Microsoft Raises the Bar for Customer Service Excellence for Microsoft Dynamics Customers With Business Ready Customer Care

Establishing a new standard for customer service, Microsoft Corp. today launched its Business Ready Customer Care initiative for Microsoft Dynamics™ customers and partners worldwide at Convergence 2007 Copenhagen, the premier Microsoft Dynamics customer event.

Under this initiative, the company provides Microsoft Dynamics customers around the world with industry-leading visibility, influence and control over their Microsoft Dynamics ERP and Microsoft Dynamics CRM solutions. Business Ready Customer Care provides customers with reassuring insight into upcoming product innovations, product support extended beyond industry practices, and new financing programs that extend the reach of Microsoft Dynamics solutions to small and midsize companies and enterprises around the world.

“We are delighted that Microsoft continues to lead by example in its commitment to customer care,” said Marc De Deygere, IT program manager at Picanol N.V., one of the leading weaving machine manufacturers in the world, based in Belgium. “Business Ready Customer Care — as exemplified through extended product support and a single Premier Support contract for all Microsoft products — demonstrates that Microsoft understands what we need to manage our IT infrastructure and plan ahead. Our investments in Microsoft Dynamics solutions have already delivered substantial benefits to our company, and this initiative reinforces our confidence in future investments.”

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International Hosting Firms Support Microsoft Dynamics Strategy for Software Plus Services

At the Convergence 2007 Copenhagen customer event today, leading hosting firms from around the world committed to delivering on-demand customer relationship management (CRM) solutions based on Microsoft Dynamics™ CRM 4.0, formerly code-named “Titan,” due out later this year.

Partners building new on-demand solutions on Microsoft Dynamics CRM include Mondo A/S, a leading Danish IT services company; JayThom Pty Ltd., a hosted and on-premise Microsoft Dynamics CRM provider in Australia; EveryWare AG, a leading hosted business applications provider in Switzerland; and Increase Ltd., a U.K.-based hosted Microsoft Dynamics CRM solution provider. These new partners join an extensive range of existing partners around the world that deliver on-demand solutions for Microsoft Dynamics CRM and Microsoft Dynamics enterprise resource planning (ERP) products.

Microsoft Corp. also announced that it plans to lower the subscription licensing fees paid by its global hosting partners for Microsoft Dynamics CRM by approximately 40 percent. The lower licensing fees enable Microsoft’s hosting partners to invest more in building out their CRM offerings and growing their customer base. This price reduction is consistent with Microsoft’s long-standing strategy to deliver more affordable CRM technology through on-premise and partner-hosted deployments as well as the new Microsoft Dynamics CRM Live service.

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Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0: Enterprise Performance and Scalability

Microsoft Dynamics™ CRM application software is designed to meet the performance and scalability requirements of large, global enterprises. Benchmark results demonstrate that a single Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 instance can achieve sub-second response times with 6,000 concurrent users executing a heavy workload against a large, complex database.

Large enterprises often deploy multiple parallel CRM instances in order to meet the diverse needs of different business units or geographies. Distributed across multiple instances, a Microsoft Dynamics CRM deployment can scale to meet the needs of the largest enterprises.

This white paper details the benchmark results of tests conducted on Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0.The technical white paper includes:

• A summary of the benefits Microsoft Dynamics CRM can provide to enterprise-class organizations.

• A description of the methods and CRM implementation used to obtain the 6,000 user benchmark.

• Details of the hardware configuration and optimization settings used in this test.

• A summary of key test parameters and results achieved in this test.

Download

Next week: Microsoft Dynamics Convergence 2007 Copenhagen

Next week the Microsoft Dynamics Convergence 2007 will take place in Copenhagen. Online registration is closed, however you are still able to register onsite!

Convergence is the premier Microsoft Dynamics event, bringing customers, partners, team members and industry experts together in an environment created for you to discuss solutions, address business needs and establish a true community that can be leveraged throughout the year.

Read more / Watch the video

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 (Titan) CRM for Outlook Client Screencast

Another screencast, this time the Outlook version of CRM.

View

Nice post about reporting in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0

Nice post by Simon Hutson about all reporting in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0.

With CRM 4.0 the product needs to be deployable and secure in an Internet facing environment such as http://www.crmlive.com/. This required a re-think of our architecture, removing the need for direct database or report server access by end-users. To acheive this Microsoft made several high-level architectural changes:

- Report Viewer moved to the CRM server
- New Data Connector proxies requests
- Remove Kerberos trust for delegation requirement
- Report entity is a full CRM entity

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New screencasts by Philip Richardson (Workflow)

Philip Richardson has three new screencasts for you today regarding the workflow feature in Titan.

Basic Workflow

Complex Workflow

Workflow Activity


Read more about this powerful feature in Titan.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 (Titan) CTP3 VPC Available to Partners

You can download the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 (Titan) CTP3 VPC here

(requires partner login).

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Versions

The following versions will be available:

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Workgroup Edition
This version is limited to 5 or fewer users. It can be installed on Microsoft Windows Small Business Server 2003 R2 Enterprise Edition, any of the supported Windows Server 2003 editions, or Microsoft Windows Server 2008. This version is limited to a single organization and a single computer that is running Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Server.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Professional Edition
This version has no user limit and is limited to a single organization. Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Professional Edition Server can, however, be installed to more than one computer.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Enterprise Edition
This version has no user limit. Additional features include support for multiple organizations, multiple server instances, and role-based service installation. Rolebased services let you increase performance by installing component services on different computers.

