The Next Dynamics CRM User Experience: Orion

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Posted on 21st March 2013 by Jukka Niiranen in News and events

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Convergence 2013 has an excellent virtual counterpart that allows those of us not fortunate enough to be in New Orleans to watch recordings of pretty much all of the sessions. Although often the most important bits get a showing on the keynote sessions, the big news for Microsoft Dynamics CRM customers and consultants was actually hidden inside the concurrent sessions: details of the Orion release. I watched two sessions that show us what the future user interface of Dynamics CRM is going to look like:

Here’s a few Orion screenshots and some notes on the changes in user interface logic.

The single window paradigm

Polaris managed to reduce the amount of popup dialogs in Dynamics CRM, but apart from some nice transient updates of the form (lead to opportunity, new case to existing case), it didn’t change the fundamental UI logic which dictated that each record form opened in a separate window. Well, Orion does exactly that: all records open in the single CRM window now.

Dynamics CRM Orion release screenshot: dashboard

Whether you are on the old main window, meaning looking at a list of records or a dashboard (possibly renamed as workspace?), or opening an individual record form, it all takes place in the same window. The navigation that was previously available only on the main window now follows you wherever you go in CRM. To quote Michael McCormack:

“The whole purpose of Orion is to get rid of that window problem we’ve had for so long.”

Note that he didn’t say Windows with a capital W and plural form… In relation to that, the commitment to cross-browser support was emphasized on several occasions, with McCormack saying he doesn’t currently use Dynamics CRM on Internet Explorer at all and neither does most of his team, just to keep everyone honest about never going back to that IE-only mentality.

The Navigation Bar

With just a single menu bar across all of the application, it’s got to be pretty versatile, right? That’s what the Navigation Bar appears to be. Here’s how to access the main navigation areas (Sales, Marketing, Service etc.) when on a record form:

Dynamics CRM Orion release screenshot: from record form to areas

Next stop, going one level down, meaning one step to the right in the new navigation structure, we can see the entities falling under the Sales area:

Dynamics CRM Orion release screenshot: entities in sales area

Even further down, if we click on the opportunity entity on the Navigation Bar, we’ll get the MRU list = most recently used records. A handy feature that used to be either hidden in the top right corner of the sitemap or alternatively buried in the Outlook backstage menus is now placed literally front and center. Pinned items should also be supported, although there doesn’t appear to be a visible pin in this early version of the Orion UI yet.

Dynamics CRM Orion release screenshot: most recently used records

Working with records

There’s now a default dashboard for each navigation area, which makes quite a lot of sense compared to having them previously only available in the common Workplace (which might be eliminated in Orion by the looks of things). If you’re in a view of records instead, what you get is a nice, widescreen presentation of column information, as there is no longer any left side navigation hogging up space on the screen.

Dynamics CRM Orion release screenshot: entity view

Clicking on a record from the list will not open a new window, you’ll just move onto a record form instead. Want to get back to the previous view? Just use the Back button/gesture of your preferred browser. Crazy, eh? CRM working just like a standard web application and respecting the navigation paradigms everyone’s already familiar with.

So, now that we’re on the record form, how is the Navigation Pane different? Well, it isn’t, which is the whole point. You can (presumably) access any menu of the application from any page of the application through this global top navigation.

Dynamics CRM Orion release screenshot: entity form

Related Records

This was one thing I really hated about Polaris: removing the Ribbon from the new forms effectively made it impossible to add related records for the parent record that you currently had open. Trying to add subgrids on the form to make up for the loss was no help either since the relationship inheritance feature was broken. To add insult to injury, you had a plus sign in the top left corner that allowed you to create a new, blank record of the same type you were currently viewing. When would anyone ever want to do something like that from a record form? (more…)

Convergence 2012 in a (virtual) nutshell

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Posted on 24th March 2012 by Jukka Niiranen in News and events

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Full disclosure: I didn’t actually physically attend Microsoft Convergence 2012 in Houston, Texas. However, that doesn’t mean you have to feel left in the dark, thanks to the immersive experience that is the social web of our times. With live webcasts, near-live blogging and some 6000 tweets on the #CONV12 hashtag, keeping up with the online buzz has never been easier. Here’s my summary of what the event looked like through the eyes of a virtual attendee and some thoughts on where Microsoft and its Dynamics product line appear to be heading based on the announcements at Convergence.

