Components:
Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Server
Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 E-mail Router
Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Language Pack
Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Reporting Extensions
Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Report Authoring Extension
Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 for Microsoft Office Outlook

Supported Operating Systems: Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP

Prerequisites: You must have Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Update Rollup 6 (build 5.0.9690.1992) installed to apply this update rollup. This update requires Microsoft .NET Framework 4.

Important Note: You can uninstall Update Rollup 8, however, you should back up your databases before you install this update.

Links:
Microsoft Support: Update Rollup 8 for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 is available
Microsoft Download Center: Update Rollup 8 for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011

Each User in CRM Online has a personal time zone setting. Configuring it is simple, and we’ll walk you through that below. If you’re looking for more advanced tutoring, Microsoft Dynamics CRM training may be right for you.

The following steps can be performed by Users with any of the Default Security Roles in CRM Online.

From CRM Online (see below), open the File menu above the ribbon, and click Options.

The Set Personal Options dialog opens (see below). In the General tab, in the Set the time zone you are in section, open the Time Zone drop-down menu and select your local time zone, in our example, “(GMT-8:00) Pacific Time (US & Canada)”, and click OK.

Congratulations, you have now changed your personal time zone.

If you are an administrator who is changing time zones for several other Users, you will need to update the time zones in each of their individual accounts.

For tutorial videos and quizzes about setting more personal options, please visit the xRM.com Success Portal for CRM Online.

Much of what we share is already available, documented by Microsoft, in a centralized location. You’re probably asking, “So where is it?” That’s a great question!

It’s in the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Resource Center.

If you’re thirsty to learn more about CRM Online, The Resource Center (pictured below) is a veritable watering hole of knowledge. Finding the information you need is simplified by the compartmentalization of topics. The aptly named Getting Started section is aimed at virgin users of CRM Online. Clicking the Getting started resources for business users link takes you to a selection of guides.

These guides (see below) are similar to Microsoft Dynamics CRM training sessions, as they walk you through specific features of CRM Online. There’s even a guide that covers the installation of the “Microsoft Dynamics CRM for Microsoft Office Outlook” add-in. These guides are great, and you especially shouldn’t overlook the two “Quick Start” guides. They give a broad sweep of CRM Online that’s perfect for beginners.

Let’s return to the Resource Center (see below) and explore one of the other sections. If you like learning from your peers, you’re going to love the Community section. There are three key components to the Community section: the Forums, the CRM Team blog, and CRM on Facebook.

The community forums (pictured below) exist as a virtual place where you and your peers can freely discuss the inner workings of CRM Online. We regularly find users brainstorming together in the forums to help solve each other’s problems, all at no cost to the user!

The Microsoft Dynamics CRM Team Blog (pictured below) is regularly updated with insider tips and helpful knowledge. You’ll find several similarities between the CRM Team Blog and our xRM.com Microsoft Dynamics CRM Blog. The CRM for Facebook page (not pictured) is a fanpage operated by Microsoft that mostly echoes the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Blog.

Returning to the Resource Center once again, let’s divert our attention to the Support section (which can be seen in the first screen shot far above).

Here you’ll find several help and support options. One of our favorites is the Microsoft Knowledge Base (pictured below as Microsoft Support), a searchable compendium of support articles by Microsoft, in one convenient location.

Last, but not least, the Resource Center also contains CRM Online videos created by Microsoft (bottom-left in the first screen shot).

If you enjoy the videos listed in the Resource Center, we recommend that you also visit our xRM.com Success Portal for CRM Online, which contains a wide range of tutorial videos created by xRM.com.

There’s a lot to learn at the Resource Center, and it’s all, literally, right at your fingertips. It’s worth visiting and revisiting.

You’re probably asking, “Who are these qualified customers, and what are subsidy checks?” Customers who purchase eligible Microsoft software licenses between March 5, 2012 and June 30, 2012 are qualified. Subsidy checks are written by Microsoft, payable to a Microsoft Reseller or Partner of your choice to subsidize your purchase of additional products or services through that partner. That helps flesh out the implementation process and lowers your total costs. For example, if you purchase eligible Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online licenses, you may want to use your subsidy to purchase professional Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online training from xRM.com.

Here’s a full list of the eligible products that quality for the offer, including Microsoft Windows Server, Microsoft Office, Microsoft SharePoint, Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online, and more. You can even calculate your savings ahead of time. Big Easy 8 cannot be combined with Microsoft Cash Rebate, Partner Subsidy, or discounted SKU promotions. However, it is compatible with most Open License and Open Value programs.

