Customer Reviews

Working with Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book covers fairly exhaustively all the basic aspects of CRM 2011 customization -- forms, solutions, workflows, dashboards, etc. However, I would definitely NOT recommend it to anyone who's worked with previous versions, who's already gone through the 2011 SDK documentation and the numerous CRM-related blogs out there. There is nothing about plug-ins, scripts, VS integration, so it's clearly not targeted at developers. In other words: don't buy this book if you're wondering whether to use early-bound or late-bound entities in your code.

To sum it up, the book does a good job of showing how customizable MS CRM is out of the box, without writing a single line of code; it doesn't even start to delve into the issues a CRM 4 developer would ask himself when starting up with CRM 2011.

It just seems odd to write a whole book about customizations without any chapter on code (be it client-side or on the server) -- I can't think of any customized CRM project that hasn't required custom code.

Hopefully, there's a "Programming CRM 2011" title in the works at MS Press...

This book does a fine job at introducing some of the new features in Dynamics CRM 2011 (their chapter on the new Dialog functionality does an excellent job at demystifying Input Arguments and Variables; the chapter on Solutions is invaluable), but it does not cover all of the new features. Some of the uncovered/undercovered features are Role-Based forms (covered, but not in great detail), Teams and Team Management (barely covered), Queue Items (barely covered), form-based Lookup filtering (not covered), and Static vs. Dynamic Marketing lists.
It is also not a comprehensive guide for implementing or supporting the application, much less for advanced customization.
Finally, it really only covers the OOTB SFA features, and does not even delve into Service Management, Service Scheduling, or the Product Catalog. For this, I would wait for Dynamics CRM 2011 Unleashed, which, if it lives up to it's CRM 4.0 content, should cover these lesser-known areas of the product.

Overall, it's not a bad book, i just wish it were a little more focused on the new functionality, or just focused in general. The topics/functionality covered seem arbitrary, and this is an on-going issue with books on Dynamics CRM in general: There are only a few books that focus on one specific area of the product (typically SFA) or a particular Job Role (Typically Admin or Developers). It would behoove MSFT to put out a series of specialized books for each area and a number of essential job roles.

CRM offers the kind of customer care that customers deserve. How can I make it easier for the customer to buy the services they need and customize the solution in a way that makes sense for their business? The Sonoma guys walk us through the options to configure, adapt, and extend my company's solution, Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011.

But the interesting part is that, although I am not a developer, I can do some of these customizations myself. You don't have to be a developer or system admin for many of these tips! It does help if you are a power user as a starting point.

The newly introduced concept of Solutions is covered in this book too. With these packaged customizations you can select from the Dynamics Marketplace, you can plug and play some solutions that you might not have the time to create yourself. This book is a must-read for those who want to do the most with their CRM investment.

As mentioned in other reviews, this is not a developer book--it is the book to get if you want to understand how to customize and configure CRM 2011. It's a great resource to have on your shelf when you need to know the best practices for configuration, and if you are a user of an earlier version of Microsoft CRM, a great way to learn what's new. You will need to know how solutions work, how to configure the SharePoint document library integration, setting up dialogs, goal management, etc, and this book will give you what you need.