Microsoft Convergence 2012 keynote summary on StorifyKeynote

The opening keynote is where the stage is set for the rest of the event, so watching the live broadcast on Monday was definitely on my agenda. Sure, it’s all about building up hype for your products by telling how great you’ve done so far, how excited you are about your future roadmap and showing off with future concept demos that have little to do with the current reality. So what! You need a little show business alongside your business applications conference.

Having the luxury of my PC keyboard & mouse at my disposal during the event allowed me to experiment with Storify, a social media storytelling tool. I captured the best tweets, photos and screenshots during the keynote and compiled them into my Convergence 2012 story. If you’re anything like me, the mental barrier for sitting down and watching a recorded conference event for 1.5 hours is quite high, so why not glance through the highlights of the show on the Storify summary? After that, you can decide if you want to read the full transcript or watch the recording on the Virtual Convergence site.

Some notes picked up from the opening keynote included:

  • The Dynamics CRM momentum now stands at 2,250,000 users in 33,000 customer organizations.
  • “There are no happy Siebel customers in the world, there just aren’t.” - COO Kevin Turner on Microsofts internal journey from Siebel to Dynamics CRM.
  • Nearly half of the deals won by Microsoft over Salesforce.com have been due to the on-premises option and the hybrid model.

Metro

It’s Windows reimagined time all across Redmond now as we’re nearing the launch of Windows 8 later this year. This means everything that can be shown as a Metro style app running on a tablet, will be shown precisely that way. The fictional Contoso Electronics scenario of the big keynote demo used a highly customized UI built for the retail store experience only. A much more interesting demo was the project management Metro app that looked so realistic you could imagine it becoming an actual UI to some future Microsoft product to be rolled out at Windows 8 launch.

We didn’t get any official screenshots of a Dynamics CRM Metro app yet, but luckily Garth Knutson was able to snap & tweet this picture of a UI concept presented in one of the sessions. Just imagine if assigning users onto a Dynamics CRM opportunity record would look like this, how much higher would the user adoption of a CRM system be among sales people? Ah, CRM reimagined…

Microsoft Dynamics CRM and Metro UI

But the road to metro is paved with Apples. The actual tablet product Microsoft had to show at Convergence was the Dynamics CRM Mobile client for iPad, which meant that Apple devices were well presented in many of the Convergence sessions. Funnily enough, during the conference an internal email leak revealed that Microsoft was banning the use of company budget to buy any Apple products for its Sales, Marketing, Services, IT, & Operations Group. Oh well, guess we won’t be seeing many iPads on stage anymore in the following events. For those of you who haven’t seen the current client yet (developed by CWR Mobility), see my previous post on Microsoft Dynamics CRM Mobile iPad screenshots.

Microsoft Dynamics Metro app running on a Windows 8 tabletAn important aspect to note is that the move towards Metro apps and tablet devices does also have an impact on traditional desktop usage of Dynamics CRM. Back in November I speculated that the legacy of Outlook could not be carried over to the world of Windows 8 tablets in its existing form. Since then this assumption has only been enforced by the announcement of Windows on ARM (WOA) tablets with no classic Windows application support and no sign of Outlook in the list of Office apps promised for these “iPad killers”. What this means is that the functionality exclusive to Dynamics CRM Outlook client must be moved to the cloud. At Convergence, the following functionality was more or less revealed to be included in the R9 release later this year:

  • Direct synchronization of activities through Exchange (instead of Outlook)
  • Support for “track in CRM” functionality in Outlook Web Access (OWA client)

Woo-hoo! It’s been a long time coming, but to me this is a clear sign that Dynamics CRM is definitely on the right track in terms of becoming more compatible with the habits of today’s mobile workforce; how they manage their activities and messages on multiple clients, not just the single Outlook on their work laptop. Making the CRM features available through new channels, such as the Office 15 Agaves, is very important for making Dynamics CRM a relevant tool for knowledge sharing as the applications and devices surrounding it are evolving.

