Microsoft Dynamics CRM Learning Resource Center

Welcome To The Microsoft Dynamics CRM Learning Resource Center!

New to Dynamics CRM and you want to learn more about it? You are on the right track. On this page you will find lots of resources to get started.
Dynamics CRM is not new to you? No problem at all! We provide links, tools and resources for every level.

No time to figure it all out on yourself? Have you checked out our Microsoft Dynamics CRM courses yet?

What can I do?
Getting Started - Using Microsoft Dynamics CRM
And now what? - Configuring and Customizing Dynamics CRM
Is that all? - Extending Dynamics CRM using .NET
More! More! More!!!! - Using Dynamics CRM as a Business Platform

Presentations
Combining the strength of Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server 2007 with Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0

Courses
Microsoft Dynamics CRM courses
Related Courses

Getting Started - Using Microsoft Dynamics CRM

Let's start with the most basic thing first: let's define CRM and Microsoft Dynamics CRM. Once you have that behind you, you can dig a little deeper in its features and possibilities.

Definitions

Definition - What is CRM?
Customer relationship management (CRM) is a broad term that covers concepts used by companies to manage their relationships with customers, including the capture, storage and analysis of customer information. (Source: Wikipedia.org)

So the C in CRM does NOT stand for Contact? No, that's right, it stands for Customer, but typically CRM can also involve other parties you come in contact with. ...Confusing... Should the C not stand for Contact then after all?
These are the three things that define CRM and help you differ it from simple contact management:
- Customer-facing: it touches every aspect in the customer life cycle: customer acquisition, retention and value. This involves your sales, marketing and service activities.
- Process-focused: A process oriented method ensures consistency and efficiency across the customer life cycle. For you, your business, your colleagues and every customer you come in contact with.
- Team Oriented: collaboration is the magic word. (there is no I in team, ...neither in CRM?)
Definition - What is Microsoft Dynamics CRM
Microsoft CRM redefines customer relationship management with a fast, flexible, and affordable solution for driving consistent and measurable improvements in all of your customer business processes using tools and technology like Microsoft Office and Outlook that you already know and use. (Source: Microsoft)

CRM is a strategy, Microsoft Dynamics CRM helps you achieve it.
History has shown us that user acceptance is one of the most important factors for the success of a new product, process or any other service that has to be deployed. To overcome this problem, Microsoft Dynamics CRM has been built with the following three tenets in mind:
- It works the way you do: Microsoft Dynamics CRM offers a native outlook experience and integrates nicely within Microsoft Office. No need to learn a new user interface.
- It works the way your business does: every company has its own specific products and services. This requires a system to be adaptable to your processes and not the other way around. You customize the system; the system is not customizing you.
- It works the way IT does: Deployment, maintainability and integration should be easy. It is based on standards and does not require highly specialized or unique knowledge. Even IT should be happy with it.
Microsoft Dynamics CRM Titan has added one more: The Power of Choice. This is driven by the three new key features:
- Multi-Tenancy: choose where, when and how you want to use the program. From outlook, the browser or your mobile device? On premise, partner hosted or Microsoft Dynamics CRM Live (Microsoft running it under the concept of the popular Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) concept - Currently ONLY available in North America)
- Multi-Lingual: Choose the language for your organization and/or for every user individually.
- Multi-Currency: Support for multiple currencies, so you can easily manage customers from different locations.
On top of that, you are free to change your mind at any time.

Using Dynamics CRM (end user perspective)

The way you use Microsoft Dynamics CRM greatly depends on your function within your company and the role you play in the customer life cycle. Microsoft Dynamics CRM supports this by categorizing its possibilities into a couple of functional groups. Although some of their functionalities overlap, the first three groups (Sales, Marketing and Customer Service) can really be seen as separate modules in Microsoft Dynamics CRM. Reporting and Analytics is a group which you will encounter in all the modules.

Sales: increase your sales success by managing your sales life cycle. It includes Account, Contact, Lead, Opportunity, Quote, Order, Invoice, and Product Catalog management.
Marketing Automation: enhance marketing effectiveness by managing you marketing automation life cycle. Plan, manage and track your marketing campaigns from development to launch.
Customer Service: deliver outstanding customer service by managing your service and service scheduling life cycle. This includes Contract, Case, Knowledge Base, and Queue management, Service scheduling and Scheduling administration.
Reporting and Analytics: start treating your customer data more like customer information. Establish new business intelligence in real-time to uncover business trends and performance results.

