• Build Word document templates that can load data from Microsoft Dynamics CRM
• Once the data is loaded, users can edit their data in Microsoft Word and then save their changes back to Microsoft Dynamics CRM

This Word-to-CRM integration allows users to take advantage of the full word processing capabilities of Word, but still allow them to store and save the data back into CRM. We use this tool internally for our project charter, specifications, etc. but we also have clients using it for documents like leases, approval letters, quotes, legal notifications, etc. This tool fits in perfectly with many different XRM development stories, and it can support both on-premise AND Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online deployments (of course).

To help show you how the Word-to-CRM integration works, we put together a short 3 minute screencast demo:

Please contact us if you want to learn more about this Word-to-CRM integration!

"You already have Microsoft Dynamics CRM for Outlook installed on another computer. Only one client computer per user can run the automated process that does bulk updates of outlook items with Microsoft Dynamics CRM Data. This client should be the computer that is most often online (such as a desktop computer) or the users primary computer. To change the Synchronizing client, on the CRM Menu, click options, and click the synchronizing tab."

After reading this message, you might find yourself asking what's the difference between being a primary and secondary client? Does that affect when or how CRM data is synchronized to the client? What about Outlook items being synchronized back to CRM?

Luckily for us (and our client), the MS CRM E2 team's "Nuts and Bolts" series covered this exact topic! The full white paper is chock full of great information about the Outlook synchronization process, but for anyone else who's been curious about this message, here's a summary of the differences beween the primary and any secondary clients: 

Background: We all have lots of corporate templates we use to build out documents that are either internal or external facing.  Often times, we are pulling data from other sources and then copying and pasting that data into our document template.  In addition, we update content in our document but then we manually update the applicable data into that other application.  Redundant data entry can cause errors not to mention always looking for where the data resides.  In the consulting world we are concerned with consistency, documentation and efficiency.  These same concerns are applied across industries – it’s really an Information Worker need.

Solution: Microsoft Dynamics CRM (#MSDYNCRM for you Twitter geeks like me) and Microsoft Word.

Here’s a quick glimpse of what we built:

We have created a Project Entity in CRM that holds a lot of relevant project information (like feature requests).  We also need to build out functional specifications for all the projects we execute.  When we open the Functional Specifications template we are prompted to choose the relevant project within CRM.

Once I choose my project and click “Load Project Data” my document template is now connected to CRM and the Project/Feature entities.  The document is populated with the data from CRM and I can now make edits within Microsoft Word.

If I make changes to the document in Word I can publish my changes back to CRM.  This is the big time saver!  I don’t have to go back to CRM, make my changes, go back to Word and pull those changes back in.  We created a 2-way integration between CRM and Word so the data flows in both directions!  This is what the feature data looks like in CRM:

These customizations are specific to our Functional Specifications document and how we manage projects within CRM.  However, the framework for integration between Word and CRM is very extensible.  We just hooked up Status Reports, Project Charter and Functional Specifications.  We are going to launch SOW’s and Master Services Agreements next.  Don’t worry - you can perform this same integration with CRM Online so if the Cloud is your preference we’ve got you covered!

Remember – this is NOT a product – we don’t sell this.  If you are interested, we can help you implement something similar.  Otherwise, use this as innovative thinking to extend CRM for your own deployment.

Cheers!

In support of this important release, they will be having a Webinar to demonstrate some of the new functionality. Details are below:

Register here: https://www107.livemeeting.com/lrs/8001615779/Registration.aspx?pageName=c0n7mnx5mrz1pg1r

Did you miss Scribe’s Product Launch webinar for Insight 7.0? This webcast, held on July 6th 2010, presented an overview of Scribe Insight 7.0 with live product demonstrations. To view the recording please click here, and to download the Insight 7.0 Product Release Overview document click here.

• Microsoft Dynamics CRM 5 (nee "V. Next") is now branded as Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011!

