Microsoft recently acquired FieldOne, a provider of FSA (Field Services Automation) solution built on top of Dynamics CRM and made it available as part of the Dynamics CRM Professional License! With this, Field Services organizations around the world have an opportunity to use a single CRM platform to manage their Field Services operations as well! Salesforce recently accounced their Field Service Lightening solution availability by Q2 2016. CloudFronts has been working with Field Services solutions since atleast a couple of years and became a FieldOne partner right around the acquisition time. We also closed our first FIeldOne project at the same time. Since then, we have been busy learning and deploying the FieldOne solution for our global clients. In the process we developed a robust integration with Dynamics AX as well and are now offering an integrated Field Services solution for clients that need a robust ERP like Dynamics AX for their backend operations. Our Field Services and Dynamics AX teams are also presenting a webinar this month on Integrated Field Services.  This webinar is being conducted on February 25th and you can register here – https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/5781453513006430721 As we grow our Field Services expertise, we now have a dedicated team with SMEs (Subject Matter Experts), FieldOne Certified Developers, FieldOne RESCO Mobility Experts as well as CRM and AX experts to provide a complete solution for our clients in Field Services.   Connect with us  

We are excited to announce that the CloudFronts Project Management Solution for Dynamics CRM 2016 will be available soon! But I thought this is a good time to share the background story on the genesis of this solution! CloudFronts was setup in 2012 with a desire to focus on Dynamics CRM and related technologies. As the founder and CEO and someone who has spent his entire career on Dynamics CRM, I realized that the first thing we needed was a Dynamics CRM platform to manage our projects and enter our billable time. For any Professional Services organization capturing time is at the heart of their business model. So with that, we signed up for our CRM Online license and started building out a basic Project Management application with time entry capabilities. As that solution continued to evolve to meet our needs, we kept adding valuable functionality to the core solution. An example would be our use of a custom google grid inside of our Timesheet entity to allow for quick time entries! But there are many such examples. About 6 months back, we got involved with the CRM 2016 Preview program and based on several new technical and functional features in this release, like the new Web API and the robust mobile client, we decided to ramp up our Project Management solution and offer it as a solution built on top of the most exciting CRM 2016 release! As we get ready for a final release next month, I have taken the liberty (even though being advised not to do so, by our development team!) to highlight key features and provide some sneak peak screen captures listed below. Key Features : Project Setup Skill Set Management Team Selection based on utilization Resource Allocation Gantt Chart Tasks and Sub-Tasks Task level and Project level Actual versus Budget auto Rollups Timesheets Time & Expense Entry Management Time Entry Approval and Invoicing ERP Integration available Mobility CRM Reports and Power BI Dashboards   Screen captures : CRM Project Entity: Skillset Selection: Gantt Chart: Task Hierarchical View: Time entry in mobile: Product Configuration:   Connect with us  

Our CRM team takes up many technical challenges with a goal of resolving key business requirements for our clients. Recently we had a requirement to integrate a cloud telephony system with Dynamics CRM Online. The client did not want to do any installs on the agent’s laptops but instead wanted the entire CTI integration to work through the browser.  In addition, the cloud telephony system (Knowlarity) did not have a TAPI adapter as well so USD (Unified Service Desk) was not even an option. Our team worked with the Knowlarity REST API and developed a POC that allowed for a screen pop within the CRM web application, for incoming calls. The agent could receive the call within CRM and open a case or add notes to an existing case directly from the browser! As we move away from client applications to apps and browser based solutions in the cloud, this approach is ideal for customers who are using different OS platforms ! The video below shows the integration working!

One of our current projects involves a CRM Online 2016 deployment along with AX 2012 R3 on Azure. Our client has manufacturing and services operations in 3 continents and wanted to ensure a deep integration between CRM and AX.   In addition, the client also wanted to deploy Field Services Automation (FSA). With the recent acquisition of FieldOne by Microsoft, it made sense to leverage the FieldOne solution which is built on top of Dynamics CRM Online and provides robust capabilities for Field Service Management.  We also had to integrate FieldOne with Dynamics AX 2012 R3 to ensure a complete integrated solution between CRM and AX. We selected the Scribe Insight platform for our integration as we already had deep expertise with AX integrations using Scribe. We then customized the Scribe JumpStart solution to incorporate the Field Services entities into the integration. Our team recently completed this challenging integration and the client is going live in a couple of months on this solution! Key Features of this integration are – Customers and Service Location integration between CRM and AX. Service Orders integration from AX to CRM. Service Objects (Customer Equipment) integration from AX to CRM. Service Order updates from CRM to AX (including through the RESCO FieldOne client) Additional integrations like inventory, back orders for parts ordering and warehouse integration are also planned for Phase 2.

