Microsoft Dynamics CRM - The Danish blog : Microsoft Dynamics CRM

Better Together: Microsoft CRM and SharePoint

martinhj@microsoft.com — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 13:48:00 GMT

Whatch this live Webinar to learn about Microsoft Dynamics CRM and SharePoint Better together.

What
Organizations around the globe are empowering employees, lowering costs and streamlining processes by using Microsoft CRM, Microsoft SharePoint - or both. This compelling session will demonstrate the accelerated success that businesses are beginning to experience when combining the strengths of these two tools.

Why
Attendees will learn how Microsoft CRM and SharePoint deliver a flexible platform of development tools that can be used to meet 90% of the requirements for virtually any IT project - significantly reducing the costs to develop and maintain custom applications. In addition, you will learn how the search, document management, business intelligence and Web 2.0 capabilities of SharePoint can combine with the activity management, customer tracking, marketing campaign and workflow capabilities of CRM to enhance employee, vendor, distributor, partner and supplier relationships.

When
Today - Thursday, June 18th, 10:15 a.m. - 11:30 a.m. EST

Sign me up!
Visit www.successaccelerators.com to register now.

Enjoy! :-)

Martin Houlberg Jensen
CRM Evangelist
Microsoft Dynamics CRM team

Announcement: Microsoft Dynamics CRM SDK Update V4.0.9

martinhj@microsoft.com — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 09:13:00 GMT

Announcing the new update to the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 SDK. You can download it here or go to it live on MSDN here.

What’s new in this release? Some highlights:

Dependent Picklist Sample - This sample shows how to make the options available in a picklist field dependent on the selected option of another picklist. It supports chaining several picklist fields together. This sample also includes best practices for defining functions in the OnLoad event and reusing them in other form events.
Delete Async Records Sample - This sample shows how to remove completed records from the async table.
KB Article Topics - added topics that describe knowledge base article states, how to create, publish and remove the articles, and how to search for published knowledge base articles in Microsoft Dynamics CRM.
Visual Studio Templates
Updated Visual Studio projects to work for both VS 2005 and VS2008.
Updated support information for plug-in and workflow assembly backwards compatibility.

Enjoy! :-)

Martin Houlberg Jensen
CRM Evangelist
Microsoft Dynamics CRM team

50.000 Concurrent Users on Microsoft Dynamics CRM - New Great Enterprise Benchmark!

martinhj@microsoft.com — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 23:59:00 GMT

We are excited to share with you the results of a new performance and scalability benchmark for Microsoft Dynamics CRM. In working with our partner, Intel, engineers from our two teams were able to greatly expand our enterprise benchmark – more than doubling previous benchmarks and achieve scale of 50,000 concurrent users. In addition, the architecture employed during this test cost less than $35K – or less than $0.70 per user, and incorporated new energy-efficient processors that generate up to 30% less power within an IT or datacenter environment.

By comparison, an October 2008 performance test for Oracle Siebel Release 8.0 scaled to 14,000 users and 1.6 million daily transactions leveraging Sun hardware that cost more than $150,000. Compared to this benchmark, the Microsoft Dynamics CRM scalability test drove 3.5 times more users and almost 2 times more transactions – while reducing hardware costs nearly 80 percent.

New standards
This benchmark sets new CRM industry standards in Number of Users and the Cost-Per-User for large-scale deployments. The results also reinforce Microsoft Dynamics CRM as a smart, cost-effective solution for the largest enterprises.

You can read the full press release on the blog here or at Microsoft PressPass here.

Enjoy! :-)

Martin Houlberg Jensen
CRM Evangelist
Microsoft Dynamics CRM team

Press Release: Microsoft and Intel Demonstrate New Levels of Power, Price and Performance With CRM Scalability Benchmark

martinhj@microsoft.com — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 23:54:00 GMT

Enterprise-class scalability with reduced costs and environmental impact for on-premise and on-demand Microsoft Dynamics CRM deployments.

REDMOND, Wash. — June 3, 2009 — Microsoft and Intel Corporation announced performance results today for Microsoft Dynamics CRM that set new enterprise standards for scalability, cost and environmental sustainability. Through a combination of enterprise-class software and the latest Intel^® Xeon^® processor 5500 series, which can reduce server power consumption by up to 30 percent, Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 scaled to more than 50,000 concurrent users over a high-volume workload — while experiencing subsecond response times.

