ClickDimensions employs industry-standard best practices to ensure the highest level of deliverability for its customers. One of these practices is the use of DKIM Signing. DKIM signing is a way for an email to be associated with a sending domain by the inclusion of an encrypted signature in the email’s header. This signature corresponds to a key in the sending domain’s DNS.

ClickDimensions automatically provides DKIM signing support for all email sent by our customers through our service because our customers’ email is sent from the email.clickdimensions.com domain which has a DKIM signature. Therefore, it is not necessary for customers to configure anything to take advantage of DKIM Signing.

For more information on DKIM Signatures, see DKIM.org and Wikipedia.

ClickDimensions has introduced an auto-update feature for the ClickDimensions solution in CRM 2011 and CRM Online environments. Below are frequently asked questions about auto-update:

1. Will Auto-Update be available for CRM 4.0?

No, Auto-Update will not be available for CRM 4.0. Unfortunately remote deployment of solutions is not possible with CRM 4.0.

2. How often are updates made available?

If you choose the full-automated update option, updates will be deployed as they are released. ClickDimensions releases updates to the CRM solution approximately every 2 months.

3. Is there a way to roll-back an Auto-Update?

The Auto-Update feature uses standard CRM methods to remotely install the latest version of the ClickDimensions solution. You also have the option to download the solution and perform a manual installation. You should make sure you have a good, tested back-up of your CRM database prior to installing or updating any solution, as CRM at this time does not provide a way to roll-back a solution update.

4. What happens if the update does not work?

If the update does not work, you will receive an email with information about the problem that was encountered.

5. If I choose the “Update Now” option, how long does it take to perform the update?

The update process is handled asynchronously, meaning that it will be queued up for processing, and may take several minutes to a few hours to complete. Factors that can impact the speed of the update process include: the level of demand for updates from the ClickDimensions system, the performance of your CRM infrastructure, and internet and network bandwidth and latency.

6. What about the ClickDimensions workflow rules?

If you choose the semi-automated or fully-automated update options,  the update process will re-assign the ClickDimensions workflow rules to the service user so that they can be updated. If you choose to download the solution and manually perform an update by importing it yourself, you must be the owner of the workflow rules prior to importing the solution.

7. What permissions are needed to perform the auto-update?

If you choose the semi-automated or fully automated options for receiving updates, the ClickDimensions service user must have privileges to install solutions on your CRM. You can grant the service user the System Administrator or System Customizer roles to ensure that these privileges are in place.

8. How do I tell which user in CRM is the ClickDimensions service user?

Many organizations will set up a dedicated CRM user to act as the service user for integration with ClickDimensions and other external applications. However, it is also possible to use a person’s CRM user account as the service user, if that person has sufficient privileges in the system. To check which user is being used as the service account, you can check the “Created by” for records that are created by the ClickDimensions integration. For example, navigate to the Marketing area and open an IP Organization record. Look at the properties for this record (click on File > Properties) to see which user created the record. This will be the service user. (See below).

9. I did a manual update but received some warning messages. Was my update successful? The warnings said “The original SDK message processing step has been disabled and replaced with one included in this solution”

Yes, if you received no other warnings or errors, then your update was successful. This is a normal warning that indicates that the update process disabled previous SDK steps while replacing them with new ones during the update process.

10. Will Auto-Update overwrite my customizations?

Yes. The automatic and semi-automated methods of updating the ClickDimensions solution use the “overwrite” option. This is necessary to ensure that all of our new features are enabled when your ClickDimensions solution is updated. However, if you have made customizations to entities that are included in the ClickDimensions solution, your customizations may be overwritten. Also, some system components, such as system views and option sets that are part of the Account, Contact and Lead entity, will be set back to their default state since these entities are included in the ClickDimensions managed solution, and Microsoft does not provide a method to exclude them from the process.

If you are upgrading your CRM 4.0 environment to CRM 2011 and you have ClickDimensions installed in your CRM 4.0 organization, there are some steps you’ll need to follow in order to maintain your ClickDimensions data through the upgrade. Some of the steps in the upgrade process are easier to perform prior to upgrading your CRM and prior to setting up IFD for CRM 2011.

Background

Microsoft has made significant changes to how third-party add-ons are handled in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011. CRM now uses a “managed solution” model to make it easier to install, update and remove custom solutions. However, upgrading from CRM 4.0 to CRM 2011 with such a solution already installed means that you’ll want to prepare your CRM environment so that the components of the solution are able to be upgraded from an unmanaged to a fully managed state.

Next Steps

Please contact our support team to request our full upgrade guide by logging a request at http://support.clickdimensions.com. The upgrade guide will provide instructions on clean-up and preparatory steps you should take prior to upgrading CRM, as well as how to get a CRM 2011 version of ClickDimensions.

