Back to Blog Listing
With Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2016, users can now automatically generate Word and Excel documents directly from Dynamics CRM. This allows documents to be automatically merged, without the need to perform a mail merge, or to create custom reports. Documents such as letters, quotes, invoices, delivery notes and other documents can now be created with a single click.
Document Templates
In the new release of Dynamics CRM 2016, there is an easy to use template design process, allowing users to build document templates from the entities (e.g. Contact, Account etc), that are defined in CRM. In CRM the user can select the main entity they would like to use and any other entities that are directly related to it. Multiple related entities can be selected for different types of relationships. It should be noted that in this initial release that only one level of related entities can be included.
The document template design process uses the XML mapping pane in Word and Excel. The mapping pane allows CRM fields from selected entities to be inserted into the document templates. For example, fields such as the contact’s name, address, product information, purchase reference numbers etc. can easily be placed into an Order template. This is illustrated below:

Document Generation
Once the document template has been created it will be available from the menus for the selected entity type e.g. Order, Invoice etc. From a record the user can then select the template to be used to generate a document. This is illustrated in the example below:


Document Template Creation & Document Generation
The video below shows a demonstration on how to generate a document in CRM and how to create a new document template in Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online.
For further information, please Contact Us to discover more on document generation in Microsoft Dynamics CRM. Alternatively you can visit C2’s Video Tutorial page. If you would like to try out Dynamics CRM, we offer a 30 day free trial.