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Dynamics CRM 2011 R9 – Social Analytics on hyper-drive

February 22nd, 2012

The R8 (CRM 2011 R8 Release Preview Guide) release  this Spring will bring enhanced social functionality to the initial feature set introduced in November 2011. However, it appears what Microsoft might have in store for the Fall 2012 R9 release will take the Social functionality of the CRM system up by several orders of magnitude.

Microsoft’s “Project Vancouver” which is a SQL Azure Labs test project could be the foundation of the Fall release.

What is Project Vancouver all about? Here is  snipit from the site:

Our goal is to enable businesses to build connections and communities among customers, influencers, and their employees; to support customer needs for high value information guided by peers and experts/influencers; to engage in conversations and respond to buzz around hot topics; and to make the voice of community actionable across the product lifecycle.

Here is what the Project Vancouver data screen looks like. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have this inside of CRM and linked to records, enhanced by workflow and user personalized? I can’t wait for Summer to be over and for November to come around!

Click on image to get full screen view.

 

Source: What’s on tap for Microsoft’s Dynamics CRM ‘R9′ update later this year

Microsoft Dynamics CRM not so secret plan

February 13th, 2012

As a CRM Partner since 2003 we receive many official public announcements and announcements under NDA regarding the Dynamics CRM product roadmap. At Convergence each year we get updated insight into the business and marketing plans for the product. We love where the product is being taken as our financial future and the success of clients depends on it’s success in the marketplace.

So recently I was pleased to see how the CRM Team (at least the HR component) is positioning itself to new hires when I stumbled on this job posting for a Senior Product Marketing Manager – Dynamics CRM.

I really like their ultimate position against SFDC along with the reference to being a ‘game changer’.

 

 

 

 

I have inserted the entire jost posting below. Or if you would like to apply for the position you can view it online.

Migrating from CRM Online to CRM OnPremise

February 8th, 2012

One of the really great features of Dynamics CRM is the power of choice – on-premise, online,  or partner hosted.

Very often companies say “I would like to give this ‘cloud thing’ a try but if I change my mind can I get the data so I can run CRM on our own server?” The answer is YES!

To initiate a migration, request an export of your organization’s data from Microsoft Dynamics CRM Support. Requests for trial exports are processed every Tuesday using the latest existing backup. There is no constraint on your continued use of Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online. New data will continue to be captured until you go to the final export stage. Continue to use it while your CRM partner or your company does a trial re-deployment of the CRM data into your CRM 2011 on-premise environment. Don’t proceed from this step to the final export until you have thoroughly tested the new on-premise environment. Like dear old mom used to tell you ” A word to the wise is sufficient”.

When you are ready to make the real switch to get the final export file, Microsoft Dynamics CRM Support will disable your CRM organization and make a full backup of the data.  The process of the final export requests starts on a Thursday; the data is prepared and published the next day – Friday. Therefore your total business week downtime will be approximately one to two business days.

Once you get the final export, restoring the data to a partner-hosted or your on-premises deployment should take less than a day. Then you will be back up and running on Monday. This presumes that you did atleast one successful trial migration.

There aren’t any fees charged to create the trial or final export files. Cancellation fees are waived when you migrate to another Dynamics CRM platform.

Additional information is available online – Microsoft CRM Online Data Migration to Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 on-premises

Dynamics CRM R8 Preview – Biggest Update Ever!

February 6th, 2012

Really, really BIG News about Dynamics CRM

Today – February 6, 2012 Microsoft is releasing preview guidance regarding the Q2 2012 Service Update

In this blog I have higlighted and summarized the 6 major categories. You can read more details at the official release site: http://crmpublish.blob.core.windows.net/docs/ReleasePreviewGuide.pdf
Today’s preview announcement is for R8. The tentative schedule is for it to release sometime this Spring. It is going to be HUGE! Looking ahead to the Fall there will be R9. Not much has been disclosed about it yet. But you can see on the time chart that Social will be the focus along with Next Gen Productivity. I wonder what that means?