Before testing your CRM’s external access or attempting to register for the ClickDimensions solution, refer to the following articles:

1. Configuring external access: http://help.clickdimensions.com/connectivity-for-the-clickdimensions-solution/
2. Firewall considerations: http://help.clickdimensions.com/what-firewall-changes-are-needed-to-allow-clickdimensions-proper-access-to-your-crm-deployment/
3. Check your SSL certificate to make sure it is valid: http://www.sslshopper.com/ssl-checker.html

Testing Access

• Test CRM 4.0   (Skip to common errors for CRM 4.0)
• For CRM 2011 or CRM Online   (Skip to common errors for CRM 2011)

CRM 4.0: Test Connectivity

Fill in the form below to test connectivity to your CRM 4.0 instance. For details on what to enter into the form, see here.

Common errors for CRM 4.0

• Unable to connect to remote server – The remote server in this case is your CRM server (the error message is being generated from our server when it attempts to connect to your CRM). This usually indicates that the firewall is not permitting connections from our IP addresses or is not permitting traffic across the port you have specified for your CRM address.

CRM 2011 or CRM Online: Test Connectivity

Fill in the form below to test connectivity to your CRM 2011 or CRM Online instance. For details on what to enter into the form, see here.

Common errors for CRM 2011

• Metadata contains a reference that cannot be resolved – This usually indicates a problem with your Internet-Facing Deployment (IFD). This could be a setting in the CRM Deployment Manager’s Web Address properties, or a DNS issue. See this article for more detail. (For CRM Online, if this error occurs, wait an hour and try again. It may be due to a temporary disruption in CRM Online.)
• Error. An unsecured or incorrectly secured fault was received. This is typically due to using an incorrect username or password in the registration to connect to your CRM. The user you are entering in the registration form must be an enabled user in your CRM. (Less commonly, this error can result from the server times being more than five minutes out of sync with either your network’s domain controller, or Microsoft’s Azure data centers where our application is hosted. Check the times on your CRM and ADFS servers. Sometimes a simple reboot is all that is needed to get the times synced back up properly.)

Ready to register?

Once you’re ready to register, use the registration link provided in your welcome email, or sent to you by your account manager.

Social Sharing in Email Marketing | New Feature!

ClickDimensions is pleased to announce the release of ClickDimensions 4.1.0, packed with new features and improvements! These new features are now available to all existing customers at no additional cost.

Customers using CRM 2011 or CRM Online can use our Auto-Update feature to download or initiate an update. If you’ve signed up to have new versions automatically installed, automatic updates will commence the weekend of November 17.

CRM 4.0 customers can email support@clickdimensions.com to request the updated installer. Please include your CRM org name and external URL for verification purposes.

The new Social Sharing feature in ClickDimensions enables you to insert links into your emails that will allow your recipients to share the email or a custom URL with their followers on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+. You can insert these links within the three email editors. We also provide statistics on how many recipients shared your email or custom URL and on what social platforms.

Learn more on how to insert social links or learn more about the social statistics.

SMS | New Feature!

SMS stands for Short Message Service, which means this new feature will allow you to send text messages with ClickDimensions. With ClickDimensions integrated SMS feature, you will be able to send text messages to Leads, Contacts, and Account. You can also opt-in to recieve text message replies from these recipients as well.

Click here to learn more about SMS in ClickDimensions.

Nurture Timeline | Nurture Programs

ClickDimensions Nurture Programs allows you to send emails and take action on a recipient based on their response to an email. Before, you were able to see if the nurture program for an individual was running, completed, paused, or canceled. Now, with Nurture Timeline, you can see the path the individual took and where they are in the nurture. The Timline shows the chronological order of what steps the individual took within the nurture along with any details that pertain to that step.

Click to learn more about the Nurture Timeline.

Spell Check | Email and Landing Page Editors

A tool has been added to your Email and Landing Page editors – Spell Check! To check the spelling in the editor, click on the spell check tool in the toolbar, and it will check the content within that html editor for any words that are misspelled.

Clone Button | Forms, Surveys, and Subscription Management

The Clone button in Web Content records will duplicate any form, survey, or landing page that has been created with ClickDimensions. If you have created elaborate forms with a lot of settings and want to create another form that is very similar, you can now use the Clone button. The principle behind the Clone button in Email Templates is the same for Web Content.

Click here to learn more about the Web Content Clone Button.

File Upload Component | Forms

You requested, and we listened! The Upload File form component is here. By adding the Upload File component to your ClickDimensions Forms, your website visitors can now upload a file and submit it along with your form. The file will be stored in the Posted Form record within CRM, where you can also download it and save it elsewhere.

Click here to learn more about how to create a form with ClickDimensions.

Heat Map | Email Marketing

The ClickDimensions Heat Map shows which links have been clicked in your email and the percentage of recipients who clicked on those links. The percentages will appear on both text and image links, and you can expand or minimize the percentages as well. This can give you good insight as to where your recipients are clicking within your emails.

Click here to learn more about the ClickDimensions Heat Map.

