We Heard You Like Apps: So Here's A Hot One For Windows 8

Posted by Sonoma Partners on October 24, 2012 in | Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011, | Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online |

Every so often Microsoft releases a new installment of their venerable Windows operating system. Their newest is called Windows 8, and it is a radical departure from previous iterations.

This is the first version of Windows that has been optimized for a touch experience and includes an app store. We know most business users are (and likely will remain) on Windows devices, so why not make them an app that improves productivity?

We did, and we call it EZ Opp.

It is without question the fastest and easiest way to view and update your sales opportunities in Microsoft Dynamics CRM. Simply touch the data and move it to change values.

Best of all? It's FREE, and available now in the Windows 8 Store. Grab a copy and let us know how you like it!

EDIT: This app is US-only for now, but if there's sufficient international demand we may open it up a bit.

Silverlight 5 Async Tasks with Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011

Posted by Blake Scarlavai on September 10, 2012 in | Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011, | Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online |

Comments (3)

Have you ever needed to execute several queries in CRM 2011 from Silverlight and perform some task when all the data is retrieved? If so, you’ll know that this can be a major pain as well as create some ugly code due to asynchronous requests.

With Silverlight 5 you can use the System.Threading.Tasks namespace to simplify your code. In the following code sample I will use two simple queries, one to retrieve all contacts and one to retrieve all accounts. I will then utilize Tasks to execute the queries asynchronously and wait until they are both finished in order to perform more logic. The following code sample uses the SilverlightUtility from the SDK to use the SOAP endpoint which can be found here.

        public void RetrieveData()
        {
            IOrganizationService orgService = SilverlightUtility.GetSoapService();

            QueryExpression accountQuery = new QueryExpression();
            accountQuery.EntityName = "account";
            accountQuery.ColumnSet = new ColumnSet() { AllColumns = true };            

            QueryExpression contactQuery = new QueryExpression();
            contactQuery.EntityName = "contact";
            contactQuery.ColumnSet = new ColumnSet() { AllColumns = true };

            var accountTask = CreateRetrieveMultipleTask(orgService, accountQuery);
            var contactTask = CreateRetrieveMultipleTask(orgService, contactQuery);

            Task.Factory.ContinueWhenAll(new Task[] { accountTask, contactTask },
                completedTasks =>
                {
                    EntityCollection accounts = accountTask.Result;
                    EntityCollection contacts = contactTask.Result;

                    // Perform task
                });
        }

        public Task<EntityCollection> CreateRetrieveMultipleTask(IOrganizationService orgService,

            QueryBase query)
        {
            return 
                Task.Factory.FromAsync<QueryBase, EntityCollection>(
                    orgService.BeginRetrieveMultiple,
                    orgService.EndRetrieveMultiple,
                    query,
                    null);
        }

If you are using Visual Studio 2012 then you can make asynchronous processing even cleaner with the Async Targeting Pack and the 'await' keyword. More information can be found here.

JavaScript Bookmark Series – Part 1

Posted by Blake Scarlavai on August 13, 2012 in | Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011, | Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online |

Comments (2)

Today we’ll be kicking off a series of posts about JavaScript bookmarks that can be useful to CRM developers and customizers. These bookmarks are easy to setup and could help save some time. To create these bookmarks, just browse to any CRM page and add it to your favorites (This will get you the lovely CRM logo). Then, you can edit the bookmark and set the URL to the JavaScript mentioned in the post.

The first bookmark in the series will alert any fields that are dirty on a CRM form. As a developer, you’ll know that sometimes forms become perpetually dirty due to some custom JavaScript that is manipulating a field value automatically. This makes the pesky “Are you sure you want to leave this page?” alert show up when the user closes the form even if they didn’t change a value.

To easily debug this issue, make a bookmark setting the URL to the following:

javascript:var message="The following fields are dirty: \n";window.frames[0].Xrm.Page.data.entity.attributes.forEach(function(attribute,index){if(attribute.getIsDirty()==true){message+="\u2219 "+attribute.getName()+"\n";}});alert(message);

Now browse to the ‘dirty’ CRM form and click your new bookmark. This should alert the names of all the fields that are dirty.

That concludes our first bookmark of the series! Let us know in the comments if you have any suggestions for a useful bookmark.