Pre-order Programming Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0

Ideal guide to adapting and customizing Microsoft Dynamics CRM to meet exacting business needs

Get practical, expert guidance for developing business solutions with Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0—straight from the Microsoft Dynamics product team. This book delivers key insights for customizing, integrating, and extending business solutions to meet unique business requirements. Covering the three major deployment options available to ISVs—on-premises, partner-hosted, and CRM Live!—this guide presents design and coding best practices to help you accelerate development and deployment. You’ll also get walk-through examples with real-world implementation scenarios, and case studies examining how to build Microsoft Dynamics CRM into a larger overall solution that integrates with other services—helping you build your proficiency for developing solutions that meet exacting business needs.

Pre-order at Amazon ($ 32.99)

It's also possible to buy this book and Working with Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 by Mike Snyder together for $ 65.98

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 - Workflows and more

More CRM 4 news by A Freaky Microsoft Dynamics CRM Blog:

Workflows are now available to end users, who no longer need access to the server in order to create, modify, and monitor them. Child workflows and workflow templates provide two ways for users to build upon existing workflow logic while they are creating new workflows.

Workflows now support many more record types. Also, they can now be triggered by the update and delete events, and a workflow can be triggered by more than one event. Dynamic values and conditionals are more useful. The new user interface for workflows includes the Form Assistant, a tool for specifying dynamic values. Dynamic values are also improved by the increased number of record relationships. So, there are more records and attributes available for inclusion in dynamic values.

One of the other things that has changed in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 is that we now can apply and use stages on all workflow logic which makes it possible to define and monitor parts of a complex workflow. In CRM 3 we only could use staging on the opportunity level.

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Update: The stunnware site has also a lot of Titan info...

Display reports in IFrames

Nice post by CRM MVP David Jennaway:

With pre-filtering, CRM offers a powerful way to produce context sensitive reports based on the selected records in a grid, or the current record in a form. In this article I’ll cover an alternative approach that can be used to display report content within an IFrame on a form, or provide a simple way to run a report from a toolbar button or menu item in CRM.

How it works
SQL Server Reporting Services provides a means for running and rendering a report by accessing a URL and passing all relevant report parameters and rendering options in the query string of the URL. CRM offers a simple means to pass the current entity type, name and instance ID as parameters on the query string when accessing a page in an IFrame, or through a toolbar button. The approach covered in this article combines these 2 features.

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Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 (Titan) Video's

Philip Richardson has posted some nice Titan videos:

- Web Import in Titan

- Duplicate Detection

- Duplicate Detection

- Add Multiple Users

Microsoft Charts Its Software Services Strategy and Road Map for Businesses

Company introduces “Online” services and Microsoft Office Live Workspace, solutions that combine client, server and services offerings to deliver connected computing options for people and businesses.

Microsoft Dynamics Live CRM
Today more than 11,000 customers, including 475,000 users, enjoy the benefits of Microsoft Dynamics CRM on-premise and partner-hosted solutions. A new version of Microsoft Dynamics CRM code-named “Titan,” which uses a single multitenant code base to deliver on-premise and on-demand deployments, will allow customers to choose the right deployment model for their needs at any point in time.
As part of an early access program that was launched this month, more than 100 customer and partner organizations are already using the new Microsoft Dynamics Live CRM service. Participants in the early access program get a better, more familiar user experience centered on Microsoft Office and Outlook; a lower total cost of ownership compared with traditional on-demand vendors; and the option to switch between on-demand and on-premise models if their business needs change. Those interested in joining can find out more at http://www.crmlive.com.

Read the full article

Microsoft Helps Businesses Achieve More with Better Connected Computing

Q&A: Jeff Raikes, president of Microsoft’s Business Division, outlines how the company’s new services offerings and investments help overcome the challenges of information overload, as well as connecting and collaborating across today’s traditional online boundaries.

Press Pass: Microsoft announced plans 14 months ago to offer an on-demand version of Dynamics CRM. How are things going today?
Raikes: Our CRM business is doing very well. In fact, during the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2007, we sold more than 85,000 seats of Microsoft Dynamics CRM. Today, more than 11,000 customers -- including 475,000 users -- enjoy the benefits of Microsoft Dynamics CRM with either on-premise or partner-hosted deployments. These customers range from the Phoenix Suns basketball team to Cypress Care, a healthcare company that, incidentally, switched from Salesforce.com.

Next, we’ll offer a new CRM software-as-a-service offering, Microsoft Dynamics CRM Live, powered by the upcoming new release of Microsoft Dynamics CRM. The new release – code-named “Titan” – offers a single, multi-tenant code base for on-premise and on-demand deployments. Customers will be able to tailor and adapt their deployment to their needs at any point in time. We think this level of choice – along with the very competitive pricing announced in July – will give us a big advantage in the marketplace over our competitors.
Microsoft Dynamics CRM Live is already in the hands of more than 100 customer and partner organizations as part of the early access program that I mentioned earlier. This program launched earlier this month. Many more will be added between now and the end of the year. The on-demand service will initially be offered in North America. We will announce plans for international expansion of the service will at a later date.

Read the full Q&A