What's New in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011

April 14, 2011 - PRLog -- Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 provides customers with a wide range of benefits, including point-and-click configurability, enterprise scalability, and easy interoperability to existing applications and databases. Microsoft Dynamics CRM turns outlook into an award winning CRM system so you can share customer data across your company. The new version has many new features; here are just 10 of the more popular features to be found in Microsoft CRM 2011.

1.   Improved Microsoft Office Interface. Microsoft Office 2007 introduced a new ribbon interface in products such as Excel and Word. Microsoft Office 2010 expanded the ribbon into other office products such as Outlook and OneNote. Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 also includes the contextual ribbon interface for improved ease-of-use and consistency with the other Microsoft Office applications.

2.   Role-Based Forms and Views. Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 allows administrators to create multiple forms for each record type. By doing so, organizations can streamline the user interface so that users only see the data they need to access. For example, sales representatives might see a form filled with sales data about a customer, while customer service representatives could view the same customer record but instead see a different form that displays only customer service data.

3.   Inline Data Visualisation. You can now quickly create charts that display next to records in a grid. For example, you can view a list of opportunities and have a chart to the right that visualises the estimated revenue of those opportunities. Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 also includes web-based tools for you to create and edit your own charts.

4.   Dashboards. This feature allows users and administrators to configure dashboards with charts, grids, and possibly even data from external systems. Dashboards can be customised and tailored to each group’s or individual’s needs so that users can quickly access the information they need.

5.   Better Office Outlook Experience. Microsoft Dynamics CRM http://www.pythagoras.co.uk/microsoft_crm.aspx for Outlook offers even deeper levels of integration with Microsoft Office Outlook. You can now use Outlook features such as filtering and conditional formatting on CRM data, in addition to other new benefits such as inserting CRM templates into Outlook email messages.

6.   Contextual Document Management. With Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2010, you can set up and associate integrated document libraries with specific records. For example, you could open an account record in CRM and access a SharePoint document library with the contracts and other documents related to the account.

7.   Field-Level Security. You can toggle security on a custom field and then configure security so that only certain users can view or edit data in that field. This field-level security applies both to forms and data views.

8.   Goal Management. Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 lets you specify the goals you want individuals or teams to achieve, and then track performance against those goals.

9.   Interactive Process Dialogs. You can configure interactive dialogs that work like screen wizards to guide users from page to page, collecting information along the way.

10.   Solution Management. Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 offers a new way for system administrators to manage their customisations. In particular, solutions allow administrators to group and bundle customisations so that the customisations can be transported to different systems more easily. In addition, solutions can be configured to prevent other users from modifying the changes.

Microsoft Dynamics 2011 is available for on premise and also hosted, in the form of Microsoft Dynamics CRM online http://www.pythagoras.co.uk/microsoft_dynamics_crm_online...

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Pythagoras is the UK's leading Microsoft Dynamics CRM partner and has over 10 years experience in implementing CRM solutions. http://www.pythagoras.co.uk/microsoft_crm.aspx