Learn more?

If you are interested in learning more about the use of Microsoft Dynamics CRM and its modules, then the first part (2 days) of our course "Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 for Power Users " is certainly for you. The second part (3 days) is about configuring and customizing Microsoft Dynamics CRM: two tasks which are unavoidable once your company introduces Microsoft Dynamics CRM.

Related Tools, Products and Documentation

Microsoft Dynamics Snap (Pre-Release): these applications allow workers to access Microsoft Dynamics data where and when they need it—while working in Microsoft Office
Available today:
- Business Data Search Snap-in: all the information you need is at your fingertips with powerful search capabilities that allow you to search for information across your Microsoft business systems including Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Microsoft Dynamics AX and SharePoint Server portals from within Microsoft Office Outlook as simply as you search your email.
  Demo - White Paper
- Business Data Lookup Snap-in: instantly insert relevant data from Microsoft Dynamics AX or Microsoft Dynamics CRM directly into the Word document, Excel workbook or Outlook email.
  Demo - White Paper
- Custom Report Generator Snap-in: simply extract, view and analyze relevant data from Microsoft Dynamics AX or Microsoft Dynamics CRM in a neatly formatted Microsoft Office Excel report.
  Demo - White Paper
- Timesheet Management Snap-in (NOT available for Dynamics CRM!): use your Outlook Calendar entries to submit timesheets without having to log into Microsoft Dynamics AX directly.
  Demo - White Paper
- Vacation Management Snap-in (NOT available for Dynamics CRM!): use your Outlook Calendar to submit vacation requests without having to log into Microsoft Dynamics AX directly.
  Demo - White Paper
- Expense Management Snap-in (NOT available for Dynamics CRM!): easily create, submit and approve or reject expense reports in SharePoint, without having to log into Microsoft Dynamics AX directly.
  Demo - White Paper
- Customer Journal Snap-in: make your customer meetings more productive with direct access to all the relevant information you might need about your customer right on your laptop. The Customer Journal Snap-in uses InfoPath to capture details like open orders and credit history from your business solution database in one, convenient and easy-to-use document. You can then take notes offline when visiting with your customer and synchronize the notes when you're back in the office.
  Demo - White Paper
- More Snaps are being developed...
More Product Information

And now what? - Configuring and Customizing Dynamics CRM

Before your users can effectively use Microsoft Dynamics CRM, you will have to configure and customize the system so it matches your own specific business information, needs and terminology.

Configuration: configuration is a critical step in the deployment of your Microsoft Dynamics CRM system. It involves setting up the security roles, system-wide settings like business units and teams, products and price lists, competitors, support queues, subject hierarchy, templates and more. Some of these are required to support the full functionality of some features in the sales, marketing and service modules.
Customization: Microsoft Dynamics CRM offers a bunch of customization options. It goes from renaming and extending the out of the box entities, over adapting the user interface to creating entirely new business entities and defining relations between them. While you are doing these, don't forget to update or create new workflows so your system starts working the way your business does (and not the other way around!).

No need to learn a programming language! All of these can be done right from the Web-based user interface.

Learn more?

In our course "Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 for Power Users" we spend three days on configuring and customizing Microsoft Dynamics CRM.

Related Tools, Products and Documentation

Track and Communicate your customization: When you’re deciding how to customize, everyone has an opinion. Keep the meeting organized with these handy files, and make sure you have a record of what you decided.
Invoke Systems Visio Shapes For Microsoft Dynamics CRM: These help you to develop a Functional Design Document or Vision Document that describes exactly what you are going to build on the Microsoft CRM Platform

Is that all? - Extending Dynamics CRM using .NET

If the core functionalities are not enough, you can always decide to extend it using Microsoft .NET. In this area you will particularly benefit from the Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) Microsoft Dynamics CRM was build on.
What are the options?

Server Programming with the Server SDK: allows you to extend the CRM functionality and integrate with other systems.
Client Programming with the Application SDK: customizing or extend the web client or one of the Microsoft Dynamics CRM clients for Outlook.
Extend CRM with Plug-Ins: Plug-ins allow you to define and "plug in" custom business logic at predefined locations in an entity's lifecycle.
Workflow: Use the same Workflow as introduced with .NET 3.0 to enable your business process automation.
Offline SDK: work with the offline SDK to customize and extend the offline capabilities of the CRM offline.

