Below are the two basic steps you need to complete in order to become a registered Dynamics CRM partner:

1. Microsoft Partner Network (MPN): The first step for any new ISV partner is to enroll in the Microsoft Partner Network. The Microsoft Partner Network is a single, integrated membership that focuses on your ability to serve your customers. To enroll, please visit: https://mspartner.microsoft.com/en/us/Pages/Membership/enroll.aspx. When you join the Microsoft Partner Network, you receive a set of core benefits that help you to save time and money while you strengthen your core capabilities and portfolio pertaining to Microsoft. If you have any issues during the sign-up process, please visit the Regional Operations Center Support website (https://mbs2.microsoft.com/PartnerSourceApp/chatnow.aspx?r=90&l=3) to contact a support professional or call 1-800-676-7658.
2. Partner Registration Agreement (PRA): The second step is to sign the Partner Registration Agreement (PRA). This document must be received via postal mail from the ISV partner. Electronic copies will not be accepted. You can get a copy of the Partner Registration Agreement by emailing MBSjoin@microsoft.com. The Microsoft Dynamics PRA provides partners with the following benefits:
• 1 year renewable development and demonstration environment
• Access the PartnerSource North America Training Homepage
• Easy visibility to Microsoft Dynamics Readiness, Trainings and Events
• Enables ISVs to participate in the Dynamics Partner Revenue Recognition Program
• Join partner communities, blogs, and forums
• Access to the PartnerSource Business Center (formerly VOICE) that serves as a one-stop shop for Microsoft Dynamics information including real-time sales, financial information, list of existing Microsoft Dynamics customers and support history information. For more information on how to use PSBC, please visit https://mbs.microsoft.com/partnersource/global/help/help/how_to_use_PSBC.

These steps are part of the broader Dynamics CRM ISV playbook/guide with lot more details on partner programs, ISV partner types (reselling, non-selling, etc), App Store listing with PinPoint, GTM (Go-to-market) guidance and many more important details. You can download the playbook from PartnerSource here: https://mbs.microsoft.com/partnersource/partneressentials/guides/dynamicspartnerplaybook.htm. But the catch is that you have to be a registered Microsoft partner before you can access PartnerSource. I’ve mentioned this catch-22 situation to our partner team and I’m sure they’ll be fixing this soon.

I swear I didn’t come up these steps but I’m just the messenger here trying to share information that I could discover. Many thanks also to Kasara D’Elene who had meticulously put the ISV playbook together, gathering resources from several Microsoft properties and teams. See you soon on the Microsoft Dynamics ecosystem!

Next week at extremeCRM2014 conference, I’ll be presenting a session on mobility with Dynamics CRM. I will be co-presenting with Richard Dickinson from the CRM engineering team, so you can expect a wide variety of mobile topics to be covered in the session. Besides a showcase of first party apps and partner solutions, you will also see some of the Mobile Helper Code for Dynamics CRM in action during the session. Here is the detailed abstract of the session.

Mobile Strategy with Dynamics CRM

http://www.extremecrm.com/2014LasVegas/Agenda/DetailedAgenda/SessionDetail/tabid/367/Default.aspx?Code=US14-P05

Level: 200 - Intermediate
Day: 10/07/2014
Time: 10:30 AM - 11:45 AM
Room: Octavius 7

Mobility can make or break your CRM business but are you confident about your mobile pitch and skillset? In this session, we’ll showcase the breadth of Microsoft Dynamics CRM mobile offerings and discuss how partners can take advantage of our mobile strengths to redefine your strategy and discover new opportunities.

Also later in the day, there is also a mobility Q&A panel featuring Richard Dickinson along with CWR Mobility and Resco, so don’t miss it if you’d like to discuss further on mobility.

See you in Vegas!

BTW download links for the mobile helper/sample code for Windows and other technical details are available here: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/crm/archive/2014/09/08/new-sample-code-for-dynamics-crm-mobile-development-on-windows-8.aspx. Many thanks Kenichiro Nakamura from Microsoft who single-handedly built and pioneered this in his spare time!

