Jukka Niiranen

Yesterday I bought my first desktop PC since around 2005. I felt really nostalgic clearing up space under the desk to fit the black box, and also to notice that they still make computers without built-in WiFi adapters in the year 2012. Oh well, I bought it purely to get a piece of that SSD magic – and boy, is it fast! I can barely see a difference between installing a local app or opening a web app.

Anyway, back in the late 90′s when we all were buying those beige boxes and living the golden era of Wintel, would you have ever thought that Apple could make a comeback and overthrow the PC market? Well, they have now done just that. iPads are outselling desktop PCs and are now equal to 17% of the PC market.

Of course there are still more Windows based computers sold than Macs or iPads combined. The thing is, Wintel was never really the king of the mobile computing era, which started when we replaced desktop PCs with laptops. Sure, you could carry around an XP equipped machine in your backpack and boot it up whenever you had some half an hour to invest in nursing your PC on and off, connect it to the network, balance with the battery life and all that.

At the end of the day, what you had was a portable desktop PC, not a true mobile computer. We had to wait for the iPad to reach a point where computers are just like magazines in our bags or on the kitchen table. You don’t manage a magazine, and similarly you don’t have to think about the iPad when you pick it up. It’s ready for you, it stays in the background as much as it can, and 90% of the time it delivers you all the computing power you need for the occasion.

It’s not just the hardware, of course, but the whole Wintel^3 experience that Apple can deliver because it can design everything but the last mile of UX (the app). Why is it that when you buy a laptop PC from Acer, Sony or whoever, the first thing you want to do is get rid of all the crapware applications that came bundled with the machine? How can it be that when a single company gets to choose what to include in the end product, the result in the PC world is pure garbage? Seriously, no one ever chose the Sony laptop over the Acer one because of the software that came with the Vaio. In a Wintel world the only true difference the manufacture was able to promote was the physical design of their physical product, since all the software available for PC’s was the same anyway.

Hmm, come to think of it, didn’t Nokia just release their first quarterly results as a Windows Phone device manufacturer? Yes, they did, and reports indicate that they’ve sold over 1 million Windows Phone devices. That’s not a bad start, considering the phones are not even available in their home market Finland yet, let alone many other significant markets, like the US. Sure, the smartphone sales are dramatically down from one year ago, but that’s not really relevant, since Symbian always was a burning platform anyway.

I’m sure the numbers will improve as a result of Nokia+Microsoft joint effort in pushing their 3rd ecosystem to the market, especially the enterprise market. It’s not as significant anymore as it used to be, thanks to the BYO trend of employees choosing their own iPhones over corporate RIM’s or whatever. It may not be the market that sets any trends, but it’s a world where no one can really challenge Microsoft when it comes to luring in the IT departments. No one loves Microsoft there either, but it’s better the devil you know, and the devil that knows you.

Where does that leave Nokia then? Isn’t this the Wintel story playing all over again on mobile phones? Well, yes, it is. Sorry. The best Nokia can hope to achieve is that the Lumias become the Vaios of the new mobile computing era. Given how Windows 8 is heading towards the Windows Phone 7 model in terms of UI and app distribution, it’s actually not very outlandish at all to assume that Nokia will soon be competing head on with Vaio laptops. Give me one reason why they wouldn’t? Of course we won’t be calling them laptops anymore, since that’s the label for portable desktop PC’s. They will be called tablets, slates or whatever combination of letters the biggest marketing departments in the world can come up with.

In the 80′s we had Nokia PC’s, called MikroMikko, being a clone of the IBM PC, running Microsoft DOS. In the 2010′s we’ll see Nokia mobile computers, called Lumia, being a clone of the Apple iPad, running Microsoft Windows 8 / Windows Phone 8, depending on the form factor. History comes full circle, only to repeat again.

The inevitable launch of Google’s new personalized search has stirred up a lot of discussion on how Google broke the Internet, made its search engine inferior to Bing, screwed over Twitter etc. Wow, were there people in the tech industry that didn’t know this was coming?

Perhaps these have been the same people who’ve declared Google+ a failure over and over again. Even the fastest growing social network is not enough in a world that has Facebook. And even if there would be tens of millions of registered users for the service already after a few months, at least they weren’t using this “ghost town” of a network (see the discussion around #aavekaupunki in Finnish). Yeah, it can only be a failed attempt from the Mountain View engineers to build a Facebook clone, since that is the gold standard of social networking that every other contender must be evaluated against.

To all those people surprised about the launch of Google “Search Plus Your World” with integration to Google+ profiles, circles and posts, I’d like to present the following question: did you think for a moment that Google was not going to leverage it’s core competence (search) in the social network it was building? Vice versa, was it not blatantly obvious right from the start that the company would utilize this new social data source it has unlimited access to (G+) for improving the relevancy of search results?

Ok, enough of the “my network is better than your network” wars. For the end user there’s precious little significance in which US based company is luring in the biggest number of status updates per second. What we ultimately want is for the creation, sharing, discovery and consumption of relevant information to be as convenient as possible, so the question is: what can I get out of a social search engine that wasn’t possible before?

Yesterday I came across a brilliant presentation from Jeff Atwood (behind Coding Horror and more notably Stack Overflow), which contained this quote from Clay Shirky:

Work is when your boss tells you to do something, you do it, and you get paid.

work is motivated by inherent interest and generally unpaid.

It was late Sunday evening and I had happily spent a good number of hours reading work related articles on my free time and loving every moment of it. The though of the looming Monday morning and returning back to mundane Work tasks made the concept strike a nerve and I decided I wanted to post it on a social network, as people generally do nowadays in such situations. I went googling for the source of the quote, to get a link that would be shareable (yes, it is a word). This is what I received:

It turns out I had actually already posted an article referencing the very same speech 11 months ago, only I didn’t have any recollection of it. It was on my Posterous “blog” that I’ve used mainly as a public noteboard of interesting articles I come across regarding knowledge work. Due to the ultimate simplicity of Posterous, it’s very quick to compose an email with quotes, images & links, send it to the Posterous email address  and see it turn into a blog post, which is why you don’t need to spend much time thinking about the topic itself. A noteboard is only useful if you know to go and read its content, which is what I didn’t know. But Google did.

Ok, the result in the example is most likely taken from a tweet rather than a Google+ post, since that didn’t exist last February yet. The point is not really about Google+ itself, rather it serves as yet another reminder that the web knows you better than you do. Instead of being frightened of the privacy implications, what I would recommend everyone to do is to make the most of it – exploit the intelligence of the machine that we’ve all helped to build.

Related artists. Who to follow. Recommendations based on your browsing history. The Web has to be working for us, not the other way around.

— Jukka Niiranen (@jukkan) January 5, 2012

For example: in a world of personalized search, is there any longer a need for social bookmarking á la Delicious? Why should I bother saving links into my own list on a separate point solution like Delicious, when I might as well share the link to my followers/circles/friends/whatever and trust that the system will bring it up if I ever need it again? Trying to come up with descriptive tags for links all on my own seems like a futile attempt compared to the power that the networked online society can have on building relevancy for the shared content.

To continue on the thoughts expressed by Shirky, sharing is work, but not Work, as it feels inherently like the right thing to do and requires effort, yet you don’t get paid for it. “Big Work drives the economy, little work drives the Internet.” It took around 100 million hours to create all of the content on Wikipedia, but thanks to the evolutionary nature of social technology and the network effect, the next Wikipedia will most likely take only a fraction of those hours. It has to, and we really shouldn’t settle for anything less. It is therefore imperative that the tools being built by companies operating in the realm of IT, be it the Google Goliaths or the start-up Davids, strive to make the most of what the collective little work of the online population has already built, because that is the best way to foster motivation of workers (with a lowercase w). This motivation, in turn, will be more and more in demand as the human civilization is facing problems that its capitalist system is not very good at solving. The little work can go a long way.

As what comes to the search engine business that built Google / Google built (any which way you want to look at it), we’ve already seen signs that indexed search has peaked. The way we used to search for content is on the decline, and if Google would be sticking to what they do best now, fighting against the next big thing, they would be standing on the deck of a sinking ship. You could well blame them of being hopelessly late to the game of social, but based on what I’ve seen from them during the past year, I wouldn’t count them out just yet. The reason is, I believe we don’t yet have nearly enough tools for social technology to make us as smart as we could be.

Right now we have the infrastructure  in place for networking with people and sharing content. That’s a good start and it’s been a big enough revolution on its own to fuel the stellar rise of services like Facebook and Twitter. However, if we’d just continue on the same path of ever increasing tweet counts, would we end up becoming increasingly smart or rather end up in the lunatic asylum? If we look at the content search functionality offered by Twitter (basic keyword search on less than a week’s worth of data) or Facebook (absolutely none!), it’s easy to see that the game has only just begun on developing content relevance and discovery algorithms that deliver real added value over simply consuming an ever growing feed of data. While social media has brought us new strategies to overcome information overload through relying on recommendations and content sharing  by people we know/trust, this won’t scale indefinitely, and it is in fact quickly contributing to the very problem it once promised to solve.

In order for us to keep getting smarter through social networks, the filters available to us will need to get smarter first. The question is: can Google produce the missing UI needed for harnessing the true power of social networks? And if not Google, then who?

I’ve got a Windows Phone 7 device that refuses to send/receive SMS’s. I’ve got an Android device that refuses to stay awake, thus not allowing me to receive phone calls. I’ve got an iOS device designed for consuming web content that refuses to stay connected to any WiFi network. Now isn’t today’s mobile technology just grand?

Don’t get me wrong, these are all wonderful toys and I love having shiny gadgets as much as the next geek. However, as their capabilities increase, so does they time I spend maintaining the gadgets and their applications. Configuring settings, hard resets, custom ROMs, googling for answers to problems that also other users have. Back in the days of hardware centric consumer electronics it used to be possible fix problems with spare parts, but when the value of the electronics is increasingly built out of bits, there’s often precious little that a repair shop could do to fix that bit for you.

With more joy comes more pain. You gain new ways to be connected with people, yet you loose something that you used to take for granted, such as phone calls and text messaging reliability. The devices get cheaper every day, which means there’s more features for the buck, like it or not. Very quickly even the entry level mobiles will have the features that a top of the line iPhone introduced a couple of years ago. The feature list will extend infinitely, but the user experience can degrade just as fast. Our future handheld devices will do a million things, cost next to zero euros, yet they may still leave the user less satisfied.

Life used to be so good

Never thought I’d say this out loud, but I’ve actually started to consider if I should grab a Symbian phone while Nokia is still manufacturing those. You know, in a “one more for the road”, “here’s to the good times” kind of way. Then again, we all know what Symbian has become, so if I really would want to have a simple, working mobile phone for oldskool communication like phone calls and SMS (even the occasional MMS, heaven forbid), I’d need to aim for an S40 feature phone instead. Something that hasn’t been destroyed by Nokia’s futile attempts to catch the iPhone wave. The wave, which, you could say, is one reason behing the troubles that more and more people are facing with their “devices previously known as mobile phones”.

And that’s where the troubles begin. I’ve lost my ability to be a feature phone user. Here’s a few reasons that come to my mind:

Input method. I haven’t used a non-QWERTY keypad for typing messages since 2005. Looking back at my handset history, using the numeric keypad was a period of roughly 9 years, and it’s now been 6 years since the end of it. I’m not getting any younger, so I’m assuming I have already lost the capability of typing with the traditional feature phone keypad. I also never adopted T9 for real, so it would be just as ackward for me.

Contacts. All my contact information on friends, co-workers, customers and online acquaintances lives in the cloud. When I install a new device, the data flows from Gmail, Facebook, Exchange Online, Twitter etc. The days of moving data around on a SIM card have truly passed. A feature phone without a cloud connection would be a silo that simply couldn’t be maintained. No way do I plan to install any more crapware like PC/Ovi Suite, Kies or something like that for data synchronization. No cables, please, these are wirelessly networked devices.

Operators. I’ve got in total 4 SIM cards at my disposal that each have unlimited mobile data plans. 2 from my employer, 2 of my own. If I would transfer my primary phone number to a feature phone, I’d be effectively closing down one 3G data pipe that is being paid for.

The legacy of the GSM revolution

The fact that certain communication methods we still use in our modern society are tied into physical SIM cards is in a way one root cause for these dilemmas. If you try to call me and one of my devices just happens to be unavailable at that time (battery is out, network is down, device is rebooting, forgot it in the other room etc.), why couldn’t I pick up the call from some other device? If you send an SMS to me and pay a few eurocents for the privilege, why am I more limited in the choice of how and where I can receive the message and reply back to you? Emails, tweets or even FB messages are available to me anywhere I am 24/7, and their cost per transaction is zero cents. Which leads me to ask the question: is the problem really the lack of GSM like reliability with today’s mobile devices, or are we again trying to solve a problem that we should no longer have?

Nostalgia can be a fun pastime and it also serves as a tool to give us human beings perspective on where we’ve come from and where we are right now. When used in the right way, it also enables us to analyse where we will be in the future. Use it the wrong way and you’ll just end up living in the past, hoping and waiting for the train to turn on its tracks, all the while it’s getting further and further away from you. Instead of just sitting at the train station, cursing the way how the world is these days, maybe I’ll need to focus on picturing in my mind where the train is heading right now.

You see, there will become a day when you can’t reach me from a phone number any longer. In fact, the technology surrounding me today is already doing its fair share to make sure the day is getting closer and closer, even if I’m not personally asking for it to do that. It presents me a compelling, alternative method of communication and asks me with its calm voice “would you like to try this instead, or should we go back to the old way and forget about these new possibilities? It’s you’re choice, I’m here to serve you either way.” And of course we won’t stick to the old, because our curiosity will always eventually trump our resistance to change. It was a tough call for many folks to give up their land line telephones, but still it was only a matter of time. I expect we’ll see similar phenomena also in the future.

We’ll move on from “connecting people” to “connected people”. In the “connecting people” era, it used to be the technology between two people that allowed them to reach out their hands and establish the connection and communicate with one another. In the world of “connected people”, the technology has already drawn people to gather around its virtual bonfire, which is where all the communication takes place. You don’t have to be online all the time, but the connection doesn’t disappear even when someone steps offline – the flame keeps on burning. Our devices enable us to be present at the bonfire whenever we want, at different levels of intensity (active speaker, casual attendee, passive consumer) that suit our current status in the physical world. Whereas the GSM technology included text based communication only as a side product (almost an accidental invention), the “connected people” will use text as the primary and persistent for of communication, supplemented by voice and video when appropriate. Finally, the transformation will not take place as a result of the new communication services and products that the major telecom industry players have been trying to design and sell to big corporations for use in their operative business. Just like with GSM, it will ultimately be the consumer adoption of new social networks and communication tools that makes the transition from old to new a reality.

So, I’m sorry to break this to you, but there is no way back to the golden days of GSM. Having said that, I still wouldn’t mind if the product engineers and FOSS fighters working on smartphone platforms would still reserve a decent fraction of their time on providing reliable applications for supporting legacy protocols such as telephone calls and SMS. As we can learn from the story of Microsoft Windows (1.0 to 7), there’s still a tangible business value in being able to support your own legacy. And most importantly: it can be done.

Last week I wrote a post on how the iPad’s and iTunes’ dependency on USB-cable based content synchronization is undermining Apple’s post-PC agenda. This week in WWDC 2011, Steve Jobs took the stage to announce upcoming features to iOS5, including the iCloud service. Does this mean Apple is compatible with the cloud era requirements? Yes and no.

Yes – in the sense that we will finally see the chord being cut on iOS device activation and operating system updates. Over The Air (OTA) updates will finally arrive, three years after the feature was available on Android. Well, at least they’re on the right track, making the 5th generation iPhone purchase experience more in line with the overall UX that Apple traditionally excels in. Wi-Fi sync of iTunes library content to iOS devices will certainly be helpful for people who are actually managing content with iTunes.

No – because the biggest announcement from WWDC was aimed at solving the wrong problem: synchronizing files between devices. I’m of course talking about the seemingly wonderful service that iCloud will provide to millions of Apple customers living in the content management hell brought to them by previous Apple innovations. When acquiring digital content from iTunes store is made so convenient, you can easily end up in possession of a lot more digital content than you had before. Now, to make sure you continue to purchase content from iTunes store, it’s only natural that the store keeper will feel the need to make managing this content easier. Enter Apple iCloud, priced at $25 per year, which promises to remove the burden of moving files back and forth between different storage locations. iCloud will match your iTunes library content and make it downloadable (notice: not streamable) to any device registered to your Apple ID. Hurrah, problem solved! Or is it?

Here’s the thing: we don’t need a better way to synchronize music files, we need a way to remove files altogether. I don’t want to own bits if I don’t have to. Ever since I signed up for a Spotify subscription, the real need for me to manage digital music files locally on my gadgets has in practice already been removed. That’s because Spotify is not a store like iTunes, it’s a service. Anyone familiar with the cloud computing concept will probably know the term SaaS, software as a service. What this means is that you no longer purchase a copy of the installation media or bits for a software application, rather you subscribe to a service that delivers the application to you (most often through a browser). Subscription based services for music delivery, such as Rdio and Spotify, have already brought the SaaS revolution into our PC’s, smartphones and iPods. Why purchase music as bits if you can get them as a service?

In the business IT lingo people are talking about public cloud, hybrid cloud and private cloud. Basically the first one is a “real” cloud service like Gmail or a private business application built on a publicly available cloud platform like Windows Azure. The last one is used when trying to operate with many of the principles of the cloud, while still remaining in possession of your own servers and application instances, perhaps located in an external data center. Hybrid… well, let’s not go there. A label that some people have cast on the private cloud option is “false cloud“. I think this also fits with what Apple has introduced to the world as their version of the cloud. It initially looks like a cloud service for music (“all your music available anywhere!”), but in reality it’s a cloud service for files (“…just the music you already had somewhere”). Blah.

iCloud will no doubt become a success. Knowing Apple’s track record in delivering excellent usability, it may well turn out to be a killer product for cloud adoption among consumers. I can imagine it becoming “Dropbox^2″ in its ability to solve day-to-day file synchronization problems, which is surely great news. What the iCloud will not do is make the iTunes paradigm relevant again, for those customers who’ve already left their bits behind. In my eyes, Apple has become a victim of its past success in selling both the hardware for media consumption as well as the content. Evolution over revolution is a safe bet to make when you’re riding on the top of the evolution wave. iCloud could have been Apple’s revolution, but now it looks like the revolution may take place elsewhere.

We have great gadgets with state of the art wireless connectivity technologies around us, in our pockets, on the office desk or on the bedroom drawer. Everything is network enabled these days, be it your TV, printer, eBook reader, USB drive, game console or almost any device with a screen and buttons. That’s the way it should be and that’s how it increasingly will be.

Why is it then that we’re still required to plug in a variety of USB cables into some of these devices? Not for charging it with electricity, but for loading it up with bits. If I’m able to consume much of the bits already through the wireless network connection that hooks me up with the great big data cloud of the Internet, then how can there be another category of bits that must still travel through the cable?

Let me illustrate the issue through two recent experiences I’ve had, one sponsored by Apple and the other by Nokia.

Case iPad 2 and iTunes

I recently decided it was finally time for me to give up on trying to steer clear from Apple products. The tablets are not just a new revision of the mini-PC/netbook boom from three years ago, I believe there’s much more to them. If the netbooks were about squeezing the familiar PC experience into a more portable form factor with a lower price tag, the tablets are aiming to bring us the smartphone experience of iOS and Android on a not-so-miniature device that gives better room for content presentation and user interface design. You could say it’s a case of less vs. more, which tends to trigger the primitive human reaction of “more is better”. I was so impressed with what my 4.3″ Android smartphone was capable of delivering compared to my previous 3.2″ gadget with the same OS + applications that I wanted to see what happens when you keep adding up more hardware goodness in a similar environment.

In an ideal world I would have preferred to purchase an Android tablet, as there are several reasons why I believe it will eventually become the leading platform for tablet computers and applications. However, the future is not here yet, as we’re pretty much lacking both the Android tablet computers and applications right now. Devices like the Samsung Galaxy Tab with pre-Honeycomb/3.0 version of the Android OS are not true tablets in my opinion. Also the current Android applications designed for a typical 3.5″ smartphone screen probably wouldn’t deliver the “more” effect I’m after. There’s no way around it, iPad rules for the time being. With the recent launch of v2 it was also easier to justify why now is a convenient time to invest in new hardware.

I won’t bore you with a general iPad 2 review here, I’ll just state that it totally rocks your socks off. Now, the one thing that doesn’t rock one single chord is the fact that you need to plug the device into a PC/Mac equipped with iTunes just to turn it on. In a way I understand the need for the iPad activation as a part of the bigger picture that includes the App Store, credit card billing, DRM and all that jazz. A necessary evil if you are stepping into the light /dark side (depending on one’s point of view) of the Apple empire. However, there’s some big irony in the whole post-PC era gospel preached by Steve Jobs when the product that should lead us into this era starts its life with a navel cord attached to a PC.

It’s no secret that I hate the iTunes application and what it has become. If I only had to use it as an occasional maintenance dock for the iPad OS updates and user identity verification, I might be able to live with this handicap. Unfortunately that’s not quite the end of the story. After having hooked up my iPad into all the usual web services like Facebook, Twitter, Gmail, Google Reader etc. (which inspired this tweet), I wanted to see how this thing works on consuming some less dynamics content, meaning books. I have a Kindle 3 and love the experience when used in conjuction with Amazon’s book store account, but not all of my eBooks are Kindle optimized. Some things just work better in PDF and especially in color, so the beautiful iPad screen should really shine with this type of content.

What I would like to see for the iPad is a similar service as Amazon has, where you can email PDF’s to Amazon and they’ll optimize it for you and deliver the book into your Kindle, wirelessly through a WiFi connection. Ok, email may not be an elegant choice of technology, but the process flows very smoothly for the user. When I wanted to achieve the same end result for the iPad, I was initially completely lost on what I should do. I had downloaded the iBooks application from the App Store and it did have a Store button allowing for book purchases (but of course not for us Finns, as there’s nothing on sale in the local iTunes book store, except freely available books). How was I supposed to get my own content into the library?

I hooked up the iPad into its navel cord again and launched iTunes. Since you can’t just copy files on an iPad, like you would for any other USB-enabled device with internal memory, there had to be a way here to get the PDFs flowing into the iPad. I didn’t see any menu item related to books or PDFs, the only synchronizable content appeared to be the usual iTunes bits for music, video etc. Finally after rubbing my head for a while and clicking around the menus, I figured it out: I had to perform the “add files to a library” process on my PC’s iTunes instance. Selecting PDF’s brough up a new category called “books” in the library, which also then became available as a syncrhonizable category for the iPad when the device is plugged in with the cable. A few more clicks, then performing a synchronization operation for the very first time (since my music and photos are already online in Spotify or Picasa Web Albums) and eventually the content appeared inside the iBooks app.