  • When we heard this news on Monday we debated how people would pronounce it. Since I call Microsoft Office 2010 as "Office two thousand ten" I was thinking I would use the same pattern for CRM 2011 as "CRM Thousand and Eleven".
  • However both Bryan Nielsen and Andy Bybee from MSFT pronounced it "CRM Twenty Eleven" instead of "CRM Two Thousand and Eleven". I guess I will start calling it CRM Twenty Eleven. :)
• Key messaging for CRM 2011
  • You all know that CRM 4.0 had "Power of Choice" as a key message
  • The key message for CRM 2011 will be the "Power of Productivity", broken down into three categories:
    • Familiar Experiences
      • Native Outlook Experience (preview pane, ribbon)
      • Advanced personalization
    • Connected Experiences
      • Visualizations, dashboards and graphical navigation
      • Guided processes (scripts)
    • Intelligent Experiences
      • Contextual document repositories (w/Sharepoint)
      • Teamwork and collaboration
• Microsoft is expanding the global availability of CRM Online
  • Will include 8 additional markets
  • 40 markets, 41 languages at the end of 2010
  • Poor Tobago was the punchline on a few jokes!
• CRM 2011 will help you manage both customer AND custom relationships
• Enough with the Powerpoints, let's see the DEMO! (courtesy of Andy Bybee). It starts around the 8:50 minute mark of the video.
  • Starts with the Outlook client (of course)
    • You can now view the related records AND the regarding records right in Outlook
    • You can convert an email to Opportunity directly
    • During the demo, Andy selected a lookup. If you pay close attention, you can see that now CRM 2011 lookups allow you to select views in addition to Quick Find! Huge!
    • Now you can also do the following from an Outlook email(with CRM data)
      • Add Connection
      • Insert Template
      • Insert Article
      • Attach Sales Literature
  • Dashboards! Gotta love the new dashboard and visualization capabilities they demo in CRM 2011.
  • CRM 2011 now provides native Outlook access to CRM data (it isn't just an Iframe to the web client like CRM 4.0), benefits include:
    • You can drag columns to reorder, add/remove, use groups, etc.
    • You can toggle the reading pane settings
    • Drag/drop form sections on a personal basis
• Bryan Nielsen interviewed Jason Hunt from Avanade about the partner opportunity with CRM 2011
  • Jason gave a quick shout out to Sonoma Partners, thanks Jason! :)
• Another demo by Andy Bybee (starting around the 29:12 minute mark)
  • CRM 2011 allows you to package your customizations into solutions (instead of one giant munged pile of customizations like CRM 4.0):
    • Solutions consist of more than entities, also includes security roles, reports, dashboards, plug-in assemblies, etc.
    • Developers can work with .NET 4.0 framework
    • Can be managed/unmanaged
  • Saw a quick demo of "processes" (sometimes referred to as scripts or dialogs). This is a huge new feature that a lot of customers ask for in 4.0.
  • You can now create custom activity types in CRM 2011. Big-time benefit!
  • CRM 2011 includes field level security! (whoo-hoo)
• Session ended with a demo from ISV Client Profiles (by their CTO Kevin Wydra)
  • Kevin mention CRM 2011 will have multiple forms per entity. Yes!!
  • Kevin demo'd one of the cool customizations called related parties (a graphical layout of the relationships between entities). It is a custom built Silverlight control loaded easily on the CRM form.

Here’s some of my personal news/highlights from the conference:

• Microsoft CRM “V.Next” got an official name: Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011. Most people, including myself, have referred to V. Next as version 5 for a while now but Microsoft likes to keep us on our toes. Who can forget all the good fun when the product skipped 2.0 and went from 1.2 to 3.0? I guess the 2011 naming is to have the CRM product naming line up with the Office and SharePoint name/numbering (versus the rest of the Dynamics products which use numbers).
  
  
• Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online (2011 version) will be available by year end! This is great news, we have customers and prospects fired up to get rolling with CRM Online.
  
  
• Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 will have a public beta this September! Sign up and get more information here.
  
  
• Microsoft CRM has 23,000 customers and 1.4 million users. Wow, great success.
  
  
• Microsoft announced they will launch a Dynamics Marketplace this September. Microsoft marketing’s description of the Marketplace = “The marketplace will allow customers to quickly search, discover and apply industry-specific applications and solution extensions from Microsoft and its partners to help them accelerate and extend their CRM and ERP implementations.” I will now translate this marketing-speak into regular person language = “The Dynamics Marketplace is our competitive offering against Salesforce.com’s Appexchange.”
  
