KB 977650 Update Rollup 9 for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 was released on February 11th, 2010 and is available for download at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=5869f2b3-d1a0-4f71-8be3-fde6e8053a2e

Update Rollup 9 contains a cumulative set of updates and hotfixes for Microsoft Dynamics CRM On-Premise. For more information see Article ID 977650 at http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?kbid=977650

I’d suggest reading the 977650 article before getting started so you understand what’s involved. There are prerequisites including Update Rollup 7 and special considerations regarding Office and Exchange 2010.

As always, I’d suggest doing a full backup of MSCRM databases and even exporting customizations as a precaution. Update Rollup 9 can be uninstalled but it’s better to be safe in case the uninstall has a meltdown. Also, I’d suggest installing this in your test environment and then testing for server and user issues before implementing it in your production environment.

KB975995 Update Rollup 8 for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 was released on December 18th and is available for download at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=c53b2916-6b93-4092-bdd3-a394c96ca000

Update Rollup 8 contains a cumulative set of updates and hotfixes. For more information see Article ID 975995 at http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?kbid=975995

Before you do anything else I’d suggest reviewing the above article in-depth.

One key thing to note is that Update Rollup 7 is now a prerequisite for deploying Update Rollup 8. Update Rollup 7 made some pretty significant modifications to CRM and especially the CRM for Outlook Client.

As always, I’d suggest doing a full backup of MSCRM. Update Rollup 8 can be uninstalled but it’s better to be safe in case the uninstall tanks. Also, I’d suggest installing this in your test environment and then testing both for server and user issues.

Microsoft recently released an updated Statement of Direction for Dynamics CRM.

It covers upcoming Accelerators, Adapters, and XRM. It also gives an overview of the next version of Microsoft Dynamics CRM, aptly code-named “ V.Next”, which most likely will end up being called Microsoft Dynamics CRM 5.0.

Microsoft customers can download the document through CustomerSource.

The long-awaited Microsoft Dynamics CRM and Microsoft Dynamics GP (formerly Great Plains) adapter is now available. 

This tool provides integration between CRM and GP to better manage data and data flow. When changes are made to one system the adapter can update the other system.

As an example, if a customer’s address is updated in Microsoft Dynamics GP the adapter can automatically update the customer’s address in Microsoft Dynamics CRM, or vice-versa. Or if an invoice is created in Dynamics GP the adapter can add the invoice to the customer’s account in Dynamics CRM.

Another CRM adapter?
This is different from the Microsoft Dynamics CRM BizTalk Adapter I recently posted about.  This adapter is a standalone product that doesn’t require Microsoft BizTalk. Also, this adapter was created to help non-developer types connect the systems without needing to know programming languages. And it has out-of-the box template mappings

Price?
Free!  Sort of. As a customer you must have an active/current Microsoft Dynamics GP Enhancement/Support plan and an active/current Microsoft Dynamics CRM Software Assurance Support Plan.

How do customers get more information on the adapter?
Customers can log into their CustomerSource account where there’s a section about the adapter.  There’s a pretty good Frequently Asked Questions document that covers some of its features and limitations.

How do customers get the adapter?
Currently the adapter is only available through Microsoft Partners who are registered and approved as a Microsoft Dynamics GP partner. Contact your current Dynamics GP partner. If you don’t have one or would like a new one call me.

A while back I did a post about everything getting lost on the Leads Notes tab when converting a Lead to an Account, Contact, and Opportunity in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0.

The summary of that post is:

• This doesn’t appear to be a bug or technical problem but is the way the system was designed
• The Notes and Attachments in the Leads Notes tab aren’t lost during the conversion, they just stay behind with the closed Lead
• I proposed a workaround of hiding the Leads Notes tab to just prevent people from even using it

So while hiding the Microsoft CRM Leads Notes tab works great for fresh implementations, and to prevent any more issues with existing implementations, what about all of the companies who need to access all of the Notes and Attachments in the old converted Leads?

The quickest and easiest solution I’ve seen is a workaround that adds a new “Leads Notes” tab to the Accounts, Contacts, or Opportunities entity. It looks just like a normal Notes tab but pulls the Notes and Attachments data from the original Lead using an Iframe and some scripting. 

Karl Iuel of Avanade posted a script with instructions of how to configure it.  Richard Knudsen of IMG also posted a script on his blog.

