CRM 2011 – Three fold increase in CRM jobs this year

If get a number of emails from recruitment consultants each week, most of them are totally inappriopriate to such an extent I wonder why they have sent them to me, did they look at my cv/profile on linkedin?  Usually it smacks  of desperation, recruitment consultants spraying out emails to any email address they can find.

Any today I got an update from recruitment consultant who specialises in CRM.   I thought it was interesting he was sending out emails updating them on the CRM market, it seemed to add some kind of value, which is quite unusual for recruitment consultants.  The email had some observations about the CRM market which seemed to back my opinion of the state of the CRM market.

I figured that since Microsoft has released CRM 2011, which contained a number of popular enhancements like sharepoint intergration/document management, dashboards and a easier to use UI it would lead to more CRM work because they would be new customers and customer upgrading.

I also thought with the big promotion from Microsoft CRM and the in particular the cloud offering, especially consider the very competitive pricing strategy Microsoft is using.  This would also lead to an increase in CRM 2011 deployments, snaffling quite a few customers from salesforce.

Anyway here are some of the comments from the email, I would of course take some of it with a pinch of salt because the goal of the letter is to obviously encourage people to move and apply for jobs and what’s likely to that, it’s by telling you there are loads of jobs and they are paying top dollar, still we can hope

CRM Desk team has noticed a three fold increase in demand for skilled candidates and now is the time that professionals within Dynamics CRM are moving for the increases in salaries, packages, better career prospects and further development training opportunities.

The UK Perm market, this year has been crazy! In the best way possible, candidates are looking at the fastest and largest growing companies and packages than ever before with “paid 2 gain” certifications and extra training also on offer, This may have alot to do with the product growth and the platforms adaptability or as predicted the rise in demand after January’s CRM 2011 product launch,

 

The letter also gave a bit of insight to which sectors are growing

 

Firstly the sectors and verticals that seem to be most profitable for MS Dynamics CRM candidates to be working in are financial, media, Tel-com & Niche Energy. with Legal and Govt looking to be on the increase / growing MS CRM markets. This is due to Central Govt seeing the value of streamline business processes and saving money through investment into cloud or integrated customer relationship management systems.

Microsoft in America are strategically looking to target and dominate the legal sector as large and small law firms often outsource many different ERP & CRM and legal systems when Microsoft’s offerings can be easily and highly bespoken to fit into and benefit them whilst all importantly saving money.

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CRM 4 – Ultimate Dynamics CRM Tools List

Although I have been working with CRM 2011, I  still have to work with CRM 4 projects.  It’s quite unusual now because a lot of the tools that worked in CRM 4 don’t work in CRM 2011 so you need to keep two sets of CRM tools

So today I was using the Javascript manager tool to extract the Javascript from an organisation and see what entities had Javascript.

So today I found the ultimate list of Dynamic tools for CRM 4, which you can find here

http://vidmar.net/weblog/archive/2010/05/06/ultimate-dynamics-crm-tools-list.aspx

It is a fantastic list of tools for CRM 4, one or two even work with CRM 2011

Here are my are my top five from the list.  I would also recommend looking at the blog because there are some interesting comments as well.

CrmDiagTool4 for Microsoft CRM 4.0

This tool makes starting tracing and turning on DevError for CRM really easy. You don’t need to manually edit web.config files, do it by clicking a button.

Customization Comparison Utility

This utility will do side-by-side comparison between two cusomization.xml files. Useful for documenting changes, spotting bugs and much more

CRM Trace Log Viewer

Simple but very useful tool that lets you filter and resolve users in Dynamics CRM trace files.

Form JavaScript Manager

If you do lots of JavaScript customizations, you know the editing of script is not easy within CRM. Form Javascript Manager is one way of solving those issue. It helps you with export/edit/import cycle of editing.

MS CRM Javascript Intellisense Generator

This tool will generate .js files for all entities. If you edit your JavaScript in Visual Studio, the editor can use this file for autocomplete.

 

 

 

 

CRM 2011 – Javascript examples – How to Updating/Create/Delete OptionSets and creating Entities

James Miley has been writing some good blog posts on Javascript over the last week.  I have noticed that the Javascript blog entries are some of the most popular on my blog.

