February 6, 2012 – Microsoft announced today the Q2 2012 Service Update for Dynamics CRM, and the fact that it’s branded as the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Anywhere release should give you a good idea of what to look forward to. Here are some of the highlights, starting with two things I get asked about all the time: iPad and multiple browser support.
Native iPad support
Including a feature-rich client (dashboards, dial or text from record, mapping, two out of three of which you can see in the following figures)
Multiple browser support
- IE on Windows 7
- Safari 5.11 + on Mac OSX and iPad 2
- Firefox 6+
- Chrome 13.x
Enhanced Activity Feeds
- Builds on current foundation
- Adds Likes/Dislikes
- Improved filtering of activity feeds
It sounds like this release will still only expose Dynamics CRM records on the activity feeds “wall”, but that the Q4 2012 Service Update will extend this to external communities.
More Industry Solutions
Expect to see industry templates like the following, both from Microsoft and partners, in the Microsoft Dynamics Marketplace:
- Wealth management
- Non-profit
- Health Plan Sales
- Relationship management for healthcare
Leveraging new features and improvements in SQL 2012
If you’re attending Convergence you’ll probably want to attend some of the sessions on this important topic.
- Performance improvements
- Next-gen BI with Power View (Crescent)
- Pre-defined Power Pivot models for CRM
- Pre-defined Power View reports
- Available on marketplace as a Microsoft Labs solution
Resources
Here are some of the most important; I’ll post more as we get closer to release.