Dynamics CRM Roadmap 2014 : Mira, Subra, Leo

Source: http://www.zdnet.com/microsoft-begins-roll-out-of-its-next-wave-of-crm-offerings-7000026452/

Microsoft is starting to open up about three of its new CRM deliverables it is rolling out through the second quarter of 2014.

On February 18 -- a couple of weeks ahead of its Convergence 2014 CRM/ERP conference -- Microsoft execs outlined plans for the coming services -- previously known by their codenames "Mira," "Subra" and "Leo."

Mira will be known officially as Microsoft Dynamics Marketing. It's based on marketing-automation technology Microsoft acquired when it bought Marketing Pilot in October 2012. Dynamics Marketing is an add-on service that can be used with Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online, CRM on-premises or as a standalone offering.

Microsoft overhauled and rebuilt Marketing Pilot's technology and hosted it on Windows Azure, officials said. As part of that redesign, lead scoring was made to tightly couple with Dynamics CRM.

Subra will be known officially as Microsoft Social Listening. It's based on social-analytics technology Microsoft bought when it purchased Netbreeze in March 2013 and is hosted on Windows Azure, officials said. Social Listening is an add-on service that can be used with Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online, on-premises or as a standalone service.

Leo is the name of the next, core Microsoft Dynamics CRM release -- the "Spring 2014" update -- that will add new customer care functionality designed to supplement the capabilities provided by Microsoft's most recent acquisition, Parature; a unified service desk for call-center users; and other new case-management functionality. The unified service desk will provide users with a single agent console for CRM and billing integration. 

(The three codenames are all constellation-related, for you Microsoft codename-tracking fans.)

The three services/ updates will be rolled out to customers through the second calendar quarter of 2014, officials said.

Microsoft disclosed pricing for Social Listening on February 18, but said pricing for the other two new components will be shared at the upcoming Convergence show.

A subscription to Social Listening will be included as part of the main CRM Professional license that costs $65 per user per month. The service will be available immediately to CRM Online users for free as soon as it goes live in Q2 2014; it will be available at an "incremental cost" for on-premises customers. When used as an "integrated" offering (as opposed to standalone), Dynamics CRM 2013 Service Pack 1 is required for on-prem use and the Spring 2014 update for CRM Online for online use. Prior versions of Dynamics CRM won't support it.

Microsoft's Dynamics CRM team is continuing on the pace it set in 2011: rolling out two major new releases a year to both its on-premises and online users.

Microsoft CRM 2013 - Custom Code Validation Tool

This will help anyone who wants to see whats supported and not supported in there customisations before attempting to upgrade to CRM 2013.

http://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/download/details.aspx?id=30151

To help you prepare for your upgrade to Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013, we have created the Custom Code Validation Tool for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013. When using JavaScript code in Microsoft Dynamics CRM, it is possible that some code will stop working or cause an error when you upgrade. The Microsoft Dynamics CRM Custom Code Validation Tool helps identify potential problems so that a developer can fix them. Please run this tool on your CRM instance to help identify potential issues with custom JavaScript in JavaScript libraries and HTML web resources. It will detect issues in the custom web resources that will no longer work after the upgrade is completed.

The most common issues that this tool targets are:

. CRM v4 client SDK calls

. CRM 2007 end points

. Common DOM manipulations

Running this tool before upgrade will enable you to identify issues and fix them prior to your scheduled upgrade so that your upgrade process can run smoothly.

Upgrade process for On-Premise CRM 4

CRM 4 CRM 2011CRM 2013

 

Watch this blog for the complete guide on to install CRM 2013 on Windows Server 2012 and SQL 2012

Attach Process for Plugin Debug

To debug a plugin, make sure you attach the right process. Please find the process details below:

• online – w3wp.exe

• offline – Microsoft.Crm.Application.Hoster.exe

• asynchronous registered plug-ins (or custom workflow assemblies) –CrmAsyncService.exe

• sandbox (isolation mode) – Microsoft.Crm.Sandbox.WorkerProcess.exe

Charts: Show field from a related record...i.e. Account(Industry code) and Opportunity(Est. Revenue)

Charts, charts and more charts!

How do you create a chart like the one below(2 fields from 2 entities)

Normally when creating charts you can only select fields on the current entity or primary lookups!

So what do you do:

Export the xml and make one tiny change and import it back in.

http://blog.simonjackson.info/2012/12/crm-2011-charts-group-by-any-related.html

In example below the chart was created using opportunities, the fields Est. Revenue & Potential Customer.

