Top Dynamics CRM links in Q1 2012

In addition to Surviving CRM, I also maintain a blog called Microsoft Dynamics CRM Links. However, it’s not an actual blog but rather my public bookmarking service for collecting interesting tools, solutions, add-ons, services and other sites that are related to Dynamics CRM. If I discover a useful new tool on, say, CodePlex, I simply create a new blog post using the tool’s name as the title, the URL as the body text and add a few tags for link categorization. I keep the list on WordPress.com because it provides a great cloud based app for managing any content, not just blog posts.

Even though the primary purpose of the site is for me to personally keep track of interesting links that I may need to come back to later on, there are also other people who have discovered the site, most likely through a search engine. One day I was looking at the statistics that WordPress.com collects and thought that this actually provides an interesting view to what the Dynamics CRM online community is currently searching for. In the spirit of open data, I decided to publish a snapshot of the website visit stats to show what’s hot in CRM right now and also promote some of the most useful tools and apps out there, to help more people discover them. So, without further ado, here’s the list of…

Most popular Microsoft Dynamics CRM links, Q1 2012

1. Auto Number for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011
2. Hierarchical Treeview for Dynamics CRM 2011
3. CRM 2011 User Settings Utility
4. Ribbon Workbench for Dynamics CRM 2011
5. MS CRM 2011 Twitter Integration by Pragmasys
6. MS CRM 2011 Pragma Toolkit: Ribbon, Sitemap Editor
7. CRM 2011 TreeView for Dependent Picklist
8. Silverlight CRM Attachment Image
9. KingswaySoft SSIS Integration Toolkit for Microsoft Dynamics CRM
10. CRM 2011 Visio add-in: Business Unit Org Chart
11. Ribbon Editor for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011
12. Dynamics CRM Dashboard for Microsoft Lync by Orbit One
13. Powertrak In-line Editable Grids for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011
14. Metadata Document Generator for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011
15. CRM 2011 Attribute Mapping
16. CozyRoc SSIS+ with Dynamics CRM Connection Manager
17. CRM 2011 Attachment Image Browser HTML Web Resource
18. Skype Connector Tool for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011
19. Bing Maps Browser for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011
20. Dynamics CRM 2011 Script# Xrm.Page library
21. Web Resources Manager for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011

There we have it, the most in-demand apps or tools for Dynamics CRM! Just don’t take the list ranking too seriously, as this isn’t a very scientific way to analyze the true popularity of the links. Some of them have been published earlier, some during Q1. Some have better keywords for search engine optimization. The page view volumes are quite limited, as the top page received 145 hits during three months. Nevertheless, I think the data still gives a fairly realistic view of the functionality people working with Microsoft Dynamics CRM are typically searching for, such as:

• Auto-numbering
• Hierarchical data visualization
• Ribbon & sitemap editing tools
• Displaying images on forms
• VoIP integration (Lync & Skype)
• Customization documentation generator

One way to look at it would be that these are all features/areas where Microsoft could improve the out-of-the-box functionality that Dynamics CRM 2011 delivers. Luckily there’s an active ecosystem around the platform that is creating either commercial or free solutions to address these areas. Especially the open source tools on CodePlex or free code samples published on various CRM expert blogs are highly valuable resources that I’m thankful for, which is why I attempt to do my own little part by sharing the best links with others. I encourage you all to do the same.