New Development Options for Dynamics CRM

Dynamics CRM 4.0, the latest version of Microsoft’s customer relationship management product, provides developers with new options for customization, including a set of Web services for integrating CRM data with other applications and a .NET-based system for defining a company’s business rules. But customizing a mission-critical server application remains complex, and the developer documentation is incomplete, so many customers will be better off working with integrators and other partners who work regularly with Dynamics CRM rather than doing the work themselves.

What Is Dynamics CRM?

Dynamics CRM is a server application that helps organizations track customer interactions and plan sales and marketing campaigns. In addition, a variety of tools allow administrators, developers, and other workers to customize and extend Dynamics CRM, create custom solutions, and integrate the product with other applications, such as enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. Like most line-of-business applications, CRM requires customization in order to fit the specific business processes of the customer. Some types of customization, such as defining the entities—sets of predefined record types (such as contact, account, and product)—can be done using the built-in features of the product without requiring the skills of a developer. Other changes, however, require software developers to write custom code to extend the product.