Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2016 Sales Features Updates

In the upcoming release of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2016 (scheduled for Q4) there are several updates across the product components. In the Sales features area of MS CRM, there will be updates to several product areas:

CRM App for Outlook: For Outlook on the desktop,  CRM for Outlook  provides true offline and rich sales capabilities inside the productivity application that salespeople already use on a daily basis.  The Microsoft Dynamics CRM App for Outlook makes it easy to track emails, add contacts from within an email or even create new records to track emails against the browser on PC or Mac or mobile browser on phone. The CRM App for Outlook will expand support to include Firefox, Safari for Mac and Outlook for Mac, in addition to the currently supported IE and Chrome.

An example of the new CRM App for Outlook interface is shown below:

Excel Integration: To help increase productivity, Microsoft is providing the ability for salespeople to conduct analysis in Excel, directly within Microsoft Dynamics CRM. This eliminates the time and effort required to switch between applications in the middle of completing a business process. Salespeople can now view sales data in familiar Excel templates, perform what-if analysis, and upload the changes, all while maintaining the work context.

An example of the new Excel integration features is shown below:

Information Discovery: Information comes to you proactively by surfacing Trending Documents from Office Delve inside CRM. Find what you need and discover new content and connections on a dashboard in Microsoft Dynamics CRM.

An example of the new information discovery interface details is shown below:

OneDrive for Business: OneDrive for Business has been added to complement how users store and share contextual content in CRM. Get a consolidated view of documents across SharePoint, OneDrive for Business, and Office 365 Groups within the context of the CRM record.

An example of the new interface showing integration of OneDrive for Business is shown below:

Document Generation: With the new Document Generation features, you no longer need to manually extract CRM data for documents such as Account summaries, Quotes, Orders, Invoices, and product sheets. With one click users can easily generate a document from CRM using pre-defined Word and Excel templates. Authors can manage the pre-defined templates and using a wizard like flow build custom templates in Word or Excel. Document templates are role based by entity to ensure users have the proper content to meet their needs. Word and Excel documents generated from CRM will open as a downloaded document with the exception of CRM Online where Excel documents will be rendered in the Immersive Excel Online capability.

Cortana Integration: The integration with the  Cortana interface now enables embedding sales activities, accounts and opportunities into Cortana to present visiblility of what is most relevant to salespeople at any time – across both personal and professional sources.

An example of the new Cortana integration is shown below:

The full Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2016 Release Preview Guide can be found here.

Beringer Associates is always here to provide expert knowledge in topics like these. Please contact us with any questions you may have.

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