New Forrester Wave reports released, and look who's ahead of Salesforce.com!

Posted by Mike Snyder on October 24, 2008 in   |  Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0  |  Comments (1)

Analyst firm Forrester recently released new reports that evaluate and rank CRM business applications. I was very happy to see that Forrester ranked Microsoft Dynamics CRM as a "leader" in both the enterprise and mid-market space. Even better, Forrester gave Microsoft Dynamics CRM a better ranking than Salesforce.com. Very nice!

Forrester summarized Microsoft Dynamics CRM with the following:

Microsoft Dynamics CRM. Over the past five years, Microsoft has established itself as a major
CRM player thanks to deep capital investment, a formidable strategy, and strong branding. The
product is strong in SFA, internationalization, and usability. Arguably its greatest strength is
its native Microsoft Office user experience. The solution is set up to look, feel, and function
like Outlook. Sales analysis tools, opportunity management, and setup and configuration
capabilities are the application’s key SFA strengths. The product also is available in multiple
deployment options and is attractively priced below many of the alternative products in the
market. The solution is built on the Microsoft .NET framework and integrates seamlessly with
other Microsoft productivity tools, like Office, Outlook, and SharePoint.

Where the solution is weaker, however, is in support for eCommerce and industry business
process support. The product does not possess deep industry vertical capabilities, and offers
minimal partner relationship management (PRM) capabilities natively, forcing buyers that
want deeper PRM capabilities to augment the application through integration to BLUEROADS.
Microsoft Dynamics CRM is best suited for organizations that are Microsoft-technology-centric
for their business applications and technology

You can download the full Forrester reports if you want read all of the details:

• Forrester Wave Midmarket report: click here.
• Forrester Wave Enterprise report: click here.

Creating New CRM 4.0 Reports Views

Posted by Jim Steger on October 17, 2008  |  Comments (0)

With Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0, any newly added report category would show up in the report's grid view selector. This was a nice way to group business reports and make it simpler for users to access them.

  

As you may have noticed, CRM 4.0 no longer automatically creates a report view from a newly created report category. By default, you can only choose to filter the reports from the default reporting views.

However, reports are now a first-class entity within CRM, so they also enjoy the benefits of advanced find and custom views. You can either use Advanced Find to create your own report-based saved views or create custom system views on the Report entity. Not only can you filter based on the report category, but other attributes as well. Further, as with other entities, you can change the system default view.

 

Use the standard entity customization tools to create new system reporting views and set the default report view. Don't forget to publish your changes. You can create new report categories by going to Settings, Administration, System Settings, and then click on the Reporting tab.

Programming Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 book cover

Posted by Mike Snyder on October 15, 2008  |  Comments (3)

Within the next few weeks, Microsoft Press will publish our third and final book about Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0. The latest book is titled Programming Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0, and you can find some basic information about it on Amazon.com. Unfortunately Amazon.com does NOT have the correct book description and Microsoft has been trying to get it updated for a while now.

Fortunately, you can get a correct book summary from the Microsoft Press website:

Get expert guidance for programming Microsoft Dynamics CRM software to meet your business needs.

Get hands-on and conceptual guidance for creating and adapting customer relationship management (CRM) solutions—direct from leading CRM consultants. This reference details design and coding practices that allow you to customize Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 to meet specific business needs. Get expert insights on customization, integration, and extension; end-to-end solution designs from the product team; and numerous case studies that demonstrate how to customize Microsoft Dynamics CRM as a business solution. The book covers the three major deployment options available: on-premises, partner-hosted, and CRM Live.

We also recently received a copy of the book cover artwork so I thought I would share what the back cover looks like!