Entries tagged with crm - Channel 9

FY09 Dynamics Platform Adoption Stories: LinkPoint360

Sanjay Jain — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 16:02:00 GMT

In this FY09 Dynamics Platform Adoption Stories series, I will continue to share success stories of my managed ISVs, highlighting their platform adoption experience, their Aha moments and advice to newer ISVs to be successful. Enjoy the next one…

During Convergence 2009, I got an opportunity to sit down with Glenn Lehner from LinkPoint360, a leading provider of Lotus Notes and GroupWise integration with Microsoft Dynamics CRM. You can learn more on LinkPoint for Microsoft Dynamics CRM Features, and Screenshots.

Prior Stories:
* Bottomline Technologies
* Hoovers
* LeadTime Techonology
* Pervasive Software
* Celenia Software
* MaxQ
* Parature

Sanjay Jain
ISV Architect Evangelist
Microsoft Corporation
Blog: http://Blogs.msdn.com/SanjayJain
Twitter: http://twitter.com/SanjayJain369

Dynamics CRM, Silverlight and more with CRM Innovation LLC

John O'Donnell — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 03:12:00 GMT

CRM Innovation LLC are an ISV based in Lenexa, KS. who specialize in Microsoft Dynamics CRM as both an ISV and implementor. As well as working on innovative solutions for Dynamics CRM the company has also embraced Silverlight and used it to enhance the capabilities of Dynamics CRM for both on premise and S+S deployments.

For more product information go to this link

Enjoy the show!

John O'Donnell Microsoft Dynamics ISV Architect Evangelist
Microsoft Corporation
http://blogs.msdn.com/jodonnell
http://blogs.msdn.com/usisvde
http://www.twitter.com/jodonnel

MetraTech: Polymorphic Iterators, Concurrency, CRM and MetraFlow

Charles — Wed, 20 May 2009 17:45:00 GMT

Donald Trump recently praised Metratech’s business model embraced by their customer, ACN, who appeared on the Celebrity Apprentice.

Metratech’s own David Blair, Director of Product Architecture, discusses how Microsoft is both a partner and a customer of Metratech. David shares how they leverage the “Infobus Pattern” architecture and apply a micro-architecture approach with polymorphic iterators to provide dynamic CRM and other valuable tools. David gives a sneak preview of MetraFlow their product for addressing highly concurrent systems with a cluster enabled model. MetraTech Corp. offers an innovative approach to charging, billing, settlement and customer care that enables organizations to embrace change without compromise.

The flagship product, MetraNet, is deployed globally, enabling diverse customers to build innovative and successful business models, securely collect revenue, and manage their entire customer lifecycle in some 12 languages, 17 currencies and 52 countries.

Interview and demonstration with ExactShip and Dynamics CRM

John O'Donnell — Mon, 04 May 2009 04:41:00 GMT

ExactShip gives you the ability to ship products directly from solutions like Dynamics CRM, Dynamics GP and Dynamics AX. As the guys from ExactShip say, everyone ships!

See more product demonstrations at http://www.exactship.com/msdynamics

Product Demonstration starts at time index - 9:29

Enjoy the show!

John O'Donnell Microsoft Dynamics ISV Architect Evangelist
Microsoft Corporation
http://blogs.msdn.com/jodonnell
http://blogs.msdn.com/usisvde
http://www.twitter.com/jodonnel

Transcensus Interview and Demonstration - Deliver easy training with SHO Guide

John O'Donnell — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 13:56:00 GMT

Just before Convergence 2009 wrapped up I caught up with Dan Higbee and Dan Peay from www.transcensus.com and talked with them about their solution for delivering application help. In this video we show it running with Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online but it can also be used with Microsoft Office applications, Dynamics or any application developed using Microsoft .NET.

Product Demonstration starts at time index - 5:45

Enjoy the show!

John O'Donnell Microsoft Dynamics ISV Architect Evangelist
Microsoft Corporation
http://blogs.msdn.com/jodonnell
http://blogs.msdn.com/usisvde
http://www.twitter.com/jodonnel

MaxQ- Dynamics adoption

Suresh Sreedharan — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 16:34:00 GMT

Warren Wilbee sits down with the MaxQ team at the CRM lab to talk about their experience working with the CRM platform.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM

Suresh Sreedharan — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 15:48:00 GMT

Jay Manley, principal technologist sits down with Sumit Virmani, principal technologist on the Microsoft Dynamics CRM team to talk about the CRM platform and the opportunities for partners to build on the Microsoft Dynamics CRM platform.