  
• Microsoft is “all in” on the cloud. If I had a nickel for every time I heard that expression last week, I would give Warren Buffett a serious run for his money.
  
  
• Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 was everywhere at the conference! I was lucky enough to provide a CRM 2011 demo as part of a session with Steve Fox. The crowed oh-ed and ah-ed at some of the cool stuff I showed off, and it was just a quick 7 minute demo.

When I presented my session at WPC, there was another session at the same time called “Taking the Covers Off of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 5” so unfortunately the scheduling conflict prevented me from attending in person. While that bummed me out, I was able to watch the recorded video of that session. I will post my notes and highlights on that session soon!

Overall, I really enjoyed WPC and the great momentum around Microsoft CRM!

(FYI, Los Angeles will host the WPC 2011 next summer from July 10-14, 2011…should be a blast)

<cross posting from Steve Fox’s blog>

Next week, Steve Fox and I will be attending WPC in Washington, DC (http://digitalwpc.com/). The Worldwide Partner Conference is a 5-day conference that provides you with an opportunity to learn more about many of the technology roadmaps, best practices and business/technology opportunities within the roadmaps.

With the latter in mind, we’ll be presenting a mini-track comprising two breakout sessions. These sessions will focus on how you can exploit the IW Platform (i.e. SharePoint, Office, CRM, and UC) for business application/solution development. The two sessions are scheduled for Tuesday, July 13th, from 3:30-4:30pm and then in the same room from 5:00-6:00pm.

About the Sessions

The first of the two sessions will discuss and showcase the business opportunities around the IW platform and will also showcase a set of partners who are betting their businesses on technologies such as SharePoint, Office, CRM, and UC. Specifically, Steve and I will be joined by the following partners:

• Mike Fitzmaurice from Nintex
• John Pollard from identityMine
• Bill Nagle from K2
• Jon Rauschenberger from Clarity Consulting
• Mike Snyder from Sonoma Partners

The second of the two sessions will discuss how you can develop on the IW platform—taking you one level deeper within the opportunities. Specifically, we’ll cover how you can develop solutions for SharePoint, Office, CRM, and then talk  more about the cloud (e.g. integration of SharePoint and Azure).

Session Information

Specific information about the sessions are as follows:

Session 1: Business Software Mini-Track: The Business Application Opportunity

Business Applications leverage platform technologies such as Microsoft SharePoint, Microsoft Office, Microsoft Dynamics CRM, and Unified Communications to drive productivity and business forward. With the recent release of Wave "14", business applications offer even more to our partners and customers—not only for the information workers who live and breathe them, but also for the developers who now can build compelling, dynamic and opportunistic solutions. As our customers continue to face new ways of doing business, an explosion of data available to them, and new means of communicating and collaborating, the opportunity to build business applications that drive and manage business continues to grow. Come hear about what's new in with business applications and how you can tap into what's going on in the market to take your business to the next level.

Date: July 13^th, 3:30-4:30

Location/Room Number: WCC-209B

Title: Business Software Mini-Track: Leveraging Business Application Platform Technologies

Abstract: The key to success with business applications is to deliver the greatest value to customers as quickly as possible. From Office to SharePoint to Azure, Microsoft can help you deliver more value in your solutions and to your customers with agility, performance and scalability. In this session, see the many ways that Microsoft can help you accomplish that goal through deeper insight into the core productivity platform technologies. To get there, we take a peek into how you can build and deploy solutions using Microsoft’s business application technologies.

Date: July 13^th, 5:00-6:00

Location/Room Number: WCC-209B

We plan on doing lots of demos and giving you ample opportunity to get engaged and ask questions.

I have had Microsoft Outlook 2010 installed on my laptop for a while but I was not happy with how the CRM Outlook client worked on UR10. Instead of adding the “Track in CRM” and other related CRM buttons on the home tab in the ribbon, it added a new tab called “Add-Ins” and put all the CRM functionality there. As a heavy Outlook client user, this simply didn’t work for me because every time I wanted to do something with CRM I had to click on the Add-Ins tab first. Very annoying.

