This week the Microsoft Dynamics CRM team announced that the long awaited next service update will be available in December. Very overdue but highly anticipated. I wanted to take a moment to highlight a few items that users should get excited about. You can read the full details by downloading the document directly. Microsoft Product Team has also released a longer term Vision- Statement of Direction which you can also download.
#5 – Updated User Experience. The updated UX will be initially for sales and service but will expand in future releases. The new UX will be more of a mash-up of information (which will save clicks in the system) and allow users to be more productive. It has a very social feel and will lead to more things when the Windows 8 Metro look and feel gets incorporated into the product.
#4- Better Social Experiences leveraging Yammer. As I am sure you already know, Yammer is an internal social networking tool that was purchased by Microsoft. Yammer allows for better collaboration between employees, clients and partners. In this first release of the integration it will allow users of Yammer and/or CRM to follow events, records or documents. Very cool productivity tool!
#3- Office 2013 Compatibility. As you most likely already know Office 2013 will be released Q1 2013 and CRM users will want their Outlook client to work with the latest version of Office. This will be ready to go for you. There are some nice Excel enhancements coming and CRM will not be able to leverage those. By the way, besides Office 2013, Microsoft is also releasing Windows 8 (out now), SharePoint Server 2013, Exchange Server 2013, Lync Server 2013 and has already released SQL Server 2012 (which CRM is compatible with currently).
#2- Embedded Skype– Though we have had dial out capabilities/presence through Lync for some time now with CRM, Lync is not utilized by all organizations. Now individuals with Skype accounts can easily utilize the new features to dial out to prospects/clients with a click of a button.
And the #1 reason why CRM users should be excited for the December 2012 Service Update from Microsoft- Multi-Browser Support. Since Microsoft Dynamics CRM Beta 1.0 we have been exclusively using Internet Explorer (IE) to access CRM. But with this new change, not only does this mean that CRM will now work from alternative browsers like Apple Safari, Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox but it will also be available innately on alternative devices. For sales people this is very important. The new Microsoft Windows 8, Apple iPhone and Google Android smart phones all will have access to CRM now. Also tablets like the new Microsoft Surface and the Apple iPad and iPad mini will be available for users to access CRM.
