We recently discovered that in the current CRM Online signup there were cases where our default scenario did not work as planned. When the user enters his/her Windows Live ID (WLID), the first name and last name of the signup account for the new organization are retrieved from the user’s profile of the WLID which works most of the time. However, in some cases, the user’s first name and last name are not available in the profile of the WLID which causes Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online signup flow to provide the user’s name as “FirstName LastName” which is odd and not user friendly. See form to the right.
The user account name (first name + last name) is stored in CRM database. The name is shown in user’s CRM Online organization as well as the billing service. Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online also sends the letters to the signup user using this name.
To make this a better experience (see picture to left), Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online introduces a new signup page for user to enter his/her first name and last name along with the WLID. The input for the first name and last name are required like WLID. This change gives the user the opportunity to specify a signup name which could be unrelated to the WLID.
After user signed in and starts a new signup, the text boxes for the first name and last name in the signup page will use the name from the user’s profile of WLID as the default signup name which could be empty for some users. The user can change the name in that page.
To make this form more useable for both the user and Microsoft Dynamics CRM, the first name and last name will be validated against the following rules after the user click the “Next” button on the Web page:
1. The name cannot be empty. The minimum length is 1.
2. The maximum length of the input text for either first name or last name is 50 characters.
3. Allow all alphanumeric characters: a-z, A-Z, 0-9
4. Allow all space characters
5. Allow the following special characters: ~`!@#$^*-_=?."’|{}[],/
6. Allow the following international characters: ÀÁÂÃÄÅÆÇÈÉÊËÌÍÎÏÐÑÒÓÔÕÖÙÚÛÜßàáâãäåæçèéêëìíîïðñòóôõöùúûü
The user will be prompted to enter the valid names again with the above information if any of these rules are not followed. This improvement for entering you User Name will be deployed in Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online product in the March Update.
Cheers,