March 2006 - Posts
Well, actually they kind of mess with the day numbering around here :-) Day one for me was the Partner Pre-Briefing on Friday which doesn't really count in Convergence days. Saturday was officially Day 1 but was really a day for folks to arrive and get registered. Wasn;t much really goining on until the great Welcome Reception Saturday night. Yesterday, Sunday, was the first 'real' day of convergence and opened with Keynote Speaker Jeff Raikes, President of Microsoft Business Division. Jeff emphasized the new theme of Microsoft Dynamics, People Ready Business (I saw the first People Ready Business commercial on TV last night!). CRM was a thread that appreared to run though it all. They demoed CRM with Office products like Outlook, Excel, etc.
The Keynote was in FAR West Dallas (I think it was still in Dallas, but much further than anything before) and after we had to hike all the way over to East Dallas for the CRM presentation by CRM GM Brad Wilson. Helping Brad was David Thatcher who runs the R&D for CRM. He told us that CRM is scheduled to be released on a 12 to 18 month cycle. CRM 4.0, code named Titan, is expected in about a year. He also commented on the Sandbox where they are developing new tools for CRM. In fact I got an e-mail today about the release of a new RSS tool for CRM. The Sandbox is part of the Community at www.microsoft.com/Dynamics/Community.
This morning, Day 2(??), the Keynote was Bill Gates himself. The production opened with a fantastic musical number by Mass Ensemble using some innovative instruments. Innovation was a theme of the presentation. What struck me was Bill's presentation/demo of the 'Next World of Work' where he showed some things he invisions for the not so distant (?) future. What I liked the most was a lounge area table at an airport where he set down his cell phone and the table recognized it and allowed him to access various resources. He then laid a business card he had collected from an event and the table recognized the card. He was then able to instruct the table to send the contact info from the card to his cell phone and thereby into his contact database (CRM of course). The cell phone will be a key piece of the information delivery system in the future.
At noon I participated in a focus group. I'm not at liberty to discuss what went on but they were looking for ideas and feedback on future features of CRM. It was interesting to see the process. The folks involved were truly interested in our opinions.
Well, tomorrow's the last day and the Expo ends today. I'll try to get by a few more booths. Haven't made much progress there yet.
Today was a little different. It was the first day of the actual (yesterday was a partners only pre-conference) Convergence. Therefore, there wasn't much of interest going on in the morning except registration. Nothing really started until about 10 AM. Several CRM MVPs (myself, Anne Stanton, and Scott Colson helped out in the Hands on Lab for awhile. Boy! Was there ever a line waiting to get in. I think it was because there wasn't much else going on in the morning. And the lab area was HUGE! There were several hundred workstations set up in there. And we took our turn manning the MVP kiosk.
Got to meet our new CRM MVP Lead, Melissa Travers, and Liz Halen. Also got a chance to visit with Jim Glass who is the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Community Lead (www.microsoft.com/dynamics/community). Also met Jeff Loucks, SBS MVP from Canada, and CRM MVP Curt Spanburgh of San Diego.
This afternoon there were several Industry specific presentations. I went to the ones concerning CRM. One on CRM for financial services companies and another for manufacturing. Afterwards I took a quick tour through the Expo area. That is huge as well. I only worked two rows today. I've got three more days to cover it all. There weren't many CRM related exhibitors but I did find one that had a CRM on Blackberry solution. That looked kinda cool. There is a lot of interest in Blackberry so if one can get CRM on it, that's good. It does require Blackberry Enterprise Server (BES) so won't be for the one man Blackberry users.
Tonight was the Welcoming Reception. It was a great party held outdoors at one of the nicer hotels in the Dallas area. There was lots of food, beer and wine, and a great band. Everyone had a super time.
That's it for today. Back at it tomorrow. I hope my feet (and the rest of my body) survive.
Made it through day 1 of Convergence. Lots of good stuff but trekking back and forth from East Dallas to West took its toll on this old man. But I'll be there bright eyed and bushy tailed in the morning.