Does this process make sense on a device that has both WiFi and 3G always-on internet connection (which often doesn’t work, by the way)? Like hell it does. The tablet computers are essentially big windows into the cloud of content that the web has to offer for us. They are not media players like the early iPods, where you transfer bits from your home media banks into a mobile device. That was the world ten years ago, why must the shadow of iPod and iTunes still haunt the iPad? At a bare minimum, the content synchronization should be something you can perform wirelessly instead through the USB port, but ultimately iTunes as we know it has to be removed from the process completely.

When we look at the competition ahead, Google doesn’t have any legacy comparable to iTunes, which is why the Android devices are much better prepared for the post-PC era with no strings (cables) attached. For the average tech consumer it may not feel like such a huge drag, and I’m sure Mac/iPod users don’t pay much attention to it at all. Nevertheless, the behaviour patterns everyone is learning from more recent services like Dropbox or Spotify will make Apple’s inconvenient truth gradually ever more visible to their customers.

Case Nokia C7, Symbian^3 and Ovi Suite

Speaking of Dropbox, after initial scepticism of the service’s alleged greatness, I’ve grown to love its beauty of simplicity and ubiquity. The service runs on my home PC, work PC, Android phone and iOS tablet, quietly taking care of small but important tasks such as making sure my KeePass database of usernames and passwords is always available wherever I go. The ability of Dropbox to deliver a dead simple way for masking the file transfer and synchronization complexity into a simple folder that’s available across devices makes it the perfect service for “normal” people who are not interested in the geeky side of technology and gadgets. It just works.

My dad recently bought a new mobile phone, a Nokia C7. I didn’t have the heart to try and convert him into an Android user, as the leap from traditional “dumbphones” built for phone calls, into a full-blown portable computer like the modern smartphones, might have been too long. If SMS is only just becoming a routine for you, it’s maybe best that your first smartphone resembles a mobile phone that’s familiar to you. That’s pretty much what Nokia offers. The C7 has a decent touch screen and a Symbian^3 OS with a few bits and pieces of what iOS, Android and WP7 (why not start including it in the list now) are made of, but at the end of the day an average user might easily mistake it for an S40 mobile. Sometimes this is not such a bad thing at all, we must keep this in mind.

The big screen and the capable camera make the C7 a nice gadget for shooting photos. Nokia has always been great at hardware and if I’d have to find a way to regularly get high quality photos captured with an Internet enabled device, I’d probably turn to Nokia’s product catalog, just due to their reputation on camera performance compared to the many lame efforts of Asian smartphone manufacturers. Based on this reputation, I had assumed that the process of taking photos and performing actions on them in Symbian^3 would at least be on par with Android. Surely many members of the product marketing team must have been faced with the situation of having to demonstrate the camera functionality of Nokia products, just to draw the attention away from anything related to browsing web content or other weak spots of Symbian. Well, from my experience with C7, I now think they’ve never bothered to proceed beyond snapping a photo with the device. You know, like, sharing it with some other device or application.

On an Android device, I can click on any picture to bring up the Share menu, which presents all the applications installed on the device that have the ability to integrate with the camera/gallery. Dropbox is my favorite method for moving pictures into an archive, but Facebook sharing and all other social applications are also very potential candidates for the next action I have in mind after taking a photo. If I install new apps, the menu gets appended with them. No need to spend any time wondering what to do, it all just works right in the context.

What are the options on a C7? Well, you can of course 1) send an MMS (do people still use those?), 2) attach it to an email or 3) send it via Bluetooth. All of these options probably would have felt useful five years ago, but as of today they all just scream legacy to me. Ok, perhaps the problem is just that the stock C7 doesn’t come with all the necessary apps, so lets go and login to Ovi Store. I’d imagine a search term like “photo sharing” would shed some light on the best way to proceed. No, nothing useful here. Since none of the top mobile app brands from the world of iOS and Android are available on the Symbian platform, even a geek like me finds himself having another one of those “iTunes moments” where the familiar logic of solving a problem doesn’t seem to work.

Sugarsync is the closest thing to Dropbox on Symbian, so let’s install that one. I get the PC application installed, even though the folder configuration is not nearly as intuitive as Dropbox. I manage to download the mobile app from Ovi Store and seemingly also connect the C7 to the same user account as the PC. The folder structure looks different from this angle, there’s some bizarre “briefcase” concept blocking my view etc. but it looks like this could in theory work for photo sharing. Except that when I start the process from capturing a new photo and wanting to move it to Sugarsync’s folder, I cannot figure out any sensible way to complete this task. The share menu is of course not updated as it would be on an Android. There is no easy navigation path between the photo gallery, the file system and the sharing application. Unless you want to work with memorizing and moving cryptic Pic123456.jpg files inside file explorer, there’s no solution. It just doesn’t work.

I refuse to give up and try another cloud based content syncrhonization application (forgot the name already). Usability is even worse on this one and I’m actually not even able to complete the pairing process of the PC and the phone, because I started by creating the user accoung in a different device than what the online registration wizard assumes. Well, I’m 100% sure that this is not a big loss. At the end of the day, I register a Gmail account for my father and just instruct him to email the photos from his brand new smartphone as attachments to his own address. I feel completely defeated for having to suggest such a lame process. My foolish cloud dreams have been shattered once again.

Of course there is a way to perform content transfer between the Nokia C7 and a PC. The answer is Ovi Suite. You need to install this Nokia’s equivalent of iTunes onto your computer, then plug in your shiny new mobile device with a USB navel ch… cable into your computer and perform a synchronization of the gallery items. To add insult to injury, the micro-USB cable supplied with C7 is about 10cm long. Sure, you could start playing with Bluetooth device paring and all that, but that’s another experience I want to spare my old man from. Also, unlike with Apple hardware, you’re actually allowed to mount the phone directly as a USB drive (well, I assume you are, didn’t try it with C7), but that is all still cable games.

Nokia even offers an advanced USB On-the-go feature, which lets you connect other devices or mass media directly on the Nokia phone which acts as the master device. Great, but what’s really your fetish with those cables? You’ve already given up on producing rubber boots, isn’t it time to give up the rubber cables next?

“Quit whining and plug it in!”

You may consider me a spoilt geek who has nothing better to do with his time and gadgets than to complain about what features they are lacking. Fine, maybe that’s also true, but here’s the underlying motivation why I write posts like this: when I observe how the world is changing slowly but surely towards a particular direction, it allows me to also spot those little pieces of the world that are standing still, i.e. getting left behind. Those little things represent potential disruptions to traditional businesses and business models, which to me are a very intriquing topic. As they say, shift happens.

Here’s how the world looks from my eyes today:

See? It’s all in the cloud already – today. The devices are connected to the cloud, the content is mostly in the cloud, also the people have arrived in there thanks to the social media breakthrough. What’s the one thing that doesn’t belong there? Yep, correctomundo, you guessed it right.

We’re approaching the post-PC era, according to many sources. If we switch our focus away from the icon of the phenomena (iPad), what this basically means is that the traditional personal computer is losing its status as the default device for all data processing and information management tasks that we perform as either employees at work or free individuals at home. Instead we’re increasingly turning to mobile devices that are always with us, always on and always connected.

Nowhere else is mobility more central than when travelling abroad, away from your familiar services and surroundings. It would therefore be perfectly natural to assume that the traveller segment would be the one that mobile service providers would be actively looking to cater for. Yet the reality is completely the opposite: mobile operators are making sure that no sane person uses mobile data while travelling abroad, thanks to the ridiculous prices of data roaming.

Going on the road? Let’s burn the books & switch off

Last week I was travelling in Macedonia, a potential candidate for becoming an EU member. An exotic location to some extent, as I hadn’t been to any of the former Yugoslavia countries, but at the same time not too distant from the average central European culture. Skopje, their capital city, is not exactly on the top 20 list of cities for tourists to visit, so there wasn’t any paper guidebooks available to take with me. I did download the Skopje In Your Pocket guidebook into my Kindle, but the painful rendering of PDF magazines on the small black & white ePaper screen meant I hardly opened the document. Instead I decided to try and rely on content that I could use on my HTC Desire HD.

The price for mobile data use in Macedonia was according to my Finnish operator’s (DNA) pages a bit over 10 euros per megabyte. Ok, so the first thing to do before boarding the plane was to disable all APN information to make sure that zero bytes would be transferred over the mobile operators’ networks. Hey, what else is new?

A key criteria in selecting our hotel in Skopje had been the availability and visitor ratings on free WiFi connectivity. Even if there was to be no hotspots discovered while out on the town, at least the hotel would serve as a home base for downloading information on sights to see and pubs to visit. In preparation for the times without a network, I had installed the Maps(-) app from Androind Market and downloaded offline Google maps data of the city.

Fortunately it was not too difficult to discover open, free WiFi networks while walking in the center of Skopje. Cafes and shopping centers tended to frequently have a network of decent quality. Outdoor signs of a free T-Mobile hotspot being available to the customers made selecting the restaurants quite a bit easier.

(Non-)Economics of data roaming

During the 3 day visit I ranked up in total 300 MB of data transfer over WiFi. While I did frequently perform Google searches, check into Foursquare (and of course Untappd while going round the pubs!), browse FB/Twitter streams etc., none of the use was particularly data intensive. No video or audio transmitter, just your everyday transactions with applications that have become a part of my daily routine.

How much would have all this mobile data connectivity cost if I had stayed APN enabled and used the 3G network provided by the local telecom operator? Over 3000 euros. Wow. That’s ten times more than what I paid for the flights and hotel altogether. I could have travelled around the world with that money.

How much did I end up paying for the mobile data connectivity while travelling in Macedonia? Zero euros. That’s right, the local economy received more of my money through bubblegum purchases than through offering me telecommunications services.

How much value did I receive from having a mobile device with Internet connection available to me during my travels? Quite a lot, and I expect that value only to increase in the future when the apps and databases available become even more useful. Would I have been willing to pay something for the convenience of not having to hunt for hotspots and just rely on an always-on 3G data connection. Of course I would have!

So, what was your business again?

Call it what you want and reason it how ever which way you like, but in my eyes the continuing state of data roaming pricing in Europe (and of course globally in most places) deserves to be labeled as pure insanity. Insanity particularly therefore that the operators are continuing to do the same thing (preserving an ancient “per MB” pricing model) and expect different results (more revenue from mobile application users).

When debating over the right price point for mobile data plans, the operators all around the world are nowadays trying to claim they can’t offer “all you can eat” pricing anymore due to the increase of smartphones and the lack of 3G/4G network capacity. While there may be a hint of truth in that, it’s important to remember this doesn’t in any way justify the exorbitant pricing of data roaming. Foreign users are at any given time and location going to represent only a fraction of the total user volume for an operator. All the investments needed are in the billing systems and agreements between operators.

The real leasson from this sad situation is that in order to make money through service innovations you don’t necessarily need any new technology. The technology for providing effortless mobile Internet connectivity to tourists has already been built and paid for. Nothing is missing, except offering the service in the form of a feasible product. At the same time, the Internet (as a conscious entity, in the vain of Skynet, Google et al) is working its way around this lack of operator products by making it increasingly easy for local entrepreneurs to punch holes into this firewall by setting up open WiFi hotspots. These holes provide connections to the backbone network of mostly the very same operators and allow the tasty app juice of our post-PC era cloud applications to flow into the mobile devices of vigilant vistors.

Everywhere you go, the cloud follows

Ok, so you may not always have high quality connection to the web, meaning you can’t rely on it to be always there to answer your questions, but the same goes for 3G connections as well. GPRS is in many ways equal to “no connection”, at least when you consume on average 100 MB of data per day. Once you do have a working connection, the big clouds are all there for you to reach into, with their unlimited and ever evolving means of communication and information discovery.

It’s good to note that not even the ancient technology of SMS was reliable enough to be transmitted between Finland and Macedonia, as many messages were delayed or remained missing. At the same time, whenever I had access to Gmail or Facebook I was able to utilize their full feature set as if I had been sitting at home, typing on my laptop. In short, there wasn’t anything that I wanted to do but was unable to do when equipped with my Android smartphone instead of lugging around a mini-PC.

Feel free to disagree, but to me that is a sure sign of the coming post-PC era where both the traditional telecom operator services such as phone calls & text messages as well as traditional keyboard + mouse + monitor + CD-ROM computing paradigms are in danger of slowly becoming extinct. I won’t be living without a “PC” or leave home without a “phone”, but I’ll care less and less about services built specifically around those old conceptual silos. I will just replace them with “everything”, which means anyone can provide services for them.

Waisting more of our time while connected

As a final note, during the trip I was once again reminded of the fact that Google couldn’t make social applications if its life depended on it (and pretty soon it does). Mr. Scobleizer wrote a great post on the topic of how the best applications are the ones that enable us to waste our time more efficiently. That’s exactly the kinds of mobile apps that you need while travelling in a foreign country.

Google Places turned out to be in practice almost useless, while Foursquare actually provided quite satisfactory results most of the time. Particularly the new Explore tab in their mobile application provided a convenient stream of relevant information to a visitor in a foreign country. If only the Macedonian people would have submitted their comments in English, since the local cyrillic alphabet makes it impossible to even make guesses about what the text might mean…

Februrary 11th 2011 was a big day for two countries: Finland and Egypt. I won’t touch the latter one, there are better places to speculate on was it social media or the people of Egypt who made it all happen. Instead I’ll write down a few thoughts about the newly announced marriage of Nokia and Microsoft.

We all knew it was coming, but someone had to say it

Last July I wrote a blog post on how the world will end for Nokia. At that time I was deeply frustrated with the mainstream media reporting on how the brand new Nokia N8 and the updated operating system Symbian^3 were going to start Nokia’s big fight to reclaim the position they had lost to Apple and all the Android manufacturers. Such claims were totally detached from the reality of what was happening in the mobile marketplace of 2010 and I’m sure not even most the Nokia personnel believed in them anymore.

A growing crowd of people were joining the cult of Apple, some of them skipping right to the end conclusion that iPhone was simply better and Nokia was therefore screwed – period. A much more telling sign was, however, that the ecosystem around Symbian application development was not only facing problems in growing its presence in the US markets – it was in fact dying altogether. Long time advocates of Symbian were throwing in the towel, because they couldn’t live with the huge gap between Nokia hype and lack of results delivered. Symbian and Nokia had become an embarrassment that no one wanted to associate themselves with anymore (in other words, an epic fail).

What I believed Nokia had to do was to admit their failure instead of trying to cover it up while attempting to build a replacement in the form of MeeGo. My concluding comment at that time was:

We don’t need an N8 from Nokia, or Symbian^4, or statements from Anssi Vanjoki about the company’s passion to reclaim smartphone leadership – we need a hard reset, and we need it yesterday.

That was what we have now finally received, first in the form of the burning platform memo from Stephen Elop and a few days later in the announcement of adopting Windows Phone as the primary smartphone platform for Nokia future devices. All of this had of course started already in September with the naming of a new Nokia CEO, when the Finnish Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo (a long term member of Nokia’s former management “dream team”) was replaced not by another Finn like Vanjoki but with a man from Microsoft. Makes perfect sense, since it’s a lot easier to admit failure when you haven’t been the one causing it.

If you look at where Windows Phone 7 is coming from, you’ll see that also Microsoft went through a similar phase earlier on. They realized that the existing Windows Mobile platform foundation was simply not good enough to build on anymore, so Microsoft made a brave move to re-design WP7 from scratch, which meant they gave up on backward compatibility and a big catalogue of existing Windows Mobile apps while at it. Thanks to this earlier reset they were now able to get the largest mobile phone manufacturer in the world to commit to their platform. Think about that for a while: everyone fails sooner or later, but the winners will be those who are the quickest in admitting failure.

Symbian no longer exists (but would you like to buy one anyway?)

When I switched jobs in December (not related to mobile industry at all, BTW), I was presented with the dreaded question “which Nokia E-series phone would you like to have?“. Having lived without a Nokia phone for years, the thought of returning back to the non-touch S60 world was simply unbearable and literally made me feel sick in the stomach. There was absolutely nothing in the Nokia business phone catalogue that I wanted to carry in my pocket. To buy off some time, I asked if I could wait for the Nokia E7 release that was just around the corner. My employer agreed and I just continued using my personal Samsung device, powered by Android.

As it ever so often happens with Nokia product launches, E7 got delayed into Q1/2011. I ended up upgrading my personal Android device to HTC Desire HD (words cannot describe how much this thing rocks, but that’s another story). On Monday, February 7th, Nokia E7 finally started shipping in limited quantities to the Finnish resellers. The company representatives were calling it “the most important model this year” in terms of sales expectations. On friday, February 11th, the device was as good as dead. Why? Because Nokia pulled the plug on Symbian, as illustrated on the following slide.

Regardless of this fact, Nokia is still expecting to sell 150 million Symbian devices before the game is over. Hmmm… okay… and how exactly do you plan to trick people into buying them? If you’re shopping for cars, it’s perfectly justified to buy a 2011 model that you know is going to be soon superseded with a 2012 model. Typically you get a sweet deal with accessories, plus there’s unlikely to be too many “bugs” and product recalls for a proven model.

It’s not going to work quite like that in the mobile industry. Nokia E7 is surely a beautiful piece of hardware design and component engineering, built with the decades of expertise accumulated into Nokia’s organization for producing the best mobile phones out there, delivered through the most efficient logistics chain in the business. Unfortunately it is now merely an empty shell with a “burning platform” inside it. I wish there was a quick way to flash the operating system of E7 from Symbian^3 to Windows Phone 7. But as always, if it was easy, the Chinese would have already done it.

E7 may still be a viable option for the oldskool business crowd who just want a replacement for their existing Nokia Communicator, primarily for phone calls, calendar and email. But if that’s all you wanted, then why did any of the Symbian engineers bother coming to work in the morning for the past 5 years? I hate to be the one breaking this to you, but getting a touch screen device with built-in support for Facebook widgets will not be enough to show you what’s really going on in the ecosystem of today’s mobile applications. You still won’t understand what all the cool kids are doing with their mobiles. You won’t see the business opportunities until your iPhone using competitor shows them to you.

The end is the beginning

If you can’t be one of the cool kids at the school yard, then try and be one of the smart kids instead. You probably won’t gain overnight popularity, but you may end up making a nice living eventually and getting your revenge. While the iPhone is certainly no one hit wonder á la Razr, there is no proof yet that Apple (or Google) would have secured their position as the U2 of mobile phones, forever entitled to sold-out stadium gigs and undivided attention from the media.

Android is aimed almost exclusively at disrupting the dominance of iOS, which means Apple and Google are fighting for the same market position. Sure, their approach is different in many ways (closed system vs. open source, for example) and Android is reaching towards the lower end of the market where iPhones are not even intended to be an option (remember, that’s where Symbian was supposed to go and retire). Windows Phone 7 is in such early phases of its existence that the platform doesn’t yet have a clear identity of its own and it is therefore being typically described through comparison to iOS and Android. This approach is ignoring the key focus areas where WP7 does differ from the established players: business users and .NET developers.

Ask a corporate IT department about which platform they want to be supporting and it’s a case of choosing a lesser evil from iOS or Android. Both of them are prime examples of the consumerization of IT. People like me will no longer tolerate standardized hardware from our employers, we’ll just rather bring our own devices to work. The problem with the cool gadgets that are capturing the attention of geeks and consumers alike is that they have been designed specifically to YOU. You as a single person, who makes the single decision to buy. The needs of a group of people encapsulated inside an organization such as a corporate office are quite different. Security, administration, compatibility and all those boring aspects are actually quite crucial to delivering monetary results beyond personal satisfaction. The mobile platforms of the future will have to be a working compromise between usability and manageability. This is where Microsoft is ahead of Apple or Google, who don’t truly know how to operate in the business segment. Nokia also has some very relevant experience from trying to meet the needs of business users and should therefore be well positioned in formulating a winning strategy to get both the IT managers and the Outlook junkies to ask for  WP7 devices.

Some say Microsoft is a dying consumer brand. There’s a hint of truth in that, since the world of personal computing has been moving away from the traditional PC desktops, into cloud apps provided by the likes of Google, and more personal mobile devices like the iPhones and iPads. Microsoft is clearly a runner-up in both categories. At the same time, they do have an impressive record of charging against Nintendo and Sony with their Xbox 360, which shows they are not planning to become a purely business brand anytime soon. It would also be a mistake to assume that Microsoft is forever stuck on the desktop, as they are building a huge “platform in the cloud” offering as Windows Azure and all the related Online Services brands. Sure, Gmail beat Hotmail with ease, but it doesn’t look like Google Apps would be walking over Microsoft’s cloud-enabled Exchange/SharePoint offering quite yet. Microsoft’s “all in” cloud strategy is going to provide a highly credible portfolio of productivity apps to Nokia’s WP7 devices, certainly much more than they could have ever built on their own or acquired through weak partners like Yahoo.

Like Mr. Scoble put it in his blog post on the Nokia WP7 alliance, “apps are the ONLY thing that matters now”. If that statement holds true, then the producers of those apps are the ones whose interest you need to capture on day one. Yes, you know this one, so sing along with me: “Developers! Developers! Developers!” If Symbian was the most hostile development environment for mobile phones ever invented, then judging by the initial launch strategy of Windows Phone 7, it’s the complete opposite. Not only is Microsoft altogether making massive investments into its developer toolkits, the promise of easy application portability across mobile, desktop, console and browser environments must sound more tempting than learning to develop apps for yet another mobile platform that promises to be something big, one day, maybe. The world is full of .NET developers who Microsoft and Nokia can target to persuade them to extend their applications onto the closest possible mobile platform, which just happens to be WP7.

We all know the facts: Microsoft is not cool, Nokia is not cool. When put together, they will indeed look like a pair of turkeys initially. They will take a fair amount of beating after class from the tech blogger bullies and gangs of Android geeks from all over the globe. Nevertheless, once we get over this initial reaction and start seeing physical results from the partnership, there’s a very real chance that both Microsoft and Nokia will be stronger together than what they could have been on their own, without admitting their past failures.

There is a dark shadow looming behind the partnership, as Microsoft’s previous mobile partners have not really fared all too well after teaming up with Redmond. It may well turn out to be a similar bust for Nokia, only time will tell. Even though it’s clear that Nokia has a lot more at stake in the deal than Microsoft, it’s getting more and more embarrassing for Microsoft not to have a credible presence in mobile devices. While Microsoft has never been too great at new product innovation, they’ve proven time and again their ability to muscle into a maturing market. Let’s see if they mean business this time around.

I sign up to new and interesting social web apps and networks a lot. It’s a strange hobby of mine and I’m not quite sure how I’ve ended up with it. I’ve lost count of how many profiles I’ve created to which service, so I’ve actually discovered forgotten sites by simply googling up my own name. Luckily I don’t usually bother my friends with invitation spam from these services, rather I just like to observe how their general user adoption grows and analyze the design behind a successful service with a sticky user experience if I come across one.

Anyway, I though I’d highlight a few examples of a more recent trend that’s becoming visible in the world of social web. It’s always been about telling the apps what you are doing, thinking or liking, where about and how. Now, after feeding the networks with data about yourself, they are gradually becoming smart enough to tell you what you are like.

Where Do You Go?