Introduction Power BI is a cloud-based business analytics service that enables to visualize and analyze data. Using Power BI users can spot risk, find opportunities at a glance, create personalized reports and dashboard. Data visualizations in Power BI will allow you to interact with your data to find business insights. We can create and modify visualizations in reports and then pin to the dashboard. A variety of different visualizations like bar chart, column chart, area chart, combo charts, doughnut charts, and funnel charts, etc. can be added to Power BI reports. With the introduction of Power BI custom visuals, developers can easily add custom visuals into Power BI for use in dashboard, reports and content packs. Custom visuals can be created for yourself and later share it with the community or can be downloaded from Power BI Visual Gallery. Case Study Power BI has out of the box Gauge visual available as shown in the screenshot below. But this does not suffice the requirement for one of our client that needs to have a custom visual something similar to the Gauge with a Dial. This was a necessity to successfully drive the business by analyzing data on the dashboard with the help of this custom Gauge with a Dial.     So, our developers had a brainstorming session and figured out how we can approach this particular requirement and meet the needs of the client. It was also a challenge and something new as it was related to Power BI and newly developer tool available for development using TypeScript. So finally after development, debugging and testing the visual, we were successful in implementing our own custom visualization named as DialGauge shown in screenshot below.     We have submitted this custom visualization to Power BI team for publishing to Power BI visual gallery. After verifying the same, Power BI team have published our DialGauge custom visual and currently it is available for Power BI users to download. Description for custom ‘DialGauge’ visualization is as below: Colour indicated by red displays actual value. Colour indicated by yellow displays target value. Pointer displays any value. Null/blank/max values will be indicated by colour green. Default minimum value is 0. Default maximum value is 100. Additional label to display value. It append % sign. Name of chart will be displayed on Center of Dial Gauge. DialGauge visual can be downloaded here.   Check the DialGauge discussion at Power BI blog:

The latest release of CRM is here. With a deep focus on Customer Engagement, this release is packed with features that will improve the CRM experience for organizations of varying sizes and across different industries. CloudFronts has been working hard over the last 2 months to learn the technical and functional aspects of this release and our CRM team is already conducting important Webinars in December that cover key features like mobility, customer engagement and SDK improvements! Register for these webinars – 1. Register for Leveraging the new Web API Webinar 2. Register for Mobility Enhancements Webinar 3. Register for Unified Service Desk and Service Desk improvements Webinar Read more about the release –https://community.dynamics.com/b/msftdynamicsblog/archive/2015/11/30/microsoft-dynamics-crm-2016-now-available-ushering-in-a-new-era-of-intelligent-customer-engagement Learn about all the new features –https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics/crm-customer-center/get-ready-for-the-next-release.aspx Sign up for a free trial –http://www.microsoft.com/en-xm/dynamics/crm-free-trial-overview.aspx

Our popular Gravity Forms – CRM Integration solution just got better. Last month, we released the product with support only for CRM Online Organizations. We promised that we will soon deliver a CRM OnPremise solution as well. Our teams finally finished their testing with OnPremise Dynamics CRM with IFD enabled and we now support Onprem integrations! We provide support for CRM 2015/2016 On Premise environments that are IFD (Internet facing deployments) enabled. You can sign up for a free 30 day trial here