Parature- Integrating CRM for customer support solution

Suresh Sreedharan — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 15:08:00 GMT

Channel Manager Heather Pertel and Chief Software Architect Matt Walnock of Parature explain how they use Microsoft technology for their customer support solution. The team explains to Larry Gregory, Director of why they use Windows Communication Foundation and how Dynamics CRM is a good fit in the future direction of their product line. For more information, see Windows Communication Foundation and Dynamics CRM.

http://www.parature.com/

Demonstration of Cincom Acquire Product Configurator in Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online

John O'Donnell — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 16:05:00 GMT

In this interview, Rick Wood and Jim Wilson of Cincom Acquire talk to me about their product configurator solution and how it can be used to configure simple to very complex product packages. In addition Jim shows us the solution working with Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online which starts at time index 8:44. This solution is also available for Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009.

More information about the solution can be found here - http://www.cincomacquire.com/product-configurator-for-microsoft-dynamics.html

Cincom Acquire will at booth #300 at Convergence.

John O'Donnell Microsoft Dynamics ISV Architect Evangelist
Microsoft Corporation
http://blogs.msdn.com/jodonnell
http://blogs.msdn.com/usisvde
http://www.twitter.com/jodonnel

CRM Accelerators: Analytics

Girish Raja — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 01:10:00 GMT

Reuben decided to take control of things on this channel9 video as we discuss about the Analytics accelerator. <Alert> we recorded this video really early in the development cycle for this accelerator. There are far more cool capabilities and reports in the final version of this accelerator than what we see in this video. </Alert>

The analytics accelerator provides a set of Performance Dashboards and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for analyzing the data residing within the CRM platform. It utilizes SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS) for creating OLAP cubes. SSAS is also used here for creating predictive analysis with some fully functional samples. The analytics accelerator will work with SQL Server 2005 with some components enhanced to take advantage of SQL Server 2008.

Check out more Channel9 videos on CRM Accelerators here and please visit http://www.codeplex.com/crmaccelerators to download the accelerators.

Happy coding!

CRM Accelerators: eService (ASP.NET Portal)

Girish Raja — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 00:58:00 GMT

eService accelerator allows developers to easily create self-service customer portals built on top of ASP.NET. This accelerator utilizes an ASP.NET starter kit and several components of the ASP.NET framework including the membership provider for authentication. The out of the box functionality of eService includes the ability for customers to create cases, schedule and manage service appointments, search through KB articles, etc all from within the website.

Don’t be fooled by the name “eService”, as underneath the covers, there is an ASP.NET control suite for CRM. Each of the ASP.NET form you saw in this video is a customizable ASP.NET user control and all of its properties and settings are derived from the CRM metadata. You can hook up these controls to any entity within the CRM system and configure them fairly easily.

I’m sure this accelerator will jump start CRM development for a lot of ASP.NET developers and vice versa.

CRM Accelerators: Event Management

Girish Raja — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 05:55:00 GMT

The event management accelerator allows you to plan and manage events and logistics through Microsoft Dynamics CRM. This front end portal of this accelerator is actually built using an ASP.NET starter kit. Behind the scenes, CRM plug-ins and workflows drives the business logic like registration, waitlists, notifications etc.

The data model and business logic that Reuben has designed for this is very comprehensive and is a result of working with several event organizers. If you’re looking at building an event management solution, this accelerator will reduce a lot of brainstorming & revisions that you have to do otherwise.

Given the design of this, I’m beginning to wonder if this accelerator could very well become a Content Management System (CMS) for event planning. What do you think?

CRM Accelerators: Notifications (RSS)

Girish Raja — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 03:32:00 GMT

CRM notifications accelerator allows you to expose CRM business data by creating Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds.

Users can subscribe to any saved views within CRM as a feed. This allows you to have a channel where you pull information instead of being pushed to you from the server. These RSS feeds accessible via a variety of RSS readers including Outlook, Mobile phone, 3^rd Party Readers, etc. It is also worth noting that this capability can be used to easily create Vista Gadget for CRM by using the generic RSS gadget that Windows Vista ships with.

