New Generation Cardscan (for Microsoft CRM)

The new sleekly designed scanner benefits from new contemporary styling and an elegant silver finish.

CardScan for CRM will help you and your sales team become more productive, more compliant in using your CRM system, and will help you realize revenue from what would otherwise have been lost opportunities.

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Free Email alerts when Microsoft Publishes (Dynamics CRM) Knowledge Base Articles

kbAlertz.com is an e-mail notification system that scans the entire Microsoft Knowledge Base every night, and e-mails you when updates or additions are made to the technologies you subscribe to.

Select the technologies that you're interested in (Dynamics CRM!) and this great service keeps your system up-to-date.

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Update Roll-up 2 is coming

The Microsoft CRM Sustained Engineering Team plans to release Update Roll-up 2, for all customers using Microsoft CRM v3.0.

This Roll-up will include hotfixes and updates released to date that enhance Microsoft CRM v3.0 usability and performance.

The estimated release dates of this Update Rollup to external test teams (and the public) are:
· Pre-release Test environments: 02-04-2007
· Pre-release Production environments: 19-04-2007
· Public release: 15-05-2007

This Rollup will include packages for CRM v3.0 Server and Sales for Outlook Clients in the following languages:

CSY (Czech)
DAN (Danish)
DEU (German)
ELL (Greek)
ENU (English – United States)
ESN (Spanish)
FIN (Finnish)
FRA (French)
HUN (Hungarian)
ITA (Italian)
NLD (Dutch)
NOR (Norwegian)
PLK (Polish)
PTB (Portuguese-Brazilian)
PTG (Portuguese-Portugal)
RUS (Russian)
SVE (Swedish)
TRK (Turkish)

Update of Optimizing the Performance of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 White Paper

This updated white paper (3.0.2) discusses how to optimize the performance of your Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 system.

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Update of Microsoft CRM 3.0 SDK (3.0.6)

The Microsoft CRM 3.0 SDK is for developers, system customizers and report writers.

Download

New: c360 Email Marketing for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0

The features of c360 Email Marketing are:

- Send high volume, personalized HTML emails as an integral component of Dynamics CRM

- Upload HTML templates created in any design program including Front Page and Dreamweaver

- Use Dynamics Advanced Find to build Marketing Lists to create target audiences.

- High speed delivery using the c360 hosted service

- Easily test Emails prior to sending

- Watch as emails are opened, read and responses made

- At a glance stats to measure campaign success

- Drill down to individual campaign responses

- Customer data enriched directly from the campaign

- Use click-through data to create follow on campaigns

- Automatic Lead generation from campaign responses

- True closed loop eMarketing from within Dynamics CRM

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One of the largest U.S. financial services firms, has selected Microsoft Dynamics™ CRM

Raymond James Financial, Inc., one of the largest U.S. financial services firms, has selected Microsoft Dynamics™ CRM as its software of choice for customer relationship management (CRM).

The St. Petersburg, Fla., company now recommends that its nationwide network of more than 4,600 financial advisors adopt Microsoft Dynamics CRM as its primary customer relationship management tool. Raymond James will initially offer 3,000 Microsoft Dynamics CRM licenses, but expects to increase the number to more than 5,000 in response to demand over the next two or three years.

“In our effort to provide our financial advisors the best tools possible, we are pleased to offer this high-quality management tool as a recommended option,” said Tim Eitel, chief information officer of Raymond James.

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Website CRMLive Updated

The CRMLive website is updated!

Custom HTML for CRM

The following Microsoft Team Tutorial shows a basic technique to use IFrames to incorporate Web pages into CRM forms.

The sample code is at the CRM Sandbox in the downloads section.

1. The first step is to create a new custom entity that we will call HTML_Cell with at least 3 attributes:

Name: The name of the entity; nothing special here.
URL: This field will be auto populated when the form loads; see further steps below. Make sure is long enough to hold a large URL.
HTML(ntext): This field will contain the actual HTML that will be displayed. Note that it will only hold up to 5000 characters; an alternative to overcome this limit is to use multiple ntext fields.
Owner: Comes by default.