Learn more?

If you've already heard about Microsoft Dynamics CRM and .NET programming is not new to you, then we've got the right course for you: "Developing Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Solutions". In the first part (3 days) we cover all the extensibility options, in the second part we take a look at the use of Microsoft Dynamics CRM as a business platform.

Learn more?

In "Developing Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Solutions", we focus two days on the integration possibilities between Dynamics CRM and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server and the intelligent use of our customer data with Sql Server Analysis Services.

Related Tools, Products and Documentation

Invoke Systems Power Tools: These tools help you develop Microsoft Dynamics CRM solutions.
Linq To CRM:The Linq to CRM project provides a custom query provider for Microsoft Dynamics CRM. (VS2008, .NET 3.5)

More! More! More!!!! - Using Dynamics CRM as a Business Platform

Microsoft Dynamics CRM is more than a product. It is a solution build on .NET using a Service Oriented Architecture. In other words: it has been built to support extensibility, integration and support towards other technologies. Instead of relying on specific Microsoft Dynamics CRM technogies it makes use of other proven and working Microsoft technologies: Microsoft SQL Server 2005, Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services, .NET and .NET Workflow Foundation.

Learn more?

In "Developing Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Solutions", we focus two days on the integration possibilities between Dynamics CRM and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server. If you are interested in the integration with Sql Server Analysis Services for the the intelligent use of your CRM data, the course "Building Business Intelligence Solutions for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0" may suit you better.

Related Tools, Products and Documentation

Microsoft Dynamics CRM Analytics Foundation: this is a business intelligence solution accelerator for Microsoft Dynamics CRM customers and partners. With Analytics Foundation, executives can better track and manage business performance with dashboards and KPIs. Managers and employees can create reports quickly and make better decisions. Sales, marketing, and service employees can identify and act on new opportunities to grow revenue and improve business efficiency with predictive analytics.

Presentations

Here are some of the presentations I've done. You'll be able to download my slides and demos here.

February 2009 - Dynamics CRM Evening : Exposing, Finding and Analyzing Dynamics CRM 4.0 Data with SharePoint 2007
Learn more about Enterprise Search, Business Data Catalog, SharePoint Dashboards and Analytics with Microsoft Dynamics CRM.

Download Slides
December 2007 - MSDN Evening Session : Combining the strength of Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server 2007 with Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0
Both Microsoft Dynamics CRM and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server are often propagated as Business Application Platforms. And although we sometimes have to make a choice between these technologies, there is a an alternative: let them join forces; combine the strengths of both products into one integrated solution. In this session we will explore the different integration possibilities and their implementation.

Slides

Dynamics CRM 4.0 Courses

These are some of the Dynamics CRM courses that we offer at U2U.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 for Power Users

This course is intended for power users, consultants and key users new to Dynamics CRM 2011. It provides the knowledge required to use, understand, implement and support Dynamics CRM solutions. In the first 2 days you learn about the out-of-the-box application functionality in Dynamics CRM, including Sales Management, Marketing Automation, Service Management and Service Scheduling. The last 3 days are devoted to the configuration and customization of Dynamics CRM. It covers the configuration of: organizational settings, business units, users, teams, security, multilingual user interface settings, currencies and exchange rates. It also covers the Dynamics CRM customization spectrum and students learn how to: customize forms and views, customize entities and attributes, create custom entities and attributes, add relationships and attribute mappings. The course ends with an introduction of the advanced extensibility features in order to provide a complete insight into the possibilities of Dynamics CRM.
Developing Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Solutions

This course is targeting developers who have none or limited Dynamics CRM development skills. The first 3 days cover the Dynamics CRM 2011 extensibility options. Although Dynamics CRM has many out of the box customization options, many companies have requirements which can only be realized by extending the existing feature set of Dynamics CRM. You will learn how to extend the core functionalities in both the online as offline versions. Using .NET Workflow Foundation to automate business process and the extensibility through plug-ins cannot be forgotten here. At the end of the course you will understand the different extensibility options and know how to implement them. In the last 2 days you will learn how you can use these extension methods to integrate with other systems. That knowledge will be applied by integrating with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2010.