PowerObjects - Microsoft CRM Simply
Microsoft CRM 4.0 Ushers in a New Era
Redmond Developer News - Irvine,CA,USA
In fact, Microsoft CRM extends its integration to the entire Office 2007 suite. Information processing and publishing firm Sandhills Publishing Co., …
Right now we are looking at creating an add-on to tie Microsoft CRM into a third party email newsletter package like ExactTarget or Constant Contact. I’d be interested in any thoughts about this and whether people think it would be of value.Â
Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 provides a rich reporting architecture built on SQL Server Reporting Services 2005. With all the features provided in Dynamics CRM 3.0, the new Report Wizard Tool has been added to CRM 4.0. This tool is for Business users in specific. With a few simple steps users can create reports needed to fulfill their job responsibilities and share it with others. The report wizard will allow customers to analyze their data by creating and editing new reports in Microsoft Dynamics CRM or by customizing an existing report created with the report wizard. The report wizard will allow business users to:
Another out-of-box feature in CRM 4.0 is the Activity Report. An activity report has been added to support the needs of sales and service users of Microsoft Dynamics CRM. For those in sales or sales management, it will provide information on such things as the number of customer contacts in a given period of time, or the total number of outgoing telephone calls by all representatives in a manager’s territory. For service teams, it makes it easy to access data on the total number of interactions required to resolve a case, or the number of e-mails created by a case.
Some users prefer to generate report using Advanced Find so here is good news for them. Advanced Find has also been improved. In Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0, you were only able to display columns from one record type. In Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0, you can add columns from the related entities. This change provides the user with another layer of information.
Export to Excel reports has also been improved. After a user has exported data to Microsoft Excel, he or she may want to add additional columns to his or her spreadsheet. Although it was possible to do this using Edit Query, this is not the best user experience. Now it is possible to add additional Microsoft Dynamics CRM data to a spreadsheet without having to recreate the spreadsheet from scratch.
The new features in Excel are available when the Microsoft Office client is installed. The Microsoft Office client includes the Addin for Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft Excel.
Currently, the user cannot export data from multiple entities while maintaining his or her relationships. For example, if a sales manager wants to view all opportunities and the accounts they are related to, he or she needs to manually export the data from the different entities separately, and then join data together in Excel. Now it is possible to export data from many:1 and 1:1 related records directly to Excel.
Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services (SRS) 2000 are not supported in CRM 4.0. In Dynamics CRM 4.0, a Connector is used to access Reporting Services. The Microsoft Dynamics CRM Connector for Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services (SRS) is a service that connects the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Server computer to the Microsoft SQL Reporting Services computer. The connector eliminates the double authentication that was required for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 deployments where Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services was installed on a separate computer.
Developers can use BI Studio to create complex reports.
Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 delivers a greatly improved workflow model. It caters to the needs of all users no matter if they are business users, implementers, partners or developers.
Business Users
The most important change to the workflow model in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 is the new web-based user interface. Business users no longer need access to the Microsoft Dynamics CRM server to create, modify, and monitor workflows. Instead, users can perform these actions on their own computers. Therefore, workflows are now much more visible and useful for Microsoft Dynamic CRM users. For example, if a user wants to create a workflow so that an email will be sent in case an opportunity is assigned to him, he can use the web interface and follow a few simple drag and drop steps to create this functionality.
Business users with adequate permission can participate in creating, running and monitoring workflows from the web based interface. This interface does not provide advance workflow capabilities like Stages, Workflow Templates and Dynamics Expressions. These advanced features can be used while creating more complex workflows like sales processes.
Partners/Implementers
Partners/Implementers can easily customize and upgrade to using the rich workflow model. The new model provides almost three times more record types and entities accessible to create a very powerful workflow in order to automate a complex business process.
Workflows can now be written that are triggered by update and delete events, in addition to the previously supported assign, create, and change status events. For example, it is possible to create a workflow that runs when the credit limit for an account is updated, or when a report is deleted. Similarly, a workflow can be triggered at multiple events. When selecting a triggering event, a user may choose more than one event. For example, a workflow can be created that runs if a contact record is created, updated, or deleted. Also, the list of triggering events can be changed after the workflow is created.
Dynamic values are another powerful feature available. For example, a workflow might include a step in which an e-mail is sent to a customer when that customer is entered into the system as a lead. The e-mail message might contain static text that is the same for every customer and dynamic values that insert the customer’s name and address based on attribute values in the lead record.
The Stages feature can facilitate implementers to encapsulate and compartmentalize business logic. Support for stages is increased by allowing Stages in any workflow, conditional statements, within stages, multiple concurrent processing on a single record, skipping of stages and exiting from the workflow.
Developers/Programmers
Developers and programmers can develop business horizontals and verticals by leveraging the Windows Workflow Foundations coupled with Visual Studio. With the adoption of the Windows Workflow Foundation, there have been some changes to the Microsoft Dynamics CRM workflow APIs. Therefore, a few of the old APIs have been deprecated. Developers have to evaluate existing code to see whether there is any effect on existing workflows.
Windows Workflow Foundation simplifies asynchronous programming for creating persistent workflow applications. The Windows Workflow Foundation runtime engine manages workflow execution and supports workflows that can remain active for extended periods of time. It preserves the state of workflow execution during computer shutdown and restart. Windows Workflow Foundation provides a rich development experience inside Visual Studio using the visual designer. This enables creating workflows graphically by dragging and dropping activities from the Toolbox onto the design surface.
