Tag: Metro

Breaking down the Polaris and Statement of Direction documents

After the announcement in July 2012 regarding the delayed delivery schedule of the CRM Anywhere functionality, Microsoft has been promising that their updated product roadmap would be announced “soon”. Well, it took until November eventually, but we now have two new documents available from them: the Statement of Direction and Microsoft Dynamics CRM December 2012 Service Update Release Preview Guide. In this post I’ll share a few thoughts and questions that these documents have raised in my mind.

Polaris (Microsoft Dynamics CRM December 2012 Service Update)

Much of the contents of Polaris was revealed in eXtreme CRM 2012 Las Vegas and tweeted out into the online communities. One major piece of news from there is only casually mentioned in the beginning of the Release Preview Guide document, so let’s emphasize it here once more:

This document is organized to highlight specific investments included in the December 2012 Service Update for Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online. This release begins in mid-December 2012 and will continue through January 2013.

Yes, on-premise and hosted customers will still need to wait another 6 months while the new functionality is previewed in the cloud. The Orion release, currently scheduled for around mid-2013, will include these new treats into the CRM server bits you can download and deploy on your own or outsourced hardware. In the meantime, there will be a gap during which some UI customizations and development can be done only in CRM Online, so remember to take this into consideration when planning you solution deployment strategies.

The new Flow UI, also known as the “Process-Driven UI” or “Refresh UI”, has been shown from the user’s point of view already earlier, but in the Release Preview Guide we get a first glimpse into the configuration options of how you can actually adjust it to match your real business processes. The Process Control Customization Tool appears to consist of a basic set of stages and steps, with no direct connection to the familiar workflow or dialog processes. Of course if you trigger a workflow process from a field value change you could include much more business logic into the stages and steps. The document mentions that there will be “several pre-defined steps such as locate existing contact and account”, so we’ll need to wait and see if the process steps will actually provide a new extension point that allows developers to create custom steps.

Ever since the Yammer deal in June, we’ve all been wondering (well, perhaps it’s just me who’s obsessed with these things) how this social business tool would be integrated into Dynamics CRM and specifically what it will do to the Activity Feeds functionality introduced in Q4 2011 Service Update. Looking at the Polaris UI preview, we still don’t have too many details about this, but at least there’s a screenshot for us to stare at. Back in July when the Flow UI was first shown, the Activity Feeds were presented on the opportunity form alongside activities and notes/attachments, but now it’s been replaced by a Yammer feed. However, the distinction between auto posts and user posts in the menu suggests that there’s a bit of the CRM Activity Feeds functionality in play here, since Yammer doesn’t have such concepts in their own product.

Showing updates regarding CRM records in the Yammer UI was already possible before Microsoft bought Yammer, thanks to the integration they had developed. In the release preview guide we can now read that “Microsoft will enable the ability to post messages from Microsoft Dynamics CRM to Yammer and vice versa”, which suggest a deeper level of integration, most likely leveraging Yammer’s Enterprise Graph. I guess it’s safe to say by now that the CRM R8 beta functionality developed for CRM Activity Feeds to filter the feed content has been permanently cancelled and all the efforts are aimed at integrating Yammer into Dynamics CRM. However, Microsoft will probably not completely rip out the existing feeds from on premises Dynamics CRM deployments nor implement a non-cloud Yammer, so the transition may take a while. Another thing worth noting is that the current free version of Yammer does not support any integration to applications like CRM, so the Enterprise Plan for Yammer may be required in order to leverage the new functionality in Dynamics CRM unless Microsoft changes the pricing policy.

Bing Maps integration will be available for the Flow UI, where “addresses for contacts and accounts will be displayed in an embedded contextual map provided by the Microsoft decision engine Bing”. There were some good comments to my previous Future Stars blog post about the licensing of Bing Maps, so you might want to check them out if visualizing your customer addresses on an integrated map is of interest to you. Just like with Yammer, currently the Bing Maps API requires a separate license when used in internal applications and there’s no mention of any changes to this model in the release preview guide, so it’s best to assume that these new Polaris features will not be free to users with a Dynamics CRM Online license alone.

