Creating the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 Mobile Client Printing Press

It was in 1041, when the first movable printing press was developed in China, by Hans Chinese.

The famous Gutenberg press was later developed, inventing quicker moulds that would bring the development of a multitude of applications of printing.

The renaissance printing press was able to produce up to 3,600 pages per day, a smouldering of printing compared to the hand copying still common amoung the rest of society.

The best-selling books during the renaissance period, through capabilities enabled by Gutenberg’s press, were able to sell hundreds of thousands of books, a feat that was quite impressive considering just a few years back thousands would have been a large accomplishment.

By the 1500s, the printing presses had printed 2 million books. By the 1600’s they had printed 200 million. In the 1620’s, Francis Bacon (an English philosopher) announced that the printing press would change the world.

The printing press introduced mass communication, essentially “sales in print” or marketing as a concept, and threatened political and religious institutions (as the internet does today).

The concept of mould once, print everywhere was born.

 

“Mobile Microsoft Dynamics CRM Printing” Develop Once Deploy Everywhere Was Not Possible

In a similar vein, I was engaged in a CRM project where the Microsoft Dynamics CRM mobile deployment was asked to be one of the first things that was deployed. Like many individuals these days, the thinking was if we’re going to deploy Microsoft Dynamics CRM why not deploy mobile (why not deploy everywhere)?

With hundreds of individuals on the ground, why not have people on the ground have access to a CRM system in a mobile fashion right away?

While logical, the complexities of deploying CRM have not always been so simple. Deploying for PC’s and deploying for mobile devices were two separate functions.

In summary:

• Both had separate forms that needed to be designed and because that was the case, it was logical to divide the implementation into two separate phases
• There was no concept of design once deploy everywhere
• A “persistent” problem was that we were not pervasively connected to the CRM system – once we left our PCs we left our CRM system behind
• While they were solutions to deal with this – they didn’t come out of the box and still needed to be configured in order to deploy (and that wasn’t always easy)

 

While traditionally that’s been the approach – things have changed with the latest release of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 mobile client. How one approached mobile development in the past is history.

With Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 mobile client with can now “mould once” and then “deploy everywhere”. A printing press of different sorts. Ultimately exploding the number of “mobile CRM deployments”.

We can group many of the features of the new Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 mobile client into two main areas:

• Features of the new mobile app (and there are many but we’ll highlight a few)
• The seamless experience / develop once deploy everywhere model (which also ties into what Microsoft calls the unique “liquid layout” or responsive design).

 

Reign of the New Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 Mobile App

One of best parts about the new Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 mobile app is that’s free. It will be available for the Windows 8 tablets, IPads, IPhones and Windows Phones (the phone apps will be available shortly after the general release of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 in the Fall 2013).

In addition we’ll see the following features:

• Recently viewed data is cached automatically on the mobile device
• A new multi-search function that allows you to search ten entities or records at a time
• Work-offline capabilities
• Yammer interaction – the ability to view social activity feeds in real-time
• Permission control over access to mobile entities
• The ability to deploy custom entities as part of the mobile experience 

Reign of the Seamless Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 Experience with Develop Once – Deploy Everywhere

The concept of mobile developers will soon be fleeting. The ability to develop the interface on the PC platform and have it automatically extend to the mobile devices will merge any type of development that was previously segregated.

How this plays out is the concept of what Microsoft calls “liquid layout” or other might see as “responsive design”.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 reads the mobile device to determine what screen size it’s working with and they deploys components of the CRM layout in order of priority (there is a set priority out of the box which can be tailored).
There are many more mobile capabilities, new user interface features and new business process features of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013. But, these capabilities have set the stage for the explosion of “mobile deployments”. Walls will be torn down and new boundaries crossed. We’re excited for the possibilities of an infinite amount of “mobile deployments”.