Oct. 30, 2009 — The October meeting of the Dynamics CRM User Group (www.DynamicsCRMUserGroup.com) featured two presentations, the first of which was by Brad Burks and Patrick Sells of C360 (www.C360.com) presenting on their best-selling product, the Core Productivity Pack for Dynamics CRM 4. This article is a short summary of their presentation, and includes a link to the recorded session,

Oct. 23, 2009 — CRM 4 many-to-many relationships can be useful, but it’s not that obvious how to query and report on records involved in these “N:N” relationships. Here’s a short video showing how to do it.

Oct. 22, 2009 — Here’s my October “News You Can Use”, with updates on the upcoming Dynamics CRM User Group meeting, the XRM platform, Dynamics CRM Online, and building workflows in Dynamics CRM 4.0.

Oct. 19, 2009 — CWR Mobility has a full suite of mobility solutions for Dynamics CRM: Windows Mobile, BlackBerry…and iPhone coming soon. Here’s an update and a link to a recorded presentation on their mobile solutions.

It must have been in 1990 I was in a record store in Ballard, WA, asked the clerk what he thought of this album “Facelift” by some band called “Alice in Chains”. I’d read about it in a review in the NY Times of three albums from Seattle bands Alice, Soundgarden, and I’m not sure [...]

Oct. 14, 2009 — There’s a LOT to like about Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online — the “cloud” deployment option for Dynamics CRM. Here are my top five reasons.

Oct. 14, 2009 — How exciting: an upcoming Service Update for Dynamics CRM Online! Here’s my notification email from the support team at Microsoft, with hints about new features like mobile device support, a new “home page dashboard” with embedded charts, an improved Outlook client experience and an updated data import wizard. And best of all, I don’t need to install anything!

Oct. 7, 2009 — My company’s 12-month migration from a traditional on-premise to an all-cloud IT platform was about as much fun as a root canal, but the one bright spot was the CRM piece: to Dynamics CRM Online, the cloud version of the Microsoft CRM. The platform is rock-solid, it’s essentially the same as on-premise (except Microsoft’s servers never go down unexpectedly!), and the migration was easy. This article summarizes the experience of a “VSAT” CRM Online customer, and includes a slide presentation comparing the online and on-premise versions of Dynamics CRM I gave at a user group meeting a while back. Enjoy!

Oct 5, 2009 — It took twelve months, but I’ve nearly reached Cloud Nirvana.
Here’s the executive summary of my firm’s migration saga, including the highs (CRM Online), the lows (BPOS e-mail), and the sad farewells (MOSS 2007 web site).

Oct. 4, 2009 — At a recent meeting of the Dynamics CRM User Group John O’Donnell and I had a brief discussion about XRM that crystalized some of my thoughts what an XRM licensing model might look like and what it would mean to take the “C” out of CRM. Here they are, along with a 10-minute DIY XRM!