PerformancePoint Server 2007 - Business Intelligence by Microsoft

Enterprises gather data related to line-of-business (LOB) operations. Data as-is is not useful. You need to transform it into information so you can understand your business and make decisions.

PerformancePoint Server 2007 is a product that can help you to build a performance management application. It integrates with Microsoft SQL Server 2005 and helps you define a set of rules to monitor, analyze, and report information in dashboards or scorecards to help users with planning, budgeting, and forecasting.

Optionally, you can use the PerformancePoint Server 2007 APIs and extend reporting to Excel, PowerPoint, and MOSS 2007. PPS is a new platform for a new set of BI Office Business Applications (OBAs).

Last week Microsoft published the new PerformancePoint Server Developer Portal on MSDN. This page compiles pointers to the new PerformancePoint Monitoring SDK, the PerformancePoint Planning Business Rules Development Guide, and useful links to data sheets for planning, analytics, monitoring, and management reporting.

Microsoft has also released the evaluation downloads.

Microsoft Offers Premier Support to Microsoft Dynamics Enterprise Customers

Microsoft Corp. is making Microsoft Services Premier Support with Microsoft Dynamics Services available for enterprise customers worldwide with one contract. The offering, which combines the best of Premier and support services for Microsoft Dynamics, simplifies processes and decreases complexity, providing high-quality, personalized service.

Premier Support is now one of the most complete vendor services offerings available in the industry, providing support across the entire Microsoft environment — from databases and servers to business applications. Through this integration, Microsoft Dynamics customers will now have access to proactive services, reactive support assistance and support account management, including the following:

• A single point of contact through a technical account manager (TAM)
• A single process for engagement
• Access to expertise on infrastructure and Microsoft Dynamics products
• Flexibility to move hours to service components
• Enhanced break-fix services with critical situation and rapid on-site support

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Microsoft BizTalk Server and Microsoft Dynamics: A Line of Business Management and Integration

Large organizations struggle to maintain a balance between centralization in order to control system and information complexity across the extended enterprise and decentralization in order to encourage flexibility and agility among local subsidiaries or divisions.

Through deployment of Microsoft Dynamics and Microsoft BizTalk Server, enterprises can realize not only a simple, high-value solution that offers visibility, insight, and control of information across the entire organization, but also the flexibility and agility that branch offices and subsidiaries require in order to innovate, grow, and compete effectively.

This white paper will be of interest to the business decision maker who is looking to find a robust, high-value solution that provides cross-functional integration and coordination of line-of-business and supply chain management applications across the extended enterprise.

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Impressive Relationship Charts Add-on

The Relationship Charts add-on for Dynamics CRM by SalesCentric, will revolutionize how you see accounts. They will no longer be meaningless lists of contact names.

At a glance, you can quickly assess the likelihood of converting a sale by understanding the decision-making unit and grasp the internal and external influencers. You will quickly see what you don't know and where the threats and opportunities really lie within an account.
There is nothing else like this on the market, it is a 'must have' for large sales organizations.

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CRM+Documents for Dynamics CRM

With CRM+Documents you not only receive the word integration (WordMailMerge for MS CRM) and the template management, but also a tool to administer all documents that lie within the marketing, sales and service activities. With this module you can now easily administer documents in the standard version of MS CRM 3.0.

Features

File Management: CRM+Documents works with the new entity "Free Document". Documents are filed in a standard way and Free Documents can be linked to any other entity. This means a Free Document can be filed to an account, contact,...
Offline access: When a user goes offline with his client, then it is still possible to use the documents as well as all other offline data from MS CRM 3.0.
Search and Find: CRM+Documents also assists in looking for documents. The integrated document browser helps to assign Free Documents and find saved information.
E-Mail attachments: The contents of a Free Document can be attached to an E-Mail activity.
Distribution of rights: It is possible to set individual user rights for each Free Document.
Archive Gateway: Prepared to connect to an archive.

