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New features coming in CRM 5

Stefano Demiliani has posted screenshots and features coming to CRM 5.  I highly recommend reading this.  Please keep in mind that CRM 5 is not final and these features are subject to change.

http://www.demiliani.com/blog/archive/2008/11/11/6526.aspx

Features highlighted are (I highlighted the ones I see most requested):

• Enhanced Navigation - I guess it was inevitable, but CRM5 uses the same "Fluent UI" (aka the Ribbon) as Office 2007. This new "command bar" replaces the CRM 4.0 "tool bars" at the top of each page, and is context sensitive. In addition, the "command bar" is fully customizable and you can add your own buttons much like you can with ISV.Config file today.
• Single Page Forms - The form model in CRM 4.0 made use of tabs to divide a form into multiple pages. In CRM5 tabs are displayed in the same way as section, with each form just having a single, scrolling page. As you can see from the navigation page of an Account entity, tabs are now displayed as a series of "quick access" navigation shortcuts under the "Information" link
• Data Filtering - One often requested feature is the ability to filter data in grids, much like Excel. Now you can navigate to the "DataView", click the "Filter" command, and you can perform your own in-line filtering.
• In-line Visualizations - Although not Business Intelligence in the true sense of the phrase, CRM5 allows you to visualize numeric data using in-line charts. This is not SQL Server Reporting Services, but looks very much like the .NET charting solution from Dundas.
• Team Ownership - Entities in CRM 4.0 were either User Owned or Organisation Owned. Now Team Owned entities are added in CRM5, and integrated into the role-based security model.
• Native SharePoint Integration - Integration with Windows SharePoint Services for document management, which includes site and document library provisioning, document metadata, item security, and check-in/check-out capabilities.
• Unstructured Relationships - The next generation of "set regarding" and "relationship roles" functionality, allowing you to define ad-hoc relationships between any two entities.
• Flexible Form Layout - We now have much more flexibility in how forms are laid out, for example, we can position sections side-by-side, as well as field labels on top, left or right of each field. Best of all, we can now configure "In-Line Sub-Grids" for child records, so a combination of IFrames & JScript is no longer required to make this work.
• Filtered Lookups - One of the most requested features has finally made it into the product. Whilst customizing the form, you can choose a pre-defined view or better still you can filter by a related lookup on the same form.
• Form Headers & Footers - Now that all tabs, sections and fields appear on a single, scrolling form, it is quite possible the form will get become quite long and you will end up scrolling up and down more often to find the information you require. In order to make the most commonly required visible at all times, you can now place these fields in a header or footer so that they will always be displayed regardless of the scrolling.
• Solution Management - With CRM 4.0, you had to implement a manual process when customizing your solution, to make sure that you didn't overwrite previous customizations, or disrupt any 3rd party ISV solutions. In CRM5 we had now added the concept of solutions.
• Multiple Option Sets - Otherwise known as "Global Picklists", you can define these at the solution level, and re-use them across multiple entities.
• Drag & Drop Form Editor - One of the most time consuming customization tasks in CRM 4.0 is the form design. Every time you want to add, remove or re-position tabs, sections and attributes, you have to go through a multi-click process. With CRM5, you can now drag and drop all elements of a form, speeding up the process considerably
• Audit - Although not explicitly mentioned during the sessions, I spotted an "auditing" setting on the attribute designer form, allowing you to turn auditing on or off.
• Custom Code Sandbox - There is a new server role for running custom plug-in code and custom workflow activities without requiring full trust. This means that it will be possible to run custom code in the CRM Online environment and achieve true parity between On-Premise, Partner-Hosted and Microsoft-Hosted deployments.
• Plug-In Transaction Support - In CRM 4.0 you could register a plug-in to run either before (pre-event) or after (post-event) the CRM platform operation. However, you were not able to run as part of the transaction itself, so you had to right your own compensation logic in the event the CRM platform operation failed. CRM5 addresses this limitation, and you can now choose to register you plug-in as part of the platform operation. The CRM5 plug-in registration tool has been modified to support this.
• Automatic Plug-In Profiling - CRM5 will keep track of how a plug-in is executing, what resources it consumes, if it is causing unexpected exceptions and whether or not it is violating security constraints. If a particular plug-in fails a number of times it is automatically disabled from executing, helping to maintain system integrity.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM Incubation Week

Last week Sanjay Jain let us know that there will be an Incubation week 12/15/2008 - 12/19/2008 in Reston, VA.  If you are interested in CRM or looking to get more in depth knowledge of the product, I highly recommend checking out Sanjay's blog post to get details on attending.  This is a no fee event.