Once you have completed an eligible transaction, you have 30 days to register it at the Microsoft Incentives Big Easy 8 website. Registering additional transactions increases your total subsidy.

Within eight weeks of each registration, Microsoft calculates your subsidy and sends you a subsidy check. You then have 90 days to spend it on products or services from your partner.

The following Microsoft web pages are available regarding the Big Easy 8 Offer:

Big Easy 8 Offer Terms & Conditions

Big Easy 8 Frequently Asked Questions

Big Easy 8 Home Page

To start with the basics, Microsoft Dynamics CRM is completely customizable and extensible. Its basic building blocks can be modified, and extra features can be added to it. Customizations can range from simple to complex. Simple customizations can probably be completed in house by someone without extensive training, but complex customizations can require professional development experience.

Finished customizations can be bundled up in “solutions”, making them reusable and distributable. That allows third-party developers to create packages of customizations ready for resale, and that’s where the Microsoft Dynamics Marketplace comes in.

The Marketplace is used to search for solutions from a large directory that contains tens of thousands of IT providers and professionals and their applications and services. You can easily search the Marketplace for a solution for CRM Online 2011, and then find an IT professional to install it for you in your CRM environment.

Are you worried about getting lost in this vast digital Marketplace? The market is logically divided, just like its real-world counterpart, into categories related to particular industries or particular products. All products and professionals are rated by a public reviewing system broken down by price, deployment time, needs met, compatibility, and performance. Many of the products also have viewable demos, allowing you to test them before buying. Do you only want to see listings that have been Microsoft Dynamics Certified? The Marketplace makes this easy. Some products can be delivered instantaneously via digital download.

Visit the future by taking a digital stroll to the Microsoft Dynamics Marketplace today. You can also access the Marketplace directly from within CRM Online 2011 by navigating to Settings, Customization, and then Dynamics Marketplace.

xRM.com is a Software plus Services Consultant in addition to a Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online 2011 reseller. Are you looking for an IT professional to install a solution that you purchased from the Marketplace or assist on Business Process and Workflow Consulting? We have Prepaid CRM Online Consulting Time available at a discount.

Duplicate records can arise in your database when different users create new records independently. Duplicate records aren’t necessarily identical. For example, two Contact records might have the same first and last name, but one record might contain a phone number not found in the other. Instead of arbitrarily deleting one of the duplicate records and potentially losing any non-overlapping data, you can use the Merge function. This tool consolidates the data from two records of the same type into one record. It works for records of the type Account, Contact, or Lead. We’ll demonstrate the process below.

This task can be performed with privileges found in all default Security Roles in CRM Online.

The first step is to locate the records you wish to merge. In this example, we’ll use two sample Contact records with the same name.

Navigate to Workplace > Customers > Contacts (see below), and select the records you wish to merge by checking their boxes. Then click Merge in the ribbon.

The Merge Records dialog opens (see below). Select the Master Record. The master record is the one that will retain the field values selected from both records. The (unselected) subordinate record is the one that will be deactivated. When you select the master record, all its fields are automatically selected. Now select any fields from the subordinate record (not the master record) you want to retain instead. Notice that the master record in this example does not have any address data, so we have chosen those fields from the subordinate record instead. Once you have identified all of the data you wish to keep, click OK to merge the records.

After the records are merged, a message appears (see below). Just to clarify, the subordinate record is only deactivated, not deleted. Click OK.

Let’s see what happened to the subordinate record. Open it (see below) and you’ll see a highlighted notification including a link to the master record. At the bottom, you can also see that the record Status is set to Inactive.

The Merge functionality is a useful tool that helps keep your CRM Online database organized and prevents important data from being lost. If you would like to learn about additional functions, you might be interested in our xRM.com CRM Online training. If you are an xRM.com customer, we invite you to join the Success Portal by xRM.com, which provides free tutorial videos on CRM Online and other applications. For more information, we invite you to contact xRM.com.

Microsoft has added some useful Dashboard customization tools. You can rearrange your personal Dashboard on the fly using the new Dashboard layout wizard. We’ll get you started with your first personal Dashboard now!

Navigate to Workplace > My Work > Dashboards. It’s likely that you’ll see the default “Microsoft Dynamics CRM Overview” Dashboard (see below). It contains three Charts and a View, but we’re about to change that. With the Dashboards tab selected, click New.

