Microsoft Convergence 2013 – Blog 4- Orion Roadmap & Look n Feel Screenshots

Wednesday 20th March 2013 session at Convergence 2013 in New Orleans, Jujhar Singh delivered a session titled CSCRM08 – Microsoft Dynamics CRM: Product Recap & Roadmap Primer. Now this is a session I had been waiting for. It contained the roadmap and look n feel of the next major release of Microsoft Dynamics CRM code name Orion, which was released publically today to customers, partners and other attendees of Convergence 2013. I will continue on the theme of photos. They explain most of it – I’m sure you can read from the photos right?

The roadmap can be displayed in 4 areas:

• Polaris
• BCM
• Polaris Update
• Gemini
• Orion
• Orion MKT

 

The next major release of Microsoft Dynamics CRM will come in the form of the Orion release in the second half of 2013.

The major themes for the Orion release are as follows:

• User Experience – Continuation of the journey in Polaris
• Ubiquitous – Role-tailored applications for Sales Professionals. (Ubiquitous key word replaces the word Mobile. You will be hearing this a lot more).
• Productivity – Internal Collaboration for the on-premise customers & Server Sync enhancements
• Business Process – Process-centric theme continued to the next level
• Online – Online first focus to continue (this means CRM Online will get all the new features first before OnPremise)

Now lets take a look at the new Orion User Interface. Firstly, you will notice it has no ribbon. Next it has no left navigation bar. The navigation bar is now at the top (as shown in purple colour in the screenshot below).

This new UI drives a better user experience for Microsoft Dynamics CRM. Everything is happening in the one browser window. Note: I have no information on the Outlook UI. You will need to wait for Microsoft to announce this.

If you have used Outlook.com, then you will be familiar with the dropdown navigation. This experience is now similar within Orion as shown below.

More UI screenshots can be seen below

The mobility roadmap for Orion

Platform in Orion

The Next Frontier …

This slide gives you a snapshot of what is coming

This is the look n feel of the MarketingPilot application which will be a part of the Gemini release. Note the flat UI.

Exciting times ahead in Microsoft Dynamics CRM.

 

Greg Olsen
YellowDuckGuy

Microsoft Convergence 2013–Blog 3–Opening Keynote

Today, Tuesday 19th March 2013, we were greeted with the Opening Keynote. This is the must attend session to kick of Convergence 2013. After taking in a good breakfast at the hotel we all headed over to get our reserved seats at the Keynote – right up the front!

Yep you read it right. 11,500 attendees to Microsoft Convergence 2013. Great turnout Microsoft. Also means 3,000+ partners in attendance.

What I will do for this blog post is post the photos in the order I took them and you can then consume the information from them. A picture is worth a thousand words .. right?

Walking into the Keynote area

Wow! that is a heap of seats. Thanks to those who had to set them all up. You deserve a beer or three.

Keynote Music

The team representing New Zealand start to fill up there reserved seats – that includes me!

Large attendance for Convergence 2013 Keynote

Speaker list for the Keynote, which included the customers sharing their experiences with the Dynamics products.

Officially announced today. Microsoft has acquired social monitoring analytics vendor Netbreeze to integrate with the Dynamics CRM platform. NAV 2013 and GP 2013 will be available in Windows Azure from June 2013.

5 Billion GBs of data is collected in 10 minutes!

Microsoft’s View: Devices and Services

Chobani share their experiences to the attendees

Weightwatchers share their experience to the attendees

Revlon share their experiences with the attendees

Now we start to see the demo information (via photos in this blog post)

Multi-tasking apps in Windows 8. Skype call goes out to Reuben in this demo.

The CRM UI flow process

Yammer integration with CRM. “Liked by Hamish Hill” – nice one!

Taking the power Netbreeze. The new product coming to the CRM platform

Analytics in motion!

Social experience inside Microsoft Dynamics CRM

That concludes blog posting number 3. Hopefully the photos were helpful, especially if you couldn’t make Convergence this year.

Greg Olsen
YellowDuckGuy

Microsoft Convergence 2013 – Blog 2 – Bourbon Street & Experience Center

If you reading on from my last blog post, then the next couple of things to blog about would be the trip to Randy & Andy’s Convergence 2013 party and the Convergence Experience Center. Consider this blog number 2 of the series.