What’s Next?

As a mobile-first organization, we will be delivering a whole lot more. Amazing new capabilities on our CRM for tablet & phone apps as well as more guidance on custom apps including cortana sample, iOS sample, Android sample, mobile framework guidance, reference documentation, presentations and much more are yet to come. But as with every mobile platform, true innovation will come from all of the developers, partners and customers that implement mobility with Dynamics CRM in ways we couldn’t have imagined. I’ll be there with at the upcoming Convergence, extremeCRM conference, and many more events to talk about this.

Why are we doing this?

While we have fantastic first-party apps with CRM for Tablets and CRM for phones, available across a wide variety of devices and consumed by several users, our customers have asked us for guidance on building task-specific apps for certain personas. As you evaluate your mobility needs for your users, you’ll realize that mobility isn’t one-size fits all. Great mobile implementations go beyond just apps and deliver purpose-specific high-value mobile experiences that target specific roles. This will also help you to expand CRM to other users in your organization who wouldn’t otherwise think of using CRM. Remember, mobile access (regardless of the apps/devices) is free for all Dynamics CRM users!

Help us help you

Many of our customers and partners are building amazing mobility solutions and high-value experiences with Dynamics. New Belgium Brewing, Reliance Home Comfort and Metro Bank are just a few examples. What are the cool things you’ve built with mobility and Dynamics CRM? We would love to hear from you and share your stories on bigger stages.

MD333 - Mobile Revolution in Microsoft Dynamics

Time: Wednesday July 16 2:30pm - 3:30pm
Location: 152B

We all live in a mobile-first world but as a partner, are you ready for this new reality yet? BYOD, BYOA and IOT go beyond buzzwords and are critical strategies that can make or break your business. In this session, we’ll share the Microsoft Dynamics mobile strategy and discuss upcoming mobile technologies like Project Siena and Azure Mobile so you can be better prepare for the future. Finally, you will hear from other partners on how they transformed their solutions to lead with mobile.

Of course you’ll see Dynamics at other WPC mobility sessions as well . In Erwin Visser’s Mobility keynote and other mobility sessions, you’ll see concept demos highlighting the potential with Dynamics CRM and other upcoming technologies like Project Siena.

If you are at WPC, I’d love to see you at session and I’m also happy to sit down and chat about your mobile stories. I’m also told that most of the WPC content will be available on-demand later, so please do checkout http://www.digitalwpc.com even after WPC.

Go Mobile!

I’ll be presenting a breakout session on harnessing social technologies with Dynamics CRM. You can find the full session detail below.

Harnessing social technologies with Microsoft Dynamics CRM

http://www.sharepointconference.com/content/sessions/SPC284

The way that people and organizations interact is changing with the explosive growth of social networks such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. Learn how to harness the power of social technologies in your sales, service and marketing strategies. We'll spotlight Yammer for social collaboration and the exciting Netbreeze social listening and analytics solution. We'll demonstrate how these solutions fit into a comprehensive social CRM program. We’ll also provide insight into future social CRM investments.

One of the highlights of the SharePoint Conference this year is the keynote by Bill Clinton on Monday, March 3rd 2014 8:30 am PST. Even better, the keynote will be streamed live for free, so you can checkout the keynote even if you’re not attending SharePoint conference. Details of the keynote webcast are available here: http://www.sharepointconference.com/Pages/webcast.aspx.

I also found out a little while ago that Jason Bullock from Microsoft will be presenting a breakout session titled “Office 365 and Dynamics CRM Online - better together”, doubling the CRM coverage at SharePoint Conference! Of course, I’ll be in the audience for that session and you can find the session details here: http://www.sharepointconference.com/content/sessions/SPC281.

I’ll be there in Vegas from Monday till Thursday afternoon, so if you are around, please feel free to reach out if you’d like to meet up during the conference.

So where do you think all the action will be, Atlanta or Vegas?

