Sonoma Partners Microsoft CRM Blog

The world's absolute worst buying guide on CRM systems, from an unexpected source

Last week I received the July issue of CRM Magazine, and the cover story is about Microsoft CRM (more on that later). Bundled with the magazine was a 30+ page supplement labeled as "2008 Annual Buyer's Guide". I assumed this document would outline the various CRM systems available and what each of these systems offer. As I expected, their Index lists the companies/products and if their solution meets these categories:

• Analytics/BI
• Business Strategy
• Contact Center
• Customer Service
• Data Quality
• E-Commerce
• Industry Solutions
• Integration
• Knowledge Management
• Large Enterprise CRM
• Marketing
• Mobile CRM
• Open Source
• Partner Management
• SaaS / Ondemand
• Sales
• Self-Service
• SMB / Mid-Market CRM
• Social Media

This is pretty standard list of CRM functionality by topic, so you would think that prospective buyers could use this document to map up their CRM needs to potential vendors. However after looking at this actual listings, I noticed something interesting:

I found it hilarious that this "Buyer's Guide" doesn't include two of most popular CRM applications on the market in Microsoft Dynamics CRM and Salesforce.com. This gaffe is particularly bad because Microsoft is on the COVER OF THE MAGAZINE talking about their CRM solution. I can only assume that this Buyer's Guide is pay-to-play, where if you don't pay the magazine they won't include your solution in their listings. If that's the case, that's a shame because it obviously severely limits its value to companies considering purchasing CRM solutions! No customer can take this Buyer's Guide list seriously if it excludes the CRM offerings from Microsoft and Salesforce.com.

If you're interested in finding out how Microsoft CRM maps to these topic centers, here you go:

• Analytics/BI: Yes
• Business Strategy: Yes
• Contact Center: Yes
• Customer Service: Yes
• Data Quality: Yes
• E-Commerce: Customization required
• Industry Solutions: Yes
• Integration: Yes
• Knowledge Management: Yes
• Large Enterprise CRM: Yes
• Marketing: Yes
• Mobile CRM: Yes
• Open Source: No
• Partner Management: Yes
• SaaS / Ondemand: Yes
• Sales: Yes
• Self-Service: Yes
• SMB / Mid-Market CRM: Yes
• Social Media: Customization required

Microsoft CRM Outlook client and authentication balloons

You know those little "balloons" that pop up from time to time in the Outlook 4.0 client? Below are some registry settings to change the Outlook client's behavior around network connectivity, notifications and so on. Our support manager recommend increasing ClientAuthAllowRetries to 10 and ClientAuthNotificationThrottle to 60000 (60 seconds), but you can obviously tweak to fit to your unique environment.

Regkey Name	Default	Description
ClientAuthNotificationThrottle	30000	Specifies the required elapsed time before which another balloon notification may be displayed (helps prevent too frequent balloon notifications).
ClientAuthRenewPeriod	60000	Specifies how frequently the hoster process will check if it should renew authentication.
ClientAuthVerifyConnectionPeriod	30000	Specifies how frequently the hoster process will check connectivity to the web application by downloading a tiny icon (anonymous access).
ClientAuthVerifySignedInPeriod	5000	Specifies how frequently the hoster process will check if authentication has been lost (ex: detect if cookies have been deleted or the CRM ticket has expired).
ClientAuthAllowRetries	3	Specifies the number of failed authentication attempts (after this an error will be shown or the client will move to the offline state).

Known issues and related support articles for Outlook client in CRM 4.0

We received this information from Microsoft partner support manager, and we thought we'd pass it along:

1. Outlook hangs during initialization (progress toolbar displays “Loading…” and never finishes)
This must-have fix is likely the most common perf/stability issue out there, especially on Outlook 2007. This fix resolves the issue. A current workaround exists by turning off the To Do bar.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/952724 (not yet published, but fix available from support)

2. With E-mail Auto Promotion Enabled, Outlook may not close cleanly/properly.
This fix addresses a memory allocation issue that can occur somewhat unpredictably. If your users are using e-mail auto promotion, I encourage you to deploy this hotfix.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/948121

3. Contacts with birthdays earlier than 1/1/1970 causes Outlook to crash
This was caused by an API change by one of our dependencies.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/948045

