Glossary
This section contains the glossary of terms for the Microsoft Business Solutions CRM Software Development Kit (SDK).
Note A complete product glossary can be found in the Help documentation in the Microsoft CRM application.
| Term | Definition |
| Access privilege | An access policy against a specific business object. |
| Access right | A specific right assigned to a user for a business object. Primary examples are read, write, append, delete, share, and assign. |
| Account | A company that might do business with your organization. |
| Account address | The address or addresses of a particular account. Accounts can have more than one address. For example, a bill to address and a ship to address. |
| Activity | In Microsoft CRM, an action to be performed, such as a task, or a communication item that is sent or received, for example, e-mail, phone calls, faxes, letters, and appointments. The status of activities is tracked and the activity history is stored in the system, so users can view the open and closed activities. |
| Append | An access privilege available in Microsoft CRM that enables users to attach objects to the selected object.
The Append and Append To access privileges are actually a pair of privileges that work in combination with each other. Each time a user attaches one object to another, the user is accessing both of these privileges. For example, when you attach a note to a case, you must have the Append privilege on the case and the Append To privilege on the note for the operation to work. |
| AppendTo | An access privilege available in Microsoft CRM that enables users to attach the selected object to another object.
See Append |
| Application instance | An application instance (or instance) is a customized implementation of a Microsoft CRM application (plus any partner-defined functionality outside the scope of Microsoft CRM) using the core Microsoft CRM services. An instance uses a single store or service deployment unit, typically a database or database cluster. |
| Article | An organized grouping of information, usually about one subject with subtopics. |
| Assign | To specify the owner of a business record, such as an account, contact, or case, or an activity, such as an e-mail message, fax, or phone call. In Microsoft CRM, users can assign cases and activities to either a user or a queue. |
| Basic | A privilege level that specifies the user has access to objects the user owns or shares. Basic is the privilege level with the fewest privileges.
The application refers to this level as User. |
| Business | An entity that provides goods and/or services to others. |
| Business process | A specified sequence of steps required to complete a task, such as completing a contract. A business process can be performed manually or through the use of a workflow rule. |
| Business unit | A unit of the top-level organization. Business units can be parents of other business units (child business units). |
| Child business unit | A business unit that is immediately under another business unit in the business hierarchy of an organization. |
| Competitor | An entity defined within an organization that might compete for sales opportunities with your business unit. You can create a competitor record that contains information about a competitor, including strengths and weaknesses, and then associate that record with opportunity, product, and sales literature records, so that it is readily available when you need it. |
| Contact | An individual who is interested in doing business or currently does business with your organization. A contact may or may not be part of a larger organization (account). |
| Contract | An agreement to provide customer service support during specified coverage dates or for a specified number of cases or length of time. When customers contact customer service, the level of support they receive is determined by their contract. |
| Customer | The entity with which a business unit conducts a business transaction, in a general sense. In most applications, it will correspond to an aggregate of related "contact" (communication) and "account" (billing) records. |
| Customer service | The functionality to ensure that customers of a business, both individuals and other businesses, can keep in communication with that business to ensure that they receive appropriate levels of service before, during, and after purchasing the business’ products or services. |
| Customer service representative (CSR) | A role that users can be assigned in Microsoft CRM. A customer service representative provides service to the customers of the organization or business unit through the opening and resolution of cases, among other activities. |
| Deep | A privilege level that specifies the user has access to objects within his or her business unit and down the business unit hierarchy.
The application refers to this level as Parent: Child Business Units. |
| Deployment | A deployment is a single installation of Microsoft CRM. |
| Discount list | A compilation of the specific discounts that can be applied to a product, based on volume purchased. Salespeople can add discount lists to price list items in a product. |
| Fiscal year | A span of time during which the financial activities of an organization are calculated. A fiscal year is divided into fiscal periods, typically defined as semesters, quarters, or months. The organization determines the dates that begin and end its fiscal year, which may not correspond to a traditional calendar year. When a salesperson is assigned a quota in Microsoft CRM, the timeframe for achieving the quota is based on the fiscal year of the organization. |
| Global | A privilege level that specifies the user has access to objects anywhere within the organization.