A wizard launches (see below) to guide you through your configuring of the Dashboard. It has six different layouts available, giving users a fair amount of styles to choose from without being overly complicated. In this example, we are going to select the 3-Column Multi-Focused Dashboard. Once you have selected the template, clicking Create will open a full-sized empty template for customizing.

You will now see an empty template load with five blank sections. (See below.) Each blank section can have its own Chart, List, Web Resource, or Iframe (where another web page can be inserted). We’d like to see some sales data reflected in our dashboard, so we’re going to create a Sales Pipeline Chart. Select the top left section by clicking inside of its rectangular area, and then click on the  Chart button (alternatively, you can click directly on the miniature chart button inside of the section).

A small wizard launches to aid you with the configuration. (See below.) You completely customize the Record Type to display, the View that determines which records are included, and the Chart you want to display it all in. As we mentioned, we are going to create a simple Sales Pipeline Chart that will display the status of your current open sales Opportunities. Keep in mind that any changes made to Views in CRM Online will dynamically update Charts, meaning that anytime you update the criteria of a View, it also updates the criteria of any Chart that uses it. Change the Record Type to “Opportunity”, the View to “My Open Opportunities”, and the Chart to “Sales Pipeline”. Click OK.

After you complete the wizard, the Chart appears in the section you selected earlier. If you don’t see your Charts being auto-populated with any data right away, don’t worry. While you are editing your dashboard, real data is not used. After we have finished making our changes, we will look at the dashboard and make sure it is functioning as expected.

After adding a few Charts, your dashboard will begin to take shape like the one below. Give it a Name, and click Save and Close to finalize your dashboard changes.

Navigate back to Dashboards, and open the drop-down menu (see below) by clicking the name of the currently selected dashboard (by default, “Microsoft Dynamics CRM Overview”). Click on the name of the dashboard you just saved to load it.

Congratulations. Your new dashboard will load with real-time data! (See below.)

Although we didn’t include detailed instructions on how, users can also add Lists and Web Resources to their Dashboards using simple wizards. Creating a personal Dashboard does not require any special Security Roles in CRM Online, and each user can have as many personal Dashboards as they want. When users are able to configure how their home pages and Dashboards look, they are more easily able to access and overview critical data.

xRM.com is a Services and Application Hosting Provider that has consistently been a recognized Microsoft Dynamics CRM Partner for over a decade. Do you have a question about Microsoft CRM Online or are you interested in how to contact us at xRM.com? Visit our xRM FAQ.

Personalization is greatly enhanced in CRM Online 2011 and one of the easiest yet most satisfying ways to personalize CRM Online 2011 is to set your home page. This determines what CRM Online 2011 first displays after you sign in. It’ll save you lots of navigating minutes over the coming months. You’ll wonder why you didn’t do this before!

Note: Any CRM Online user can perform this task. No special security role or permission is required.

Below is a (reduced) screen shot of the default home page that most people see when they first sign in: the Workplace pane and the Dashboards tab. In “breadcrumb navigation” notation, that’s written Workplace > My Work > Dashboards.

Let’s change the home page to something a salesperson might like to start with instead. For example, Sales > Opportunities.

Open the File menu and click Options. (See below.)

A new window opens, titled Set Personal Options (see below). In the General tab, under Select your home page and settings for Get Started Panes, open the Default Pane drop down list and choose the Sales pane as your default pane.

Notice the Default Tab drop down list changes to offer the tabs or areas within Sales. (See below.) Choose the Opportunities tab as your default tab and click OK.

Now when you sign in, CRM Online 2011 displays Sales > Opportunities. (See reduced below.)

Taking a minute to set these two simple options can save you a lot of time on the long run, but you might not have known you could do that. That’s what xRM.com is for. xRM.com is a Microsoft Partner that specializes in Microsoft Business Solutions. We also offer Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online training designed for anyone from end users to executives to IT personnel. Are you interested in becoming a Dynamics customer, but hesitant to take the plunge? Feel free to read through some xRM Case Studies and view the Microsoft recognition xRM.com has received during its exploration of the innovative CRM xRM industry space for more than a decade.

This update introduces Read Optimized Forms, a new feature.

The following components are affected by this update.

Components:
Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Server
Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 E-mail Router
Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Language Pack
Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Reporting Extensions
Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Report Authoring Extension
Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 for Microsoft Office Outlook

Supported Operating Systems: Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP

Prerequisites: You must have Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Update Rollup 6 installed (build 5.0.9690.1992) to apply this update rollup. This update requires Microsoft .NET Framework 4.