Foursquare is not new, but here ‘s a very quick recap: you pull out your mobile phone, launch the app and see what venues are close to you (based on mobile network location data, or GPS for the hifi geeks). You click to check-in to the place you are currently. The end.

Ok, so of course you can also view where your friends have been checking in to. That is, if any of them would be similar gadget geeks like you. I’m pretty sure eventually the location information will become a natural part of the social fabric (waiting for FB Places to arrive here in Finland), but as of now, in reality it isn’t for everyone yet.

What can you get from the location data then? For example, this heatmap of where I’ve been checking in around the city of Helsinki. Sure, I don’t spend all my time with a finger on the check-in button, nor do the public venues available on the service give an accurate view of where I spend my time. Still, it would be foolish to say that the heatmap doesn’t give me insight on the locations that are a part of my ‘graph in the geographic sense. With enough data and the right presentation method, casual transactions can start to accumulate a whole new value added.

Take a trip down Memolane

Pretty much every social app has a timeline view of some kind, similar to the FB wall. It’s sort of a divider between generations of applications, as many of the oldskool software and business applicatios are perfectly happy with asking you the user to punch in more and more data without trying to present it back to the users in any aggregated “what’s been happening lately” view. Another common dilemma is that it’s hard if not impossible to automatically combine data from different applications. That’s how bad life used to be only a few years ago.

Integration in the cloud is as easy as OAuth (open authorization), so in a matter of a few clicks you can be connecting the various dots fragmented around your networks into a single stream of information about yourself. Now all there’s left to do is to put a nice timeline UI on top of the data and you’ve got Memolane. Your tweets, check-ins, FB posts, Last.fm scrobbles and everything else in a chronological order that allows you to travel back in time and reminisce about what you did last summer. Yes, again the web knows what you’ve long since forgotten in your selective human brain.

Get Glue’d to the media around you

Apps on top of apps – that’s the future we’re already living in. Why keep on re-inventing the wheel when you could be focusing on designing the rest of the vehicle instead?

Back when Last.fm launched their audioscrobbler app in 2003 the concept of sharing playlist data right from your WinAmp in real time to a web-based service was very novel. Keep in mind, this was waaaay before social networks made sharing and liking and retweeting something that’s considered an everyday activity. I kept on accumulating information their database on a regular basis, then stopped using them, then returned back to an active user thanks to their integration with Spotify.

The concept of scrobbling remains cool, but in this day & age there are people out there who cannot be satisfied by merely sharing what track they are listening to. Enter GetGlue. What they’ve built is an almost universal system for checking in to things. Books, movies,TV shows, games, gadgets, restaurants etc. By installing an add-on for your browser and browsing one of hundreds of supported sites that GetGlue recognizes as having content items that their database tracks, you’ll see a toolbar at the bottom of the window. The toolbar not only allow you to like/unlike/favorite/saveforlater or share to FB/Twitter, but it also shows who else has been liking the content in question + recommendations of what else you might like, based on the user data similarity.

Sitting home alone on your sofa and watching Dexter doesn’t have to be unsocial time anymore. Reach for your smartphone, launch the GetGlue app and do a check-in. You’ll see who else has checked into the same show, so you can go and spy their profile to see where their remote has taken them next. While at it, why not do a check-in to that bottle of wine you’ve been sipping? Come on, you’ll get badges as a reward as well!

OMG, where’s my privacy?!?

The first reaction from a casual web surfer on all of the new ways in which you can expose yourself to the world will surely be a cry for privacy. Isn’t this the kind of a surveilance society that George Orwell warned us about by writing the 1984? Only it’s worse, since the innocent web surfers have been brainwashed to report back to big brother seemingly on their own free will, just by giving them pictures of digital badges! Someone please stop this insanity!

I’m going to let you in on a little secret that explains why the situation is not quite that grim at all:

The web knows you because we are the web.

Back in the 90′s, the world wide web was born as a network of documents. Today it is a network of people. Small but profound difference. While it is still perfectly possible for anyone to choose to use the web as a big document management system and just passively consume content that is published there by large organizations and media entities, there is an increasing amount of benefits to be gained by being an active participant instead. Once you cross that line, you start to exist in the web. It may be behind a number of aliases and alter egos, or it may be with your real name and identity (probably both). You may exist in different forms and footprints to anonymous surfers, identified users and verified friends or co-workers. Nevertheless, your actions become a small but integrated part of the fabric of web. Just like you’re a tiny little piece of society, still making an impact all the same.

The web knows you’ve clicked. Google knows you’ve searched. Your ISP knows you’ve downloaded, so don’t waste too much energy on worrying about leaving a trail of what you do when using a networked system like the web. A more interesting question to focus on is how much more can you know about yourself with the help of the web and what value could be derived from the data that you and other fellow citizens of the web are capable of feeding into it. As long as the publishing of data is done through a conscious decision and you pay attention to where the line of privacy is set, it’s hardly any more reckless behaviour than using the web in the old document oriented way. Same old channel, just a very different application.

I have recently been forced to plan how to migrate all my contact information away from my current employer-sponsored devices onto a temporary holding bin and then onwards to new address books. This has made me realize how broken the whole address book concept is nowadays. Let me explain by starting from the very beginning.

Becoming digital

I bought my first mobile phone in 1997 (see the full timeline here). Prior to this I had absolutely no digital contact data assets whatsoever: just a rolodex, a few paper lists of addresses and the good ol’ memory. Sure, the world was a much smaller place back then, and as a high school  student living in the offline era there wasn’t that many people who you didn’t either meet at school or after school on a weekly basis. It was the villager way of life and I think we were all quite happy with it back then.

Mobile phones brought us the concept of electronic phone books, with SIM cards as the media used for transferring these from one device to another. Email client applications like Eudora and Outlook Express gave us the option to store email addresses as contacts in their own address books. Pretty soon the phones began to connect with your PC through a cable and handy software like Nokia PC Suite (don’t get me started on that one…). This meant you now had the problem of several mismatching address books on your computer, so the whole contact management concept started to become painful not just for corporations but private persons as well.

During the past few years we’ve seen some improvement on the situation, thanks to the wide availability of mobile data connections and push email services in the corporate world. If you keep your personal contacts and business contacts in the same address book, updating the records in MS Outlook and synchronizing data through MS Exchange (replace with your favorite non-Redmond software) has made phone number and email address management almost a non-issue.

What’s the problem?

Well, while we now have fairly decent solutions for address book sync and some established formats to make interoperability across platforms less painful, these are essentially solutions for the wrong problem. You see, not only have the address books become digital but so has life. Here’s my personal evidence of this:

• Everybody and their dog is on Facebook. With hundreds of millions of registered profiles, we’re far beyond the point where you’d need to make guesses about whether social networks will really catch on or not. They came, they saw, they conquered. Sure, you might be on VK or Renren instead of FB. That makes no difference, social networks are now as universal as SMS.
• I have “contacts” who don’t know me, nor do I know them IRL. The may be bloggers or twitterers who I follow regularly, which means they’re relevant people to me on a much higher frequency than old acquaintances in the address book who I may not interact with even once per year.
• A job is no longer for life. Knowing where someone worked 3 years ago, what his title was and how to reach him through land line or snail mail is of decreasing relevance to anyone. I’m more interested in knowing where you’re working today and with whom you’ve worked with, which is what LinkedIn was invented for (7 years ago already).
• The number of phone calls I make is dropping every year. I’ve reached the point where calls are the least preferred method of communication in my mobile “phone”. No matter how much the mobile revolution initially increased the amount of phone calls, it will only decline from here onwards. Meeting in person is effective for establishing shared understanding, exchanging textual information asynchronously is great for managing details, reacting to synchronous voice communication requests (a.k.a. phone calls) is, well… a distraction I like to minimize. The phone call is dead.
• Christmas is pretty much the only reason for me to use postal services nowadays. Be it cards or gifts, I’d prefer to replace them both with bits and services. Similarly, if you’re arranging a party, you’ll probably send an FB invite with the relevant information. Recording you home address is therefore not so relevant for me, whereas knowing your current/recent location through Foursquare might be much more interesting.

When I think about these facts, then glance at my Outlook address book, I see two worlds collide. Yes, may both be about people and communication, but that’s pretty much where the similarities end.

How can we manage?

What’s different in this brave new digital life when compared to the old offline world is that the number of channels and players is significantly higher and it will just keep on increasing. The possibilities become ever greater and so will our pains with the traditional address books. Tim O’Reilly has been writing about the missing Web 2.0 Address Book in 2007, others have speculated about the data management concepts it requires in 2010. If we’re lucky, at this rate the solution will arrive maybe a few years after HTML5 has become mainstream. In short, we’ve got to stop waiting for a new solution and find a way to live with the contacts we have for now.

For my task at hand, I chose Gist as the web application to take care of my immediate contact data management needs. Like any contact manager, it promises the same old “one place for all contacts” Holy Grail. What the service does is it asks you for your Facebook, Twitter and Gmail account authorization, then pulls in the contacts from each service and tries its best to merge them. LinkedIn contacts can be imported through a file, as can naturally Outlook data. In addition, there’s also a ranking algorithm that tries to identify the importance of each contact based on communication history, and by also allowing you to adjust the score, so the most frequent interactive connections float to the top.

Is it the new address book then? Who knows, I’m sure there’s also many other valid contenders besides Gist out there. The main point is that this approach of utilizing networks and integrating online channels blows the Outlook contact list right out of the water, no doubt about it. This is what’s relevant to me in 2010. Not the daunting task of recording phone numbers and street addresses completely separately from the interactions and channels. The information and the interactions are out there, just bring the data to me and let me enrich it as new connections get established and new channels emerge. Give me an app I can install on my Android phone and a plug-in I can use when viewing Gmail. Allow me to discover more about my contacts through suggestions of in which networks they are present in.

I started with the assumption that I wanted to update and keep my address books in order. It turns out this wasn’t at all what I wanted to do. What I really wanted was a way to keep in touch.

A healthy dose of reality

When going through some of the ancient entries originating from my SIM cards, I realized something which can be all too easy to forget while sitting in front of your PC: not everybody is online. I’d like to say “not yet”, but that would be perhaps too optimistic. Considering how young the trend of being present in the web with your real name and real thoughts still is, even in the short history of the mainstream internet, the current divide between who “are” in the web and who’re just consuming the content is quite understandable. Blogging requires effort, LinkedIn may not fit every kind of profession and Twitter is something most people can’t get their head around yet. The FB boom is covering up the fact that most people are not yet ready to adopt the digital lifestyle. Fair enough, I’ll keep you as an offline entry in my contact list, waiting for the day when you will be ready.

You should know by now that Axwell = house choons guaranteed to rock your socks off. He’s at it again, this time with quite a biblical video. No more chit chat, just enjoy the track.

Certain entities that contain the activity roll-up feature, namely accounts, contacts and opportunities, are also equipped with a date filter that allows you to choose whether you want to see all the activities related to the record or just a selected subset. By default this is “Next 30 days”, but you also can choose between “Overdue” or “Next 12 months”, or just go for “All”. That’s the good news.

The bad news is that this piece of helpful functionality has remained uncustomizable throughout different Dynamics CRM versions. A lot of users were annoyed with especially the same filter in the associated history view, nowadays known as Closed Activities view in CRM 2011, which used to default to “Last 30 days” and hide away all but the most recent email threads, appointments and other information that you might have been searching for. You always had to change the filter manually to “All” to uncover the historical information about the relationship with the account or contact. However, this has changed now in the latest version and “All” has become the default filter (or should I say the filter is off by default).

That’s definitely a step towards the right direction. It’s not exactly what the response on Microsoft Connect suggests, which claims that “we’ve allowed a user to change the default filter for associated views in CRM 2011″. I’ve yet run into such a setting and neither has The Great Internet, unless Google is hiding such instructions or blog posts. It would be useful to be able to configure or remove filters that the end users don’t want to deal with, without having to resort to unsupported customizations.

Open vs. closed activities

History is one thing but it’s the future actions that matter the most. Until very recently, I’d say up until Update Rollup 2 of CRM 2011 the filter functionality in the open activities associated views used to be such that the default “Next 30 days” would also show any activity that was missing a due date. By default the due dates are not a required field and sometimes they are not that practical for the CRM users, as many things in the daily life of a modern information worker don’t have strict deadlines. Also, there’s no out-of-the-box functionality in Dynamics CRM to set default values for date fields either, so setting the exact due date for every task or phone call you enter on your task list may feel too bureaucratic. An activity with a missing date should be considered as “do this as soon as you can, given all the surrounding factors”, in my personal opinion.

In the current version of Update Rollup 5 the “Filter on” value is applied in such a way that it by default hides away all activities that don’t meet the “Next 30 days” criteria. If the due date is blank, the activities won’t show under the account/contact/opportunity. This may seem quite confusing to the user, since any new activity that he or she creates for the record will appear to “vanish” into thin air after clicking “Save and close”. In the My Activities view they will still appear on the top of the list, as null values in the Due Date column are sorted on top.

What’s even more confusing is that CRM 2011 introduces two different ways for users to navigate to related activities on the account form: the familiar associated view and the new subgrid. If you’ve been reading my blog, you’ll know that subgrids ain’t exactly what associated views used to be. They don’t contain the activity roll-up feature, so you won’t see those activities that are set regarding a child record of an account (for example, opportunities) instead of the account record directly. Just like another filter, except you can’t even change it.

How to change the default filter value

There’s been numerous blog posts written on the topic of setting the filter defaults on CRM 4.0, but I was initially a bit surprised I couldn’t find a working piece of Javascript to achieve this on CRM 2011. Examples like this, this or this didn’t seem to be working for me, but luckily I ran into this post on the Microsoft Dynamics CRM German forum by Andreas Buchinger. To save you the trouble of Google Translate (well, it’s not much trouble at all when using Chrome’s built-in translation toolbar), here’s a walk through of the steps needed.

1. Create a new Web Resource of type Script (Jscript) and click the Text Editor button, then paste in the code from the above post.

2. Open the form customization window of the entity where you want to change the Activity view filter default. In this case we’ll do it on the account form. Select “Form properties” on the ribbon, click “Add” on the Form Libraries section and find the web resource you created in step 1.

3. Click the “Add” button on the Event Handlers section of the window to add a new entry for form OnLoad event. Select the library you created in step 2, enter SetView as the function field value and ‘Activities’, ‘All’, “crmGrid_Account_ActivityPointers_datefilter” in the parameters field.

4. Save & publish everything. Done! Just open an account form, navigate to associated activities view and witness the “Filter on” value being set to “All”.

When working with Contacts or Opportunities, just modify the third parameter value accordingly. If you want to set a different default value than “All”, the choices for the second parameter are ‘Overdue’, ‘Today’, ‘Tomorrow’, ‘NextXDays;7′, ‘NextXDays;30′, ‘NextXDays;90′, ‘NextXMonths;6′, ‘NextXMonths;12′. Once again, thanks to Andreas for providing us this script and the parameter values!

Just remember that it’s not a supported customization, so in case any of the view names change in future updates, you may need to modify the script. For instance, when I was testing on a system with Finnish base language, the view parameter was “crmGrid_Account_ActivityPointers_scheduledend” initially, but on an Update Rollup 5 system this appeared have changed globally to “crmGrid_Account_ActivityPointers_datefilter”.

If you’d rather see the Activity default filter being set to “All” in the Microsoft Dynamics CRM standard configuration, please go and vote on the related Microsoft Connect suggestion (Windows Live ID login required). Thanks.

The functionality of the new Activity Feeds feature introduced in CRM Online R7 / CRM 2011 Update Rollup 5 is built around the concept of following specific records. This allows a very granular level of control for the users to select the specific items from which they wish to see posts on their personal wall. However, this does also force us to carefully plan for the scenario of a new user who logs into the Activity Feeds view for the very first time. What they will have in front of their eyes is an empty wall with just a few links to the online help material.

In order to make Activity Feeds a shared, trusted source of information on customer related events, the organization using Dynamics CRM needs to provide its users a path that they can follow to become a member of this community. Although it is possible to build custom business logic through the SDK that automates the following of records, wouldn’t it be better if teams of users could themselves choose topics that they wish to follow, and also broadcast their posts to other users following the same topic? You know, like #hashtags on Twitter. Well, there’s no built-in support for hashtags in the current release of the Activity Feeds solution, but here’s a description of one possible workaround which I’ve come up with.

In my previous post on the topic, I covered the general process of how to enable Activity Feeds for entities in Dynamics CRM. The natural choice for supporting a team collaboration scenario would be to use the default entity Team to display relevant posts for its’ users on the entity form. Unfortunately you can’t enable Activity Feeds for teams, since that’s not a supported entity. In fact, you cannot enable Activity Feeds for any organization-owned entities, even custom ones.

Luckily there’s nothing stopping your from creating a user-owned custom entity and enabling it for Activity Feeds, so let’s go ahead and create a new entity called “Group”. No need for new fields, just publish the entity, then create a Post Configuration record with the same entity name (new_group or something like that). After this you’ll need to go and adjust the form so that the Record Wall is directly visible when you open the form, by moving it below the first General tab.

Now you’re all set for starting to use the group entity in Activity Feed posts. No matter on which record’s wall (or your personal wall) you’re writing a post to, you can perform a mention by entering the @ character followed by the group’s name. In this case I’ve created a group called CRM, so I’ll add a mention of @CRM on an account record wall. You’ll see how that turns into a hyperlink to the group record.

How the user’s personal wall works is that it will display all Activity Feed posts that contain any reference to a record that the user has followed. It doesn’t have to be the record where the post has been written on. This is what enables us to make following updates concerning a certain topic easier for the end user, as long as the posts contain a mention/link to the group record. For manual posts the users will need to indicate that they wish to direct the post to the group’s followers by performing the @[groupname] mention as seen below.

So, does this mean that the mentions can only be utilized with manual user initiated posts? Absolutely not! There is a new attribute available in the workflow editor, called Post Url (Dynamics value). You can read this post on the MS Dynamics CRM Team Blog for details on how the feature can be leveraged in building workflow rules that create Activity Feed posts with mentions referencing other records. This allows us to reference multiple related records in a single post and make it appear on the personal wall of anyone who’s following one of the records.

Let’s say we want to create an auto post whenever a case record is created and it has the value “CRM” in the subject field, to notify anyone who’s following the CRM group. Ok, so we can find a relationship to the related subject record but since that’s not supported for Activity Feeds (just like teams aren’t), we wouldn’t be able to use it for creating a mention. Also, since the group entity we created doesn’t have a relationship to the case entity, it’s not available in the workflow dynamic values menu.

Should we go and create a relationship through entity customization? Well, that would be a bit cumbersome, since you’d then have to include a reference into the actual group record in every case record you wish to create a post a mention on. You’d pretty much have an additional subject lookup on the case form as a result, which is not a good solution in terms of usability (at least if you already use the default subject entity in your processes).

Luckily there’s one more place on the Activity Feed post entity that you can use in the workflow: RegardingObjectId. Normally this would represent the main object of the post (such as the opportunity record which has had a state change event that triggered the post), but you’re free to select a record from any of the entities that have been enabled for Activity Feeds through the Post Configuration records. So, let’s proceed by creating a workflow that runs whenever a new case is created, checks if the subject is “CRM” and creates a post record with the following attributes:

Let us now return back to the new user sign up scenario. In the beginning the personal wall is going to look quite empty and the user will not necessarily know which records he or she should start to follow, in order to get an idea of the activities going on in the system.

After the user clicks on the follow button on the group record, all the posts that contain a mention of the group’s name will be visible on his personal wall. The user will immediately be up to speed with the latest activities around the topic of the group.

An added benefit of following groups or topics instead of individual records is that this makes it much easier for the users themselves to apply noise controls if the number of updates on the Activity Feed walls gets to high for them to keep up with. All they’ll need to do is unsubscribe from groups that are not providing updates relevant to their own work. No need to start selecting accounts, opportunities etc. that they wish to unsubscribe from, or to contact the sysadmin and request an adjustment to the workflow rules that are generating low value auto posts into the feed.

The first selling point advertised for Dynamics CRM in almost any context is the user interface familiarity of Office users and the seamless integration to Outlook. Compared to other CRM applications, the feature set available in the Dynamics CRM 2011 client for Outlook is unsurpassed, no doubt about that. However, sometimes you do run into issues that break the illusion that CRM and Outlook would be the one and the same application. Here are a few features that you should be aware of when planning on how you’ll train your users to use the two different client versions available: web and Outlook.

Issue 1: Dashboard ribbons are not context sensitive in Outlook

If you build a dashboard out of grids that present the user with relevant data from various entities, this can significantly cut down their need for jumping between different menus and screens. Say, a customer service representative can easily view all the new items in the email support queue, active cases assigned to him/her and also other open activities. With the help of the context sensitive ribbon the user can then process these records in the same screen, by changing record status from open to closed, accepting items from the queue, creating new tasks etc.

Except, in Outlook that won’t work. The user will only be able to create a new dashboard, but not any of the common tasks, like creating new records for the selected grid. This is because in Outlook the ribbon is not context sensitive within the dashboard. Why is this? It works elsewhere in Outlook, so why not here? I imagine the explanation is that while the normal grids are composed of native MAPI objects inside Outlook, the dashboards are merely web pages as far as the Outlook client can recognize them, so it can’t understand which ribbon should be shown in which part of the page. Bummer.

As a result, if you want to create actionable dashboards that allow users to work on the items presented there, it’s better to instruct them to open CRM through the web client instead of the Outlook client.

Issue 2: Different logic in Quick Find

People who have worked with Dynamics CRM throughout several versions will surely have learned how the Quick Find operates and when you need to use wild cars. With the CRM 2011 Outlook client, this logic no longer holds true. Outlook has its own way of handling search terms, so now we can punch in a search word right from the middle of a field, such as the account name, without entering the asterisk wild card in front of the term.

Great, easier for the user to perform searches, right? Well, it is if you only ever work inside the Outlook client. If you step into the web client views, you’ll discover that things work differently there. Not only do you need to remember to use the wildcard in Quick Find criteria, but there also is a specific Quick Find View. Whereas in the web client the search will cover every active record in the database, no matter from which view you start, in Outlook the search is conducted on the records in the selected view. So, if you’re in the My Contacts view in Outlook client and search for a contact that belongs to another user, the Quick Find results will not deliver any data. In the web client it will.

Also the columns presented in the web client will always be the ones specified in the Quick Find View customizations, but in Outlook the columns will not change as you’re searching from within the current view. However, it appears that the search columns that the Outlook client performs the query on are still affected by the ones defined in the entity Quick Find View, even though this view is never actually presented to the Outlook user. Still following me? If the different search logic is hard for a consultant to remember, just imagine how confusing it can be to the CRM user.

Issue 3: Writing emails from Outlook without Outlook

One of the three core modules in Dynamics CRM is Service. The most typical scenario for utilizing CRM for customer service processes is directing the incoming emails for an address like support@company.com to a queue in CRM. This way the emails are automatically tracked under a contact record if the sender email exists in CRM. Also the queue allows you to see which items are already being worked on by customer service reps.

