Today I’m proud to announce the availability of beta version of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 UR9 or Q2 2012 Service Update or “R8”. Call it what you want but it is here! The beta release only includes on-premises version of the next release of CRM. This release includes support for multiple browser types and many other great features that you can find in the Release Preview Guide.
This beta release is primarily targeted at developers and partners. We want you to make sure your solution and custom code works as you expect with the upcoming release. Please be sure to ready yourself, your peers and solutions for the release coming up in just a few short weeks.
Again we’d like to emphasize that the beta release is for test purposes only, and not for production usage. There is no migration path from the beta to the final release, so please plan accordingly and use appropriate test environments. There are elements of upcoming release that are not included in the beta, for example Mobility or CRMOnline specific features are not offered as part of the beta but will be available in the final release.
The bits are available on Microsoft Connect site. Please follow the steps below to get access.
Post all questions on the Connect discussion group linked above in step #4. If you are having trouble accessing the connect links above, please send an email to crmtapbeta@microsoft.com.
Microsoft is bringing new capabilities faster than ever to our cloud offerings including SharePoint Online and CRM Online. Case in point is the Business Connectivity Services (BCS) that was introduced in SharePoint Online last fall as part of the recent service update. The biggest ask I’ve had since the service update was examples of surfacing CRM Online data within SharePoint Online through BCS.
Having worked with BCS in SharePoint 2010 along with CRM Online, I chatted with the BCS experts at Lightning Tools to pick their brain on this topic. Nick Swan from Lightning Tools was really excited about building a connector to integrate the two cloud platforms. Nick also published a blog post which has a detailed walkthrough on setting up basic integration between SharePoint Online and CRM Online through BCS. You can check out the post here: http://www.lightningtools.com/blog/archive/2012/02/20/crm-2011-online-and-sharepoint-2010-integration-through-business-connectivity.aspx
It is a great sample for the community to get started on this topic and Nick also addresses some of the popular questions and concerns you might have. If you are looking for a full-fledged integration solution, please reach out to Nick directly by emailing him at nick@lightningtools.com.
Happy SharePointing!
Happy New Year! Over the holidays, a book I co-authored with my former colleagues at evangelism group was published by Wrox : Professional SharePoint 2010 Cloud-Based Solutions (Wrox Programmer to Programmer).
This is my first book and the whole experience was pretty daunting, humbling yet really fun! Seeing one’s name on the bookshelf is truly rewarding and I’d encourage everyone to try it at least once in your lifetime.
With CRM systems being a major workload in the cloud, the book has a chapter on managing customer information in SharePoint Online using CRM Online as the backend (of course)!
<Cross posting from donovanf’s blog>
Steve Fox was the driver behind this and it was a great opportunity to team up with him and my other colleagues Paul Stubbs and Donovan Follette to write this book.
Professional SharePoint 2010 Cloud-Based Solutions is primarily for IT Pros, SharePoint Developers and enthusiasts who want to better understand how to leverage the cloud in/from their SharePoint solutions/installations. Each chapter is designed to expose some form of integration with SharePoint and the cloud. This includes Web 2.0 technologies, Windows Azure, CRM Online and other cloud-based services.
What I believe is most helpful in the book, is that each chapter provides a conceptual overview of the technologies used in building cloud-based solutions. It then provides a high-level architecture for a solution and then lays out the practical step-by-step instructions to walk through a sample concept-to-practical solution. Our intent for the book is not to just talk about what you might do, but to describe the concepts and then show you how to do a small project and get you rolling.
Thanks again to Steve, Paul and Donovan for the opportunity to work with you on this.
As promised, here are the slides from my webcast earlier today on “Technical Overview of CRM 2011 R7“. You can also access the recording of the webcast on XRMVirtual.com here: http://www.xrmvirtual.com/events/tech_over_R7_CRM2011
I’m returning back to Dynamics CRM world after a small hiatus! I joined our Dynamics CRM group as a Technical Product Manager last month. Even though I’ll be working with most people I already knew and same set of technologies, every job change at Microsoft is challenging. That’s not bad though, since the constant change and new challenges are essential parts of being at Microsoft and is actually quite fun.