Before adding this to your MSCRM I’d suggest giving some thought to how your users will use this. The reason I say this is it’s your choice whether to add this to the Account, Contact, or Opportunity entity. My suggestion would be to add it to the Contact entity. Here’s why.

I tested Karl’s script on the Account, Contact, and Opportunity entities and converted a Lead.

With the Account version the Lead only transfers once. Meaning, if in the future you get a Lead who happens to be an employee of an existing Account in MSCRM that was a previously converted Lead, it will only transfer the Notes from the first Lead.

With the Opportunity version it depends on if you associate Opportunities with a Contact or Account. A user might get confused on where to look for the Lead notes if some of your customers are companies (Accounts) and some are individuals (Contacts).

With the Contact version the Leads Notes stay with the Contact. A Lead is somewhat of a combination of the Account, Contact, and Opportunity records. But to me it most closely resembles a Contact record. So when a user is later looking for notes of a closed Lead the first place they would probably look would be in Contacts records.

Again, it’s your choice where to put the new Leads Notes tab but it depends on how your company and users use your MSCRM. To validate which one works best I’d suggest having a couple of your key users test each version and perform tasks as they would as part of their normal day.

The Microsoft BizTalk Server Adapter for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 is now available for download.

If you’re not familiar with Microsoft BizTalk Server it can be used to connect disparate internal and external systems.

So what’s that mean in business terms? Improved efficiency and happier customers.

Here’s an example.

Company A has an accounting system that contains all of their customer information such as names, addresses, account numbers, etc.  Much of this information is also stored in other systems such as Microsoft Dynamics CRM for the sales department and several other databases. Although there’s overlapping data all of these systems run totally independently. So when a customer calls customer service to change their address, the accounting system isn’t updated. Accounting is having increasing problems with unpaid invoices because they’re being sent to old addresses.  And customer satisfaction is decreasing because customers are being contacted about paying invoices they never received. The workaround in this situation frequently is to create a procedure to have employees manually update the other systems. While this may partially solve one problem it usually creates several new problems such as manual processes and other inefficiencies. And there are usually still delays in getting the systems updated so the problem still exists but a little less frequently.

Company B has integrated their systems, such as by using BizTalk, to unify data and control data flow. When a customer calls to update their address, BizTalk recognizes that one system has been updated and then it automatically updates the other systems. Company B’s customers don’t get unnecessary calls. And when a customer calls Company B’s accounting, sales, or customer service departments they get consistent information because of consistent data.

If you were a customer which company would you rather deal with?

Update Rollup 6 for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 (KB 970148) is now available for download at
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=79f90982-c039-41c2-af8e-3119ecf27790

Full detail can be found in Article ID 970148 at
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?kbid=970148

This Update Rollup is a cumulative set of updates and hotfixes intended to resolve problems and enhance performance.  While this Update Rollup can be uninstalled it’s recommended that you evaluate its impact on your test environment and do a full backup before installing it in your production environment.

A new demo is available for the eService Accelerator for Microsoft Dynamics CRM. This demo is for the Online version but functionally it should be similar to the On-Premise version.

The first few minutes cover some technical stuff but the middle section of it does a pretty good job of showing the functional process flow. Toward the end it goes back into technical configuration.

http://www.democrmonline.com/eServiceOnline/

The eService Accelerator is pretty slick. Much like the Event Management Accelerator I did a walkthrough of recently, this is another great example of the potential of CRM as an xRM platform from which to optimize your business. The concept of xRM (Anything Relationship Management) looks beyond CRM as contact management software or a sales force automation database. Again, CRM can be used for those purposes but that’s like buying one of those huge RVs to drive around the block. Get out and explore!

Think more about all of the different types of people your business and its employees interact with and the processes that are used for those interactions. Could those processes be improved? How would your customers feel about your business if you offered them the option of submitting their own service cases online instead of calling? How would providing self-service capabilities affect your costs? Yes, CRM is software but success comes with the convergence of the software with your business.

Revised 10/14/09

In an interview with Brad Wilson, the General Manager for Microsoft Dynamics CRM at Microsoft, ChannelWeb mentioned version 5.0 would be out in the second half of 2010.

“Microsoft (NSDQ:MSFT) channel partners are about to get their first look at the next release of the vendor’s Dynamics CRM application, a product that’s targeted for release sometime in the second half of 2010″

“Dynamics CRM 5.0 will sport improvements in the user interface and data visualization features, enhanced sales and marketing capabilities, and tighter integration with Microsoft’s SharePoint Server collaboration platform, according to Wilson, who declined to disclose details.”

http://www.crn.com/software/218500733;jsessionid=KEB1TPSAPTOIWQSNDLOSKHSCJUNN2JVN

From what I remember new CRM version releases were supposed to be on a two year cycle. Version 4.0 was out in January of 2008 so this seems to have been pushed out a bit.