This blog post is a simple step-by-step walkthrough on connecting SharePoint Online (SPO) to CRM Online using the Business Connectivity Services (BCS). This can be useful in a number of situations including self service portals, executive dashboards, etc. The end goal for this post is to have CRM account information displayed within SharePoint as illustrated below (nothing fancy) but you can easily extend this sample to include additional scenarios such as pulling additional entities/tables, create/update CRM data, charts/dashboard, mashups with ERP and much more.

Note: SharePoint Online in this example uses SharePoint 2013 and CRM Online is the December 2012 release. Steps are subject to change for future releases. This walkthrough uses the App model for SharePoint instead of the classical BCS settings managed in the admin center.

Architecture of the solution

Below is a quick diagram showing the architecture of the solution we’re going to walkthrough. As you can see from the diagram below, we do have a shim sitting between CRMOnline & SPO. The reason for us to have a shim/proxy web service is because, external authentication is not enabled on CRM Online’s REST endpoint today.  CRMOnline’s REST endpoint today is only available for use by JScript and web resources within the CRM application however you can expect that limitation to change in the future.

Enough with the talk, let’s get to the code.

Building the Proxy OData Service

1. Download and extract the latest CRM 2011 SDK if you don’t have it already. If you're using CRM 2013, please ensure that you're following this article with CRM 2013 SDK. While you could build the proxy web service in several ways, we’re going to use an approach that creates a REST/OData service that involves very minimal custom code!
2. Once you have extracted the SDK, goto the folder “\sdk\walkthroughs\portal\webappwalkthrough\” and open the webappwalkthrough.csproj project using Visual Studio (2012 in this case)
3. Open the web.config file and change the connection string to your CRMOnline credentials as shown below. In this post, we’re using the same identity for all CRMOnline calls and we are not impersonating the SharePoint user.
   
4. Open the CrmData.svc.cs file and modify it as shown in the snippet below. Essentially we’re modifying the code to make the OData endpoint just pull accounts and contacts from CRM instead of pulling everything.

1. Right-click on the project and “Add Reference” to the Microsoft.IdentityModel.dll (v3.5). Make sure you set it’s copy local property to true.
    
   
2. Set CrmData.svc as the start page and hit F5 to verify that the OData endpoint is working locally. You can browse to http://localhost:<devport#>/CrmData.svc/ContactSet to verify that the proxy OData is indeed pulling data from CRM Online.
   Note: For the purposes of quick illustration, the code in this blog post doesn’t apply any security on the proxy OData service. Please refer to Marc Schweigert’s blog post and Steve Fox’s BCS security post for details on implementing security for proxy services.

1. The service now needs to be deployed publically in order for SharePoint Online to consume it. Here, we’re going to deploy the OData service to the *free* Windows Azure websites. Once you have signed up for Windows Azure, login to your Azure account and hit the “New” button followed by the steps illustrated below to quick create a website. Hint: Use the region closest to your CRMOnline datacenter. The unofficial way of finding this out is documented here.
   

1. Once the site has been created, download its publishing profile from the portal.
   
2. Back to Visual Studio, right-click on the project and click “Publish”. In the publish dialog, choose Import –> “Import from a publish profile file” –> browse to the publishing profile you downloaded earlier –> OK. You can run through the next few steps or hit publish button directly.
   
3. Once the site has been published, browse to the public URL for the service (say http://yoururl.azurewebsites.net/CrmData.svc/AccountSet) and ensure that the endpoint is able to pull data from CRM Online.
   

Creating the SharePoint Online App

Now that we have the proxy OData service up and running, it is time to create the SharePoint App.

1. In your Office365 admin center, click the Admin dropdown followed by SharePoint. Create a new private site collection with the “Developer Site” template.
   
         
2. Open Visual Studio as admin or better yet follow this hack to always run Visual Studio 2012 as admin. If you’re going to spend a lot of time building SharePoint apps, the hack will save you a lot of time and pain.
3. Create a new “App for SharePoint 2013” project.
   
