Microsoft Dynamics CRM @ Joris Kalz's WebLog : Mobile Express

Lazy Emulator for CRM Mobile Express

Joris Kalz — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 22:02:00 GMT

As promised in my last posting, I want to write about a small demo tool to demo CRM Mobile Express without a need for a real device / emulated device. CRM Mobile Express is a mobile client for Microsoft CRM that offers a lightweight, mobile browser client for viewing and editing data in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0. Now you can manage important Sales, Service and Marketing information from your Windows Mobile, Smartphone and HTML 4.0 compatible devices! You can find more information about our mobile clients here http://blogs.msdn.com/crm/search.aspx?q=Mobile&p=1 or here CRM Mobile Express

So let’s talk about how to demo CRM Mobile Express. Imagine you are demoing Microsoft CRM and there are just a few minutes left and the audience would like to know more about our mobile solutions. Now there are three ways to demo our solutions:

Having a real device in place and hand it out to your audience or instead of that you can show the display of the real device by using a tool called “ActiveSync Remote Display”, which is part of the Windows Mobile Developer Power Toys
Second, instead of a real device you can use a device emulator for a smart phone or even a pocket pc. Just install it in your demo environment: Device Emulator 1.0. This is a standalone version of the Device Emulator that shipped with Visual Studio 2005. You can install this and use to run and showcase device applications.
Third, instead of using a full blown device or emulator, for CRM Mobile Express you can just use a normal browser, because it is a normal html application. But instead of just using the browser, I created a small tool, which looks like a device inside the browser. So I named this tool Lazy Emulator. The trick is, to place a device picture behind the web site. A picture says more than words:

Download the demo files here: Lazy Emulator.

To install just copy the files inside the zip file to your "mobile application" folder on your webserver. To access it use the following URL: http://[CRMMobileServer]/Mobile Application/LazyEmulator.aspx

Hope that helps! Joris

New stuff in the pipeline

Joris Kalz — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 20:59:00 GMT

Right now I am in Seattle and getting all the news about our products. There is so much amazing stuff out there that it blows my mind: MOSS 2007, WCF, WPF, WWF, Vista, Office 2007, Office PerformancePoint, Live Communication Server, Longhorn Server, Titan, the next version of Microsoft CRM etc.

Right know I have some new stuff in my blogging pipeline and as soon I will have the time I will write about the following:

Proposal Management with Office 2007 and VSTO SE. Just look at the video to get an idea of it:
A Lazy Emulator to demo Microsoft CRM Mobile Express. The idea is, to show Microsoft CRM Mobile Express just in a normal browser and put a photo of a mobile device into the background. By doing so, you don't have install the mobile emulator images.
And an updated version of my Multi-Field-Desktop-Search now based on the Windows Vista Sidebar.

By the way, I just had a funny chat with one of our ISV-Partners c360. They are adding great value to Microsoft CRM in several areas. So you definitely should take a look at their solutions. When the sales men presented me their solution, he also wanted to highlight their search solution, which is much better than mine. The funny thing, instead of presenting their solution, I got a presentation about my own solution, which I have added to our international VPC image :-)

Localized ressource file for Microsoft CRM Mobile Express

Joris Kalz — Wed, 01 Nov 2006 18:29:00 GMT

Thanx to the architecture of Microsoft CRM Mobile Express, you can use it with any language version of Microsoft CRM. You just have to localize the provided ressource file. Even if this is good lesson to understand the localization features of ASP.NET, I did it for the German version for you, as Ive promised it in my last webcast. So you just have to copy the attached ressource file into your ressource folder of the Mobile Application.

Would you like to know more about the different options you have to access Microsoft CRM with a mobile device? Just look at the following Webcast: German Webcast about Microsoft CRM Mobile.