It is not easy to grow a business these days, but when you have years and years of experience and tons of connections and there is a good need, it is often the right thing to do.

John Gravely and his team have just that company with ClickDimensions.

On June 1st, join John to hear some of that great experience as he presents REAL stories of MARKETING with Dynamics CRM. This is a premier event for marketers (not sales people who do a bit of marketing): Offering True Stories of Marketing with Microsoft Dynamics CRM

This live workshop will include examples of real world campaigns where Microsoft CRM was used to:

• Double a newsletter list in two weeks using a unique approach toward email marketing and lead scoring
• Develop an easy way to improve web traffic by understanding the quality of visitors by traffic sources
• Implement a strategy for creating great content that positions your firm as a leader
• Apply simple tips for search engine marketing and search engine optimization
• Provide sales with easy to use automated prospecting and marketing tools to make them more effective and efficient
• Identify how to best use the right social channels to drive business value

It should be fairly interesting as there is so much more that can be done both with the built in features of Microsoft Dynamics CRM Marketing AND with some of the incredible ISV offerings that tie the power of the internet, statistics and technology with the CRM platform.

TO REGISTER

Wow - CodePlex grew while I wasn't paying attention. There are now almost one hundread different free solutions available, all with interesting hints of cool stuff.

Searching on Dynamics CRM: Check it Out

When it comes to learning Dynamics CRM one of my favorite blogs to keep up with is Richard Knudson's Dynamics CRM Trick Bag and as I was catching up I caught a quick little tip at the bottom of one of his posts.

He was summarizing Convergence and low and behold a favorite subject of mine appears. Business card scan options for Dynamics CRM. It always made me sad that Corex cardscan evaporated, because I really liked their integration and devices. Anyway here is a clip from Richard's post.

"What are the best card scanners for CRM?  (How could this topic NOT be included in a Convergence summary article?) Here are the two I’ve had personal experience with, and have recommended to clients who’ve had success with them:

• Cardiris 5 for Windows, from IrisCard
• CardScan, from DYMO"

You just settled in with Microsoft Dynamics CRM v4.0

In fact you are feeling pretty good with it. You have started with the basics, learned a few of the intermediate features, added a few reports that you like and all is good. Next week you might even add a few more workflows to the mix to automate even more of those painful manual processes and THEN

Microsoft comes out with this upgrade. Oh and you took a look and it has some cool new stuff that you want. BUT, but, but there is still so much you can do in Dynamics CRM  v4.0

Well no worries: We have a session to discuss all of these considerations at the VIRTUAL FREE DecisionsWorld conference.

Mark your calendar today - Register (yes, it is free but you need to register) and gather up all of those questions and perhaps a few assumptions so you are ready to debate the timing and benefits of staying vs. upgrading.

The Microsoft CRM web-services normally give you pretty good error messages when you make an invalid request, but occasionally you will get this error message: “Generic Sql Error”. These errors pop up enough that they’ve become a fairly common question on the CRM development forums. The usual responses are to either enable CRM tracing or use SQL Server Profiler to get a better error message. I find that the CRM trace logs don’t always give you anything better that the same generic error message the SDK provides, so SQL profiler is probably the better option. However, if you don’t have experience using the SQL Profiler it can be hard to find the actual error message in the vast amount of data it provides. These are the steps I take to get to the bottom of most CRM “generic SQL” errors using the SQL Profiler:

via www.avanadeblog.com

Thanks Erik!

Happened to run across the release of the 2011 version of CCA out on the Marketplace.  Finally, we can start playing with the "new and improved" version with 2011.

http://dynamics-crm.pinpoint.microsoft.com/en-us/applications/customer-care-accelerator-for-microsoft-dynamics-crm-2011-12884914795

Matt Parks

via www.avanadeblog.com

Thanks for the heads up on this Matt!

The word of the day is OData 

"The Open Data Protocol (OData) is a Web protocol for querying and updating data that provides a way to unlock your data and free it from silos that exist in applications today. OData does this by applying and building upon Web technologies such as HTTP, Atom Publishing Protocol (AtomPub) and JSON to provide access to information from a variety of applications, services, and stores. The protocol emerged from experiences implementing AtomPub clients and servers in a variety of products over the past several years.  OData is being used to expose and access information from a variety of sources including, but not limited to, relational databases, file systems, content management systems and traditional Web sites" retrieved from www.odata.org 

Now apply that to your Silverlight learning as you introduce or mix Silverlight in with Dynamics CRM v4.0 or 2011!

"Silverlight 4 includes rich support for accessing web data either on the Internet or intranet via WCF Data Services. Formerly known as ADO.NET Data Services in Silverlight 3, WCF Data Services provides support for REST-based data access as well as support for the new Open Data Protocol (OData) format" retrieved from http://programming4.us/multimedia/2478.aspx 

Fun Stuff!!

Over the last couple of years I have participated in the MSDynamicsWorld Decisions conference and the first year it was pretty cool, but a little light by the second year the speakers and vendors were really starting to get the format and now VIRTUAL CONFERENCES are well just hot. (Hey, just checking out the technology is cool)

Yes, the world is noisy, people are busy - but given that Decisions 2011 has one full day packed with great CRM Speakers I am helping to spread the world. Last year I heard and shifted my perspective when listening to a talk on Dynamics CRM and the marketing features (how to really leverage what is there) and this year who knows what I will learn.

SO Mark your calendars as June 17th is CRMDAY!

CRM Day 

and for those of you also working with the other products within the Microsoft Dynamics Family you might be interested in these virtual conference days as well.