This is just a tip of iceberg on how RSS can be used with Microsoft Dynamics CRM. Since the accelerator ships with the source code as well, developers can further extend this or create new and interesting applications based on RSS & CRM.

CRM Accelerators: Enterprise Search

Girish Raja — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 20:33:00 GMT

In this video, we take a look at the Enterprise Search Accelerator for CRM and see how SharePoint and CRM can complement each other in creating business solutions.

The enterprise search accelerator allows Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) customers to view and search for Microsoft Dynamics CRM data directly from their SharePoint portals.

Additionally, the technology, Business Data Catalog (BDC), and techniques used with this accelerator can be employed to surface data from other line of business applications to further enrich the SharePoint portal.

BDC makes it easy for people to connect to, find, and act on information stored in structured line-of-business systems (such as Microsoft Dynamics CRM) by using a declarative framework to securely integrate them into search results. With BDC you can configure actionable audience-specific portals, dashboards and mash-up interfaces for this data without writing any code.

CRM Accelerators: An Introduction with Reuben Krippner

Girish Raja — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 15:22:00 GMT

Few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to interview Reuben Krippner from the CRM team. Reuben has been working very hard for the last several months to release CRM Accelerators. In this short video, Reuben gives us an overview of the Accelerators program and we chat about how Accelerators will evolve in the future.

Update: Microsoft Partners can download the accelerators bits and related information at the below links:

http://www.codeplex.com/crmaccelerators
https://mbs.microsoft.com/partnersource/newsevents/news/MD_CRM_Accelerators

Stay tuned for more videos on Accelerators as Reuben and I drill into the technical details of each accelerator.

Thanks,
-Girish Raja.
http://blogs.msdn.com/girishr

Interview with Jeff Gerardot of Interactive Intelligence

John O'Donnell — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 14:09:00 GMT

Jeff Gerardot of Interactive Intelligence (http://www.inin.com) talked with me about their call center solutions and the work they have done to integrate Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 into the solution.

Enjoy the show!

John O'Donnell Microsoft Dynamics ISV Architect Evangelist Microsoft Corporation
http://blogs.msdn.com/jodonnell
http://blogs.msdn.com/usisvde
http://channel9.msdn.com/Wiki/DynamicsCRM/HomePage/

Interview with Microsoft Dynamics CRM Community and Content Strategy Team

John O'Donnell — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 03:09:00 GMT

While in Redmond I managed to catch up with the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Community and Content Strategy team and talked to them about the great work they do for the various Dynamic CRM Communities including these:

CRM Team Blog

CRM Forums

CRM Community

Resource Center (external)

CRM SDK

Enjoy the show!

John O'Donnell
Microsoft Dynamics ISV Architect Evangelist
Microsoft Corporation
http://blogs.msdn.com/jodonnell

http://channel9.msdn.com/Wiki/DynamicsCRM/HomePage/

Interview with Microsoft Dynamics CRM Engineering for Enterprise team

John O'Donnell — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 16:18:00 GMT

In this interview I talked with the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Engineering for Enterprise team and their great work including performance testing Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 to 24k users!

Enjoy the show!

John O'Donnell Microsoft Dynamics ISV Architect Evangelist Microsoft Corporation
http://blogs.msdn.com/jodonnell
http://blogs.msdn.com/usisvde

Creating a Silverlight control for CRM

Girish Raja — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 09:24:00 GMT

In this screencast, we'll see how to build a Silverlight 2 control that connects and displays data from Dynamics CRM.

There are a variety of ways you can connect a Silverlight client to CRM. In this screencast, we're using a proxy approach by having a WCF service sitting in between Silverlight control and CRM web services.

You can download the code for this screencast here. Check out http://blogs.msdn.com/girishr/ for more code samples and related screencasts.

Creating a CRM WPF Offline Application

Girish Raja — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 08:47:00 GMT

In this screencast, we'll see how to create a simple Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) application that pulls data from Dynamics CRM. We'll then see how can we modify this application to work in offline mode.

Check out http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/benriga/The-Dynamics-Duo-talk-about-CRM-and-WPF/ for some cool WPF work we've created as a proof of concept.

You can download the code for this screencast here. Check out http://blogs.msdn.com/girishr/ for more code samples and related screencasts.