I attended the Partner Q&A on Sunday 17th March. Quite a few asked the panel questions and they responded with the answers. Some of the content would be released at the opening Keynote for customers.

Once the Partner Q&A wrapped up it was off to refresh up and attend the Microsoft NZ drinks get together. This is a opportunity for the Kiwi team to get together and say hi and have a good chat over a drink and then head into the famous ‘Bourbon Street’ of New Orleans to the ‘Randy & Andy’s Convergence 2013 bash.

On the way, we got to experience (first time for me) the famous Bourbon Street. Few photos below to give you an idea of what it is like. I laughed as one store which sold clothes during the day converted to selling beer at night via beer kegs connected up out back. You don’t see clothes stores selling beer in NZ right? Correct me if I’m wrong.

The art of throwing green bead necklaces everywhere from the balcony was (how should I describe it?) “interesting”.

It was a good night out with the other kiwi folks and managed to down a few drinks (yea one too many!) and woke up the next day with a slightly sore head!

So after the hot chocolate from Starbucks at 1pm the next day kicked in and my energy levels on the rise, it was off to the Convergence Experience Center.

On Monday 18th March when I entered the Experience Center I was greeted by Karaoke in the Convergence Theater. You could hear this throughout the whole building. I didn’t stick around this area to see if anyone else got up for a sing.

Below are a few other photos from the Experience Center.

The cakes shown above were awesome. If there was a Facebook ‘like’ feature on this post, then I certainly will be giving it to the cakes on this table.

Xbox Kinect darts being played out at the Microsoft stand

The main message for this year’s Convergence 2013 is ‘A World Ahead’.

Well that concludes blog 2. Need to keep them brief as I only get small windows to do write ups. Next blog post should hopefully contain the Keynote.

Thanks for reading.

Greg Olsen
YellowDuckGuy

Microsoft Convergence 2013–March 18-21 2013–Blog 1– Arriving

Well this blog will start a series of hopefully a few blog posts during my time here in New Orleans (yes I have arrived).

The journey to the USA started from the Auckland International Airport. Boy did it start! What I mean by this is that the automatic link from NZ to USA for check-in failed and AirNZ had about 150 people (approx) backed up for check-in. “Anyone on the Los Angeles flight? Please make you way forward now”. Cry’s from the AirNZ staff as check-in is about to close for those passengers. I had more time as my San Francisco (SFO) flight was a bit later. The next laugh I had was with the people leaving Auckland to head to USA after being on a cruise ship and having way to much luggage. “Sorry madam, you are over your allowance to board this aircraft”. Little did they know they couldn’t take there 4 suitcases onto the the plane with the 1 bag, 23kg limit. Why did they need so much stuff? I’ll let you guess the answer to that.

Well I managed to get through check-in and security with enough time to spare. Met up with Joerg Rau from Theta Systems (NAV expert). He was having the same laughs as I was, so it was good to compare the jokes.

Landed in San Francisco in good time. Managed to get about 5 hours sleep on the 12 hour flight. Arriving in San Francisco photos below.

From San Francisco we jump aboard United Airlines and head to New Orleans (p.s. I have to get the pronunciation right, it’s basically new-OR-linz. Keep working on it Greg!). Just under 4 hours later we arrive to a nightly lit city and it’s time to grab our suitcase and taxi to the hotel.

Below are some arrival photos into New Orleans.

Once the taxi arrived to the hotel we get greeted by the party goers on the footpath. Gee a bourbon would be good right about now, but I need sleep. So it was check-in time, have a shower and off for a sleep!

Next day begins (Sunday 17th March 2013)….

Eyes open, it’s 10am. Nice I had a good sleep. Time for another shower and get ready to meet up with the others. Starbucks for a hot chocolate. Facebook check-in begins!

Next its off to the Convention Centre to register and pick up the goodies. Another laptop bag and the essential agenda material. “Where is the Microsoft Surface Pro”,  we ask the attendant at the materials collection counter. Blank face. Don’t think she got the joke.

Here are some convention centre photos below.

Right, time to fly. Need to keep moving. Off to the next “event”.

Greg Olsen
YellowDuckGuy