be able to track the e-mail sent to the customer and set it regarding the invoice so that it shows up in the activity history areas in the invoice, contact and account records.

About Spindle Professional 2009 SP1
Spindle Professional 2009 SP1 was released by Draycir in February 2009 and is the first release to offer integration with Microsoft Dynamics CRM.

• Requirements: 1GHz processor, 512MB memory, 500MB free disk space, Windows 2000/XP/Vista or Windows Server 2003 (32-bit or 64-bit).
• Supported Systems: Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 & 4.0, NAV and GP; Microsoft Office Word, Excel and Outlook 2000/XP/2003/2007; Microsoft SQL Reporting Services; Microsoft SharePoint, Sage accounting products, Pegasus Opera, Access Accounts, Crystal Reports, lots of fax servers and other email solutions (MAPI, SMTP, Lotus Notes, etc.).
• Suggested Retail Price: Spindle Professional 2009 SP1 is available from Draycir’s reseller network. A 10-user bundle costs approximately £1,820 plus £600 per annum for Gold Support which includes support, updates and version upgrades. Generous discounts are offered for volume bundles.

(Full Disclosure: Increase CRM is a Draycir reseller.)