Creating a custom SharePoint webpart for CRM

Girish Raja — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 03:23:00 GMT

In this screencast, we write a simple SharePoint webpart that pulls data from the CRM 4.0 VPC.

Check out http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/benriga/The-Dynamics-Duo-talk-about-Dynamics-CRM-and-SharePoint/ to take a look at a cool dashboard you can build with custom connected webparts.

You can download the code for this screencast here. Check out http://blogs.msdn.com/girishr/ for more code samples and related screencasts.

Customizing CRM's Entity Model and User Experience

Girish Raja — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 03:14:00 GMT

Custom navigation along with custom entities allows you to start creating Line of Business (LOB) applications in a variety of vertical industries. This screencast shows how you can import the entity and sitemap customizations into the CRM platform to quickly convert a vanilla CRM instance to a customized business application.

Check out http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/benriga/The-Dynamics-Duo-talk-about-Dynamics-CRM-Customization/ for the conversation I had with Ben Riga on the topic of customizing the CRM Platform.

You can download the code for this screencast here. Check out http://blogs.msdn.com/girishr/ for more code samples and related screencasts.

Creating an OBA - Word Add-in for CRM

Girish Raja — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 23:41:00 GMT

In this screencast, we'll see how to create a simple OBA application (word add-in) that pulls data from Dynamics CRM 4.0.

Check out http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/benriga/The-Dynamics-Duo-talk-about-CRM-and-Office-Business-Applications-OBA/ for some of the possibilities with such applications.

Check out http://blogs.msdn.com/girishr/ for code samples and related screencasts.

ARCast.TV - Dennis McCarthy on Platform as a Service (PaaS)

Bob Familiar — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 15:22:00 GMT

Bob Familiar interviews Dennis McCarthy, a software architect at Kronos about his research into leveraging Microsoft Dynamics 4.0 as an S+S Platform.

The Dynamics Duo talk about CRM and Silverlight

Ben Riga — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 19:42:00 GMT

In yesterday’s video we talked about WPF and showed off some mind-altering 2D and 3D animations :). As we said then, WPF provides access to local data and resources as well as access to bare metal performance including 3D graphics acceleration. But you can’t take that sort of thing to the web. While WPF will run in a browser, that browser needs to be Internet Explorer running Windows.

Silverlight changes all that. Silverlight v1, which has been out for over a year, was primarily focused on media scenarios. Silverlight v2 goes much farther with numerous new features including a compact version of .NET. It’s now an ideal platform for building web-based line-of-business applications like the ones ISVs build today on the CRM platform. CRM and Silverlight 2: seems like a marriage made in heaven. If you’re looking for a way to light up your CRM applications, Silverlight is the way to go.

Silverlight runs in IE, Firefox or Safari across Windows and Mac. It will soon be on mobile devices (including Windows Mobile and Nokia). There’s even a project to get it working on Linux.

So bottom line; WPF is very rich, Silverlight is very reach. :)

As always, Girish delivers a demo that clearly demonstrates how Silverlight can take CRM farther. We continue the professional services scenario. In this case, a client has booked a new project and we need to figure out when it’ll fit into our schedule. That means we need to do some project and resource planning. Girish does that by dropping an iframe that includes a Silverlight control into CRM. When it loads it uses web service calls to pull in team member names and their project and schedule information.

The control displays that in an interesting way; showing transparent cylinders to designate the amount of available hours or capacity and then pours in the project schedule information to show which projects are currently scheduled to which team member. Adding all the team members makes for an interesting data visualization showing where we have time to add additional projects. Once you know that you can layer the new unallocated projects on to the graph. The power of Silverlight comes in when you start interacting with the data; moving unallocated projects around to ensure that we are optimizing staff resources while delivering projects on time.

Of course, the beauty of Silverlight and WPF is that they are so very similar. Learning one automatically gets you the other; giving you the ability to deliver both desktop and web applications as appropriate to your customer needs. User-experience design also becomes much easier as the workflow between designers (using Expression Studio) and developers (using Visual Studio) is well-thought out and seamless.

One interesting twist is that Silverlight 2 doesn’t currently support the CRM web services so it was a simple matter for Girish to add a WCF web service that bridges the two. Girish will be posting this code on his blog here. I know this because I have that promise on video. ;)