“Our business strategy is to make CRM technology that is simple, flexible and affordable for companies of all sizes,” said Brad Wilson, general manager of Microsoft Dynamics CRM. “In this benchmark, we’ve proved that Microsoft Dynamics CRM can handle extreme workloads with minimal investment in hardware and a reduced impact to the environment. We’re once again redefining the price-to-value equation in the CRM market, across all deployment models.”

By comparison, an October 2008 performance test for Oracle Siebel Release 8.0[i] scaled to 14,000 users and 1.6 million daily transactions leveraging Sun hardware that cost more than $150,000[ii]. The Microsoft Dynamics CRM benchmark scaled to more than 50,000 users and more than 2.9 million daily transactions — all from hardware that costs less than $35,000[iii], or $0.70 per user. In this comparison, Microsoft Dynamics CRM drove three and a half times more users and almost two times more transactions — while reducing hardware costs nearly 80 percent.

“Intel and Microsoft engineers worked together to optimize Microsoft Dynamics CRM for new Intel^® Xeon^® processor 5500 series-based servers with intelligent server technology capabilities and Intel Solid State Drives (SSDs),” said Boyd Davis, general manager, Intel Server Platforms Group. “This collaboration led to exceptional economic scalability and responsiveness results, which can enable companies of all sizes to deploy enterprise-class business solutions at a fraction of what these kinds of solutions have traditionally cost.”

Detailed performance tests and production runs were completed on Microsoft Windows Server 2008 and Microsoft Windows SQL Server 2008 for 50,000 concurrent users, 5,000 concurrent users, 2,500 concurrent users, and 1,000 concurrent users. For scenarios with casual users or lower transaction rates per user, higher number of users can be accommodated. An executive summary of the performance and scalability benchmark is available by clicking here, and other white papers that outline the results of each test will be published in the coming weeks at http://crm.dynamics.com.

About Microsoft Dynamics

Microsoft Dynamics is a line of adaptable, easy-to-use ERP and CRM applications that enable business decision-makers to run their business efficiently and drive business success. Delivered through a network of channel partners providing specialized services, these integrated, adaptable business management solutions work like and with familiar Microsoft software to streamline processes across an entire business.

About Microsoft

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT”) is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.

[i] Performance and Scalability Benchmark: Siebel CRM Release 8.0, Industry Applications and Oracle 10g R2DB on Sun SPARC Enterprise T5440 Server running the Solaris 10 OS, Oracle Corp., October 2008

[ii] Sun SPARC Enterprise T5440 Server Pricing Estimate as of May 28, 2009, Sun Microsystems, http://shop.sun.com

[iii] Microsoft Dynamics CRM benchmark hardware was priced using http://www.newegg.com on the configuration listed in the executive summary of the performance and scalability benchmark, available here.

Note to editors: If you are interested in viewing additional information on Microsoft, please visit the Microsoft Web page at http://www.microsoft.com/presspass on Microsoft’s corporate information pages. Web links, telephone numbers and titles were correct at time of publication, but may since have changed. For additional assistance, journalists and analysts may contact Microsoft’s Rapid Response Team or other appropriate contacts listed at http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/contactpr.mspx.

Partner support (for Denmark)

martinhj@microsoft.com — Tue, 26 May 2009 10:52:00 GMT

This blog post is for the Danish partners only - or more precisely, the content that it is referring to, is.

Her på bloggen har vi nu samlet kontaktoplysninger fra bl.a. GPSD for dig som partner. Du finder dem på deres helt egen side via linket her og med link nede til højre.

Så har du altid bl.a. email-adresser og telefonnumre lige ved hånden.

Vi ønsker dig fortsat god dag og god fornøjelse med CRM :-)

Enjoy! :-)

Martin Houlberg Jensen
CRM Evangelist
Microsoft Dynamics CRM team

Update Rollup 4 is available for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0

martinhj@microsoft.com — Mon, 11 May 2009 08:37:00 GMT

Microsoft CRM 4.0 Update Rollup 4 has been released and is now available via the download center.