Cross-browser support arrives with Polaris, but it’s a bit of a “yes and no” regarding support on iPad Safari browser. Yes, users will be able to access something else than Mobile Express on their iPad, but it’s not the same browser client as you’d have on a PC or Mac. A special version of the web client has been created for the iPad only, utilizing the new Flow UI forms. However, as the Flow UI is only available in a limited number of entities so far, only the “sales experience” is enabled in the iPad CRM client version. Judging by the menu below you can only access accounts, contacts, leads and opportunities. Any other entities (presumably even quotes, orders or products) will require you to click the “Launch Mobile Express” link, which will take you back to the CRM experience designed for pre-iPhone era smartphones. The Polaris version of iPad client seems therefore like an intermediate solution while we await for the full tablet UX to arrive.

So, where’s the Dynamics CRM Mobile part of the CRM Anywhere release? Hmm, not mentioned in this document, so let’s check out the long term roadmap next.

Statement of Direction, November 2012

This document discusses the Dynamics CRM product vision for the next 36 months and is therefore much less specific on the upcoming functionality than the Polaris release documentation. It starts with a list of upcoming applications to be added into Dynamics CRM in future releases. Putting the terminology into context, an example of a new application for CRM 2011 was goal management, so these would likely include a bunch of new default entities, business logic, UI enhancements and potential new integration points.

On the SFA front we’ve got Quote, Order, and Pricing Management, which is a very important area for Dynamics CRM to step up it’s game. Anyone who’s ever demoed the existing UI for creating quotes knows that the popup jungle is something you want to avoid showing to potential customers, so a more flat user experience for working with product lines . In the Service section the term Knowledge Management brings a breath of canned air from the past decade, especially when we later on hear that “SharePoint will power next-generation content and knowledge experiences to strengthen supporting business processes”. All joking aside, it’s pretty obvious that the KB functionality in Dynamics CRM is in need of a makeover, so bringing SharePoint into the picture is the obvious route for Microsoft to improve its CRM offering for service users.

The direction of marketing functionality development in Dynamics CRM will be shaped by Microsoft’s latest acquisition, Marketing Pilot. Although no one seems to have heard about the company before the MS press release, that doesn’t mean it wouldn’t be a good choice for the foundation which the v2.0 of Dynamics CRM marketing module would be built on. Whereas Skype and Yammer were big existing brands with their own technology stack, MarketingPilot is a small company that has developed their product on top of Microsoft’s platform and should therefore be much more easily assimilated into the Dynamics CRM product. Not a big splash like Salesforce.com’s acquisitions of Buddy Media or Radian6, not even close, but Microsoft have said marketing automation is one of their key investment areas for CRM, so let’s wait and see how that story develops.

While not exactly a bullet point in the Statement of Direction document, it’s pretty clear that Surface will be the central vehicle for launching the re-imagined Dynamics CRM experience and Microsoft have come up with a nice promotional video to build up the hype while we wait for the Windows 8 app to arrive. Folding the “Metro CRM app”, Yammer, Skype and Surface all into one sure does result in a compelling image of what the next generation of customer relationship management applications could be like.

What about devices other than the Surface? More precisely: what about mobile as in smartphone apps? Unfortunately there’s not much to say about them, except that there’s another delay for supporting iPhone and Android devices. Even the upcoming Windows Phone 8 customers won’t initially be able to use their mobile device for more than reading CRM records and posting Activity Feeds posts with the existing Microsoft Dynamics CRM Mobile client.

The February 2012 announcement of Microsoft partnering with CWR Mobility pretty much put everyone in a waiting mode, as the official mobile client for Dynamics CRM would have obviously been the safest bet for any customer or partner. Well, by now we can clearly see that the deal is off and the CWR client is no more “official” than Resco, TenDigits or any other ISV offering. Instead of buying a solution, Microsoft eventually decided that they need to be the ones who build it. In the long run I believe this is definitely the right strategy for them, as mobile is simply far too important to be an outsourced component of CRM.

We’ve heard from the Dynamics team that they’re betting big on HTML5 to deliver experiences across different devices. Even though Facebook famously backed off from their HTML5 strategy in favor of native apps, I’m somewhat optimistic that the path chosen by Microsoft can work better in the business apps landscape. MS will naturally build native CRM clients for Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8, but the effort required in delivering an enterprise scale mobile solution for a fragmented Android platform probably doesn’t make sense to them. Those are the gaps that ISV’s are there to fill, delivering more advanced offline clients for non-MS mobile platforms.