For Every Deactivation There is an Equal and Opposite Reactivation

Posted by Corey O'Brien on June 2, 2011 in | Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011, | Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online |

Comments (1)

Adding Activate Buttons to Microsoft CRM Activity Ribbons

One common customization request we receive for Microsoft CRM is to allow users to reactivate completed activities. Typically this is because a user wants to make a simple update to the record, like correcting a typo.

There are two common ways we can achieve this in Microsoft CRM:

Executing a manual workflow
Adding a custom button to the ribbon

A manual workflow is easy to set up, but because the workflow runs asynchronously, it isn’t the best user experience. In this post, I’ll demonstrate the second method - adding a custom ribbon button to reactivate activities.

Part 1: Prepare a Solution

The first step is packaging the activities you are targeting into a custom solution. To do this, open up Microsoft CRM and navigate to the Settings > Customizations > Solutions page. Now, create a new solution. You will be adding a JavaScript library to this solution, so you will want to set up a new publisher to represent your company if you do not already have one. Specify an appropriate Display Name and Version.

Click Save in the solution toolbar and then select the Entities node from the solution components tree on the left. Now click the Add Existing button in the toolbar above the grid, and select each custom activity that you want to add an Activate button to.

Next we’ll add a JavaScript library. Select Web Resources in the solution component tree and then click New from the toolbar above the grid. Enter Scripts/RibbonSample/activateRecord.js for the Name and activateRecord.js for the Display Name. Select Script (JScript) from the Type picklist and then click the Text Editor button.

Paste in the following script:

if (typeof (Sonoma) == "undefined") { Sonoma = {}; }

Sonoma.activateRecord = function (id, logicalName) {

var orgServiceUrl = Xrm.Page.context.getServerUrl() + "/XRMServices/2011/Organization.svc/web";

var request =

'<s:Envelope xmlns:s="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/">' +

'<s:Body>' +

'<Execute ' +

' xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/xrm/2011/Contracts/Services" ' +

' xmlns:i="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">' +

'<request i:type="b:SetStateRequest" ' +

' xmlns:a="http://schemas.microsoft.com/xrm/2011/Contracts" ' +

' xmlns:b="http://schemas.microsoft.com/crm/2011/Contracts">' +

'<a:Parameters ' +

' xmlns:c="http://schemas.datacontract.org/2004/' +

'07/System.Collections.Generic">' +

'<a:KeyValuePairOfstringanyType>' +

'<c:key>EntityMoniker</c:key>' +

'<c:value i:type="a:EntityReference">' +

'<a:Id>' + id + '</a:Id>' +

'<a:LogicalName>' +

logicalName +

'</a:LogicalName>' +

'<a:Name i:nil="true" />' +

'</c:value>' +

'</a:KeyValuePairOfstringanyType>' +

'<a:KeyValuePairOfstringanyType>' +

'<c:key>State</c:key>' +

'<c:value i:type="a:OptionSetValue">' +

'<a:Value>0</a:Value>' +

'</c:value>' +

'</a:KeyValuePairOfstringanyType>' +

'<a:KeyValuePairOfstringanyType>' +

'<c:key>Status</c:key>' +

'<c:value i:type="a:OptionSetValue">' +

'<a:Value>-1</a:Value>' +

'</c:value>' +

'</a:KeyValuePairOfstringanyType>' +

'</a:Parameters>' +

'<a:RequestId i:nil="true" />' +

'<a:RequestName>SetState</a:RequestName>' +

'</request>' +

'</Execute>' +

'</s:Body>' +

'</s:Envelope>';

var req = new XMLHttpRequest();

req.open("POST", orgServiceUrl, true);

req.setRequestHeader("Accept", "application/xml, text/xml, */*");

req.setRequestHeader("Content-Type", "text/xml; charset=utf-8");

req.setRequestHeader("SOAPAction",

"http://schemas.microsoft.com/xrm/2011/Contracts/Services/IOrganizationService/Execute");

req.onreadystatechange = function () {

if (req.readyState === 4) {

location.reload(true);

}

};

req.send(request);

};

This script defines a single method that takes in an entity id and type name. It then makes a call to CRM’s Organization service to activate the record passed in via the parameters. When the service call completes, it reloads the entity form.

