Thanks to Michael Rich the new VPC Image is now available as a download. In addition there is a great demonstration tool, which helps you to prepare your demo environment and demo data. The VPC image is a one computer setup including Microsoft CRM 4.0 and associated Microsoft Dynamics CRM clients for Microsoft Office Outlook and Microsoft Internet Explorer.

The base language is English and the following language packs are already installed: German, French, Danish and Dutch, However, you can easily add other language packs by downloading them here. Beside the basic infrastructure components the image contains Microsoft Office Professional 2007, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, Microsoft Performance Point Server and Microsoft Office Communication Server to help you to demo the overall Microsoft value proposition.

But please keep in mind: Much more important than just a good demo platform are your skills to prepare and execute a software demo. There is fortunately a good book, which explains the art of demonstrating software in a very impressive way. By using the right demoing methods and by avoiding common pitfalls you can easily improve the quality of your software demonstrations and win more customers.

Learn more about this great book at amazon: Demonstrating to Win!

Best regards from Whistler

In case you haven't noticed: I just stumbled upon the product keys on TechNet. It looks like they are now available.

Via E-Mail from Amy:

The Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 SDK download package has been updated.  Version 4.0.1 includes several important changes: 

• The Plug-in walkthrough in the CHM has been updated to match the readme that is included in the SDK\Walkthroughs folder.
• The Readme file in the SDK\tools\deployworkflowtool folder has been corrected.
• Additional sample code has been added in the Scripting Sample Code topic.
• New content has been added to the URL Addressable Forms topic.

Great posting from Jonas about an update regarding the CRM 4.0 plug-in registration tool. Continue reading: http://blogs.msdn.com/jonasd/archive/2008/01/12/access-denied-when-using-pluginregistration-tool.aspx

Plug-in development and registration is a much more powerfull in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 compared to Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0. The Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 SDK ships with two tools helping you to register your plug-ins. Jonas added a smart improvement, he simple added a new property and once checked default credentionals are used when connection to discovery and crm webservice.

The Microsoft Dynamics CRM Team just announced that ALL of the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 WAVE 1 Languages (English, German, Spanish, French and Dutch) are now released and available for download! This includes both the language version plus the language packs. Wave 2 will be Simplified Chinese, Danish, Finnish, and Italian. The delivery date for all Wave 2 languages is currently scheduled for January 29th. We will continue to trickle out languages as they are available.

Great work!

PS: Some of you asked, if everything is fine with me. Don't worry, this is my last boring-list-of-download-posting, before I will write about using Silverlight to visualize relationships in Microsoft Dynamics CRM.

English

German

Spanish

French

Dutch

Other documentation (English only)

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 SDK

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0: Planning and Deployment Guidance for Service Providers

Examples of how to configure the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 on-premise E-mail Router in different deployment scenarios

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Internet Facing Deployment Scenarios

Direct link:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=nl&FamilyID=50761e58-6040-4cf3-853a-f5ab535f7194

Bill Patterson just announced Microsoft Dynamics CRM Live:
http://blogs.msdn.com/crm/archive/2008/01/09/choice-begins-today.aspx

How frustrating, he is always faster: http://blogs.msdn.com/mscrmfreak/archive/2008/01/07/usted-habla-espa-ol-and-crm.aspx

Direct link:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=es&FamilyID=99cb3a7a-eba9-4de9-b0f1-2ebf11c3d756

The Microsoft Dynamics CRM Team just announced that the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 German language pack is now available for download.

Existing Customer Download
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=99CB3A7A-EBA9-4DE9-B0F1-2EBF11C3D756&displaylang=de

90 day trial version
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=A9C110FD-AAC8-4D2A-B401-7801B1866E82&displaylang=de

Email Router
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=E1358499-3FDB-45B8-ADF0-7585F758277E&displaylang=de

Outlook Client
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=60C4A6CC-59D7-416E-9F44-0AE8FF249768&displaylang=de

Data Migration Wizard
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=6766880A-DA8F-4336-A278-9A5367EB79CA&displaylang=de

Via blogs.msdn.com/crm:

Download the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Trial Versions in either 32 or 64-bit!
Download the Microsoft Dynamics CRM for Outlook (For On-Premise and Hosted Editions) 32 bit!

Download the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Data Migration Manager 32 bit!
Download the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 E-mail Router (On-Premise and Hosted Editions) in either 32 or 64-bit!

Implementation Guid:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=1CEB5E01-DE9F-48C0-8CE2-51633EBF4714&displaylang=en

Congratulations to the whole Microsoft Dynamics CRM development team! Craig Unger (GM Microsoft Dynamics CRM R&D) and Brad Wilson (GM for Microsoft Dynamics CRM Business) just send out the internal note about the sign off and the release of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 – formerly code-named “Titan”. This is a remarkable milestone for our CRM product, and enables us and our partners to deliver a whole new level of value and innovation to our customers. More information in the press release.

What I have seen so far, our development team has done an absolutely outstanding job in this release by delivering a unified code base that supports both on-premise and on-demand deployments. So our customers will be able to make the best decision based on their needs and requirements.

From small businesses to large enterprises, the new release of Microsoft Dynamics CRM offers an excellent user experience and exceptional ease of use and configuration. In addition the underlying platform technology of this new release raises the bar of customization to an undreamed level of flexibility to deliver world-class customer relationship systems for every type of business.

We will have a very fast localization process and in the next few days you will see a detailed plan for all 25 languages and their availability.
 
I am so excited about the new release, so please expect tons of postings on my blog about this release. Thanks again to the whole “Titan” team for delivering such a great product.

*Release to Manufacturing

Totally off topic: I just noticed a new update in the Windows Vista Ultimate Extras section and it seems to be a new content pack for Windows DreamScene, but I am not really sure. Long Zheng, could you please make an official statement?

:-)

Some of you asked me how to use the Wallpaper tool. Unfortunately I did not had much time to write a documentation or simple help file, because I wrote it just as a personal learning experience. Instead of it I created a small Silverlight video, which you can see here. By the way, this helps me to understand the new Microsoft Expression Encoder.

Video (Doubleclick for fullscreen mode)

Some of you would say that this posting was just a poor try to get more visits by using some buzzwords in the title. Yes, it is :-)