Edit the xml for potential customer i.e. customerid to industrycode

Import back in viola!

Other things you can do:

Scale break http://blogs.msdn.com/b/crm/archive/2011/05/02/crm-2011-charts-know-the-real-potential-part-deux.aspx

Bar Chart and Data Points - http://blogs.msdn.com/b/crm/archive/2011/01/04/crm-2011-charts-know-the-real-potential-part-i.aspx

 

3D - http://niiranen.eu/crm/2010/10/turn-the-flat-dynamics-crm-2011-charts-into-3d/

CRM 2011 Web Services

Great blog which can be found here

Here’s  quick overview of the different services:

• Organization SOAP Service: This is the primary web service accessing the data and metadata (data about data) for a CRM organization.  It provides methods to perform any operation in Dynamics CRM.
• Discovery SOAP Service: A CRM implementation can have multiple “tenants” or organizations.  To determine/retrieve an organization and the web service endpoint to access the Organization service, the discovery service can be used.
• Organization ODATA Service: This is a web services that utilizes a REST endpoint and is limited to only CRUD (create, retrieve, update and delete) operations.  This is typically the bulk of the operations performed, but an example of an action the REST endpoint cannot do is to assign records in CRM.

Traditionally within plug-ins, you’ll use the organization service because you can easily retrieve the service as it’s being passed into the plug-in execution context.  However within web resources such as JScript and Silverlight applications, what should you use and when?  The Dynamics CRM SDK lists the following:

• CRUD Operations: REST
• Associate and Disassociate records: REST
• Assign Records: SOAP
• Retrieve Metadata: SOAP
• Execute Messages: SOAP

Another good link

Service	Platform	Protocol	Description	Tasks
Discovery	WCF	SOAP 1.2	information about the organizations availables	RetrieveUser, RetrieveOrganization
	Endpoint:<Discovery Server URL>/XRMServices/2011/Discovery.svc
Organization	WCF	SOAP 1.2	access to the business data and metadata	CRUD, Associate, Dissociate, Metadata, Execute
	Endpoint: <organization URL>/XRMServices/2011/Organization.svc
Organization Data	WCF	REST Open data (JSON/Atom)	access to the business data (only for web ressources/no authentication)	CRUD,Associate,Dissociate
	Endpoint: <organization URL>/XRMServices/2011/OrganizationData.svc
Web Ressource	WCF	SOAP 1.2	access to the business data and metadata (only for web ressources/no authentication)	CRUD Associate, Dissociate, Metadata, Execute
	Endpoint: <organization URL>/XRMServices/2011/Organization.svc/web
Deployment	WCF	SOAP 1.2	access to the deployment properties	RUD, Execute
	Endpoint: <servername>/xrmdeployment/2011/deployment.svc

And another one

For CRM Online End Points:

CRM 2011 Discovery and Web Service URL’s to use, based on the Developer Resources Page in CRM.

Here is the information that you need:

The following URLs should be used to access the discovery service (use the appropriate URL for your location):

https://dev.crm.dynamics.com/XRMServices/2011/Discovery.svc (North America)
https://dev.crm4.dynamics.com/XRMServices/2011/Discovery.svc (EMEA)
https://dev.crm5.dynamics.com/XRMServices/2011/Discovery.svc (APAC)

The following URLs should be used to access the Organization service(SOAP endpoint):

https://{Organization Name}.api.crm.dynamics.com/XrmServices/2011/Organization.svc (North America)
https://{Organization Name}.api.crm4.dynamics.com/XrmServices/2011/Organization.svc (EMEA)
https://{Organization Name}.api.crm5.dynamics.com/XrmServices/2011/Organization.svc (APAC)

Where {Organization Name} refers to the Organization that you specify in the URL when accessing the Web application. For example, for Contoso.crm.dynamics.com, the {Organization Name} is Contoso.

The following URLs should be used to access the Organization Data service(OData REST endpoint)

https://{Organization Name}.api.crm.dynamics.com/XrmServices/2011/OrganizationData.svc (North America)
https://{Organization Name}.api.crm4.dynamics.com/XrmServices/2011/OrganizationData.svc (EMEA)
https://{Organization Name}.api.crm5.dynamics.com/XrmServices/2011/OrganizationData.svc (APAC)

For CRM On-premises customers:
http://{server}/XRMServices/2011/Discovery.svc for the Discovery service endpoint
http://{server}/{OrgName}/XRMServices/2011/Organization.svc for the Organization Service endpoint (SOAP)
http://{server}/{OrgName}/XRMServices/2011/OrganizationData.svc for the Organization Data Service endpoint (REST)
http://{server}/XRMDeployment/2011/Deployment.svc for the Deployment Service endpoint

Great Tools & Software for Microsoft CRM 2011

Found 3 good links (1,2,3) with many great Tools & Software for Microsoft CRM 2011.(Tried to update as many links for CRM 2011 instead of CRM 4)

Enjoy!