Publish Button | Forms, Surveys, and Subscription Management

Easily update forms, surveys, and landing pages with the Publish button in Web Content records. In previous versions of ClickDimensions, if the Name, Create New Visitor As, or any other field in the Web Content record was changed, it was necessary to open the desinger and click save in order to publish those changes. Now, after changing those fields, click the Publish button and it will update the form, survey, or landing page with the new information.

Click here to learn more about the Publish button in Web Content records.

Additional Features

We also added in some additional new features, such as the ability to add FreeMarker code in the From Name field in an Email Send as well as adding multiple Test Email addresses. In the Actions panel of a Form, Survey, or Subscription Page, you can now also notify an entire team with Team Notifications when someone has made a submission. Finally, when submitting a Form, you can choose to disallow the entry of free email addresses, encouraging the user to fill out his or her professional email.

Make sure you receive New Release notification emails!
Click here to fill out our New Release and Update Notification form to ensure that you receive new release emails >>

The following code can be used to repair or manually update your sitemap if you have overwritten it with other customizations and wish to add the ClickDimensions navigation groups back to the interface.

See here for more information on how to update the sitemap in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011.

1. Marketing Area: Add the following groups of links to the Marketing area of the sitemap:

<Group Id="cdi_analytics" Title="Analytics" Icon="$webresource:cdi_clickdimensionsicon">

<Titles>

<Title LCID="1033" Title="Analytics" />

</Titles>

<SubArea Id="cdi_iporganization" Entity="cdi_iporganization" />

<SubArea Id="cdi_anonymousvisitor" Entity="cdi_anonymousvisitor" />

<SubArea Id="cdi_visit" Entity="cdi_visit" />

<SubArea Id="cdi_pageview" Entity="cdi_pageview" />

<SubArea Id="cdi_postedform" Entity="cdi_postedform" />

<SubArea Id="cdi_postedfield" Entity="cdi_postedfield" />

<SubArea Id="cdi_postedsurvey" Entity="cdi_postedsurvey" />

<SubArea Id="cdi_surveyanswer" Entity="cdi_surveyanswer" />

</Group>

<Group Id="cdi_emailmarketing" Title="Email Marketing" Icon="$webresource:cdi_clickdimensionsicon">

<Titles>

<Title LCID="1033" Title="Email Marketing" />

</Titles>

<SubArea Id="cdi_emailsend" Entity="cdi_emailsend" />

<SubArea Id="cdi_emailtemplate" Entity="cdi_emailtemplate" />

<SubArea Id="cdi_sentemail" Entity="cdi_sentemail" />

<SubArea Id="cdi_emailevent" Entity="cdi_emailevent" />

<SubArea Id="cdi_unsubscribe" Entity="cdi_unsubscribe" />

<SubArea Id="cdi_postedsubscription" Entity="cdi_postedsubscription" />

<SubArea Id="cdi_subscriptionpreference" Entity="cdi_subscriptionpreference" />

</Group>

<Group Id="cdi_mobile" Title="Mobile" Icon="$webresource:cdi_clickdimensionsicon">

<Titles>

<Title LCID="1033" Title="Mobile" />

</Titles>

<SubArea Id="cdi_bulktxtmessage" Entity="cdi_bulktxtmessage" />

</Group>

2. Add the following group to the Settings area of the Sitemap (NOTE: You must replace your Account Key in the URL to the settings page. See the end of this article for instructions on locating your Account Key):

 <Group Id="cdi_clickdimensionssettings" Title="ClickDimensions" Icon="$webresource:cdi_clickdimensionsicon">

           <Titles>

             <Title LCID="1033" Title="ClickDimensions" />

           </Titles>

           <SubArea Id="cdi_settingspage" Title="ClickDimensions Settings" Icon="$webresource:cdi_clickdimensionsicon" Url="https://app.clickdimensions.com/MSCRM/v2011/pages/Settings.aspx?accountKey=YOURACCOUNTKEYHERE" Client="Web" PassParams="1" />

           <SubArea Id="cdi_domain" Entity="cdi_domain" />

           <SubArea Id="cdi_filter" Entity="cdi_filter" />

           <SubArea Id="cdi_formfield" Entity="cdi_formfield" />

           <SubArea Id="cdi_surveyquestion" Entity="cdi_surveyquestion" />

           <SubArea Id="cdi_subscriptionlist" Entity="cdi_subscriptionlist" />

           <SubArea Id="cdi_webcontent" Entity="cdi_webcontent" />

           <SubArea Id="cdi_nurturebuilder" Entity="cdi_nurturebuilder" />

           <SubArea Id="cdi_formcapture" Entity="cdi_formcapture" />

           <SubArea Id="cdi_profile" Entity="cdi_profile" />

         </Group>

3. Add the following to the Resource Center area in the Sitemap (optional):

 <SubArea Id="cdi_kb" PassParams="0" Url="http://www.clickdimensions.com/support/training.asp" Title="ClickDimensions" Icon="$webresource:cdi_clickdimensionsicon">

             <Titles>

               <Title LCID="1033" Title="ClickDimensions" />

             </Titles>

           </SubArea>

Finding Your Account Key
Each ClickDimensions deployment has a unique account key that is used to integrate your CRM with the ClickDimensions cloud. The account key is used in the tracking script on your web pages, to identify forms and email templates for your organization, and other places. To locate your account key, you can view your tracking script on the ClickDimensions Settings page. You can also create or open an Email Template record, view the template in full screen mode, and copy the account key from the URL.

