Creating letters or documents

I have been looking at Microsoft CRM. It seems to be a basically good product but has one very big weakness.

Whilst it is possible to generate emails from within MSCRM, most businesses still need to generate traditional letters. It should be possible ( and is in most other CRM applications I have used) to generate letters from within accounts, contacts or opportunities. This then brings up the opportunity to select from one of a number of (word) templates. The selected template then generates a document which is populated with the relevant contact / account information. The user then edits and checks the document. The document is saved and a note/activity is added to the account, contact or opportunity where the letter was originated from.

Are there any plans from Microsoft to add this facility to Microsoft CRM in future?

--
Paul Lisseter
LNL Services - UK

Stephen
Sun Aug 01 04:27:59 CDT 2004

Paul,

You have two options:

1. The Sales for Outlook client has the facility to do a "traditional"
mail merge to Word.

2. In the web client, add a view with the columns that you will need and
export to Excel. Use Excel file as the data source for a mail merge (not
very slick though).



Stephen

<Paul Lisseter>; "LNL Services"
<PaulLisseterLNLServices@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:8D1FDA75-9FD5-4174-99C5-412A3B93309F@microsoft.com...
> I have been looking at Microsoft CRM. It seems to be a basically good
product but has one very big weakness.
>
> Whilst it is possible to generate emails from within MSCRM, most
businesses still need to generate traditional letters. It should be possible
( and is in most other CRM applications I have used) to generate letters
from within accounts, contacts or opportunities. This then brings up the
opportunity to select from one of a number of (word) templates. The selected
template then generates a document which is populated with the relevant
contact / account information. The user then edits and checks the document.
The document is saved and a note/activity is added to the account, contact
or opportunity where the letter was originated from.
>
> Are there any plans from Microsoft to add this facility to Microsoft CRM
in future?
>
> --
> Paul Lisseter
> LNL Services - UK