4. Hoster process can crash on startup of CRM for Outlook with Offline Access (Laptop Client)
This fix addresses a memory allocation issue that occurs rarely, but worth checking out if your hoster process inexplicably crashes.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/951884

5. Items in Shared Calendars will report Sync Issues
We do not support Shared Calendars in CRM 4.0, we encountered a couple of cases where some code was getting executed against a shared calendar and causing problems.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/949086

6. Appointment attendees do not resolve properly
This problem occurs when you set to option to only “Match against contacts synchronized to Microsoft Dynamics CRM.”
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/949141

7. Unable to Go Offline with a MUI pack installed
This fix resolves a parsing error that occasionally appears in the Go Offline process, causing a failure.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/951179

8. Changing CRM website port after re-configuring IIS
We’ve encountered some customers who have made changes to the CRM IIS configuration after installation (such as adding host headers) and then had trouble with configuring clients. This is because certain config values are stored during setup which become invalidated after these IIS changes. The KB article below talks to this issue.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/947423/

When does support end for Microsoft CRM 3.0?

I was on a conference call today and the customer asked me a question I didn't know the answer to off the top of my head: "When does Microsoft stop supporting Microsoft CRM 3.0"? After the call, I looked up the published support lifecycle for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0:

• Product release date: 12/1/2005
• Mainstream support retired: 4/12/2011
• Extended support retired: 4/12/2016

This is interesting because the total support duration for Microsoft Dynamics CRM is more than 10 years! In the past, Microsoft offered a three-year Mainstream Support Lifecycle policy but they obviously changed that policy to offer longer windows of support. Consequently, customers can invest in the Dynamics CRM platform without worrying about being forced to upgrade on their vendor's timetable. Microsoft allows plenty of time for customers to make the upgrade decision when it is right for them.

We'd like to thank the Academy...

In the past week, Sonoma Partners received two great awards:

• Microsoft awarded Sonoma Partners as one of three finalists for the Global Microsoft Dynamics CRM Partner of the Year. We won this award twice before (in both 2005 and 2003), and it's a great honor for us to receive this type of recognition again. More than 2,000 companies applied for this award worldwide, so finishing in the top 3 is amazing.
  
• The National Association for Business Resources recognized Sonoma Partners as one of Chicago’s 101 Best and Brightest Companies to Work For. This award means a lot to us because it indicates we're doing a good job of creating an excellent work environment. Hiring and recruiting people in the information technology industry is VERY competitive, so we know we need to offer a great employment experience because people have lots of options. Like the Microsoft Partner of the Year award, we won this award in the past too...and it's a great feeling to get the nod again!

If you're interested, you can read our official press release describing these awards.

Step by Step book wrapping up

We've been burning the midnight oil to get our Microsoft Dynamics CRM Step by Step book done to hit our deadlines. The book is coming along just fine and I am excited to see the final product in print this fall! Here's what we're planning from a chapter and page count perspective. This is about 95% accurate/finalized, but of course it's subject to change.

Section	Chapter #	Chapter Title	# of Pages
Overview	1	Introduction to Microsoft Dynamics CRM	10
	2	Getting Around in Microsoft Dynamics CRM	15
	3	Working with Account and Contacts	15
	4	Working with Activities and Notes	15
	5	Microsoft Dynamics CRM for Outlook	20
Sales	6	Leads and Opportunities	20
	7	Quotes and Orders	15
Marketing	8	Using Marketing Lists	20
	9	Managing Campaigns and Quick Campaigns	20
	10	Campaign Activities and Responses	20
Service	11	Tracking Service Requests	15
	12	Using the Knowledge Base	15
	13	Contracts & Queues	20
Data Management	14	Duplicate Checking	10
	15	Reports and Views	15
	16	Using the Report Wizard	15
	17	Reporting with Excel	15
	18	Importing Data	15

The one thing that consistently amazes me about these books is that we've written over 1,000 pages of content about Microsoft CRM, and I still feel like we're just scratching the surface in some areas!

Microsoft CRM 4.0 Application series eLearning available

Microsoft recently posted the eLearning material in PartnerSource/CustomerSource for the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Applications series (collection 8913). These sessions are a pretty decent introduction to the core functionality of Microsoft CRM.

Waiting for the Salesforce.com wheels to come off?