Here is a blurb from Sanjay's post:

Microsoft Dynamics CRM Incubation Week is designed to offer following assistance to entrepreneurs.

Learning and building next generation business solution on Microsoft Dynamics CRM Platform (a rapid application development platform to reduce the cost and Go-To-Market time) with help of on-site advisors (Microsoft Dynamics CRM experts).

Getting entrepreneurs coaching from a panel of industry experts (academic and angel investors)

Generating marketing buzz for their ideas

Update Rollup 1 now available for CRM 4

Microsoft has released Update Rollup 1 for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Server, Microsoft Dynamics CRM for Microsoft Office Outlook, and Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 E-mail Router.
For more information about this release, see Microsoft Knowledge Base article 952858.

To download the update, click here.

Similar to the CRM 3 rollups, make sure to take caution when exporting and importing customizations:

When customizations are exported from Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Server, we do not encourage you to import the customizations to Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Server in the following scenarios:

• The server from which you are exporting customizations does not have Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Update Rollup 1 installed. However, the server to which you are importing the customizations has Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Update Rollup 1 installed.
• The server from which you are exporting customizations has Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Update Rollup 1 installed. However, the server to which you are importing the customizations does not have Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Update Rollup 1 installed.

Here is a list of the key items fixed, taken from the support KB:

CRM 4 Outlook Client Hotfix Top 10

Microsoft recently posted a blog listing the top 10 issues received through their support channel.  The issues relate specifically to the Outlook client for CRM.  If you have not read this, I highly recommend it.  Here is a short compilation of the 10 listed:

1. Outlook hangs during initialization (progress toolbar displays “Loading…” and never finishes)
2. With E-mail Auto Promotion Enabled, Outlook may not close cleanly/properly.
3. Contacts with birthdays earlier than 1/1/1970 causes Outlook to crash
4. Items in Shared Calendars will report Sync Issues
5. Cannot Promote an E-mail where the name of the attached file contains a ‘&’ symbol.
6. Selecting Dismiss on Outlook Calendar reminder for Service Activity causes record to change Status Reason back to default value for that record.
7. OWA Sent Emails Get Stuck in Outlook Draft Folder When Outlook Is Open And CRMADDIN is Enabled
8. Microsoft Outlook stops responding when you open, close, reply to, or forward e-mail messages in the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 client for Outlook
9. CRM Outlook client and/or Desktop Client hangs in presence of other Outlook add-ins
10. Phone call activity due time is changed after the activity is snoozed or dismissed.

Here is a link to the post: CRM4 Outlook Client – Issues and Fixes

For a list of all the hotfixes currently available for Microsoft CRM 4, check out the following KB article: Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 updates and hotfixes

CRM Plugins in a 64-bit Environment

With the latest release of the CRM 4 Sdk (4.0.5) Microsoft has added 64-bit versions of the reference assemblies (Microsoft.Crm.Sdk.dll and Microsoft.Crm.SdkTypeProxy.dll) used in plugins.  This has raised an issue for us because many of our clients are running 64-bit versions of CRM with plugins we developed using the 32-bit assemblies.  The biggest question is whether or not we should recompile our plugins to use these 64-bit assemblies or if it's ok to use the 32-bit assemblies compiled to be platform neutral.  Below is a response I received from Microsoft regarding this issue:

If your extension is built platform neutral than the extension will work on both 32-bit and 64-bit environments.  If you build your extension platform specific it will only work on the environment you’ve compiled it for.  So if your extension is platform neutral and was built using the previous versions that were shipped in the SDK, this will continue to work moving forward but it is not supported to run a 32-bit extension that is compiled to run only on 32-bit and then run it on a 64-bit server.

Here’s the matrix of what will work:

If you’ve built the plugin with platform neutral, then it will work on x64 even if you used the x86 version of the SDK.

