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.

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.

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

As an update to a post I did last month about mobile phone options for Microsoft Dynamics CRM,  Softtrends just released Mobile CRM+ which works on Blackberries, Windows Mobile, and Symbian phones.

It has a few interesting features:

• It can record calls and/or take voice notes which can be stored as Activities in CRM
• It has a DVR style audio buffer that allows you to selects key points of recordings
• It works offline

The Analytics and Enterprise Search Accelerators are now available for download.

Newly Released

• Analytics: Extends business intelligence for Microsoft Dynamics CRM by delivering sales, service and operations dashboards.
• Enterprise Search: Rapidly configure portal views of CRM data within SharePoint (MOSS) and expose this data to MOSS enterprise search.

 Currently Available

• E-Service Portal: A configurable self-service portal for enhanced customer service through Microsoft Dynamics CRM.
• Extended Sales Forecasting: Enhanced sales forecasting mechanism for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0.
• CRM Notifications: Newsfeeds (RSS) that allow users to subscribe to CRM “events” relevant to their job role.
• Event Management: New functionality to plan, create, execute, and review events.

Available Soon

• Business Productivity: A collection of time-saving productivity customizations for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0
• Sales Methodologies: Practical Guidance for adoption of third-party sales methodologies such as SPI Solution Selling, Target Account Selling (TAS) and Miller Heiman)

Microsoft has been gradually releasing Accelerators for Dynamics CRM 4.0. They just made the E-Service Portal available for download.

Newly Released

• E-Service Portal: A configurable self-service portal for enhanced customer service through Microsoft Dynamics CRM.

 Currently Available

• Extended Sales Forecasting: Enhanced sales forecasting mechanism for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0.
• CRM Notifications: Newsfeeds (RSS) that allow users to subscribe to CRM “events” relevant to their job role.
• Event Management: New functionality to plan, create, execute, and review events.

Available Soon

• Analytics: Extends business intelligence for Microsoft Dynamics CRM by delivering sales, service and operations dashboards.
• Enterprise Search: Rapidly configure portal views of CRM data within SharePoint (MOSS) and expose this data to MOSS enterprise search.
• Business Productivity: A collection of time-saving productivity customizations for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0
• Sales Methodologies: Practical Guidance for adoption of third-party sales methodologies such as SPI Solution Selling, Target Account Selling (TAS) and Miller Heiman)

The Dynamics CRM team at Microsoft just publicly released downloads for the Notifications, Event Management & Extended Sales Forecasting Accelerators at:

http://www.codeplex.com/crmaccelerators/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=19132

• Extended Sales Forecasting: Enhanced sales forecasting mechanism for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0.
• CRM Notifications: Newsfeeds (RSS) that allow users to subscribe to CRM “events” relevant to their job role.

Here’s the rest of the accelerators they’ll be releasing soon.

• Analytics: Extends business intelligence for Microsoft Dynamics CRM by delivering sales, service and operations dashboards.
• Event Management: New functionality to plan, create, execute, and review events.
• E-Service Portal: A configurable self-service portal for enhanced customer service through Microsoft Dynamics CRM.
• Enterprise Search: Rapidly configure portal views of CRM data within SharePoint (MOSS) and expose this data to MOSS enterprise search.
• Business Productivity: A collection of time-saving productivity customizations for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0
• Sales Methodologies: Practical Guidance for adoption of third-party sales methodologies such as SPI Solution Selling, Target Account Selling (TAS) and Miller Heiman)

A lot of people really like the search-for-everything offerings that are available for the internet and computers. So, I’ve been getting existing customers asking if CRM has a “global search” option.

The primary Dynamics CRM search options, called Find and Advanced Find, do a pretty good job of enabling users to dig into CRM’s data to find what they need. But, Find only searches within a single entity such as Leads. And Advanced Find can perform a broader search but it’s a bit more time consuming.

So is there a way to perform one quick search that looks though all of Dynamics CRM? Yes, but it’s not built-in to Dynamics CRM. One option is the Multi-Field Search for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 by c360. C360 is an Independent Software Vendor (ISV) that makes software add-ons for Microsoft Dynamics CRM to enhance its functionality. The c360 Multi-Field Search enables you to perform one search that simultaneously looks across multiple entities (i.e. Leads, Contacts, etc) and fields (i.e. First Name, Last Name, etc).

This comes in pretty handy in general and especially for companies who are heavy users of the Leads entity because it eliminates the need to search for a person in Leads and again in Contacts.

More information on the Multi-Field Search for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 is on c360’s website.

Softtrends just released a mobile offering for Dynamics CRM 4.0 named Mobile CRM+ http://www.crmmobileplus.com/msdynamics.html. Most of the Dynamics CRM mobile options currently available have fairly basic functionality or functional constraints. This one caught my eye with some interesting features:

·         Available for Windows Mobile, Symbian/Nokia, and Blackberry Curve devices

·         Supports Dynamics CRM Online (formerly Dynamics CRM Live)

·         Can capture device camera images and attach to any entity such as Leads, Accounts, Contacts, etc

·         Can capture device microphone recordings to attach audio annotations to entities

·         Can record incoming and outgoing phone calls and attach to Leads or Contacts

·         Works online and offline

One potential issue is it appears to have a basic interface that isn’t geared toward the Microsoft look and feel. I haven’t tested it yet so I’m not sure exactly what it looks like and how well the interface works. It definitely has some promising features though.