Further functionalities:
Possibility to copy any Free Document.
Infolinks can be sent to employees via email.

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The Ultimate Microsoft Word Intergration for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0: WordConnect

Are you looking for a simple integration with Microsoft Word from your CRM application? Or would you like to apply house-style automation within your organisation? WordConnect will do it for you.

WordConnect by Temptus simply takes the addresses and any other information required from your application and uses them in standard templates. With some applications, WordConnect even offers full integration, including creating activities! WordConnect can do much more, read more about WordConnect, request a demo version, or contact Temptus directly.

WordConnect is recommended by Microsoft!

Price List Utilities Add-on

Price List Utilities is an easy to use bulk update tool that helps maintain your company price lists. An intuitive wizard guides you through the price list related procedures.

With DPS Price List Utilities adding new price list items, modifying or removing existing ones as well as copying price list information from one product to another becomes an easy and quick process. And what is the most important the utilities work in bulk mode; it simply means that you can perform any action on a range or even all products and price lists with just one click!

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More Add-ons by this company here

Organization Structure Add-on

Organization Structure is a Dynamics CRM add-on that allows you to display customer organization in a graphic tree view. Out of the Box Dynamics CRM functionality presents only subaccounts for selected Customer.

Organization Tree presents selected customer Organisation with its all Parent and Children records. The highest level in the tree view is the top level in Organization (number of displayed records depends on user security role).

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Activities Mass Update Add-on

Activities Mass Update is a Dynamics CRM add-on that allows you to close several activities at the same time or change existing Status Reason for the previously closed activities. Out of the Box Dynamics CRM functionality allows only to close one activity at a time.

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Improving the Outlook Client User Experience (Cassini Hoster Process Hang)

Sometimes a Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 Laptop Client for Outlook (hereafter referred to as the CRM Outlook Laptop Client) user can experience a hang or bad performance when using the tracking functionality.

In this case just setting 'Regarding' field information for an email to be tracked in CRM or viewing regarding information for an email that is tracked in CRM causes the Server to not respond.

What is the Cassini Hoster Process?
The Cassini Hoster process is a substitute for IIS on the CRM Outlook Laptop Client that handles all the Web page processing on the client.

Read more on the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Team Blog

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Pre-order the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 (Titan) book

You can now start pre-ordering the Titan version of the Microsoft CRM book! The official title is Working with Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0.

It has a target release date of January 18, 2008.

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Service Scheduling: Performance and Scalability Study

This white paper provides conclusions and recommendations based on the results of a performance and scalability study of a Microsoft CRM 3.0 Service Scheduling application. The white paper also presents the details and results of those tests.

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Service Scheduling: Optimizations and Considerations

This white paper provides optimizations and considerations for configuring the Service Scheduling module in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 based on the customer’s business processes. The paper also includes guidelines and best practices for designing a service scheduling solution using Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0.

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Microsoft Office 2003 SP3 available today

A third service pack for Office 2003, promising improved security and enhanced compatibility with Windows Vista, Office 2007, Internet Explorer 7 and Windows SharePoint Services, will be available today (September 18).

You can download Office 2003 SP3 from Microsoft's Office Update or Microsoft Update pages, or just here . (These links will be live today).

The download will be 120MB for the U.S. version and "no larger than 140MB". Office 2003 customers who use Microsoft's AutoUpdate feature will be notified of SP3's availability over the next few weeks.

Microsoft Office Outlook Connector version 4

With Microsoft Office Outlook Connector version 4, you can use Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 or Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 to access and manage your Microsoft Windows Live Hotmail or Microsoft Office Live Mail accounts, including e-mail messages and contacts for free!

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Release of CWR Mobile CRM 1.2

CWR Mobility has released CWR Mobile CRM version 1.2 today!