Mobility

Not only are there mobile options from various third party providers, get a real CRM mobile client from Microsoft itself. Mobile Express no more as the only solution from Microsoft. Of course it isn’t free but for those that need it the cost is easy to justify.

Browser Flexibility

To quote Red Fox from Sanford & Son – This is the Big One. Running IE as the browser will no longer be the non-negotiable requirement. Run CRM in the browser of your choice and the device of your choice.

Social

Activity Feeds just got introduced in the November 2011 R7 release and they are going to get more functionality and features.

Industry Templates

Looks like more vertical market sample solutions from the MS team (Dynamics Labs) to demonstrate how CRM can be applied to any industry. These pre-built solutions can be used to jump start your implementation.

SQL Server 2012

SQL Server RCO is available and ready. Looks like CRM Online will be using it come this Spring. Along withe new BI solutions for SharePoint to integrate into CRM.

Certifications

They are going to keep your data even safer at Microsoft CRM Online and meet some of the most important and widely required agency, organization and rule certifications requirements will be met.

 

CRM Innovation Cloud Applications Service Performance

February 4th, 2012

Our hosted application servers are located in a Tier 1 Data Center in Kansas City. We have invested in a extremely reliable system to support our cloud applications for Web2CRM, Event2CRM and Email2CRM.

If you would like to check the status of our cloud environment at any time just go to http://stats.pingdom.com/ne3i29r0lxj1 and it will give you both a live and historical view of our performance.

Most months we have provide a 100.00% uptime experience like shown in this graphic for January 2012.
Uptime for CRM Innovation Cloud: 01/02/2012 - 02/01/2012

For the last 6 months we have provided a 99.96% uptime which included a planned 25 minute service update in the early hours of a Saturday morning.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If you would like to explore our integration solutions we provide for event management, email marketing & web analytics, or advanced Internet lead capture don’t hesitate to contact us.

 

Event2CRM – Dynamics CRM Event Management Goes Mobile

February 1st, 2012

Our event integration partner – Eventbrite.com - has built mobile apps that enable the event manager to track their event status and also register attendees at the door. These mobile apps for the iPhone, iPad, and Android devices are free and work seamlessly with our event management solution we have built into CRM 2011.

Event2CRM enables marketing teams to plan, promote, & track in CRM any event that needs registration or ticketing.

Interested in learning more? Sign-up for an upcoming webinar.

The busy event manager can check the status of their events on their iPhone, iPad or Android phone while away from their CRM system.

From left to right:

  1. Event menu – get stats or check attendees in at the event at the door.
  2. Listing of active events.
  3. Retrieving the current list of attendees.
  4. Event attendees listed alphabetically for review or check-in via 2D barcode.


 

 

 

 

Sell tickets at the door on your iPad

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Scan tickets and look up guests using the Entry Manager app!

Event2CRM organizers – keep your lines moving and check in attendees faster with Entry Manager app. Look up attendees on the guestlist or validate their tickets using the scanning feature.  All check-ins are synced with with your CRM system so you can use multiple devices at different points of entry and not worry about the same ticket being used twice.

With the Eventbrite Entry Manager app you can:

  1. Look up and check in attendees off a list
  2. Easily validate ticket barcodes using the camera-based scanner
  3. Check in attendees using multiple devices at the same time
  4. View live sales and attendance stats
  5. Analyze your attendance data online in the CRM system after the event

Do you also own an iPhone or iPad?  The Entry Manager app is also available for download in the Apple App Store. All check-ins and event data will sync seamlessly across both platforms into your CRM system.

 

How to Avoid Human Induced Catastrophe in CRM

January 26th, 2012

Often the weakest link in protecting the security of the CRM system is the user and not the technology infrastructure. There are some basic steps you can take immediately after installing CRM 2011 or signing up for the CRM Online service to protect your users from themselves. It is all about adjusting the security roles in CRM and taking some other basic precautions to minimize the risk of user induced catastrophe to the CRM system.

1.  Never assign the CEO-Business Manager role to the owner of the company. This role has extensive privilege’s and without proper perspective and insight it can do a lot of damage. How often does the Owner get CRM training? Not very often. Unless that is you.

