Light “spackling” for your Activity Feed walls

Posted by Sonoma Partners on December 30, 2011 in   |  Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011,   |  Vibe Social Networking  |  Comments (2)

Today's guest blogger is Jacob Cynamon-Murphy, a Technical Specialist at Sonoma Partners.

I'm a big fan of Activity Feeds, the social CRM feature in Microsoft Dynamics CRM introduced with release 7 (R7) in November.  Not only can users manually post to "record walls," but power users can use Activity Feed Rules or custom workflows to create auto-posts when meaningful events occur on records or in the system.  Internally, we have updated the Sonoma Vibe desktop and iPad clients to use the new Activity Feed Post and Comment entities as well, making it very easy to share news and knowledge (not to mention fun) with the rest of the company.

As a technical specialist at Sonoma Partners, I am responsible for managing the demo environments that we use.  Benefitting from a little slow time while everyone is on holiday, I decided the time was right to deploy the managed solution for Activity Feeds to all of our demo orgs that my colleague in IT had updated to R7.  While deploying the solution and enabling activity feeds for the primary entities, I quickly noticed that the bit field to enable record walls sometimes remained at 'No' despite everything I attempted to set it to 'Yes'.

I wondered if this might be a common issue, so I checked the Microsoft Dynamics CRM forum and the CRM Team blog.  On the blog, I discovered an article about enabling record walls manually; in short, the plugin that processes Activity Feed Configuration records is designed to only add a record wall to an entity's form if there is only a single form of type "Main".  The article goes on to walk through the manual steps to add the tab and HTML web resource to each form, attach the JavaScript web resource to the forum, and register an event handler from the JavaScript to the tab; that last step cleans up the form by hiding the record wall until a user accesses it from the form navigation on the left-hand side.

While this approach works fine if you have one or two forms to modify, I had dozens; several of our demo environments have managed solutions or manual customizations that use role-based forms.  I decided to write a quick-and-dirty utility that prompts the user for a server name and an organization name (and saves up to 9 server/org pairs), credentials and an entity logical name and automates these form customization steps for each "Main" form of the entity.

If you have a complex implementation including entities with multiple forms, this utility - available for download - will save you time configuring and get your organization more social, and patch up record walls so your users can share information more effectively.

 

Vibe scores Microsoft Dynamics Marketplace honor!

Posted by Mike Snyder on June 22, 2011 in   |  Vibe Social Networking  |  Comments (0)

I am excited and proud to announce that our enterprise social networking application Vibe was a finalist for Microsoft’s Partner of the Year award in the Dynamics Marketplace Solution Excellence category (official press release here)!

When we launched Vibe to the Dynamics Marketplace back in January 2011, we decided to try something unique…we gave it away for free! We believed then (and still do) that the benefits of social networking are so great that we wanted to share it with ALL Microsoft Dynamics CRM customers worldwide.

Five months after the public launch of Vibe, we couldn’t be prouder of the results:

• Vibe is one of the top-rated applications on the Dynamics Marketplace
• Vibe has been downloaded from 61 (yes sixty-one!) different countries
• The Microsoft sales community frequently uses Vibe during their customer and prospect demos
• Vibe was featured at multiple Convergence 2011 presentations regarding Social CRM
• Sonoma Partners internal deployment of Vibe has had more than 20,000 posts in just 5 months!

We feel that this award helps formalize a lot of the success we’ve seen with Vibe, so we’re pretty pumped up!

If you’re new to Vibe, please check it out and learn how your organization might be able to use it. Otherwise you can learn more about Vibe and download it from the Dynamics Marketplace.

5 Ways Vibe Can Make Your Business More Agile, Save Time, Boost Teamwork, and Generally Save the World

Posted by Mike Snyder on April 19, 2011 in   |  Vibe Social Networking  |  Comments (1)

This isn't your dad's business. You have employees and partners spread all over the world and the information that makes your company successful is in their heads -- not on paper. Many of your employees work outside the traditional office and check in from home, their local Starbucks, and on-the-fly office spaces. 

A worldwide presence and a dynamic work environment are a boon for your business, but there are some drawbacks too. Since some of your employees work from home, those vital water cooler chats to catch up on company news are a thing of the past. Moving fast is hard when your project team and your sales team are in different time zones (or even just in different offices in the same building). And your project and delivery teams have no clue what's in the sales pipeline, making it difficult for them to gear up for new projects.