The application refers to this level as Organization. |
| Incident (case) | A customer service issue or problem reported by a customer and the activities that customer service representatives use to resolve it. |
| Invoice | An order that has been billed. It is also a record of a sale to an account, including details about the products or services purchased. |
| Knowledge Base | A database that internal users can browse or search in to find information about the organization's products and services, often to answer commonly asked questions from customers. This information is in the form of articles and is organized by subjects. The Knowledge Base is searchable by keyword, header text, or full text. |
| Lead | A potential customer who must be contacted by a salesperson and either qualified or disqualified as a sales opportunity. If a lead is qualified, it can be converted to an opportunity, account, and/or contact in Microsoft CRM. |
| License | A set of the Microsoft CRM application functionality that an organization purchases. Each license type is associated with a group of privileges. |
| Local | A privilege level that specifies the user has access to objects within his or her own business unit.
The application refers to this level as Business Unit. |
| Notes | A small item of information that can be appended to any business object. Notes can be appended to one and only one object. |
| Opportunity | A potential sale to an account or contact that may be won or lost. |
| Order | A confirmed request for delivery of goods or services based on specified terms. Basically, an order is a quote that has been accepted by a customer. |
| Organization | In Microsoft CRM, the entity that is internal to the customer relationship management process. The organization is the top level of the Microsoft CRM business hierarchy. The organization can be a specific business, a holding company, a corporation, and so on. There can be only one organization per Microsoft CRM deployment. The organization is divided into business units. |
| Price list | A compilation of the specific prices that can be charged for each unit in the unit group of a product. Salespeople use price lists to determine the pricing in a quote for a customer. In addition, a default price list can be added to a product. |
| Private | A setting that hides an object from all users except the owner of the object and any users who have had the object explicitly shared with them. |
| Process | A definition for an automated workflow consisting of steps, including the actions the workflow should take at each step, and the rules the workflow should use to proceed to the next step. |
| Process instance | A running instance of a process. |
| Process template | A process that is not intended to be run, but is used as a starting point to create other processes. |
| Product | In Microsoft CRM, an item in the product catalog. Salespeople can associate products to their quotes, orders, and invoices, but products can be added to the product catalog only through the Settings area of Microsoft CRM. |
| Public | The setting that gives anyone with the proper security role access to view and edit an item. |
| Query | A formal question that can be submitted to the database to retrieve the results. |
| Queue | A holding container for work items. In Microsoft CRM, queues are used in several places. For example, the Queues area of the Workplace module contains queues of cases and activities. In KB Manager, knowledge base articles are sorted into queues in the Draft, Unapproved, and Published folders. |
| Quota | A revenue objective specified as a specific monetary amount that has been assigned to a salesperson for a specified fiscal period. |
| Quote | A formal offer for products and/or services, proposed at specific prices and related payment terms, which is sent to a prospective customer. |
| Reports | A collection and grouping of business data that answers a question or aggregates data in some way. |
| Role | A defined set of access privileges assigned to a user in Microsoft CRM. The role assigned to a user determines which tasks the user can perform and which parts of the user interface the user can view. In Microsoft CRM, all users must be assigned at least one role in order to access the system. |
| Sales literature | The documents that business units create with specific information about products and/or services. |
| Salesperson | A role that users can be assigned in Microsoft CRM. A salesperson is responsible for finding and/or qualifying leads, and working with opportunities, accounts, and contacts in order to generate sales revenue, among other activities. |
| Search | See Query. |
| Security principal | Represents a user or team. It is essentially an object that can be assigned a business object for ownership. |
| Share | To allow another user or team to have a specified amount of access to a particular record, such as a case, account, or contract. For example, you can share an account with a team and specify that they can read the account record, but cannot have write access to it. |
| Subject | A category used to organize objects in the Knowledge Base and product catalog. |
| Team | A group of users who share and collaborate on business records in the system. A team can consist of members who report to a single business unit (such as all sales or all customer service) or members who report to different business units (salespeople, customer service representatives, and accounting representatives). |
| Territory | A geographical area that a salesperson is assigned to. |
| Unit | A measurement that specifies in what quantity a product will be sold. |
| User | Either the user of the Microsoft CRM application or the user who is logged in for authentication purposes for each Microsoft CRM API. |
| Workflow rule | A set of action steps that are enabled for a business process or sales process. Workflow rules determine the required activities for a workflow and in what order those activities must be performed. |