If your company is using then you've probably heard about the new upgrade (Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013) coming soon. Most likely you've seen communication from Microsoft giving you a date and time for the upgrade, and a list of items that might fail once the upgrade is completed.
Here’s what you need to know:
- You can schedule your upgrade for a time that is convenient for you, not Microsoft.
- If you have any workflows they will need to be evaluated even if they are not shown by Microsoft as a failure. The Workflows and screen editing has changed to the point that some workflow logic will not work as desired/expected.
- If you have any JavaScript on any of the forms, they need to be tested. The Microsoft tool only looks for language changes that they know will not work in the new release.
- If you have any custom code it should work, but it will need to be tested as well. If it was written in CRM 4.0, then it needs to written in the new SDK. CRM 4.0 SDK is no longer supported.
- User experience will greatly change, do not forget training.
- We had a few customers that did not plan their upgrade and they found that waiting for the upgrade and fixing in production impacted their business more than if they had planned for the upgrade.
- Remember, people that fail to plan, plan to fail.
Here at we can work with you and your team to develop a successful upgrade to CRM 2013 with our proven process. We will:
- Develop a change plan from CRM 2011 to CRM 2013
- Developing an overall strategy and plan that helps you understand who is impacted and how you will guide them through the transition is critical.
- Setup a development/test environment
- Non production environment to fix the issues and test within.
- Limit downtime of production.
- Provide an environment to review with upgrade team for sign off.
- Know how it will look and feel before it shows up.
- Create a communication plan
- Communicate early and often.
- Create a training plan
- A comprehensive training plan that focuses on processes and use cases, not just features and functionality, is crucial.
- Create a support plan
- A support plan will focus on making sure your team problems are resolved in a timely manner.
In the next few months, your CRM system will be upgraded to an entirely new user experience, which will organize your information in a clean and easy to manage layout. Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 will allow you to view everything you need in one spot – fast and fluid, and relevant to the work at hand. No pop-ups. No flipping from one application to the next. So you can focus on what is most important – your customers.
If needed, you can change your release date - .For more information or further details on upgrading to Dynamics CRM 2013, the Dynamics CRM experts at Affiliated.
Mike Moran, Affiliated, Microsoft Dynamics CRM Ohio, Implementation, Integration and Support
