Microsoft announces Agile driven release cycles for Dynamics CRM 2011

For those who survived CRM 3.0, learned to thrive in 4.0, and who’s hopes were somewhat dashed with the release of 2011 there appears to be some good news (unless you are Salesforce).   As part of Microsoft’s effort to drive the direction of CRM systems and especially the expansion of these systems into enterprise wide use they have announced the significant compression of development cycle times. 

Historically Microsoft has released CRM versions every 2-3 years and major updates every 6 months to one year.  Now Microsoft is attempting to match the release cycles of Salesforce and Sugar CRM with major updates twice yearly.

If the term Agile, as used in this statement of direction, is actually the movement toward Agile software development management practices by the Dynamics CRM team we may see Microsoft realize even faster release cycles in the future.

Dynamics CRM 2011 announces significant updates coming

Sonoma Partners have posted the Microsoft CRM team’s recent statement of direction.  There are some promising acknowledgements in this statement.  The open acknowledgement that the Dynamics CRM 2011 product fell short when it did not include cross browser and cross  device support was smart. 

Some highlights are:

Cross-Device Support – Which devices is not listed by Apple and Blackberry would be likely.  Android remains questionable.

Multi-browser Support – Leveraging the HTML 5 movement and allowing users who do not have IE running to access CRM.  This has been a deal killer for organizations who use Apple devices or who chose to run Firefox and Chrome browsers.  While Chrome support would be nice I am not holding my breath on Google and Microsoft playing well together.

Extended Self-Service BI – The ability to drive business intelligence through CRM has been increasing with integrated dashboards, expanded SharePoint list integration, and live datasheets in Excel.  This next release should be interesting.

Enhanced Data Visualization – While it is unclear what this means, I am hopeful that the integrated dashboards can integrate a visualization from more than one data source. Essentially ask two questions and see how they relate to each other.  A fundamental requirement for driving predictive analytics.

Social Integration – A cool but underutilized feature offered by Salesforce is the ability to integrate social media, web based activity and conversation into the customer experience.  Microsoft has lagged in this offering and it looks like they intend to make up for it.

In all these are some key areas that we are excited to see become available.  Since these additions are scheduled to be included in the base service offering and at the standard base fee Dynamics will have a price point approximately 300% under the comparable Salesforce offering.  This is a big deal when you consider that these systems can be extended to company wide process control and are no longer only used by small sales groups.

This link is to the Statement of Direction document posted by Sonoma Partners – This is a direct PDF file access link.

CRM Online login error: Live login keeps looping or refreshing

A client recently began having trouble signing in to their CRM online instance.  When they used the Windows Live sign in screen the page would attempt to load the CRM instance but then appear to refresh and then go back to the login screen.  Other times the page would appear to be in an endless loop and going no where fast.

Obviously, this was frustrating.  Kenny Vaes posted a good article on his blog on how to resolve this.  I am surprised that there is not more out there on this issue and appreciate Kenny posting a solution.  Essentially the use needs to add several more urls to the trusted sites area of internet explorer.  These sites are in addition to adding you actual CRM instance url to the trusted sites.  Here are the steps:  

In Internet Explorer Select "Tools"

Select "Internet Options"

Select the tab "Security"

Click the green check mark "Trusted Sites"

Click "Sites"

Add these urls to the trusted sites: https://*.crm.dynamics.com   https://login.live.com  

After entry of these urls close your browser and reopen.

 

Outlook 2010 Ribbon and CRM Dynamics 4.0 Integration

The introduction of Outlook 2010 brings some very handy improvements to email management.  Unfortunately, as of this post the default offering of the Outlook client for CRM Dynamics 4.0 is 10.  When installed in Outlook 2010 the client version 10 installs in the add in section of the ribbon.  This is makes the add in essentially useless.  Fortunately the client 11is now available if you know to go look for it.  After the install of the CRM client 11 for Outlook the CRM tool bar will be added to your ribbon in Outlook 2010. 

 

Once installed you will have the ability to move and modify your view in 2010.  To install the cumulative roll-up 11 chose the "CRMv4.0-KB981328-i386-Client-ENU.exe" file for download.

Dynamics CRM 4.0 Outlook client and the 64bit version of Outlook 2010

As clients begin the process of updating their software it is common for businesses to make the move to 64 bit systems.  During the Windows install the help screens make this seem like such a good idea.  Micrsoft however still recommends running the 32bit version of Office on your 64bit operating system.

Currently Microsoft CRM Outlook Connected does not support the 64bit version of Office Outlook 2010.  While direct access to CRM through IE is not affected this does prevent the installation of the CRM Outlook Client.  The ability to embed CRM into Outlook is one of it greatest strengths from a user adoption and consistency of use position.  As such, this is a deal killer when considering upgrading to 64 bit Office.  In general the advantages of running the 64 bit version of Office will pale incomparison to the ability to embed CRM in Outlook

Microsoft has reported that it has no immediate plans to support the 64bit version of Office Outlook with the CRM Dynamics 4.0 Client so we will need to wait for CRM 5.0.  For most organizations this will not be a major concern.