Microsoft Download Center page

Microsoft Knowledge Base Article (KB968176)

The build number of this update rollup package is 4.00.7333.1551.

Update Rollup 5 (UR5) will release on July 2nd.

Enjoy! :-)

Martin Houlberg Jensen
CRM Evangelist
Microsoft Dynamics CRM team

Microsoft Dynamics CRM in the Lead - according to Gartner

martinhj@microsoft.com — Mon, 04 May 2009 10:00:00 GMT

Microsoft Dynamics CRM accelerates for Sales, Marketing and Service Management processes, we all know that. Now, with CCF – Customer Care Framework, Gartner acknowledges this by placing Microsoft Dynamics CRM in the "Leader" quadrant on the April 2009 released Gartner Magic Quadrant for Customer Service Contact Centers.

Gartner says this:

The addition of the Microsoft CCF is a boost to Microsoft Dynamics CRM's capabilities.
The user interface is intuitive and appeals to broad audiences familiar with the look-and-feel of Microsoft's applications.
Microsoft is investing in knowledge solutions, Web self-service, business process capabilities and industry versions, adding to its basic customer service functionality.
The concept of xRM, where the customer is given the tools to create its own brand of CRM solution, is useful to reach a broad audience

Valuable resources
Information on Microsoft.com
The Gartner report
CCF Deployment Guide
CCF Development Guide
Download CCF 2009 including SP1 go to 'Servers' and then 'CCF2009'.

Learn more from your Partner-newsletter in Insights and on PartnerSource.

Enjoy! :-)

Martin Houlberg Jensen
CRM Evangelist
Microsoft Dynamics CRM team

The Power of Choice (4/3) - Lad dine potentielle kunder opleve Microsoft Dynamics CRM - nemt og gratis

martinhj@microsoft.com — Fri, 01 May 2009 10:00:00 GMT

This is the fourth article in the three ( :-) ) part blog post series on The Power of Choice – for partners and customers in Denmark we have released a Click-Try-Buy site, where customers for 30 days can try and get to love Microsoft Dynamics CRM for free! The article is in Danish since it only targets the Danish market.

Microsoft Danmark har frigivet et nyt dansk site for hosted CRM, hvor interesserede nu kan prøve løsningen på dansk GRATIS i 30 dage - se mere på www.microsoft.dk/clicktrybuy.

Interesserede kan bl.a. også læse om CRM og se fire korte film, der stiller skarpt på, hvad CRM kan gøre for dem i lige præcis deres situation - med en rolle i marketing, salg, service eller ledelse.

Hvad kan du bruge dette til som partner?
Du kan med dette site lade dine kunder og emner få succesoplevelser med Microsoft Dynamics CRM ved at prøve det i 30 dage.

Vil de herefter blive ved med at høste udbyttet, kan de direkte på sitet købe CRM fra jer som partner hosted løsning eller traditionelt installeret løsning.

Hvad kan du bruge dette til, hvis du er kunde?
Du kan med dette site få afprøvet mulighederne med Microsoft Dynamics CRM i en periode på 30 dage, hvor du også har gratis adgang til hjælp og vejledning i at optimere din brug af løsningen. Vil du herefter blive ved med at høste udbyttet, kan du direkte på sitet købe fremtidig adgang til løsningen hos en CRM hosting partner. Alternativt kan du naturligvis også implementere CRM som en traditionel løsning, serviceret af IT-afdelingen.

Er du allerede CRM-kunde, kan du med dette site lade en kollega få succesoplevelser med Microsoft Dynamics CRM ved at prøve det eller du kan ’invitere en ven’, som også skal prøve alle fordelene ved Microsoft Dynamics CRM. Blot send linket sammen med en invitation om at opleve styrkerne og effekterne ved CRM!

Se mere om styrkerne og effekterne ved Microsoft Dynamics CRM her.

Hvordan gør du som partner?
Ønsker du at tilmelde dig denne kampagne, så kontakt Martin Houlberg Jensen på martinhj@microsoft.com og hør nærmere om betingelserne.

Hvad siger markedet lige nu?
Ifølge en række analytikere vil der inden for de næste år kunne ses en stigning i danske virksomheders investeringer i CRM løsninger. Vi kan allerede se denne tendens og den er blevet yderligere forstærket af den økonomiske situation, der motiverer virksomheder og organisationer til at stille skarpt på procesoptimering, øget kundeservice og -loyalitet samt omkostningsreduktion samtidig med forretningsudvikling. Dette er essenserne af CRM!

