Essential Links, Downloads and Resources

 Here’s my short list of “essential” links, downloads and various resources for Dynamics CRM 4.0 and Dynamics CRM Online. I hope you find it useful, and let me know if I missed any of your essentials.

Links, downloads and other resources
Dynamics CRM 4.0 SDK The single best reference for customizing and extending Dynamics CRM.
Dynamics CRM 4.0 Implementation Guide The single best reference for installing and deploying Dynamics CRM on-premise, and in particular the single best piece of documentation if you’re preparing for the MB2-633 Installation and Deployment exam.
   
Logical Database Diagrams Deep drill-down on how all the out of the box entities related to one another.
Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0: 90-Day Trial Versions of software Download the bits, install them with supplied product keys, and use them for 90 days.
Dynamics CRM Developer Center The uber-spot for Dynamics CRM developers. There are a lot more useful links there than I have in this article…but in case you forget that link and remember this one, I include it here.

Add-on programs and applications

 
 
 

 
Once you get Dynamics CRM up and running (install it, for the on-premise version; walk through the setup wizard for Online), there are a number of optional add-on programs you may want to use. These are all free (they won’t do you much good if you don’t have Dynamics CRM!), and they do not need to run on the Dynamics CRM server machine. The “big three” in my opinion are the E-Mail Router, the Outlook Client, and the Data Migration Manager. Important point: notice that each one of these has a different downloadable, depending on which version of Dynamics CRM you’re running. A lot of people don’t realize this, since the functionality is identical, but it’s important to use the right version.
Dynamics CRM E-mail Router:

 This gives you centralized management of integrated e-mail. It works with any e-mail server application as long as it supports POP3.
Dynamics CRM for Microsoft Office Outlook (the “Outlook Client”)

 The Outlook Client provides two main functions:

  • The main reason to use it is that it’s awesome. It makes “doing CRM” a simple extension of Outlook.
  • Also: if you don’t use the E-mail Router, you can still have integrated e-mail by using the Outlook Client. It’s not centralized, but it’s easy.
Dynamics CRM Data Migration Manager:

 The Data Migration Manager allows you to migrate relational data sets in one pass, create custom entities on the fly, and a number of other features that the
Dynamics CRM 4.0 Language Packs
  1. Download one of these and install it on your CRM server.
  2. As a system administrator, “enable” the installed language in Dynamics CRM.
  3. Then your users can toggle the CRM UI and Help between the base language and anything you’ve installed and enabled. Sweet!
Dynamics CRM 4.0 Sample Data Set The pre-configured AdventureWorks data set, all ready for importing after you install the Data Migration Manager.
Demonstration Tools for CRM 4.0 This cool set of tools lets you do things like create sample data, perform a find and replace to rename an entity, and some other good time-savers.
Accelerators for Microsoft Dynamics CRM
 Here are the three new ones:

NEW
Social Networking
NEW
Portal Integration
NEW
Partner Relationship Management 

 

 
Here are the rest:
Notifications
Event Management
Extended Sales Forecasting
eService
Analytics R2
Enterprise Search R1
Business Productivity Newsfeed
Business Productivity Workflow Tools
Business Data Auditing
Sales Performance International (SPI) Sales Methodology

 

 The Accelerators for Dynamics CRM 4.0 are essentially reference applications that run on top of and extend the core Dynamics CRM platform. Most of them are horizontal, adding functionality that might be used by any organization, such as auditing, enhanced analytics, and so forth.
 All of the Accelerators require the installation of software on your Dynamics CRM server machine, and so they all require the on-premise version of Dynamics CRM.
 As of Dec. 5 2009 there are 13 accelerators available. At the left I provide links to the overall landing page, the three newest ones (the social networking one integrates Twitter and Dynamics CRM), and the rest of them.
 
 All CodePlex Dynamics CRM Projects CodePlex is an awesome resource: open source (free, downloadable) code you can run on top of Dynamics CRM.

December 7, 2009 · Filed under Customization, News You Can Use

1 Comment »

  1. Samantha Grove Said,

    January 9, 2010 @ 7:13 am

    Thank you Richard for this great resource.

    Your blog has saved me quite a bit of time with some info I’ve been looking for on CRM

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