CRM 2011 Top 10 List

Every self respecting MS CRM blogger has posted a list of nice CRM 2011 features on their blog, so I felt obliged to follow the trend.

Here is my Top 10 list of nice CRM 2011 features (don't pay too much attention at the order):

1) WCF (.NET 4.0)
This is my number 1 favourite. CRM 2011 uses WCF now instead of asmx web services (which will definitely be a good thing for performance). CRM also makes use of .NET 4.0 and the primitive CRM types are now represented as their underlying .NET data types. So no more CrmDateTime, but plain old System.DateTime.

2) Out of the box SharePoint integration.
In a couple of minutes you can configure an integration between CRM and SharePoint. Nice!

3) Outlook Client
CRM is now inside your Outlook. No more web based integration, but a full Outlook experience.

4) Solutions
CRM 2011 allows you to bundle components and treat them as a solution. So you can now create your own customizations in a personal solution and have some sort of versioning.

5) Filtered Lookups
Finally a supported way to filter lookups!

6) Dialogs
An interactive form you can create for a certain entity. This "wizard" can be launched from any record to gather information and execute actions accordingly.

7) Multiple Forms
You can now define multiple forms for a certain entity. You can even define security roles on these forms so that "salespersons" see a different form than "marketing managers".

8) Field Level Security
Remember the sweaty moments when a customer asked to implement field level security? You knew it was possible, but it took a lot of development. Not any more as this is out of the box now.

9) Personal Default View
Finally, no more disappointed faces when you needed to explain to the customer that the default view for an entity was something you configured for the entire organisation. Now a CRM user can choose his own default view.

10) Global Option Sets
Picklists which you can reuse on multiple entities. Thank you MS!

So this is my list. There are a lot more new features which are worth mentioning, but these will be for another post.

Have a lot of CRM 2011 fun!

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