For those that aren’t very familiar with me, I was a Technical Evangelist in the DPE group for the past 4 years evangelizing Dynamics CRM, SharePoint, and the Microsoft platform to our developers and ISV partners. In that role, I had the opportunity to create vast amount of technical content, demos, present at various conferences world-wide and most importantly blog about all of those great things.
Though my new role is slightly different from my previous one, I’ll continue to evangelize Dynamics CRM and other great Microsoft technologies, so stay tuned for more blog posts!
As promised, below are the slides and links to demos from the “Extending SharePoint 2010 with HTML5 and JavaScript” talk that I gave at the SharePoint Saturday Conference in DC.
Slides
Demos
“SharePoint Saturday - The Conference” is coming up next week in the DC area and I’ll be there presenting a few sessions and we’re also hosting an amazing workshop that you don’t want to miss. First off here are some details about the conference
When: Thursday, August 11 – Saturday, August 13, 2011 8 am – 6 pm Where: Northern Virginia Community College, Annandale Campus, Annandale, VA Website: http://www.spstc.org
As part of the conference, we’ll be holding a one-day workshop on August 11th covering one of my favorite topic - SharePoint & Windows Azure Integration. You can register for the workshop here: http://calendar.activedatax.com/spsdc/EventRegistration.aspx?Rid=2778&Iid=9535&Frm and there is no additional cost for the workshop.
This action packed workshop will include presentations, demos and hands-on lab content walking through various aspects of integrating SharePoint 2010 and Windows Azure together. Please bring your laptop for this workshop to run through various hands-on lab materials. We’ll provide you credentials for a remote virtual machine to run thru the labs. You’ll also receive a free Windows Azure account (no credit card required) to help you develop Windows Azure applications while at the workshop.
Plus few of the early birds attending the workshop will receive a free copy of the book Developing Microsoft SharePoint Applications Using Windows Azure by Steve Fox. Steve himself will be kicking off the workshop, so make sure you get a copy of the book signed by him if you can!
My team will be delivering three sessions at the conference besides the workshop.
The conference is a community event with over 280 sessions from over 190 speakers that are world renowned SharePoint experts and executives covering a wide range of technical and business topics.
Don’t miss this great learning opportunity and make sure you register now. I look forward to seeing you in DC!
This week we released the July version of the SharePoint 2010 and Windows Azure Training Kit. If you haven’t looked at this kit before, it is a training course for developers to ramp up on different ways to integrate SharePoint and Windows Azure.
You can view the online MSDN version of the training course here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/SPAzureTrainingCourse You can also download an offline version of the kit which allows you to store the hands-on labs and presentations on your local computer: http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9762346
SharePoint 2010 provides many ways to integrate with Windows Azure. From simple SQL Azure data-centric applications to complex workflow that leverages custom Azure services, there is great potential to integrate these two growing technologies. The kit contains twelve modules that include PowerPoint decks, hands-on labs and source code that shows how the SharePoint 2010 platform and Windows Azure platform can work together.
This course is intended for developers and architects who are interested in understanding how SharePoint 2010 and Windows Azure can leverage each other. Knowledge of SharePoint 2010 development or Windows Azure is helpful but not required. Familiarity with general .NET development along with web technologies such as HTML, JavaScript and Web Services is recommended.
If you’ve downloaded a previous version of this kit, new in the July 2011 release are:
Big news in the SharePoint world this week with the release of Office 365 (including SharePoint Online) and the ServicePack1 release for SharePoint 2010. I missed all the action earlier this week as I was out sick but I thought I’d summarize it as a simple reference list for me and I hope this is of use to you as well.
Office 365 is now publicly available in 20 languages and 40 markets around the world at http://www.office365.com. If you’re wondering what Office365 is, it includes SharePoint Online, Exchange Online, Lync Online and Office 2010 Professional Plus that you can subscribe to as a “service” hosted and operated by Microsoft.
