Thanks to Anne Stanton and I think someone on Twitter (sorry cant find the tweet)

The, albeit slight, CRM integration starts at 00:45.

I have just encountered an interesting combination of customer centric ideas.

Firstly I had an email from Crucial UK (the computer memory company) entitled “What’s next for Crucial? We want your ideas!” which went on to ask people to log into their forums and say what they want from Crucial in the future

Then from Jason Kottke I picked up on this piece from the Harvard Business School which describes how the El Bullii restaurant works which includes the quote:

"Adrià’s idea is that if you listen to customers, what they tell you they want will be based on something they already know," Norton observes. "If I like a good steak, you can serve that to me, and I’ll enjoy it. But it will never be a once-in-a-lifetime experience. To create those experiences, you almost can’t listen to the customer." (My emphasis)

As an example of the two ends of the customer spectrum, both valid, and showing the dangers of trying to apply universal rules.

EDIT

Seems I am somewhat misinformed.

Marco Amoedo has added the following comment:

There is support for VSTO Add-ins on 64 and 32 bits already for Office 2010 and it is available with the betas of VS 2010 and Office 2010. Moreover, for the managed .Net add-ins created with previous version and compiled to target any-cpu there won’t be any problem. Well, providing that you don’t use any p-invoke. There is more info at MSDN.

In the case of the CRM Add-in. It is not actually a VSTO Add-in as it is not managed .Net code. Therefore it needs to be specifically compiled for the 64 bits platform. I would expect an updated by the Office 2010 RTM to solve the 64 bits issue.

Many thanks for clarifying this.

I am noticing a bit of a 32-V-64 bit clashes coming down the line.

I have migrated most of my machines to Windows 7, 64 bit but Office 2007 is only 32 bit which is not a problem. I am also in the market for a new machine for a family member and I notice that a large number, possibly the majority, are shipping with the 64 bit version of the operating system.

Now office 2010 finally ships with a 64 bit version. However, I see that PCPro warns that some aspects of Office 2010 wont work with 64 bit versions and I also read that the CRM 4 client wont work either.

The primary culprit is the fact that most add-ins are based on COM and activeX and there is not currently a 64 bit Visual Studio Tools for Office runtime. Lets hope this does come together well in advance of RTM.

It was good to hear Andrew Bybee say in the xRM and Azure PDC session (07:22) that they not only will they be supporting .NET 4 and loads of other new development features in MSCRM V5  but they would be maintaining backward compatibility.

I have now watched the videos that came out of the Microsoft PDC and I have been mulling over what this means for the way we as partners will work with the new capabilities and how it will change our propositions.

The conclusion I have initially come to is that Version 5 is a major game changer and has the capability to be a significant disruptive force in the partner community.

So why have I come to this conclusion? Well, the key message I have taken away from watching this is that MSCRM has taken the major step from being a product to a platform.

What’s the difference? Well, lets look at where we are now with MSCRM 4.

In Microsoft CRM Version 4 we have a deployment model that looks like this:

Within each deployment there are a whole range of components, each of which has complex and deep dependencies on each other. The result of this is that it is very difficult to extract specific solution based functionality in a manner that is independent of a specific deployment and is supportable, upgradeable and protectable.

The result of this is that whilst many partners  seek to have a vertical offering it is hard to make the model fit the technology and to justify the commitment to the level of focus that is needed and not get drawn back into the competition for the next RfP that is issued.

This is why I say to people who ask “where is your competition” I answer “Other Microsoft Partners” and not SalesForce.com or similar.

So where does Version 5 take us?

Well the whole model has changed. We are moving from a model where a single deployment exists to a modular or package environment. The new model looks like this:

Now we have a mechanism for gathering together configurations, code, workflow and any other components and wrap them up into a package. The CRM engine will identify and, if appropriate include any dependencies and the package can be protected.

The other key feature of this package mechanism is that packages can be easily dropped in and out of a deployment and upgraded. This means that if a feature is added or improved then it is very easy to add it to multiple deployments.

So what do I think this all means for partners?

Well, apart from changing the way we think about development and methodologies, I see this making a fundamental change in the way partners can do business. We will now be working with a platform as opposed to an application and this means that, like our colleagues in the ERP space,  we now HAVE TO GO VERTICAL.

From now on if we are not targeting reusable solutions then we will be beaten to the deals by those partners who do have drop in packages and have wrapped their experience up into vertical solutions.

I don’t make much of my pre-consulting days especially on this blog but headlines and stories such as these do deserve recording.

100th repatriation And Dignity

PC Bill Barker

“There but for the grace of God” as the saying goes.

Sometimes “Lets be careful out there” comes undone.

They are in my thoughts.

And as I kneel by your cross
I realize that I never knew you
but I know you did this for me
even though you never knew me.

I have found through the comments on this blog possibly the one of the best code blogs for MSCRM.

http://a33ik.blogspot.com/

I had initially started this post  with the intention of highlighting a few of the key code components that I would find useful. However, when I had 12 tabs open in IE I realised that I was approaching this all wrong.

The correct approach is ..

If you need code, be that client, server or workflow then check here first as there is a good chance Andriy has done it already and if you don’t find it maybe hire him to build it

Just for example need a workflow action which returns current DateTime value. He has that!

Just a disclaimer – I have NO connection to Andriy and I have not built or installed any of his code, ever, so YMMV.

I don’t know where this originated bit I picked it up from here.

If anyone has been seeing any strange testing posts in their feeds, my apologies.

I was examining the new geo-tagging feature that WordPress have turned on.

Unfortunately is of no real use. When I tried the “Auto Detect” feature it put me in Lambeth, London, which is strange as my IP is registered to my ISP which is based in Sheffield 200 miles away.

When I set it correctly I found that it does not remember where I am so any new posts have to be manually reset and this also means that posting using Live Writer does not pick up the location.

Its a nice idea but needs a LOT of work.

In one of those major about turns that all companies do from time to time Microsoft has accepted that the total lock down of the Office Ribbon bar was, in hindsight, a bit harsh!

So now in Office 2010 we can go back to meddling with our Ribbon, with added value.

We can now have our own “My Tabs”, which can be called anything you want, with commands on them that are most relevant to how you work.

The ability to change  the in-built tabs.

The ability to import and export your tab customisations. This is a nice one, say a team has a set of templates or add-in functions key to their job you can group them once and share them out.

Finally, in a nod to the fact that customising the ribbon was taken out because of the problems it caused Support Desks when every toolbar was different, there is the ability to lock all of this down through group policies.

I have to say that I am really happy about this and I think the key difference to the problems faced by the old toolbar and Office 2007 way of doing things is that users are now much more aware of the ribbon and, most importantly, it is not possible to randomly re-arrange the toolbars by mistake and also drag them onto the working surface or close them by mistake which was the single biggest cause of support calls I had to manage from my one supported users. Yes, you guessed it, my Mother.