Satya's Blog : Dynamics

The Laws of Simplicity

satyanadella — Sun, 04 Mar 2007 21:58:00 GMT

I recently read The Laws of Simplicity by John Maeda . He has a cool web site as well. In the Dynamics group there is a lot of passion around this subject. John’s first rule – REDUCE: Simplicity through thoughtful reduction…strikes me as the most critical,...(read more)

Dynamics CRM - LIVE & Analytics Foundation

satyanadella — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 02:42:00 GMT

Last week we released our early access to Dynamics Live CRM (code name: Titan) to partners.... this is a huge milestone for us. I have been playing around with my Dynamics LIVE account and it’s great to explore some of the things we can enable with the...(read more)

Microsoft Dynamics in the "Live Era"!!

satyanadella — Mon, 06 Nov 2006 14:34:00 GMT

Bill’s keynote at Convergence EMEA is going to focus on two topics – Role Based User Experience advances & Dynamics in the “Live Era”. Role Based user experience advances. We continue to raise the bar when it comes to user experience advances. The...(read more)

Convergence EMEA – NOV 6th-8th 20006, Munich, Germany

satyanadella — Mon, 06 Nov 2006 08:02:00 GMT

Today in Munich the Microsoft Dynamics team will kick off its first Convergence customer conference for the EMEA region. Over 3,200 customers and partners from 75 countries will come together three days of learning and networking. We’ll have keynotes...(read more)

Microsoft Office Accounting 2007 - New Wave of business software for Small Business

satyanadella — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 02:50:00 GMT

New wave of business software for small businesses launches tonight!! Check out www.ideawins.com late Sunday night. Microsoft Office Accounting 2007 Express… is available for free download!! We have three 3 core themes driving our innovation on behalf...(read more)

Office Business Application services & Dynamics

satyanadella — Sun, 11 Jun 2006 10:17:00 GMT

At Tech Ed, Microsoft will announce Office Business Application (OBA) services. This announcement nicely builds on the previous two posts. Think of OBA as the platform support for “business mash-ups” in Office. To date we have been using Sharepoint 2.0...(read more)

MBS @ Tech Ed - Extensibility, Customization and Business Mash-Ups

satyanadella — Sat, 10 Jun 2006 00:08:00 GMT

At TechEd Darren Laybourn & James Utzschneider will be presenting a keynote at the MBS track. As usual lots of demos are planned. There is a new RSS feed demo for Dynamics AX 4.0 using its web services framework (AIF). They will go through how to...(read more)

Dynamics AX 4.0 RTM

satyanadella — Fri, 09 Jun 2006 21:30:00 GMT

We hit Dynamics AX 4.0 RTM today. This has been a year of major Dynamics Wave 1 releases for us (CRM 3.0, GP 9.0). I am super proud of what we achieved in this release. We are delivering on all the Wave 1 themes (new UX, search across structured/un-structured,...(read more)

Economist Survey on New Media and Implications for Dynamics

satyanadella — Tue, 25 Apr 2006 05:44:00 GMT

Finished reading a great survey of the New Media in the Economist . A lot of what it talks about in terms of new kinds of user generated content applies to work we as a community are doing (Dynamics blogs, newsgroups, solutions finder etc). One could...(read more)

Dynamics Customer Model

satyanadella — Wed, 12 Apr 2006 07:53:00 GMT

I just got the new Microsoft Dynamics Customer model poster hung in my office this week. This is more than just another poster for us. It’s been the catalyst for real cultural change throughout the organization driven by the awesome initiative of our UX team.

The customer model is the repository for all information and research regarding processes and people; it is a shared resource that is used to ensure that we are focusing on a common set of people and processes. Our development teams use it for everyday tasks within our product cycle. It’s the common language that helps us with our user experience and features design. It also helps us do prioritization and decide on what features are in or out, because we want to consider the completeness of features for a given “role” and “process”.

The model is powered by an ongoing body of primary research. We have to date done 1400+ interviews and observations of real users including 280 site visits. The model today spans 61 roles, 5 departments, 15 organization charts, and 155 processes that make up 33 business process groups.

One of the more salient points of impact is that it has helped us factor “process” complexity based on size and business need. For example when you design “paying supplier” process in a small organization, Annie (a persona in our customer model) does all the tasks. Whereas when designing the same process for a larger organization, we need to coordinate the process flow across April (AP), Arnie (AR), Phyllis (Accounting Mgr), and Ken (Controller).