Some countries and jurisdictions require websites to notify visitors about the types of tracking technologies used on the website and by the website owner. ClickDimensions has developed an example script that will show an alert to a website visitor to notify them about tracking. You can use this sample script by copying it to your own web site and modifying the language that is contained in the script.

The script is located at https://az124611.vo.msecnd.net/web/tracking/TrackingCookie.js

See the screenshot below for an example of how the script works.

View the HTML that was used in the example screenshot above: tracking-cookie-alert

Read ClickDimensions privacy statement and download our white paper on web tracking: http://www.clickdimensions.com/privacy/

As part of the February 2013 release, ClickDimensions for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 and Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online supports the following browsers:

• Internet Explorer 8, 9 and 10
• Chrome 24+
• Firefox 18+
• Safari 6+

The ClickDimensions February 2013 release has made significant changes to the way that web analytics and posted forms are synchronized to our customers’ CRM systems. As a result of the changes made in the ClickDimensions cloud application, our customers should immediately deactivate the following plugin steps in their CRM:

• PageViewPlugin (two steps registered on the Create of the Page View entity)
• PostedFormPlugin (two steps registered on the Create of the Posted Form entity)
• PostedSubscriptionPlugin (one step registered on the Create of the Posted Subscription entity)
• PostedSurveyPlugin (one step registered on the Create of the Posted Survey entity)
• ScorePlugin (two steps registered on the Create and Update of the Contact entity, and two steps registered on the Create and Update of the Lead entity)
• VisitPlugin (three steps registered on the Create and Update of the Visit entity)

There are a total of 13 plugin steps that must be deactivated:

To deactivate a plugin step in CRM 2011 or CRM Online:

1. Log into CRM as a user with the System Administrator security role.
2. Navigate to Settings > Customizations > Customize the System. This will open the default solution in CRM containing all customizations.
3. Click on Sdk Message Processing Steps on the left side of the solution window.
4. Select the plugin steps listed above and click on the Deactivate button:
   
   Watch a video demonstration:

To deactivate plugin steps in CRM 4.0:

To deactivate plugin steps in CRM 4.0, the Plugin Registration tool must be used. Please contact ClickDimensions support if you require assistance.

The CRM 4.0 pluginregistration.exe can be downloaded from here: http://archive.msdn.microsoft.com/crmplugin/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=2010

Using the plugin registration tool, connect to your CRM 4.0 organization and expand the ClickDimensions plugin to view the registered steps. Select the steps noted above and disable them in the plugin registration tool UI.

In What Languages is ClickDimensions Available?

The ClickDimensions managed solution for Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online and Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 is currently available with the following localized languages:

• 1033 – English
• 1030 – Danish
• 1031 – German
• 1036 – French
• 1043 – Dutch

(For Microsoft CRM 4.0, only US English is available. For instructions on translating the solution for your CRM 4.0 environment, see this article: http://help.clickdimensions.com/translations-for-clickdimensions-entities-and-labels-2/)

If you are interested in providing additional translations for CRM Online or CRM 2011, please contact our support team at http://support.clickdimensions.com.

NOTE: The localized values apply only to the CRM entities, labels and menu items that are included in the ClickDimensions managed solution. Some components of ClickDimensions, such as the Email Template editors, Form designer, and field mapping interface, are hosted on ClickDimensions’ cloud application and are only available in English.

ClickDimensions employs industry-standard best practices to ensure the highest level of deliverability for its customers. One of these practices is the use of DKIM Signing. DKIM signing is a way for an email to be associated with a sending domain by the inclusion of an encrypted signature in the email’s header. This signature corresponds to a key in the sending domain’s DNS.

ClickDimensions automatically provides DKIM signing support for all email sent by our customers through our service because our customers’ email is sent from the email.clickdimensions.com domain which has a DKIM signature. Therefore, it is not necessary for customers to configure anything to take advantage of DKIM Signing.

For more information on DKIM Signatures, see DKIM.org and Wikipedia.

