CRM Accelerators

For anyone who is unaware of the CRM Accelerators for MSCRM 4.0 you may want to take a look into some of the things that the Microsoft CRM team has put together for partners to be able to access. There were a number of webinars on them last week and the Accelerators are supposed to be out very soon. I received word today that two are to be available today or tomorrow (10/27/08 or 10/28/08) and 3 others by the end of the week. As far as coding, everything is done, from what I understand, they just have to get everything through the PR and legal type stuff.

These are to be fully supported since they are built using the SDK. And source code will be available to partners as well so we can modify custom code to fit our clients needs if necessary. However, if you modify Microsoft's code and don't follow the SDK then you're on your own and not supported. If you stay within the SDK, it may not be as easy for Microsoft support to assist you but they will still support you.

The modules to be released this week are:

Today/Tomorrow:
Extended Sales Forecasting
CRM Notifications (RSS Feeds from CRM views)

Later this week:
eService (an external service portal)
Event Management
Analytics

Keep your eyes open inside of PartnerSource as that is where they will be posting the downloads. If you are not a Microsoft Partner then you will either need to become one, talk to your MSCRM partner, or wait until someone you know has gotten these from a Microsoft Partner and have him/her send them to you.

These are free but if you buy the external Accelerators (like eService) then you will need to purchase the external connector license, so be aware of that.

I'll keep you posted as I hear more.

David Fronk
Dynamic Methods Inc.