4. Enter a name for the app, the URL of the site collection you created earlier and choose “SharePoint-hosted” followed by clicking the Finish button.
   
5. If Visual Studio prompts you for Office365 credentials, enter them so that the project is connected to your SPO site.
6. Right-click on the project –> Add –> “Content Types for an External Data Source”.
   
7. Enter the URL for the custom OData proxy running in Azure website and specify a name. Click Next.
   
8. Choose both AccountSet & ContactSet and hit the Finish button. Visual Studio automatically generates the ECTs (External Content Types) for both accounts and contacts.
   
9. Within Default.aspx (under Pages), change the code within the head and body sections as listed in the below snippet. Essentially we’re creating the links for account and contact ECTs along with a placeholder for some custom javascript. Make sure that the version of jQuery referenced in the code matches the one within the Scripts folder of your app.

1. Next up, let’s write some jQuery to select the AccountNumber & Name and display it in a simple HTML table (sorry web designers)! Open the App.js file (under Scripts folder) and replace it with the code below. If you’re familiar with javascript and jQuery, the code should be pretty easy to follow.

1. Right-click on the project or solution and click Deploy. Visual Studio automagically installs the app to your SPO developer site.
2. Open the SPO site and you should see your app under “Apps in Testing”. Click on the app and make sure it works as expected.
    

Now that you have the base connectivity between CRMOnline and SPO through BCS, the possibilities are endless. You can bring data from other CRM entities, apply security trimming, have users update CRM data directly from SharePoint, use highcharts.com for pretty charts and dashboards, mashup CRM data with other OData data sources and much more depending upon your needs. If you end up building interesting SharePoint-CRM apps, please do tell us through comments below.

If you didn’t attend Convergence 2013, you can still watch the recording of the keynotes and breakout sessions by registering for the Virtual Convergence. Best part is that it is completely free! You can signup for Virtual Convergence here: http://presentations.inxpo.com/Shows/microsoft/MSConvergence/3-13/Registration/Registration.html.

For attendees of Convergence 2013, there is a better experience to catch-up on all the session content that you might have missed or slept through . Besides the virtual convergence website, if you log back into the Convergence attendee website, you can see the session recordings along with PowerPoint presentation decks in the Schedule Builder which also allows you to nicely slice and dice through all the content!

1. Self-Service BI with PowerView

Excel 2013 introduces the ability to create PowerView charts for advanced data analysis by combining a variety of data sources. With the new December 2012 Service Update, data from Dynamics CRM Online can be included as one of the data sources for PowerView. SharePoint 2013 and SharePoint Online’s new release provides the ability for customers to render PowerView charts (including bubble animations) from Excel workbooks through Excel Web App. This allows professionals to analyze their CRM Online data in a self-service manner with just a browser (no need for everyone to be running Excel 2013). For example, in the below figure you can see that the customer service data from CRM combined with call metrics from IVR systems to produce a report rendered right within the browser.

2. Self-service Portals with BCS

Business Connectivity Services (BCS) in SharePoint 2013 has been enhanced to natively consume OData endpoint making it easy for customers to integrate Dynamics CRM data within SharePoint. For example, customers can now easily build an internal SharePoint portal for casual CRM users. This is very useful in many enterprise scenarios such as help desk ticketing, vendor portal and many more. SharePoint 2013 also introduces the new notion of SharePoint ‘Apps’ that can bundle such customizations and provide developers with the ability to sell them through the Office marketplace. You can find a simple step-by-step walkthrough on Connecting SharePoint Online and CRM Online using BCS here.

3. Document library integration enhancements

With the December 2012 service update, the document library integration with SharePoint has now been enhanced to support SharePoint 2013 along with rendering on multiple browsers including Chrome, Safari, Firefox and IE. SharePoint 2013 also has improved eDiscovery for legal compliance and built-in Content Management Interoperability Services (CMIS) compatibility for interoperability with other applications (like Adobe Bridge and Photoshop) making it easier for customers to manage their CRM digital assets with SharePoint.