 

2.  Clone all of out of the box rules and remove the Delete privilege on all the Core Records. Assign those modified roles to users.

 

3. Limit the users who are assigned the System Administrator or System Customizer Role assignments to only those must have users that have received training.

 

4.  Turn on Auditing for all company critical records – Accounts, Contacts, Leads, Opportunities.

How? http://help.crm.dynamics.com/help/default.aspx?area=%2ftools%2faudit%2faudit_area.aspx&user_lcid=1033&ver=5.0.9688.1553

  
5.  Periodically export the default solution of your system as a backup. Go to Settings/Customizations/Customize the System. Select Components, check the select all box and then Export the solution. You may want to do this before you are going to be making any major edits to the entities or site map.

 

7. Make sure the Bulk Delete privilege is not enabled for users that don’t need it.
8. Remove the Bulk Edit privilege for users that don’t need it.

9. Besides running the ‘nightly disaster recovery backup’ for the SQL database, you might consider automating the scheduling of periodic onsite backups during the business day if the database isn’t too large.

These are the first 9 steps we perform on every CRM installation we implement.

CRM 2011 Online Test Site Setup

January 25th, 2012

As a CRM partner that creates solutions to enhance the functionality of CRM we regularly have the need to spin up a clean CRM Online instance for our own internal product testing or for client testing purposes. In almost every one of these situations we just need to run the 30 day trial and then let it expire. Typically we would often get emailed or called by the Microsoft CRM Online Sales Team about how the trial is going and are we ready to convert to a paid account. That turned out to be wasteful of their time and it didn’t seem fair to keep answering the phone and saying – hey we are just testing and won’t be converting that instance to paid.

So it took us a few times before we cracked the code on how to eliminate these calls. The solution is to un-check the Phone and E-mail boxes at the bottom of the Complete Sign-up form. When you submit it with boxes un-checked you won’t receive any sales emails or phone calls. You will just receive administrative notifications.

CRM 2011 Online

Happy testing!

CRM UX Design Guide – It is for Non-Programmers Also

January 17th, 2012

Non-programmers –  think there is no reason for you to download and install the CRM SDK on your computer? Guess Again!

The SDK includes an extensive Style Guide folder with Content Screen shots, all the images that are used in CRM and the css style files that are used in CRM on the web and on the phone.

For example there are 54 png files in the C:\CRM2011_SDK\sdk\resources\images\sfa folder. Many more are in other folder paths.

(click on image to enlarge)

These are great resources for Business Analysts, trainers, product managers at ISVs and other people that need to include visual examples of the CRM system in any work they are doing – customer facing or not.

“The Design Guide even includes the UX principles used to define the user interface and the visual style for CRM across the web, outlook and mobile platforms. Here is what I pulled out of the document:

Welcome to the User Interface Design Guide for Microsoft Dynamics CRM.    This guide has been designed to provide a high quality baseline for the user   interface, and define the visual style for CRM across the web, outlook, and mobile platforms.”

The CRM UX Principles are:

  • Put People First
  • Content before chrome
  • Delight through everyday experiences
  • Build for people on the go
  • Give before we get
  • Forgiving and protective
  • Performance matters
  • Pride in craftmanship

CRM Online Default Time Zone (and Office 365)

January 16th, 2012

Lately,  I have noticed that some email confirmations have come back to us with a time zone stamp of (UTC) Monrovia, Reykjavik. I thought this was a little odd because even though our firm provides CRM solutions to partners and end users worldwide these particular emails weren’t from people on that part of the planet.

After checking a little further I confirmed that the Time Zone setting in both CRM Online and Office 365 Exchange defaulted to the Monrovia, Reykjavik Time Zone.

To update it to your time zone each CRM user must go to their personal options (File, Options) to select their time zone and then save the record. This is not a system wide setting that can be done by the admin. While you are there you might as well set the Currency to the appropriate selection.

 

For Office 365 go to https://portal.microsoftonline.com and login with your credentials. Then go to Options, Settings, Regional and you will see the screen example below and you can update the time zone setting.

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