1. Stunnware Tools
(www.stunnware.com)

2. Deletion Service Job Editor 

(http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/ScaleGroupJobEditor)

3. CRM Documentation Generator
(http://metadatadocgenerator.codeplex.com/)

4. Google Closure – Javascript Minifier
(http://closure-compiler.appspot.com/home)

5. CRM Web Service Toolkit
(http://xrmsvctoolkit.codeplex.com/)

6. Auto Embed Javascript
(http://www.xrmlinq.com/safely-add-script-references-to-dynamics-crm-pages)

7. Javascript Audit Add-On for Microsoft CRM
(http://crmjavascriptaudit.codeplex.com)

8. External View for Microsoft CRM Online
(http://viewlayoutreplicator.codeplex.com/)

9. Javascript Intellisense Generator for Microsoft CRM
(http://crm.vdsnickt.eu/ms-crm-javascript-intellisense)

10. View Layout Replicator
(http://mscrmtools.blogspot.com)

11. Access Checker for Microsoft Dynamics CRM
(http://mscrmtools.blogspot.com)

12. MSCRM Audit / Track Changes Add-On
(http://crmaudit.codeplex.com)

13. Field Level Security for Microsoft CRM
(http://www.thuta.info)

14. Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online
(http://crm.dynamics.com)

15. MSCRM 2011 SDK
(http://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/download/details.aspx?id=24004)

16. Linq2CRM
http://linqtocrm.codeplex.com/

17. Iconator for CRM 2011
http://mscrmtools.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/new-tool-iconator-for-microsoft.html

Advanced CRM 2011 Auto Number

(http://advcrm2011autonumber.codeplex.com)
Supports: CRM 2011 On-Premise, CRM 2011 Online, CRM 2011 Partner Hosted and Load Balancing setup.
Advanced CRM 2011 AutoNumber is the most advanced auto numbering solution for CRM 2011. Guaranteed 100% unique autogenerated number. Supports multiple auto number fields for an entity and allows flexible auto number formatting.

CRM External View 

(http://crmexternalview.codeplex.com)

Supports: CRM 2011 Online
CRM External View enables more robust control over exposing Microsoft CRM data (in a form of views) for external parties. The solution uses web service as the integration layer to CRM. Supports paging and simple authentication.

CRM Javascript Audit (http://crmjavascriptaudit.codeplex.com)
Supports: CRM 4 On-Premise
CRM Javascript Audit enables the auditing functionality for client side Javascript customization. Traditionally you will have to store the Javascripts in source control, but this could be a tedious process as more customizations made.

Site Map Editor

• http://sitemapeditor.codeplex.com

SiteMap Editor for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 helps developer and customizers to configure the Site Map in a graphical way.

• http://pragmatoolkit.codeplex.com

Pragma Toolkit is a developer tool for improving productivity of the CRM 2011 developers. This release contains Ribbon Editor and Site Map Editor.

Ribbon Editor

• http://ribboneditor.codeplex.com

Ribbon Editor makes it easier for developers and customizers to edit Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 ribbons.

• http://pragmatoolkit.codeplex.com

Pragma Toolkit is a developer tool for improving productivity of the CRM 2011 developers. This release contains Ribbon Editor and Site Map Editor.

• http://crmvisualribbonedit.codeplex.com

Visual Ribbon Editor is a tool for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 that lets you edit CRM ribbons.

URL Encoder/Decoder to easily get CRM Record IDs

• http://meyerweb.com/eric/tools/dencoder

LINQ Queries

• LINQPad and CrmLINQPadPlugin.lpx

Interactively query databases in a modern query language. You can test your LINQ query in the LINQPad before use in plugins and custom workflow activities.

Fetch XML

• http://www.stunnware.com/products/tools4/download.htm

Stunnware Tools for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4, but we can use it to test Fetch XML. There are other cool tools embedded inside the Stunnware.

CRM Security Roles Interface

• http://roleupdater.codeplex.com

Role Updater for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 makes it easier for CRM 2011 administrators and developers to add or remove privileges to multiple security roles in one operation. You’ll no longer have to open each security role and apply privileges one by one.

