Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2015 – WHAT’S NEW ? #CRM2015 #MSDynCRM

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2015 is scheduled in December 2014. Coming just four months after their spring ’14 release, Microsoft is not wasting any time in adding numerous improvements and new functionality into their Dynamics CRM solution.

There is lots to be excited about when it comes to the new features included in Dynamics CRM 2015. Here’s a quick summary of what to expect:

PLATFORM

Powerful tools provide the ability to fully tailor Microsoft Dynamics CRM to meet your unique business needs. Dynamics CRM 2015 facilitates the delivery of rapid business value with an agile solution framework that can be easily tailored and configured. The following investments in Microsoft’s platform capabilities further the commitment to an open, customisable and extensible product and online service;

• Field Level Security – Improved security
• Improved Search (using wildcard values)
• Business Rules
• Calculated Fields – Reduced developer costs
• Improved Business Process Flows
• Branching Logic & Calculated Fields
• Business Rules Editor Improvements
• Synchronicity with Outlook and Yammer
• Tablet and Mobile enhancements;

SALES

Microsoft deliver the following new features:

• Improved Guided Sales Process – streamlined guided steps allow sales personnel to follow defined methodologies and best practice. Process flow can be branched to reflect a state change. Brand new calculation fields available.
• Product Families – more definable products with the ability to group and bundle products together.
• CRM for Tablets – major performance improvements and enhancements to design and layout of views on tablet devices.
• Sales Hierarchies – new visual hierarchical chart views now in CRM as standard. (See below screenshot of the brand new Sales Hierarchy function)

 

SERVICE – Case Management Enhancements

Dynamics CRM 2015 enables companies to build customer loyalty, empower agents and drive resolutions by providing relevant, proactive and personalised service across all channels. Companies can connect their customers with the right answers to their service inquiries, at the right time, via their channel of choice across web, social, chat, mobile and phone.

DYNAMICS MARKETING

Released in June 2014, Microsoft Dynamics Marketing is the brand new element to the Dynamics CRM stack.

The world is changing rapidly and is impacting how companies need to engage with customers. According to recent research, customers are 57% of the way through the buying cycle before they engage.

Marketers are becoming ever increasingly accountable for the ROI of the investment made in marketing, however most lack the ability to track campaigns effectively. Dynamics Marketing enables marketing teams to seamlessly go from planning to execution; leveraging the power of Excel and Power BI to measure the effectiveness of campaigns from beginning to end. Dynamics Marketing 2015 includes:

• Multi-channel marketing
• Email editor – create or edit Emails using the easy drag and drop build process
• Campaign Management Console – split test marketing campaigns with ease
• Integrated Social Listening – brand new integration of Social Listening into the Marketing function
• Marketing Analytics – empower your company with access to sales and marketing data through visual dashboards.
• Internal Process Automation – drag and drop actions
• Geographical Expansion – availability of Dynamics Marketing now available in Japan and Russia
• B2B Marketing – improved lead scoring and brand new webinar integration
• Marketing Resource Management – brand new Marketing calendar with integrated Lync collaboration.

See how integrated webinar creation in the below video can assist in your marketing efforts in Dynamics Marketing 2015.

 

Below is a screenshot of the brand new Marketing calendar, gain unprecedented visibility into your marketing plan and improve collaborative marketing with click to call capabilities from Lync.

SOCIAL – Microsoft Social Listening

Social media is changing the way people communicate. Today’s customers are better informed and are receiving their information from a variety of new emerging sources. Buying decisions are becoming increasingly influenced by discussions online, user communities and buyer reviews. Around 75% of B2B customers are likely to use social media to influence their purchase decisions with customers over 67% of the way through the sales cycle before they make first obvious buying contact.

The majority of the available social listening tools are, however, too complex to use and very expensive. This means the relevant and often critical buying information rarely gets used by the sales and marketing personnel who need it the most. Microsoft believe that this valuable information should be available to everyone, which is why this is now available through Microsoft Social Listening.

Microsoft Social Listening offers:

• Analysis of what people are saying in your industry – through Twitter/Facebook/Blogs and YouTube
• Gain social insights – use location filters to narrow your data set and to see posts from specific countries or regions.
• Extended Geographic availability – Listen to social conversations in 19 languages

See the current version of Microsoft Social Listening for yourself and take a free trial here or click on the picture below.

 

For even more information on what Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2015 has to offer, download the Release Preview Guide.

Talk to us today to see how Microsoft Dynamics CRM can benefit your business, book a call back, email: solutions@cps.co.uk or call: +44 (0)1628 895600.

Don’t forget to check out and join our upcoming CRM webinars here.

#Office365 Single Sign On Smart Links

Consider the following scenario… You have migrated your company intranet to SharePoint online and wish to deploy the site as the IE homepage for your staff.