Wow, all kinds of new stuff coming out today for Dynamics CRM.

Mobile Express for Microsoft Dynamics CRM enables users to access Dynamics CRM through a web browser on a mobile device such as a phone or PDA.

This is great for road warriors such as salespeople who need to access information about clients while traveling. You can use Mobile Express much like you use regular CRM. So you can get to Accounts, Contacts, Opportunities and most other CRM entities right from your phone.

A couple of things worth noting.

Microsoft says Mobile Express works well for “occasional access to Microsoft Dynamics CRM” and over “High-speed networks”.  What this translates to is it’s great for quickly checking stuff like a phone number or quote but you wouldn’t want to do the majority of your daily CRM tasks with it. And since it’s web-based you must have internet access to use it because it doesn’t store data on the mobile device and therefore doesn’t synchronize data. But most mobile devices that have internet access usually always have connectivity so I don’t see this as a big deal. If you need offline access see my post about other mobile options for Dynamics CRM.

Here’s more detail and the download for Mobile Express.

In the next few weeks Microsoft plans to release three new Accelerators for Microsoft Dynamics CRM. These include the Social Networking Accelerator, the Partner Relationship Management Accelerator, and the Portal Integration Accelerator.

I’ve had several clients asking about Twitter integration so this is good timing. There are some existing methods for integrating Twitter with Dynamics CRM but they’re pretty basic. This Social Networking Accelerator looks like it has tighter integration and more functionality.

Here’s an online demo of the Social Networking Accelerator:
Social Networking Accelerator for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0

Here’s a portion of the detail released by Microsoft:

Social Networking Accelerator
The Social Networking Accelerator allows business professionals to monitor and analyze customers’ conversations on social networking sites, and as a result, provides real-time status updates about their products and services. This accelerator delivers integration with Twitter; other networks will be introduced in future releases.

Partner Relationship Management (PRM) Accelerator
The Partner Relationship Management (PRM) Accelerator allows businesses to use Microsoft Dynamics CRM to distribute sales leads and centrally manage sales opportunities across channel partners. It provides pre-built extensions to the Microsoft Dynamics CRM sales force automation functionality, including new data entities, workflow and reports. Using the PRM Accelerator, companies can jointly manage sales processes with their channel partners through a centralized Web portal, as well as extend this integration to automate additional business processes.

Portal Integration Accelerator
The Portal Integration Accelerator easily connects Microsoft Dynamics CRM to an organization’s Web experience. With this added capability, a business analyst can use point-and-click configuration — as opposed to Web development — to rapidly extend to the Internet any business process and drive costs out of everyday business interactions.

Microsoft has been releasing free add-ons for Dynamics CRM called Accelerators. The Accelerators enable you to quickly add new functionality to Dynamics CRM to handle common business activities. As you might expect, the Event Management Accelerator enables you to manage events right within Dynamics CRM.

This serves as a good example of what’s possible with Dynamics CRM. Many companies still think of CRM as contact management for storing customer names, phone numbers, and history. While it can be used for that there is so much more potential for it to be used as a business efficiency platform.

Microsoft has been pushing the idea of XRM which is “Anything Relationship Management”. Where CRM emphasized customers, XRM could be partners, distributors, physicians, and you name it. For XRM you still use Dynamics CRM. You just use it to do a lot more.

So back to Event Management. Coordinating events can be a costly and time consuming process. Because CRM doesn’t have event management built-in users partially use CRM along with other tools to manage the entire process . Wouldn’t it be nice to have a single fully integrated method of managing everything? This is exactly what the Event Management Accelerator enables you to do in Dynamics CRM.

The Accelerator provides a web-based process for enabling interested attendees to view information about the event and register for it online on a webpage that Dynamics CRM automatically creates. All of their registration data is captured and stored in CRM. So here’s a high level look at the process.

The Accelerator adds new functionality to the marketing campaign entity. You can create an event much in the same way you do a marketing campaign by adding planning tasks and activities. You can configure quite a bit including the date/time, duration, location, maximum capacity, and even sponsors.

Here’s the campaign event form to create an event in Dynamics CRM.

