At the end of March I’m flying out to the Sahara Desert to compete in the Marathons des Sables ‘The Toughest Footrace on Earth’ (http://www.saharamarathon.co.uk/about.html) Whilst I’m not looking forward to 151 miles carrying my provisions on my back, it’s in aid of a worthy cause – ShelterBox – who have kept thousands of families alive all around the world in times of disaster.
My JustGiving page has just been posted here: http://www.justgiving.com/michaelmcclary
Blogs, frogs and dogs - 3 things that I spend too much time looking at
Michael Lu has put together a great screencast (7m 33s) showing how to set-up the Dynamics CRM 4 E-mail Router with Gmail's POP3 service.
Check it out here:
http://video.mikelu.org/emailrouterpop3/emailrouterpop3.html
To be honest, it's about time I did one of my own - all most suggestions welcome.
As ever, Simon has done a great job of highlighting that the software is downloadable and some information about the license keys.
As of last week, the English, German and Spanish x86 bits are on MSDN Premium Downloads:
Unleash the hounds!
According to Michael Lu we shipped CRM 4 RTM on Friday - great job by all of the guys on the team. There'll be a short wait to get the bits on media and MSDN but expect to see some great solutions coming out shortly, all built on the Titan platform.
Yes, I know that the NDA lifted on Monday and I'm later than some people, but don't worry, I'll catch up eventually.
So one thing is that we are running a 3-day CRM 4.0 Developer Training Course in London starting on Monday 29th October. What's the catch? Well, you need to be a UK ISV on our Early Adopter programme...but if you are then you can attend a great 3 days in London and learn the latest about building applications on CRM 4.0, including...
- Configuration
- Relationships
- Application SDK
- Server-side SDK
- Workflow
- Off-line capabilities
- Reporting
- Analytics / BI
- and more...
Not that I would of course (internal chip kicking in there)
I would build an application platform which gave the following:
- Easy customisation so ISVs could verticalise an application quickly and simply
- No weird tools, just familiar MS-type stuff and a nice Web UI to do the normal things (create and customise Workflow Foundation workflows, customise entities, create 1:n, m:n relationships, that kind of thing). Actually, if you want to create and customise workflows using Visual Studio I'll throw a few extra helper tools in as well.
- Multi-tenancy, multi-lingual, multi-currency.
- Multi-coloured, multi-pack, multitudinous (great word, not as good as 'thrashing' but still good)
- An Asynchronous Services cluster to run Workflow Foundation components and asynchronous plug-ins
- A simple, open and dynamic Web Services API, very important in this modern day of the interweb and computers connected by wires and things
- A very nice web UI-based Report Wizard that even Basil could use
- Off-line cached SSRS reports out of the box, yes, they'd like that
- In fact, while I'm there, off-line web service exposure, off-line data synchronisation and, what the hell, off-line .NET plug-ins
And a few more things that'll come to me.
No-one will think of this - I'm off while it's still fresh
So this post is a bit late, but on the 13th I spoke at the OBA Architect Forum at our offices in London.
The principal reason (apart from helping out with a lot of OBA stuff this coming year) was that we have some great business applications with great hooks; easy web service interfaces, .NET Business Connector, SQL Analysis Services cube generation and processing.
The principle of OBA is great - take a look at www.obacentral.com for all of the material people have been submitting. Unfortunately I see a lot of demonstrations which talk a good game but don't actually use a business application on the back-end. I focus on two applications here at Microsoft; Dynamics AX and Dynamics CRM - the new 'Titan' release is imminent and I'll be blogging features in my next post. If you're a UK ISV interested in building great OBA architectures on real business data then we're interested in talking to you.
Postings from colleagues:
Matt Deacon (including post-event decks)
David Gristwood
Darren Strange
I get a good feeling from going to our new London office, OK they're a bit modern and swanky, especially the customer centre, but my principal reason is the journey...
Instructions:
- Get to London Paddington
- Walk through Hyde Park
- As the joggers go past, feel a pang of guilt that you're not going out running as much as you should
- Take pictures of the lake, the park and various wildlife
- Don't take too much notice of directions and vary your route :-)
Currently the time varies between 35 and 60 minutes (see note on route above).
The service pack is now available for download from Partner Source and Customer Source. See the download page for a fix list and other information.
PartnerSource - https://mbs.microsoft.com/partnersource/downloads/servicepack/DynamicsAX40sp2.htm
CustomerSource - https://mbs.microsoft.com/customersource/downloads/servicepacks/DynamicsAX40sp2.htm
ISVs working with Dynamics should definitely take a look at the new Dynamics collateral on MSDN here.
Check out this link to find out where to download Ben Riga's presentation from Mix'07.
In it, he presents with Jason Hunt of Invoke Systems about Microsoft Dynamics CRM's capability as an application platform. There are also two examples of great CRM applications from Jason; a live Pet Insurance application which was built to use Microsoft CRM as an application platform from the ground up and also a great Citizen Relationship Management application for Local Government showing the power of CRM customisation including a portal and Virtual Earth integration.
If you are:
- Wondering whether to build your application using Microsoft CRM as an application platform
- Evaluating the features and customisation of Microsoft CRM
- Looking for some hints as to the next version of Microsoft CRM 'Titan'
then please download and view the video. If you have any questions then please e-mail me
We've had a great response to the Titan Ascend programme and, having run a successful 3-day developer workshop on the great new features, we still have spaces left on a second run, at Microsoft TVP (Reading) May 30th - June 1st. These places are only available to ISVs on the Ascend programme, so...if you want to build your vertical or horizontal solution on Microsoft CRM and are a Gold Certified Partner then e-mail me for more details.
Check out this link for a post-Convergence chat and demonstration of Microsoft-hosted CRM Live.