Here's a list of our favorite tips about using Microsoft CRM 2011.
1. You can mass edit existing records using Excel.
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/crm/archive/2011/06/01/leverage-microsoft-excel-to-edit-records.aspx
2. When importing new records into CRM using the Import tool, you have to import accounts and contacts at the same time using a zip file in order to properly link the "primary contact" for an account and the "parent customer" for a contact.
3. The Microsoft CRM search box doesn't always work very well out of the box, but it can be tweaked.
How to improve the Microsoft CRM 2011 search box
4. CRM 2011 has a really nice auditing/logging feature, which tracks every change that is made to a record and who made it, but it is not turned on by default.
To turn on logging, go to Settings > Auditing > Global Audit Settings and click on the various check boxes to enable auditing. To view the log once it is turned on, open an Account or Contact and from the left hand menu select the Audit History option (it's in the Common section under the "related" set of menus).
5. By default CRM doesn't force you to type in phone numbers in a consistent manner. But you can easily use some custom Javascript to turn on a standard phone number format mask.
Phone number mask for Microsoft CRM 2011 using Javascript
6. By default, the data views in CRM 2011 only show 50 records per page. If you have a lot of records, you can change your CRM to show 250 records per page rather than 50.
Each user can change this setting by going to File > Options so that the Set Personal Options page comes up. On the General tab, use the drop down box to change your records per page to 250.
7. The default file attachment size in an e-mail is set pretty small in CRM (5,120 kb). Especially if you are using the Outlook plug-in to track emails, most users at some point or another will try to send an email with an attachment bigger than 5,120 kb, so they will get an error.
Change the default email file attachment size by going to Settings > System Settings and then select the E-mail tab. The setting can be changed to a maximum of 32,768kb.