About Salesforce.com, Joshua Greenbaum from ZD Net says:

"Which is why I’m here today to revise my forecast of the decline of Salesforce.com: It’s going to take 18 months longer than I had originally thought. In other words, the wheels will start to come off by the end of 2009."

Salesforce.com is far and away our number one competitor, so I hope that Mr. Greenbaum's prediction is on track!

Two default views? How to get back to one

You might come across a scenario where you see that Microsoft CRM lists two different views as the "default" for an entity (as shown in the screenshot below):

Obviously this is not the intended behavior as only one view should be listed the default. Changing the default view and re-publishing the entity with the web interface does not appear to correct this issue. While we're not 100% what causes this scenario, we have figured out a method to fix it.

First you need to export the customizations.xml file for the entity. Then open the customizations file and search for the duplicated defaulted view and change the

<isdefault name="Yes">1</isdefault>

To

<isdefault name="No">0</isdefault>

Note that when you find the view "name" in the customizations.xml file, it is actually at the bottom of the node. This means you will need to scroll up in the file to find the <isdefault> node.

Save, import, publish and you should be all set again.

Two more books about Microsoft Dynamics CRM coming!

Some wiseguy called our office the other day to ask why we have not blogged in a while? Well the answer is pretty simple, we've been running like crazy to try and keep up with all of the demand for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0. In addition, I have personally been trying to devote all of my free writing time to two new projects. These projects are two new books that Microsoft engaged us to write about Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0!

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Step by Step Publish Date Sep. 2008 Target audience: End users of Microsoft CRM who want to learn more about the core sales, marketing and customer service functionality in a  step-by-step fashion.		Programming Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Publish Date Oct. 2008 Target audience: Developers who want to learn the nitty gritty details of writing custom code and extending the Microsoft CRM platform.

As you can imagine, writing two new books is a massive amount of effort...way more than Jim and I could handle by ourselves. Therefore, we recruited some additional Microsoft CRM experts to help write each of these titles. Kara O'Brien and Brendan Landers (both from Sonoma Partners) are helping us with the Step by Step book. Corey O'Brien and Brad Bosak (also both from Sonoma Partners) are writing the Programming title with us. In addition, Phil Richardson from Microsoft graciously agreed to write two chapters in the Programming book.

As you can see from the links above, there aren't a lot of public details about these books yet but we plan to post more information as we get further into the writing process!

Second and Final Notice about your upcoming upgrade to Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online Release

Just received this email today since we are Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online Early Adopter. I thought this might be of interest to others too:

Dear Mike Snyder,

Thank you for your participation in our Early Access Program!  We hope that you are finding our online service for your organization Sonoma Partners to be a flexible and familiar system in helping you develop customer and business relationships.

As the designated administrator for your system, we wanted to provide advance notification on the remaining schedule for our Early Access Program.  In addition, we want to take this opportunity to inform you on the conversion to our production release and to outline your options for becoming a paid subscriber for our web-based system.  

NOTE: This is the second and final notice. Please read carefully as some of the dates have changed slightly from the first notice.

• Program Updates for Production Service Conversion
• Advanced Schedule of Activities
• Entering a Billing Agreement with Microsoft Corporation
• Accessing your Technical Support Benefits
• Terminating your Early Access Subscription

Program Updates for Production Service Conversion:

As we ready our new service for general market availability, we wanted to take a moment to inform you of an important update.  Upon the migration from Early Access to our Production Service, our service will be renamed from Microsoft Dynamics^TM CRM Live to Microsoft Dynamics^TM CRM Online.    This rename reflects new naming conventions chartered by Microsoft when referring to web-based business services for small business, mid-market and large enterprise organizations.    

Upon conversion to your production service database, you will see this new name reflected in product logos and online references within the Application Header, Online Help and Resource Center areas of your application.    

Advanced Schedule of Activities:

Your organization Sonoma Partners is set for migration to the production release of Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online beginning April 14, 2008.  During this time, we will begin automatically migrating your online CRM database to our production version - including all business entity customizations, form customizations, report definitions and transactional data stored within your organization database.  

You will be given one-day advanced notification for the specific date of your migration.  On the day of your conversion, your online system may be temporarily unavailable to allow our automated upgrade process to complete without interference.  To minimize the impact to your business, this will be done during off-peak hours.  We expect this process to be complete and for your business to be back online within a few hours.  