At the same time as the device specific offering is being rearranged, we’ve heard from a source claiming to have official confirmation from Microsoft that the Dynamics CRM CAL price will soon be increasing by 15 percent, in preparation of the upcoming support for more devices per user. Since there will not be any additional 30 USD monthly fee per mobile user, the user CAL can be leveraged on more devices and therefore it delivers more value to customers, which in turn means Microsoft sees it can justify a price increase. Although no one ever rejoices when the cost of a service goes up, I’m actually in favor of a pricing strategy where the mobile and tablet clients will be as easy as possible for any Dynamics CRM users to access, rather than the customer organizations having to go through the internal negotiations of who really needs a premium license for mobile CRM usage. There’s always the device CAL for those who need to just enable CRM access on a single PC per user, after all.

Conclusions

Polaris is certainly an important update for Dynamics CRM and in many ways it feels like the starting point for “the next chapter” of the product. With all the UI and client changes lined up for Orion in mid-2013, in my mind it raises the question that will this already be a fully new product á la Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013? Any which way, I think Microsoft is right now delivering a compelling vision with their whole product portfolio and announcements this year, and this reflects positively on the Dynamics applications as well.

November 3, 2012
Making Dynamics CRM exclusive again with Windows 8 & Metro

We have less than a month to go until Windows 8 hits RTM (release to maunfacturing). What has been described as the biggest OS renewal since Windows 95 is the current center of attention for each and every division at Redmond, since effectively Microsoft is betting the whole company on Windows 8. How does such a significant shift in the operating system used by 1.3 billion users impact a business application like Microsoft Dynamics CRM that has “only” 2.7 million users worldwide?

The past glory of Outlook

Previously Outlook used to be the premium client for accessing Microsoft Dynamics CRM. While any other CRM application provider was technically able to design a great user experience on a browser client, tapping into the omnipresent Microsoft Outlook (1 billion MS Office users globally) was a much more challenging task for outsiders, since they couldn’t just borrow members of the Outlook product team to help in building a CRM client, like the Dynamics division did with CRM 2011.

One regular tweet the Redmond tweeps like to recycle is that Outlook integration is the most popular add-on for Salesforce.com. I can imagine that for anyone selling a CRM application the question of “how does it work with my Outlook email and calendar” will have been a common encounter. As a result, every significant vendor has developed an Outlook integration. Also, as admitted by Bill Patterson at his WPC 2012 presentation, some customers actually prefer the Outlook clients of competing CRM vendros over what Dynamics CRM offers today. Sure, it may be an add-on, but what’s the big difference at the end of the day?

Another aspect to consider is that CRM inside Outlook is no longer the Holy Grail it once used to be. While I don’t have actual hard evidence to back this claim up, to me it seems obvious that the Outlook client is losing the relevancy it once had as the central hub for all knowledge workers. We no longer process our emails or manage our calendars on only our work PC, instead we do it on mobile phones, tablets, browsers, everywhere. The traditional Outlook application as we know it exists only in one of these environments. Although it remains within the reach of most Dynamics CRM users, it is more about the desktop legacy than showing the way of the future.

Cross-browser vs. Metro

Alongside Outlook, also the Internet Explorer client is losing its past status. The Dynamics CRM browser experience is becoming available on pretty much any Internet capable device, be it a PC or tablet, as the cross-browser support in Dynamics CRM rolls out. It was supposed to be here already, but got put on hold for another 6 months based on a decision Microsoft has made very recently. Regardless of the delay, it is something that cannot be stopped anymore. All the users, be it on IE, Chrome, Safari or Firefox will get the benefits of the new “Refresh” UI in their web client.

The main reason stated for the delayed delivery schedule of cross-browser support has been quality issues related to customizations in existing Dynamics CRM environments. Microsoft representatives have emphasized that they will not release a beta level product for line of business software that’s business critical to many of their customers.

While those are most likely accurate claims, Dennis Michalis (General Manager, Microsoft Dynamics CRM) also brought up in his WPC 2012 session the impact that Windows 8 has had on product development for other Microsoft product lines. Based on his statements, the demands placed on all the product teams for reaching Metro compatibility as close to the Windows 8 RTM date (beginning of August) as possible have probably forced them to re-evaluate their roadmaps and take away resources from the development of non-Metro functionality. In his own words:

“If we didn’t render Dynamcis CRM in the Windows 8 context we’d look foolish.”