Outlook Client UR10 – Uses Add-Ins Tab

When Microsoft released UR11, the first thing I tested was to see if they fixed this problem. Great news, the all of the CRM functionality including the critical “Track in CRM” button is now front and center on the home tab!

Outlook Client UR11 – CRM Functionality on Home Tab

Even better, you can play around with the Ribbon to customize the location of the CRM section and move it further to the left in the ribbon if you want (clicking the up arrow moves the ribbon section closer to the left side of the screen). You can access this menu by right-clicking on the ribbon and selecting “Customize the Ribbon”.

(Side note: What the heck does the Chinese Conversion section do? I don’t see it on the ribbon at all, weird.)

Vibe supports both On Premise and Internet Facing Deployments.  This works well for companies who have users travelling but might not be able to connect via VPN to their native network. 

Vibe provides users with an easy-to-use search feature.  You can search by text, author, feed and/or date range.  The search is performed against the Microsoft Dynamics CRM database and returns the results in-window.  This works extremely well.  In honor of the Chicago Blackhawks making it to the Stanley Cup Finals I searched on “blackhawks” for this example.  ;-)

Vibe allows you to drill down into specific feeds and see recent posts.  In this example, I clicked on myself and can see who/what I am following, those who are following me and my most recent posts.  I am following 61 people, groups, or topics and have 24 followers.

Here are some quick takeaways:

• Vibe is 100% dependent on Microsoft Dynamics CRM (it’s the brains behind the user interface)
• Vibe is just another example of why Microsoft Dynamics CRM is truly a XRM platform
• Vibe has become a critical way we communicate information internally at Sonoma Partners
• Vibe will send you email recaps of information posted on a daily/weekly basis
• Vibe utilizes the Windows Workflow Foundation to automatically post feeds based upon CRM data (like new leads, cases, accounts, opportunities, orders, or any other custom entity created)
• Vibe allows end users to create and maintain their own workflow feed rules
• Vibe can integrate to internal and external applications allowing posts to be created from other sources (we have integrated Vibe to our blog site)
• Vibe is available for our customers today
• Vibe is not sold as a standalone product – we provide Vibe to our customers at NO COST

With Microsoft Dynamics CRM – The Possibilities are Endless!

Issue #1:

You receive errors on security permissions which don’t seem logical

Tips/Tricks:

Issue #2:

Want to make changes to the site map

Tips/Tricks:

Issue #3:

You need to include date fields on mail merges but don’t want to include time stamps

Resolution:

1. Add date field added to the xml document (for example, «Created_On»)

2. Highlight the field, right click and select Toggle Field Codes:

 3. Add the formatting switch to the  field:

Formatting will display in the mail merge document:

4. For a list of all formatting options: http://support.softartisans.com/docs/OfficeWriter-Java/docs/WordWriter/WebHelp/topic_files/format.htm

What is Vibe - Combining the power of Microsoft Dynamics CRM with the popularity of social networking applications, Vibe cultivates communities among your Microsoft Dynamics CRM users to drive user adoption and increase collaboration. Users subscribe to individual and group feeds to access data most relevant to them. In addition, Vibe securely pushes CRM data to individuals and teams through the powerful Vibe WPF application.  Utilizing Microsoft Dynamics CRM’s Windows Workflow Foundation, Vibe will send automated notifications to users based upon key data entered into CRM.  If you are on the road, no problem, Vibe is accessible via your mobile web browser giving you the capability to stay connected even without a PC.

How does Vibe stack up to Chatter?  Well – Chatter isn’t officially released so the easy answer is Vibe can be used today and Chatter, well, is still just Chatter.  But enough with the sarcasm – I downloaded the datasheet on Chatter and came up with the following items:

Chatter’s Datasheet: http://www.salesforce.com/assets/pdf/datasheets/DS_Chatter.pdf

The takeaway – If you’re looking at CRM applications and social networking is important to you we definitely have you covered.  Microsoft Dynamics CRM is a powerful platform and Vibe is just another example of XRM innovation.

