CRM 2016 announced! My favorite features to look out for

 

You might have seen the press release (http://news.microsoft.com/2015/09/08/microsoft-reinvents-productivity-with-upcoming-release-of-customer-engagement-solution/), CRM 2016 is no longer under NDA and will be released by Q4 of this calendar year! Below is a very quick summary of favorite features I have extracted very high-level (in bold are my biased favorite features!) but if you’d like to read more about it, I suggest you review the release preview guide: http://download.microsoft.com/download/D/5/D/D5D38A09-6A5C-4DC0-8649-3A4F39A8F8F3/Microsoft_Dynamics_CRM_2016_Release_Preview_Guide.pdf

 

 

MOBILE

1.    Full offline support to create, update and delete records while offline. *
2.    Open SharePoint/OneDrive documents from CRM mobile app.
3.    App-to-app deep linking
4.    New UI controls and ability to bind data fields to UI controls
5.    Task bases experiences: Show relevant data from multiple records in a single screen for a given task*
6.    Preview phone/tablet experience from browser while designing forms.
7.    Full web resource (IFRAME) support in mobile.
8.    Integration with Intune for secure CRM data with Mobile Application Management (MAM) in BYOD scenarios.

 

CRM ONLINE*
1.    Data encryption for CRM server
2.    New data centers in Canada (Toronto and Quebec City) and India
3.    Bulk Data Loader tool

 

PLATFORM
1.    Enhanced modern API: REST, OAuth 2, JSON, OData v4.
2.    Next Generation Search: Multi-entity search with relevance ranking*
3.    Azure Machine Learning: Easily configure ML integration for product cross sell recommendations*

 

SALES / SERVICE / MARKETING
1.    CRM app for Oultook (PC / Mac / any browser) *
2.    Excel integration including mobile/tablets and Excel templates for viewing sales data
3.    Consolidated document storage integration from SharePoint, OneDrive and O365 groups.
4.    Document Generation: in one click generate Word/Excel documents from CRM data (orders, invoices, etc.)
5.    Cortana integration*
6.    Single- and Multi-stream service hubs dashboards
7.    Re-designed forms for cases, accounts, contacts and activities with reduced clicks, wall filtering, quick actions on related records.
8.    External Party Access: Give access to your CRM data to third party (customers, partners, etc.)
9.    Enhanced knowledge management curation process.
10.    CRM surveys sent to external people (email/web). Results and analysis captured in CRM. (requires Azure to host feedback page)
11.    Field Service Capabilities (FieldOne acquisition)

 

MDM*
1.    Enabled SMS channel for marketing campaigns (inbound/outbound) in MDM
2.    HTML email rich editor in MDM

 

USD
1.    Centralized auditing configuration
2.    OOB integration with Azure 3rd party systems like HDInsights
3.    Stability and Performance enhancements
4.    Simplified install & upgrade experience. Custom DLLs distributed through CRM server configuration.
5.    PowerBI dashboard

 

MSE*
1.    Feeds from custom sources (RSS) and non-public sources (Yammer)
2.    “Intelligent Social”: Target accounts and share content, detect potential leads vs. cases
3.    Improved sentiment analysis by domain-specific models.
4.    Groups and custom roles
5.    Social Center: Post to Facebook/Twitter with rich multimedia content from social center.

* Only available in CRM Online.