Dynamics CRM Online

Dynamics CRM Online is a Microsoft-hosted customer relationship management (CRM) service. It rounds out Microsoft’s CRM strategy by targeting customers who lack the desire or necessary skills to run complex applications like Dynamics CRM in-house. It should appeal most to organizations with fewer than 25 users, including small and midsize companies and workgroups or departments in larger organizations. It is hosted on multitenant hardware like the Standard versions of the core BPOS services; a Dedicated version is not available.

As is true of the on-premises Dynamics CRM software, workers can use a Web browser or a plug-in for the Outlook e-mail client to access the three main functional areas of Dynamics CRM Online:

Customer service provides tools for logging, assigning, and tracking customer incidents or cases; creating and managing knowledge bases, such as collections of articles describing problem-resolution steps; and scheduling and dispatching service calls.

Marketing includes features that help front-office workers manage marketing activities, such as advertising campaigns and mass mailings. For example, an organization could use CRM Online to select lists of potential customers for a campaign; assign, track, and manage work activities, such as creation of marketing literature; send bulk e-mails to customers; and manage responses from customers.