CRM for iPad

Some years ago, CRM entered the mobile world with the release of Mobile Express. We’ve heard from customers about the limitations of this experience, and we’ve worked hard to address their concerns. In our current release, we’ve made a serious commitment to our mobile customers by offering Mobile Safari support.

We’re proud to say users can now access Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online from an iPad.

Let’s look at what we’ve shipped.

• What is the experience?
• Who gets the iPad experience?
• How do I opt in to the iPad experience?
• Which iPad does this work on?
• Which components are supported?
• How have we optimized for iPad?
• Limitations
• How do I go back to my old Mobile Express experience?

What is the experience?

We designed this iPad experience to solve the key Sales scenario of taking a lead from opportunity to close. We optimized the user interface for touch interaction, with work surfaces presented “flat” inline. No more annoying popups!

You can access CRM on the iPad from Mobile Safari without having to install a separate application. You just have to be connected to the internet to access your data.

Who gets the iPad experience?

iPad experience is available ONLY for CRM Online customers and only for orgs that are opted in to the new user experience (to do this, accept the Product update from the settings -> administration page). Sign up via the web browser on a computer, and sign in to your org on the iPad.

How do I opt in to the iPad experience?

There is no separate opt-in for the iPad. As long as you opt into the new experience by installing Product Updates, you can access your org from an iPad.

Which iPad does this work on?

We support this experience on iPad devices which have iOS6.0 and above, with the exception of iPad Mini. We do not redirect to Mobile Express in iPad Mini, nor do we offer this new experience there.

Which components are supported?

The iPad experience supports the following key components

• Dashboards
• Entity grids
• Activity Feeds
• New Forms for these records:
  • Contact
  • Opportunity
  • Lead
  • Account

Dashboards

This is your landing page by default. You set up a default dashboard when you’re logged in from a computer, and it loads that dashboard when you log in.

• Dashboard renders with full capabilities
• Dashboard picker is available to switch between dashboards
• Expand charts to drill down into them
• You cannot create a new dashboard but can switch between already created dashboards

Record Grids

Selecting a record from the sitemap loads the record grids.

• Select the view you want
• Sort columns in the grid

You can view and drill down into charts from record grids.

Clicking the Expand button to maximize the chart—this replaces the double-click on the chart slider.

Sitemap

This is restricted to COLA (Contact, Opportunity, Lead, and Account) records, Dashboards, and What’s New. The sitemap honors permissions on these items, but you can’t customize it.

If you switch to a portrait layout, the sitemap automatically hides. It comes back when you switch to landscape.

You can collapse the sitemap in the landing pages and in the new forms to get more space

You can create a new record by selecting the entity in the sitemap and hitting the “+” button.

Forms

Opening a record or creating a new record will open a new tab.

For the COLA records, we render the new form mode with all the capabilities of the new form experience. Auto-Save will fire just like the web browser as you make changes.

All other records render in Read Optimized mode

To make quick changes in the record from Read Optimized mode, click Edit and Mobile Express loads inline. If we detect scripts in the form, we will load the form in Mobile Express.

Activity Feeds

What’s New is available in the iPad experience as well. You can create a new post, reply to an existing post, or like a post—just as you do in the web browser.

How have we optimized for iPad?

We’ve done a few things to optimize the experience for touch

• We support both portrait and landscape mode
  • Switching between them collapses the left navigation pane automatically
  • You can also manually collapse the sitemap
• Made things easier to tap by increasing the spacing between them
• Flattened more popups, like Delete confirmation, and Lookups
• Removed the ribbon at the top—it took up too much space, and invoked a lot of popups
• Removed the help visor to save space
• Removed the jump bar(A-Z) from grids

Limitations

Here are the restrictions of the iPad experience

• Since we render new forms, Read Optimized forms, and Mobile Express forms, there is no JavaScript support. We detect events, and launch those forms in Mobile Express
• No ribbon actions. Command bar in the forms is the only thing that is available
• No sitemap customizations.
• Yammer integration doesn’t work in iPad. You have to go to the Yammer application to view Yammer posts in an iPad
• We have turned off Pinch & Zoom due to restrictions with our current form layouts.
• Voice Over doesn’t work.
• Lync integration does not work. Lync integration requires Internet Explorer.
• Skype integration works from grids but not in forms.

How do I go back to my old Mobile Express experience?

We understand that this experience targets a particular scenario and if this doesn’t work for you, we have provided an easy way for you to switch to Mobile Express and continue using the experience that you did before this release.

This is our first big step into the mobility world. Look out for more capabilities in our future releases.

Thanks

Anusha Shankar