Once your upgrade is complete, we ask that you validate all system customizations, workflow definitions, and business reports to ensure that all changes have migrated successfully. In addition, users of the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Clients (Microsoft Office Outlook, E-Mail Router, and Data Migration Manager) will need to perform an uninstall and reinstall of their client software to leverage these features with their new production account.

Entering a Billing Agreement with Microsoft Corporation:

During the online sign-up process for Microsoft Dynamics CRM Live Early Access, your organization was asked to provide a valid Credit Card payment option to complete your system sign-up.  While this Credit Card was not charged during our Early Access Program, it has been kept on file for your organization.

Beginning May 1, 2008, active Microsoft Dynamics CRM Live subscriptions and user accounts will automatically convert to a paid offering of Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online.  By default, all Early Access subscriptions will be migrated to the following offer:

Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online - Professional - 12 Months

Subscriptions converted to this offering will be charged according to the following schedule:

· A one-time, $79.00* Activation Fee for enabling your online subscription.  This is a flat-fee used for system activation and does not vary based on the number of user licenses applied to your account.  This charge will appear on the Credit Card stored on file for your organization once you are converted to the paid offering.

· After the first month of use of the online system, you will be charged a monthly service fee for all user licenses defined on the system.  Current standard rates for the per user license charge of Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online are as follows:

For organizations located in the United States:

$39.00 USD* per user license per month for Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online Professional

$59.00 USD* per user license per month for Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online Professional Plus

For organizations located in Canada:

$39.00 CAD* per user license per month for Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online Professional

$59.00 CAD* per user license per month for Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online Professional Plus

· For early access customers, user licenses will be calculated based on the number of active users in the system at the time of conversion.  Active users are defined as users that have accepted invitations from the System Administrator to use your Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online application for organization Sonoma Partners.  There is a minimum requirement of five user licenses for Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online.  If your organization has less than five active users, your organization will be assigned five user licenses to meet this minimum.  

· Once monthly billing begins, an early termination fee will apply to your subscription.  If your organization chooses to cancel the subscription or reduce user licenses prior to the end of your commitment term, a fee of $175.00* per user license will be charged to your credit card on file.

*All prices quoted are exclusive of applicable taxes, levies, and duties.

Accessing your Technical Support Benefits

During the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Live Early Access Program, all organizations were given online, e-mail, and telephone access to Technical Support personnel at no cost to your organization.  With the migration to our production service, your technical support benefits are tied to your Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online subscription offering.  Current technical support offerings for Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online subscriptions are listed as follows:

	Professional	Professional Plus
Number of Support Incidents	Unlimited	Unlimited
Support Type	E-mail	Phone or E-mail
Response Time	24 Hours	24 Hours
Online Portal and Knowledge Base	Yes	Yes
Online Training Benefit	Unlimited	Unlimited
Hours of Operation	8am - 8pm CST M-F	8am - 8pm CST M-F

All Early Access participants will be provided free telephone support until May 30, 2008 to assist with conversion-related questions or issues.  To leverage this benefit, you may contact our Technical Support team at 1-877-CRM-CHOICE, and select option 3 for Technical Support.

Terminating your Early Access Subscription

If you wish to cancel your Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online account, please contact our Customer Service team at 1-877-CRM-CHOICE and select Option 2 from the automated teller.  You will have until April 11, 2008 to terminate your subscription and avoid subscription charges. 

We truly appreciate your support and hope that you have found the Early Access Program to be a great way to manage your customer information. We look forward to working with you as you convert to this exciting new product from Microsoft.  

Sincerely,

Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online Team

Sales and Marketing webinar recording posted

This morning we conducted our webinar titled "Improve Sales and Marketing Effectiveness with Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0". If you weren't able to attend, we posted the webinar recording on our website:

Improve Sales and Marketing Effectiveness with Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0
The most effective customer relationship management systems make it easy to capture, store, use and share customer data. If you're like most companies, you want a CRM system that's powerful, yet so simple to use, that you'll wonder how you ever managed to successfully market and sell without it.
Join Mike Snyder, principal of Sonoma Partners and co-author of Working with Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0, for a webinar presentation of the sales and marketing functionality within Microsoft CRM, including:

• Tracking and viewing customer information and account activity
• Creating timely forecasts and accurate reports
• Working seamlessly with Microsoft Outlook, Excel and Word
• Developing and managing marketing campaigns
• Email distribution tools using ExactTarget

Original Event Date: Thursday March 20, 2008
Duration: 55 minutes
View recording now

Here's a list of the questions that were asked (and answered) during the webinar...check out the recording for our answers.