Warning: The script is technically unsupported because it accesses the location.reload method on the HTML DOM. However, since there is currenlty not a supported way to refresh the current form, this will be your best bet to provide a good user experience.

Click OK to close the text editor, then Save and Close to create the new web resource.

Export the solution by clicking the Export Solution button at the top of the solution window. This will be an unmanaged solution and we don’t need to include any of the system settings, so leave all of the default options selected as you navigate through the wizard. When prompted, save the solution zip file to a place you will be able to find it on your local computer.

Part 2: Modifying the Solution

Now comes the fun part, we need to open up the exported solution and modify the ribbon definition for each activity we included. Start by extracting all files from the solution zip file into a new subfolder. You should see three files and a WebResources folder extracted.

Open customizations.xml in your favorite XML or text editor. You should see a section similar to the following in each of the entities you included in the solution:

</Templates>

</RuleDefinitions>

</RibbonDiffXml>

Replace the <CommandDefinitions /> element with the highlighted text below:

</Templates>

</EnableRules>

</DisplayRules>

<JavaScriptFunction FunctionName="Sonoma.activateRecord"

Library="$webresource:sonoma_Scripts/RibbonSample/activateRecord.js">

</JavaScriptFunction>

</Actions>

</CommandDefinition>

</CommandDefinitions>

</RuleDefinitions>

</RibbonDiffXml>

Note: You will need to change the sonoma_ prefix (as highlighted above in green). This prefix is defined in the publisher you associated with the solution.

Now you might be wondering why we didn’t need to define a button, icons, labels, tooltips, tab location, etc. As it turns out, the activity forms all have this button defined on them natively. They just have a DisplayRule in place to hide them. With this Ribbon change, we’re simply redefining the CommandDefinition to call our custom script and leveraging the existing button definition.

Tip: If you ever need to see an entity’s native ribbon definition, you can check out the Export Ribbon Definitions topic in the CRM SDK.

Part 3: Putting Humpty Dumpty Back Together Again (or Reimporting the Solution)

Now to see these new buttons you’ll need just need to zip up the your exported files (or you can drag the only modified file – customizations.xml – back into your existing solution zip file) and import them back into CRM. To perform the import, navigate back to Settings > Customizations > Solutions within CRM and click the Import button from the toolbar above the grid. Browse to pick your new zip file, and then continue through the rest of the wizard. After the import completes, you can click Publish All Customizations to apply your new change, or if you have other pending changes, you can manually navigate to the activity entities and publish them individually.

Success!

Now if you open a Closed activity you modified, you should see the Activate button in the ribbon:

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Online Released to Web!

Posted by Mike Snyder on January 17, 2011 in | Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011, | Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online |

Comments (1)

Microsoft announced the release of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Online today! ~~I haven’t seen an~~ ~~official press release~~ ~~from Microsoft (yet), but~~ I just signed up for a Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online trial and I received the 2011 edition of the software! So if you’ve been patiently waiting to use CRM 2011 in a production environment, wait no longer my friend. Roll up your sleeves, sign up for trial and get in there!

CRM2011

If you like track build numbers, you can see that this build is 5.0.9688.56.

CRM2011-Build

What’s New in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 and Release Candidate Available (RC)

Posted by Mike Snyder on January 5, 2011 in | Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011, | Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online |

Comments (1)

Ok so the holidays are finally over and you’re just now catching up on all those emails you received. If you were not paying careful attention right before Christmas, you might have missed a huge piece of news regarding Microsoft Dynamics CRM. Microsoft announced and posted the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Release Candidate!

The RC is the last time Microsoft will release the software for customers to test before the official CRM Online Release to Web (RTW) launch in January 2011, and the on-premises Release to Manufacturing (RTM). There are just WAY too many features to list everything that’s new in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011, but here are some of the key highlights from our perspective (with links to some of the YouTube videos we created back in September 2010 highlighting these features):