If you’re working with the Outlook client for Dynamics CRM, then you can write all your emails with the normal Outlook email editor and make use of the rich tools for message formatting, signatures, attaching multiple files with at once etc. Right? Not in this case. If the email you are replying to does not exist inside your Outlook mailbox but rather as an email record inside a CRM view, you can’t send “Outlook” emails as a reply. When you click the reply button, the Outlook client will open the web client email editor form for you.

There’s surely a reason why the email editor in the web client hasn’t been improved since CRM 3.0. Outlook is Microsoft’s premium experience editor that should be used wherever possible, whereas the web editor is a secondary feature. But if you’re using Outlook already, then it would be nice to be able to always remain within that rich client, even when replying to queue emails, wouldn’t it?

Issue 4: Recently used and pinned records behind the File button

Many users will normally be working with a selected few accounts, contacts and opportunities at a time, rather than the whole CRM customer database. This is why the Recently used records menu in CRM 2011 is a great usability enhancement, which is also familiar from many other CRM applications. Right from the CRM main window, from the top left corner where you first look, you’ll be able to open a rich pane that presents all the latest records as well as the views you’ve recently visited.

So, when I’m in the Outlook client then, surely I’m able to access the same list? Well, you are, but you’ll have to open the Office Backstage menu by clicking on the Outlook File menu, then glazing past all the file manipulation options and settings menus, to finally reach the recently viewed CRM records. And even if you reach it, you won’t be able to launch any views from this menu, since again the way how Outlook treats grids is different from the web client. Anyway, you probably won’t be accessing this menu any more often than you tweak your CRM settings, simply because it’s so well hidden away.

Desktop Outlook: how crucial is it still?

Ok, so there are a few quirks to be aware of when jumping between the web client and Outlook client. But how essential is it really to use the Outlook client in the first place?

Ever since email became the ubiquitous tool for communication, task management, documentation and almost everything involved in the information work that many of us perform in order to get the regular paycheck, there’s been a whole generation of people born into a world where they “live inside Outlook“. Now, in the year 2011 we should all be aware of how email is most often not the optimal tool for the job, but as it remains the lowest common denominator between people, teams and organizations, you can’t easily just stop using email. Even an Enterprise 2.0 organization needs to remain backwards compatible with Enterprise 1.0 level users, after all…

Having said that, remember that you don’t need Outlook for using email. For those of us who started using email before the common availability of webmail solutions like Hotmail or Gmail, installing an application on your PC for receiving and sending email messages may not sound so silly, but for the younger generation I’m quite positive it does. You don’t install Facebook, you just use it. Even for the oldskool users accustomed to an email client application running on their desktop, the rise of smartphones with 3G data plans and mobile access to email will surely have affected their perceptions of what is needed for a person to be email enabled. Email is available everywhere, you could say it’s become light as air.

There’s of course a lot more you can do with Outlook than just email and there’s a wealth of handy add-ins that Outlook can host to make your communication, task and calendar management work more fluent than it would be with separate web apps. Still, whenever I boot up my PC, I’d prefer if I didn’t have to launch Outlook. Why? Because most of the time I just need to quickly access a few messages, which I can do a lot faster by just opening up a browser window and going to Outlook Web Access. If I had the option of tracking activities from the browser application into the related CRM records, this would surely be my preferred method of using CRM. Just a lightweight bridge between the two worlds, not a rich, heavy client application. Why couldn’t it just work like that?

What will the future hold?

It’s no secret that the world of personal computing is moving away from desktop PC’s, towards devices that will be more portable, always-on and always-online. Microsoft was late to the tablet game (because it wasn’t willing to cannibalize Windows with its Courier project), but you might have as well said that about cloud computing. In 2010 they announced the “all in” cloud strategy and in 2011 we saw how Windows 8 has been designed to fit the era of slate devices with touch UI’s.

This leaked photo from March 2011 shows how the new Office 15 could look like. Yes, it’s pretty obvious by now that there will be a Metro style version of Outlook, in one form or another, to go with Windows 8.

Supporting nearly all the Dynamics CRM server and client functionality in offline mode is no small task, but that has been the requirement for the Outlook CRM client in the past. Will this feature remain in the product? I’m positive it will. Does it make sense to try and implement something like it for an ARM processor based tablet device designed to be always online? Now you’ve hit the nail on the head: it probably doesn’t. An application like Outlook cannot be transferred into the world of mobile & touch just by redesigning the UI to have bigger icons and Metro style tiles. Something’s gotta give.

In his presentation on CRM Outlook client optimization at Extreme 2011 Las Vegas, Tripp Parker listed a few considerations that Windows 8 will impose on the CRM client design. The lower resources available on slate devices may introduce the need for conditional disablement of features. The possibility of suspending Metro apps to the background will affect how data synchronization can be performed. Network traffic and disk storage usage will all require optimization. As you can imagine, turning a laptop software package into a tablet app is no small feat.

The new Microsoft Dynamics CRM Mobile application for Windows Phone 7 gives us a taste of how people will expect to be able to access data from their business information systems. Not with a big client but preferably through a small app that provides them with the essential features in that environment. Yes, they will want to link items from their calendar to the contacts in their CRM, or make updates or add notes to existing  CRM records. It won’t be a competition of having the most features available to the user – it will be about having only the right features.

Some of the legacy that Outlook has accumulated since its birth in 1997 may still be relevant to driving information worker productivity 15 years later when Microsoft steps into its “post-PC” era with Windows 8. Some of it will be a burden that the company will have to carry, due to it’s choice of persistently delivering backward compatibility to customers who’ve standardized their IT architecture on the MS stack. From the perspective of Dynamics CRM, I think we’ll inevitably see an increasing number of client options in the long run. Soon CRM will break free from its “Internet Explorer only” roots with cross-browser compatibility in R8 release (Chrome, Firefox, Safari, including iOS Safari). How long will it be before we also see its activity synchronization functionality break free from desktop Outlook?

Connections are a nice new feature in Dynamics CRM 2011 that allow you to create ad-hoc relationships between two records of almost any entity type. Additionally, you can specify roles for both the Connected To and Connected From parties, to describe the connection in more detail, as well as provide start and end dates for the connection. These are very handy for recording non-hierarchical relationships between contacts and accounts that tend to exist in the real world. As an example, a person working as the CEO of Company A might be a member of the board in Company B, which means they should be visible under both accounts. Company A would then be the parent account of the contact, whereas there would be a connection between the contact and Company B.

Another common real life phenomena is that duplicate records find their way into the CRM database. This can be due to data imports from external databases, web forms feeding in new contacts, or simply two users being unaware of each other’s records and entering data with slightly different spelling or email address variations. Luckily Dynamics CRM has a built-in functionality that allows you to merge duplicates from the database. This process will move all the child records from the subordinate record to the master record, thus ensuring that everything remains linked to the active record and not the deactivated duplicate.

Except that for connections this doesn’t happen! Once the merge is done, all the connections will still be referencing the inactive record, not the master record. In the aforementioned example, you would have effectively lost the information about the contact’s relationship with Company B. Even though you could still see it by opening up Company B’s record and seeing the connection there, how would you ever have known where to look?

There is an existing feedback item 683301 on Microsoft Connect regarding this functionality:

Here’s a quote of the comment I’ve posted on the item:

I think this is a serious flaw that undermines the perceived reliability of the Merge Duplicates feature in the eyes of the end users. The merge screen indicates that all child records related to the subordinate record to be deactivated would be transferred to the master record, but it doesn’t warn that connections would need to be manually checked.

The merge process works just fine for custom entities, activities and pretty much everything except connections. Why would the user ever want to leave behind some non-duplicate information to the deactivated record? By merging two accounts or contacts the user is effectively declaring that these represent the same object in the real world. If something in the database has a relationship with either of these records, it should be carried over to the active record, as the inactive record no longer serves any other purpose than indicating the prior existence of a duplicate entry and the possible differences in attribute values compared to the current active record.

If you think connections should be transferred over to the master record when merging duplicates, be sure to log in to Microsoft Connect with your Windows Live ID and cast your vote on this item. In the meantime, if you’re planning to use the connections entity for recording any data related to accounts, contacts, or leads, my suggested options are:

• Don’t do it. Create a new custom entity for recording this data, as they will merge over to the master record just fine.
• Develop you own plugin for capturing any merge events and updating the related connection records accordingly.

Data migration typically isn’t the most joyful part of a CRM implementation, but you really need to pay attention to carefully importing all the relevant customer data it if you want the users to adopt the CRM system as an integral part of their day to day activities, rather than yet another business application searching for its purpose. When implementing Microsoft Dynamics CRM, the logical place to start planning the import process is having a look at what tools are available in the application itself.

The Data Import Wizard used to be a curse word among the Dynamics CRM crowd for a long time, but you shouldn’t ignore this option right away, just because of its bad reputation. Sure, there are many limitations with the built-in tool, but it has come a long way since the previous versions. Having recently spent some hands-on time with the CRM 2011 Import Wizard, I decided to put together some of the useful links and pieces of information I discovered during the process. There’s plenty of great blog posts out there on individual data import features, but perhaps this can serve as a “getting started” tookit for planning on how to import data into Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011.

Mapping related records based on custom ID fields

The CRM database by definition is primarily a place for storing information about how different objects relate with one another. This means you will almost always be dealing with source data that needs to reference another set of data once imported into the system. In Dynamics CRM these relationships manifest themselves as lookup fields that point from a child record to its parent.

When you are mapping the lookup fields from a child entity into a parent entity that’s already in the system, you always need to consider the possibility of duplicate values in the list of parent entities. Contact names are not unique, and neither are account names in many cases. Yes, you could import lookup references by using a CRM GUID instead of the primary field (most often the name attribute) of the parent entity, but how often would you have that available in your source data to be imported? Exactly.

The first and in my opinion the best improvement with the Import Wizard in CRM 2011 is the possibility to reference the parent entity with an alternative field. Yes, if you have a reliable unique value available in your data, such as customer number or contact email address, you’re free to use that to link your records together. Alternatively, you can construct specific import ID’s out of your data that you first import into a hidden field, then later on use that as the reference which connects your related child records into exactly the correct parent record without the risk of import row failure.

For step by step instructions, check out this blog post by MVP Leon Tribe: Changing the Lookup Reference When Importing Related Data.

Importing data for multiple entities in one go

A common format for customer data coming from non-relational systems is a flat file that contains both account and contact data on the same “table”. In these cases you will have multiple instances of the account’s information repeated on each line where there is an individual contact related to that account. You first reaction might be “oh well, guess I’ll have to split that into an accounts file and a contacts file, then remove the duplicates“. Well, good news: you don’t have to anymore!

Nowadays CRM comes with a built-in data map called  ”For Generic Contact and Account Data”, which will allow you to import a file that has data intended for both account and contact records. First of all, you can map some of the source fields into both the target entities. Address information is a good example, as it’s typically stored separately on both accounts and contacts (yeah, data redundancy, but often it’s just more convenient for your everyday CRM usage).

Secondly, you will not get duplicate account records from each of the rows, as the Import Wizard is smart enough to detect the distinct parent accounts needed for the child contacts. Now, in order to get the expected results, it’s also up to you to be smart with your source data and field mapping. If any of the fields you’ve mapped to the parent account have any variation in their contents (such as phone numbers with different spacing formats), you will get duplicates, simply because the system will not throw away any unique data rows. Additionally, your child record imports to those accounts will result in failures, as the parent account lookup field will point to a non-unique value in the database (unless you used the aforementioned method to specify an alternative lookup reference). You should also take into consideration if the source data actually has intentional duplicate values for account names, such as branch offices with only a different address.

Check out this article for step-by-step instructions on how to import accounts and contacts from a single file. But what if you need to perform the same type of import, only you’re not dealing with accounts and contacts? Say, importing data to custom entities with a parent-child relationship, like “event” and “event attendee”? No problem, you can build a data map just like the “For Generic Contact and Account Data” one, by leveraging the multi-entity data file import mapping feature.

How much data is too much?

Even if you are importing only into a single target entity, there’s a good chance that you’ll cross the line of allowed maximum size of the import file for the Import Wizard, which is 8 MB. While the XML data import templates available for download from the CRM UI provide very nice features for ensuring the input data is in the correct format, they have the downside of increasing the file size considerably. Compared to an Excel file (xls, xlsx) the size of a file saved in the Office 2003 XML file format can easily be tenfold.

One potential way to get around this limitation is to zip up your import files. You can read the requirements for the zip file contents here, but in general your everyday import files should be zip compatible without any extra tricks. This is actually how the multi-entity data file imports are also handled, as there will only be the possibility of uploading a single file into the Import Wizard to be processed, so you’ll need to package your import files into a zip archive.

In addition to the source data files, you can also include attachments into a zipped import file. Yes, the Import Wizard does support attachment import as well. You’ll need to be careful with the data structure, so have a look at this article for specifications on how to Import attachments with notes. Keep in mind that the 8 MB file size limit does still apply here, so a large number of big file attachments may not be a fun task to perform throug the Import Wizard.

Field and value mapping made easier

If you are working with a data set that contains several picklists with lots and lots of values, mapping them could potentially consume a lot of your time. The first thing you want to make sure is that there are matching values in the CRM picklist fields (nowadays known as option sets) for all the distinct values available in your source columns. Auto mapping will do the heavy lifting for you and match the source and target values as long as they are identical in both. One thing you may not initially notice while mapping the data, though, is that the Import Wizard will also automatically append the list of values in the option sets if it encounters new source values. While it sounds like a neat feature, this may mean you end up with an unexpected set of values, duplicates with slight differences in spelling, breaking workflows or plugins due to mismatch of value ID’s etc. In my opinion, it’s much better to plan ahead and be in the driver’s seat of how your CRM is customized, even if the Wizard offers powerful but dangerous new features that can extend the schema with new fields or even entities.

When you’re working with development, test/QA and production environments, performing the same data mapping procedures time and time again could quickly become a very tedious task. Not only that, but the chances of making a mistake in the process of mapping the fields and values becomes ever more likely if you have to repeat a manual task like that. Luckily Dynamics CRM allows you to save your data maps after you create them (and before you start the actual import job), so be sure to take advantage of this feature. Of course, saving your data map into a test server won’t provide you with that data once you move to production. That’s where the export/import feature of data maps comes in handy. Just create your field mapping once and then take it with you to the next organization you’re working on.

More handy improvements in the Wizard

There used to be limitations on some of the entity fields which you weren’t allowed to update in previous versions. A common pain point was the inability to directly set the record owner, so you had to import this information in a temporary field and perform bulk updates on the records after the import. This limitation has now been removed and you’re free to assign the records directly to users or even teams.

Another caveat of the Import Wizard was that you weren’t allowed to set the state of the imported records, meaning you couldn’t easily import inactive records for historical purposes. Well, now you can, so no more need to leave out information on past activities with your customers, just because you don’t want to re-send all your emails to get them appear as closed activities. Just set your activity status as completed, import opportunities as won/lost or whatever status it is you require.

One thing to note while importing records is that the status change will actually take place after record creation. Why is this important? Well, the closing event will trigger workflows you may have in the target system. Also with the new Activity Feeds functionality introduced in the Q4 2011 update, there’s a chance you may have activity feeds rules in place that will spam your import actions all over the personal wall of your CRM users. Since no one wants to see hundreds of “activity X closed” notifications in their activity feed, be sure to remember to deactivate all rules which could wreak havoc on your brand new internal collaboration channel.

How about update existing?

While creating new records with the CRM 2011 Import Wizard is supported, updating existing records isn’t. In case you would like to only import some new fields for existing customers, by using an identifier field like email address or customer number to locate the records to be updated inside the CRM database, you’ll need to look for alternatives to the Wizard.

It is supported to perform an “export for import” extraction of data from Advanced Find that provides you an Excel sheet you can import back to update records (by selecting “make this data available for re-importing by including required column headings” option). However, unless you’re willing to dump all your records into this Excel and then match them against your import file with your custom ID field by using a tool like Access, to get the corresponding GUID’s, this won’t be the tool you are looking for.

I guess you could also create a temporary child entity for the target entity, then import new records here with the required lookup reference linking them to the parent, followed by a set of workflow magic that would transfer the required values from child to parent. It all depends on how much effort you’re willing to put in working with the out-of-the-box data import tool.

Beyond the Import Wizard: ISV solutions

There will always be many data migration needs that simply cannot be covered with a wizard like application, no matter how much Microsoft would improve the feature set of the Dynamics CRM Import Wizard. At some point it would have so many parameters and options that it would no longer resemble a wizard at all. Since the out-of-the-box functionality has to remain approachable for the “normal” user who just wants to get a simple Excel list uploaded into the system, I’m pretty certain that the market for 3rd party solutions is not going to go away anytime soon.

Instead of rooting for one particular vendor, I’m going to provide a list of the data import solutions that I’m aware of and let you evaluate which one best fits your needs.

• Scribe Insight
• InaPlex Inaport
• CRM Extensions Import Manager
• Starfish ETL
• eOne SmartConnect
• QuickBix Integration Suite
• …and many more

It’s been nine months since Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 was released. Given the large number of new features and functionality included in the new version, I’m sure many organizations have been able to keep themselves busy with thinking about how to leverage all of them. Anyway, the time is now upon us when we see the first true deliverable from the new agile development path that the Dynamics CRM product development team has adopted. The “Q4 2011 Service Update”, “November Service Update” or “CRM Online R7″, however you like to call it, gives a taste of things to come, as new features and improvements are now introduced bi-annually instead of a big bang release every 2-3 years.

There’s lots of neat things included in the update, such as multi-category charts, user access auditing, lookup and date fields for dialogs, ignoring null values and inactive records in duplicate detection rules etc. Have no doubt, though, this release will be remembered from the Activity Feeds, so let’s proceed straight to them.

More than just an accelerator for CRM

Microsoft has split the delivery method of the Activity Feeds functionality into two tiers. The platform level changes are delivered with Update Rollup 4, which brings us a selection of new default entities, such as the feed Post. These will provide the building blocks not only for the visible Activity Feeds released now but also web services API enhancements, which are covered in the 5.0.7 update of the SDK.

The Update Rollups can nowadays be considered pretty much as “business as usual” hotfixes like the ones released for other Microsoft products, both on server and client side, as they are delivered through the common Microsoft Update mechanism. Testing and planning for the Rollups is of course very much recommended still, as significant changes can be included in them, and yes, they do occasionally break compatibility between versions. Furthermore, the Update Rollup 5 required for Activity Feeds to function cannot be uninstalled if things go wrong.

Anyway, unlike the hotfixes that can be expected to be installed on almost all CRM environments, the Activity Feeds user interface components will probably remain missing from many instances. Why? Because there is no automatic delivery method for them, unless you are using a CRM Online environment that has been provisioned after the R7 release became available. You see, Activity Feeds still are kind of like an accelerator package, as the solution file will need to be downloaded from the Dynamics Marketplace and installed by the system administrator.

Not even installing the solution file and publishing the customizations is enough – you still need to configure them. The menu item for “What’s New” will appear in the UI after the solution installation, but none of the entities in your CRM have yet been enabled for Activity Feed posts. To do this, you’ll need to navigate to Settings and go to Activity Feeds Configuration menu. Create a new Post Configuration record for each entity that you wish to relate posts to. The configuration UI of the solution is not too nice, as you’ll actually need to use the logical name of the entity rather than the display name. So, to enable the new functionality for the user entity (which is the very first thing you must do!) is enter the value “systemuser” and click save. Make sure you check the box for “enable walls for this type of record form” and don’t forget to publish the entity’s customizations after clicking on save.

What’s a “wall”? If you’re on Facebook (and who isn’t), you’ll know this refers to the place where the posts related to a user will be displayed in a descending chronological order. Now, in CRM it’s not only users that can have walls, but any entity for which you have created a Post Configuration entry for. Even your custom entities, like “project” or “event” can be set to have their own Wall. However, bare in mind that not all the system entities are supported for the Activity Feeds functionality, so you can’t have a discussion related to, say, competitor or product records (which kind of sucks, as those are some very common topics for employee discussion around the water cooler, but guess you’ll still need to get away from your desk every now & then). For a complete list of supported system entities, see this page on the SDK.

As you can see from the image above, the wall is actually a web part that is presented on a new tab, that is located before the first default tab (general). The tab will be collapsed by default and the form actually scrolls to the general tab right after the form script is loaded, so a user may not notice anything new on the form. However, if you click on the anchor on the left side navigation, the Record Wall will be revealed in all its glory. Here the user will have the option of adding the record into his list of followed CRM records, see who else is following it, and of course post an update on the wall. (By the way: if you have multiple forms per entity, you’ll need to add the Record Wall web parts manually, by following these instructions.)

There’s also a Personal Wall that shows the user all the content from followed records, and that’s the first entry visible on the updated sitemap for Workplace. What’s really nice is that you have a link right after the “What’s New” header, which will allow you to pop up the wall in a new window. This way you can have the feed view quickly available for you at any time, no matter with which CRM entities you are currently working on in the main application window.

Furthermore, every user has a User Record Wall, which would be identical to the concept of a Facebook profile page. Sorry, no timeline design available here yet!

Not just for mindless chatter: business logic for Auto Posts

If all that Activity Feeds provided was the ability to chat with your colleagues or manually post updates related to records, then it would have a tough time competing with established enterprise microblogging apps like Yammer. Luckily the Dynamics CRM platform can offer much more than that. By allowing certain events related to CRM records to generate content for the Activity Feeds the system can actually serve as a tool that removes the need for you to email information about business events or type updates into a microblogging app. A traditional way to demonstrate the CRM workflows has been to create email alerts on closed opportunities, but now you can reduce the clutter in your inbox by moving these into the right context (opportunity form) with the ability for users to comment and see others’ comments.

The way to configure what gets posted on the walls is through the Activity Feeds Rules menu in the settings area. It’s here where you can enable or disable rules that have been tied to certain events, such as qualification of a new lead, case routed to a queue, appointment closed for an opportunity and so on. If you follow the record that these events have been associated to, you’ll see a pre-formated Auto Post on your personal wall after the event takes place.

Great, so how do I create new Post Rule Configuration records? Well, unfortunately, you don’t. You see, all the entries visible in the list have been created as the result of enabling Activity Feeds for an entity. There is no UI available for creating new rules, nor modifying existing rules – all you can do is change the status. If you want to have different events triggering Auto Posts, you’ll need to either use a workflow rule or plug-ins. Here’s a quick example of a workflow that executes every time a new contact is created, checks whether the parent account relationship type is “customer” and then proceeds with creating a Post record with the contact details inserted as dynamic text. Note that the RegardingObjectId is set to the account and not the contact record. This is very important, since a new contact will not have any users following it at the time the record is created into the database, so the Auto Post would only show on the Record Wall but not the users’ Personal Walls.

As we see from this example, it makes all the difference what kind of a following strategy the CRM users adopt. How to get the right amount of posts in the feed, without missing out on any important pieces of information? Also, how to handle the process of unfollowing? There’s a limit to 5000 records a user is allowed to follow, and managing a list as long as that will require some planning.