Asked: Can you have the system automatically start the sales process workflow?

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Asked: What kind of hourly email send rate can ExactTarget produce?

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Asked: When emails are tracked in CRM, do they have to have the numeric code that shows up by default? I don't want recipients to see the CRM number, looks hokey.

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Asked: What kind of hourly email send rate can ExactTarget produce?

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Asked: Does the new email mail merge functuion support images?

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Asked: my company has the IT platform that fits microsoft products, but my partner business uses a lotus notes environment. they most likely will need salesforce.com as their tool. does MS CRM 4.0 have an interface to integrate forecast reporting?

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Asked: Where/how can we contact you/your firm to demo CRM Live?

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Asked: 1-to-1 email marketing possible? i.e. customized documents attaching

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Asked: Can you point us to some good resources for building a "CRM culture" in an environment that's never had CRM, and anything you recommend from Microsoft for the implementation process (needs analysis, configuration tips, user training)?

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Asked: Do you have contact info for ExactTarget?

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Asked: Thank you so much. I wish we'd worked with you instead of another provider!

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Asked: Thank you!! Great presentation

Using the Native CRM 4.0 Import for Lookup and Picklist Values

I have recently been asked if you could use the native Tools-Import functionality of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 when importing records with lookup and picklist values. My answer was "of course", as I use it all the time with our production CRM system internally.

However, I never really thought about what I was doing, since it just happen to work for me the first time. I suspect that one of the reasons for my apparent success was that I started by exporting from a view (or advanced find) and used that as my data source template, which CRM in turn used an automatic data map for me. I decided to do some quick research and detail my findings in hopes that it is useful for others trying this.

Here are some key things to consider when importing with the native Import functionality:

1. You need to have CRM automatically map the data map for your import. To do this, ensure your import columns match EXACTLY the attribute display name. The easiest way to do this is to export from a view or advanced find. Ensure the related records or picklist values exist in the system prior to import.
2. You can use the display value or the actual value of the lookup or picklist record. For lookup relationships, the display name will be the primary attribute and the record GUID will be its value. For picklist attributes, the display name will be the name shown to users and its value will be an integer.
3. Ensure you have all required fields in your source data file.
4. Save your source data file in the CSV format and then run through the native import process.
5. All records imported through the native Import functionality will be owned by you. If you need the records owned by someone else, you should either use an alternate method of import or simply reassign the records after you get them into the system (manually or with a workflow rule).
6. If your name (for either the lookup or the picklist) has duplicates, the record will not be imported. You will receive an error similar to A duplicate lookup reference was found. You can avoid this by specifying the GUID (record id of the referenced value) or integer (identifier for the picklist value) instead of the name. Keep in mind that only the record with the duplicate name will fail, not the entire import.

Here is a quick example of importing contacts associated to different parent account records. Let's say that the following two accounts, Contoso and Fabrikam, already exist in your Dynamics CRM system. Fabrikam's record id is 072AA102-11F5-DC11-8C5D-0003FF1FCD52. You now want to import the following 5 contact records from Excel to CRM, and each belongs to one of those two accounts. The Excel file is shown below. This file will show you that you can use either the Parent account's name or identifier and the import will still work fine.

Save your file as a CSV file and then back in CRM, click Tools, then Import Data. Select the CSV file and then click Next. Select the record type (contact in this case) and you should see Automatic dynamically listed for the Map. If you do not see this, then one of your columns does not exactly match an attribute for that record type. Go back and correct your source data file.

Finish the import wizard steps, and then from the Workplace click Imports and you can then monitor your import status from here. The next image shows the actual import record. This record tracks your settings from the Import wizard, as well as what records failed or were created successfully.

Once complete, you will now see your new records in the contact grid.

Of course, the native Import functionality wasn't meant to solve all import challenges. When you find that you have stretched its capabilities, consider the free Microsoft Dynamics CRM Data Migration Manager (DMM) tool, a third party tool like Scribe, or write your own import (using the supported CRM API's of course).