If you want to get a good overview of Office365’s capabilities, you *MUST* watch this video. Steve Ballmer officially launched Office365 on July 28th and did a 30-minute presentation for the press. The recording of his presentation along with demos can be found here: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/presskits/office/online/VideoGallery.aspx.
Tip: The built-in Silverlight player gave me some errors while trying to watch the recording. I then opened Windows Media Player and did a File->Open URL and pasted this link: http://cdn-smooth.ms-studiosmedia.com/news/mp4_hq/1006657_MS_OfficeDivision_Ballmer_06282011_HQ.mp4. The video then played flawlessly!
My colleague Chris Mayo has just released the Office 365 Developer Training Course and it is available for free here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/Office365TrainingCourse. You can also checkout the SharePoint Online developer page (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/gg153540.aspx) for more articles and downloads such as whitepapers, SDKs, etc.
Of course if you develop for SharePoint 2010, most of those skills apply for SharePoint Online as well since it is built on the same platform.
Read what others are saying about Office 365 in this collection of selected top news stories -http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/presskits/office/online/topStories.aspx
Two articles that I particularly enjoyed reading were:
My session titled “Integrating Microsoft SharePoint 2010 and Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online” from TechEd North America 2011 was recorded and can be viewed on-demand at the link posted below.
Source code of all my demos in this session is available here: Source Code from my TechEd OSP309 Session.
I also found out that John Anderson from Bamboo Solution has done a great job summarizing my session in his blog here: http://community.bamboosolutions.com/blogs/sharepoint-2010/archive/2011/05/17/teched-integrating-microsoft-sharepoint-2010-and-microsoft-dynamics-crm-online-with-girish-raja.aspx.
BTW channel9 has the recordings of all sessions from TechEd North America 2011 and you can watch/download them here: http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/TechEd/NorthAmerica/2011/. Even if you didn’t attend TechEd, you can watch all the sessions including the keynote, so don’t miss out on your favorite content.
http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/TechEd/NorthAmerica/2011/OSP309
Microsoft has released a Virtual Machine (VM) for CRM 2011 for field and partner consumption. This virtual machine is for demonstration purposes and is pre-loaded with a number of high value scenario demos. It includes CRM 2011, SharePoint, Exchange, Outlook client, SQL Server, and includes xRM scenarios such as portals, facility management, employee management, vendor management scenarios. With the host of tools available within the VM, it can also be used to kick start your CRM 2011 development if you’d like to build apps for CRM 2011.
You can download the virtual machine from PartnerSource here: https://mbs.microsoft.com/partnersource/deployment/methodology/vpc/MSD_CRM2011VirtualMachine.htm
If the standard one doesn’t fit your needs, you can always build your own custom CRM 2011 VM.
Below you'll find the source code for various demos I used during my OSP309 session at TechEd NA 2011.
These source code projects are provided as-is and are for temporary reference only without any support. They will be removed shortly and the final versions will be posted on MSDN Code Gallery. The link to the Code Gallery Projects will be available in this blog post as soon as they're published.
TechEd North America is a four day event happening May 16-19, 2011 at the Georgia World Congress Center in Atlanta, Georgia. I’ll be there presenting a couple of sessions and participating in a few more. Below is a detailed list of the sessions that I’ll be presenting. If you are at TechEd and want to chat more about CRM, please feel free to look me up.
Given my interest in SharePoint and Azure, I’m also working on creating some new content for the SharePoint and Azure Development Primer as a pet project. You can expect an updated version of the primer on MS Downloads by TechEd, so stay tuned!
Integrating Microsoft SharePoint 2010 and Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online
Building Cloud Apps Using Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online and Windows Azure Interactive Discussion
Hadley Pettigrew from New Zealand has built a simple yet powerful mapping component for CRM 2011 that integrates with the “Advanced Find” dialog. This allows you to take the results from Advanced Find and plot them in Bing Maps with a click of a button. Checkout the tool at http://crmmapping.codeplex.com/
Hadley has also been blogging the details on how he built it at his new blog here: http://crm-dev.blogspot.com/2011_04_01_archive.html. He has built a number of cool CRM stuff for us recently so be sure to subscribe to the blog.
