How to Set a Partner of Record in Office 365

Posted on by Keith Cockerham

Go to http://portal.microsoftonline.com and log in with your Office 365 details.

 

From the dashboard, choose Licences

 

 

Click on your subscription. You may see more than one subscription in the list.

 

Click add under Partner Information

 

Enter Partner ID 4112828 and click Check ID

 

Partner should be shown as Optimal CRM as below

 

Optimal CRM is now set as your Partner of Record.
You may need to repeat the above steps for any other Office 365 subscriptions.

 

Please contact us if you need any help with the above steps.

Office 365 Admin App

Posted on by Keith Cockerham

Earlier this week Microsoft released a new iPhone, iPad and iPod touch application for IT administrators to check the service status of Office 365.

The Office 365 Admin mobile app empowers IT service administrators to connect to their organizations’ Office 365 service status on the go. The Office 365 Admin mobile app enables administrators to view service health information and maintenance status updates. In addition, administrators can filter information by service subscriptions and configure app data refresh interval.

You can download the app for Windows Phone from the Windows Phone Store and for iOS from iPhone and iPad

Chris and Rod’s Charity Cycle Ride

Posted on by Keith Cockerham

This week; our group sales director, Chris Oldfield is cycling 400km across the Western Cape of South Africa with his best friend Rod Dyer to raise money for REGAIN – The UK Trust for Sports Tetraplegics.

Over the past year Chris and Rod have raised an amazing £7,700 for the charity through various sponsored events such as a Pig Race, a Bonfire, a Movie night and an end of summer BBQ and concert. Both have paid their own travel expenses and every penny profit from the events has gone to the benefit of REGAIN.

There is still time to support them using the Just Giving Donation site

This week, we will be keeping in touch with their progress using Microsoft Lync Video Conferencing with their mobile devices. 

Good luck guys!

Microsoft CRM 2013 Whats new

Posted on , updated on by Keith Cockerham

What’s changed in CRM 2013

Here are a couple of handy guides from Microsoft including What’s changed in CRM 2013 and the Microsoft CRM 2013 Release Preview Guide

To summarise the changes;

Updated Navigation
The first thing you’ll notice is that the navigation has been completely redesigned. The navigation pane has been removed and replaced with a new horizontal navigation bar at the top of the screen which is designed to be ‘touch friendly’ for use on tablets.

Goodbye Ribbon
The ribbon has been removed from within a record and the top 7 commands are now displayed, additional commands are displayed under the More Commands (…) button.

Process Flows
Originally introduced in the Polaris update back in February, the new UI allows the creation of structured business processes. A good example of this is now when converting from a Lead to an Opportunity, these are now displayed within the same window instead of a flurry of popup windows.

Mobile Apps
Microsoft have introduced mobile apps for the following platforms:
Windows Phone 8: Windows Phone Store
Windows 8: App store for Windows 8
Apple iPhone: Apple App store
Apple iPad: Apple App store
Android phone: Google Play store

Quick Create Forms
Quickly create a new record when working within a new record. For instance, create a new phone call when working within a lead.

Legacy code discontinued
The way custom code was written changed between Microsoft CRM 4 and 2011. This was still supported until CRM 2011 Rollup 12 and is now no longer supported in CRM 2013. This means if you previously upgraded from CRM 4 and are on an older version that was heavily customised; these customisations may no longer work when upgrading to CRM 2013. Fear not; we can assess your system and determine if any code needs to be changed prior to the upgrade.

If you would like help upgrading or would like a CRM 2013 orientation session, please feel free to call us on +44 1924 665589 or use the Contact Us form.

Free eBook – CRM for Dummies

Posted on , updated on by Keith Cockerham

Microsoft are offering “CRM for Dummies” as a free eBook to help customers and prospects get the most out of Microsoft Dynamics CRM

The book allows you to discover information about functionalities that will improve the way you handle customer contacts, leads, opportunities and case resolution.

These out-of-the-box functionalities can make your sales and marketing processes more effective and efficient.

You’ll then be ready to put your hands on and experience the power of operational CRM for you and your organisation.

Download the free CRM for Dummies eBook here.

Microsoft Surface Review

Posted on , updated on by Keith Cockerham

Recently, I bought a Microsoft Surface.

At home, it’s replaced my netbook for surfing and sending emails.  Surfing the web feels very natural on the Surface’s touch screen interface.  I also opted for the touch keyboard.  This means you can type on-screen when required but still pull out the touch keyboard for more fiddly text editing and blogging.

The Surface hasn’t managed to replace my work PC for one reason; although you can use Microsoft Dynamics CRM and check your email, you can’t use Microsoft Outlook on Surface RT so there’s no way of tracking emails in Microsoft CRM.  This makes sense though as the Surface RT is aimed at consumer use and the Surface Pro coming out early next year is designed for business use.

There’s one app I must mention though.  OneNote MX!  I no longer carry my laptop to meetings – just my Surface.  I enter all meeting notes into OneNote and they are automatically synced up to my SkyDrive account.  Admittedly, taking notes on OneNote takes a little bit of getting used to; I sometimes find I have to concentrate a bit harder typing notes rather than scribbling on a pad but I’m sure this will get more natural as time goes on.  It’s also handy to take pictures of drawings etc and embed them into OneNote.

Another feature worth noting, when I logged into my surface with my Live ID/Microsoft Account, Windows 8 picked up all my profile settings from my other Windows 8 devices – even my Wi-Fi passwords and browsing history.

All in all I’m glad I invested in a Surface.  Yes you can buy cheaper android devices but adding a keyboard bridges the gap between a laptop and tablet.

Tornbridge use Office 365

Posted on , updated on by Keith Cockerham

Recently we have been working with author, Stephen Michael Moore to create a website for his latest book.  Set in 1814 amidst the British and American war, The Washington Adventure follows the story of legendary pompous idiot, William (Lord) Peel of Tornbridge.  Rather than creating a general website about the book, the website is based around the fictitious town of Tornbridge.

The Tornbridge website uses the public facing SharePoint Online site within Microsoft Office 365.  The author can log into the site and easily change the layout and content without any need to learn HTML or scripting language.

Microsoft Partner Briefing Manchester

Posted on , updated on by Keith Cockerham

On Monday this week, I attended the Microsoft Partner Briefing in Manchester.  Key members of Microsoft UK outlined the roadmap and new technology coming over the next few months.

Things to look out for include the next release of Office 365 and Microsoft Office 2013.

No official release date was confirmed for Office 2013 but you can download the technical preview from http://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/officepreview

James Akerigg demonstrated a few features of office 2013 including the ability to publish documents from Word 2013 directly to blog sites such as WordPress and Blogger.

James also demonstrated new features in Excel 2013 such as the new “flood fill” feature where you can dynamically split addresses and contact details by changing a few entries. Another feature demonstrated was being able to plot Excel data directly to Bing maps using the new office App store.

Another interesting feature demonstrated was the ability to use the Office 2013 Web App offline!

Later in the day, we met with Microsoft management to discuss the strategy for selling Microsoft’s cloud services including Microsoft CRM Online, Office 365 and Windows Intune