CRM Online update (known as R4) announced and coming in November

Posted by Mike Snyder on October 5, 2009  |  Comments (3)

We just received an email from Microsoft officially announcing an upcoming update to CRM Online:

“As part of Microsoft's commitment to ongoing innovation and customer success, we are set to deliver our next Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online service update in November 2009. This update will provide your organization with increased business benefits that accelerate time to value in areas such as:

• Access to Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online through a range of mobile devices
• In-page help and how-to guidance to provide an even richer experience for new users
• The ability to add additional storage capacity to accommodate even larger customer databases
• The introduction of a Home Page dashboard that gives improved visibility into data through embedded charts
• A new release of Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online for Outlook with improved performance and usability
• Enhanced data import capabilities through an updated import wizard experience

We will begin upgrading existing organizations in early November.”

Putting our own spin on this (and based on the previews we’ve seen), we are really excited for:

• DASHBOARDS, DASHBOARDS, DASHBOARDS: Did I mention Dashboards?
• Microsoft CRM Mobile Express: now available for CRM Online
• New release of the Outlook client: This will be bigger than your typical bug fix/update rollup, think more along the lines of massive performance improvements.
• Improved data import: The update message is a little vague above but we expect there will be significant improvements for customers migrating from competing CRM products (hint: SFDC).

Stay tuned for more details as Microsoft releases them to the public!