The ClickDimensions February 2013 release has made significant changes to the way that web analytics and posted forms are synchronized to our customers’ CRM systems. As a result of the changes made in the ClickDimensions cloud application, our customers should immediately deactivate the following plugin steps in their CRM:

• PageViewPlugin (two steps registered on the Create of the Page View entity)
• PostedFormPlugin (two steps registered on the Create of the Posted Form entity)
• PostedSubscriptionPlugin (one step registered on the Create of the Posted Subscription entity)
• PostedSurveyPlugin (one step registered on the Create of the Posted Survey entity)
• ScorePlugin (two steps registered on the Create and Update of the Contact entity, and two steps registered on the Create and Update of the Lead entity)
• VisitPlugin (three steps registered on the Create and Update of the Visit entity)

There are a total of 13 plugin steps that must be deactivated:

To deactivate a plugin step in CRM 2011 or CRM Online:

1. Log into CRM as a user with the System Administrator security role.
2. Navigate to Settings > Customizations > Customize the System. This will open the default solution in CRM containing all customizations.
3. Click on Sdk Message Processing Steps on the left side of the solution window.
4. Select the plugin steps listed above and click on the Deactivate button:
   
   Watch a video demonstration.

To deactivate plugin steps in CRM 4.0:

To deactivate plugin steps in CRM 4.0, the Plugin Registration tool must be used. Please contact ClickDimensions support if you require assistance.

The CRM 4.0 pluginregistration.exe can be downloaded from here: http://archive.msdn.microsoft.com/crmplugin/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=2010

Using the plugin registration tool, connect to your CRM 4.0 organization and expand the ClickDimensions plugin to view the registered steps. Select the steps noted above and disable them in the plugin registration tool UI.

Here’s how to get the help you need:

Search

Notice that search box on the top right? Enter your search terms here to look across all of our product documentation (hundreds of articles!), training material, marketing blog, and support forums. Chances are you’ll find an answer.

Still Have a Question?

Can’t find what you’re looking for by searching? If you’ve got a question about how to do something with ClickDimensions, there’s a chance someone else has the same question. Maybe they’ve asked it already, but if not, they can benefit from the answer too! So head over to our Q&A Forum and ask away! 

Need Support That’s More Technical?

Have an error or something is just not working no matter what you try? It happens to the best of us! That’s why our technical support team is ready to help! Head over to our support page and open a request. Be sure to include your CRM version, the error messages you’re seeing, and any screenshots that would be helpful.

Tip: If you’ve got an urgent problem, create a support request and then log in to view the details of the ticket. You’ll find a phone number there where you can reach our support team directly during standard business hours.

PS: What’s a Marketing Success Manager?

Our Professional and Enterprise level customers have an assigned Marketing Success Manager who can help with training and consulting on how to use ClickDimensions. All of our customers are encouraged to take full advantage of our instructor-led and web-based training, ClickDimensions Academy, which is offered at different times each day and as on-demand videos. Each week’s classes wrap up with an open Q&A. Whether you have an assigned Marketing Success Manager or not, this is the place to start with gaining knowledge about how to use ClickDimensions to power your marketing!

ClickDimensions has introduced an auto-update feature for the ClickDimensions solution in CRM 2011 and CRM Online environments. Below are frequently asked questions about auto-update. For more information on the actual update process, please click here.

1. Will Auto-Update be available for CRM 4.0?

No, Auto-Update will not be available for CRM 4.0. Unfortunately remote deployment of solutions is not possible with CRM 4.0.

2. How often are updates made available?

If you choose the full-automated update option, updates will be deployed as they are released. ClickDimensions releases updates to the CRM solution approximately every 2 months.

3. Is there a way to roll-back an Auto-Update?

The Auto-Update feature uses standard CRM methods to remotely install the latest version of the ClickDimensions solution. You also have the option to download the solution and perform a manual installation. You should make sure you have a good, tested back-up of your CRM database prior to installing or updating any solution, as CRM at this time does not provide a way to roll-back a solution update.

4. What happens if the update does not work?

If the update does not work, you will receive an email with information about the problem that was encountered.

5. If I choose the “Update Now” option, how long does it take to perform the update?

The update process is handled asynchronously, meaning that it will be queued up for processing, and may take several minutes to a few hours to complete. Factors that can impact the speed of the update process include: the level of demand for updates from the ClickDimensions system, the performance of your CRM infrastructure, and internet and network bandwidth and latency.

6. What about the ClickDimensions workflow rules?

If you choose the semi-automated or fully-automated update options,  the update process will re-assign the ClickDimensions workflow rules to the service user so that they can be updated. If you choose to download the solution and manually perform an update by importing it yourself, you must be the owner of the workflow rules prior to importing the solution.

7. What permissions are needed to perform the auto-update?

If you choose the semi-automated or fully automated options for receiving updates, the ClickDimensions service user must have privileges to install solutions on your CRM. You can grant the service user the System Administrator or System Customizer roles to ensure that these privileges are in place.

8. How do I tell which user in CRM is the ClickDimensions service user?

Many organizations will set up a dedicated CRM user to act as the service user for integration with ClickDimensions and other external applications. However, it is also possible to use a person’s CRM user account as the service user, if that person has sufficient privileges in the system. To check which user is being used as the service account, you can check the “Created by” for records that are created by the ClickDimensions integration. For example, navigate to the Marketing area and open an IP Organization record. Look at the properties for this record (click on File > Properties) to see which user created the record. This will be the service user. (See below).