There were three sessions this afternoon. Went to the Small Business discussion lead by Eric Ligman well know to the SBS crowd. It was basically a panel of 3 partners who mainly sold Dynamics accounting solutions and some CRM. Their concept of small business was a bit different than those of us in the SBS space but it was interesting. Came away with my first real book on CRM, Working with Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 by Mike Snyder and Jim Steger. I'm looking forward to devouring it.
Next was a session on Hosted CRM. I had thought from the morning session that hosted might be a solution for very small clients who were not in a position to invest in the infrastructure required for CRM. However, it seems it's targeted at the 50 and over space.
Lastly was the Partner Briefing Closing Session. It was very good with an extensive question and answer session with Microsoft Corporate Senior Vice President for the Business Division Doug Burgum. There were lots of very pertinent questions from the partners which Doug fielded excellently.
Tomorrow is the first day the general public arrives and it will blossom to an intimate 7,000 of our nearest and dearest friends. Blog at ya manama.
Today is the first day of Microsoft Dynamics Convergence 2006. Actually today is Partner Day. There are about 2,400 partners here and they expect the population to explode to over 7,000 tomorrow!
Convergence is being held at the Dallas Convention Center which is HUGE! It took me quite awhile of driving around it to figure out where I should go in and park and then where the actual conference was. Once found, it's pretty much everywhere. At least I'm getting some good exercise as the sessions are at one end of the complex (East Dallas?) and the food, etc. is at the other end (West Dallas?).
There have been two sessions so far this morning (it's lunch time now). The Keynote was interesting as they gave us a preview of the marketing and advertising campaigns they are launching to promote the Microsoft Dynamics brand. Sharepoint and integration with Office 2007 are going to be big. I was also interested that CRM seemed to play a pivotal role in the whole scheme of things.
The second session was a CRM breakout. They focused on the direction of CRM. Hosted CRM is being pushed and they announced a new Service Provider Edition. Also Connectors will be big as they have a team tireless working on them.
Well, off to the afternoon sessions. Blog at ya later.
One of the unique features of the Small Business Server version of CRM, CRM Small Business Edition (SBE) is the ability to fax directly out of CRM. So, I figured I'd give it a try. It's pretty easy to do, at least for an individual fax (I'll try a small blast later and let you know how it went). You can send faxes to Accounts, Contacts, Leads, and apparently Campaigns.
Sending a fax is relatively simple. Just create a Fax Activity. When you do, you can include your text, etc. and then hit the Send button. Unfortunately what is sent is pretty bare bones. On my tests, there was no cover page sent and the message is pretty simply displayed, along with a code of some form that is likely an ID number generated by the SBS fax service. Gonna have to work on getting it prettied up a bit. Also, will have to see whether faxes to Campaigns have to be sent individually like e-mail do.
The Fax feature is also supposed to scan incoming faxes and if it detectes the name of a CRM user, is supposed to send the fax to that users. Other faxes are supposed to go into the Fax Queue. I've not seen any faxes directed to me via CRM and my Fax Queue is empty after serveral months so I guess there's some configuration (or at least investigaton) to be done here.
I'll keep playing with this, for awhile, and post back as I learn anything of interest.
Just returned from the MVP Engagement Tour in Houston. The presentations by the MVP Program Manager for Northamerica, Connie Rennie, and MVP Lead Kim Ramuta were very informative, especially for this new MVP. Unfortunately there were only a handful of MVPs who attended. I think the short notice and holding it during Spring Break had a negative effect. But it was good to have the MVP program reach out.
Thanks to Anne Stanton (http://thenorwichgroup.blogs.com/mscrm/) for pointing out the new CRM List Web Part for SharePoint. This web part can be added to a SharePoint web site such as the Companyweb in SBS 2003. It will display a list of records from your CRM database. The records are keyed to the privileges of the current user.
The CRM List Web Part offers a lot of flexibility. You can use it to list records concerning pretty much all of the entities in your CRM database. You can select the views your interested in, look up records and even edit them, etc. You can also create new records. For instance if you are listing Activities as I am, you can display your schedule for Today and use the web part to create a new Phone Call activity and close an appointment you've just completed.