I also tried this the other way around, with a workflow rule that would be triggered based on User Posts creation, which would email the post text to a user, but apparently that particular field is not  compatible to be inserted into workflow generated records (even though the workflow editor allows you to select it). Also, it’s worth noting that even with plug-ins you can only create Auto Posts with text content, not the rich XML content that the out-of-the-box Activity Feeds Rules utilize to present their information with customized images and other tricks. Furthermore, while the default Auto Posts will be presented in the user’s language, this is not available for custom Auto Posts yet.

So, is this now Social CRM?

No, not quite yet. The first release of the Activity Feeds solution for Dynamics CRM is squarely focused on introducing the data model and user interface components needed for sharing information in a more modern, social way inside the corporate firewalls. The customer (the first letter in the CRM acronym) has not yet been invited to be a contributing member in this internal community, as all the data in the Activity Feeds will be from either employees or  internal business rules configured in CRM. To really step outside of the traditional silo of CRM and adapt it to the world we now live in, where the customers are A) social and B) in charge, a lot more will be needed. To get an idea of Microsoft’s roadmap for developing their Dynamics CRM platform to become a business hub that supports input from external communities, be sure to check out this presentation on Slideshare, especially the “Beyond Wave 1″ part.

However, as there is an API available already today, expect to see new 3rd party ISV solutions that tap into the CRM feeds and push content from external networks right into your lead or contact walls when they post content on Twitter. Technically it’s not difficult at all to achieve, but a more important aspect to consider is how you will make that customer contributed data add value to the CRM users and enable them to gain new insights based on it. It’s a fire hose of data out there in the social networks and online communities, so simply linking up your CRM system to that data pipe may not be a smart choice.

Even for the internal communities use case, it’s very important to remember that just because you built it, doesn’t mean they’ll come. In this case “they” means the CRM users, who shouldn’t just be expected to automatically adopt the new social features of Dynamics CRM, even though they have been installed into their system. Not only will the new ways of working require support from top management, a plan on how & why these new information management capabilities will be leveraged, but also a conscious effort from Dynamics CRM system customizers and administrators on making these new features approachable, usable and relevant for the everyday tasks that the CRM users need to perform.

Thanks to the Activity Feeds in Dynamics CRM, we now have a lot more toys to play with and certainly a lot to learn about them. So, what are you waiting for? Let’s get to it!

You pass! That’s a sight for sore eyes after staring at 75 grey screens full of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Applications certification exam questions for almost 2 hours. I received 750 points out of the required 700 minimum, so not exactly a walk in the park, but who’s going to care about the detailed statistics of how you acquired your MCTS certification?

During the test I did have to go back to some 15 questions I marked for review during the initial round and spend a fair amount of time rolling the virtual dice in my head. Well, not exactly like that, but rather trying to reverse engineer the process of how the people at Microsoft might have designed the application to function in different scenarios and what reasons and practical limitations lead them to these choices. While many of the questions could well be taken from real life use cases, the way in which you need to be able to solve these problems in the exam is quite far from the normal routines. In real life you experiment, investigate and iterate, whereas here you’ve only got a few words to work on; each of them possibly containing a hint towards the right answer, or alternatively loaded with the malicious intent of leading you astray.

Just because you’ve been working with the Dynamics CRM application on a daily basis for several years, doesn’t guarantee you would pass the MB2-868 exam. Even MVP’s have failed on their first attempt, so beware! The amount of product information covered in the Applications exam is growing all the time as new features are introduced and with CRM 2011 there’s a lot to read, let alone to try out in the application itself. At least when I was going through the training materials, the most time consuming part was when I constantly kept coming up with new ideas about “hey, this is something we must also set up for our presales demos”. Even though I had started digging deeper into the new version functionality already before the beta of CRM 2011 was released (and compiled my findings into two “what’s new” presentations you can find here: pt1 and pt2), preparing for the Applications exam made me realize how much of pre-2011 functionality you also need to keep in mind at the same time.

So, tell me then, how important is it to remember by heart from which menus a particular standard report can be executed, when they’re A) all available from the Reports menu anyway and B) usually available in the right context for the user? Or what about studying all the different record statuses in which certain actions can be performed, when we’ve got a graphical, context sensitive ribbon persistently available in the UI, gently reminding us of the things we can and cannot (greyed-out/hidden buttons) perform at any given time? Like it or not, this is the direction that these multiple choice exams tend to drift towards: detailed information that’s perhaps nice to know, but won’t matter much in terms of real life skills required while actually using Dynamics CRM.

If we look at Microsoft’s target audience definition for this exam, it reads:

This exam is intended for individuals that plan to implement, use, maintain, or support Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 in their organization.  The exam is also intended for service schedulers, administrators, office managers, CEOs, and consultants who want to demonstrate foundational understanding of the application functionality.

Quite a broad definition then. If you as an end-user or administrator are interested in learning details about the default functionality available in Dynamics CRM 2011, by all means do attend the training courses and download the training manuals from CustomerSource. They contain a wealth of useful information and some nice exercises you can try out in, for example, your very own 30-day trial environment of CRM Online (which may offer you quite a different “vanilla” training environment than your customized production CRM server). However, don’t worry too much about “demonstrating foundational understanding” of Dynamics CRM through the MB2-868 exam. The system is far easier to use in everyday life than how the exam questions portray it, so you’re better off in directing that time and energy towards exploring the possibilities that Dynamics CRM gives you in customizing the system to fit your business data and to automate your business processes. That’s where the real ROI of your CRM system is hiding, after all.

For those of you who need to take the exam due to MS partner competency requirements, the MB2-868 exam page section “skills measured”  is a useful document to keep by your side when browsing through all the CRM 2011 applications MOC courseware. Checking the topics enables you to better balance your study efforts, to make sure you’re not just diving deep into one module and neglecting another. This is how everything counts:

• Marketing automation: 27%
• Sales management: 30%
• Service management: 24%
• Service scheduling: 19%

For example, service scheduling and service contract management have been standard features of the Dynamics CRM product for a long time, yet I find it hard to discover real life use cases of customers having deployed these processes into production use. Either the organization has initially tried using them, but later given up due to the mismatch of the built-in process flow and solved their problem with custom entities instead, or then they’ve gone down the customization route directly. As a result of this, it’s not necessarily an area that CRM consultants would be too knowledgeable on, when considerably more of their time is spent configuring and training the sales process in CRM.

Does this then mean that these modules should have less emphasis in the exam? Well, at the end of the day, probably not. If you look at things from Microsoft’s point of view, it is in their best interest to have CRM consultants be aware of all the different functionality that their product contains out of the box. Precisely because their common tendency might be to focus on what they already know best and leave out the rest of the story when discussing with potential and existing Dynamics clients, it’s actually a fair exercise to make these specialists step outside of their comfort zones for a while during the certification process. Sure, you may not need the information in the projects you’re working on right now, but you need to have the ability to get up to speed quickly when duty calls.

Finally, here’s a few practical tips from me on how to prepare for the CRM 2011 Applications exam:

• Goal management: understand what values are recorded on which entity, the impact of ownership, fiscal year settings.
• Teams and queues: this is where most of your answers based on experience from CRM 4.0 will guide you down the wrong path, so forget what you know and learn the new CRM 2011 way of working.
• Charts and dashboards: what the user can do vs. what the admin can do, this should actually be pretty much 101 stuff if you’re well in grips with the solution management side of things. However, you shouldn’t forget about SSRS entirely: open each default report at least once and try them out, just to refresh your memory.
• Marketing lists: Try building a few dynamic marketing lists to see how they’re different from the traditional static ones, and also how to mix’n match them.
• Scheduling: you’ll need to understand how capacity management and resource selection rules work from the service and the resource perspectives, there’s just no way around this.
• Record statuses: trust me, things that require no attention from you in everyday life will be very important here, so play around with as many different entities as you have time for and examine what actions are available on the ribbon in which record status.
• RTFM: knowing how the system works is not good enough, as some of the questions are clearly derived from how the use cases are described in the training material, and in these kind of exams every word in the questions and answers is significant. So, don’t just play around with the fun tools built into CRM 2011 or trust what a lecturer tells you – also read through the MOC PDF’s.

And just to close things off, some useful links for seeing what others think about MB2-868:

• MS Dynamics CRM 2011 MOC training courses and…
• MS Dynamics CRM 2011 Certification Tracks and Exams by Adam Vero
• Dynamics CRM 2011 Certifications by Richard Knudson
• Exam MB2-868: CRM 2011 Applications Preparation tips by Mani Ramachandran

Call it a revolution, call it a bubble, call it what you want. One thing is for sure: social networks are not going away. Even though it still remains important to be able to manage and measure your sales funnel with the help of some tried & tested SFA tools, segment your customer database to build more effective target groups for campaigns, or share information on customer support enquiries across your helpdesk staff, this functionality will not be considered as important as it was during the last decade. In this new age of connected customers and empowered information workers, companies will be searching for applications and processes that go beyond what CRM has traditionally stood for.

Let’s take a look at some of the recent news surrounding the world of CRM, to gather evidence of where we might be heading towards.

Takeways from #SFDC #DF11

On the last week of July, Salesforce.com held their annual Dreamforce conference in San Francisco. As a person working with Dynamics CRM for a living, it’s a good idea to keep an eye on where the other CRM solution providers are focusing their development efforts on, and SFDC certainly is one of, if not the main competitor that Microsoft has their eyes on. In his opening keynote, Marc Benioff made it very clear where his team’s focus is on, and that is the concept of a social enterprise. I’ll spare you from the marketing flare and instead present a few screenshots captured from the presentation, highlighting the new feature announcements.

So, what’s in the pipeline for Salesforce.com during the winter 2011/2012 then?

• Contact profiles will be “social enabled” by default, showing public feeds from networks were your customers are present
• Data.com, previously known as Jigsaw, will power the social data discovery and data import, in combination with D&B’s database
• Chatter Now extends the functionality from microblogging to instant messaging with presence information
• You can invite your key customer contacts to specific Chatter networks, or even publish Chatter on the web as a customer service channel
• Radian6′s technology will monitor those customer complaints that are not targeted at your helpdesk, enabling you to jump in on the conversation
• All of this follows you everywhere you go, as touch.salesforce.com promises to deliver a HTML5 client that’ll make your iPad or smartphone a full-fledged social CRM control panel

Even if you leave away some of the over-the-top scenarios presented, like friending the Coke machine or having network routers tweet you on social networks, it’s still clear that with all the promised functionality at your fingertips (once it’s available and working in a reliable manner), the possibilities for you to design and implement new business processes will be dramatically expanded. Whether companies are able to make use of and, more importantly, make money out of these new possibilities is a different question, but it surely does push the boundaries of CRM as we know it.

Social CRM is where it’s at

“Social” certainly is an attractive attribute to include in your product description these days. Gartner, for example, has predicted that the market for Social CRM would reach a total value of one billion dollars by the end of next year. Predicting the future with concrete figures is always a challenge, but it’s even more difficult when people don’t even agree on the definition of the market to be predicted. Several analysts have commented on Gartner’s reports, starting from reminders that an SCRM market may not really exist yet, or they have questioned Gartner’s choice of products included in their SCRM Magic Quadrants as including applications aimed at other functions than what CRM systems traditionally are about – managing customer information, that is.

Aside from the numbers, an important prediction that Gartner made is that the Social CRM market (however you define it) would begin to see a shift towards more integrated platforms over the initial point solutions that have emerged during the first wave of the social business boom. In the age of the cloud, both developing as well as buying and deploying new applications designed for addressing a specific business need can be lightning fast, compared to what the corporate IT projects were like a decade ago. This can easily lead to a situation where individual departments have gone and acquired “shadow” solutions to help them get started on participating in social media, monitoring the buzz around topics and measuring results of their actions. Now, the next step of tying all this back to the customer records in the company’s operational IT systems will often be much more complicated than signing up for the new service initially. A quote from Gartner describes the situation further:

The need for integration will favor more-traditional CRM vendors that add social capabilities. Integration did not matter much when enterprises were just experimenting with social CRM,” Mr. Sarner said. “However, companies are asking for the integration of social data with other customer data within sales, marketing and customer service processes, which will require the integration of social CRM with applications such as a knowledgebase for customer service, multichannel campaign management, sales force automation or e-commerce, Web content and Web analytic applications, master data management, and even back-office applications.

Sounds convincing to me. The first mover advantage is unlikely to be such that it would overshadow all “oldskool” CRM functionality and allow the new players to start building an empire from a clean slate. Gradually we will see everyone adopting the new social paradigm into their product offering, in one form or another.

Upcoming social features for Microsoft Dynamics CRM

We’ve already seen Microsoft lay out their roadmap for new features in the Statement of Direction whitepaper released in May 2011. “Microblogging, business activity feeds and social intelligence” is what we’ve been promised. During the WPC 2011 keynote we saw pieces of this type of functionality utilized in the CRM demo and now we have what appears to be the first official screenshot of the activity feeds leaked out into the open.

So, what we will definitely get is an activity feed of different events taking place inside the CRM database, combined with the ability to post updates and reply to posts. If you’ve used Twitter, Yammer, Chatter or any other microblogging app, you should know the drill by now.

How about the social world outside the firewall? Traditionally Microsoft has preferred steering clear from committing to any specific 3rd party networks. For example, the Outlook Social Connector does not integrate with Facebook or LinkedIn out-of-the-box, instead you have to download a separate provider per each network (there’s not too many of them, btw). With the release of Windows Phone 7.5 (Mango), Microsoft now appears to feel comfortable enough with the top 3 networks of Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, by integrating them right into the core of their product: the People Hub. Check out the picture on the left and tell me if you spot a slight resemblance in the two feed UI’s… If this is anything to go by, I’m expecting to see the same three brands bundled into Dynamics CRM’s default integration points.

As for the rest of Microsoft’s social CRM plans, we’ll need to wait and see if there will be any deeper integration to services such as social media monitoring or whether the Redmond folks simply decide to support and promote some of their partners’ solutions more heavily. In the age of cloud & social, it’s still all about developers, developers and developers, which is why a healthy ISV ecosystem remains a crucial asset to cherish.

My feed is your feed and your feed is mine

Not too long ago, Yammer was accusing Salesforce.com for being a copycat when releasing their Chatter product. Now at Dreamforce ’11, the mascots for both companies were holding hands under the “Friends With Benefits” slogan of the campaign that announced integration between Yammer and Chatter. Well, you know what they say: keep your friends close and your enemies even closer.

Yammer does already integrate with SharePoint. By the time Microsoft incorporates the Activity Feeds into the core product of Dynamics CRM, I assume there will be a full API available for 3rd parties to tap into the event data of the feeds. Therefore I’m expecting that we’ll also see Yammer providing a solution for Dynamics CRM integration.

Where does this feed actually belong to?

Looking at Microsoft’s big stack of software products, it’s not so very obvious where all this new type of social activity functionality should be built into. SharePoint is the collaboration platform, Lync is for unified communications and, well, CRM could be considered as the solution for managing interactions and processes related to customers. So, tell me then, what specific application will the Microsoft end-user be using when he engages in the types of activities that a Yammer user has already grown accustomed to? “All of them” is not a very good answer, because that leaves you without a name to assign to the activity. Without a name, you don’t have a brand, and unless you have a brand, it’s very difficult to make anything stick. Just like with CRM implementation projects, user adoption is the golden key which you will need for unlocking the door that leads to ROI from your social business initiatives.

Much of the functionality needed as the building blocks for a social enterprise is already included in Microsoft’s portfolio today. The thing that is missing is the super glue to attach all the pieces together and make them really stick, i.e. work effortlessly in real life business scenarios. I’m not tallking about the “regular” glue, which in IT terms would mean configuration, customization, development and integration work. With enough skills available you can do great things with the stack already today and build the solutions needed. What the new, cloud-based players on the field of social business are promising is however a different value proposition: products built for the exact scenarios that companies encounter when dealing with their customer base in this world gone social. A solution you can just grab and start using.

It has taken Microsoft a massive effort to work its way into the current position, where their crown jewel productivity tools are available as cloud services you can subscribe to. The next shift that will need to take place is the integration of these services into a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. Instead of just using traditional business applications like SharePoint or CRM, the new business processes for the social enterprise need a technical foundation that effortlessly extends beyond the corporate firewall and reaches the conversation that is taking place “out there”. Not so easy to achieve with on-premises building blocks alone, but hey, that’s when you gotta go “all in” to you know where…

There’s an immense amount of product news coming up from the WPC 2011 conference, due to the sheer size of Microsoft’s portfolio of different product lines. Luckily also Dynamics CRM had its 15 minutes on the WPC keynote stage and we saw a few bits and pieces of what lies ahead in the upcoming Q4 2011 Service Update that will become available to both CRM Online and CRM 2011 on-premise later this year. I already wrote a post in Finnish about the CRM news from WPC, but I thought I’d also share a few screenshots here to those who haven’t seen the keynote video.

Social business remains a hot topic and Microsoft will add some of the much needed social aspects into the next release of Dynamics CRM. Activity feeds á la Twitter, Facebook, Yammer, Chatter and the likes will be integrated also into Dynamics CRM, as can be seen in the demo dashboard below.

In addition to allowing status updates from colleagues, the functionality we saw earlier in CRM 4.0 as the Business Productivity Newsfeed Accelerator (though merely a report) and then later on implemented through 3rd party add-ons like Vibe from Sonoma Partners, now looks to become a core part of Dynamics CRM platform. I’d imagine these automatic feed items are still posted as a result of record updates triggering workflow process rules, like in the aforementioned examples.

Office 365 will become the new home of CRM Online in Q4 as it integrates into the same infrastructure. In addition to subscription management and authentication provider improvements, there’s some interesting benefits for CRM in the Lync integration provided from the Office 365 cloud. No longer will you be limited to only have chats and video conferencing with your colleagues. If the customer contacts in your CRM database are also users of Office 365, their presence information can be federated across organizations (if they choose to, I’m sure) and presented right inside the CRM forms, allowing you to reach out to them through Lync with one click.

Azure Data Market is now being marketed as the “one-stop shop for premium data and applications”. The Dynamics CRM demo included a custom button called Azure Enrich, which went out into the Data Market, opened up D&B’s company database and provided the missing address information for the Contoso account. I guess the big news here isn’t how you can retrieve company data through the API, but rather what the existence of a central marketplace can actually do in making data available to a whole new scale of potential customers, from a variety of global players. The cloud is not only for apps anymore.

In the WPC keynote demo we saw again a Windows Phone 7 client for Dynamics CRM. This time there was also one new screen included, which presents the same activity feed information (labeled as “records feed”). It doesn’t quite compete with the other flashy WP7 Mango demos presented later on in the session, but definitely a useful way for mobile workers to keep an eye on what’s going on in the CRM database while outside the office.

Oh, and of course there was the tablet app built for running Dynamics CRM on a Windows 7 slate. With all the Metro UI goodness, I’m wondering what the out-of-the-box experience could actually become like once we reach Windows 8…

Today was finally the big day when Microsoft’s cloud productivity platform BPOS was replaced with Office 365, which is now available for subscription. Having played with the beta version for a while now, I’m overall quite impressed with how close the SharePoint Online environment now is to its on-premises counterpart. While the limitations are still somewhat more visible than when comparing CRM Online vs. CRM 2011 on-premises versions, I think it’s already close enough to enable a significant part of traditional business requirements for SharePoint to be fulfilled with the cloud platform.

Microsoft confirmed already last fall that also Dynamics CRM Online will eventually be migrated onto the same Online Services Delivery Platform as Office 365. In addition to being a natural fit with SharePoint and Exchange, CRM Online should also gain benefits into both its subscription management as well as authentication options as a result of  this migration. However, there’s no official timeline or feature set communicated yet, so we’ll have to keep waiting possibly until Q4/2011, when the next update for Dynamics CRM has been scheduled to become available, as announced in the latest Statement of Direction document.

Ever since Dynamics CRM 2011 was launched with built-in SharePoint document library integration, there’s been a bit of anxiety on when this functionality could be leveraged with the cloud versions of CRM and SharePoint. Since BPOS was built on SharePoint 2007, it wasn’t possible to utilize the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 List Component for Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 in the Online environment. This meant that setting up a document management enabled trial environment with CRM Online required an on-premises SharePoint server, which wasn’t too convenient. Nor was it for any customer looking to go “all in” with their MS applications. Oh well, but now that Office 365 is available, that’s all a thing of the past, isn’t it?

Wrong! Despite of the better together marketing message surrounding Office 365 and CRM Online, there’s actually still no way to integrate the SharePoint document libraries with the CRM List Component. Sure, you can upload the solution file into a SharePoint Online site and publish it. What you cannot do in the Online version is to take care of the second part of the installation steps, which involves the AllowHtcExtn.ps1 PowerShell script,used for enabling .htc file extensions to be served from SharePoint.

Why is this important? Because without the .htc support, you can’t actually do anything with the document library. The folder creation can be configured and it flows through as it should when accessing the Documents menu for a new record, such as an account. However, after that you are presented with the following prompt:

“The action buttons are disabled because the SharePoint server that you are using does not allow HTC component files. To enable the buttons, contact your system administrator.” What this means is that the document library will be rendered nicely inside the CRM entity form, but you can’t upload any documents to it. Clicking on the buttons does nothing, as they’re all disabled.

How about on the SharePoint side of things then? We can see that the entity specific document libraries are created and also the corresponding folders for each record where the document location has been defined. We can also of course use the native SharePoint UI to upload documents into the library.

Then when you access the corresponding record through CRM, you can see that the document does appear in the library. But with all the controls disabled, you again cannot do anything with it, like open the document, for example. How nice…

How did we end up in this situation where the latest and greatest cloud offerings from Microsoft are not working together like they obviously were inteded to? That’s a very good question. The problem with Office 365 SharePoint Online limitations and their implications to Dynamics CRM document management functionality has been a known issue throughout the whole beta phase of Office 365. There are several threads on the Office 365 community forums regarding this. Yet the response from Microsoft has been that this cannot be resolved by GA (general availability) of Office 365 (as in “today”), but rather we’ll have to wait for the first service update, probably. Come on! How can 6 months not be enough to allow one .htc file to perform its work and provide the document integration between CRM and SharePoint? I find it extremely strange that the product management behind Office 365 has allowed such a flaw to be included in the initial release version.

Of course eventually this issue will be solved and we’ll be able to experience the full document management process flow with Microsoft’s cloud applications.

Microsoft julkaisi lokakuun viimeisellä viikolla merkittävän päivityksen Dynamics CRM 2011 -tuotteeseensa. Tämä marraskuun 2011 palvelupäivitys tunnetaan myös nimellä Q4 2011 Service Update, tai vaihtoehtoisesti CRM Online R7. Päivitys koskee sekä omalla palvelimella ajettavaa on-premises -versiota että Microsoftin palvelinkeskuksesta toimitettavaa CRM Onlinea. Jos käytössäsi on jälkimmäinen palveluvaihtoehto, on organisaatiosi laskutuksen hallintakäyttäjä todennäköisesti jo saanyt alla näkyvän ilmoituksen siitä, että “CRM Online organisaatiosi on päivitetty automaattisesti tämän palvelun uusimpaan versioon”.