Think about the priorities from Microsoft’s perspective: Would you rather make your business applications run seamlessly across PC and non-PC devices, thus making your competitors’ hardware and software more valuable for the user, or would you focus on building something that will run only on Windows machines? Besides, who wouldn’t want to get to selling a CRM app as gorgeous as this ASAP?

With the introduction of Metro apps on Windows 8, it will once again be possible for Microsoft to deliver a premium user experience that is exclusive to the clients running the latest & greatest MS software. Metro CRM will effectively be what the CRM Outlook client used to be a few years ago. This slide from WPC shows how the future Dynamics CRM client portfolio will no longer be Internet Explorer + Outlook, but instead we have the Classic client (browser + Outlook), Core client (Metro) and Companion clients (mobile apps).

In this transformation process the iPad apps are relegated into the “companion” category, whereas Metro apps are considered a part of the “core” experience. We probably won’t be seeing all the Dynamics CRM customization tools in the Metro CRM app anytime soon, but most of the functionality accessed by the average CRM user will very likely be available in the Metro client. Companion apps fill the gap for usage scenarios running on truly mobile devices i.e. smartphones, but the iPad or Android tablet apps Microsoft themselves offer will surely never be allowed to reach the level of functionality available on the Metro UI.

By delaying the availability of Microsoft Dynamics CRM Mobile from Q2 to Q4 the period of time between the Metro CRM app preview (Winter 2012 release = Q1 2013) and the official iPad app availability will have been conveniently minimized. Sure, anyone could acquire the iPad client straight from the manufacturer already today, but in the eyes of industry analysts who don’t pay attention to every detail in the product portfolio of CRM vendors they write articles about, little things like this can make a difference (case in point).

Are you ready to sell the Windows OS?

As we feast our eyes on the sneak peaks to a world where Dynamics CRM data is available literally at our fingertips, sliding away smoothly on the Metro canvas, it’s easy to forget what it will actually require for customers to gain access to a system like this. Metro apps will not run on anything but machines with Windows 8 OS. Also, they will not feel all that special unless you have some form of touch based input available in your hardware.

The Microsoft stack must be a faimilar concept to any IT professional. As an example, a customer doesn’t just buy Dynamics CRM from Microsoft, they buy the OS for the server & client, SQL Server for the database, Office for the end user information processing tools + optionally SharePoint, Exchange & Lync. Similarly, the Dynamics partners don’t only sell Dynamics CRM, Dynamics NAV etc. but also the surrounding stack. While in the past the OS hasn’t been a huge focus for Dynamics VAR’s, soon many of them will be selling Windows 8, indirectly. This is because if the customer doesn’t have the modern client software & hardware at their disposal, then you’ll need to fall back into the classic client in your CRM presales demo. Just imagine how crushing that will be once you’ve had a taste of Metro.

But there’s more to it then just flashy CRM demos obviously. Microsoft needs Metro to succeed in the enterprise. It may not need it immediately, though, and could therefore be prepared to not see a bigger uptake until Windows 9 comes around. Nevertheless, in order to have any chance of convincing companies to move beyond Windows 7 they’ve spent a lot of time and money migrating to not too long ago, Microsoft is in desperate need of Metro apps for the enterprise user. It’s not too difficult to convince developers to build simple Twitter clients and other small apps for Metro. The consumer can probably migrate to a Metro world pretty quickly, just like they’ve embraced the iPad. The enterprise scenario is a lot more complicated: No enterprise Metro apps -> users stuck with desktop apps -> Windows 8 only makes the life of IT department more difficult -> no sale.

The previous versions of Windows were sold to the enterprise as an operating system that meets the core needs placed on an OS. Windows 8 and its successors will be sold as the platform that runs the apps that your users need, with the user experience that they want. It’s no longer how you sold the enterprise BlackBerries, it’s increasingly how the enterprise was made to adopt iPhones. From the bottom up, through CoIT strategies (consumerization of IT). Cheap upgrade offers and shiny new slate devices targeted for the Xmas shopping season will not get the enterprises to adopt Windows 8, but they may get a few key influencers to go BYOD with Microsoft software and hardware (unlike the BYOM we’ve seen so far, i.e. Bring Your Own Mac) and put some pressure on their IT departments.