Convergence is one of my favorite conferences that I’d love to attend. It is a unique event with the blend of technical and business people, high-level & deep-dive content and finally casual & serious game-changing conversations. With over 8000 people attending, the event is very huge but approachable at the same time! If you are attending it, there’ll be lots of people you’ll meet, tons of content to learn and plenty of food and drinks to be had! It’s kind of like what Dilbert refers to below
Yours truly will be there delivering a lots of presentations -
Harnessing Cloud Technologies with Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Bruno Nowak, Girish Raja, Shan McArthur
Developer's Guide to Integrating Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 & Microsoft SharePoint Girish Raja, Steve Fox
Besides the above ones, I’ll also be participating in the user group sessions and presenting in the Managed ISV CTO summit.
At Convergence, you’ll also see the CRM 2011 RTM Developer Hands-on Labs fresh out of the oven. If you have participated in one of the Metro CRM2011 events in the past, it is the same kind of labs updated for CRM 2011 RTM build. Play with them and let me know if you have any comments or feedback.
Do spend time, lots of time at the Expo and talk to a few people around there to get some independent perspectives. Obviously the Microsoft folks will only give you the standard polished answers but fellow attendees at the Expo hall or even in the meal halls might stir up some interesting conversations to solve your problems and help your business. If you are happy, we are happy! Parties are fun and a great way to meet like minded people and I personally have seen many deals and agreements made at these parties than at the actual conference.
Many have written tips and tricks about attending Convergence 2011 and I’ll stop here so that this isn’t another “Guide to Convergence”. If you are attending Convergence, below are few links that you might find useful.
One more thing. There will be plenty more conversations happening in the social world about the conference and you wouldn’t want to get left out, would you? Use the official hash tag: #CONV11 to join the conversation and I hope to see you in Atlanta.
The recent code sample I published on Connecting to CRM Online 2011 Web Services using SOAP Requests Only was well received by many people however a few developers from Europe & Asia mentioned that they were getting (500) Internal Server Error when they were trying out the code. I then realized that CRM 2011 Web Service URLs had a different format in Europe & Asia which helped me to find the culprit.
I signed up for a CRMOnline European trial account and putting the SDK sample under Fiddler inspection revealed that it was a minor change within one of the XML fragments. That’s it, seriously!
<a:Address>urn:crm:dynamics.com</a:Address> to <a:Address>urn:crm4:dynamics.com</a:Address>
Obviously crm4 is used in our European datacenter and crm5 is used in our Asian datacenter so I had to modify the code to use the appropriate URN address.
// Create the URN address of the format urn:crm:dynamics.com. // Replace crm with crm4 for Europe & crm5 for Asia.string URNAddress = "urn:crm:dynamics.com";if (CRMUrl.IndexOf("crm4.dynamics.com") != -1) URNAddress = "urn:crm4:dynamics.com";if (CRMUrl.IndexOf("crm5.dynamics.com") != -1) URNAddress = "urn:crm5:dynamics.com";
You can download the updated code sample here: http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/CRM-Online-2011-WebServices-14913a16
All is well again!
In case you’re wondering what Office Web Apps is, it is Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint & OneNote) running in the cloud. In competitive terms, this is the Microsoft’s free version of Google Docs but only better! As announced recently, Office Web Apps now available worldwide in more than 190 countries.
Office Web Apps has a nice online viewing & editing experience. To get started visit SkyDrive which gives you a whopping 25GB of online storage. FYI Office Web Apps is also integrated with Hotmail.
You could do a lot of cool things with Office Web Apps like embedding presentations in your blog similar to the below one. So head over to http://skydrive.live.com and enjoy!
Updated: 23rd February 2011 - This webcast was recorded and can be viewed on-demand here: https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/mseventsbmo/view?id=1032473318&role=attend&pw=5149E819. You can view the slides used in this webcast using the PPT Web App at the bottom of this post.