Enjoy! :-)

Martin Houlberg Jensen
CRM Evangelist
Microsoft Dynamics CRM team

News and Actions on Sure Step - for Success in CRM Implementations

martinhj@microsoft.com — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 11:15:00 GMT

Dear partner,

Sure Step is important to secure rapid, solid and effective implementation of the customers CRM application and business changes around CRM processes. This blog post presents you with some important resources for you to secure your business and projects. Use and benefit, power-up and succeed!

Assess your knowledge of Sure Step
Use this free, fast, online assessment to verify how well you know Sure Step. Upon completion of the assessment you will receive a learning plan to help guide you in your efforts to continually enhance your Sure Step implementation skills. Mastering Sure Step enables our partners to minimize risk, improve customer satisfaction, and increase efficiency!

Learn more on PartnerSource here.

Get your success story out
Submit your reference nomination - a customer that is willing to speak with partners and prospect customers and tell how Sure Step and the partner - you - gave them value during the implementation project and secured the basis for a solid and long term CRM solution.

Contact Sure Step Lead for Denmark and Iceland, Thomas Ødum Halse with your great story on how Sure Step helped improve your implementation projects and secured the customer satisfaction on a higher level.

New Sure Step Partner Case Study Now Available
Learn how a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner experienced fast growth in its Microsoft Dynamics CRM practice, found ways to secure all pending business and use resources more effectively, control costs, and increase customer satisfaction. With sound methodology, best practices, guidance, and documentation, the Microsoft Dynamics Sure Step Methodology proved to be a comprehensive business-enabling resource. Since this partner adopted the methodology, it has used Sure Step to scope every implementation project and close a significant volume of new business. Clearly set expectations and careful planning boost customer confidence and help customers realize solution benefits rapidly. And, with Sure Step tools and materials, the partner minimizes the cost and risk of complex projects, streamlines technical training, and gains valuable efficiencies in its resource utilization.

Read the full case study here and consider how you can benefit in similar ways.

For more information, read the announcement on the Sure Step Spring 2009 Release here.

Enjoy! :-)

Martin Houlberg Jensen
CRM Evangelist
Microsoft Dynamics CRM team

Announcement: The Agent Communications Panel for CRM - CRM + OCS + ACP = WOW!

martinhj@microsoft.com — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 09:00:00 GMT

Now you will learn why I in March blogged about UC and OCS. The reason is - besides that UC is great and enables business development and improvement within communication processes - that we have made and now released the glue that binds CRM and OCS together to empower yet another big step for all companies.

The glue is called Agent Communications Panel - ACP. It offers a lot of improvement possibilities including:

make the employees CRM desktop aware of customer in focus and the history, ongoing orders, projects etc. – directly and automatic access all CRM knowledge
by looking up the customer in CRM on incoming phone call the employee will have displayed customer data and saves valuable time plus is fueled with extra valuable knowledge
more effective internal communication on customers, customer cases, projects, pipeline, ongoing tasks and other relation processes
exchange 'customer' above with the contact points in your line of business and repeat all, for instance vendors, patients etc. - xRM!

Example of how ACP looks for the customer care worker.

What is the Agent Communications Panel (ACP)?
ACP is an application add-in to Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 by the Office Communication Services (OCS) team. It combines Microsoft Dynamics CRM and Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2.

What does it do?
It enables contact center and call center agents to manage their communications (make calls, receive calls, conference, and chat) from within their Microsoft Dynamics CRM system.

Technical info
The Agent Communications Panel is an XAML browser application (XBAP). It is published to a Web server and opened from a Web browser.
ACP is released in English and there are no plans to release the ACP in any other languages.
The OCS team has released the technical documentation on the download site.

Get & use
The ACP is a free download and is supported by the OCS team.
To get it and learn more go to the Microsoft download center here.
To read more about UC go here.
To read more about OCS read my blog posts from March 2009.
To read more about CRM go here.

