Dynamics CRM 2011 Walkthrough: new features in 74 slides

There’s no shortage of great blog posts that give you samples of the new functionality unveiled in Dynamics CRM 2011 Beta, as the buzz around the new version in the CRM blogosphere is just incredible right now (cheers to everyone who’s contributing to it). The problem is that this information is quite fragmented and simply all over the place for a person wanting to understand “what’s new and what does it look like?“. CRM 2011 videos and webcast recordings are also widely available already, but I often find this form of media quite difficult to consume effectively, as browsing and skipping through the long introductions and monologues can get tedious.

What’s my answer then? Well, I’m a PowerPoint guy who likes to present his thoughts in slides, so this was the obvious format for me to start compiling my introductory materials to the brave new world that awaits for us when Microsof Dynamics CRM 2011 becomes available in a few months time. Slides are great for capturing screenshots of the UI and annotating them with callouts, so that’s been my main focus in the presentation; giving a clear view of the new features in a logical order.

These 74 slides are actually just Part 1 of the deck I’ve been building. There’s simply way too much great new stuff (or limitations to be aware of) in Dynamics CRM 2011 to make a very brief introduction, so please bear with me while I walk you through the application.

Part 1 is titled “end-user tools and features” and it’s split into the following topics:

• End-user tools and UI enhancements
• Outlook client
• Form customization options
• Auditing
• Connections
• SharePoint integration
• Visualizations
• Goals

As you may have guessed already, the second part of the CRM 2011 Walkthrough (that’s still in the making) is going to focus more on behind the scenes changes that will be of interest to consultants and developers who are managing and building CRM/XRM solutions on top of the platform. The planned contents for part 2 is:

• Customization menus
• UI customization options
• Solution management
• Web resources
• Processes (workflows)
• Custom activities
• Queue enhancements
• Multiple forms per entity
• Security features

Stay tuned for updates and let me know if there’s any specific features in CRM 2011 that you would like to see in my slides.

(Update: you can now find the part 2 slides in the following blog post: Dynamics CRM 2011 Walkthrough Part 2: another 100+ slides of new features)