Microsoft CRM 2011 - Features/Buzzwords

CRM 2011 deliver many new features. Much to learn! Here i will give an overview about the most interesting features. I will explain some of them in my further posts.

General Stuff (User Perspective)

• Excel Export and Import with Create and Update Feature (Delete is not available)
• Processes (Dialog Based Workflows)
• Business Auditing (XML-Based)
• Create Entity on Import
• Strg + Z
• Goals (Sales)
• Recently Visited Objects (Pinnable)
• Completely new Outlook Client (MultiTenancy Support, Social Touch, Excel-Style Filtering)
• Mobile Client (also Dashboards are supported but not with Reports)
• Sharepoint Integration

Customizing

• Solutions (Holy Grail?)
• WebResources (GIF, XAP, HTML, ...)
• Filtered Lookups (Hooray!)
• Ownership - Teams instead of Organization
• Views can be shared
• FieldLevelSecurity (If you dont have permissions on field Level --> Fielt is available but always empty)
• EntityBased Forms (If an account is a partner --> You can configure specific fields)
• RoleBased Forms (Sales-Team can have different forms than service)
• Connections - AddHock Relations
• Dashboards/Visualizations
• Lists as "Scrollable Views" in Entites
• Headers and Footers in Forms
• Tree/Sections instead of Tabs
• Ribbon instead of MenuBar
• Name of Root-Businessunit is changeable
• Automatically deleting of successfull workflow jobs
• Reccuring Activities
• Own Activity-Entities
  
• Marketplace Integration

Development

• Default .NET Types (bye "CrmNumber" hello "int?"...)
• New BaseType "Entity"
• Linq Support
• DataProvider
• oData (WCF DataService) Endpoint for Silverlight and Javascript
• Plugins OnlineReady (Sandboxing)
• Transaction-Support in Plugins
• Portal integration
• Reports OnlineReady (Sandboxing)
• FetchXML for Reporting (Middle Tier)
• AzureSupport

Deployment

• Online and OnPremise available
• Splitting Components (Async Service, Website...) to different Servers with GUI-Installer
• Authentication Changes (AD and Claims Based)