Read more on their blog

Microsoft gunning for CRM crown

Microsoft has made a move against some of the biggest names in the customer relationship management (CRM) market by adding web-based services to its Dynamics CRM offering.

Steve Ballmer, chief executive at Microsoft, gave a demonstration of Dynamics Live in a keynote address at the 2007 Microsoft Convergence conference.

The software will be a key component in helping the next version of Dynamics Live to go head-to-head with CRM giants SAP, Oracle and Salesforce.com.

Dynamics Live will be a hybrid that mixes the traditional PC-based software client with a web-based software-as-a-service (SaaS) model.

SAP and Oracle offer similar hybrid products, while Salesforce.com uses SaaS exclusively.
By adding SaaS components to Dynamics Live, Microsoft hopes to combine the customisation of web-based services like Salesforce.com with its current CRM software as well as its other proprietary business apps such as Excel and Outlook.

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Microsoft Dynamics CRM Bolsters Cypress Care’s Rapid Growth

Pharmacy benefits manager Cypress Care Inc. is expanding the IT engine on which it built its fast-growing business with Microsoft Dynamics™ CRM.

The Atlanta-based company is working with Microsoft Gold Certified Partner I.B.I.S. Inc. to convert from its existing Salesforce.com customer relationship management (CRM) solution, synthesize its customer data and business intelligence, and reduce its total cost of ownership (TCO) for CRM technology by more than an estimated $400,000 over the next five years.

Marc Datelle, president of Cypress Care, credits the superior use of business IT as a key to the company’s rapid growth to more than $100 million in annual revenues in less than six years. “The switch to Microsoft Dynamics CRM will expand Cypress Care’s Microsoft software platform, providing the unified technology base needed to accelerate the company’s growth,” Datelle said.

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Project Management and Timesheet Registration Add-on for Dynamics CRM 3.0

@work Management Associates released a complete Project Management Solution with timesheet registration in CRM.

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CWR Mobility's Mobile CRM now available via c360

One of the most exciting Dynamics CRM solutions available, CWR Mobile CRM, is now available via c360, leading provider of add-ons for the Microsoft Dynamics CRM platform.

c360 have become one of the worldwide distributors of CWR Mobile CRM and for them they whitelabeled and branded it to c360 Mobile CRM.

Read more about CWR Mobile CRM

Read more about c360

Upcoming release of Microsoft Dynamics CRM will fuel new choices for customers and new opportunities for partners.

The “Titan” release is specifically designed to open up new opportunities for Microsoft’s global community of value-added resellers, independent software vendors, hosting providers and system integrators, as well as to provide a new platform for on-demand solution partners to plug into.

“Our global partner community has a tremendous depth of business and technical expertise, and plays a key role in delivering successful CRM solutions to our customers,” said Brad Wilson, general manager of Microsoft Dynamics CRM. “With ‘Titan,’ our partners will be able to deliver innovative solutions across on-premise, Live CRM and partner-hosted environments.”

Today, Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 offers a rich service-oriented architecture (SOA) with metadata-driven configuration capabilities, allowing businesses to quickly develop solutions that fit their specific needs. End users can access role-based CRM capabilities that are most relevant to their jobs through Microsoft® Office and Outlook®, through a Web browser, and through a broad range of mobile devices.

With the upcoming “Titan” release, the core platform is extended to offer full multitenancy, a capability that will be leveraged to enable high-volume hosting for the Live CRM service as well as for partner-hosted CRM solutions. The same metadata-driven configuration model is shared by Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 and the “Titan” release, allowing partners and customers to easily build applications in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 today that can be automatically upgraded to “Titan.”

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Only CRM 4.0 E-mail Router (to be released in 2007) can be installed on a computer that is running Exchange 2007

The Microsoft® Dynamics CRM-Exchange E-mail Router (the Router) is a software component that provides an interface between the Microsoft Dynamics CRM system and Microsoft Exchange 2000 Server, Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 or Microsoft Exchange Server 2007.