The same applies to Microsoft Dynamics partners. If the Salesforce.com sales reps go meet the potential customer with an iPad 3 in their hands, what Microsoft needs to get into the hands of its partners is the Surface. Long before the Dynamics CRM users will adopt it in any significant numbers. As the saying goes, the future is already here – it’s just not very evenly distributed. Even if Windows 8 would become an instant success in the consumer space, this will likely remain the reality for the Dynamics CRM customer base for quite some time.

July 16, 2012
Dynamics CRM roadmap for Fall 2012 release and beyond (the road to Metro)
After the unfortunate delay announcement of R8 / Q2 2012 Service Update planned functionality into Q4 2012 (cross-browser and mobile, read it all here), we have some more upbeat news regarding the future of Microsoft Dynamics CRM. As of now there is no official document available on this information, but the screenshots from World Partner Conference 2012 (WPC) already give us plenty of new information and reasons to get excited about the road ahead. Without further ado, here’s what the future releases of Dynamics CRM are planned to contain:

Click here for a bigger version of the picture. Now, let’s break this roadmap slide down into pieces so we can better digest the contents.

No more references to “Q4 2012 Service Update”, R9 etc. Instead we now have the functionality placed into Fall 2012, Winter 2013 and Spring 2013 updates. Whether this is the official new naming policy for Dynamics CRM updates remains to be seen.

“Refresh” UI coming to the browser client presumably in Fall 2012 update. These UI changes have now been merged with the cross-browser support, which was delayed from Q2 2012 to Q4 2012. The new UI will have a Metro feel to it, but it won’t be an actual Metro app. Simplified appearance with less colors seems to be the way to go here. If you’ve seen the leaked Office 15 screenshots, that’s probably where CRM is going as well.

Office 15 (Office 2013) compatibility in Fall 2012, enhancements during Winter 2013. Since we don’t have a beta of Office 2013 available, the future functionality is unconfirmed, but I’d imagine CRM to integrate with the Agaves feature, for example. Making the CRM client compatible with Outlook 2013 should be an obvious deliverable here.

Process driven UI, to be launched in Fall 2012 update and developed further in consecutive releases. The demo from WPC shows a persistent process “timeline” graphic on top of the lead form, which visualizes the stage the record is in and he information & actions required in that stage. What’s interesting is that this process in the demo flows seamlessly from a lead record onto an opportunity record. This looks like a highly interesting new feature that will hopefully allow us to make workflow and dialog processes as well as status reason data easier for the CRM user to understand and interact with. Also notice how the lead entity form in the demo presents fields and subgrids in several columns side by side, with the form navigation collapsed.

Metro CRM app preview in Winter 2013, full release in Spring 2013. Yes, the real deal, not just a generic Dynamics app we’ve seen in the keynote demos in Convergence 2012 and now WPC 2012. CRM reimagined.

Application functionality updates. Opportunity management and case management enhancements in Fall 2012, presumably to go alongside the process driven UI. Sales & service hierarchies, sales team enablement in Winter 2013, providing some of the team functionality visible in the Metro demo. Territory and performance management in Spring 2013.

On the platform side there’s plenty of new things lined up. For Fall 2012 we have:
- Service monitoring and analytics (á la Office 365 Trust Center)
- Additional compliance (more certifications for CRM Online?)
- Bulk data load (improved data import wizard?)
- Multi-instance (?)
Winter 2013 promises us:
- Online snapshot (can we download a copy of CRM Online database as self service?)
- Office 365 migration (is this the move from CTP to OSDP, finalizing the “better together” story for existing customers?)
- Server side sync with Exchange (R9 rumor from Convergence now confirmed, no more Outlook client dependency)
- Data enrichment (could be Azure Data Market, InsideView or something similar for filling customer details from external databases & networks)
And finally “custom indexes” for Fall 2013. A lot of questions arise from a single roadmap slide, but that’s what the upcoming Q4 2012 Release Preview Guide will hopefully address once released during the summer.

A big shout out to CRM MVP Mark Smith from Magnetism for sharing the pictures he grabbed during the WPC 2012 sessions. You can find his WPC album on SkyDrive, filled with Metro goodness. I’ll close off with another beautiful scene from the Metro CRM and start counting the days to when I can get my hands on a Windows 8 slate running the preview app.
July 11, 2012
Convergence 2012 in a (virtual) nutshell
Full disclosure: I didn’t actually physically attend Microsoft Convergence 2012 in Houston, Texas. However, that doesn’t mean you have to feel left in the dark, thanks to the immersive experience that is the social web of our times. With live webcasts, near-live blogging and some 6000 tweets on the #CONV12 hashtag, keeping up with the online buzz has never been easier. Here’s my summary of what the event looked like through the eyes of a virtual attendee and some thoughts on where Microsoft and its Dynamics product line appear to be heading based on the announcements at Convergence.