We have started to include the customer model in our implementation methodologies and believe that it something that can be extended by the community for any given specific deployment. Our goal would be for each organization using Dynamics to have a “poster” that was a real living model of their people and processes (and this will be something we generate from the software “models” we capture).

CRM Mobile, LINQ, Proclarity

satyanadella — Tue, 04 Apr 2006 04:22:00 GMT

We just hit RTM on CRM 3.0 mobile client. Two cool features – over the air sync support & also much better support for setting up of perimeter/internet facing topologies. Looking forward to seeing the feedback on this release. We need to plan for the next steps on what we do here and also in general our mobility investments across CRM and ERP and will be nice to get feedback on scenarios and also infrastructure support needed.

I got a chance to read up a bunch on LINQ over the weekend. This is something that is close to the heart of what we in Biz Apps care about. X++ has SQL extension built in today and it will be nice to have this in the .Net languages. This coupled with more “models” that reduce total code and also tools not just for professional developers but end users is what we are going after.

Also today Microsoft announced the acquisition of Proclarity , BI analysis and visualization tools. We already exploit SQL BI and also integrate with Business Scorecard Manager and will look to see how can take advantage of Proclarity technology to help with further “guided” BI within our apps.

Dynamics Community

satyanadella — Mon, 27 Mar 2006 22:39:00 GMT

Dynamics Community has content, code and ability to connect with others in the community. Power of Dynamics Community can perhaps be best gauged by how directly it impacts our product features. ~60% of features that ship in Dynamics GP 9.0 were a direct result of feature suggestions from the community newsgroups. Our development teams triage these suggestions on a regular basis and decide on what feature to release to the sandbox, part of SPs or main releases. Through Community Watson, we add the feature suggestions directly into our Product Studio –the mission critical app for all product groups within Microsoft – for tracking from suggestion to feature complete.

Dynamics - "Light -Up" on Vista & Composite Applications - Bill Gates at Convergence

satyanadella — Mon, 27 Mar 2006 09:09:00 GMT

Watch for the Dynamics client demo tomorrow at Convergence. It’s an immersive roles based user experience that shows how we adapt Windows Vista & Office 2007 UX concepts to Dynamics. You will see how “stacks” from Vista can help give you visual cues on how to prioritize work. “Ribbons”, from Office 2007, help with command presentation. And the “breadcrumb bar” from Vista will help you traverse back the application path that you take. The coolest part will be Dynamics “light-up” on Vista. We will show the power of Windows Presentation Framework (WPF) controls on Vista as part of Dynamics user experience. Also we will "mashup" Windows Live local as as part of the user experience. The key takeaway is that these user experiences can be customized for specific verticals and roles by our partners & customers.

Also we will show our first composite app where we automate the process of on-boarding a new vendor into your ERP system. The app was built using Windows Workflow Foundation (WWF) on SharePoint and integrates with Dynamics AX logic/data using its web service interfaces. What I really like about the scenario is the fact that an end user can add ad-hoc workflows on top of what a VAR/IT provides you, using the native capabilities of SharePoint in Office 2007. This proves the point that, for all the process standards out there, there will always be un-planned and personalized extensions.

One announcement to watch for is our connectors for Dynamics CRM. We have several internal projects within Microsoft, where teams are using Dynamics CRM to surround Siebel to benefit from our middle tier that is easier to extend and a user experience that is native in Outlook and a natural part of their work!! We are going to release sample code between now and WPC (July 06 in Boston) that builds on the great work that BizTalk team has done around connectors to enable the integration of core entities between Dynamics CRM and legacy CRM systems from SAP and Siebel.

Dynamics CRM - Hosted Service

satyanadella — Sat, 25 Mar 2006 19:22:00 GMT

Hosted Dynamics CRM at Convergence. http://demo.hostedmscrm.com

A partner of ours – Streamline Solutions - has deployed CRM as a hosted service for attendees of Convergence to play around with. You can login as your favorite role and full immersive experience for the CRM client!!

We have several partners also doing “vertical” deployments of Dynamics CRM as a hosted service. The CRM team at Convergence will be talking a lot about this.

This is soooo cool…… a taste of things to come!!

Dynamics - 15 Demos in 20 mins and 3 Major relesaes in 12 months!!

satyanadella — Sat, 25 Mar 2006 07:56:00 GMT

At today’s Partner Day at Convergence, I got a chance to do 15 demos in 20 min as part of the opening Keynote with Tami Reller !! Thanks Graham Sheldon & Darren Laybourn for staying up all night getting the VPCs all staged. Next time we will remember...(read more)