Improved Microsoft Office Interface Microsoft Office 2007 introduced a new ribbon interface in products like Excel and Word. Office 2010 expanded the ribbon into other office products like Outlook and OneNote. Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 also includes the contextual ribbon interface for improved ease-of-use and consistency with the other Microsoft Office applications.
Role-based Forms and Views Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 allows administrators to create multiple forms for each record type. By doing so, organizations can really streamline the user interface so that users only see the data that they need to access. For example, sales reps might see a form filled with sales data about a customer, while a customer service rep could view the same customer record but instead they would see a different form that displays only customer service data.
Inline Data Visualization You can now quickly and easily create charts that display inline next to records in a grid. For example you can view a list of opportunities and have a chart to the right that visualizes the data you’re viewing. Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 also includes web-based tools for users to create and edit their own charts.
Dashboards This feature allows users and administrators to setup dashboards with different types of data such as charts, grids, and possibly data from external systems. Dashboards can be customized and tailored to each group’s or individual’s needs, so that they can quickly and easily access the information they need.
Better Office Outlook Experience Microsoft Dynamics CRM for Outlook offers even deeper levels of integration with Outlook. Users can now use Outlook features like filtering and conditional formatting on CRM data, in addition to other new benefits like inserting CRM templates into Outlook emails.
Contextual Document Management With Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 and Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server 2010, you can setup and associate integrated document libraries with specific records. For example, you could open an account record in CRM and access a Sharepoint document library with that accounts contracts.
Field Level Security You can toggle security on custom fields and then configure security so that only certain users can view or edit data in that field. This field level security will apply to both forms and data views.
Goal Management Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 lets you setup goals that you want individuals or teams to achieve, and then track your performance against those goals.
Interactive Process Dialogs You can setup and configure interactive dialogs that work like screen wizards that guide users from page to page collecting information along the way.
Solution Management Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 offers a new way for system customizers to manage their customizations. In particular, solutions allow you to group and bundle customizations together in smaller packages so that they can be transported to different systems more easily. In addition you have the option to configure solutions so that other users can’t edit or modify your customizations.
Extensibility and Developer Features Microsoft Dynamics CRM includes a number of new programmer enhancements including a new programming model using Windows Communication Foundation (WCF), extended use of Windows Workflow Foundation 4.0, and support for .NET Language-Integrated Query (LINQ) for writing queries.
User Interface Enhancements Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 includes multiple user interface enhancements designed to reduce the number of clicks it takes users to accomplish tasks. Some of these enhancements include recently viewed items list, the ability to pin specific records, and inline filtering on data grids.
Global Customizations You can now create option sets of values that can be attached to multiple records. For example, you can create a single option set for a list of countries and leverage that option set on accounts, contacts and leads (versus managing three different country picklists in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0). In addition, you can also create globally available JScripts which any entity can access.
Cloud Development Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 includes Azure extensions that help speed development of cloud based solutions.
Connections This new feature replaces the relationship functionality from Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0. Connections offer more flexibility because users can make their own connections between records, and connections can apply to many different types of entities.
Queues Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 offers better queue functionality because now you can use queues on different types of records beyond cases. In additions, queues are also improved because they offer better security options and can participate in workflow.
Microsoft Dynamics Marketplace The Marketplace is an online catalog of 3^rd party solutions available for download and use with your Microsoft Dynamics CRM system. You can access the Marketplace directly within the Microsoft Dynamics CRM web interface.
Teams You can have teams own records in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011, whereas only users could own records in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0. This opens new options for teamwork and collaboration within the Microsoft Dynamics CRM security model.
Auditing You can now enable auditing on a field by field basis where Microsoft Dynamics CRM will capture each time a user modifies a record. The audit feature also captures the date and time of the modification along with its old and new value.
Web Resources Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 allows you to store html files, JScript and Silverlight applications as web resources. System customizers can then use the web resources in form customizations, the Sitemap, or the application ribbon.

Stay tuned as we release more updates on what’s new in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 in the coming months.

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

Posted by Mike Snyder on October 5, 2009 in | Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online |

Comments (3)

iStock_000009761161XSmall

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!

Second and Final Notice about your upcoming upgrade to Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online Release

Posted by Mike Snyder on April 5, 2008 in | Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online |

Comments (1)

Just received this email today since we are Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online Early Adopter. I thought this might be of interest to others too:

Dear Mike Snyder,
Thank you for your participation in our Early Access Program! We hope that you are finding our online service for your organization Sonoma Partners to be a flexible and familiar system in helping you develop customer and business relationships.
As the designated administrator for your system, we wanted to provide advance notification on the remaining schedule for our Early Access Program. In addition, we want to take this opportunity to inform you on the conversion to our production release and to outline your options for becoming a paid subscriber for our web-based system.
NOTE: This is the second and final notice. Please read carefully as some of the dates have changed slightly from the first notice.

