A free solution accelerator called the Dynamics CRM Analytics Foundation could help customers and partners kick-start development of business intelligence (BI) solutions for Dynamics CRM 3.0, Microsoft's customer relationship management (CRM) application. The accelerator provides code samples, documentation, and a prebuilt multidimensional database (or cube) for the SQL Server 2005 Analysis Services online analytic processing and data mining platform, and it could help Microsoft advertise many of its other products for use in BI scenarios. However, the accelerator's initial release does not use the most recent versions of Microsoft's SharePoint portal and team collaboration platforms.

What Is Included?

The Analytics Foundation includes tools, resources, and documentation that demonstrate the use of a range of Microsoft products and technologies for building BI solutions for CRM.

These include the following:

• A SQL Server 2005 database containing CRM 3.0 data for the fictitious Adventure Works company
• A SQL Services 2005 Analysis Services cube built from the Adventure Works CRM database; in addition to summaries of the CRM database, the cube contains key performance indicators (KPIs) for the business, such as leads and sales
• Several data mining models that work against data in the cube to demonstrate the use of SQL Server 2005 data mining features for predictive analysis
• Several Excel 2007 workbooks that provide views of the data in the cube; for example, one workbook allows users to navigate and analyze sales data
• A pair of scorecards for the Business Scorecard Manager (BSM) 2005 performance management product and reports for SQL Server 2006 Reporting Services that display KPI data stored in the Analysis Services cube.

In addition, the accelerator includes a prebuilt SharePoint site that contains Web Parts for viewing the BSM scorecards and Reporting Services reports. The site works with SharePoint Portal Server (SPS) 2003 or Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) 2.0. However, the accelerator does not include a site designed for either SharePoint Server 2007 or WSS 3.0, the latest versions of those products.

Resources

Microsoft released the solution accelerator in Feb. 2007 as a free download. For full functionality, the accelerator requires CRM 3.0, Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition SP1, SQL Server 2005 Enterprise Edition, SPS 2003 or WSS 2.0, BSM 2005, and Visual Studio 2005.

The Dynamics CRM home page is www.microsoft.com/dynamics/crm.

Dynamics CRM Analytics Foundation can be downloaded at www.codeplex.com/crmanalytics.

For more information on Dynamics CRM 3.0, see "New Features, Licensing for CRM Product" on page 12 of the Feb. 2006 Update.