Keynote

The opening keynote is where the stage is set for the rest of the event, so watching the live broadcast on Monday was definitely on my agenda. Sure, it’s all about building up hype for your products by telling how great you’ve done so far, how excited you are about your future roadmap and showing off with future concept demos that have little to do with the current reality. So what! You need a little show business alongside your business applications conference.

Having the luxury of my PC keyboard & mouse at my disposal during the event allowed me to experiment with Storify, a social media storytelling tool. I captured the best tweets, photos and screenshots during the keynote and compiled them into my Convergence 2012 story. If you’re anything like me, the mental barrier for sitting down and watching a recorded conference event for 1.5 hours is quite high, so why not glance through the highlights of the show on the Storify summary? After that, you can decide if you want to read the full transcript or watch the recording on the Virtual Convergence site.

Some notes picked up from the opening keynote included:
- The Dynamics CRM momentum now stands at 2,250,000 users in 33,000 customer organizations.
- “There are no happy Siebel customers in the world, there just aren’t.” – COO Kevin Turner on Microsofts internal journey from Siebel to Dynamics CRM.
- Nearly half of the deals won by Microsoft over Salesforce.com have been due to the on-premises option and the hybrid model.
Metro

It’s Windows reimagined time all across Redmond now as we’re nearing the launch of Windows 8 later this year. This means everything that can be shown as a Metro style app running on a tablet, will be shown precisely that way. The fictional Contoso Electronics scenario of the big keynote demo used a highly customized UI built for the retail store experience only. A much more interesting demo was the project management Metro app that looked so realistic you could imagine it becoming an actual UI to some future Microsoft product to be rolled out at Windows 8 launch.

We didn’t get any official screenshots of a Dynamics CRM Metro app yet, but luckily Garth Knutson was able to snap & tweet this picture of a UI concept presented in one of the sessions. Just imagine if assigning users onto a Dynamics CRM opportunity record would look like this, how much higher would the user adoption of a CRM system be among sales people? Ah, CRM reimagined…

But the road to metro is paved with Apples. The actual tablet product Microsoft had to show at Convergence was the Dynamics CRM Mobile client for iPad, which meant that Apple devices were well presented in many of the Convergence sessions. Funnily enough, during the conference an internal email leak revealed that Microsoft was banning the use of company budget to buy any Apple products for its Sales, Marketing, Services, IT, & Operations Group. Oh well, guess we won’t be seeing many iPads on stage anymore in the following events. For those of you who haven’t seen the current client yet (developed by CWR Mobility), see my previous post on Microsoft Dynamics CRM Mobile iPad screenshots.

An important aspect to note is that the move towards Metro apps and tablet devices does also have an impact on traditional desktop usage of Dynamics CRM. Back in November I speculated that the legacy of Outlook could not be carried over to the world of Windows 8 tablets in its existing form. Since then this assumption has only been enforced by the announcement of Windows on ARM (WOA) tablets with no classic Windows application support and no sign of Outlook in the list of Office apps promised for these “iPad killers”. What this means is that the functionality exclusive to Dynamics CRM Outlook client must be moved to the cloud. At Convergence, the following functionality was more or less revealed to be included in the R9 release later this year:
- Direct synchronization of activities through Exchange (instead of Outlook)
- Support for “track in CRM” functionality in Outlook Web Access (OWA client)
Woo-hoo! It’s been a long time coming, but to me this is a clear sign that Dynamics CRM is definitely on the right track in terms of becoming more compatible with the habits of today’s mobile workforce; how they manage their activities and messages on multiple clients, not just the single Outlook on their work laptop. Making the CRM features available through new channels, such as the Office 15 Agaves, is very important for making Dynamics CRM a relevant tool for knowledge sharing as the applications and devices surrounding it are evolving.

