Forward
SharePoint is beyond a file repository, and this post is just the beginning of showing you what SharePoint can do for you. When asked what SharePoint is, many who work with it will tell you it is a great place to collaborate on files. A great place for collaboration is true, but only for the first ten percent of what is possible. Just like an iceberg, there is so much more to SharePoint than file collaboration and sharing. This post is the first in a series of posts to design and create a CRM (Customer Relations Manager) using out-of-the-box SharePoint tools and features. We may even take a step further and add other features to our CRM with different apps native to M365. I know dozens of CRM tools are out there; that is the point. Most of you who will read this series will understand what I am trying to do. I am here to show you how you can develop ideas of what could be by creating a mashup.
You may ask what a mashup is. It takes different parts of SharePoint and puts them together meaningfully to create a greater solution when they interact. Think of multiple SharePoint lists, libraries, and pages combined into a solution like the CRM we will build throughout this series. The SharePoint lists will capture the data the same way a database would. The document libraries will contain digital artifacts about our clients and customers. The pages will allow us to present the different moving pieces in one seamless presentation so that the employees of X-Stream Widgets can interact with our CRM. Use this series to develop amazing ideas of how SharePoint could assist you, your team, or your company with exceptional solutions to business challenges.
The Mashup Story
For reference, we will pretend to be a company from the 1950’s future (Think the Jetsons). We are X-Stream Widgets. We have just started our venture, and we need to be able to take care of our current customers while trying to bring in new customers. Trying to keep track of customers in notepad, email, or a spreadsheet is not scalable. We have several clients and customers but would like to grow that over the next six months to get our production figures in the black. We will need to keep track of the company we are doing business with, the contacts working for that company, and any documentation we may receive from them. As the series unfolds, we will most likely identify more features to show other potential and possibilities of M365.
The First Building Block in Our Mashup
Create a new SharePoint list with the best practices in mind. Always use an underscore (_) instead of a space when creating a list or library. The underscore accomplishes a couple of things. One, the URL will be much more legible, and the second will shorten the base URL by two characters per space. Return to list settings and replace the underscores with spaces if you desire. Doing so will not change the URL. The list name we will use is “Customers”. (See Image 1) Be sure to fill in the list description as well. The description is valuable because it will help elevate the items within them in search results if the search connects the description to the search query.
The customers X-Stream Widgets work with are companies of different sizes that sell widget wares. Knowing the pertinent information about their client headquarters is essential and the cornerstone of our CRM Mashup. The information captured is specific to the headquarters building. See the list below for details on identifying our client’s location.
- Company Name (Changed the Title column that comes with a new list)
- HQ_Address (The street address)
- HQ_Address_2 (To identify if there is a suite, floor, etc.)
- HQ_City
- HQ_State
- HQ_Zip_Code
- Main_Phone (either a toll-free number or number to the front desk)
- Fax_Phone (to work with companies still using Fax technology)
There is one thing we did in addition to the Company Name field. We checked the box to force it to be unique. We do not want to have duplicates of our clients and customers by accident. Duplicates could confuse our sales staff and have adverse effects. One such effect would potentially be more than one sales representative contacting the customer with the same offer. When a new customer is added, all the fields except HQ_Address_2 and Fax_Phone should be required. (See Image 2)
X-Stream Widgets CRM Mashup Step One Conclusion
By creating the Customers list in SharePoint, we have completed the cornerstone of the CRM mashup solution we are building in this series. We have covered the high-level concepts of a mashup. We have also created a fictitious company, X-Stream Widgets, to help us visualize our goal for this series. Be ready for the next post in this series, where we will cover another essential piece: contacts.