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More agile direction for Dynamics CRM future product releases

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Posted on 12th May 2011 by Jukka Niiranen in News and events

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During Convergence 2011 Atlanta we already heard the first pieces of news about an upcoming change in the release cycle of Microsoft Dynamics CRM product versions. Now we have the updated Statement of Direction May 2011 whitepaper in our hands and it lays out a roadmap for more rapid delivery of new features into both CRM Online as well as on-premises and partner hosted instances.

What has now been labelled as the agile release model for Microsoft Dynamics CRM will mean that an update/upgrade to the core platform will become available every six months. Contrast that to the previous 2-3 years in between major releases and you can see it’s no minor readjustment but rather a whole new way from the Microsoft Dynamics team to deliver products to the business users.

Funnily enough, the SoD whitepaper claims that CRM 2011 is the fifth major release of the product. While it goes by the 5.0 version number, I guess some of the folks in Redmond have already forgotten that there never was a CRM 2.0 realease, rather we saw the version number incremented from 1.2 to 3.0. Oh well, time flies when you’re having fun working in the field of CRM, so let’s move on…

The new release cycle is of course a direct result of the Cloud Power in action. No longer can you spend years in designing and developing features for your new product behind closed doors, even if you are Microsoft. Cloud applications have taught us consumers into living in a world of perpetual beta products that constantly get updated with new functionality, without any effort required from us to physically upgrade the apps. If Google can do it for Gmail, then why would the enterprise users settle for working with a standarized XP/2003 toolset for almost a decade? In the scheme of CRM, if you’re competing against Salesforce.com that has a monthly release cycle (or so I’ve heard), delivering a huge box of new features once every three years (which is what 2011 does offer over 4.0) means you’d have to actually keep three years ahead in terms of development, just to avoid slipping behind your competitor again. Doesn’t quite sound like a winning strategy.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM Statement of Direction May 2011

During the CTP and Beta phases of the Dynamics CRM 2011 release process there were many times when I found either myself or someone else on the forums & blogosphere expressing their thoughts along these lines: “these new features are really awesome, but I just wish the small details of X and Y could be included before RTM, so I can really truly make the most of the product”. In the world of the old release cycle, hearing MSFT representatives reply back with the words “thanks, we’ll try to include it in v.Next” didn’t give much comfort. If the next version was three years away, it’s effectively the same as “forget about it”, if you contrast it with how fast the world of applications keeps turning these days. Facebook grew from 10 million to 310 million active users during a timeframe like that.

Smaller packages of new features twice a year should definitely help Microsoft fill the gaps in product functionality that inevitably appear whenever a big release deadline approaches and planned features have to be dropped to meet the real life requirement of shipping a release. At the moment, Dynamics CRM 2011 is lacking some functionality on three distinct areas that the Statement of Direction says will be addressed in upcoming versions to be released within one year:

  • Cross-browser support. Transforming Dynamics CRM from an Internet Explorer only application to a true cross browser app through a new HTML5 UI, thus finally making the platform an option for Mac users as well.
  • Mobile devices support. The Mobile Express client in 2011 is identical to what we had in 4.0, but with more and more iPads and Android/iOS/WP7 smartphones found in the workplace, the out-of-the-box mobile experience should be much better, with possible 3rd party apps taking it on an even higher level (offline data access etc.).
  • Social CRM. There are two dimensions in which a CRM application needs to be “social enabled” these days: 1) internal collaboration on customer information and activity feeds á la Yammer and Chatter, and 2) capturing and enabling a dialog with the customers in social media channels like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn.

Dynamics Marketplace will also presumably play a role in addressing some of the needs that don’t quite fit into the core product delivered by Microsoft. The accelerators that we saw released for CRM 4.0 were nice proofs of concept, but they weren’t proper add-on products that could have been deployed by the end user organizations without customization and development services provided by MS partners. The solution management framework included in CRM 2011 will make the distribution of apps much easier and I would expect to see development also on the Marketplace functionality as a channel for app delivery (eventually commerce). When the base platform of Dynamics CRM is built on one single product edition (meaning no separate standard/enterprise or sales/service versions), modularity is enabled throug the solution packages. While the verticals will likely remain a partner driven domain, I’m expecting to see some interesting releases coming from Microsoft Dynamics Labs as well.

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