Create a new Custom Entity within CRM and call it “Outlook Contacts.”

Next, create a 1:N relationship between the Outlook Contact and native Contact entity in the CRM database.  No other fields are required.

Add the Contact lookup attribute to the Outlook Contact form (and you are almost finished).

Publish your entity and you are now ready to setup your Local Data Group.  Simply create a local data group that subscribes to your My Active Outlook Contacts and make sure that your local data group is active.  The final step is to add contacts to your new Outlook Contacts entity.  You will manage all the contacts you wish to synchronize to Outlook through this new custom entity. 

This is a great way to manage the contacts you wish to synchronize to Outlook and rather than going back into Local Data Groups you can simply use the native entity forms within CRM to manage your data.

Thanks to my fellow Sonoman’s for implementing this concept at Sonoma Partners!

Enjoy!

• February 2009
• August 2009
• April 2010

While of course the April 2010 document contents are very interesting (at least for a CRM geek like me!), it is just as interesting to see what Microsoft changed from version to version. I took a look at the April 2010 document and compared it to the August 2009 document to see what changed, and there are some big changes! Just look at the differences between the table of contents when comparing the new version to the pervious version:

A few things jumped out at me while reviewing the differences:

• The April 2010 document states Microsoft Dynamics CRM “5” is targeted for “release in the second half of 2010”, which lines up with the “targeted for release in 2010” guidance MSFT gave back in August. It appears to be on schedule for release, and that is great news.
  
  
• Where did XRM go?!?! If you were at Convergence 2010, you couldn’t swing a dead cat without hearing the phrase XRM. It was EVERYWHERE. Now Microsoft removed the XRM section from the April 2010 Statement of Direction (although it does get one or two mentions throughout). While of course XRM is more of a concept than specific features or functionality, the removal of XRM as its own section from the April 2010 is interesting to note.
  
  
• Microsoft now refers to “VNext” as “5”. Of course this isn’t a huge surprise and it’s no guarantee that Microsoft Dynamics CRM 5.0 will be the official product name but I have been calling it “5” for a while.
  
  
• No mention of the TenDigits mobile alliance anymore, it appears they are no longer part of the official mobility story. Actually Microsoft removed all of the mobility information from the April 2010 Statement of Direction. Weird.
  
  
• See ya BizTalk integration! Microsoft is shifting their integration focus to the new Microsoft Dynamics CRM Adapter, and they even announced release timings for AX6 and NAV2009. Very cool. However, in BizTalk’s defense Microsoft did state that there will be “An updated Microsoft BizTalk Server adaptor for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 5”.
  
  
• The table of contents in April 2010 for V5 functionality now has three bullets, much less than compared to the 25 bullets from August 2009. However this is strictly a formatting change because the sub-bullets in the April 2010 match almost identically with the August 2009 version. I did notice that “Knowledge Management” was removed from the April 2010 document but they added “Performance Management” in its place.
  
  
• There is a new version of the Microsoft CRM SDK coming in May 2010 (this month!). It will include lots of great new functionality such as:
  • An enhanced code generation tool called CrmSvcUtil.exe which generates .NET classes based on the unique schema and relational structure of each CRM database. Developers can then code against Microsoft Dynamics CRM APIs using these strongly-typed classes.
  • These generated classes simplify the creation of queries and optimizes returned data from both CRM Online and CRM on-premises. Queries that require data from related entities can now be simplified to a single line of code, where previously it required multiple lines of code.
  • Classes generated by CrmSvcUtil.exe enable developers to streamline integration and connectivity with 3rd party applications (mash-ups, portals, etc.) that need access to Dynamics CRM data through the CRM APIs
  • LINQ for Dynamics CRM translates a LINQ query expression into a CRM SDK Query. This introduces standardized and consistent patterns to easily query and update CRM data. LINQ is a Microsoft .NET Framework component that provides a standardized way to query across many different data sources. LINQ is a standard .NET universal query mechanism that can be extended to support any type of data store.
  • A Portal Integration toolkit which provides a scenario-based set of resources for developers to improve portal integration efforts. This toolkit enables developers to create integration services between external portals and Dynamics CRM more efficiently.
  • Connectivity & Caching management which provides improved scalability and application efficiency for portal applications connecting to CRM Online. Developers can now specify a single-line connection string to connect to the CRM API whether that is CRM Online, On-Premises or Partner Hosted.
  • The Portal Integration toolkit also provides sample code and guidance on how to best connect portals with Microsoft Dynamics CRM.
  • Portal accelerators provide complete reference sample applications to get you up and running quickly.

