Nov. 13, 2009 — In a previous article, I described how to use existing charts to configure your personal home page dashboard in Dynamics CRM Online. The November 2009 Service Update also added the Chart Designer, which you can use to create charts, and that’s what I describe in this article.

Nov. 7, 2009 — Dynamics CRM Online – the cloud version of Microsoft’s flagship customer relationship management application – is an excellent product. The “November 2009 Service Update” gets rolled out to current customers on November 9, and in my view the term “service update” doesn’t do it justice. This is the first of a series of articles on the new features, so I’ll start at the beginning: the new “up and running experience”.

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).

A BPOS Story with a Happy Ending
One of the first articles I posted on the re-launched Dynamics CRM Trick Bag was a bit of a rant about the Microsoft product Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS, for short). This is Microsoft’s “cloud computing” suite of hosted Exchange, SharePoint and Live Meeting. I had a heck of [...]

If ever there were a good candidate for cloud computing the Microsoft way, it’s me. I’ve managed a Microsoft partner firm for …well, a long time, and we pretty much drink the Redmond kool-aid: Exchange for email, SharePoint for our web site and collaboration, Office for all the docs that go into SharePoint, Dynamics CRM [...]