Microsoft CRM Bridged to Office

An upcoming feature pack for MSCRM 1.2, Microsoft’s customer relationship management software for small and medium-sized businesses, will showcase the Office smart client concept and IBF technology. Using the IBF technology, the feature pack will enable MSCRM users to attach letters to customer records, escalate support cases, and look up customer data without leaving the Office 2003 user interface. These capabilities could be particularly useful to first-time and occasional CRM users who currently spend a lot of time in Office applications.

The announcement highlights continued technical cooperation between the MSCRM and Office groups, which in turn helps the MSCRM group leverage the huge Office customer base while encouraging Office upgrades by new CRM customers. The Office 2003 Small Business and Professional Editions already ship with a Business Contact Manager application developed by the MSCRM team, and many functions of MSCRM are available inside Outlook.

Additional MSCRM 1.2 enhancements planned for the feature pack include improvements to the product’s reporting features and its Sales for Outlook client, and new tools for migrating CRM deployments to new sites and organizations. The feature pack will also include a client for the Pocket PC 2003 handheld.