9. I did a manual update but received some warning messages. Was my update successful? The warnings said “The original SDK message processing step has been disabled and replaced with one included in this solution”

Yes, if you received no other warnings or errors, then your update was successful. This is a normal warning that indicates that the update process disabled previous SDK steps while replacing them with new ones during the update process.

10. Will Auto-Update overwrite my customizations?

Yes. The automatic and semi-automated methods of updating the ClickDimensions solution use the “overwrite” option. This is necessary to ensure that all of our new features are enabled when your ClickDimensions solution is updated. However, if you have made customizations to entities that are included in the ClickDimensions solution, your customizations may be overwritten. Also, some system components, such as system views and option sets that are part of the Account, Contact and Lead entity, will be set back to their default state since these entities are included in the ClickDimensions managed solution, and Microsoft does not provide a method to exclude them from the process.

Many email applications and email providers will try to filter out unwanted or spam emails. Unfortunately, this can sometimes result in filtering out email that you actually want in your inbox. One way that you can help to ensure that you receive emails that you want is to add the sender to your safe senders list. Here is how to do this in some common email programs:

Outlook 2010 & 2013

Select the email and then, on the “Home” menu, click Junk > Never Block Sender (or Never Block Sender’s Domain).

Older versions of Outlook

• Outlook 2007
• Outlook 2003

GMail

Adding the sender to your GMail contacts will help to ensure that the email makes it to your inbox. Here’s how:

1. Hover over the sender’s name in your GMail inbox. A contact card will appear:
   
   
2. On the contact card, click “Add to Contacts”.

For more about GMail contacts and email filtering, see here.

Yahoo

Adding the sender to your Yahoo contacts will help to ensure that the email makes it to your inbox. Here’s how:

1. Select the email in your Yahoo inbox, and right-click it:
   
   
2. On the context menu, select “Add Sender to Contacts”

Outlook.com

Outlook.com also gives higher priority to email from senders who are also your contacts. But you can also add the sender to your safe sender list:

1. Click the gear icon on the top right of the Outlook.com page, then click “More Mail Settings”:
   
   
2. Under Options, click on “Safe and blocked senders” and then click on “Safe Senders”.
3. In the Safe Senders screen, type the email address and click the add button to add the sender to the safe sender list:
   

ClickDimensions Introduction Video

Written Tour

What is ClickDimensions?

In a nutshell, ClickDimensions allows you take your Email Marketing and web content and integrate it seamlessly with your Dynamics CRM. For example, you can design emails with us, send them to Leads and Contacts, and get live statistics on who interacted with your message. You can also see Leads and Contacts browsing your website, use forms to generate new Leads and Contacts, track survey responses, and much more.

ClickDimensions in CRM

Since ClickDimensions is fully integrated into CRM, new users may find it tricky at first to spot which parts of the software are ClickDimensions features. Most ClickDimensions features can be found in two sections of CRM: Settings and Marketing.

Settings

Under ClickDimensions you’ll find our general solution settings as well as entities to create web content.

ClickDimensions

ClickDimensions Settings – Set basic options for our solution. Read More
Domains – You’ll need to create records here for each website you want to integrate with your Web Content. This is also where you’ll set up your Web Content CNAME. Domain records and associated Web Content CNAMEs are essential to making sure your Web Content functions properly. Read More
Filters – Filters let you ignore web traffic coming in from certain domains or IP addresses. Some companies choose to exclude hits from bots or internal traffic using this tool. Read More
Form Fields – For every box that you’d like to have filled out on a form you’ll first need to create a Form Field record here. Form Fields will be aggregated on a Form type Web Content record to create your Form Builder form. Read More
Survey Questions – Just like Form Fields, you’ll first create a record here for each question you’d like to ask on your Survey. These will also be put on Survey Type Web Content records to make your surveys. Read More
Subscription Lists – If you’re using Subscription Management, you’ll get started by creating Subscription Lists here. These will represent every time of mailing you’re going to send out and will allow people to opt in and opt out. Read More
Web Content – This is where you’ll create and edit any Forms, Surveys, Subscription Management Pages, and Landing Pages within our system.
Nurture Programs – Nurture Programs let you automate the Email Marketing process to a certain extent. You can send out automatic messages and perform tasks based on interactions to “nurture” Leads until they are sales ready. Read More
Form Captures – If you’d like to use or write your own HTML form to integrate with ClickDimensions, you’ll need to integrate your form fields and set up a Form Capture record. Read More