I think the reason for this is because the sample files are either too basic or very complex and there is no middle ground.  I actually think the main reason is there isn’t enough examples.  For the areas like oData and Link there are lots of examples, so it’s easy to find some code which is similar to what you want and then modify it a bit.

Anyway on with the Javascript. We have two good examples of some useful Javascript.  One of them shows you how to insert, update or delete optionSets using Javascript and the other one shows you to create entities.

Inserting, Updating, or Deleting OptionSet Values in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 in Jscript

http://mileyja.blogspot.com/2011/03/working-with-optionset-values-in.html

Publish an Entity in Jscript in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011

http://mileyja.blogspot.com/2011/03/publish-entity-in-jscript-in-crm-2011.html

 

 

 

 

 

 

CRM 2011 – The Best Weekly CRM articles – March week 3

top ten CRM blog posts for 2010

http://www.crmsoftwareblog.com/2011/01/top-ten-crm-software-blog-posts-for-2010/

upgrade gotchas

http://niiranen.eu/crm/2011/03/upgrade-gotchas-outlook-client-for-dynamics-crm-2011/

adding records to queues with workflows in CRM 2011

http://www.crmsoftwareblog.com/2011/03/adding-records-to-queues-with-workflow-in-microsoft-crm-2011/

formatting a currency in javascript for CRM 2011 and CRM 4

http://mileyja.blogspot.com/2011/03/formatting-currency-in-microsoft.html

Inserting, Updating, or Deleting OptionSet Values in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 in Jscript

http://mileyja.blogspot.com/2011/03/working-with-optionset-values-in.html

Publish an Entity in Jscript in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011

http://mileyja.blogspot.com/2011/03/publish-entity-in-jscript-in-crm-2011.html

Introduction to Solutions

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg334576.aspx

CRM 2011 Jscript Soap Request Formatter RELEASED!!

http://mileyja.blogspot.com/2011/03/crm-2011-jscript-soap-request-formatter.html

Microsoft’s Brad Wilson Interviews

“What is the state of the CRM software industry?”
“What’s the strategy behind Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011’s low price point?”
“What percentage of customers choose the cloud?”
“How can Microsoft Dynamics CRM partners survive in the cloud era?”
“Is the Microsoft Dynamics Marketplace a success?”
“What is Microsoft’s strategy to compete in the marketing automation market?”
“What’s New in Dynamics CRM 2011?”

CRM 2011 – Formatting a currency using Javascript

I was looking on LinkedIn and then I saw Jamie Miley had replied and then I found my way to his blog.  He had some interesting blog entries on his site.  I saw this one Formatting Currency in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 and CRM 4 in JScript.  It was a nice function to format currencies in Javascript.

I though it was useful piece of Javascript although I wondered why you would need it in CRM because you cpuld just format the field.

Still I am always looking to improve my Javascript skills and I thought it was a good example.  also you never know they might be a day when I need to format soem currency using Javascript for reasons that are not clear to me.

//Format currency in CRM jscript

//EXAMPLE USAGE
//alert(FormatAsCurrency(10000));

function FormatAsCurrency(amount) {

var i = parseFloat(amount);
if (isNaN(i)) { i = 0.00; }
var minus = '';
if (i < 0) { minus = '-'; }
i = Math.abs(i);
i = parseInt((i + .005) * 100);
i = i / 100;
s = new String(i);
if (s.indexOf('.') < 0) { s += '.00'; }
if (s.indexOf('.') == (s.length - 2)) { s += '0'; }
s = minus + s;
amount = s;
var delimiter = ","; // replace comma if other mark is desired
var a = amount.split('.', 2)
var d = a[1];
var i = parseInt(a[0]);
if (isNaN(i)) { return ''; }
var minus = '';
if (i < 0) { minus = '-'; }
i = Math.abs(i);
var n = new String(i);
var a = [];
while (n.length > 3) {
var nn = n.substr(n.length - 3);
a.unshift(nn);
n = n.substr(0, n.length - 3);
}
if (n.length > 0) { a.unshift(n); }
n = a.join(delimiter);
if (d.length < 1) { amount = n; }
else { amount = n + '.' + d; }
amount = minus + amount;

return "$" + amount;

 

}