Q2 2014 Release

Microsoft Dynamics CRM Spring 2014 Release Preview Guide

Andre MargonoCRM 2013, Dynamics CRM 2013, Microsoft CRM, Microsoft Dynamics, ,

Following up the excitement of last night presentation about the key new features of Dynamics CRM 2013 in Q2 2014 release in Melbourne Dynamics CRM User Group by Mark Smith (@nzCRMguy). Microsoft also released the release preview guide.

This Q2 2014 release is highlighting lots of really amazing new features:

  • Microsoft Dynamics Marketing – major enhancement for marketing: Drag and drop visual Campaign Designer, Lead lifecycle management, Marketing Personalised Homepage, Scalable Email Marketing, Power BI for Marketing, Improved Sales & Marketing Connector (This Dynamics Marketing enhancement requires an extra Office 365 Procurement).
  • Updates on Sales Automation – Insights (puts real-time company and contact information from 30,000 sources into Microsoft
    Dynamics CRM), CRM Tablet App Enhancements
  • Customer Service – USD (Unified Service Desk – not US Dollar), Enterprise Case Management (SLA & entitlements, dynamic routing, KPI, case merge, parent child case, automated case creation, Define Status Reasons, Social Care, Service Management), CRM Tablet app –  Case Management.
  • Parature – Multi-Channel Care: portal, facebook portal, mobile app, real-time chat, Knowledge Management
  • Social Listening – Listen & Analyze, Monitor & Respond, Social Insights in Microsoft Dynamics CRM
  • Sandbox Environments (2 types of sandboxes are available: Minimal Copy & Full Copy) with the abilities: reset Sandbox to Factory Settings, Sandbox snapshot. On top of the sandbox environment, Admin also has the access to the New CRM Online Admin Center.

Aside from the new front-facing features there are also enhancement on the platform capabilities that enabling organizations to build, test and configure CRM deployments of all sizes.

Tooling:

  • CRM Package Deployment Tool
  • CRM Configuration Migration Tool
  • Updated Plugin Registration Tool
  • Visual Studio Toolkit enhancements
  • More PowerShell Support
  • New Windows Client API ( Microsoft.Xrm.Tooling.xxxx )

Extensibility:

  • OAuth discovery specification to support ISV/office clients
  • GROUP AND/OR for workflows

Scale: Scaling Improvements in Async processing to handle very large workloads.

And again adding more compatible environments:

  • Windows 8.1
  • Internet Explorer 11
  • iOS7 Safari on iPad (web application)
  • iPad Air using Safari (web application)
  • Windows Server 2012 R2 (CRM server)
  • iPad Air using CRM for Tablets

Full details can be found on: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/p/?LinkID=395005

Once again, it is definitely an exciting journey for Dynamics CRM, Dynamics CRM is moving really fast and looking forward for the landing of this massive release.