Omalla palvelimella toimivaan CRM 2011 -sovellukseen nämä uudet ominaisuudet on saatavissa käyttöön Update Rollup 5 -päivityskokoelman asennuksella. Päivitys tulee saataville Microsoft Update -päivityspalvelun kautta automaattisesti marraskuun 8. päivä alkaen. Myös Online-käyttäjien on syytä muistaa, että Dynamics CRM for Microsoft Office Outlook -työasemasovelluksiin tulee asentaa vastaavat päivitykset. Koska kyseessä on tavallista merkittävämpi päivityskokonaisuus, Update Rollup 5 ei tue asennuksen poistoa, joten on hyvin suositeltavaa varmistaa oman CRM-ympäristön mahdollisten laajennusten ja integraatioiden toimivuus testiympäristössä ennen tuotantokäyttöönottoa.

Asiakastiedon uusi sosiaalinen ulottuvuus

Näkyvimpänä uutuutena marraskuun 2011 palvelupäivitys tuo mukanaan Activity Feeds -toiminnot eli suomeksi “toimintasyötteet”/”aktiviteettisyötteet”, jotka tarjoavat uuden, sosiaalisemman tavan jakaa tietoa yrityksen sisällä. Monista sosiaalisen media palveluista tuttu mahdollisuus lähettää statuspäivityksiä ja kommentoida muiden käyttäjien kirjoituksia on nyt tuotu myös CRM:n sisään. Kyse ei ole kuitenkaan ainoastaan käyttäjien välisten keskustelujen mahdollistamisesta, vaan tiedon liittämisestä oikeaan asiayhteyteen eli asiakastietoihin ja muihin liiketoimintatietueisiin (tarjoukset, palvelupyynnöt, sopimukset, projektit ym.). Activity Feeds rakentuu Dynamics CRM:n joustavan tietomallin päälle ja täydentää sitä uudella sosiaalisella kerroksella, jonka avulla käyttäjät voivat seurata heille tärkeitä tietueita ja saada niihin liittyviä tilapäivityksiä.

Jokaisella CRM-käyttäjällä on uudessa palvelussa oma seinä (personal wall), jonka kautta toimintasyötteiden sisältöä voi lukea, kommentoida ja tietysti myös kirjoittaa. Seinällä näkyvät kaikki sellaisiin tietueisiin liittyvät päivitykset, jotka käyttäjä on lisännyt omalle seurantalistalleen. Koko yrityksen ei siis tarvitse lukea samoja tilapäivityksiä kaikkiin tietueisiin liittyen, vaan kyse on käyttäjäkohtaisesti tuotetusta personoidusta sisällöstä, jonka tarkoituksena on nostaa näkyville käyttäjän oman roolin kannalta relevantti tieto. Esimerkiksi isoa myyntimahdollisuutta saattaa olla mukana työstämässä laaja tiimi työntekijöitä eri organisaatioyksiköistä. Seuraamalla CRM:n mahdollisuustietuetta on näiden käyttäjien helppoa pysyä selvillä viimeisimmistä siihen liittyneistä toimenpiteistä, ilman että tietoa pitäisi erikseen jakaa sähköpostitse eri osapuolille.

Käyttäjien itse tuottama syötesisältö (manuaaliset viestit) ei ole ainoa tapa saada tietoa esille seinälle. CRM:n tietueita koskevista tapahtumista voidaan määrittää syntyväksi automaattisia viestejä, jotka nousevat näkyville kaikkien liittyvien tietueiden syöteseinille että myös niitä seuraavien käyttäjien seinille. Kun esimerkiksi myyntimahdollisuus suljetaan voitettuna tai hävittynä, luo CRM automaattisesti merkinnän seinälle, joka sekä nopeuttaa tiedon levittämistä että tarjoaa käyttäjille kätevän kanavan kommentoida tapahtunutta yhteisellä foorumilla.

Syötteiden käyttöönotto

Kun rekisteröit uuden CRM Online -organisaation koekäyttöön, saat jatkossa Activity Feeds -toiminnot suoraan käyttöösi. Nykyisille organisaatioille toimintasyötteiden tietomalli tulee alustaan aiemmin mainitun Update Rollup 5 -päivityksen mukana. On kuitenkin syytä huomioida, että itse aktiviteettisyötteet eivät vielä näy käyttöliittymässä päivityksen jälkeen. Kyse on nimittäin erillisestä ratkaisupaketista, joka pitää ladata Microsoft Dynamics Marketplace -sivustolta.

Kun asennustiedosto on ladattu, tulee ratkaisupaketti asentaa CRM-organisaatioon asetukset-osion mukauttaminen-valikosta. Ohjeita ja vinkkejä aktiviteettisyötteiden käyttöönottoon löydät mm. tästä blogikirjoituksesta.

Windows Phone 7 -sovellus

Nokian ansiosta paljon huomiota viime aikoina Suomessa saanut Windows Phone 7 -käyttöjärjestelmä on nyt erityisasemassa Dynamics CRM -maailmassa, sillä Microsoft on julkaissut tälle alustalle natiivisovelluksen CRM:n mobiilikäyttöön. Microsoft Dynamics CRM Mobile on ladattavissa ilmaiseksi Windows Phone Marketplacesta, aivan kuten muutkin WP7-sovellukset. CRM Online -käyttäjät voivat kirjautua sovelluksella suoraan omaan CRM-organisaatioonsa syöttämällä palvelimen osoitteen. Myös on-premises -ympäristöt ovat tuettuja, kunhan ne ovat ns. IFD-konfiguroituja (Internet Facing Deployment) eli mahdollistavat sisäänkirjautumisen yrityksen verkon ulkopuolelta.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM Mobile tukee täysipainoisesti uusia aktiviteettisyötteitä, jotka ovatkin omiaan juuri mobiililaitteella selattavaksi. Tarkempi lista sovelluksen muista toiminnoista on luettavissa aiemmasta artikkelista Mango tuo uutta makua mobiili-CRM:ään. WP7-sovellus parantaa merkittävästi CRM-tiedon käytettävyyttä verrattuna aiempaan selaimella käytettyyn Mobile Express -kevytversioon verrattuna, tarjoten mm. verkosta haettujen tietojen tallennusta välimuistiin sekä luonnollisesti Windows Phonen Metro-käyttöliittymäkieltä noudattavan navigointitavan, joka on optimoitu kosketusnäytöllisille älypuhelimille. CRM-tietueisiin liittyvien statuspäivitysten kirjaaminen tien päältä on siis jatkossa yhtä helppoa kuin vaikkapa Facebookin mobiiliselailu, mikä varmasti on omiaan alentamaan kynnystä CRM:n hyödyntämiseen luontevana osana nykypäivän tietotyöläisen työkalupakkia.

Tämän kvartaalin aikana ilmestyvä Microsoft Dynamics CRM Q4 2011 Service Update sisältää lukuisia tervetulleita parannuksia CRM 2011:n nykyisiin toimintoihin (mm. uusia kaaviotyyppejä, laajemman kenttätuen dialog-prosesseihin) sekä kokonaan uusia toiminnallisuuksia, joista näkyvimpänä todennäköisesti Activity Feeds. Vähäpätöinen ominaisuus ei myöskään ole federoidun identiteetin tuki, jonka myötä käyttäjätunnusten hallinta mukautuu yhteensopivaksi Office 365:n kanssa. Tarkempia tietoja tämän myös CRM Online R7 -päivityksen nimellä kulkevan version sisällöstä on nyt saatavilla virallisesta Release Preview Guidesta.

Ajankohtainen ja kauan kaivattu uutuus sijoittuu mobiilirintamalle. Microsoft sai viikko sitten viimein viralliseen jakeluun Windows Phone 7.5 eli Mango-päivityksen mobiilikäyttöjärjestelmäänsä, joka nosti niin nykyisten kuin tulevien WP7-laitteiden käytettävyyden aivan uudelle tasolle, sisältäen mm. uuden IE9-selaimen, tuen sovellusten moniajolle, sisäänrakennetut Facebook, Twitter, ja LinkedIn-verkostojen integraatiot sekä paljon muuta. Nokia on vasta tuomassa omia laitteitaan markkinoille loppuvuodesta (Suomeen kenties vasta Q1/2012), mutta kotimaisen kehittäjäyhteisön mielenkiinto on verkkokeskusteluista päätellen noussut jo hyvin korkealle tätä älypuhelinmarkkinan kolmatta/mustaa hevosta kohtaan. Mikä olisikaan parempi hetki Microsoftille julkistaa myös ensimmäinen virallinen Windows Phone 7 -sovellus Microsoft Dynamics CRM:lle!

Aiemmin Microsoftin tarjoama mobiililaitteiden tuki CRM:ssä on rajoittunut Mobile Express clientiin, joka on ollut lähinnä BlackBerryn / Nokia E71:n kaltaisille näppäimistöllä varustetuille puhelimille suunniteltu kevytversio Dynamics CRM:n käyttöliittymästä. Kolmansien osapuolien tuottamat sovellukset (mm. CWR Mobility, TenDigits) ovat tarjonneet lisähintaan kosketusnäytöllisille älypuhelimille optimoitua mobiili-CRM:ää, mutta nyt myös Microsoftin vakiotuotepaketti laajenee kattamaan nimenomaan Windows Phone 7 -alustalle rakennetun natiivin Dynamics CRM -sovelluksen. Luonnollisesti käyttöliittymä tulee hyödyntämään samaa Metro-käyttöliittymäkieltä, johon niin WP7 kuin myös tuleva Windows 8 -työpöytäkäyttöjärjestelmä vahvasti nojaavat. Toiminnallisuuslistalla ovat muun muassa:

• Asiakas-, yhteyshenkilö-, liidi-, ja mahdollisuustietueiden lukeminen (huom: ei siis vielä luonti/muokkaus)
• Yhden klikkauksen päässä oleva sähköpostin lähetys tai puhelinsoitto CRM-tietueelle
• Osoitteiden haku yhdellä klikkauksella Bing Maps -karttapalvelusta
• CRM:n viimeisimpien päivitysten selaaminen Activity Feeds -näkymästä
• Reaaliaikaisten statuspäivitysten kirjoittaminen ja lukeminen (á la FB/Twitter/Yammer/Chatter)
• Mukautettavissa olevat tietuelomakkeet

Dynamics CRM:ään jo aikojen alusta sisältyneen Outlook/Exchange-integraation ansiosta CRM:n yhteystiedot, kalenteritapahtumat ja tehtävät ovat jo tähän mennessä kulkeneet vaivatta mobiililaitteissa mukana. Älypuhelinsovellus tuo asiakastiedon askelta lähemmäksi niitä tilanteita, joissa asiakkaan kanssa todennäköisimmin ollaan tekemisissä. Yrityskäyttäjien kiirehtiessä jo innolla hankkimaan iPadeja ja muita tablettilaitteita korvaamaan perinteisten kannettavien käyttöä tien päällä työskennellessä on yrityssovellusten kehityksen painopiste myös vahvasti siirtymässä kohti “mobile first” -ajattelua. Ensi vuoden alkupuoliskolle aikataulutettu Dynamics CRM Q2 2012 -versio onkin tuomassa mukanaan kokonaan uuden HTML5-pohjaisen käyttöliittymän. Vaikka moni Mac-käyttäjä onkin tätä päivitystä jo kaipaillut, tulee sen merkitys todennäköisesti olemaan paljon kauaskantoisempi juuri laajemman mobiilikäytön mahdollistajana.

CRM-tietokannan sisällön selaaminen mobiililaitteista edellyttää tyypilliesti, että palvelimelle on konfiguroitu käyttöön ns. IFD-moodi (Internet Facing Deployment), jos käytössä on oma on-premises -versio Dynamics CRM 2011:sta. Tämän voi olettaa säilyvän vaatimuksena myös tulevan WP7-version käytölle. CRM Online -käyttäjillä tämä lomakepohjainen autentikointitapa on jo valmiiksi käytössä, joten heidän ei tarvitse muuta kuin odottaa pilvipalveluun loppuvuodesta asentuvaa Q4 2011 Service Update -päivitystä ja Windows Phone Marketplace -sovelluskauppaan ladattavaksi saapuvaa Dynamics CRM -sovellusta.

Los Angelesissa tänä vuonna järjestetty Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference eli tuttavallisemmin WPC on kasvanut osanottajamäärältään huimiin mittasuhteisiin. 15.000:n osallistujan joukko koostuu pääasiassa Microsoftin kumppaniyritysten edustajista, jotka ovat kerääntyneet Staples Centeriin kuulemaan viimeisimpiä uutisia päämieheltään. Esillä oleva tuotteiden ja palveluiden kirjo kattaa käytännössä kaiken Microsoftin tarjonnan, alkaen Windows-käyttöjärjestelmistä ja Office-sovelluksista, päätyen mobiili- ja konsolitarjonnan kautta yrityspuolen palvelinsovelluksiin ja yhä keskeisemmin pilvipalveluiden äärelle. Jos vuonna 2010 WPC:ssä julkistettiin Microsoftin “all in”-pilvistrategia ja aloitettiin Cloud Power -sanoman todellinen vyöryttäminen, ei tämänvuotinen tapahtuma edusta suunnanmuutosta vaan pikemminkin jatkumoa. Päivän sana on edelleen “cloud”, jota ei pääse pakoon missään Microsoftin tuoteperheessä.

Kasvulukuja

WPC:n toisen päivän keynote-esityksessä lavalle nousi Microsoftin Dynamics-liiketoiminnasta vastaava Kirill Tatarinov. Periamerikkalaiseen tyyliin ylisanoja ei ole esityksissä tapana säästellä, mutta Dynamics-tuotesalkun osalta myös numerot puhuvat puolestaan. Microsoft Dynamics CRM -käyttäjien määrä on globaalilla tasolla ylittänyt jo 2 miljoonan rajapyykin, saavuttaen tämän nopeammin kuin mikään CRM-järjestelmätoimittaja aiemmin. Tarkasteltaessa Microsoftin tasan kymmenen vuotta sitten aloittamaa yrityssovellusten liiketoimintaa (alkaen Great Plainsin ostosta 2001), yksikön nykyiset asiakasmäärät niin CRM- kuin ERP-puolella (300.000 asiakasorganisaatiota tuotteilla GP, SL, AX, NAV) kertovat siitä, että Dynamics-tuoteperheen merkitys Microsoftin tuotekehityksen panostuksissa tuskin on ainakaan laskemaan päin. Ottaen huomioon CRM-pilvipalveluiden markkinoiden kasvuennusteet, voidaan Dynamics CRM-käyttäjämäärän kasvun olettaa jatkavan kasvuaan kaksinumeroisilla prosenttiyksiköillä tulevinakin kvarataaleina.

Pitkään Siebel CRM:ää toiminnassaan käyttänyt Microsoftin oma organisaatio julistettiin Siebel-vapaaksi vyöhykkeeksi, tarkoittaen että viimeisetkin yksiköt olisi viimein saatu siirrettyä käyttämään omaa Dynamics CRM:ää asiakkuudenhallinnan tietojärjestelmänä. Kirill kehoitti myös MS-kumppaneita käymään Oracle Siebel CRM -tuotetta käyttävän 5000 asiakasorganisaation kimppuun, jotta nämä saataisiin siirrettyä Dynamics CRM -maailmaan, koska tämän sanoin “Siebel is a dead product”. Niitä MS-kumppaniyrityksiä, jotka ovat tähän asti käyttäneet sisäisenä CRM-ratkaisunaan Salesforce.com:ia (“god forbid!”), ohjeistettiin ystävällisesti ottamaan käyttöön partner-etuna ilmaiseksi tarjottava Dynamics CRM Online.

Dynamics CRM Q4 2011 Service Update

Keväällä julkaistun, päivitetyn Statement of Direction -whitepaperin mukaisesti Dynamics CRM:ään on jatkossa odotettavissa päivityksiä kaksi kertaa vuodessa, aiemman 2-3 vuoden päivitysvälin sijaan. Tämän uuden julkaisupolitiikan ensimmäinen ilmentymä tulee olemaan vuoden viimeisellä kvartaalilla julkaistava Service Update, joka tuo uusia ja paranneltuja toimintoja sekä CRM Online- että on-premise -käyttäjien saataville.

Activity feeds on yksi WPC:ssä esiteltyjä näkyviä uudistuksia. Demosta päätellen toiminto tulee mahdollistamaan yrityksen sisäisen mikrobloggauksen/status-päivitysten julkaisemisen, kuten esimerkiksi suosittu Yammer-palvelu tai Nokian organisaation käyttämä Socialcast. CRM:n sisään integroituva palvelu tulee lisäksi mahdollistamaan CRM:n tietueisiin liittyvien muutosten seurannan syötteiden kautta, esim. myyntimahdollisuuksien tilan päivittyessä. Salesforce.com:in vastaava Chatter-palvelu on herättänyt paljon kiinnostusta entistä sosiaalisempien yrityssovellusten tarjoamista mahdollisuuksista. Kun tiedon määrä CRM-tietokannoissa kasvaa, tulee relevantin ja viimeisimmän tiedon esille nostaminen entistä keskeisemmäksi toiminnoksi niin CRM- kuin muissakin tietojärjestelmissä.

Muita CRM-tuotteen parannuksia Q4 2011 -päivityksessä on luvassa ainakin analytiikkatoimintoihin, sekä CRM 2011:n yhteydessä lanseerattuihin interaktiivisiin dialog-prosesseihin.

Office 365

Samassa yhteydessä kun Dynamics CRM:ään julkaistaan Q4-päivitys, tulee CRM Online siirtymään osaksi samaa alustaa kuin Office 365. Tämän myötä mahdollistuu yhtäaikainen koekäyttöympäristöjen provisiointi CRM:ää tai Office 365:ttä kokeilevien organisaatioiden käyttöön. Myös tilaushallinta ja laskutus tulevat yhtenäistymään, tehden CRM:stä käytännössä yhden lisäoption Office 365 -pilvipalvelun käyttäjille.

CRM Onlinen uusi käyttäjähallinta tulee Windows Live ID:n sijaan perustumaan jatkossa samaan ratkaisuun kuin Office 365:ssä, mikä tarkoittaa mahdollisuutta integroida CRM-käyttäjätilit osaksi yritysten nykyistä, paikallisesti hallinnoitua Active Directory -palvelua (aivan kuten on-premise -ympäristöissä aiemmin). Siirtyminen osaksi isompaa Online-palvelukokonaisuutta tulee parantamaan myös CRM:n saavutettavuutta ongelmatilanteissa, kun Microsoft luo mahdollisuuden siirtää vakavan palveluhäiriön ilmetessä palvelinalustassa CRM-organisaatiot kokonaisuudessaan yhdestä EU:n sisällä sijaitsevasta data centeristä toiseen.

Mielenkiintoinen uusi ominaisuus Lync-viestintäpalveluun liittyen, jota esiteltiin WPC 2011:n keynote-demossa, on läsnäolotietojen federointi. Jo aiemmin Dynamics CRM on tukenut käyttäjien tavoitettavuustietojen näyttämistä esim. CRM-tietueen omistajakentän yhteydessä, jolloin pikaviestikeskustelun aloittaminen asiakkuudesta vastaavan henkilön kanssa on ollut vain yhden klikkauksen päässä. Jatkossa on mahdollista nähdä reaaliaikaisesti myös asiakkaan läsnäolotieto, mikäli tämän organisaatio käyttää Office 365:ttä ja jakaa Lync-palveluun liitettyjen sähköpostiosoitteiden läsnäolotietoa oman organisaation rajojen ulkopuolelle. Tähän kun vielä yhdistäisi Microsoftin hiljattain ostaman Skypen käyttäjätilien integraation, niin…

CRM:n mobiilikäyttö

Keynote-esitysten vakiosisältöä ovat nykyään perinteiselle PC:lle vaihtoehtoisten käyttöliittymien esittely. WPC:ssä Dynamics CRM:ää käytettiin sekä tablet-pohjaiselta laitteelta että Windows Phone 7 -älypuhelimesta. Näistä ensiksi mainittu oli toki näyttävyydeltään omaa luokkaansa. CRM-sovelluksen käyttöliittymä oli rakennettu Metro-tyyliin, tarjoten isoja, live-dataa sisältäviä ja interaktiivisia kuvakkeita. Arkipäivänen CRM:n käyttö tuskin vielä muuttuu tällaiseksi aivan lähiaikoina, mutta kosketuspohjaisten käyttöliittymien ja mobiililaitteiden voittokulku pakottavat myös yrityssovellusten kehittäjät tuomaan saataville vaihtoehtoja hiirellä klikkailtaville lomakkeille.

Kolmansien osapuolien sovellusten ohelle tarjolle tulevasta Microsoftin omasta mobiili-CRM -clientista ei edelleenkään saatu tarkkaa faktatietoa. Demossa Windows Phone 7 -client tuki tuttujen CRM-asiakastietuiden lisäksi myös Q4 2011 Service Updaten myötä lanseerattavaa activity feed -toimintoa. Erityisesti mobiilikäyttöön tällainen tiedon esitystapa tulee tarjoamaan kätevän tavan pysyä ajantasalla asiakkuuksiin liittyvistä viimeisimmistä käänteistä, ilman että myyjän tarvitsee kaivaa PC:tä esiin läppärilaukustaan.

Vuoden 2012 keväälle aikataulutetussa toisessa versiopäivityksissä siintävä siirtymä HTML5-pohjaiseen käyttöliittymään Dynamics CRM:n vakiosovelluksen osalta tulee mahdollistamaan CRM:n käytön muillakin kuin Microsoftin Internet Explorer -selaimilla. Tällöin myös Applen laitteita käyttävillä organisaatioilla on mahdollisuus Dynamics CRM:n hyödyntämiseen asiakkuudenhallinnan ratkaisuna, olipa sitten laitteena MacBook tai iPad.

Gartnerin tuoreen ennusteen mukaan maailmanlaajuinen SaaS-markkina kasvaa tänä vuonna 20,7%, saavuttaen 8,5 miljardin euron kokonaisarvon vuodelle 2011. SaaS kaappaa sovellusten hankitoihin kohdistuvista budjeteista tällä hetkellä jo 10%, eikä Yritysten kiinnostus pilvipalveluja kohtaan näytä laantumisen merkkejä, ei etenkään asiakkuudenhallinnan osalta.

Perinteisesti CRM on ollut SaaS-palveluiden suurin segmentti ja Gartner ennustaa sen voittokulun jatkuvan tänäkin vuonna. SaaS:in osuus CRM-ratkaisumarkkinasta kohoaisi ennusteen mukaan tänä vuonna jo kolmannekseen eli 32%. Pitkään markkinoilla olleet asiakkuudenhallinnan SaaS-sovellukset kuten Salesforce.com ovat viime aikoina saaneet rinnalleen kilpailevia pilvituotteita myös perinteisiltä softataloilta. Microsoft toi Dynamics CRM Online -palvelunsa globaalisti saataville tämän vuoden alussa, kun se oli aiemmin ollut tarjolla vain Pohjois-Amerikan asiakkaille. Lisääntyvä pilvipalvelujen valikoima aikaansaa markkinoilla kiristyvää hintakilpailua (tässä esimerkkiä Microsoftin vertailutaulukosta Salesforceen), joka osaltaan tuo täysveriset CRM-ratkaisut entistä pienempien organisaatioiden ulottuville.

