May 28, 2011 – Dynamics CRM 2011 Solution Packages (”solutions”, for short) are packages of customizations that allow you to build and maintain Dynamics CRM/xRM applications, and to move them from one organization to another. This is the first article in a multi-part series on the topic.

May 26, 2011 – The style of JScript we need to write for Dynamics CRM 2011 has changed significantly in the upgrade from CRM 4.0. If you learn best from examples, here are a few you may find helpful: Hide or show account tabs; create a URL for an opportunity record, construct a SharePoint search or a Bing map URL from an account form and display in an IFrame.

May 24, 2011 – I gave a presentation today in Springfield, IL on integrating Dynamics CRM 2011 and SharePoint 2010. Here’s a summary, and the recording I made of the demo part of the session.

May 12, 2011 — With Dynamics CRM 2011, feature-parity between online and on-premise is closer than ever! With custom SSRS reports supported now for CRM 2011 Online, we can check another feature-gap off the list. Here’s a short article and a longer video about setting up and authoring custom SSRS reports for Dynamics CRM Online 2011.

May 8, 2011 – When it comes to customizing Dynamics CRM, I get more questions about many-to-many relationships than almost any other topic. This article is my attempt to summarize the three main approaches you can use to create “N:N” relationships in Dynamics CRM 2011, and to provide guidance on when to use them.

April 20, 2011 – There are lots of ways you can visualize data in Dynamics CRM 2011. Dashboards are great, but as Barry Givens pointed out in my favorite Convergence session, they aren’t the only way to create dashboard-style visualizations. You can also use the new multiple forms per entity functionality to create what I call “record-centric” dashboards, like the account dashboard I show in this article.

Dec. 24, 2010 – You don’t have to write as much code in CRM 2011 as in CRM 4.0. And in situations when you do need to write code, you can do it more efficiently and re-use it better. JScript libraries are in CRM 2011 one of the many types of “web resources” you can create and which are stored in the CRM database. In this article I provide an introduction to JScript libraries in CRM 2011 and show an example of some useful code to format phone numbers.

Dec. 23, 2010 – Recently I was asked how to manage vendors in Dynamics CRM. I’m a big proponent of using the account record type for things other than just “customers”. But the simplest approaches to categorizing accounts are too restrictive for many organizations…which is where “many-to-many” relationships come in. These are both easier to create and easier to apply in CRM 2011 than in 4.0, and in this part 1 of 2 articles, I show you how to create them and use them to classify accounts.

December 13, 2010 – Both CRM 4.0 and CRM 2011 allow you to attach a file to most record types. But you don’t get versioning, check-in/check-out or other collaboration features. But Dynamics CRM 2011 has a simple and productive integration with SharePoint…that does have all of those features. Here’s a quick look at it.

December 2, 2010 – If you ever had to manually synch up the values in a similar picklist on two different entity forms in CRM 4.0, you will like global option sets in CRM 2011. If you ever had to do it for three picklists on three entity forms in CRM 4.0 you will LOVE global option sets in CRM 2011.