Program Updates for Production Service Conversion

Advanced Schedule of Activities

Entering a Billing Agreement with Microsoft Corporation

Accessing your Technical Support Benefits

Terminating your Early Access Subscription

Program Updates for Production Service Conversion:

As we ready our new service for general market availability, we wanted to take a moment to inform you of an important update. Upon the migration from Early Access to our Production Service, our service will be renamed from Microsoft Dynamics^TM CRM Live to Microsoft Dynamics^TM CRM Online.    This rename reflects new naming conventions chartered by Microsoft when referring to web-based business services for small business, mid-market and large enterprise organizations.
Upon conversion to your production service database, you will see this new name reflected in product logos and online references within the Application Header, Online Help and Resource Center areas of your application.
Advanced Schedule of Activities:

Your organization Sonoma Partners is set for migration to the production release of Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online beginning April 14, 2008. During this time, we will begin automatically migrating your online CRM database to our production version - including all business entity customizations, form customizations, report definitions and transactional data stored within your organization database.
You will be given one-day advanced notification for the specific date of your migration. On the day of your conversion, your online system may be temporarily unavailable to allow our automated upgrade process to complete without interference. To minimize the impact to your business, this will be done during off-peak hours. We expect this process to be complete and for your business to be back online within a few hours.
Once your upgrade is complete, we ask that you validate all system customizations, workflow definitions, and business reports to ensure that all changes have migrated successfully. In addition, users of the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Clients (Microsoft Office Outlook, E-Mail Router, and Data Migration Manager) will need to perform an uninstall and reinstall of their client software to leverage these features with their new production account.

Entering a Billing Agreement with Microsoft Corporation:

During the online sign-up process for Microsoft Dynamics CRM Live Early Access, your organization was asked to provide a valid Credit Card payment option to complete your system sign-up. While this Credit Card was not charged during our Early Access Program, it has been kept on file for your organization.
Beginning May 1, 2008, active Microsoft Dynamics CRM Live subscriptions and user accounts will automatically convert to a paid offering of Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online. By default, all Early Access subscriptions will be migrated to the following offer:
Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online - Professional - 12 Months
Subscriptions converted to this offering will be charged according to the following schedule:
· A one-time, $79.00* Activation Fee for enabling your online subscription. This is a flat-fee used for system activation and does not vary based on the number of user licenses applied to your account. This charge will appear on the Credit Card stored on file for your organization once you are converted to the paid offering.
· After the first month of use of the online system, you will be charged a monthly service fee for all user licenses defined on the system. Current standard rates for the per user license charge of Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online are as follows:
For organizations located in the United States:
$39.00 USD* per user license per month for Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online Professional
$59.00 USD* per user license per month for Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online Professional Plus
For organizations located in Canada:
$39.00 CAD* per user license per month for Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online Professional
$59.00 CAD* per user license per month for Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online Professional Plus
· For early access customers, user licenses will be calculated based on the number of active users in the system at the time of conversion. Active users are defined as users that have accepted invitations from the System Administrator to use your Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online application for organization Sonoma Partners. There is a minimum requirement of five user licenses for Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online. If your organization has less than five active users, your organization will be assigned five user licenses to meet this minimum.
· Once monthly billing begins, an early termination fee will apply to your subscription. If your organization chooses to cancel the subscription or reduce user licenses prior to the end of your commitment term, a fee of $175.00* per user license will be charged to your credit card on file.
*All prices quoted are exclusive of applicable taxes, levies, and duties.
Accessing your Technical Support Benefits

During the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Live Early Access Program, all organizations were given online, e-mail, and telephone access to Technical Support personnel at no cost to your organization. With the migration to our production service, your technical support benefits are tied to your Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online subscription offering. Current technical support offerings for Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online subscriptions are listed as follows:

Professional

Professional Plus

Number of Support Incidents

Unlimited

Unlimited

Support Type

E-mail

Phone or E-mail

Response Time

24 Hours

24 Hours

Online Portal and Knowledge Base

Yes

Yes

Online Training Benefit

Unlimited

Unlimited

Hours of Operation

8am - 8pm CST M-F

8am - 8pm CST M-F

All Early Access participants will be provided free telephone support until May 30, 2008 to assist with conversion-related questions or issues. To leverage this benefit, you may contact our Technical Support team at 1-877-CRM-CHOICE, and select option 3 for Technical Support.