On-premise eli omalle palvelimelle asennettu versio on varmasti yhä monille isommille organisaatioille preferoitu tapa oman asiakastietojärjestelmän ylläpitoon, kehitykseen ja integrointiin, mutta PK-sektorille pilvipalveluna tarjottava CRM Online muodostanee jo selkeän ykkösvaihtoehdon. Microsoft on jatkanut aiemmin kesäkuun loppuun voimassa ollutta kampanjahinnoittelua, joten CRM Online maksaa yhä vain 31 euroa per käyttäjä, per kuukausi (listahinta 40,25 euroa).

Toinen segmentti, jossa voidaan ennakoida nähtävän jatkuvaa kasvua SaaS-mallin osuudessa ohjelmistoinvestoinneista, on Gartnerin kielellä CCC eli Content, Communications & Collaboration. Sisällönhallinan, viestinnän ja ryhmätyön ratkaisumarkkinaan tulee omalta osaltaan pistämään vauhtia Microsoftin kesäkuussa lanseeraama Office 365. Aivan kuten CRM Online, myös Office 365 tuo enterprise-tason sovellusratkaisut (SharePoint, Exchange, Lync) saataville PK-ystävällisellä hinnoittelumallilla. E1-E4 -pakettien hinta liikkuu välillä 9-25,50 euroa, jälkimmäisen sisältäessä myös paikallisen Office 2010 -ohjelmiston käyttöoikeuden.

Dynamics CRM:n kannalta tulee olemaan kiinnostavaa nähdä, miten palvelun liittäminen myöhemmin tänä vuonna osaksi Office 365 -palvelutarjontaa tulee vaikuttamaan sen kysyntään. Tiukempi integraatio niin tilaus- kuin käyttäjähallinnan puolella tulevat varmasti madaltamaan yritysten kynnystä täydentää aiemmin hankkimiaan Microsoftin viestintä- ja sisällönhallintasovelluksia saman yrityksen CRM-ratkaisulla. Pilvitarjooman roadmapiin liittyviä julkistuksia on mahdollisesti luvassa 10. heinäkuuta alkavassa Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conferencessa eli WPC 2011:ssa.

Anvia IT järjesti yhteistyössä Microsoft Oy:n kanssa Markkinoinnin uudet työkalut -tilaisuuden Keilarannassa 26. toukokuuta, jossa esitteltiin ensimmäistä kertaa Suomessa CoreMotives Marketing Suite -tuotelaajennus Microsoft Dynamics CRM:lle. Kyseessä on Windows Azure -pilvialustan päälle rakennettu palvelu, joka tuo niin sähköpostikampanjat, web-kävijäseurannan, web-lomakkeet kuin liidien pisteytyksen suoraan CRM:n käyttöliittymän sisältä hallinoitavaksi, integroiduksia ratkaisuksi.

Toisin kuin monet muut vastaavat markkinoinnin työkalut, CoreMotivesin ratkaisu on alunperin rakennettu vain ja ainoastaan Microsoft Dynamics CRM:n tietomallin päällä toimivaksi. Miksi tällä sitten on merkitystä? Niin kampanjoiden, kohderyhmien kuin kampanjoista syntyvän historian ja palautteiden kirjaamisessa käytetään Dynamics CRM:n vakiotietueita, jolloin data on sekä loogisesti esitettynä käyttöliittymässä että myös hyödynnettävissä CRM-alustan tarjoamien toimintojen kanssa käytettäväksi. Työnkulun säännöt (prosessit), koontinäytöt (dashboards, raportit, tiedon tuonti/vienti ja pelaavat yhteen CoreMotivesin tuotelaajennuksen kanssa, aivan kuin se olisi luonnollinen osa Dynamics CRM:ää.

CoreMotives Marketing Suiten keskeisimpiä etuja erillisratkaisuihin verrattuna on se, että järjestelmä mahdollistaa yhteismitallisen markkinoinnin toimenpiteiden seurannan läpi eri kanavien. Oli kyseessä sitten uutiskirjeen postitus HTML-viestipohjia käyttäen, yhteydenottolomake webissä, kotisivujen kävijäseuranta tai sosiaalisen median kautta jaettujen linkkien klikkaukset, kaikki tämä tieto näkyy CRM-järjestelmässä asiakastietojen yhteydessä, helposti hyödynnettävässä muodossa. Ohessa löyvät aamiaisseminaarin CoreMotives-tuotedemon yhteydessä esitetyt kalvot, joissa käydään läpi online-markkinoinnin toimintojen käytännön hyödyntämismahdollisuudet kuvitteellisen esimerkkiyrityksen näkökulmasta.

Palvelun käyttöönoton kynnys on tehty hyvin matalaksi. CoreMotives Marketing Suite toimii käytännössä minkä tahansa Microsoft Dynamics CRM -version päällä. Niin 3.0 kuin 4.0 ovat yhä tuettuja, lisäksi 2011-tuki on ollut saatavilla heti uuden CRM-version lanseeraamisesta lähtien. Ei ole väliä käytetäänkö CRM:ää omalta palvelimelta (on premise), kumppanin ylläpitämältä alustalta (partner hosted) tai Microsoftin tarjoamasta CRM Online -ympäristöstä, sillä CoreMotivesin sovellus ei vaadi ensimmäistäkään palvelimelle asennettavaa komponenttia. Ratkaisu koostuu CRM:ään tuotavasta mukatuspaketista, joka luo CRM:n tietorakenteeseen tarvittavat uudet entiteetit ja niiden sisällä iFrame-kehyksessä näkyvät ulkoiset käyttöliitymäkomponentit, asennusprosessin hoituessa parhaimmillaan 15 minuutissa.

Windows Azure -pilvialusta (PaaS, platform as a service) on toiminut CoreMotivesin ratkaisun jakelukanavana tuotteen ensimmäisestä versiosta lähtien. Marketing Suite voitti vuonna 2009 Microsoftin startup-yrityksille suunnatun BizSpark-ohjelman järjestämän Azure-kilpailusarjan kunniamaininnalla “most viable busines model”. Yrityksen kokemuksia Azuren tarjoamista skaalaeduista ja palvelinalustan hallinnoinin helppoudesta voi lukea Microsoftin aiheesta tekemästä case study -dokumentista. Globaalisti yli 300 asiakasyritykselle palveluitaan tarjoava CoreMotives on myös mukana ensimmäisten Azure-käyttäjien joukossa hyödyntämässä ns. geo-aware -reititystä dataliikenteelle, jolloin Azure-palvelut tarjotaan automaattisesti lähinnä käyttäjää sijaitsevasta Microsoftin palvelinkeskuksesta.

Mikäli olet kiinnostunut tietämään lisää sähköisen markkinoinnin työkalujen hyödyntämisestä integroituna osana Microsoft Dynamics CRM -järjestelmää, ota yhteyttä Anviaan crmpalvelu.fi-sivujen kautta.

Microsoftin suomalaisille sovelluskehittäjille suunnatussa vuoden päätapahtumassa TechDaysissa oli tänä vuonna ensimmäistä kertaa oma kokonainen trackki Microsoft Dynamics CRM:lle. Tämä toivottavasti toi Dynamics CRM:n mahdollisuuksia sovelluskehitysalustana laajemmalti esille kotimaisten MS-kehittäjien ja IT-ammattilaisten keskuudessa.

Globaalisti jo 1,4 miljoonaa ihmistä käyttää Dynamics CRM:ää 23.000:ssa asiakasorganisaatiossa, eikä CRM Online -pilvipalvelun lanseeraus varmasti ainakaan vähennä tuotteen painoarvoa markkinoilla. Kysyntä CRM-osaajista on kova, samoin mahdollisuudet sovelluslaajennusten tuotteistamiseen ovat nyt Dynamics Marketplacen ja CRM 2011:n solution management -jakelumallin myötä selvästi paremmat kuin aikaisemmin.

Videot TechDays-esityksistä ovat nähtävillä MSN Video-palvelussa ja sisältävät paljon hyvää informaatiota sekä niille, joille Dynamics CRM alustana ei vielä ole kovin tuttu (Rasmus Fogedin esitykset) että CRM:lle kehitystyötä jo tehneille, 2011:n uusista ominaisuuksista kiinnostuneelle (Kalle Salon esitykset). Alla linkit videoihin sekä muutamia nostoja niiden sisällöstä. Valitettavasti esitysten kalvot eivät CRM-träkin osalta ole päätyneet julkiseen levitykseen (katso täältä ja täältä TechDays-kalvot esim. Office 365:een liittyen).

What’s new in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011

Puhuja: Rasmus Foged
Aihe: CRM 2011:n uudet toiminnallisuudet ja CRM Onlinen vaikutus sekä asiakkaiden käyttäytymiseen että Microsoft-kumppanien mahdollisuuksiin
Videon linkki: http://video.fi.msn.com/watch/video/what-s-new-in-microsoft-dynamics-crm-2011-rasmus-foged-microsoft/15dwvhxne

Utilizing the full Microsoft cloud stack with Dynamics CRM online

Puhuja: Rasmus Foged
Aihe: Miten CRM Online ja tuleva Office 365 integroituvat keskenään, käyttäjän identiteetin federointi esim. Active Directorysta, dokumentinhallintaa SharePoint Onlinen avulla
Videolinkki: http://video.fi.msn.com/watch/video/utilizing-the-full-microsoft-cloud-stack-with-dynamics-crm-online-rasmus-foged-microsoft/15dmoplgu

How to develop and publish applications to Microsoft Dynamics Marketplace

Puhuja: Rasmus Foged
Aihe: Miten Dynamics Marketplace tulee ISV:iden ja kehittäjien näkökulmasta muuttamaan tapaa, jolla asiakkaat/loppukäyttäjät etsivät sovelluksia ja laajennuksia Dynamics CRM -ympäristöönsä
Videon linkki: http://video.fi.msn.com/watch/video/how-to-develop-and-publish-applications-to-microsoft-dynamics-marketplace-rasmus-foged-microsoft/15dtabtjq

Liiketoimintasovellusten kehittäminen käyttäen CRM 2011 kustomointityökaluja

Puhuja: Kalle Salo
Aihe: XRM-skenaariot uuden CRM 2011 -version tarjoamien mukautustyökalujen avulla, miten käyttöliittymää pystytään tuetusti mukauttamaan entistä joustavammin
Videolinkki: http://video.fi.msn.com/watch/video/liiketoimintasovellusten-kehittaminen-kayttaen-crm-2011-kustomointityokaluja-kalle-salo-microsoft/15d7qu2c6

CRM Online sovelluksen laajentaminen käyttäen CRM 2011:n uusia rajapintoja

Puhuja: Kalle Salo
Aihe: WCF ja OData rajapintoina CRM:n tietojen ohjelmalliseen käsittelyyyn, skenaarioita web-resurssien hyödyntämiseen osana CRM 2011:n solutions-pakettia
Videolinkki: http://video.fi.msn.com/watch/video/crm-online-sovelluksen-laajentaminen-kayttaen-crm-2011-n-uusia-rajapintoja-kalle-salo-microsoft-oy/15dhzn4r7

CRM sovellukseni on pilvessä: Miten integroin muut pilvi- ja paikallisesti asennetut sovellukseni Dynamics CRM:ään

Puhuja: Kalle Salo
Aihe: Kuinka pilvi-CRM voidaan integroida esimerkiksi on-premises ERP:hen käyttämällä Windows Azure AppFabric Service Bus -väylää viestien välittämiseen, miten rakennetaan oma listener-sovellus, mitä toiminnallisuuksia tarjoaa Microsoftin julkaisema ilmainen Dynamics Connector -tuote CRM, AX ja NAV -asiakkaille
Videon linkki: http://video.fi.msn.com/watch/video/crm-sovellukseni-on-pilvessa-miten-integroin-muut-pilvi-ja-paikallisesti-asennetut/15d5wucmv

Oli CRM-järjestelmä sitten omalla palvelimella tai pilvessä, monesti se on yrityksen ikioma saareke, jonne tietoa tuottaa vain ja ainoastaan yritys itse. Myyjiä velvoitetaan ylläpitämään oman myyntiputkensa tietoja parhaan arvauksen perusteella, asiakaspalvelu kirjaa puhelinsoittoja sikäli kun ongelmatilanteissa täyttyviltä linjoilta kerkeää, lisäksi jonkun onnekkaan osana on vastata asiakastietokannan ajantasaisuudesta ihmisten vaihtaessa toimenkuvaa ja työnantajaa yhä kiihtyvällä tahdilla. Hienompikin CRM-järjestelmä kertoo asiakkuuksien tilasta tyypillisesti vain sen, mitä joku käyttäjistä on järjestelmälle kertonut, jos on muistanut, ehtinyt tai viitsinyt.

Vaikka CRM:n tietojen ylläpito vaatii organisaatiolta konkreettisia työpanoksia, useimmat asiakasrajapinnassa toimivat henkilöt silti tunnistavat syyn, miksi asioita on kirjattava yhteiseen tietojärjestelmään. Vaihtoehto kun olisi paljon synkempi: ei voitaisi edes teoriassa tietää mitä on tehty, kenelle ja miksi. Organisaation toimijoiden määrän kasvaessa ja fyysisen rakenteen hajaantuessa on pakko sopia toimintatavoista, jotta prosesseja voi suorittaa useampi kuin yksi henkilö. Viestinnän, kanavien, kontaktien ja dokumenttien määrän alati kasvaessa voi kuitenkin tuntua siltä, ettei yrityksen ymmärrys asiakkuuksistaan kaikesta seurannasta huolimatta kasva sitä tahtia kuin kirjattava tietomassa.

Asiakkaan rooli on viimeisen vuosikymmenen aikana muuttunut passiivisesta kampanjakohderyhmän jäsenestä ja tuote-esitteen vastaanottajasta aktiiviseksi toimijaksi, oli toimiala sitten mikä tahansa. Aiemmin myyjä pystyi kontrolloimaan sitä, millaista tietoa potentiaaliselle asiakkaalle kannatti toimittaa tietyssä vaiheessa myyntiprosessia. Nyt tietoa tuotteista, toimittajista ja muista asiakkaista on useissa tapauksissa saatavilla suorastaan rajaton määrä verkon ja verkostojen syövereissä, josta tieto kuplii asiakkaan silmien eteen hakukoneiden tai kavereiden suositusten kautta. Sen sijaan että aktivoiduttaisiin vasta potentiaalisen palveluntarjoajan ottaessa asiakkaaseen yhteyttä, aktiivinen tiedonhaku palvelua koskien alkaa nykyisin todennäköisemmin verkossa saadusta kimmokkeesta. Jos hyvin käy, silloin kun asiakas on valmis evaluoimaan esikvalifioimiensa palveluntarjoajien kyvykkyyttä täyttää hänen tarpeensa, tämä saattaa ottaa yhteyttä myös sinun yrityksesi myyntihenkilöstöön.

Push ei enää toimi kuten ennen, Pull on parempi markkinoinnin strategia tämän päivän aktiivisten kuluttajien ja päättäjien tavoittamiseen. Mitä tämä sitten merkitsee CRM:n järjestelmien ja prosessien näkökulmasta?

Yhä suurempi osa asiakkuuden kannalta kriittisestä tiedosta on jatkossa peräisin palomuurin ulkopuolelta.

Vaikka organisaatiosi olisi täynnä mallioppilaita, jotka aktiivisesti kirjaavat tekemisensä CRM-järjestelmään, et välttämättä enää pysty saavuttamaan tämän prosessin kautta kilpailuetua. Uusasiakashankinnassa liidit pitäisi tunnistaa verkossa jo ennen kuin niillä edes on CRM:ään kirjattavissa olevaa henkilön nimeä. Nykyasiakkaasi eivät välttämättä viitsi istua kanssasi palavereissa kuuntelemassa lisämyyntiin tähtääviä kalvosulkeisia, mutta tieto tuoteuutuuksista ja innovaatioista voi kyllä löytää heidät muita kanavia pitkin. Tyytymättömät, kohta entiset asiakkasi, eivät reklamoi sinulle suoraan, vaan sen sijaan päädyt heidän ignore-listalle.

Mistä tämä palomuurin ulkopuolinen maailma koostuu? Verkkosivustoista, blogeista, keskustelupalstoista, sosiaalisista verkostoista, kaikista meille nykypäivänä jo hyvin arkisista online-medioista ja viestintävälineistä. Jos yrityksellä on käytössä CRM-järjestelmä, on se myös hyvin todennäköisesti investoinut web-presenssiinsä, sekä luultavasti harkitsee tulevaisuudessa kasvattavansa suhteellista markkinointipanostusta verkossa tapahtuvaan viestintään. Niin toimenpiteiden, toimijoiden kuin käytettävien järjestelmien määrä on siis nousussa, josta pääsemme taas siihen tuttuun aiheeseen. Kaikkea tätä asiakkaisiin liittyvää tietoa pitäisi kyetä hallinnoimaan jossain yhteisessä paikassa, mutta CRM:n manuaaliseen ylläpitoon ei enää ole tietotulvan keskellä annettavaksi lisäresursseja.

Onko tässä uudessa ympäristössä tapahtuvaan asiakasviestinnän organisointiin, toteuttamiseen ja seurantaan olemassa valmiita työkaluja, joilla tieto saataisiin virtaamaan suoraan asiakaskortille? Tottahan toki. Microsoft Dynamics CRM asiakastiedon hallinnan alustana ja CoreMotives Marketing Suite sähköisen viestinnän ratkaisupakettina mahdollistavat yhdessä saumattoman seurannan eri kanavien kautta tapahtuvasta asiakasvuorovaikutuksesta. Sähköpostikampanjoiden lähetys, web-sivujen kävijöiden seuranta, web-lomakkeiden ja -kyselyiden toteutus onnistuvat suoraan Dynamics CRM:stä, ajantasaista asiakastietoa hyödyntäen ja reaaliaikaisia, yksilöitäviä tulostietoja tarjoten. Molemmat sovellukset ovat otettavissa käyttöön nopeasti ja vaivattomasti pilvipalveluna, jos asiakas niin haluaa, mutta myös oma CRM-palvelin (on-premise) tai partner hosted -toimitusmallit ovat toki tuettuja. Myöskään versiorajoituksia ei ole, sillä CoreMotives toimii niin CRM 3.0, CRM 4.0 kuin CRM 2011 -alustoilla.

Mitä jos CRM osaisikin kertoa sinulle asiakkaistasi jotain, mitä kukaan työntekijäsi ei ole sinne syöttänyt? Sen sijaan, että myyjä pisteyttää liidien arvoja, voisiko järjestelmä automaattisesti nostaa verkkosisältöön reagoineet kävijät soittolistan ykkössijalle? Voisivatko web-lomakkeiden kautta tulevat yhteydenotot kirjautua suoraan oikean asiakkuuden alle CRM:ssä, ilman työläitä järjestelmäintegraatioita tai manuaalista tietojen kopiointia sähköpostista?

Tule mukaan Anvia IT:n ja Microsoftin järjestämään, maksuttomaan aamiaisseminaariin 26.5. kuulemaan ja näkemään, kuinka Dynamics CRM ja CoreMotives voisivat avata näkymän verkossa jo nyt käymääsi asiakasdialogiin. Ilmoittaudu mukaan crmpalvelu.fi-sivuston kautta. Käsiteltävinä aiheina tilaisuudessa ovat mm. sähköpostimarkkinointi, web-sivujen kävijäseuranta, tiedon visualisointi ja prosessien automatisointi – kaikki tämä tutuilla Microsoftin työkaluilla ja Azure-pilvessä toimivilla sovelluslaajennuksilla.

Microsoft TechDays 2011 Finland -tapahtuma pidettiin 30.3.-1.4. Helsingin Messukeskuksessa. Kenellekään osallistujalle ei liene jäänyt epäselväksi Microsoftin Cloud Power -viesti. Pilvi ei ole enää jotain horisontissa siintävää tulevaisuuden teknologiaa tai ainoastaan hypellä kyllästettyjä kalvoja, vaan nyt puhutaan konkreettisista tuotteista, jotka ovat otettavissa käyttöön osaksi yrityksen IT-palvelukokonaisuutta. Niinpä on tullut myös entistä ajankohtaisemmaksi tarkastella sitä, kuinka Microsoftin pilvipalvelut rinnastuvat omalle palvelimelle asennettaviin on-premises -versioihin. Monen mielessä liikkuu varmasti kysymys siitä, tukeeko pilvi riittävästi asiakaskohtaisia sovellusten mukautustarpeita.

Microsoft Office 365, kohta sitä saa!

Kesällä lanseerattava Office 365 pilvipalvelu eli Microsoftin BPOS:in (Business Productivity Online Suite) seuraaja tulee tarjoamaan todella lupaavan kokoelman sovelluksia nykypäivän tietotyöläisen käyttöön. Exchange, SharePoint ja Lync päivittyvät toiminnallisuuksiltaan 2010-tuoteversioiden tasolle, siinä missä BPOS on vielä toistaiseksi toiminut 2007-tuotteiden varassa.

Office 365:n myötä myös aiemmin julkaistu Microsoft Dynamic CRM Online tulee jatkossa siirtymään samalle palvelualustalle. Asiakkaille tämä tulee näkymään mm. parantuneina tilauksenhallinna prosesseina ja laajempina vaihtoehtoina käyttäjien tunnistautumisen toteutuksessa. Tarkkoja aikatauluja ja toiminnallisuuksia Microsoft ei vielä ole julkistanut, mutta kehityksen suunta on selvä.

Jatkossa Microsoftin sovellusten uudet toiminnot tullaan pääsääntöisesti näkemään aluksi pilvipalvelussa, joka kehittyy oman syklinsä mukaan. On-premises -versiot säilyvät täysverisinä vaihtoehtona rinnalla, mutta niiden päivitystahdin noudattaessa perinteistä 3-vuotiskiertoa. Versionumeroista ei kuitenkaan enää pilvessä virallisesti puhuta, koska asiakkailla tulee olemaan käytössään yksi ja sama, viimeisin julkaistu palvelu. Aivan kuten Google Apps ei sisällä julkista versiotietoa, myöskään esimerkiksi SharePoint Online ei ole jatkossa sidottu vuosilukuun.

Onko pilvipalvelu kaikille sama?