Convergence wrap up

I am wrapping up some emails and getting ready to start the week tomorrow. Since I was out of the office all of last week at Convergence, I expect that tomorrow will be busy! Therefore, I want to post my final thoughts tonight on Convergence 2008 (otherwise it might never get done):

• Steve Ballmer keynote: Steve is a great speaker and I think he is one of the most direct and straight forward executives I have heard. When he gives his opinion, it isn't full of "corporate speak" and "marketing fluff" and I really appreciate that. Overall I thought his keynote was interesting but I wish he showed more software demos! On the plus side, the two demos that he did show were both for Microsoft CRM.
• Kirill Tatarinov keynote: This was the first time I heard Kirill speak and I thought he was solid. The demos were for ERP products, but I did think they were pretty interesting.
• Kevin Schofield keynote: I wasn't able to attend this in person because it was on Friday and I had already left. I plan to watch the recorded version in the next few weeks, again hoping for cool demos.
• Sold out sessions: I was very disappointed at the multiple stories I heard about "sold out" sessions where our customers and prospects were not able to attend a breakout session/event. Considering the amount of time and money people invest to attend the conference, I think this is simply in-excusable and I hope that Microsoft corrects this in the future.
• Book launch: We used the Convergence conference to launch our Working With Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 book and it was a great success. On Wednesday, Microsoft gave away approximately 1,500 copies of the book to everyone who attended the Microsoft CRM sessions presented by Brad Wilson (see photo where they put a book on every attendee's chair). In addition, the CRM product team gave away some copies of the book at the Expo trade show. We followed the book giveaways with a Sonoma Partners' celebratory party on Wednesday night, and that event went off perfectly.

• Space shuttle: On Monday night/Tuesday morning there was a space shuttle launch at 2:30am. I thought about attending the launch in person but the late night timing was too much for me to handle. Amazingly, I woke up in my hotel room at that time and I was able to see the shuttle launch from my window on the 11th floor. Unfortunately there was a heavy cloud cover that night so people could only see the shuttle for about 10 seconds before it disappeared into the clouds! I also heard some horror stories about traffic jams on the return trip for those people who attended the launch in person.
• Location: This was my first event in Orlando and overall it wasn't too bad. The weather was good, and I was able to walk back and forth between our hotel and the convention center (this is key!). I still think San Diego was the best Convergence location, but Orlando definitely beat Dallas as a Convergence host city. I learned this weekend that Convergence 2009 will be in New Orleans. Now THAT is a city that knows how to host a convention! I attended the Microsoft Partner conference in New Orleans in 2003 and it was one of my absolute favorite events. Convergence 2009 should be outstanding.
• Logistics: With more than 9,500 people attending from 60+ countries, I can't even imagine how complicated it is to host an event like Convergence. I would say that the event logistics ran pretty smoothly but I did have problems connecting to the WiFi network (too many users) and eating (lunch hall closed at 12:30pm one day!).
• Overall: Convergence is a "must attend" event for anyone who's serious about Microsoft Dynamics, and I had a great time! I spent most of the week meeting with customers, prospects or people from Microsoft so I only attended one session (about Microsoft CRM of course!). The conference does take a toll on you physically as you start around 7:30am and one can can easily go until 1:00am (or later) on almost every night with the various dinners, parties, etc. Do that five days in a row, and you can imagine how I felt on Friday! However Convergence was worth every single dime we invested, and I'm already looking forward to next year's event.

Convergence initial thoughts: Mobile Express for 4.0 coming soon

Today was the Partner day at Convergence 2008, and I wanted to quickly share some Microsoft CRM news. Brad Wilson and Christian Pedersen from the CRM team made the following announcements:

• Microsoft will release an updated version of Microsoft CRM Mobile Express that will be compatible with the 4.0 version. Timing of the release is "very soon".
• Microsoft will release a BizTalk Adapter for CRM 4.0.
• The next release of Microsoft CRM is planned for the second half of calendar 2009. They said we should expect to see new major releases approximately once every two years.
• Microsoft CRM Live will release updates approximately every six months:
  • R1 - Open access coming soon
  • R2 - Online marketing / search word integration
  • R3 - Multiple language support
  • R4 - Timed with the next major release of Microsoft CRM
• All Convergence attendees will get a free 30 day trial of CRM Live.
• Microsoft partners will get a free 12 month subscription to CRM Live for internal use/demos/etc.