Here are five ways that Sonoma Partners’ Vibe Social Networking application can boost your business by getting all your employees -- no matter where they are or when they work -- on the same page.

1. Vibe is as easy -- and fun -- to use as social media (minus the annoying Farmville updates).

You might already stay in touch with your friends and family using social media like Facebook and Twitter, which you can access from anywhere, anytime. Vibe is a social CRM platform for businesses where users can post information, subscribe to feeds, and more. Vibe helps your company take advantage of your geographically diffused workforce -- and the collective brainpower of all your employees -- through a technology that your employees are already familiar with.

2. Vibe lets your employees get help with projects, proposals, and more.

With Vibe, your employees can create their own feeds for each new opportunity, order, or case; post requests for help and get immediate responses from the entire organization; and deliver solutions based on other members' experience instead of starting from scratch with each new sale or proposal. Vibe also lets users search posts for information they may have missed so they don't duplicate requests, and receive daily e-mail digests so they don't miss important information.

3. Vibe lets you work like the wind.

The pace of business is getting faster by the day, so when you get a client request you need to marshal your resources and employees and get your clients what they need, stat -- which is hard when your employees (and the data in their brains) are scattered globally. With Vibe, instead of having to spend hours sleuthing out the right person or resource, employees can simply post a quick note that other subscribers to that feed can see and respond to pronto.

4. Vibe builds strong teams.

Employees work better together when they share a personal connection. Just for fun, feeds like @sports and @musicnerds foster an enjoyable work environment and help build loyal teams.

5. Vibe keeps you in the know.

Want to know what's going on in the trenches in your organization? Management can use Vibe to follow key conversations, keep abreast of new projects, and find out when someone needs help.

The result? We hate to use the cliché "well-oiled machine," but with Vibe that's what your diverse employees and partners will work like. Solutions are better, responses are faster, and key data -- from product fixes to who's following which sports team -- are where your employees need them.

Please contact us for more details on how Vibe can boost your business! If you’re already running Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011, you can download the free community edition of Vibe from the Dynamics Marketplace.

Get Social with Vibe and Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 (free Community Edition)

Posted by Mike Snyder on January 27, 2011 in   |  Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011,   |  Vibe Social Networking  |  Comments (8)

Microsoft released the 2011 edition of Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online last week, and we've decided to celebrate by offering everyone -- not just existing Sonoma Partners clients -- the newest release of Vibe for free. And yes, we mean for free.

We believe in the Microsoft Dynamics CRM community, and therefore we want to offer Vibe to the community an alternative to Salesforce.com's Chatter. Because we're not offering support -- think of Vibe as a public beta -- we can afford to give it away, so download Vibe, use it, and enjoy it on us. We firmly believe social networking is a critical way for businesses to communicate, and we want to support that philosophy by spreading Vibe far and wide.

We developed Vibe as an internal social networking application that centers on CRM-related data: employees can collaborate and share details about new opportunities, projects, accounts, customer information, and more. Vibe uses Microsoft Dynamics CRM as the data repository and uses Dynamics CRM Workflow to automatically post feeds based on CRM usage and data.

Vibe Community Edition:

• Combines the ease-of-use of Facebook and Twitter with Microsoft's powerful CRM platform.
• Is easy to install.
• Posts important CRM data -- but also allows users to manually post information to a feed.
• Lets users create and maintain their own feed subscriptions.
• Has native integration to Gravatar so users can personalize an avatar for their feed.
• Allows users to search across all feeds.
• Supports hash tags in posts (perfect for you Twitter-philes).
• Includes a usage analytics dashboard.
• Works with Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online and Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 on-premise editions.

We've posted the free community version of Vibe on the Dynamics Marketplace and included online help so you can download it and get started right away.

If you’re new to Vibe and want to learn more, you can get a quick overview from this screencast:

If you're evaluating Chatter and Salesforce.com, think about trying Vibe with Dynamics CRM instead. (Not only is it a great product, but the price is right!) Keep in mind that Vibe is not supported -- but we think you'll love it just the same.

So come on down, get Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 and start sharing data with Vibe!

