Dynamics CRM 2016 announced, with enhancements to intelligence, mobility and service

Just a few hours ago, Microsoft has finally announced the new version of Dynamics CRM 2016.  It is marketing-ed as a "customer engagement solution", due to be released at later this year.

According to Microsoft, this new CRM release is the most comprehensive upgrade ever for Dynamics CRM includes advancements in intelligence, mobility and service, with significant productivity enhancements to help businesses and workers achieve more.


Check it out: http://news.microsoft.com/2015/09/08/microsoft-reinvents-productivity-with-upcoming-release-of-customer-engagement-solution/

Now the question is, how the existing offline CRM customers get more benefits from a newer version of CRM straight away? I'm sure there are many thoughts on it. :)

Microsoft Dynamics CRM Customization Essentials

"Microsoft Dynamics CRM Customization Essentials" written by Nicolae Tarla, a MVP alumni. This book has published on December 2014, targeting to Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2015. But in my option, most of the contents in this book can also apply to CRM 2011 and 2013.

The bright spot of this book is about “Use a no-code approach to create powerful business solutions using Dynamics CRM 2015”. Therefore the audience of this book are business administration users, functional consultant etc. Developers could also benefit from this book by recognising what are the out-of-box Microsoft Dynamics CRM offerings, and how to leverage them; rather than try to develop everything – noted in most scenarios, we should follow the “CCDI” route: 

Configuration -> Customisation -> Development -> Integration.  

In some scenarios, the right route would be CCID - so use the best of CRM, not everything (in which other technology/products can provide a better solution, so integration would be preferable and scalable).

Either way, “CC” are always the first choices, which are the focus of this book; it has 6 chapters:

• Chapter 1: Getting Started – get a free trial of CRM Online and configure CRM Outlook.
• Chapter 2: Dynamics CRM Application Structure – CRM modules and major components.
• Chapter 3: Customizing Entities – Entities in detail, customise entities and extend the system.
• Chapter 4: Business Processes – Customise business processes and business roles.
• Chapter 5: Social Features in Microsoft Dynamics CRM – various social platforms, internally and externally of Dynamics CRM platform.
• Chapter 6: Dynamics CRM Administration – Various administration options available in Dynamics CRM.

In summary, it is a recommended book of Microsoft Dynamics CRM business administration / functional readers who learn/design/build their CRM systems using the “Configuration and Customisation” approach.

Although in a complex business environment, you will need more or less in-deep development work to extend CRM further to fit your business, but those are not the focus of this book.

Orchard CRM supports Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011, 2013 and 2015!

Happy New Year 2015!

For those who are interested in the Orchard CRM, I have compiled the module with the latest Orchard v1.8.1 and CRM 2015 dlls, so now it supports Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011/2013/2015 Online and On-Premise deployment, using the latest .Net framework 4.5.2.

Demo site:
http://www.orchardcrm.com

Download the module here:
http://gallery.orchardproject.net/Packages/Orchard.Module.DynamicsCRM

More articles of Orchard CRM:

• Orchard CRM - A concept of Dynamics CRM Portal Solution
• Orchard CRM - The Application Design
• Setup Orchard CRM portal website on Azure