The long anticipated day has finally arrived: Dynamics CRM for Tablets and Phones! With the release of Dynamics CRM 2013 and Dynamics CRM Online Fall 2013 comes the release of brand new client applications for tablets and smartphones. These applications, initially aimed at sales users, open new avenues to work with your Dynamics CRM information from smartphone and tablet devices. And best of all, there are no additional license fees to install and use them.
The tablet application works with iOS and Windows 8 devices. Specific hardware, operating system, and browser versions are required so make sure your devices are up to date. Simply download the app from your devices app store and install like any other app.
So what can the CRM for Tablet application do? It provides create, view, modify, and delete access to the primary sales record types including Accounts, Contacts, Leads, Opportunities, Opportunity Products, Competitors, and Connections. Products, Cases, Attachments, Users, Teams, and Currencies are available read only but can be related to other records. Custom record types can be enabled for tablets but the remaining out of the box record types cannot. Appointment, Phone Call, and Task activities can be created, modified, marked complete, and deleted while Email and Letter activities can be viewed. Records can be related, lookup fields can be looked up, notes can be noted, and attachments can be attached.
The CRM for Tablet application provides a brand new tablet oriented user interface. Users start with a home page where they can view and interact with a dashboard (views and charts) and pin frequently used tiles for quick access to records or views. CRM for Tablet uses the same forms and list views as the Outlook and Web clients including Quick Create forms. This reduces customization time as forms only need to be designed and configured once for Tablet, Outlook, and Web clients. (Note that Activity Feeds, Bing Maps, SharePoint Document Libraries, iFrames, and Web Resources are not yet supported on CRM for Tablet forms and will not be rendered.)
Contacts and Users can be quickly emailed or called (via Skype) by clicking on the Communication Card. The new Business Process flows are available so users can navigate, update, and switch their business processes. One feature found in CRM for Tablets that is not currently available for the Outlook or web clients is the ability to search across multiple record types in a single search. Also note that while the CRM for Tablet application can be run while offline (disconnected from the internet), only recently viewed data that was cached while online will be available.
I recently downloaded the CRM for Tablets app and installed it on my iPad and I have to say that I am impressed. The new interface is engaging, fluid, and simple to navigate. The simple, context sensitive command bar is unobtrusive until needed. Navigation to the home dashboard or to a specific record type takes two taps. Search is available from anywhere in the application. View more information about a record by swiping left. Open related records by clicking on tiles. This is an application that I can see Sales users up and running on in no time.
If your organization could benefit from the new CRM for Tablet application available in Dynamics CRM 2013 and / or would like some assistance with upgrading to the new version and taking advantage of its many new features to enhance your business processes, please contact the experts at NexusTek at 303.773.6464 or sales@nexustek.com.
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