Marketing

Analytics

IP Organizations – These are records of all the IP Addresses that have ever accessed your site. Read More
Anonymous Visitors – These are people who have visited your site but we haven’t been able to link them to a Lead or Contact record or create a new record for them yet. Read More
Visits – Every time anyone accesses your site we’ll create a record here. Inside you can see which pages they viewed in order. Read More
Page Views – Page Views note every time anyone has visited any page on your website. Read More
Posted Forms – These will be generated whenever someone submits a form either through the Form Builder or Form Capture. Read More
Posted Fields – These are all the responses ever submitted in any Form Field in any Form. Read More
Posted Surveys – This will show you all the Surveys that have ever been submitted to your system. Read More
Survey Answers – These are all the answers ever submitted to every Survey Question. Read More

Email Marketing

Email Sends – This is the main record used for sending emails. Here’s where you’ll set properties for your send, choose your template, and add your recipients. The views on Email Sends are very important and reflect the status of your email. Read More
Email Templates – You can create the design and content of your email here. It’s very easy to clone and re-use templates in multiple mailings depending on your needs. Read More
Sent Emails – These are records for every email message that has ever been generated and sent through an Email Send. So if you send one Email Send to 100 people, you’ll have 100 records here. Read More
Email Events – These log all the things your email does and all the interactions with your message. This includes things like deliveries, bounces, opens, and clicks. Read More
Unsubscribes – These records are automatically generated and allow customers to opt out of emails. Read More
Posted Subscriptions – Every time someone fills out a Subscription Management Page we’ll create a record here with the submitted information. Read More
Subscription Preferences – These are all the preferences ever submitted for anyone who has filled out a Subscription Management Page. If someone submits multiple times, we will generate multiple records. Read More

Mobile

Bulk Text Messages – You can send out a text message to multiple recipients using a Marketing List. Read More

Event Management

Events – If you’ve set up GoToWebinar Integration, all your webinars will come in here as Event records. The “Active” view shows upcoming webinars and the “Past” view is for those that have already completed. Read More
Event Participations – A record will be created here for every instance of every person signing up for every webinar. It will include information they submitted upon registering, how long they were in the webinar, any questions they asked and more. Read More

ClickDimensions processes millions of emails each day, sending them to recipients all around the world. For the vast majority of these emails, the time from someone clicking “Send” to the time it lands in the recipient’s inbox is often a matter of seconds or minutes. Sometimes, though, an email doesn’t get to someone’s inbox when you might expect it to. And other times, the email makes it to the recipient very quickly, but you don’t see a record of that in your CRM. So let’s take a look at what can make it seem like an email is taking longer than expected.

1. How deliveries are recorded:
   There are two relevant times recorded on an Email Event record when considering this question: The “Created On” field, which is shown in a column of the Email Events view, and the “Time” field, which is shown on the Email Event form.
   
2. What can delay deliveries?  (Symptom: The UTC timestamp is many hours after you clicked “Send”.)
   • Rate limiting. When an email marketing service sends a bulk email, each ISP (Internet Service Provider) accepts messages at a different rate. For example, Yahoo might accept 100 emails per connection and allow 1 connection per minute. Outlook.com might permit 1 email per connection, but allow 1 connection per second. It varies for every ISP, and in many cases is closely guarded by the ISPs. (For more information on rate limiting, see the section “Delivery and Filtering Details” on this page: https://wordtothewise.com/isp-information/)
   • ISP problems. This can be a variety of factors, such as bandwidth at the ISP or recipient mail server, temporary DNS issues, heavy internet traffic in the region, etc. When ClickDimensions sends bulk emails, it creates and sends the messages very rapidly. If a message is not immediately accepted by the recipient ISP, but is not yet bounced, ClickDimensions will automatically retry every 15 minutes for up to 24 hours to get a delivery acknowledgment from the ISP before giving up. This  is why if you send 10,000 emails, you will likely see a very large cluster of delivery events in the first 30 minutes, with additional delivery events hours or even 1 day later. This might make you think that it took that long for ClickDimensions to send your emails, but in fact, it had been processed and sent very quickly with just a few stragglers waiting for the ISPs to accept the emails.
   • Processing issue on ClickDimensions. If there is an unexpected problem on ClickDimensions that causes it to take a long time to process the email job and begin creating the individual emails. If this happens, you would likely not see any indication of even a single delivery until the issue is resolved, at which time you might see all the deliveries process at once.
   • Performance issue or connectivity problem with customer’s CRM. If CRM does not respond quickly to the queries we make for the email addresses, unsubscribe records, etc., then we will not be able to process the job quickly either.
3. What can delay recording the delivery in CRM as an Email Event? (Symptom: The UTC timestamp on the Email Event shows a quick delivery, but the “Created On” date/time is many hours later.)
   • Processing issue on ClickDimensions. Once an ISP acknowledges delivery, usually within microseconds of the email being sent, ClickDimensions queues up that record and formats it in a way CRM will understand. If the queue that this piece of data ends up in happens to have a technical problem, or there is a broader systems issue with ClickDimensions or Microsoft Azure, you may not see the Email Event record created in your CRM until the issue is resolved.
   • Performance or connectivity problem with customer’s CRM. If the CRM system is not able to accept the data that we are pushing to it, whether due to performance issues or connectivity, ClickDimensions will retry once an hour for up to 1 week until the data is synced.