I really like redeploying the production system into our test environment as that provides the latest data and also contains all of the users and business units configured. We can then apply our newest changes and test appropriately. One potential downside to this approach is that our test users can sometimes accidentally end up in the wrong system when testing if they aren’t careful.

While, you could setup different user accounts for your test team, I find a more visual indicator to be the most effective. So, one approach we have used to distinguish between development, test, and production is to alter the masthead image and change the background color scheme so that our developers and test teams can be sure they aren’t accidentally modifying production data.

Since I will be showing you some unsupported changes, let me make sure I am clear with my warning:
NOTE: The css changes shown are completely unsupported and should only be done on development or test environments.

Changing the masthead

• Replace [webroot]\_imgs\masthead.jpg with your own copy (named the same). I am not a designer so I kept the example simple (and ugly).

Changing grid background color

• Update the body.stage style in the css file [webroot]\_common\styles\global.css.aspx
• Change background-color to color of your choice
• Comment out the background repeat/image settings

body.stage
{
<% if (CrmStyles.IsRightToLeft) { %>
dir:rtl;
<%} %>
border-top:1px solid #6893cf;
background-color: #00ff00;
padding: 4px;
/* background-repeat: repeat-x;
background-image: url(/_imgs/app_back.gif); */
}

This will produce the following result:

You can similarly change the form’s background color.

Changing the form background color

• Update the TR.ms-crm-Form-Background style in the css file [webroot]\_forms\controls\Form.css.aspx
• Add a background-color with color of your choice
• Comment out the background repeat/image settings

TR.ms-crm-Form-Background
{
/*background-image: url(/_imgs/form_back.gif);
background-repeat: repeat-x;*/
background-color:#00ff00;
}

Also remember that since you are changing core CRM files, a rollup/hotfix could overwrite them. So, keep backups of the original files as well as documentation on your changes in case you need to reapply them.

Choice Hotels’ deployment of Sonoma Partners franchise management solution helps them generate multiple business benefits, including:

• Company growth and decision support. Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 provides Choice Hotels with an end-to-end view of its relationship with its franchisees, spanning all previous interactions, current status and prospective future opportunities.
• Time savings and efficiencies. The consolidation of customer data in a central system eases information retrieval and spares employees from having to pull data together manually from multiple, disparate sources.
• Accuracy of data. Elimination of manual processes reduces exposure to human error from manual data entry. The more accurate data helps Choice Hotel eliminate new franchise sales to existing franchisees already in default, which saves them money in legal and administrative costs.
• Integration. Microsoft Dynamics CRM integrates with Choice Hotels’ installed base of Microsoft solutions, including Microsoft Office SharePoint Server, Microsoft Office Communications Server, Microsoft Exchange Server, and Microsoft Office. The existing in-house knowledge base around use of these applications — the interface of which Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 replicates — expedites user adoption.
• Improved reporting. Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 enables Choice Hotels to drill down into franchisee data to perform analysis and identify trends and business opportunities that will drive sales and marketing efforts and overall corporate strategy.
• Customer service. A Microsoft Dynamics 4.0 single integrated system for franchisee management allows Choice Hotels to more closely coordinate and align franchisee services — a benefit that promotes increased franchisee satisfaction.

If you’re interested in learning more about the Choice Hotels deployment and Sonoma Partners Franchise Management solution for Microsoft Dynamics CRM, please contact us!

If you’re going to be at the Convergence conference in a few weeks, we’d love to get together in person.