After you’re done setting up the event, CRM creates a campaign that you can use to contact target attendees. As an example you could do a mail merge and send a mass email invitation and registration link to all attendees. When they click on the link they will be taken to an events calendar page.  This webpage can be integrated with your website or be used independently. If there is more than one event they will be displayed on this page.

When they click “Register Now” on the Events Calendar page they are taken to the registration webpage form.  Once completed this registration data is transferred directly into Dynamics CRM.

After completing the form they are taken to a confirmation webpage that lets them know they’ll receive a confirmation email.

The registrant’s information is then added to the event campaign as a campaign response. When you open up the campaign response it displays a form with all of their details.

Overall, this is a pretty slick little add-on that should help your business manage events more efficiently. And since the people you’re inviting are probably existing or potential customers this accelerator will be another tool to make sure they have a good experience every time they deal with your company and its employees.

I’m back and am getting caught up a bit.

Update Rollup 5 for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 (KB 970141) was released today July 2nd, 2009 and is available for download at
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=5101d801-976b-4c11-bdfc-000b970ef4a3

Update Rollup 5 contains a cumulative set of updates and hotfixes. For more information see Article ID 970141 at
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?kbid=970141

While this update can be uninstalled, it is recommended that you do a full backup of CRM and assess it in your test environment before deploying it to your production system.

Microsoft has released Update Rollup 4 for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 (KB 968176).

This is a cumulative set of updates and hotfixes to enhance technical and functional performance.

More detail is at the Microsoft Knowledge Base page for KB 968176 and it’s available for download.

Although this Rollup can be uninstalled, I’d recommend thoroughly reading the Knowledge Base article, deploying this to your test environment first, and fully backing up your CRM production system before implementing it.

Microsoft recently released two more Accelerators for Microsoft Dynamics CRM.

The Business Productivity Newsfeed and Business Productivity Workflow Tools Accelerators are now available for download.

Like last quarter the results weren’t all that great but Microsoft Dynamics CRM is again one of the products that’s continuing to see growth.

On the webcast Chris Liddell, Microsoft’s Senior Vice President & Chief Financial Officer said “In the quarter we continued to see strong demand for our SharePoint, Office Communications Server, and CRM products which all grew more than 20%.”

Microsoft’s Investor Relations page is at http://www.microsoft.com/msft/default.mspx

Microsoft just released updated versions of the E-mail Router and CRM for Outlook software.

These are for the Online version of Dynamics CRM only. Not On-Premise.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online Email Router

Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online for Outlook

Microsoft just released a new add-on for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 named the Agent Communications Panel.

It uses Office Communications Server to enable CRM users to make and receive calls, do conference calls, and do instant messaging through Dynamics CRM.

Here’s a link to the download and documentation

This is a pretty nice promotion.

Essentially, when you buy Microsoft Dynamics CRM licensing or other qualifying products by June 26th, 2009 you get a subsidy check back from Microsoft that can be used toward software or services with a reseller or consultant who’s a qualified Microsoft partner.

So as an example, let’s say you need Microsoft Dynamics CRM Professional for 25 users. The subsidy check back to you would be $2,835. Pretty nice.

More detail on the program is at http://www.microsoftincentives.com/BigEasy3/Default.aspx

No April Fools joke.

Microsoft is now offering qualified customers a “no-charge” (free) server license of Microsoft Dynamics CRM Professional.  The server license is normally over $2,000 so that’s a pretty good chunk of change.

So how do you qualify?

• You must already own, or need to purchase, one of Microsoft’s ERP products including Microsoft Dynamics GP (formerly Great Plains), Dynamics AX (formerly Axapta), Dynamics SL (formerly Solomon), or Dynamics NAV (formerly Navision).

• The ERP product must have been purchased through Microsoft’s Business Ready License (BRL) program. You must have a valid and current Business Ready Enhancement Plan and Advanced Management Edition, or Module Based Licensing and Professional Edition. Business Essentials Edition and Standard Edition don’t qualify.

• The Microsoft Dynamics CRM Server License is included in the Foundation Pack of Dynamics AX, Dynamics NAV, Dynamics GP, and Dynamics SL. To receive the free Dynamics CRM server license you must purchase at least one Client Access License (CAL) which essentially is a license for each user or computer that will access CRM.

So for companies who are already using one of Microsoft’s Dynamics ERP products and need a CRM system, this is a nice way to save some money.

Contact me with any questions.