Kun asiantuntijoilta kysytään neuvoa siitä, mitkä sovellukset yrityksen kannattaisi ensimmäiseksi viedä pilveen, suosittelevat nämä yleensä aloittamaan Exchangesta. Sähköposti on hyvä esimerkki yrityspalvelusta, josta on muodostunut yhteinen, standardisoitu sähköisen viestinnän muoto. Vaatimukset palvelun luotettavuudelle ja saatavuudelle ovat korkea, kun taas mukautuksen tarpeet tai hyödyt ovat yleensä varsin matalat. Tällainen sovellus on parhaimmillaan tarjoiltuna keskitetysti hallinnoidusta pisteestä mahdollisimman monelle loppukäyttäjälle, jolloin saadaan rahallisesti merkittäviä skaalaetuja pilvimalliin siirtymisestä.

Myös Lync eli Microsoftin uusi pikaviestien, neuvottelupalveluiden ja puheviestinnän sovellus noudattaa pitkälti tätä kaavaa. Tärkeintä on työkalujen yhteensopivuus viestivien osapuolien kesken, ei niinkään työkalujen kustomointi juuri oman firman tai oman yksikön viestisisällön tai palaverikäytännön mukaiseksi. Pikemminkin voisi sanoa, että vaihtoehtojen ja variaatioiden määrä laskee palvelusta saatavan potentiaalisen hyödyn määrää. Jos myös yhteistyökumppani käyttäisi samaa alustaa, olisi saatavuustietojen jakaminen ja virtuaalineuvottelujen toteuttaminen paljon kivuttomampaa kuin heterogeenisessä Skype/Messenger/Gtalk/GoToMeeting/jne. ympäristössä. No, markkinamielessä minkään yhden palvelun tai toimittajan monopoli ei pidemmän päälle tietenkään olisi hyvä ratkaisu, joten tärkeintä olisi standardien muodostuminen pilvipalveluiden tarjoamien viestintätoimintojen välille.

Sähköposti, puhelut ja pikaviestintä eivät yksinään riitä toimiston viestintäkanavaksi, vielä vähemmän dokumenttimuotoisen tiedon jakamiseen ja tiimityön tukemiseen. Tähän tarvitaan SharePointin kaltaista järjestelmää, joka auttaa organisaatiota luomaan yhtenäisen muistijäljen viestitystä tiedosta, luo ympäristön tiedon jalostamiseen ja mahdollistaa sen löytämisen myöhemmissä asiayhteyksissä myöhemmin mukaan astuneille osapuolille. SharePointilla on mahdollista saavuttaa pienemmässä organisaatiossa paljon arkihyötyjä jo mukauttamattomalla “vanilja”-asennuksella, kunhan opetellaan hyödyntämään järjestelmän tarjoamia vakiotoimintoja ja malleja. Toisessa ääripäässä ovat globaalisti toimivien organisaatioiden kunnianhimoiset hankkeet roolipohjaisesti mukautuvien sähköisten työpöytien kehittämiseksi, tai sitten julkiseen verkkoon tuotettavat julkaisut ja sovellukset. Toisin kuin sähköpostipalveluissa, sama SharePoint-alusta voi toimia moottorina suorastaan dramaattisesti toisistaan eroaville käyttökohteille, mikä luonnollisesti asettaa hyvin suuria vaatimuksia alustan mukautus- ja laajennusmahdollisuuksille.

SharePoint Onlinen mukauttaminen

Office 365:n lanseerauksen myötä tarjolle tuleva SharePoint Online tarjoaa merkittävästi enemmän mukautusmahdollisuuksia kuin edeltävä BPOS-versio. Mukana on kattavampi valikoima vakiotoimintoja kuten My Sites, Excel Services, Visio Services. Omien web-osien kehittäminen Visual Studion avulla SharePoint Onlineen on nyt tuettua, sikäli kun koodin voi suorittaa SharePoint Onlinen tarjoaman sandbox-moodin puitteissa. Kattava tietopaketti aiheesta löytyy TechDays 2011:n Office 365 -esitysmateriaaleista, joista etenkin Jussi Roineen kalvot (01, 02) kannattaa lukaista johdantona pilvi-SharePointin maailmaan.

Näkyvimpiä rajoituksia perinteiseen SharePoint 2010:iin verrattuna ovat Onlinesta puuttuvat BI-toiminnot ja FAST-hakupalvelu. Myöskään integrointimahdollisuudet eivät ole Onlinessa vastaavat kuin on-premisesissä. Tulevaisuudessa SharePoint Onlineen ollaan kyllä lisäämässä mm. tuki BCS:lle (Business Connectivity Services), jonka avulla muiden järjestelmien tietoa voidaan lukea ja päivittää SharePointin kautta. Nykytilanteessa integraatioiden toteutukseen ei kuitenkaan ole tarjolla suoria palvelinpuolelle tehtäviä ratkaisuja, vaan vaihtoehdot tietojen yhdistämiseen useasta eri lähteestä perustuvat client-koneella suoritettavaan koodiin, esimerkiksi SilverLight-komponenttien hyödyntämiseen.

Yhtenä poikkeuksena on integraatio CRM Onlinen ja SharePoint Onlinen välillä, sillä tiedostonhallinnan automatisoitujen toiminnallisuuksien vaatiman luettelo-osan (List Component) odotetaan tulevan saataville Office 365:een jo palvelun julkistamisen yhteydessä.

Extranet-käyttöön soveltuvien portaaleiden toteuttaminen lienee täysin realistinen vaihtoehto SharePoint Onlinen avulla, samoin jotkin yksinkertaiset julkiset websivut esim. kampanjakohtaisen, rajatun aihealueen sisällön nopeaan julkaisuun. Vaativampi sivustojen ulkoasun mukauttaminen ja spesifit asiakaskohtaiset toimintotarpeet tulevat kuitenkin todennäköisesti olemaan jatkossakin on-premises -version heiniä. Tämä on varsin ymmärrettävää, sillä perinteisen CMS:n rajoja venyttävien julkaisutarpeiden kattamiseen keskitetysti hallinnoidun pilvipalvelun kautta on vaikea nähdä teknisesti tai taloudellisesti kannattavaa mallia. Tällaisiin hankkeisiin valmistauduttaessa on parempi tarkastella dedikoitujen SharePoint-ympäristöjen hosting-palvelua tarjoavia tahoja, samalla pitäen mielessä että Microsoftin ylläpitämän Office 365:n rinnakkaiskäyttö ei sekään välttämättä ole kustannusmielessä poissuljettua.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online ja mukauttaminen

Dynamics CRM lanseerattiin Online-versiona Yhdysvaltojen markkinoille kaksi vuotta sitten, jolloin palvelu perustui CRM 4.0 -versioon. Jo tämä versio tarjosi XRM-tasoisia ominaisuuksia, joiden avulla tietokantaan oli mahdollista lisätä uusia tauluja (CRM:n kielellä entiteettejä), automatisoida työnkulkuja ja muokata käyttöliittymän lomakkeita ja näkymiä samalla tavalla kuin omalle palvelimelle asennetussa on-premises CRM-ympäristössä. Koodipohjainen laajennus plug-inien avulla ei kuitenkaan ollut tuettua, custom-raportteja ei voinut palveluun ladata, eikä käyttöliittymään ollut mahdollista tuoda tietosisältöä CRM:n omien lomakkeiden täydentämiseksi käyttämättä toista palvelinta/palvelua sisällön tarjoamiseen.

Uuden CRM 2011 -version myötä tilanne on muuttunut hyvin merkittävästi. Voidaan jopa sanoa, että lähtökohtaisesti CRM Online tukee kaikkia keskeisiä Microsoft Dynamics CRM -alustan mukautustoimintoja. Tyypillisen CRM-asiakkaan ei siis tarvitse enää tinkiä järjestelmän joustavuudesta valitessaan käyttöönsä kuukausimaksupohjaisesti laskutettava, minuuteissa käyttöön saatava pilviversio Microsoftin asiakkuudenhallinnan sovelluksesta. Alustavalinta voidaan tehdä puhtaasti asiakkaan IT-resurssien ja kokonaisarkkitehtuurin tarpeisiin peilaten.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM on alusta alkaen rakennettu web-sovellukseksi, jonka clientin selainkäyttöliittymä on toteutettu hyödyntämällä CRM-palvelinsovelluksen web services -rajapintaa. Tämä sama rajapinta on avoin kolmansien osapuolien hyödynnettäväksi sovelluslaajennuksia tehtäessä. CRM Online tukee samaa SDK:ta kuin CRM on-premises, eli web services API on käytettävissä pilviversiossa siinä missä omalla palvelimellakin. Integraatio CRM:n ja muiden tietojärjestelmien kuten ERP:n tai dokumentinhallinnan välillä onnistuu siis tietojen lukemisen ja päivittämisen osalta yhtä hyvin riippumatta siitä, onko käytössä CRM Online tai omassa konehuoneessa sijaitseva CRM-palvelin. Tieto ei jää pilven vangiksi, eikä pilvestä muodostu omaa tietosaareketta, joka ei keskustelisi muiden järjestelmien kanssa.

Miten CRM Online eroaa on-premisestä?

Sovelluskehittäjän näkökulmasta konkreettisia rajoituksia Dynamics CRM Online -pilviympäristössä toimittaessa ovat seuraavat:

• CRM-tietokannan tauluihin/näkymiin (filtered views) ei ole suoraa pääsyä, joten mm. omat raportit on kirjoitettava FetchXML -kyselykielellä perinteisten SQL-hakulausekkeiden sijaan.
• Plug-init eli CRM:n bisneslogiikkaa laajentava tai muuttava .NET-koodi on suoritettava sandbox-moodissa.
• Työnkulkujen laajentaminen koodaamalla WWF:n mukaisia kustom-aktiviteetteja ei ole tuettua, kuten ei myöskään CRM:n ulkopuolella rakennettujen XAML-työnkulkujen tuominen järjestelmään.

Luonnollisesti mikään paikallisia palvelinresursseja  vaativa laajennus ei ole sellaisenaan siirrettävissä pilveen, jossa fyysiselle palvelimelle ei ole pääsyä. Uuden 2011-version mukana tulleisiin ratkaisupaketteihin (solutions) on kuitenkin mahdollista sisällyttää laaja valikoima web-resursseja, kuten HTML-sivuja, kuvia, Javascriptiä, CSS:ää ja SilverLightia, jotka ovat tätä kautta siirrettävissä CRM Online -palvelimelle. Jos siis vanha CRM 3.0/4.0 käyttöliittymälaajennus oli toteutettu ASP.NET-sivuina, ehkäpä nyt olisi oikea hetki siirtyä hyödyntämään viimeisimpiä SilverLight-teknologioita ja tarjota sekä paremmin hallinnoitava CRM-laajennus että mahdollisesti aiempaa rikkaampi käyttöliittymä loppukäyttäjälle.

Kuten olettaa saattaa, ei-tuetut muokkaukset eivät ole… no, tuettuja CRM Onlinessa. Seuraavaksi kannattaa kysyä, että onko tämä rajoitus hyvä vai huono asia? Haluaisivatko asiakasorganisaatiot todella ottaa tietoisesti sitä riskiä, että kumppanin toimittama CRM-laajennus tai lisäosa ei toimikaan versiopäivityksen jälkeen (tai edes viimeisimmän hotfixin asennuksen jälkeen)? Olisiko sittenkin parempi, että kumppani kertoisi avoimesti millaisia muutoksia CRM-alustaan on mahdollista tehdä tuetusti, sekä suunnittelisi asiakkaan kanssa parhaan mahdollisen vaihtoehdon päästä pyydetyn kaltaiseen custom-toiminnallisuuteen?

Yhteenveto: mukautuvan pilven laidalla

Liiketoimintasovellukset eivät ole siirtymässä kohti pilveä ainoastaan suurten palvelinkeskusten ja keskitetyn ylläpidon mukanaan tuoman kustannustehokkuuden vuoksi. Yksi keskeinen syy pilvimalliin panostamiselle on itse asiassa se, että tämä ympäristö kiihdyttää sovellusten evoluution tahtia, jonka seurauksena saamme entistä tarkemmin asiakkaan tarpeisiin mukautuvia sovelluskokonaisuuksia entistä nopeammin.

Sovellukset muuttuvat yhä enemmän palvelualustoiksi, joihin prosessi-, toimiala- tai asiakaskohtaisia laajennuksia tuotetaan tuettujen rajapintojen kautta. Näiden laajennusten jakeluun ja käyttöönottoon taas alustatoimittaja kehittää yhä standardoidumpia tapoja, kuten esimerkiksi Dynamics CRM 2011:n mukanaan tuomat ratkaisupaketit ja Dynamics Marketplace. Tällaiset yksittäisen sovelluksen sisältä tarkasteluna pieniltä vaikuttavat muutokset ovat siksi kauaskantoisia, että ne mahdollistavat ekosysteemien syntymisen sovellusalustojen ympärille ja sovellusten välille. Ei siis enemmän uusia geenejä, vaan geenien uusia kombinaatiota.

So what, vaikkei enää pääsekään puukottamaan sovelluspalvelimen config-tiedostoja, kun fyysinen palvelin on kadonnut koodarin ulottumattomiin? Kun vanha keino ei toimi, on vain etsittävä uusia. Muutosprosessia nopeuttaa se lohduttava tieto, että pilvipalvelun potentiaalinen globaali asiakasmassa todennäköisesti houkuttelee paikalle useampia toimijoita ratkomaan samaa pulmaa. Yhden toimittajan ympäristössä ei tarvinnut välttämättä investoida paljoa aikaa ratkaisun tuotteistamiseen, hallittavuuteen ja yhteiseloon muiden laajennusten kanssa. Haittana asiakkaalle oli se, että silloin kaiken toiminnallisuuden piti melkeinpä tulla siltä samalta toimittajalta. Pitkällä tähtäimellä pilviympäristön uudet pelisäännöt tuovat lisää vaihtoehtoja molemmille tahoille: asiakkaalle enemmän potentiaalisia toimittajia, toimittajalle enemmän potentiaalisia asiakkaita.

Se, mikä ei vielä toimi pilviversiossa, todennäköisesti toimii siellä kohta. Se, mikä on jo nyt mahdollista, voi luoda vanhoille toiminnoille täysin uusia käyttökohteita. Ajattele jos voisitkin kutsua perinteiseen SharePoint-työtilaan käyttäjiä ei vain oman organisaation sisältä vaan vaikkapa alihankkijan työntekijöistä? Tai mitä jos saisit CRM:n sähköpostikampanjoihin lisätoimintona seurantatiedot viestin linkkejä klikanneista yksinkertaisesti asentamalla uuden ratkaisupaketin? Moni aiemmin teknisesti mahdollinen asia on vaarassa muuttua pilvisovelluksien kohdalla lähes naurettavan helpoksi ottaa käyttöön. Uhkakuvana on järjestelmien käytön monipuolistuminen ja ominaisuuksien mukautuminen käyttäjien todellisiin tarpeisiin, sitä mukaa kun nämä tulevat tarpeistaan tietoisiksi.

Kun Nokia ilmoitti viime kuussa käytännössä lopettavansa Symbianin kehittämisen ja tähtäävänsä jatkossa kohti Windows Phone 7 -maailmaa, jäi monelle tietotyöläiselle käteen uudehko älypuhelin vailla toivoa uusista älykkäistä sovelluksista. Varsinkin Suomessa lukemattomat yritykset ovat lukinneet mobiililaitepolitiikkansa tiukasti Nokian tarjoamiin malleihin. Vaikka kyseiset politiikat otettaneenkin useassa paikassa uudelleenarvioitavaksi, eivät jo hankitut Symbian-laitteet kuitenkaan poistu käytöstä ihan hetkessä. iPhone ja Android-luurit toki ovat jo nyt läsnä työpaikalla varjo-IT:n muodossa, eri asia sitten tukevatko yrityksen sovellukset tai IT-osasto näitä epävirallisia alustoja.

Mitä tehdä esimerkiksi uudella Nokia E7 -puhelilmella, joka rautansa puolesta sopii mainiosti työkäyttöön, mutta jonka väistyvälle Symbian-alustalle mobiilikehittäjät eivät enää ole kiinnostuneita tekemään uutta softaa? Yksi hyödyllinen käyttökohde on asiakastietojen hallinta ja hyödyntäminen mobiilisti, Microsoft Dynamics CRM:n avulla. Työkalun tähän tarjoaa Abile DynaMitt mobiili-client, jonka voi ladata ilmaiseksi puhelimeen tästä Ovi Store -linkistä.

Abile DynaMitt tukee niin uudempaa Symbian^3 käyttöjärjestelmää (N8, E7, C7) kuin myös aiempia Symbian S60 3rd & 5th editioneita (esim. E51 – E55, E71 – E75) vailla kosketusnäyttöä. Personal Edition on ilmainen, mutta saatavilla olevan datan ja asetusten osalta rajoittunut. Personal+ Edition tarjoaa € 20 hintaan joustavammat vaihtoehdot CRM:n tietojen hyödyntämiseen. Abile DynaMitt keskustelee CRM:n kanssa käyttäjän tietokoneelle asennettavan DynaSync-sovelluksen ja Outlook-tunnistetietojen avulla, synkronoiden CRM:n tietoja Symbian-laitteen paikalliseen tietokantaan, joten periaatteessa käyttöönotto onnistuu ilman IT-osaston tukea tai CRM-palvelimeen koskemista. Tuettuja versioita ovat Dynamics CRM 4.0 ja CRM 2011, sekä on premises- että hosted-ympäristössä.

Entä jos käytössä onkin CRM Online, tai jokin muu kuin Symbian-puhelin? Useimmille älypuhelinalustoille löytyy kyllä nykyään CRM-mobiilisovelluksia, joista osa on suoraan sovelluskaupoista käyttäjän ladattavissa. Hyvä tapa lähestyä Dynamics CRM:n puhelinkäyttöä yrityksenlaajuisesti on kuitenkin aluksi tutustua Microsoftin tarjoamaan CRM Mobile Express -versioon, joka on ilmaiseksi käytettävissä kaikissa Dynamics CRM -ympäristöissä, mukautettavissa olevan selainkäyttöliittymän kautta. Mikäli haluat lisätietoja tarjolla olevista vaihtoehdoista CRM:n käyttöön matkapuhelimellasi, ota yhteyttä tämän lomakkeen kautta.

Nyt niitä bittejä saa! RTM (release to manufacturing) -versio Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 :stä luvattiin alunperin helmikuun 28. päiväksi, mutta julkaisun hetki koitti lopulta lähes kaksi viikkoa aiemmin. On premises – ja Partner hosted -asennuksiin tarkoitettu palvelinsovellus on siis virallisesti valmis tositoimiin eli tuotantoympäristöihin.

Voit ladata suomenkielisen CRM2011-Server-FIN-amd64.exe -asennuspaketin Microsoft Download Centeristä. Myös uusi Outlook client on ladattavissa 32-bit ja x64-versioina. Mikäli aiemmat Beta- ja Release Candidate -versiot eivät ole tuttuja, kannattaa ensimmäisenä kuitenkin ladata Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Implementation Guide. Tämä sisältää tärkeää tietoa mm. CRM 2011 -ympäristön suunnittelusta, järjestelmävaatimuksista ja asennusprosessista. Opas on luettavissa myös suoraan TechNetissä. Readme-tiedot taas löytyvät CRM-resurssikeskuksen sivuilta.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0:aa käyttäville asiakkaille, joilla on voimassa Software Assurance -ylläpito, tulevat CRM 2011 lisenssiavaimet saataville tämän palvelun kautta. Download Centeristä löytyvät kokeiluversion lisenssiavaimet, joilla järjestelmää voi käyttää 90 päivän ajan. Jos CRM:n päivitys on mielessä, kannattaa heti alkuun lukea millaiset järjestelmävaatimukset 2011 tuo mukanaan esimerkiksi palvelinten käyttöjärjestelmille ja SQL-tietokannalle. Seuraavaksi on hyvä sisäistää tarjotut kolme vaihtoehtoista päivityspolkua CRM 4.0:sta CRM 2011:een.

Virallinen lehdistötiedote RTM-julkaisusta kehuskelee myös uudella Dynamics CRM:n suorituskyvyn ja skaalautuvuuden merkkipaalulla. Lähiviikkoina ilmestyvä white paper tulee esittelemään miten yksi CRM-instanssi on testeissä kyennyt palvelemaan 150.000 samanaikaista käyttäjää alle sekunnin vasteajoilla. CRM 2011:n huomattavasti aiempaa visuaalisempi ja toimintorikkaampi käyttöliittymä onkin varmasti saanut monet miettimään millaisia tehovaatimuksia uusi versio asettaa infrastruktuurille. Suorituskyvyn benchmark-tulokset ovat toki aina enemmän tai vähemmän viitteellisiä. Yhä isompiin asiakasyrityksiin tähdätessään Microsoft tulee varmasti kiinnittämään huomiota erityisesti juurikin Enterprise-kohderyhmän vaatimusten täyttämiseen järjestelmän skaalautuvuutta testatessaan. Myöhemmin tulemme todennäköisesti saamaan samanlaiset white paperit CRM-ympäristön suorituskyvyn optimoinnista kuin mitä aiemmista 3.0- ja 4.0-versioista julkaistiin.

Vielä muistutuksena, RTW eli Release To Web tuli saataville jo aiemmin tammikuussa. Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online on kaikkien halukkaiden koekäytettävissä ja myös tilattavissa aiemmassa blogikirjoituksessa kuvatun prosessin mukaisesti. Tämä vaihtoehto saattaa kiinnostaa myös nykyisin omaa CRM-palvelinta ylläpitäviä organisaatioita, joten uusi pilvipalvelu kannattaa toki pistää testaukseen samalla kun tutustuu CRM 2011 on-premises -ympäristön saloihin.

http://twittinmscrm.codeplex.com/

http://metadatadocgenerator.codeplex.com/

http://www.orbitone.com/en/blog/archive/2012/01/24/dynamics-crm-dashboard-for-microsoft-lync-1.aspx

• Rich Text Editor (TinyMCE)
• Auto Numbering
• Bing Maps Geolocation Lookup
• Date/Time Parsing
• Boolean Parsing

http://community.adxstudio.com/downloads/productivitypack

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/microsoft-dynamics-crm-2011-development-resources.aspx

http://www.kingswaysoft.com/products/ssis-integration-toolkit-for-microsoft-dynamics-crm

http://downloads.mycrmgroup.com/ePDF.aspx

http://www.axonom.com/crm_solutions/powertrak/pt_crm_editablegrids.html

http://www.dynamicsexchange.com/EGS.aspx

http://www.rssbus.com/ado/mscrm/

http://www.dynamicsexchange.com/SPE.aspx

http://workflowautomation.codeplex.com/

http://www.crmcodex.com/products-page/applications/crm-codex-record-recovery/

http://crmattachmentimage.codeplex.com/

Also check out the thread at http://mscrmblogger.com/2011/05/10/crm-attachment-image-for-crm-2011-entities/

http://www.supersearch.fi/

http://www.targit.com/en/Products/Fast_integration_tool/For_MSDynamicsCRM

http://www.shrpr.org/p/shrpr-web-resource-editor.html

http://www.vscrm.com/CRMRules.html

http://crm2011ldgmanager.codeplex.com/

See also: http://xrm2011.wordpress.com/category/views-toolkit/

http://www.zero2ten.com/skype2crm.aspx