Microsoft CRM 4.0 User Guide Now Available

Microsoft has released the user guide for CRM 4.0.  The guide is editable allowing you to customize it on a client by client basis.  You can download it in docx and pdf format here. 

Below are details pulled from the CRM team's blog.

The Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 User’s Guide includes all of the basic end-user information available in Help, including documentation on sales, marketing, and customer service features, as well as step-by-step instructions on working with Advanced Find and workflow. And it’s in an easily printable format.

Microsoft Partners and MVPs have told us that they want to provide customized documents for their customers. To make it easy to customize the document, we’re making a version available in Microsoft Office Word 2007 (.docx) format.

We’ve also talked to Microsoft Dynamics CRM customers, such as salespeople and customer service reps, who’ve expressed frustration at having to print out each Help page individually. Based on this feedback, we’ve included an Adobe Acrobat (PDF) version that serves as an all-in-one document you can distribute in your organization.

Ascentium Posts our JavaScript SDK to Celebrate a Great Year!

Jason Hunt recently made a blog post over at our company's website a highlight of our awesome year and details about our JavaScript SDK that we developed and use everyday at Ascentium.  I highly recommend downloading it and checking it out.  It makes SDK calls a lot easier!

Here is a link to the blog post

Here is an example taken from the blog post:

Create, Retrieve, Update, Delete Sample

This sample shows how to Create, Retrieve, Update and Delete records within CRM. Notice when creating the Contact that to set the parentcustomerid there is a special CrmLookup object you need to use. Use this for all lookups.

function Run()
{
    //create the Ascentium_CrmService object
    var oService = new Ascentium_CrmService("MicrosoftCrm", 
"http://localhost:5555");

    //create an entity
    var beAccount = new BusinessEntity("account");
    beAccount.attributes["name"] = "Ascentium";
    beAccount.attributes["numberofemployees"] = 600.00;
    var sAccountId = oService.Create(beAccount);

    alert("Account Created. Account ID = " + sAccountId);

    //update an entity
    var beAccountToUpdate = new BusinessEntity("account");
    beAccountToUpdate.attributes["accountid"] = sAccountId;
    beAccountToUpdate.attributes["revenue"] = 1000000000.00;
    oService.Update(beAccountToUpdate);

    alert("Account Updated");

    //retrieve an entity
    var asCols = ["name", "revenue", "createdon", "createdby"];
    var beRetrievedAccount = oService.Retrieve("account", 
sAccountId, asCols);

    alert("Account Retrieved: " +
    beRetrievedAccount.attributes["name"].value + " : " +
    beRetrievedAccount.attributes["revenue"].value + " : " +
    beRetrievedAccount.attributes["createdon"].value + " : " +
    beRetrievedAccount.attributes["createdby"].value);

    //create an entity with a lookup attribute
    var beContact = new BusinessEntity("contact");
    beContact.attributes["firstname"] = "Joe";
    beContact.attributes["birthdate"] = "2008-01-01T00:00:00";
    beContact.attributes["parentcustomerid"] = new CrmLookup("account", 
sAccountId);
    var sContactId = oService.Create(beContact);

    alert("Contact Created: " + sContactId);

    //delete an entity
    oService.Delete("account",sAccountId);

    alert("Account Deleted");
}

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Implementation Guide (IG) 4.2.0 Available

Microsoft released an update to the IG yesterday.  You can download it here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=1ceb5e01-de9f-48c0-8ce2-51633ebf4714&DisplayLang=en

With this release they have added 3 new topics;

• Install Microsoft Dynamics CRM Server on multiple computers.
• Configure an Organization Database for SQL Server 2005 Database Mirroring
• Deploy Microsoft Dynamics CRM for Outlook with Systems Management Server 2003

You can view all of the changes in the "Summary of Documentation Revisions and Additions for Update 4.2.0" document contained in the download.

Developer Ramp up Kit for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0

Microsoft has released a series of videos that detail the various features and changes in CRM 4 in 12 presentations.  I'm in the audience for these and Aaron Elder is the presenter :)

This kit is for .NET based developers who want to ramp up and build on top of the Microsoft Dynamics CRM platform. Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 uses familiar components such as Web Service endpoints, Windows Workflow Foundation, SSRS reporting, and more; making it a general purpose platform for any line-of-business applications. Developers can use their existing .NET skills to take advantage of various features of the Microsoft Dynamics CRM platform. This kit drills into the details of such development and explains how developers can connect, extend, and embed with the Microsoft Dynamics CRM platform. It includes presentations, hands-on labs, and a VPC environment for practicing. This content was delivered earlier as part of the Metro Early Adopter initiative and the video recordings of the ramp-up presentations are included as well.