Important Note: You can uninstall Update Rollup 7. However, you should back up your databases before you install this update.

Links:
Microsoft Support: Update Rollup 7 for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 is available
Microsoft Download Center: Update Rollup 7 for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011

Mobility

One of the most talked about improvements in CRM Anywhere is the introduction of a new mobility component dubbed Microsoft Dynamics CRM Mobile.

Here’s the background: CRM Online already has existing mobile support with Mobile Express, a trimmed-down version of the interface designed for efficient viewing through a web browser on a small screen, such as that of a smart phone. However, Mobile Express requires an active internet connection and has some functional limitations.

In contrast, the new mobility component, CRM Mobile, is a true mobile client that runs on your cell phone or other mobile device and synchronizes with CRM Online silently in the background. CRM Mobile stores important CRM Online records in a secure offline database on your mobile device. This lets you access those records and create new records even when you’re in areas with no internet connection, making CRM Online 2011 literally available anywhere, as in “CRM Anywhere”. It is extensively configurable and has lots of functionality. CRM Online users who are aficionados of a particular mobile device will be pleased by the look and feel of Mobile CRM because it presents the CRM Online experience in the particular graphic style of each platform it runs on.

This level of mobility was hotly requested even back in the days of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0, and the volume of news articles referring to CRM Anywhere and CRM Mobile shows us that people are truly excited about it. Microsoft has never offered such rich access to any of their Microsoft Dynamics CRM applications in the past, marking this as a very important step in the growth of the application.

As always, Microsoft seems to be directly competing with a rival Salesforce.com product. Moreover, as is usually the case, Microsoft seems to have them beat. Microsoft Dynamics CRM Mobile will run you $30 per user per month, while mobile access to Salesforce.com weighs in at $65 per user per month. CRM Mobile will be available on the Microsoft Dynamics Marketplace when CRM Anywhere is released.

Since realizing that CRM Mobile is about to be unleashed on the world, we at xRM.com have been hard at work preparing a slew of new training videos that are now available on our CRM Success Portal for users of Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online 2011. These videos guide you through everything from installing the CRM Mobile client on your mobile device for the first time, to helping other users go mobile, to performing advanced mobile configurations.

Cross-Browser Support

Microsoft Dynamics CRM Mobile isn’t the only reason Microsoft is calling the coming update CRM Anywhere. Users of CRM Online 2011 will now be able to access the application using the following browser versions (see below).

To understand why this is so important for CRM Online 2011, let’s turn to a few third-party statistics on browser usage around the world. The following table compiles several different studies for easy comparison.

You should notice that while Internet Explorer is definitely in the lead, other browsers remain popular. Since users of Firefox, Chrome, and Safari cannot use CRM Online 2011 now, CRM Anywhere will literally double the potential user base of CRM Online 2011.

Social Media

The third thing that’s important about CRM Anywhere is the continued improvement of social-media in CRM Online 2011. Unless you’re a marketing guru, you’re probably asking, “What’s social-media?” To put it simply, social-media is any tool that empowers you to communicate with other people. Large social-media websites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Reddit mostly function on revenue generated through the sale of advertising targeted at their users or through the sale of information collected about their users. This just simply wasn’t available ten years ago, but now that it is, people are taking notice, Microsoft included.

CRM Anywhere includes enhancements to Activity Feeds that function very similarly to Facebook “wall posts” or “status updates”, except they appear within the CRM Online interface (also available in CRM Mobile) and are related to records in CRM Online 2011. Activity Feeds allow CRM Online users to follow records and comment to each other about those records.

We’ve heard rumors about even more social-media improvements that will come to CRM Online 2011 sometime after the release of CRM Anywhere. We’re going to wait until there’s an official statement before we share those with everyone! You can trust that when Microsoft releases more information on the coming updates to social media, we’ll have it available right here at the xRM.com Microsoft Dynamics CRM blog.

CRM Anywhere

Are you beginning to understand why Microsoft named its latest update CRM Anywhere? CRM Online 2011, already a versatile application, is being fully extended to mobile devices and all major browsers! When you include the social-media enhancements, you start to see why we think CRM Anywhere is so important.

When CRM Anywhere is released, you will be able to download it either through Windows Update, or at the Microsoft Download Center. Stay tuned here and we’ll provide you with all of the information you need to update when the time comes.

As always, we’re also ready to provide Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online training to anyone who wants to head down the fast track to utilizing the new features available in CRM Anywhere.