CRM Live screenshots!

Hi all of you,


Just before going to sleep I'd like to share some images with you. They are images I made of the presentation of CRM Live during Steve Ballmers keynote. The presentation was given by Brad Wilson, General Manger for Microsoft CRM. The presentation actually was live from the internet, so these bits are online right at this time in the Microsoft data center! I'll give you some of the pictures that are best and some information around what is on the screen. You can click the images for a detailed image. Unfortunately I didn't had the best place to sit, but these are the best shots I could get off the screen.


After logging in via the Live Passport, Brad got this screen. He was able to select an organisation because he is assigned multiple accounts to multiple organisations. If you only have one organisation to choose from, then this screen will ofcourse be skipped.



This image shows the activity overview screen on the workplace window. The differences with CRM 3.0 as we see on the screen is the button "imports" on the left side of the screen between Calendar and Queues. Another change is the new module "resource center". This is a button under Settings. This resource center allows users to directly access the community and search for answers to their questions.

We can see on the title that the name here is "Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4 Community Technology Preview 1". There has not been any statement on the name yet, but it might be CRM 4. It also could become CRM 2008 because it will be released before the end of the year.




This is the last picture which is quite ok. On this shot you can see Steve Ballmer and Brad Wilson looking to the "Service Calendar" in the Service module.

During his presentation Brad mentioned something about Duplicate Detection as well. On the screens of the contacts and accounts, there has been shown a button which stated "Detect Duplicates". Thats all that has been said about this subject for now, but I think it will be great if the same functionality would be in the system as what is in the addon of c360.

Brad also shown the Outlook client for CRM Live. This worked just as fine as the webclient. Also modifications made to the sitemap are immediately replicated to the Outlook client.

Thats about all I have seen on the presentation, so thats all I was allowed to say. I have been said that I'll get access to these bits, if I do so then I'll post some clearer shots of the same screens that were shown today.

Now we just have to wait until the next releases in the TAP program and for some of you even end of the year... But it will be worth the wait!

Good night,

Ronald

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

any initial thoughts on comparisons between it and salesforce.com?
a salesfrce.com killer? or
a salesforce.com wannabe

Ronald Lemmen said...

Hi Hermanator,

There are some mayor differences between Salesforce.com and CRM live. In terms of technology, CRM Live kicks ass and definitely overrules salesforce.com. Only take a look at the ability to move from CRM Live to partner hosted or on-premise. Thats a huge advantage over any other CRM SaaS provider. Also the close integration with Office is another unique selling point.

On the other hand, MS Dynamics CRM is still relatively new in the market (end 2003), so in terms of functionality MS can still learn from the competition. This is only for the time being, because the MS CRM framework does allow changes to be made very quicly.

Hope this answers your question.

Anonymous said...

Hmm.. Thank you for the screen.. I am quite surprised that the UI is (almost) exactly the same with Microsoft CRM 3.0. I thought this version will enable users to access CRM across browser (along with the "Windows Live" brand), so I think that there will be a total UI change. But, it doesn't seem to be..

About the name, I think it will be the one that has been mentioned frequently, "Windows Live CRM". But there are more fail stories now with the Windows Live branding, who knows.. :)

Anonymous said...

Oh I have just read news that CRM Live is only the name for one of the deployment method. So it's not the product name. :)

Ronald Lemmen said...

It could still be that the CRM Live will just be called CRM Live. There will be just one CRM Live regardless of the version. When in the future titan+1 gets released, then the CRM Live will get updated and remain CRM Live. The product name underneath will be named differently though.

About the UI, that will not change much. There will be some minor changes ofcourse, but nothing dramastically as we have seen with the change from CRM 1.2 to 3.0.