That's about all of the CRM news for today, and I'll try to post as more news as we get it this week.

The new 4.0 books are here!

I returned home from work today to find I received a large package from Microsoft. Much to my surprise, I received my author copies of the new Working with Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 book! I flipped through the book and everything looks good, and I am excited to start sharing copies with our customers and prospects. The timing is actually perfect because I have a sales demo tomorrow, and now I can hand our prospect a brand spankin' new copy of the book.

Amazon.com says the book will be published March 10th (next Monday), so it will be available before you know it. And of course if you're attending Convergence next week, you can get a free copy of the book at several different places.

Convergence just a week away, free book giveaway

This time next week, we'll be in sunny Orlando, FL for Convergence. In my opinion, Convergence is a must-attend event for any customer, prospect, vendor or partner serious about Microsoft Dynamics. I've attended Convergence for the past few years and I'm really looking forward to this year's event.

Back at Convergence 2006, Microsoft gave away several thousand copies of our Working with Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 book...hot off the press. I am very glad to report that Microsoft will give away a few thousand copies of our newly released Working with Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 book at Convergence 2008. To my knowledge, this will be the first chance to get a physical copy of the book. We have not seen a finished printed copy of the book ourselves, so we're eager to see them! The books will be given away at the following locations (subject to change without notice):

• CRMGEN The Power of Microsoft Dynamics CRM for Customer Choice   Valencia BC  Wednesday 10:30am
• CRMGENR The Power of Microsoft Dynamics CRM for Customer Choice   Valencia BC Wednesday 3:15pm
• Microsoft Dynamics CRM Kiosk/Tradeshow booth on Thursday and Friday

In addition to the great product learning opportunities (and free books), Convergence offers an unparalleled chance to network and make new contacts. One vendor that we have worked with several times is Upward Momentum, and Chuck Nealis from Upward Momentum will be at Convergence. They recently launched a new product called CRM-XT that allows partners to develop, manage and maintain computer-based-training on behalf of their ERP and CRM customers. Contact Chuck to setup a personalized demo. If you're not a partner, but you'd still like to understand how interactive training can help with your deployment, Chuck and Upward Momentum can help with that too. You can schedule a meeting with him by searching for "upward" in Convergence Connect.

Recording posted for What's New in CRM 4.0 for Administrators webinar

Yesterday we conducted our webinar "What's New in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 for Administrators" webinar and it went very well. There's about 50 minutes of software demo (and some PowerPoint) but it's mostly demo. The last 15 minutes of the recording is the Q&A session which was quite lively with lots of great questions (see below for the list). If you interested in viewing the recording, you can access it here:

What's New in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 for Administrators
Original Event Date: Thursday February 28, 2008
Duration: 70 minutes
View recording now

A lot of the questions we received were actually covered in the January webinar titled "What's New in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 for Users". There is almost no overlap of the material we covered in the two webinars so I would also encourage you to view that webinar as well if time allows!

What's New in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 for Users
Original Event Date: Thursday January 31, 2008
Duration: 50 minutes
View recording now

If you're curious, here's a list of the questions asked during yesterday's event. Tune in to the recording for our answers!

Asked: How does the forms based authentication work with Outlook over the internet (not LAN or VPN connected)?

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Asked: Is the rules deployment process history?

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Asked: 1. Can the multicurrency function be set to pull current exchange rates from any of the many online exchange rate feeds so it's all up to date? 2. Can the auto populate function of the form fields be set to be contextually sensative based on other data in the form (i.e. look only for contacts associated to the account in the open account form)? 3. Does duplicate detection do the detection of similar first names (i.e. Bill vs. William)? 4. What's the name of the On Demand webcast in which new Outlook functions are highlighted in greater detail?

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Asked: Can you use the Import function to import data into Custom attributes? Can you schedule a report to go directly to a printer on a certain schedule?

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Asked: does duplicate detection also fix corresponding duplicates in GP?

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Asked: Will import wizard work with custom entities?

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Asked: Will the service module work similarly with many concurrent users?

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Asked: can you import into the knowledge base

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Asked: What enhancements, if any, have been made to the advanced find functionality? Can we join multiple entities?