4. Identity alignment

Office 365 and CRMOnline have shared the same identity platform for some time now. The same identity platform now has been extended to developers for their custom apps as well through Windows Azure Active Directory. This simplifies the user provisioning and administration of joint solutions spanning Dynamics CRM, Office 365 and other applications within an organization.

5. Social enhancements

Last but not least is the social enhancements in December 2012 service update powered by Yammer which becomes the social layer for Dynamics CRM. We are also heavily investing in unified identity, integrated document management and feed aggregation among SharePoint, Yammer and Dynamics CRM for the future.

The list is just a sampling of what I have been able to do discover so far and I’m sure there are a lot more cool integration scenarios that we’ll discover together as a community.  Things like FAST search, SharePoint for Internet Sites connecting to CRM and many more scenarios were possible earlier with SharePoint 2010 and they are enhanced in many ways within SharePoint 2013.

If you’d like to see some of these scenarios in action, please check out one of my presentations at the upcoming Convergence conference:

TL;DR version: Dynamics CRM ‘TDM’ presentation deck is now available for download here:https://aka.ms/crmtdmpartner. It is a must have resource for all sellers of Microsoft Dynamics CRM.

TDM deck is a popular Microsoft lingo for a technical presentation deck that is used by the sales folks in the field. It is content that gets used when you’re presenting to technical folks at a prospect looking to buy CRM. A technical decision maker (TDM or ITDM) could be someone like a CTO, CIO, CIO Board Member, Enterprise Architect, Solutions Architect, IT Manager or other similar roles within the prospect organization.

However in real-life, you’re not going to be just presenting to a room full of TDMs alone. Of course there’ll be non-technical decision makers, also known as Business Decision Makers (BDM in Microsoft lingo), in the room along with TDMs. So use this deck in conjunction with the Dynamics CRM BDM deck when presenting to prospects.

Dynamics CRM TDM deck is an all-encompassing presentation providing a technical overview of Microsoft Dynamics CRM. Further sections within the deck drill into specific topics that contain detailed technical information needed for influencing the technical audience. However the current version of the deck is just a beginning and we’ll strive to include new topics and keep it update to date with latest Dynamics CRM features. Upcoming sections of the deck include User Experience, Extensibility, Security and much more. Below is a sampling of some of the slides you’ll find within this presentation deck.

Updated 18th March 2013: New section includes presentation slides with speaker notes on the multi-instance capabilities of CRM Online.

Finally, this deck has been made possible by a number of folks both inside and outside of Microsoft. I’m not going to name them all as the list is pretty long but you know who you are and we sincerely thank you.

Happy selling!

Frequently asked questions:

Q: Why was the TDM deck not posted publicly on SlideShare or Skydrive?
A: Some of the content within the deck are not suitable for public posting due to legal limitations, hence we’re posting this to PartnerSource wherein all Microsoft Dynamics partners can easily access it.

Q: Can I share this TDM deck on SlideShare or any other publicly downloadable location?
A: No

Q: Can I share this with my prospects and customer?
A: Yes, but please exercise caution when sharing. Your prospect may not want to sift through hundreds of slides, so only share slides that you feel are appropriate, preferably in PDF format.

I’ve seen many people that are wondering where the print menu went in Windows 8 especially when trying to print a PDF file they’re viewing in the Reader app.

With Keyboard

If you have a keyboard attached to your Windows 8 machine, it is as simple as pressing Ctrl+P in the Reader app which will bring up the list of printers that you have installed and you’re two clicks away from printing your document.

Without Keyboard

If you don’t have a keyboard, don’t worry as you can do this easily with touch. Swipe from the right to bring up the charms.

Tap on Devices which should show you the list of printers you have installed.

Select the appropriate printer and choose other options (like page size, etc) and print away! BTW be responsible and print only if you must absolutely do so. Vast majority of things you can do on paper (such as reading, highlighting or adding an annotation) can be done directly within the Reader app in Windows 8.