Enjoy! :-)

Martin Houlberg Jensen
CRM Evangelist
Microsoft Dynamics CRM team

Integrating Microsoft Dynamics CRM with Microsoft Dynamics NAV - a CRMUG Roundtable session

martinhj@microsoft.com — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 09:55:00 GMT

Are you using Dynamics NAV along with Dynamics CRM? Then join this roundtable, hosted by NAVUG, to share & listen as other companies discuss their interest as well as experience around Integrating Microsoft CRM with NAV.

The Roundtable will explore the following topics:

What value does integrating CRM & NAV add to my organization?
What are the technical aspects of the integration?
How does Microsoft Sharepoint fit in?
Who has performed the integration & what can they share with me?

Logistics
Date & time: 28th of April 2009 20.30 - 21.30 Danish Timezone and 18.30 - 19.30 Icelandic Timezone.
The session will be hosted via Live Meeting.
For more information on this session and to register go here.
For more information about the "Dynamics CRM User Group" go here.

Thanks to the Dynamics CRM User Group for this initiative.

Enjoy! :-)

Martin Houlberg Jensen
CRM Evangelist
Microsoft Dynamics CRM team

Announcement: The New Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Virtual PC Image Released (April 2009)

martinhj@microsoft.com — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 01:14:00 GMT

We are happy to announce that the brand new CRM 4.0 VPC now is available for download!

Among the content you will find:

The Accelerators for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0
Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 List Web Part
Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 and Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 R2
Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server 2007 and PerformancePoint Server Excel Add-In
and much more cool stuff! :-)

The Virtual Hard Disk (VHD) image will run until August 12th, 2010.

Together with the VPC you will also find demonstration scripts for assistance and inspiration with your demos.

Link to PartnerSource for download

Enjoy! :-)

Martin Houlberg Jensen
CRM Evangelist
Microsoft Dynamics CRM team

Accelerators for Microsoft Dynamics CRM - Business Productivity released!

martinhj@microsoft.com — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 23:09:00 GMT

The next accelerator has been released and renamed:

The Newsfeed Business Productivity Accelerator turns Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 into the hub of business activity, letting users keep up to date on events happening across the organization. The Newsfeed Business Productivity Accelerator drives user adoption by presenting CRM data to users in a way that is appealing and interactive, drawing them into the application and encouraging use.

What is it?
The Newsfeed Business Productivity Accelerator is a single report - a Dashboard - that can be used as-is after it has been uploaded to Microsoft Dynamics CRM.

The newsfeed is largely made up of Microsoft Dynamics CRM Activities so any user creating activities in Microsoft Dynamics CRM will automatically be creating newsfeed items. Additional newsfeed items can be created when different events happen in Microsoft Dynamics CRM. Any user with the permission to create workflow processes can configure new newsfeed items to be added to the dashboard.

NB: Currently this version of the Newsfeed Business Productivity Accelerator will only work with the On-Premise edition of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0.

Get it here: http://www.codeplex.com/crmaccelerators.

Enjoy! :-)

Martin Houlberg Jensen
CRM Evangelist
Microsoft Dynamics CRM team

Invitation to the next CRMClubDeliver day on the 28th of May 2009 in Copenhagen (Hellerup)

martinhj@microsoft.com — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 14:50:00 GMT

Hi CRMClubDeliver

Pre-book this date for the next CRMClubDeliver day. It will have content for all roles within the CRMClubDeliver community and some very interesting sessions.

Look out for a personal invitation together with the agenda by mail - only for registered CRMClubDeliver members.

If you aren't a member yet, check out how to become one here.

Enjoy! :-)

Martin Houlberg Jensen
CRM Evangelist
Microsoft Dynamics CRM team

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Internet Facing Deployment Scenarios

martinhj@microsoft.com — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 19:32:00 GMT

This document from the Microsoft Download Center covers the following Internet-Facing Deployment (IFD) scenarios for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0:

Install Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 through the user interface (UI) setup
Install Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 with a configuration file
Upgrade Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 through the UI setup
Upgrade Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 with a configuration file

This document is intended to cover how to set up the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Web site to make it available from the Internet (not cover the steps that you must complete to make a server available from the Internet).

Download it here

Thanks to Anni Cita from GPSD for this resource.

Enjoy! :-)

Martin Houlberg Jensen
CRM Evangelist
Microsoft Dynamics CRM team