Our next in the Geek Girl Blog Podcast Series is now online! :)
Check out this months interview with Interactive Design Guru Donna Spencer here: http://wpmu.thepodcastnetwork.com/geekgirlblogs/2009/04/28/podcast-donna-spencer/
Somewhere in between her overseas trips to present at world class conferences, organising a UX conference here in Canberra Australia, writing a book, freelancing, mentoring & being a mother, she took 30 mins out to have a chat with me about it all!
Hope you enjoy it! :)
We know that differentiating your line-of-business applications from those of your competitors has never been more important. If you’ve considered using Dynamics CRM as a line-of-business platform, Silverlight or WPF to build compelling experiences, Office or SharePoint to build on the familiar skills of your end-users or Partner-Hosting or Azure Services to extend you application to the cloud, well then this is the event for you. We’re hosting a series of 4 online events (across multiple time zones) that will help you understand how we can help you do that as a valued Microsoft Partner.
Because of the anticipated high-demand, we encourage you to register immediately to ensure your attendance at this valuable event. We’ve provided an overview below and the upcoming event dates and registration links at the bottom of this message. Be sure to register for all 4 online events.
Also it is important to note that there are sessions being run in APAC friendly timezones! This is a great opportunity to hear some of the Top Dynamics speakers from around the world share their knowledge from the comfort of your own computer!
So what’s going to be included:
A Line-of-Business Application Platform
Microsoft Dynamics CRM provides the platform for getting your line-of-business applications to market fast. Clearly applicable in CRM-type scenarios, Microsoft Dynamics CRM also supports a wide range of business applications with the essentials required for building, delivering and maintaining them in multi-tenant Software+Services environments.
This event will demonstrate the power of Dynamics CRM as a platform for developing line of business applications. It will also cover how solutions built on the Dynamics CRM platform benefit from other Microsoft technologies to provide compelling experiences, build on familiar skills and give your customers the power of choice.
Compelling Experiences
Increase user productivity and accuracy by providing an attractive, easy to use application user interfaces on either the desktop or the web using one set of tools and knowledge. With Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) you’ll build the next-generation of Windows user experiences with deep support of data visualization, complex text content, rich media, dynamic interactive experiences, and branded or custom look and feel. With Silverlight you increase repeat visits and brand loyalty while dramatically reducing customer support costs through compelling, intuitive, high performance self-service web sites.
Familiar Skills
Increase the productivity of the users of your applications by providing a seamless and integrated end to end experience that empowers them to collaborate and get work done in familiar ways. Pull line-of-business processing directly into the Microsoft Office applications your users use day-in day-out. Unified communications across the Dynamics CRM and Office line of products, such as instant messaging, document sharing, and user presence, further promote and simplify ad hoc processes and keep people in the center of the workflow – where they belong.
Power of Choice
Whether you are deploying behind the firewall or internet-facing applications, build and deploy those applications quickly and easily by capitalizing on the same personnel, development tools investments, and knowledge that already power your organization. When you build on the Dynamics CRM platform you’ll be prepared to deploy your line-of-business applications on-premises, in partner-hosted facilities or in Microsoft own Dynamics CRM Online data centers. When you build the internet-facing self-service applications that integrate with your line-of-business solution, the Azure Services Platform helps reduce IT-related costs, freeing up time and capital to focus on your core business.
Be sure to register for all 4 events below.