Familiarity with the .NET Framework, Microsoft Visual C#, Jscript, Microsoft SQL Server and general Web development is recommended.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc720132.aspx

2008 Microsoft MVP!!!!

Yesterday I received the following email from Microsoft letting me know that I have received an MVP award for 2008!!!

Dear Ross Lotharius,

Congratulations! We are pleased to present you with the 2008 Microsoft® MVP Award! The MVP Award is our way to say thank you for promoting the spirit of community and improving people’s lives and the industry’s success every day. We appreciate your extraordinary efforts in Dynamics CRM technical communities during the past year. Microsoft will soon send your MVP Award gift package. It is our way to say “thank you for making a difference.".....

I'd like to give a special thanks to Aaron Elder who has been my mentor for close to 10 years and my wife Mary for supporting me through it all.  

Thanks to all who voted for me!  It has been quite a year!

Microsoft CRM Sdk 4.0.5 Available for Download

Amy Langlois posted on the Microsoft blog that the new Sdk is now available.  You can download it here. 

Here is the info she posted:

Check out the latest SDK update, version 4.0.5! If you’ve been waiting for sample code in VB .NET, then download the SDK. We’ve converted over 100 samples to VB .NET.

Here’s a list of changes:

• Added 64-bit versions of the DLLs needed for plug-in and custom workflow activity development.
• New sample code for accessing the CRM Web services from JScript including:
  • How to use the GenerateAuthenticationHeader function to simplify your JScript code.
  • Samples showing how to call each CrmService Web service method using JScript.
  • How to retrieve data from related records
• New walkthrough that shows how you can use a Web Debugging proxy to capture SOAP packets for Microsoft Dynamics CRM Web service calls from a console application.
• New sample showing how to add a new Web page to the navigation pane.
• New info in the Report Writers Guide:
  • Linking related reports
  • Managing reports in offline mode
  • Formatting values in reports
  • Categorizing and displaying reports in different languages
• New message for Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online: RetrieveOrganizationResources. This message retrieves statistics about the resources used for an organization.
• New custom workflow activity samples:
  • Return a calculated value
  • Create a task in a custom workflow activity
  • Return the next birthday for an account or contact
• New sample code for these messages:
• New topic on how to export customized entity and attribute text for translation.
• New topic and sample code that contains information about using the Microsoft Dynamics CRM for Outlook SDK.
• Plug-ins:
  • Added information and sample code showing how to instantiate the Web services in code executing within a child pipeline.
  • Updated upgrade information for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 callouts.

Virtual PC 2007 SP 1 Download Now Available

Microsoft released SP1 for Virtual PC yesterday.  The download is available here. 

Note: With all Virtual PC updates, make sure none of your VPCs are in a saved state before applying an upgrade.

Here is a link to the release notes on SP1: http://download.microsoft.com/download/8/f/4/8f44a346-1f62-4bb2-b957-7508ea1f7d80/relnotes.htm

CRM 4 Customization and Configuration Exam (MB2-631)

Yesterday I took the new CRM 4 Customization and Configuration exam and passed!  I just winged it and it turned out to be a fairly straight forward test.  I can't go into too much detail around the test but the major areas it touched on were;

• Customizations through CRM's interface
• Deployment scenarios
• Relationships
• Multi Org
• Multi Lingual
• Multi Currency

It was a decent test with some fairly complicated scenarios and one of the questions had the same answer twice.  I notified Prometric and filled out a form to hopefully get it corrected :).

