Client-side scripting in Microsoft CRM 3.0

In addition to a greatly revamped server programming model, Microsoft CRM 3.0 now offers a strong client-side model to allow developers to tap into the following events:
Form onLoad
Form onSave
Field onChange
By using these three client events to fire custom javascript code on the forms, the customizations possibilities in Microsoft CRM 3.0 expand exponentially. To help illustrate this, Sonoma posted an example of using the form onLoad event to alter field values before the user loads a form.

Source: Sonoma Partners

Microsoft CRM 3.0 Preliminary SDK Released!

Microsoft just publically released a preliminary version of the Microsoft CRM 3.0 SDK!

The Microsoft CRM 3.0 SDK (Software Development Kit) is for developers, system customizers and report writers. There are so many goodies in here including:
Server Programming Guide – A guide for developers writing server side code, custom business logic, integration modules, workflow assemblies and more. This guide provides an architectural overview of Microsoft CRM, the entity model, security model, Web services, and sample code.
Client Programming Guide – A guide for developers customizing the Web client or the Microsoft CRM client for Outlook, including scripting, integration of custom Web pages, and sample code.
Report Writers Guide - A guide for developers writing reports for Microsoft CRM using Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services Report Designer.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM to be RSS enabled

Infoworld reports of Microsoft's demonstration of a link between its CRM package (new brand is Microsoft Dynamics) and RSS at the Microsoft Business Summit in Redmond.

"Think about a CRM application with this role-based approach. A sales person wants to be able to have customized reports around their pipeline. They want to have customized tools and reports and what we've done is because we're putting Web services interfaces on all our of our ERP applications, it's a relatively easy thing for us to put an RSS pipe in front of one of those, so that someone in the sales role can use RSS to subscribe to application events," Utzschneider said.

Microsoft Business Solutions products will be rebranded under the "Dynamics" name

On September 7th, Microsoft announced that their Microsoft Business Solutions products will be rebranded under the "Dynamics" name. Here is the analysis of how the Dynamics rebranding will impact Microsoft CRM:

Microsoft CRM will be rebranded as "Microsoft Dynamics CRM", but the full Dynamics name only needs to be referenced in the first mention. Subsequent product references can be just "Microsoft CRM". This is actually the same as the current branding where the official name is "Microsoft Business Solutions CRM", but everyone simply refers to the name "Microsoft CRM". So this should be no problem whatsoever, and as a bonus CRM can help leverage some of the Dynamics-related brand equity (from print ads, trade shows, etc.).
The Dynamics branding will appear in CRM 3.0 marketing materials, but the product launch should NOT be delayed by the re-branding.
Long term (2008 or later), the ERP products Axapta, Great Plains, Navision and Solomon will consolidate to one ERP product simply named "Microsoft Dynamics". However, Microsoft CRM will continue to be sold separately from the Dynamics ERP product.

Microsoft released Arash's PowerPoint presentation

Microsoft released Arash's PowerPoint presentation from the PDC session, and it's posted here for you to download.

The PowerPoint explains from a high level the Microsoft Word - Microsoft CRM bidirectional integration. The outline of his presentation was:

Microsoft CRM V3.0 overview
Architecture and Extensibility overview
Price proposal management business scenarios
Solution - Customization and schema generation
Solution - Form event programming and object model
Solution - Web Services and Object Model
Solution - .NET assembly code extensions (Callouts & Workflow)
Solution - Office integration Solution - Demo

Again, Arash said that this sample (with the source code) will eventually be released to the MSDN website for public download and usage!!!

Advanced UI Customization for Microsoft CRM

Some really cute tricks how to extend the User Interface (UI) of Microsoft CRM.
Read as PDF document: Advanced_UI_Customization_Microsoft_CRM.pdf

Source: Joris Kalz's WebLog