Microsoft Dynamics CRM UK Blog

What's New In CRM5 (Slight Return)

2009-11-24T16:43:00Z

Naomi's Solar Pumpkin… It has been a full year since we got our first glimpse of CRM5 (the catchy codename for the next version of Microsoft Dynamics CRM) at the Microsoft Professional Developer Conference (PDC) 2008, and a lot has changed since then. Last week at PDC 2009 , Andrew Bybee , Nikhil Hasija , Barry Givens and others from the Microsoft Dynamics CRM product team, presented more cool CRM5 information, and many of the developer and platform features which were just prototypes last year are...(read more)

UK Dynamics CRM Customer Clinic

2009-11-11T00:02:00Z

Desert Rose… I was chatting with Tom Brookes (UK Partner Technology Specialist for Microsoft Dynamics CRM) about his Q&A slot at the upcoming UK CRM User Group meeting on Wednesday 2nd December. I suggested it might be a good idea to extend this by arranging 1:1 meetings where any Microsoft Dynamics CRM customer could come along and discuss anything at all to do with their current CRM system. To my surprise he thought this was a good idea. So I went ahead and booked a couple of rooms (along with...(read more)

Why ISVs Should Build On Microsoft Dynamics

2009-11-10T23:16:00Z

High Landrons… Having just posted details about the Microsoft BizSpark programme for start-up ISVs, I received an email from John O’Donnell (US Dynamics ISV team) to tell me about a series of webinars running between Monday 7th and Friday 11th December. These sessions are designed to help ISVs understand how they can take advantage of Dynamics CRM and Dynamics AX to build compelling solutions. Here’s the content of John’s email Dear Partner Are the costs and time to develop compelling business solutions...(read more)

Have You Heard Of BizSpark?

2009-11-10T15:53:00Z

All England’s Eyes… …No? Me neither until this week. “ BizSpark provides fast and easy access to Microsoft tools and technologies, for their immediate use in design, development, testing, demonstration, and hosted application production and deployment.” What this means is that if you are a start-up or small business who meets certain criteria, then joining the BizSpark programme will enable you to obtain and use Microsoft software at pretty much zero cost. An eligible business must have the following...(read more)

SharePoint 2010 Training Available

2009-11-10T11:13:00Z

Don’t Wake The Lion… As a follow-up to my previous post regarding SharePoint 2010, I just saw that we published more than 20 modules of free-to-access webcasts regarding SharePoint & Office development here: Office 2010 Workshop SharePoint 2010 Developer Enjoy. This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights. Laughing Boy Chestnuts Pre-School...(read more)

UK CRM User Group Meeting - 2nd December 2009

2009-10-28T07:49:00Z

Steppin' Out (Concerto For A Rainy Day)... I can't believe how time has flown these last few months. It seemed like just the other day that Rod Gordon ( Gordon Associates ) was holding the last UK CRM User Group , when in fact it was back in March. Well, an e-mail dropped into my Inbox this week to let me know about the next meeting being held on Wednesday 2nd December between 9.30am and 1pm, here at the Microsoft Campus, Thames Valley Park, Reading RG6 1WG. Sessions Include: Building Dashboard Style...(read more)

SharePoint 2010 Information Now Public

2009-10-20T14:56:00Z

Sláinte Mhath… We took the NDA off SharePoint Server 2010 at the SharePoint Conference 2009 this week. There are some great new capabilities, but my personal favourites are: SQL Server PowerPivot for Excel and SharePoint – Formerly codenamed “Gemini”, this is a powerful new in memory database technology that lets Excel users navigate massive amounts of information without having to create or edit an OLAP cube. Imagine an Excel spreadsheet with 100 million rows of business data, that lets you sort,...(read more)

UKCRM Is Now Tweeting

2009-07-10T12:34:00Z

Not Just For The Dead… Now that Menno has let the cat out of the bag regarding the new Microsoft Dynamics CRM Accelerator for Social Media , I thought I would create my very own twitter account as an extension of my blog for those times when I just don’t have the time or inclination to post at length. It may be that this experiment ends up in the same way as Philip’s experience , but let’s see what happens. You can find me at http://twitter.com/ukcrm . This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties,...(read more)

Gartner & Forrester Analyst Reports

2009-07-04T12:09:00Z

Strange Magic.... As part of my pre-sales work, I inevitably assemble a collection of customer-ready presentations and whitepapers that I can use to help support the business case for Microsoft Dynamics CRM. Analyst reports from the likes of Gartner and Forrester can be very useful when positioning our solution for different functional requirements (e.g. sales force automation or customer service) or market segments (e.g. mid-market or enterprise), but they generally come with a price tag if you...(read more)

Closing An Incident (Case) That Has Open Activities

2009-07-04T00:47:00Z

In The Lap Of The Gods… Every so often I come across a feature in CRM that makes me wonder “why was it designed like that?”. The one that catches me out almost every time I demo is the inability to close or cancel a incident when there are associated open activities. This wouldn’t be so bad except that many of these activities are generated automatically by workflow, so when you cancel these activities manually, workflow processes continue to run and create still more activities. Solving this problem...(read more)

Removing/Hiding CRM Folders In Outlook

2009-06-17T14:32:00Z

Ministry of Lost Souls… A question came up recently from a customer who wanted to use the “Address Book”, “Task/Contact/Calendar Synchronisation” and “Track In CRM” functionality from the CRM Outlook Client, but avoid using the CRM navigation folder and so forcing their staff to use web client. They wanted to know if there was a supported way to hide or remove the whole Outlook Client Navigation. Unfortunately you can’t simply delete the Microsoft Dynamics CRM folder (a Custom MAPI Message Store...(read more)

Testing Both IFD & Windows Authentication

2009-06-17T12:24:00Z

Deep In The Motherlode… As part of my development work I sometimes need to test applications using both IFD and Windows authentication on my Virtual PC demo environment. However, looking through the various blog posts here and here , it seemed that no-one had come up with a solution to be able to run both authentication models side-by-side when the CRM client and CRM server are on the same virtual machine. After a couple of days playing around with various network settings, DNS entries and the IFD...(read more)

Update Rollup 4 for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0

2009-05-08T02:13:00Z

The Glass Prison… I just did a quick scan of the latest downloads from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads and noticed that the CRM team have just released Update Rollup 4 for CRM 4.0 which you can download from here . It’s good to see that we are sticking to the predictable, 8-week, update rollup schedule outlined earlier this year on the CRM product team blog. This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights. Laughing Boy Chestnuts Pre-School...(read more)

Windows 7 & Virtual PC

2009-05-08T00:27:00Z

It’s The End Of The World As We Know It… There’s been a lot of noise this week around the broad availability of Windows 7 Release Candidate (RC) (available for download here ), but the thing that caught my attention was the beta availability of a new version of Virtual PC, specifically designed for Windows 7. Now, you have probably noticed the increased focus here at Microsoft on 64-bit computing, with the Exchange Server team no longer shipping a 32-bit version and many other server products likely...(read more)

Virtual PC 2007 Performance Tweaks

2009-05-07T13:54:00Z

Going For The One… I’ve been head-down working on closing out Q4 CRM deals here in the UK, but wanted to share a couple of tweaks that have made a small improvement to the speed of my demos running on Virtual PC 2007. 1. Prevent your PC from entering a low power state Some laptops will slow down performance of their CPUs and putting them into low power modes resulting in poor Virtual PC performance. Here are instructions on how to maximise CPU utilization to ensure that the laptop doesn't go into...(read more)