(more…)
March 24, 2012
Microsoft Dynamics CRM Mobile iPad screenshots
Microsoft has released a YouTube video where Ruben Krippner talks you through the upcoming features of the Q2 2012 Service Update, a.k.a. Dynamics CRM R8. Since we already know much of the new release details through the Release Preview Guide, the most interesting part of the video is the live footage of Microsoft Dynamics CRM Mobile running on an iPad. For those of you who want to get a quick glimpse of what the client looks like, I took the liberty of taking a few screenshots from the video.

Sitemap & Dashboards

As we know, the “new” client is actually a rebranded version of the CWR Mobility client for Dynamics CRM. The UI looks almost identical, apart from a new set of Metro style entity icons. The sharp edges and “authentically digital” appearance look somewhat out of place in the otherwise iOS-style app, but let’s hope that there will be a full Metro app for Dynamics CRM available once the Windows 8 tablets hit the stores.

Dashboards appear to be close to the web UI as far as charts go. If you have other types of web resources on your dashboard (say, a Silverlight component), the results may be a bit less so. Also, I’m assuming entity grids will not be rendered on the iPad Dashboard, at least not in their original format.

Views

The iPad UI does support filtering data through views, just like you do on the web client. However, the views themselves will not be presented in the familiar grid style with columns, rather you’ll see a list of records with the primary field and some other data stacked on top of each other. Whether this is because of iOS limitations or an inherited design from the iPhone app, I’m not sure.

Forms

The standard fields are presented on a form that has a single column. Picklist and date fields use native iOS controls, also field types like phone numbers or email addresses will open native apps for respective actions. Why an iPad app shows you the options to dial a phone call or send SMS, I don’t know, because at least my iPad won’t allow me to do those without jailbreaking the device, but maybe Ruben has a special version of the Apple tablet 😉

As you can see from the form, it’s not specifically optimized for landscape mode viewing on a tablet, but rather looks like a big iPhone app. Entity forms with many columns will therefore be presented as a long list the user has to scroll up & down.

Maps

As a funny little detail that Ruben mentions on the video how the account address opens up on Google Maps. Why not Bing Maps? Well, because the native map application on an iOS device comes from Google…

Off-topic: It’s great that the mobile clients for iOS, Android and Windows Phone now have the basic address mapping integration in place, now we just need to get it for the web and Outlook clients as well. While the integration itself is technically quite trivial, the requirement for purchasing a Bing Maps license for using the map data on a non-public application is currently a big barrier in the desktop world. But enough about that, let’s get back to the mobile client.

Related records

Because the sitemap navigation pane is permanently visible on the left hand side of the screen, which on a normal web client entity form would show the related records, in the mobile client these are accessed through a button on the lower right corner of the screen. Subgrid type of functionality is not available on the tablet UI, which can make it a bit cumbersome to navigate through long hierarchies of records. As a result, using the iPad client for tasks such as order entry while on the road is not really optimal in the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Mobile client. These types of use cases will still be better met with a custom developed tablet application equipped with specific data entry screens, so toolkits like Resco will remain relevant even after this official Dynamics CRM iPad client gets released.

Configuration

The mobile client is not just an alternative UI for CRM, but there is a wealth of management options for user and client management, synchronization settings, usage reports etc. Since the way you use a mobile/tablet application is quite different from the normal desktop client usage scenario, it’s important that the information presented to the user can be optimized. Microsoft Dynamics CRM Mobile allows you to do this by defining different user groups and assigning them tailored mobile profiles containing only relevant entities in the sitemap. Also the contents of the mobile forms can be adjusted, so you don’t have to show all the tens of attributes that your entities contain.

Conclusions

The CRM Anywhere theme is definitely a step in the right direction for Microsoft Dynamics CRM to become an application that truly “works the way you do”. Even though the cross-browser compatibility will enable users to open up the CRM web client on their iPad Safari browser, for any serious work on a tablet you’ll want to have a client that is optimized for:
1. touch based user interface
2. streamlined data presentation to support the “working in short bursts” mode of mobile device usage
3. offline access for those moments when 3G or WiFi just doesn’t reach you
For the subscription price of $30 per user per month (or the perpetual license you can still acquire from CWR Mobility), you can install a fully capable Dynamics CRM mobile client on both your iPad and your iPhone, and still have one user license left for trying out the latest Android phone (whether the non-offline Windows Phone 7 client will consume a license, I don’t know yet).

You can read more of my thoughts on Microsoft Dynamics CRM Mobile on this article I wrote after the announcement at eXtreme CRM 2012 Berlin.
March 9, 2012