• http://crm40admin.codeplex.com

Used in CRM 4.0 Administration. Release 1.3 contains three utilities, focused on the administration of Users, Security Roles, Views and Local Data Groups. It supports Intranet, Internet and CRM Online deployments.

CRM Tools from Microsoft

• CRMSvcUtil.exe

Advanced Developer Extensions for Microsoft Dynamics CRM provides a command-line code generation tool called CrmSvcUtil.exe that is used to generate a data context class as well as data transfer objects (DTOs) for all Microsoft Dynamics CRM entities.

• Plugin Registration

It is a tool for registering CRM plug-ins and custom workflow activities.

• Entity Metadata Browser

The Entity Metadata Browser provides the capability to examine the metadata for all the entities in the system.

• ILMerge.msi

ILMerge is a utility for merging multiple .NET assemblies into a single .NET assembly. This is used if we have multiple Dynamics CRM 2011 .NET projects in a solution.

• Visual Studio Agents 2010

Visual Studio Agents 2010 includes Test Controller 2010, Test Agent 2010 and Lab Agent 2010. Test Controller 2010 and Test Agent 2010 collectively enable scale-out load generation, distributed data collection, and distributed test execution. Visual Studio Agents 2010 can help in unit testing of plugins and custom workflow activities.

Third Party Components

• Documents Core Pack: http://mscrm-addons.com

Documents Core Pack provides the possibility to create and manage documents associated with CRM – records in a comfortable and structured way. It enables creation of Word-Documents with data from MS CRM.

• CRM 2011 OData Query Designer: http://crm2011odatatool.codeplex.com

The CRM 2011 OData Query Designer is a Silverlight 4 application that is packaged as a Managed CRM 2011 Solution. This tool allows you to build OData queries by selecting filter criteria, select attributes and order by attributes. The tool also allows you to execute the query and view the ATOM and JSON data returned.

• Dependent Picklists: http://treeviewfordependent.codeplex.com ORhttp://blogs.msdn.com/b/paf/archive/2011/04/21/how-to-easily-create-dependent-picklist-in-crm-2011.aspx

Create Dependent Picklist by using a user friendly interface.

• ReSharper

ReSharper is a productivity tool that makes Microsoft Visual Studio a much better IDE. Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 developers can use ReSharper’s code inspections, automated refactorings, blazing fast navigation, and coding assistance in custom development of plugins and workflow activities.

JavaScript/CSS/HTML Testing: Useful in CRM Custom HTML/ASPX Development

• Test CSS/HTML: http://www.dabblet.com/

• Test JavaScript/CSS/HTML: http://jsfiddle.net/

• Test JavaScript: http://pastebin.com/X6NxXvkC

• JavaScript Development Sheet.pdf

This document is a cheat sheet and a quick reference to JavaScript methods in the new XRM Page Model of Dynamics CRM 2011. Download JavaScript Development Sheet from here.

• Dynamic HTML Editor 1.9: http://www.dynamic-html-editor.com

Dynamic HTML Editor is a powerful HTML (website design) Editor that permits you to create your site in a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) environment using both CSS and/or tabled layouts.

Tools for taking Screen Shots: Helpful in writing Functional and Technical Dynamics CRM 2011 Documents

• Balsamiq Mockups: http://www.balsamiq.com/products/mockups

Using Balsamiq Mockups feels like drawing, but because it’s digital, you can tweak and rearrange easily. Teams can come up with a design and iterate over it in real-time in the course of a meeting.

• Snagit: http://www.techsmith.com/snagit.html

Capture anything on your computer screen with this screen capture tool. Snagit makes it easy to create eye-catching images and videos for quick communication.

• MS Paint

Paint (formerly Paintbrush for Windows) is a simple graphics painting program that has been included with all versions of Microsoft Windows.

• Paint.Net: http://www.getpaint.net

Paint.NET is free image and photo editing software for computers that run Windows. It features an intuitive and innovative user interface with support for layers, unlimited undo, special effects, and a wide variety of useful and powerful tools.

• Microsoft Picture Manager (Microsoft office 2010)

Microsoft Office Picture Manager is a software program included with Microsoft Office suite starting with version 2003. It is a basic image editing and image management program. It replaced Microsoft Photo Editor, which had been included up to Office XP since Office 97.