On February 22nd , I’ll be presenting an MSDN webcast titled Integrating SharePoint 2010 and CRM 2011 Online. It is a 300-level webcast for programmers, developers & architects , so I’ll delve deeper into code and architecture. The topic of integrating SharePoint & CRM is something I’ve been presenting for more than an year but every time I deliver this, there is definitely new content available for me to present. This time is no exception as you’ll get a preview of the BCS connector we’re working on and also I’m excited to show a couple more interesting demos.
You can signup for the webcast here: https://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032473318&Culture=en-US Date & Time: Tuesday, February 22nd, 2011 9:00 AM Pacific Time (US & Canada)
Below is the abstract for the webcast. Let me know (by leaving a comment below) if you’d like me to cover anything specific that might be of interest to you.
Microsoft SharePoint and Microsoft Dynamics CRM is a match made in heaven. With Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011, Microsoft provides out-of-box document integration with Microsoft SharePoint 2010, but customers are increasingly looking for ways to integrate these two technologies further. In this developer-focused webcast, we look at how you can bring Microsoft Dynamics CRM data to SharePoint using web parts, Microsoft Business Connectivity Services (BCS), web services, and more. We also demonstrate the BCS adapter for Microsoft Dynamics CRM and an end-to-end online application connecting Microsoft SharePoint Online, Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online, Microsoft Silverlight, and Windows Azure. If you want to understand how to integrate SharePoint and Microsoft Dynamics CRM, then you don't want to miss this webcast.
You can view the slides used in this webcast using the PPT Web App below:
I’m very excited to announce the availability of Dynamics CRM 2011 Developer Training Kit. It’s a great collection of materials that allows .NET developers to learn the development features of Dynamics CRM and helps them build applications using Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 and CRM Online.
Download the training kit here: Dynamics CRM 2011 Developer Training Kit.
The training kit includes various resources such as
Presentations - Presentation decks in PowerPoint (.pptx) format that you can use to learn the concepts. Videos - Video recordings of the presentation along with demos delivered by expert trainers. Hands-on Labs - Hands-on labs with detailed instructions and source code that will walk you through the various development features.
No prior Dynamics CRM experience is required to go through this training kit. Familiarity with the .NET Framework, Microsoft Visual C#, Microsoft JScript, Microsoft SQL Server and general Web development is recommended.
What topics does this kit cover?
What’s Next?
We look forward to seeing your apps on the Dynamics Marketplace.
Updated 22nd March 2011: The sample has been modified to support CRM Online accounts in Europe & Asia. For more details regarding the fix, please see:http://blogs.msdn.com/b/girishr/archive/2011/03/22/crm-online-2011-web-services-soap-sample-now-ready-for-emea-amp-asia.aspx
Recently I have had a number of developers asking me about using CRM Online web services from within non.NET applications such as PHP or Flash web apps. Given my heads down approach on .NET these days I ended up putting together a pretty basic sample in C# that shows how to access CRM Online web services using SOAP messages only. This code sample retrieves data from CRM Online using pure SOAP calls only and no additional assemblies to illustrate the underlying SOAP interactions. Couple of ISV partners were able to successfully use this sample and port it over to PHP & Adobe ActionScript, so this stuff apparently works!
The soap messages were based on Fiddler (http://www.fiddler2.com) traffic capture of sample code from the CRM 2011 SDK (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg309408.aspx).
You can download the sample code here: http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/CRM-Online-2011-WebServices-14913a16
At a high-level below is what the code does:
BTW the new MSDN code gallery (beta) is pretty awesome with the ability to browse through the source code without downloading and extracting the zip file. Pretty nice, huh!
In this video, David Yack walks through the process of setting up a all-in-one CRM 2011 Virtual Machine from the ground up. Of course CRMOnline is a great way to build your demos and prototypes however there are scenarios where you’ll need a virtual machine. This is especially true for pro developers who’d find a VM very useful for developing, debugging & testing their code.