The CRM List Web Part can be found here and is only 558 KB in size. Install it on your server and import it into your SharePoint.
Recently I acquired a hand-me-down server to use for 'playing around'. I decided to start off by installing Windows Server 2003 R2. The install went well and I was eventually presented with the Administrator's console. This screen presented an opportunity to download and install security updates (Windows Updates). It also provided an opportunity to configure Automatic Updates. Seeing this, I then went into My Computer->Properties and configured the server to accept Remote Desktop Protocol. Then I retired to the comfort (Friday night) of my den and my trusty notebook. I attempted to access the server's console via RDP. I wasn't allowed to. I figured the Windows Firewall might be preventing access. My attention turned to Friday night (in-)activities.
Today, I went back to the server room (my office) and installed the security etc downloads and configured the server for Automatic Updates. When I completed these, and went to close the initial screen, a message popped up saying that after I closed the screen, connections to the server would be allowed and to be sure to consider the security aspects of this (not their exact words...). Once I closed it, I then tried again to access the server via RDP and was successful. So... If you install R2 on a server and want to use it in the network, you will first have to navigate the security update screen.
Had a question from a friend tonight that I thought others might have concerning installing CRM on SBS Premium. When you first install SBS 2003, set up installs two MSDE instances, one for SHAREPOINT, and the other SBSMONITORING used by the SBS Monitoring system. When you upgrade to SBS Premium and add SQL, you normally want to UPGRADE the SHAREPOINT MSDE to full SQL so you can use the Search function of SharePoint. You do NOT want to upgrade the SBSMONITORING MSDE however. Be sure to add the appropriate service packs as well.
Now, in order to install CRM, you must also install the DEFAULT instance of SQL as well. This is the only instance that CRM will install onto. I'll leave it to you to figure out the steps to do so. The setup pretty much walks you though it all, you just have to check the Default checkbox. Be sure to apply all appropriate service packs to this instance as well.
Hope that helps someone.
I have been noticing lately that my C: (System) drive is reporting a Disk Busy time of around 40% recently. My data (E:) drive is around 10%. I posted a query on a CRM newsgroup and a couple of other CRM users reported they had experienced similar usage recently. Don;t know what's causing, or whether CRM is really involved or not. Will try to sleuth it out and let you know.
One of the frustrations with Microsoft licensing is trying to figure out what exact SKU to buy for a customer. There are so many different options that it's mind boggling. I tried ms-gearup.com but the SKUs it provided didn't exist! I have a customer who is interested in CRM but would prefer to take advantage of paying over a 3 year period. A little research told me that to do so, he must buy Open Value License, or is it Open License Value, or....? Anyway. I use Tech Data to purchase software licenses so I went to their web site. That was hopeless. I finally called their Licensing Hot-Line. I eventually got a RLP (Real Live Person). That person could only give me pricing for Open Business (not sure what that is) and had to forward my call, more time on hold, to the Open Value department. But I did get them without too long a wait and the gentleman who helped me seemed very knowledgeable. He gave me the appropriate pricing for CRM 3.0 Small Business Edition. I had been concerned that one must be authorized to sell CRM (a Microsoft rep told me as much). I was assured that no product authorization was required. Here is a synopsis of the pricing he provided. I have provided the MSRP as your mileage may vary on the reseller cost.
FULL PAYMENT (1 payment up front like regular stuff)
PRODUCT MS SKU MSRP
CRM 3.0 SBE SERVER C8C-00652 $741
CRM 3.0 SBE CAL C8D-00639 $617
ANNUAL PAYMENT (3 annual payments)
PRODUCT MS SKU MSRP
CRM 3.0 SBE SERVER C8C-00648 $247/Year
CRM 3.0 SBE CAL C8D-00635 $206/Year
These prices include Sofware Assurance which means that my client is entitled to any and all updates/upgrades during the 3 year period. With CRM 4.0 expected by the end of 2007, that will be valuable. Plus he gets to spread his payments over 3 years.