Tools for Unit Testing: Helpful in custom development of plugins, workflow activities and ASPX pages

• MOQ: http://code.google.com/p/moq

Moq (pronounced “Mock-you” or just “Mock”) is the only mocking library for .NET developed from scratch to take full advantage of .NET 3.5 (i.e. LINQ expression trees) and C# 3.0 features (i.e. lambda expressions) that make it the most productive, type-safe and refactoring-friendly mocking library available.

• Rhino Mock

Rhino Mocks is a dynamic mock object framework for the .Net platform. Its purpose is to ease testing by allowing the developer to create mock implementations of custom objects and verify the interactions using unit testing.

• .NET Code Coverage Tool: http://www.jetbrains.com/dotcover

Reporting statement-level coverage in .NET Framework and Silverlight applications. Integration with Visual Studio 2005, 2008 and 2010.

....that's all folks!

CRM 2011 December 2012 Service Update

Christmas 2012 is coming early....

Next service update due December 2012
(UPDATE: Now January 2013...bug in the new release, should be re-released soon... for CRM Online and On-Premise 2013 Q2) is codename:Polaris will show off some great new features. Please have a look below links for the latest info...

Release Preview Guide

http://crmpublish.blob.core.windows.net/docs/Release_Preview_Guide_December_2012_FI
NAL.pdf

http://crm.dynamics.com/en-us/polaris

https://community.dynamics.com/product/crm/crmnontechnical/b/crmconnection/archive/2012/11/01/december-2012-service-update-is-here-for-microsoft-dynamics-crm.aspx

The December 2012 Service Update introduces a new bulk data API that allows you to create, update and delete large volumes of records in Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online!
------------------------------------------------
Definitely worth a scroll

Nice screenshots of new features + cross browser support info
http://blog.sonomapartners.com/

Windows 8 app for CRM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=iiuha…!

Polaris (Online release) will be followed up by other updates of :
Orion(On-Premise release)
Leo
Vega



The below is from Microsoft communities, link

As part of its continual evolution of Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Microsoft will soon release its December 2012 Service Update, codenamed Polaris. (Following the Polaris release, there will be three more star or star constellation themed releases: Orion, Leo and Vega.)

The Polaris release contains a range of new capabilities, including new sales and customer service user interface options, cross browser support, new integration points for Yammer, Skype, and Bing Maps, Microsoft Office 2013 compatibility, and a bulk data API. More information on this release, including an official Release Preview Guide from Microsoft, can be found on the Microsoft CRM site http://crm.dynamics.com/en-us/polaris.

This release will be rolled out from mid/end December and through January, and while most of the changes in this Service Update will be for customers using Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Online, those using the on-premise release will also be able to take advantage of cross-browser support. What does this mean? To quote from the documentation: “Microsoft is expanding the range of browsers supported to include versions of Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome on Windows PCs. Firefox and Apple Safari will be supported on Macintosh desktop computers. There will also be Safari support on Apple iPad tablets for sales users. This sales experience on iPad adds flexibility for the mobile salesperson.”

This potentially has an impact on any current deployments of Dynamics CRM 2011 that contain any JavaScript or HTML programming (for example, any. web resources that have been created to hide/show fields etc.). Organisations that are potentially impacted by this update need to work with their service providers or themselves to ensure that any JavaScript that has been deployed will comply with the cross-browser update.

The process to review the code is as follows and the time it will take will depend obviously on the complexity and functionality of the JavaScript that has been deployed:

1. Download and install the ‘Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Custom Code Validation Tool’ solution from Microsoft athttp://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=30151 . This tool is free to download.
2. Import your CRM solution into the your UAT/DEV environment.
3. The solution will run and provide a colour-coded review of the code in the solution, identifying code items that will fail and might fail following the release of the December 2012 update.
4. For any areas where the code may break, a developer will be required to update the code and fix the issue; this may be as a result of an upgrade where the JavaScript has not been fully converted (using old V4 supported code) or where there are specific commands that only Internet Explorer can interpret.
5. Once the changes have been applied, the updated solution needs to be tested and rolled out.

As a guide, we would expect for most customers this process will take from 4-8 hours to complete; for larger, more complex implementations this process may take longer.

The following blog post by Microsoft details this process in far more detail:http://community.dynamics.com/product/crm/crmtechnical/b/crmteamblog/archive/2012/06/21/microsoft-dynamics-crm-2011-custom-code-validation-tool-released.aspx . If you would like to know more, please don’t hesitate to contact us at Intergen (http://intergen.co.nz/Contact-Us/enquiry-form ).