Customer Engagement & Dynamics CRM Forum

I'm in the process of cleaning the Ribbon on some of our entities and I'm wondering whether I should hide the Follow and Unfollow buttons. Besides adding a record to the "I Follow" views like "Accounts I Follow" or "Contacts I Follow" is there some other functionality that this view provides? I know in the classic web interface we had a "What's New" dashboard area which  has been taken away in the Unified Interface.
Our users don't use the "I Follow"  view and so I just wanted to check if anyone is aware of some other functionality that those buttons provide so I can make an informed decision.

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Edrei Mpanduki
Technical Analyst
Gilbert AZ
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@Edrei Mpanduki

If you add a timeline to a dashboard will get notified about changes to the records you follow there. So it works as a wall / feed on any social media like Twitter or LinkedIn, where each individual user chose what to follow and build their own feed based on their interests. So the information is 'pushed' to the user instead of having to 'pull' it.E.g. you get informed when important things happens to accounts, opportunities, contacts you are interested in.

You can then use workflows / flows to create your own posts when certain things occur in the system. E.g. a contact changes employer, an opportunity moves to a certain stage etc. 

What is lacking, in my opinion, is a proper notification in the system like users are used to seeing on social media like LinkedIn:
You still need to navigate to the Dashboard to see what has happened


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BR,
Niels
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Original Message:
Sent: Jun 03, 2020 11:29 AM
From: Edrei Mpanduki
Subject: Follow/Unfollow Buttons in Unified Interface

I'm in the process of cleaning the Ribbon on some of our entities and I'm wondering whether I should hide the Follow and Unfollow buttons. Besides adding a record to the "I Follow" views like "Accounts I Follow" or "Contacts I Follow" is there some other functionality that this view provides? I know in the classic web interface we had a "What's New" dashboard area which  has been taken away in the Unified Interface.
Our users don't use the "I Follow"  view and so I just wanted to check if anyone is aware of some other functionality that those buttons provide so I can make an informed decision.

------------------------------
Edrei Mpanduki
Technical Analyst
Gilbert AZ
------------------------------

Hi @Edrei Mpanduki,

That's a great question because not only would eliminating the buttons clear up the user interface a bit, but it would then give you the opportunity to clean up those "I Follow" views -- the more clutter there is in the user interface, the more difficult it is to drive adoption.

As @Niels Søgaard Lønberg said, there is some functionality beyond just the views, and it can be quite helpful. But if your users haven't adopted it yet, and if you're having some adoption issues, it may be a good idea to shut it down for the time being​​​. Then plan to re-introduce it later when your users see the benefit. 

A real-world use-case: literally yesterday I was consulting for a new client and several of their users noted that it's impossible for them to get a list of all the accounts and contacts that they're interested in following up with because they don't own most of them. Follow could be a helpful answer to this kind of situation. You could setup workflows to auto-follow records under certain conditions too (such as if you interacted with them, if they are in an industry that you sell into, etc).

Do keep in mind that the maximum # of follows for any user is 5,000 and I believe it is set to 1,000 by default. And I believe that is across all entities (Leads + Contacts + Accts, etc). The limit is there for a good reason: once you get over a certain amount, it's hard for it to be doing much good. But if you have legitimate reason to follow more than 5,000 records, you're going to need a different solution for this. (I'm fairly certain this paragraph is still accurate - though it has been several years since I checked to confirm).



​

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Geoff Ables
Managing Partner
C5 Insight
Charlotte NC
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Original Message:
Sent: Jun 03, 2020 11:29 AM
From: Edrei Mpanduki
Subject: Follow/Unfollow Buttons in Unified Interface

I'm in the process of cleaning the Ribbon on some of our entities and I'm wondering whether I should hide the Follow and Unfollow buttons. Besides adding a record to the "I Follow" views like "Accounts I Follow" or "Contacts I Follow" is there some other functionality that this view provides? I know in the classic web interface we had a "What's New" dashboard area which  has been taken away in the Unified Interface.
Our users don't use the "I Follow"  view and so I just wanted to check if anyone is aware of some other functionality that those buttons provide so I can make an informed decision.

------------------------------
Edrei Mpanduki
Technical Analyst
Gilbert AZ
------------------------------

Thank you for your responses. I like the idea of putting the Timeline on the dashboard and creating a personal feed. ​​​@Geoff Ables you're right, the issue is user adoption, and one of the issues that is brought up consistently is that the form and view ribbons have too any buttons they don't need/understand. So think I'll just hide some of these buttons for now and simplify the ribbons and sitemap, then reintroduce some of these features as users get more experience using Dynamics. I think they'll like the idea of having a way to follow accounts and leads but for now it seems like a bit much while they're still learning to use the system

------------------------------
Edrei Mpanduki
Technical Analyst
AZ
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: Jun 04, 2020 08:47 AM
From: Geoff Ables
Subject: Follow/Unfollow Buttons in Unified Interface

Hi @Edrei Mpanduki,

That's a great question because not only would eliminating the buttons clear up the user interface a bit, but it would then give you the opportunity to clean up those "I Follow" views -- the more clutter there is in the user interface, the more difficult it is to drive adoption.

As @Niels Søgaard Lønberg said, there is some functionality beyond just the views, and it can be quite helpful. But if your users haven't adopted it yet, and if you're having some adoption issues, it may be a good idea to shut it down for the time being​​​. Then plan to re-introduce it later when your users see the benefit.

A real-world use-case: literally yesterday I was consulting for a new client and several of their users noted that it's impossible for them to get a list of all the accounts and contacts that they're interested in following up with because they don't own most of them. Follow could be a helpful answer to this kind of situation. You could setup workflows to auto-follow records under certain conditions too (such as if you interacted with them, if they are in an industry that you sell into, etc).

Do keep in mind that the maximum # of follows for any user is 5,000 and I believe it is set to 1,000 by default. And I believe that is across all entities (Leads + Contacts + Accts, etc). The limit is there for a good reason: once you get over a certain amount, it's hard for it to be doing much good. But if you have legitimate reason to follow more than 5,000 records, you're going to need a different solution for this. (I'm fairly certain this paragraph is still accurate - though it has been several years since I checked to confirm).



​

------------------------------
Geoff Ables
Managing Partner
C5 Insight
Charlotte NC

Original Message:
Sent: Jun 03, 2020 11:29 AM
From: Edrei Mpanduki
Subject: Follow/Unfollow Buttons in Unified Interface

I'm in the process of cleaning the Ribbon on some of our entities and I'm wondering whether I should hide the Follow and Unfollow buttons. Besides adding a record to the "I Follow" views like "Accounts I Follow" or "Contacts I Follow" is there some other functionality that this view provides? I know in the classic web interface we had a "What's New" dashboard area which  has been taken away in the Unified Interface.
Our users don't use the "I Follow"  view and so I just wanted to check if anyone is aware of some other functionality that those buttons provide so I can make an informed decision.

------------------------------
Edrei Mpanduki
Technical Analyst
Gilbert AZ
------------------------------