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Asked: If we decide to have a license per machine, not per user how many unique users may log in to the same machine

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Asked: We have noticed that you can not configure (out of the box) a M:M relationship between all entities (Activity/Contact). Is this possible to work around?

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Asked: If the account owner changes the screen (add a field) for the record, is that viewable to others that others that have access to that record?

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Asked: Does all of the functionality remain the same for Notes vs Outlook?

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Asked: Can you create lists through queries? Are there any wildcard capabilities in the list view? For example, find all rrecords with "gh" in it?

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Asked: I'm running 3.0 SBS now with 14 users. When I upgrade to 4.0, do I have to go to Professional? Will it work on a SBS?

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Asked: What about the enhanced Advanced Find features. Cant you create more sophisticated reports through Advanced Find now?

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Asked: Do I understand that going offline is no longer necessary if there is any internet connection available when an IFD is configured?

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Asked: Field Security - do they have it in this version?

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Asked: Does all of the functionality remain the same for Notes vs Outlook?

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Asked: Will you have a session to review security roles set up?

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Asked: is there a built-in way to automatically synchronize entities with entities from external systems

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Asked: Has anything been done to show more attributes in an entity hyperlink (case: incident #: title)

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Asked: is there a built-in way to automatically synchronize CRM entities with entities from external systems?

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Asked: Does all of the functionality remain the same for Notes vs Outlook? Would you also expand on security to records, would an individual be able to be added as a 'team member' in bulk to a group of records?

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Asked: Can you use the Import function to import data into Custom attributes? Can you schedule a report to go directly to a printer on a certain schedule? I am sure you went over this in the User presentation, but can you do an advance find can you select "All" the records instead of just the 250 per page?

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Asked: Will sys admin be able to see user-created workflows?

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Asked: Can non-admins do duplicate detection (ie run and set-up the duplicate detection rules)?

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Asked: Can you create join Queries in Advanced find now where the results returned join entities

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Asked: Are we able to share custom/individual Advanced Views? (without having to designate as a system view)

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Asked: Has anything been done to show more attributes in an entity hyperlink (case: incident #: title) from 'regarding' (from a view)

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Asked: Can you publish articles with images in Knowledge Base

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Asked: Can you change the default Organization for a user when you are using CRM enterprise or will it always default to the same one?

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Asked: 1. Do I understand that going offline is no longer necessary if there is any internet connection available when an IFD is configured? 2. Can the Notes associated with a specific record be added as a column to the views in which that record is visible?

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Asked: is there a built-in way to automatically synchronize CRM entities with entities from external systems?

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Asked: How does the Access Mode on the User record selection affect license usage?

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Asked: can views show columns from entities more than one relationship away from the primary entity?

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Asked: Prev question related to Regarding field on view.. it only shows Title. need to see other info (Account, city\state; Case \Incident #). This related primarily to Activitry views., etc.1

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Asked: can views show columns from entities more than one relationship away from the primary entity? (so that views can be used like SQL server views)

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Asked: Haven't looked closely at server spec yet. Does CRM4 require a 64-bit server, or can it run on 32-bit?

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Asked: Mail Merge. Does it include custom fields and entities now? Can I send a letter with the invoice #?

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Asked: can custom entities have e-mail and address fields that work like those in the Contact and Account?

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Asked: What is upgrade path 3.0 to v4

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Asked: can custom entities have e-mail and address fields that work like those in the Contact and Account? What I mean is, the e-mail field in the Contact entity can be used as a To address in an e-mail. Is this functionality available for fields created in custom entities?

Reminder: Webinar tomorrow on What's New in CRM 4.0 for Administrators

Attend this online event and learn about many of the great new features in Microsoft CRM 4.0. I promise it will be light on PowerPoint and heavy on demos of the software in use!

What's New in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 - For Administrators
Event Date: February 28, 2008
Time: 1:30pm Central
Register Now!

What's new in Microsoft CRM 4.0 webinar reminder...tomorrow!

I wanted to post a quick reminder that we're hosting a one hour webinar tomorrow that will highlight some of the great new features in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 (specifically for users). Space is still available, so please register now!

What's New in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 - For Users
Event Date: January 31, 2008
Time: 10:00am Central
Register Now!