With ClickDimensions, you can schedule an Email Send to go out on the date and time you desire:

Note: When you set these options, you must “Save” the Email Send record BEFORE pressing “Send”.

When using this option to schedule an email, the request to ClickDimensions is not submitted to our system until the date and time specified. This is handled by a CRM workflow that is associated with the Email Send:

Notice the “Postpone until:” time on the workflow. CRM sets this based on the date and time that was in the “Send On” field when the record was saved. This is the time when CRM submitted the request to ClickDimensions for processing:

Note: There are usually two workflow instances for each Email Send. This is because the workflow is triggered any time the status of the Email Send changes, once from “Draft” to “Outbox” and again from “Outbox” to “Sent”. When looking at the workflows, the first one to run will contain the steps, with several green checkmarks, for the scheduled email. The second one will have only two green checkmark, showing that it checked if the Email Send status was Outbox and, finding that is was not, it then checks to see if it was a split test.

What can go wrong and cause the email to be sent at a different time than desired?

1. The most common reason that an email is sent at a different time than desired is when a user accidentally clicks “Send” prior to saving the change to the “Send On” field. In this case, the email is sent immediately because the scheduling options were not saved. The “Postpone Until” field on the workflow will be blank.
2. The second most common reason is that a user has set the “Send Immediately” to “No”, saved the Email Send, then set the date and time while the window was still open, and saved and closed the record. In this case, the first “Save” initiated the workflow before the date and time were saved. The “Postpone Until” field on the workflow will also be blank in this scenario.
3. The third most common reason that a scheduled email can be sent at a different time than desired is when the user changes his/her mind about the date and time, reactivates the Email Send record, enters a new date and time, and then clicks “Send” again. There are now two workflows running against the Email Send record. The email is then sent when the earliest “Postpone until” time is reached on one of the workflows. (Note that you will normally see two workflows having run on Email Sends. Even when they are not scheduled emails, the workflow is momentarily triggered by the status change of the Email Send from Draft to Outbox, and again from Outbox to Sent. In the case of an email that was not scheduled, neither of these workflows does anything as the first step in the workflow checks to see if it is a scheduled send or not.)
4. In rare cases, the email may be sent at a later time than scheduled or not at all. The “Postpone until” date and time may be correct, but the CRM server did not actually execute the workflow steps in a timely manner. This can be due to performance issues in CRM or having multiple servers running the CRM Asynchronous Processing Service, which handles workflow execution.

1. Does ClickDimensions Store Any of My Data? ClickDimensions does not store your data. Your data is stored safely and securely in your CRM system. The sole exceptions to this are: a) Email addresses of recipients. These are logged as all email platforms must do, in order to accurately record deliveries, opens, clicks, bounces, etc.; b) if you use our Profile Management feature which makes it possible to pre-populate a web form that an email recipient visits by clicking a link in a ClickDimensions email (see the article on Profile Management for more information).
2. Is the communication between ClickDimensions and my CRM secure? Yes. If you register your CRM using an address that starts with HTTPS, then our connection to your CRM will always be securely encrypted using the SSL certificate you’ve installed on your CRM website (or the one used by Microsoft for CRM Online). Note that self-signed SSL certificates are not supported.
3. How does ClickDimensions connect to my CRM? ClickDimensions communicates with your CRM using only Microsoft-documented methods to connect to CRM’s web services. ClickDimensions does not communicate or connect to SQL Server, Active Directory, or any other server or network applications. All of our functionality is delivered through Microsoft’s SDK (Software Development Kit) methods for Dynamics CRM. For detailed information on ClickDimensions connectivity, read here.
4. Who has access to ClickDimensions servers? ClickDimensions’ application is entirely hosted in Microsoft’s Windows Azure system in Microsoft data centers. As such, physical access to the servers and network resources that host the ClickDimensions application is restricted to Microsoft personnel. ClickDimensions personnel do not have physical access to these resources. See Microsoft’s Windows Azure Trust Center for more information. Remote access to the production environment is restricted to the ClickDimensions CTO. The ClickDimensions application production environment is a separate network from ClickDimensions’ internal operations network. Therefore, ClickDimensions employees, such as developers and technical support individuals, do not have access to the ClickDimensions production application.
5. Can I retain control of the password that ClickDimensions uses to connect to my CRM? Absolutely. When you register your CRM with ClickDimensions, the connection information is securely transmitted in encrypted format. At any time after installing ClickDimensions, you can change the password our system uses from within CRM by clicking on Settings > ClickDimensions Settings > Service Credentials. (Note that you must update it here prior to actually changing the password for the user.) See here for more.
6. What are the IP addresses of ClickDimensions’ service in Azure? Some companies wish to restrict access to their CRM to only specific IP addresses. See this article for the IP addresses currently being used by the ClickDimensions application.