Microsoft Dynamics CRM customers now have access to an exciting and free – yes, absolutely free – new tool. Vibe, released by Sonoma Partners, is a powerful Microblogging product that offers Facebook and Twitter functionality right through Dynamics CRM. Just be aware that even though Sonoma Partners are making this product available for free, they're not supporting it. You may raise an eyebrow at why Sonoma is releasing this for free. According to Sonoma Co-founder and Principal Mike Snyder, they want to provide a workable alternative to Salesforce.com's Chatter. Given the declaration of war between Dynamics CRM and Salesforce.com, it's not surprising that Microsoft would encourage its partners to make their offering as attractive as possible.
Sonoma developed Vibe to allow employees to collaborate on projects, customer information, and opportunities with live CRM-related data. Here's a brief list of features you can expect from Vibe, courtesy of the :
- Combines the ease-of-use of Facebook and Twitter with Microsoft's powerful CRM platform.
- Easy to install.
- Posts important CRM data -- but also allows users to manually post information to a feed.
- Allows users to create and maintain their own feed subscriptions.
- Has native integration to Gravatar so users can personalize an avatar for their feed.
- Allows users to search across all feeds.
- Supports hash tags in posts (perfect for you Twitter-philes).
- Includes a usage analytics dashboard.
- Works with Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online and Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 on-premise editions.
Vibe is currently available on the Dynamics Marketplace for the ripe price of zero dollars. Online help comes with the package, so it'll help you get the package up and running quickly. Try it out and see how easy it can be to integrate social media and CRM data – after all, what have you got to lose?
By CRM Software Blog Editors, Find a local Microsoft Dynamics CRM expert