The recently released update of the E-mail Router provides support for Microsoft Exchange Server 2007, but cannot be installed on a computer that is running Exchange 2007.

Dynamics CRM users with only an Exchange 2007 Server in their network have to wait till the release of 'Titan' (Dynamics CRM 4.0).

If there are also Exchange 2000 or Exchange 2003 computers in your network in combination with Exchange 2007 it is possible to make use of this update .

The Forrester Wave™: Midmarket CRM Suites, Q1 2007

Forrester evaluated leading midmarket customer relationship management (CRM) suites vendors across approximately 490 criteria and found that RightNow Technologies, Oracle, salesforce.com, and Microsoft lead the category.

This year's evaluation marks the first year that the Microsoft Dynamics CRM product emerges as a Leader in a Forrester Wave as well as the first year that Forrester is including an open source offering: SugarCRM's Sugar Enterprise.

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Installing and Configuring Virtual PC Images for demonstrating Microsoft CRM 3

A Video, Instructions, Links and Educational resources for installing and configuring VPC Images containing Microsoft Dynamics CRM for the purposes of demonstrating Microsoft CRMs features and functionality.

This download package is closely tied to the three other download packs (see post before this one) which are designed to teach you how to demonstrate these features and functionality once you've installed the VPC images necessary to do so.

Download

Video, Resources and Education regarding demonstrating Microsoft CRM

Demonstrating Microsoft CRM 3 to Sales Professionals

This set of videos and supporting materials is intended to give pre-sales techical indiividuals the tools necessary to give a good, quick demo of the Sales functionality of Microsoft CRM in a first-sales call situation.

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Demonstrating Microsoft CRM 3 to Service Professionals

This set of videos and supporting materials is intended to give pre-sales techical indiividuals the tools necessary to give a good, quick demo of the Service functionality of Microsoft CRM in a first-sales call situation.

Download

Demonstrating Microsoft CRM 3 to Marketing Professionals

This set of videos and supporting materials is intended to give pre-sales techical indiividuals the tools necessary to give a good, quick demo of the Marketing functionality of Microsoft CRM in a first-sales call situation.

Download

Dynamics CRM 3.0 Time Zone Data Updates and Dynamics CRM 3.0 Update Time Zones Wizard

Beginning in 2007, Daylight Saving Time (DST) will be extended in the United States. DST will start on March 11, 2007, which is three weeks earlier than usual, and it will end on November 4, 2007, which is one week later than usual. This results in a new DST period that is four weeks longer than in previous years. Unless certain updates are applied to your computer, the time zone settings for your computer's system clock may be incorrect during this four-week period.

How the DST Change Affects Microsoft Dynamics CRM:

After the operating system has been updated with new time zone definitions, the updates and wizard synchronize Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 time zone definitions with Microsoft Windows and adjust records associated with dates/times in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0.

Most records in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0, including custom records, include date/time stamps based on current DST rules. For example, activities that are scheduled during the delta period will appear one hour earlier than they should. Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 calculates the Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) value when an activity is created.

So if a user creates an appointment while Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 is configured for the old DST rules and the appointment is scheduled during the new DST weeks, the appointment will appear one hour earlier than it should. The Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 Update Time Zones Wizard helps adjust such records appropriately.

The Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 updates and wizard are being released in advance of the United States Daylight Saving Time rules change in 2007, but they can also be used for general adjustments of calendar-related items based on changes in time zone definitions.

Download

Free Trials of Duplication Check, Queue Converter and Notes Browser for Dynamics CRM

ASK Software Solutions presents Extreme for CRM power users:

Notes Browser
The Notes Browser allows users to view all Notes from Accounts, Contacts, Activities, Opportunities and Cases with a simple click of a button.

Duplication Check
This tool allows users to search and check duplication of records in Accounts and merge the records including links to the records.

Queue Converter
Automatically convert emails (xml template) from a queue into a Lead or Case record.

Queue To SMS
Due to popular demand, we have developed a Queue to SMS. It is a smart way of incorporating SMS into your automated workflows.

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