You have ADFS to provide a rich single sign on experience but you still get the Microsoft organizational sign in page when you first login to Office 365.

Using ADFS 2.0 or above, on-prem staff can bypass this login and navigate directly to the SharePoint site by using Smart Links. External Staff will bypass the Microsoft Sign In screen and go straight to your ADFS Proxy landing page.

Interested? Let’s begin.

Prerequisites:

• Fiddler: http://www.telerik.com/fiddler
• ADFS 2.0: Disable Extended Protection
  http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/1426.ad-fs-2-0-continuously-prompted-for-credentials-while-using-fiddler-web-debugger.aspx

Or

• ADFS 3.0: Disable Extended protection token on ADFS Server to allow Fiddler HTTPS decryption
  Set-ADFSProperties -ExtendedProtectionTokenCheck None
• IIS7 or above.

 

Step 1

Open Fiddler and enable HTTPS traffic decryption.
(It is not necessary to enable Windows 8 Mode even on a Windows 8 client for this procedure)

Step 2

Ensure you are logged out of Office 365 and sign into https://portal.micosoftonline.com where you should meet the Office 365 login page. (This must be done internally)

Step 3

Open fiddler and login to Office 365.
You should be taken to your destination without having to enter in any credentials as normal.

(If you get an authentication prompt that will not resolve you need to disable extended protection in ADFS as per the prerequisites).

Step 4

Look for a HTTPS 302 redirection from your ADFS server and copy the URL to notepad.

Step 5

In notepad, remove the text between ls/? and wa=wsignin
Remove all text after wreply%3D

This is your Smart URL and this will form the base part of any links you wish to give out to Office 365.

Step 6

Append the URL after wreply%3D with the target Office365/SharePoint site you wish to direct your users to using base encoding.

For example, https://yourcompany.sharepoint.com becomes https%253A%252F%252Fyourcompany%252Esharepoint%252Ecom

Or

https://yourcompany.sharepoint.com/sales becomes https%253A%252F%252Fyourcompany%252Esharepoint%252Ecom%252Fsales

Substitute with your site URL as appropriate. The final link should look like this:

https:/adfs.yourcompany.com/adfs/ls/?wa=wsignin1.0&wtrealm=urn:federation:MicrosoftOnline&wctx=wa%3Fwsilnin3.0%26aeiou%3D9%26fa%4D5

275200813%26rves%3D3.2.2202.0%26wi%3DJUI%16wreply%3Dhttps%253A%252F%252Fyourcompany%2

52Esharepoint%252Ecom

*Verify this link works by copying it into a IE Private Session that has not been logged into Office 365.

You should be taken straight into 365 and should not have to enter in your credentials.

Step 7

Create internal and external DNS records for your vanity URL to point to your IIS Server.

For example we want to use http://intranet.yourcompany.com as an easy to remember link that passes single sign on and not the full URL we have created in Step 6.

As this is going to be our homepage set via group policy we need to ensure we can resolve this URL Internally and Externally.

Step 8

Create a new site in IIS for your vanity URL by right clicking the sites folder.

Create a new physical path (This will not be used) and add the DNS name you created in Step 7 to the host name.

Step 9

Select HTTP Redirect and paste your URL from Step 6 into the destination box.

Once these steps have been completed your users should be able to use easy to remember links to connect to Office 365 without the need to enter credentials.

This works for the Office 365 Suite with the exception of CRM.

To get CRM to work you will need to perform the same actions from Step 3 changing the Office 365 link you were going to, (youcompany.sharepoint.com for example) to your CRM login.

Capture the URL and remove the text between ls/? and wa=wsignin

DO NOT append after wreply%3D otherwise the link will fail.

Continue the steps as described for the Office 365 smart link.

References

Excellent blog post from David Ross which forms the foundation of this blog post.
http://blog.kloud.com.au/2012/10/12/office-365-smart-links/

Official Microsoft Post
http://community.office365.com/en-us/w/sso/358.using-smart-links-or-idp-initiated-authentication-with-office-365.aspx

Where do I get templates?

I downloaded another template for using when producing wireframes this morning.  It was for CRM, which until recently I had very little need to wireframe.  It made me think about all of the templates that I have created, used and not been able to find.  I use templates for Word, Excel, Visio (wireframe, architecture, processes), Balsamiq, etc. so I thought it might be useful to keep links to the templates in one place.

So this is my collection of links to templates.

Architecture

Microsoft Office (including SharePoint, Exchange & Lync)

Visio 2010

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=35772

SharePoint

SharePoint 2010	Balsamiq	http://sharepoint.jsturges.com/2011/11/sp2010-wireframe-template/
SharePoint 2013	Balsamiq	http://flucidity.com/2013/02/sharepoint-2013-balsamiq-mock-up-template/

CRM

CRM 2013

Visio 2010

http://crmdynamo.com/2014/01/free-to-use-crm-2013-wireframe-template/