I could not find any public links about the exams.  The only ones I was able to find are on the partner website:

Exam MB2-633 – Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Installation and Deployment Certification Exam

https://mbs.microsoft.com/partnersource/communities/training/Certifications/exampreparation/CRM40_ENU_ID_PREP.htm

Exam MB2-632 – Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Applications Certification Exam

https://mbs.microsoft.com/partnersource/communities/training/Certifications/exampreparation/CRM40_ENU_APP_PREP.htm

Exam MB2-631 – Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Customization and Configuration Certification Exam

https://mbs.microsoft.com/partnersource/communities/training/Certifications/exampreparation/CRM40_ENU_CC_PREP.htm

The Skeptical Developer

Recently my company, Ascentium, posted a white paper titled Microsoft Dynamics CRM as a Business Application Platform that was written by my co-workers Aaron Elder and Jason Hunt.  In the white paper is a section titled "The Skeptical Developer", which speaks to my experience with CRM and moving from a pure custom development background into the world of CRM and using CRM as the platform to build the same applications I have been custom developing and architecting for years.  Yesterday I noticed that a fellower CRM blogger, Menno te Koppele, posted a write-up summarizing the white paper that I thought was very good.  Below is a C&P of the write-up and the post is here.

“It Doesn’t Pay to Grow Your Own”

• When building a custom application, most organizations “spend most of their time on the plumbing” (see below) and don’t have enough time for  business functionality.
• Ascentium has found from their experience they SAVE  “50% to 70% of the development time” using Microsoft Dynamics CRM as the Platform
• Using Dynamics CRM as a Platform allows Developers to “focus on solving the employees’ problems and solving them well [functionality], so that they choose to use your application”
• “Custom business applications are often not extensible or scalable over the long term” due to time restraints around development
• When technology changes you have to update and modify your Platform, using Microsoft Dynamics CRM – Microsoft takes on that cost
  • New versions of SQL Server, Exchange, Office, SharePoint

Benefits to the Business

• Centralization of data (Prevent Silos of information)
• Standardization of user experience – inherits Dynamics CRM web-like UI (user adoption, lower training costs)
• Simplification of development (Using Customization UI, Web Services, SDK, Service Oriented Arch [SOA], any .NET language)
• Integration with organizations existing systems (Web Services, common SQL Server tools)

What Dynamics CRM provides (The Plumbing)

• Security Model with Authentication tied to Active Directory
• Presentation Layer :: UI Framework (Tool build forms, tabs, add fields, IFrames without any coding)
• Data Model
  • Structure of the Data (Tables, Fields, Etc.)
  • Integrity of the data (Relationships, Dependencies on one another)
• Extensibility of the Data Model without SQL (Tool to add tables, fields, relationships without any SQL)
• Software Development Kit (SDK) – access to the entire SDK used by the developers of Dynamics CRM themselves
• Workflow Engine (Windows Workflow Foundation – build through simple UI)
• Built In connection with Outlook / Office

Don’t miss the “The Skeptical Developer” a great real world story.

If you haven't read the white paper, I highly recommend it.  The Skeptical Developer is a great story (I'm biased because I helped write it :)) about my conversion.  I now speak about CRM 4 to clients and ISVs all over the world with my most recent travels on behalf of Microsoft during Titan Ascend and Metro programs.

Compilation: CRM 4.0 Performance and Scalability White Papers

Microsoft has compiled together the performance and scalability whitepapers into 1 download.  You can get it here

Below is a list of the white papers with a brief description.

Enterprise Performance and Scalability
This white paper provides an overview of the results and benefits of performance and scalability enhancements in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0.

Performance and Scalability – User Scalability for the Enterprise
These benchmark results demonstrate that Microsoft Dynamics CRM can scale to meet the needs of an enterprise-level, mission-critical workload of 24,000 concurrent users while maintaining performance at sub-second response times. Test results were achieved without customizations to simulate an out-of-the-box Microsoft Dynamics CRM deployment. This white paper describes the goals, methodology and detailed results of this performance benchmark.

Performance and Scalability – Database Scalability for the Enterprise
These benchmark results demonstrate that Microsoft Dynamics CRM can scale to data volumes of over 1 billion database records while maintaining performance at sub-second response times. Test results were achieved without customizations, and minimal optimization to simulate an out-of-the-box Microsoft Dynamics CRM deployment. This white paper describes the goals, methodology and detailed results of this performance benchmark.

Performance and Scalability – Bandwidth Utilization Improvements
Microsoft Dynamics CRM showed network utilization improvements of up to 94% in version 4.0. This white paper details the test results comparing version 3.0 to 4.0.