Vibe – Social Networking for Microsoft Dynamics CRM

Posted by Ryan Toenies on May 26, 2010 in   |  Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0,   |  Vibe Social Networking  |  Comments (2)

In my last post I pointed out that Vibe stacks up pretty well against Chatter for Salesforce.com.  In this post I thought I would provide you a little more detail on what Vibe looks like when it’s being used.  But before I begin, there’s a key component to Vibe that I feel makes it very powerful.  Vibe is a WPF client that runs on the host PC.  It leverages One-Click deployment technology and will automatically check for product upgrades.  Upgrades are managed in the cloud so that users are assured of the latest product changes whenever they log into Vibe.  This is a great way of leveraging cloud computing with the rich interface that WPF brings to the table.  It’s the best of both worlds.

Vibe supports both On Premise and Internet Facing Deployments.  This works well for companies who have users travelling but might not be able to connect via VPN to their native network. 

Vibe provides users with an easy-to-use search feature.  You can search by text, author, feed and/or date range.  The search is performed against the Microsoft Dynamics CRM database and returns the results in-window.  This works extremely well.  In honor of the Chicago Blackhawks making it to the Stanley Cup Finals I searched on “blackhawks” for this example.  ;-)

Vibe allows you to drill down into specific feeds and see recent posts.  In this example, I clicked on myself and can see who/what I am following, those who are following me and my most recent posts.  I am following 61 people, groups, or topics and have 24 followers.

Here are some quick takeaways:

• Vibe is 100% dependent on Microsoft Dynamics CRM (it’s the brains behind the user interface)
• Vibe is just another example of why Microsoft Dynamics CRM is truly a XRM platform
• Vibe has become a critical way we communicate information internally at Sonoma Partners
• Vibe will send you email recaps of information posted on a daily/weekly basis
• Vibe utilizes the Windows Workflow Foundation to automatically post feeds based upon CRM data (like new leads, cases, accounts, opportunities, orders, or any other custom entity created)
• Vibe allows end users to create and maintain their own workflow feed rules
• Vibe can integrate to internal and external applications allowing posts to be created from other sources (we have integrated Vibe to our blog site)
• Vibe is available for our customers today
• Vibe is not sold as a standalone product – we provide Vibe to our customers at NO COST

With Microsoft Dynamics CRM – The Possibilities are Endless!

Vibe for Microsoft Dynamics CRM vs. Chatter for Salesforce.com

Posted by Ryan Toenies on May 20, 2010 in   |  Vibe Social Networking  |  Comments (1)

Social networking applications are definitely taking off by storm.  Salesforce.com is working on releasing Chatter but we are not sitting on the sidelines and waiting for this to happen.  Instead, Sonoma Partners is continuing to innovate and has recently released Vibe for Microsoft Dynamics CRM.  This is our 2nd major release of the tool with the first version branded as SideBar.

What is Vibe - Combining the power of Microsoft Dynamics CRM with the popularity of social networking applications, Vibe cultivates communities among your Microsoft Dynamics CRM users to drive user adoption and increase collaboration. Users subscribe to individual and group feeds to access data most relevant to them. In addition, Vibe securely pushes CRM data to individuals and teams through the powerful Vibe WPF application.  Utilizing Microsoft Dynamics CRM’s Windows Workflow Foundation, Vibe will send automated notifications to users based upon key data entered into CRM.  If you are on the road, no problem, Vibe is accessible via your mobile web browser giving you the capability to stay connected even without a PC.

How does Vibe stack up to Chatter?  Well – Chatter isn’t officially released so the easy answer is Vibe can be used today and Chatter, well, is still just Chatter.  But enough with the sarcasm – I downloaded the datasheet on Chatter and came up with the following items:

Chatter	Supported		Vibe	Supported
Profiles	X		Profiles	X
Status Updates	X		Status Updates	X
Groups	X		Groups	X
Document Sharing	X		Document Sharing	X
App Updates (via the cloud)	X		App Updates (via the cloud)	X
Feeds	X		Feeds	X
Security/Sharing Model	X		Security/Sharing Model	X
Social	X		Social	X
Daily/Weekly Email Recap	?		Daily/Weekly Email Recap	X
Real-time Notification	?		Real-time Notification	X
Mobile Access	X (cost?)		Mobile Access	X (free)
Workflow Automation	?		Workflow Automation	X
Personalized Avatars	?		Personalized Avatars	X
Data Store is Native CRM Database	?		Data Store is Native CRM Database	X

Chatter’s Datasheet: http://www.salesforce.com/assets/pdf/datasheets/DS_Chatter.pdf

The takeaway – If you’re looking at CRM applications and social networking is important to you we definitely have you covered.  Microsoft Dynamics CRM is a powerful platform and Vibe is just another example of XRM innovation.