The MSCRM Product Catalogue is a multi-talented area of functionality – capable of tracking different Units of Sale for Products and from there related Units Groups and Discounts.
Product Catalogue ERD for Dynamics CRM
However this area of functionality often hits difficulties between either being too basic for Companies that have a product-based business model (such as manufacturing) and too needlessly complex for Companies offering a more simple bespoke Product Pricing business model.
For the first point, there are various software extensions and Quoting Tools available to extend the MSCRM Product Catalogue to support Product Features, optional extras and quoting rules for building a final customer price – this will be a topic for a different blog post maybe.
On the second point however often I encounter clients who like to simplify the process of building a Quote or Opportunity within MSCRM, and would like to remove some of the offered functionality of the Product Catalogue.
The following set of blog posts is a rolling series on various techniques to customise the relevant MSCRM entities to support this simplified use of the Product Catalogue. The posts aim to offer a step by step guide on how to build this simplified version of the Product Catalogue – this is not intended as a solution that will fit every business model but moreso as a how-to guide that contains several useful pieces of functionality that may be helpful in some MSCRM projects.
1. Defaulting the Opportunity Price List
2. Adding Opportunity Products
3. Overriding the Product Catalogue to allow for bespoke pricing
4. Showing the list of Products for an Opportunity or Quote
5. Hiding the Write-in Products Area
6. Mapping fields from Opportunity Product to Quote Product records
7. Managing Tax Codes in MSCRM
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