We continue to see strong momentum in 2010 as we close out a record 1st QTR for new business.  The CRM market continues to defy the odds as businesses look to strengthen their relationships with customers while the economy recovers.  At Sonoma Partners, we continue to invest time, money and resources to build world-class CRM applications to solve unique business needs.

We look forward to working with your business in Denver and the surrounding communities!

Agenda

To participate in any of these sessions, please contact James.Johnston@microsoft.com directly and let him know which sessions you are interested in attending ASAP!

I. Visualizing Relationships in Microsoft Dynamics CRM

• Saturday, 24 April, 1:30 PM – 2:45 PM
• Sunday, 25 April, 1:30 PM – 2:45 PM
• Monday, 26 April, 1:30 PM – 2:45 PM

II. Outlook Continues: CRM Information in Outlook

• Sunday, 25 April, 11:00 AM – 12:15 PM
• Monday, 26 April, 9:00 AM – 10:15 AM

III. Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online Service Experience

• Monday, 26 April, 3:00 PM – 4:15 PM

IV. Social CRM

• Sunday, 25 April, 3:15 PM – 4:30 PM
• Monday, 26 April, 4:30 PM – 5:45 PM

V. Authoring and Editing Discussion Steps (e.g., Customer Service Scripts) Using CRM Workflow

• Tuesday, 27 April, 10:45 AM – 12:00 Noon

VI. Mobile Experiences and Scenarios

• Tuesday, 27 April, 12:14 PM – 1:30 PM

Here is the official language from Microsoft regarding these sessions:

The Microsoft Dynamics CRM Team are enthusiastically looking forward to meeting you at Convergence 2010, sharing with you our ideas and aspirations for future versions of Microsoft Dynamics CRM, and, as always, learning from you, your experiences and your insights.

Influence Microsoft Dynamics CRM

Between Saturday, April 24^th and Tuesday, April 27^th members of the CRM Research and Development Team will be hosting a series of discussion groups and forward-looking research sessions at the Atlanta Convention Center for Convergence 2010.  During these sessions, we will present prototypes and ideas designed to improve Microsoft Dynamics CRM; we invite you to review and critique designs and discuss your important scenarios and stories so that you can directly influence our investments in a wide array of areas. 
*These sessions are limited in size, so please respond early.*

Gratuity & Non-Disclosure Agreement

Participants in each Discussion Group will receive a Microsoft gratuity which will be mailed to you.  We will have a list of gratuity choices available for you at the sessions.  We will also ask you to sign a standard Microsoft Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) so that we can confidentially share our ideas and present our thinking.

Audience

These Microsoft Dynamics CRM Discussion Groups are open to ALL Convergence 2010 Attendees who want to learn about and influence the future of Microsoft Dynamics CRM.

• Partners, IT Experts, Developers – (for example) Implementation Partner, Solution Developer, IT Managers
• End Users – (for example) Sales Professional, Marketing Professional, Customer Service Representative
• Business Decision Makers – (for example) Sales Managers, Marketing Managers, Service Managers

Where

All sessions will be in the Atlanta Convention Center and I will inform you which room when you register for one of the sessions.

Participation

Please review the session titles and RSVP directly to me (James.Johnston@microsoft.com); I will send you an email with the schedule indicating the session date(s) and time(s): Sessions will be repeated so that we can accommodate your schedules at the conference.

I will send you an email confirming your participation in the session(s) you select.

These discussions and research sessions are specifically designed to collect feedback from our customers, users, developers, and partners on our future thinking and aspirations for Microsoft Dynamics CRM.  All Convergence 2010 attendees are welcome regardless of your product focus.   If you are interested in learning more about Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0, our most recent CRM release, we encourage you to take advantage of the other generally available and informative Microsoft Dynamics CRM sessions which are being conducted during Convergence 2010.

Thank you, as always, for your distinctly helpful insights and constructive feedback on Microsoft Dynamics CRM.  We are eager to welcome you and look forward to hearing from you soon.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM Team

• Microsoft Dynamics CRM is experiencing strong double digit global growth, and we were fortunate enough to bet our business on CRM a few years back. When the Microsoft CRM industry grows, we grow too. :)
• Deal sizes are increasing! We have seen our average deal size grow from 180 users in MSFT FY09 to over 700 users per deal in MSFT FY10. That’s an amazing statistic.
• Our company cranks out a ton of repeat business and “phase two” projects because customers are getting a lot of value from their Microsoft CRM deployment. These repeat customers (100% of our Tier 1 customers!) make it much easier for us to grow our business.

