Mobility webinar recording now available

Last Thursday we conducted our Microsoft CRM mobility webinar and overall it went pretty well. We were able to cover the main topics we wanted to hit and share our mobility thoughts with prospects and customers. While researching information for the webinar, I received great responsiveness from Erik van Hoof at CWR Mobility BV and Mark Watts at Ten Digits. So thanks very much to those two guys!

Unfortunately we did have two minor hiccups during the event:

1. We received an authentication error during the demo of Microsoft CRM Laptop Client for Outlook. We didn't miss anything major but it was frustrating.
2. The conference call line muting didn't work 100% and I could hear someone playing music lightly in the background. The music is audible in the recording background but I wanted to let everyone know it wasn't me playing that non-sense!

So we're getting pretty good at the webinars but clearly we're still not perfect yet. I am not sure why we received the authentication error but we have been experiencing problems with the August 2007 VPC image provided by Microsoft. Every once in a while it will randomly prompt you to login again. I am not sure if this is related to the error we saw, but my guess would be "yes". I ask Menno if he has seen this login prompt/error himself and it sounds like he has. Therefore, I'm hopeful Microsoft is working on a solution.

You can watch the mobility webinar recording here, it is about 46 minutes in duration. Summarizing the entire event in a nutshell:

• If you have a laptop, use the Microsoft CRM Laptop Client for Outlook. It will give you (nearly) full CRM access offline and it will sync CRM Contacts, Appointments and Tasks into your Outlook...which you can in turn sync onto the mobile device of your choice.
• If you have a mobile device (PDA or cell phone):
• Don't plan on using Microsoft CRM 3.0 Mobile unless you don't have any custom entities or your needs are VERY basic around the sales module.
• Use Microsoft CRM 3.0 Mobile Express for infrequent access to CRM data because it is slow to browse. On the plus side, it's free and there is no software to install on the device. You also get the source code if you want to modify or extend it.
• If you want to use CRM data extensively (logging calls, adding notes, etc.) on your mobile device:
• Buy CWR Mobile if you have a Windows device.
• Buy Mobile Access from Ten Digits if you have a Blackberry.

As a reminder, you can watch any of our past Microsoft CRM webinars from our Events page.