Terminating your Early Access Subscription

If you wish to cancel your Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online account, please contact our Customer Service team at 1-877-CRM-CHOICE and select Option 2 from the automated teller. You will have until April 11, 2008 to terminate your subscription and avoid subscription charges.
We truly appreciate your support and hope that you have found the Early Access Program to be a great way to manage your customer information. We look forward to working with you as you convert to this exciting new product from Microsoft.
Sincerely,
Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online Team

Microsoft CRM 4.0 RTM and what it really means

Posted by Mike Snyder on December 18, 2007 in | Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0, | Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online |

Comments (1)

If you're reading this blog, you probably already know that Microsoft announced yesterday that Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 was released-to-manufacturing (RTM). Of course, this caused a great deal of excitement around the Sonoma Partners office, and we're already hearing buzz from customers about upgrading. I thought I would try to address some of the common questions I've heard about the CRM 4.0 announcement:

While the development team is done with their part, customers and partners will need to wait "7 to 10 days" before they can download the software. I took a peek at the MSDN downloads tonight but of course it wasn't posted yet. I tried to subscribe to a Microsoft RSS feed to notify me of new MSDN downloads but...this thing hasn't been updated since 2006! I guess we'll just login to MSDN everyday and keep checking. Sigh.
Yesterday's RTM announcement does NOT apply to CRM Live. Customers who want to get on CRM Live will need to continue to work through the early adopter programs. Expect CRM Live to be ready for public access in the first half of calendar 2008.
Even though the main Microsoft Dynamics CRM product is complete, none of the Microsoft CRM add on solutions will be released at the same time. Microsoft has not publicly confirmed which add-ons they will release but we can take a good guess based on the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 add-ons. Therefore, we assume (hope) that there will be 4.0 versions of these add-ons released in the coming months:
- Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Mobile
- Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Connector for Microsoft Dynamics GP
- Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 BizTalk Server Adapter
- Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Sharepoint List Web Part
One current Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 user said they weren't sure if it was worth the effort to upgrade to 4.0 because 3.0 works fine. For the next 5 minutes I rattled off about 25 great new benefits and they said "Ok, nevermind. It sounds great!" If you're a current 3.0 customer and you're not sure what benefits 4.0 offers, please contact us and we'd be happy to share our ideas on the upgrade benefits.

Congrats to the product team on all their hard work. After working with the new version over the past 12+ months, I can confidently state that Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 is an amazing release.

At Sonoma Partners of course we use Microsoft Dynamics CRM for our internal sales, marketing, service and project management. We've already completed a half dozen trial upgrades of our internal system to 4.0 and we plan on upgrading to the final RTM bits as soon as possible after release. Even though I can't definitively prove this, I like to think we were the first company in the world to upgrade to Microsoft CRM 3.0 way back in November 2005. We plan to be the first again on Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0!

Sonoma Partners

Blog

We Heard You Like Apps: So Here's A Hot One For Windows 8

Silverlight 5 Async Tasks with Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011

JavaScript Bookmark Series – Part 1

For Every Deactivation There is an Equal and Opposite Reactivation

Adding Activate Buttons to Microsoft CRM Activity Ribbons

Part 1: Prepare a Solution

Part 2: Modifying the Solution

Part 3: Putting Humpty Dumpty Back Together Again (or Reimporting the Solution)

Success!

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Online Released to Web!

What’s New in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 and Release Candidate Available (RC)

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

Second and Final Notice about your upcoming upgrade to Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online Release

Program Updates for Production Service Conversion:

Advanced Schedule of Activities:

Entering a Billing Agreement with Microsoft Corporation:

Accessing your Technical Support Benefits

Terminating your Early Access Subscription

Microsoft CRM 4.0 RTM and what it really means

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Archives

Links

	Professional	Professional Plus
Number of Support Incidents	Unlimited	Unlimited
Support Type	E-mail	Phone or E-mail
Response Time	24 Hours	24 Hours
Online Portal and Knowledge Base	Yes	Yes
Online Training Benefit	Unlimited	Unlimited
Hours of Operation	8am - 8pm CST M-F	8am - 8pm CST M-F