We see deal sizes increasing for a few reasons. One, Microsoft Dynamics CRM has proven itself to be enterprise-ready. A few years ago, a lot of prospects used to ask us questions like “Can you handle 500 users? Can you handle 2,000 users?”. We don’t hear a lot of those questions anymore because the performance record is pretty clear and well documented. We have deals we’re chasing that range all the up to 25,000 users.

Two, we’re seeing deal sizes increase because the XRM capabilities of the platform enable customers to expand their system waaaaaaay beyond the traditional sales, marketing and service deployments. If you’re interested in learning more about all of the fun and creative ways that you might be able to leverage Microsoft CRM’s XRM capabilities, please let us know.

UPDATE: Fast Company wrote up a pretty fun article about our release. I couldn’t agree with Maccabee more, Huzzah!!

See you there!

Microsoft Dynamics CRM allows you to extract any view to Excel.  My personal favorite is creating a dynamic link between CRM and Excel for viewing the Sales Pipeline. 

My goal is to create a Dynamic PivotTable but I am going to start by creating a Dynamic Worksheet.  Yes, there is a method to my madness.

I love to create filters and view data by different measurements.  If I create a Dynamic worksheet link between Excel and CRM I can still create a PivotTable and I get to take advantage of Excel filters all at the same time.

CAUTION: I have learned this the hard way over time.  Stop and think about all the different attributes you might want to use when slicing and dicing your opportunities.  Take a moment and add those columns right now to your Dynamic worksheet.  Otherwise, you’ll need to go back at a later time and recreate the Dynamic worksheet to include the fields you missed the first time.   

Remember that when Excel opens you will need to Enable the data connection.

Now the fun begins!  First things first – SAVE THE DOCUMENT.  If you forget to save the document you won’t be able to create your PivotTable due to the temporary file name given to the document by the extract.  Don’t forget to change the file type to .xlsx.

I like to create filters right away on the Dynamic worksheet.  This allows me to look at the data in the worksheet by applying filters to any attribute/column.  This comes in very handy when I want to look at deals by owner, district, service, etc.

An example I use all the time is pulling up our Pipeline report, looking for deals in a district and then discussing those with our PAM.

As I mentioned earlier, I do like using a PivotTable but I prefer to create a Dynamic worksheet first and then creating the PivotTable.  The primary purposes is to allow me to group fields on the PivotTable.  From the worksheet click on Insert – PivotTable to create your Dynamic PivotTable connected to CRM.

Select the range of cells you want included in your PivotTable.  Just include the entire worksheet.  This way, anytime you update the worksheet you will automatically update your PivotTable data too. 

Create your PivotTable – Add items to the Rows and Columns to build out your table.  For a Pipeline view I always add Est. Close Date to the Column header. 

I like to look at things by Months, Quarters and Years so I like to group my Est. Close Date by those values.  This is pretty simple to do and something I find to be quite effective.  Right mouse click on the first date entry and then click on Group.

Select your options for how you want to group the data.  In this example I’m using Months, Quarters, and Years.

My view now shows the sales pipeline by how I like to manage the business.  However, I’m not quite done yet.  I still want my values to be formatted as currency.  This too is an easy fix.  Simply click on the Sum of Est. Revenue from the field chooser and change the Value Field Settings. 

Click on the Number Format and then choose Currency and modify the number of decimals to be displayed.

Once again, SAVE your document and you are ready to go.  You can repeat these steps and also create a PivotChart from the Dynamic worksheet if you like visuals more than tables.  Your options are endless.  The best part is – it takes less than 5 minutes to create this report in Excel and once you’re done you can re-use it over and over and constantly change how you view your data (by filters, drilling down on the PivotTable, creating PivotCharts, etc.).  There’s no going back to the developers to create another static report – everything is at your fingertips.