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| Line-of-Business Application Framework | Compelling Experiences | Familiar Skills | Power of Choice |
| Europe Middle East and Africa | ||||
| North and South America | ||||
| Asia/Pacific |
Europe, Middle East and Africa (Mon Apr 27-Thu Apr 30)
· 9:00 AM UTC - Dublin, London
· 10:00 AM UTC+1 - Madrid, Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam, Geneva, Copenhagen, Rome, Berlin, Prague, Stockholm, Budapest, Warsaw, Oslo
· 11:00 AM UTC+2 - Cape Town, Athens, Helsinki, Istanbul, Cairo, Jerusalem, Beirut
· 12:00 PM UTC+3 - Moscow, Kuwait City
· 1:00 PM UTC+4 - Tehran, Dubai
· 2:30 PM UTC+5:30 - Bangalore
· 4:00 PM UTC+7 - Bangkok, Hanoi, Jakarta
North and South America (Mon Apr 27-Thu Apr 30)
· 9:00 AM UTC-7 - Vancouver, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Redmond
· 10:00 AM UTC-6 - Calgary, Denver, Mexico City
· 11:00 AM UTC-5 - Houston, Minneapolis, Chicago
· 12:00 PM UTC-4 - Caracas, Toronto, Montreal, Boston, Miami, New York
· 1:00 PM UTC-3 - Buenos Aires, Sao Paolo
Asia/Pacific (Tue Apr 28 - Fri May 1)
· 9:00 AM UTC+8 - Singapore, Hong Kong, Beijing, Shanghai
· 10:00 AM UTC+9 - Perth, Seoul, Tokyo
· 11:00 AM UTC+10 - Sydney
· 12:00 PM UTC+11 - Auckland
The new CRM Demo VPC is now available for download on Partner Source: https://mbs.microsoft.com/partnersource/deployment/methodology/vpc/msd_crm4vpcapril09.htm
It is loaded up with CRM, the latest rollups, all of the accelerators, Visual Studio 2008, SQL 2008, Performance Point, OCS, office and just about everything else you could think of that helps demo the out of the box capabilities of CRM 4.0.
I got my hands on a copy of the VPC a little while ago & I am impressed! Download it now! :)
Just a reminder that I am stopping over in Adelaide on my way back home from Perth on the 21st of April so am going to be giving a couple of presentations while I am there!
So if you’re in Adelaide, make sure you pop into one of these sessions & say hello!
First up:
Adelaide SQL Usergroup
http://www.sqlserver.org.au/Events/RegisterMeeting.aspx?EventId=403
Venue: SA Innovation Centre, L2 Westpac House | Duration 12:00-14:00 | On: Tuesday, 21 April 2009
Building BI solutions with Dynamics CRM
In this current economic climate, looking after customers and examining trends is more important than ever. No wonder more and more people are turning to customer relationship management, and the hottest product in the market is Microsoft Dynamics CRM and the BI tools that come with it.
In this session, hear Microsoft’s Catherine Eibner talk with Rob Farley about CRM from a SQL perspective, including how you can apply your BI skills to this important space.
Then later that evening:
Adelaide Sharepoint Usergroup
Venue: Microsoft Innovation Center Audiotoruim, Level 9 / 91 King William Sreet, Adelaide | Duration 17:30-19:30 | On: Tuesday, 21 April 2009
Lets get CRM & Sharepoint talking with the new CRM Enterprise Search Accelerator
The newly released CRM enterprise Search accelerator allows you to easily integrate CRM data into Sharepoint by including CRM content in the enterprise search as well as exposing CRM content via specially created Web Parts.
In this session we will take a high level overview of the additional functionality this CRM accelerator provides to Sharepoint and then dive into how to setup & configure the accelerator so that you can be taking advantage of the powerful accelerator in your own CRM deployments in under 20 minutes!
Here is another one of the very cool tools I got a sneak peek at earlier this year & I am very happy to see it released as I foresee it will save so much time in development as well as make it much easier for developers familiar with Visual studio development but new to programming for Dynamics CRM to get up & running far more quickly!
Benefits of the Developer toolkit listed on the MSDN site include:
Download it here: http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/E2DevTkt
After the excitement generated from our Dynamics NAV guru Johan Emilsson’s great work integrating OCS with Dynamics NAV (Webcast on that coming soon), there was much discussion internally about doing a similar example for CRM.
Today I came across this – and I am very glad that this has been released as it seems to make perfect sense to me that OCS and CRM SHOULD work seemlessly together. This is something I have wanted to see for CRM for some time so I am really excited about this!
From the Overview:
The Agent Communications Panel for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 is an application add-in to Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0. It works with Microsoft Dynamics CRM and Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2, and enables agents to manage their communications (make calls, receive calls, conference, and chat) from their Microsoft Dynamics CRM system.
The Agent Communications Panel is an XAML browser application (XBAP). It is published to a Web server and opened from a Web browser.
The Agent Communications Panel embeds with CRM itself:
You can download it here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=0d689f13-4953-40ea-995e-49469dae559e#
Just a quick note that with the latest release of Codeplex, the address to download the CRM accelerators has changed .
You can now download there from http://crmaccelerators.codeplex.com/