They have added some great new features and improvements:

- Graphical sitemap configurator
- Graphical filter configurator
- Highly improved synchronization, improves synchronization time by 400%
- Real Windows Mobile experience: context sensitive menus, keyboard navigation
- Dozens of enhancements and improvements based on feedback from our customers and partners.

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Titan CTP3 Multilingual User Interface Packs

The Titan CTP3 Multilingual User Interface Packs are now ready for download. Microsoft has released only four packs for Spanish, German, Dutch :-) and French. More languages will be available after RTM.

They should be ready on the Ascend site and will be ready shortly on Pre-Release (CTP) site.

At this stage access to CTP3 is only by invitation.

CrmDiagToolTurbo Update

The CrmDiagTool needed an extra feature in order to be used efficiently with the Outgoing SMTP Configuration Wizard tool (see previous post) because when you set up the Authentication method to be used by CRM you need to set it up accordingly with the Authentication method accepted by your Exchange SMTP Server.

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Microsoft CRM 3.0 Outgoing SMTP Configuration Wizard

This is a tool you can run on CRM.

- It will detect if you are currently using the Local or Remote SMTP Stack for Outgoing Email
- It will propose you to configure the Remote stack like described in the KB by using a simplified form.

- Once you are done, you can Save the Changes, the Wizard will prompt you if you wish to restart W3SVC Service in order to make the change effective.

The advantage of this is that It prevent the user to mistype the parameters, there is a FORM validation which tells you if you entered the information correctly or not.
Plus it Enable/Disable the fields on the Form depending on the Authentication you select.

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Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 VPC (Extended May 2006 Edition)

Update of the May 2006 Edition.

This demo is a one computer setup with Microsoft CRM 3.0 server and Microsoft CRM 3.0 client for Outlook. This demonstration also contains Microsoft Exchange Server 2003, Microsoft SQL Server 2005, and Microsoft Visual Studio 2005.

This demonstration will expire on 06/30/2008.

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Update of XML Notepad 2007 (version 2.5)

XML Notepad 2007 provides a simple intuitive user interface for browsing and editing XML documents.

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Windows Server® 2008 Beta 3

This time-limited release of Windows Server® 2008 Beta 3 will expire on April 7, 2008. After this time, you will need to uninstall the software or upgrade to a later release or a fully-licensed version of Windows Server® 2008.

This product requires a valid product key for activation – you may install the product without activation, but if you do not enter a valid product key and activate within 30 days of installation, the software will cease to function.

Download Windows Server 2008 Beta 3 Standard

Download Windows Server 2008 Beta 3 Enterprise

Download Windows Server 2008 Beta 3 Datacenter

Download Windows Server 2008 Beta 3 for Itanium-based Systems

Global Design Firm Selects Microsoft Dynamics as Its Blueprint for Business Success

EwingCole, a prominent multidisciplinary design firm offering architecture, engineering, interior design and planning services to domestic and international clients, has selected Microsoft Dynamics AX 4.0, Professional Services for Microsoft Dynamics AX and Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 as the foundation for driving its project management initiatives across the company. EwingCole will use the platform to bring together its data into a single integrated system to improve client service, better manage project-related information and processes, and easily adapt its technology infrastructure to changing business needs.

“Microsoft’s integrated technology will provide the end-to-end project management, accounting, document management and business development solutions we need to provide our clients with the highest quality service,” said John Gerbner, president of EwingCole.

EwingCole employees will also be able to access data and information via the familiar 2007 Microsoft® Office system user interface available through Microsoft Dynamics Client for Microsoft Office and SharePoint® Server. This ability to access data through one screen rather than navigating through several applications to find relevant information increases employee productivity.

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Release of CTP3 of Titan (CRM 4.0)

Last week the Dynamics CRM team signed off on their CTP3 release of Titan. Earlier this week they made it available to partners in closed beta programs. Soon they'll be opening up access to Titan to a wider partner audience.

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Vista Gadget: CRM Queue Checker

Microsoft Dynamics CRM queue checker solution.

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