Since C9 now uses Smooth Streaming for the default player, it is recommended to watch this video in full screen on a broadband internet connection with good bandwidth. If you’re having trouble viewing this in the embedded player, please download & play the high quality WMV. For web purists (no offense), C9 now offers the video in a HTML5 player (video tag) if you choose so in your C9 user profile!
http://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/girishr/Building-a-CRM-2011-Virtual-Machine
I shared the video with someone smart who also had the patience to write down the steps in a detailed fashion. I’ve posted the notes here as-is with minimal edits and I hope you will find it useful.
Step Outline
Detailed Steps
BTW, below are the links to software downloads referred in the video
Windows Server 2008 R2 http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008/en/us/trial-software.aspx
SQL Server 2008 R2 http://www.microsoft.com/sqlserver/2008/en/us/try-it.aspx
Office 2010 Trial http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/try/
SharePoint 2010 Foundation http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=49c79a8a-4612-4e7d-a0b4-3bb429b46595&displaylang=en
CRM 2011 RC Download http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=c3f82c6f-c123-4e80-b9b2-ee422a16b91d&displaylang=en
Visual Studio 2010 http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/en-us/download
P.S: I know this video was recorded several months ago while Beta build was around but it is still very relevant for everyone. I apologize for not posting this earlier.
In concert with the CRM 2011 Launch last week, we released a whitepaper titled “Comparing xRM Application Framework and Force.com” targeted at developers & ISVs. While the two technologies have many technical similarities, they also have important differences. This paper illustrates why xRM (the framework that underpins CRM) is clearly the superior choice for independent software vendors (ISVs) and enterprises to build business applications.
You can download the whitepaper here http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9759264 and please feel free to distribute it to your customers and partners.
In the paper, we closely examine the three major advantages of xRM that stand out. Instead of feature comparisons we focus on the strategic strengths of our offering that is unmatched.
Today, we launched Dynamics CRM Online (2011 version) worldwide, bringing our cloud-based customer relationship management software (CRM) to businesses outside North America for the first time.
Customers can access Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online in 40 markets and 41 languages and sign up for a free trial at http://crm.dynamics.com. Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online is available today at a promotional price of $34 per user per month for the first 12 months of service to qualified customers that sign up by June 30, 2011.
More than 11,500 customers and 400 partners have already used Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 as part of a beta program, including customers that have switched from competing solutions. Microsoft has been spotlighting those customer stories with its Don’t Get Forced campaign, where customers talk about how they’re benefiting from Microsoft Dynamics CRM. Microsoft is also offering eligible customers up to $200 for each user that makes the switch to Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online between now and June 30, 2011 to use towards services such as migrating data or customizing the solution to meet unique business needs. This offer is available in most markets where Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online is available.
Also don’t forget to tune in for the virtual launch event happening on January 20th (Thursday).
CRM 2011 is almost here. Please mark your calendar and attend the global virtual launch event on Thursday, January 20th, 2011 at 9am PST as Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer introduces Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011. With the launch of Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online 2011 in 40 markets and 41 languages, CRM Online will be more interesting than ever to all our partners and customers.
You can register for the virtual launch event here: http://crm.dynamics.com/2011launch/. There is a developer virtual forum at this launch event and yours truly will be there all day to assist you with your questions.
For developers and partners looking to get started with CRM 2011 please be sure to checkout this whitepaper on
Building Business Applications with Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 A guide to Independent Software Vendors and Developers
This white paper is a helpful guide for ISVs and developers to build line of business applications using Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 and the Microsoft platform. For technical decision makers, it is a valuable resource to understand what the xRM Framework, which underpins Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011, has to offer.
BTW, there are also a number of local launch events happening around the US and if there is one happening in your area, please be sure to register and attend an event.
In this video Dan Bien, Principal Program Manager from the CRM team walks through the list of steps required to list your CRM 2011 App in the Dynamics Marketplace. Most of the steps are for first time partners. Existing Dynamics partners may be able to skip some of the steps that Dan mentions.
We look forward to seeing your application in the Dynamics Marketplace.
Since the video was captured at a high resolution, watching it in High Quality WMV is highly recommended. http://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/girishr/Listing-your-app-in-the-Dynamics-Marketplace