iD Fresh Foods Pvt. Ltd, also known as “iDSpecial” (www.idspecial.com) is a fast growing Indian FMCG “fresh food” brand. With a mission to “make the preparation of home-made meals a pleasure”, iDSpecial delivers fresh foods to customers every single day. Through a hub and spoke model, iDSpecial provides fresh food to local shops every morning! What started as a small business with humble beginnings 8 years back is now a fast growing, fresh foods company in India and many international markets. Last year iDSpecial raised around 6 million dollars in funding to fuel its rapid growth and expand into new cities and international markets! The business operation is dependent on being able to provide fresh food to the local shops on a timely basis, every single day. This requires a sophisticated operation built on top of modern technologies. The van drivers (who run set routes every single day) are provided with smart phones to update their delivery numbers to each store while their location is geo coded and fed to a centralized system for tracking. Sales Managers are assigned territories and it is their job to ensure their territories continue to grow and meet targets and ensuring the store owners’ issues and concerns are addressed in near real time! The numbers from the territories then need to drive the KPIs and metrics that are used by Management to make critical business decisions that impact growth! iDSpecial wanted a sophisticated Business Intelligence platform that would allow rich analytics with an ability to drill down quickly into details. In addition, they wanted a platform that would be accessible from mobile devices as well! iDSpecial considered the Power BI platform from Microsoft and connected with CloudFronts for an initial discussion and demo at the CloudFronts offices. iDSpecial selected CloudFronts to implement the Power BI platform and has recently entered into a yearlong Services Agreement with CloudFronts to continue developing the Power BI platform. From providing running total of daily sales for current month and the projection for the remaining days to average sales by territories that utilize the gauge visuals, Power BI is already a key BI tool for iDSpecial and will continue to evolve over the coming days and months. A robust SQL Data Warehouse sitting on Windows Azure ensures data integrity and high reliability for the Power BI reports and dashboards!

CloudFronts Technologies is releasing its Gravity Forms and Dynamics CRM integration solution for General Availability! This solution was initially released as a limited release Public Preview last month and we have resolved several issues through feedback from our clients and our internal teams! This finished solution also marks the release of our first ‘product’ for Dynamics CRM customers globally! This solution is currently available for Dynamics CRM Online and will soon be made available for Dynamics CRM On-Premise environments. You can register for a 30 day trial here. Key Features of the solution are highlighted below – Automated Web to Lead Conversion – Our solution integrates the very popular Gravity Forms (a WordPress form Plugin) with Leads in Dynamics CRM. When a visitor to your WordPress site submits the contact form it is converted to a Lead in CRM. Robust Technology Infrastructure – Our integration service is built on top of Azure and utilizes some of the latest features from Azure to provide a highly reliable Lead conversion platform. With a queue based delivery and a high uptime of 99.9%, our integration service ensures your leads are never lost in ‘translation’! $5/Month pricing – A single $5/month pricing! Convert as many leads as you want. Pricing is also independent of the number of CRM users. Only a flat $5/month pricing! Sweet. Cancel anytime – There is no contract and you pay on a monthly basis through a recurring payment! You can cancel anytime and we will not bill you going forward. Edit your Mappings! – Easily edit your form mappings between Gravity Forms and CRM. Access to our Support – Our Support teams are here to help you. Send an email to support@cloudfronts.com if you need any assistance! Sign Up for a Free Trial here – https://www.cloudfronts.in/gravity-form-crm-integration-product/.

CloudFronts Technologies is a Premier Scribe (www.scribesoft.com) partner providing deep integration and migration capabilities through the Scribe Insight and TIBCO Cloud Integration solutions. Our Scribe certified consultants and our in-house Scribe MVP (Anil Shah) continue to work on resolving complex integration requirements using the Scribe Insight and Online platforms. Our teams developed complex AX 2012 integrations with platforms like Dynamics CRM in addition to other integration solutions, using the Scribe Insight Platform. This year our team has worked extensively on the TIBCO Cloud Integration platform and the CDK (Connector Development Kit) to develop their first Connector on this platform! Our Connector has been developed for our Partners – AKA Enterprise Solutions (a New York based inner circle and Gold Partner). AKA offers a rich add-on to Dynamics GP & Dynamics CRM for Media companies that need Ad Sales Management. AKA had a requirement to integrate the above offerings between CRM and GP to allow a seamless experience for their Media clients! AKA engaged CloudFronts to develop their connector on top of the TIBCO Cloud Integration platform. TIBCO Cloud Integration is a light foot print integration platform hosted on top of Azure and offered as a cloud platform with a robust ‘Connector Development Kit’. The CloudFronts team quickly learnt the CDK and started the development for the solution in September. The key requirement was to integrate Orders between CRM and the custom entities in Dynamics GP for the AKA Ad Sales Mangement solution. Our teams developed this complex connector in record time and are now working with the AKA team to ensure a timely delivery before Thanksgiving! What a wonderful Thanksgiving it will be !! To learn more about the AKA Ad Sales Management solutions for CRM & GP – http://www.adsalessolutions.com/ To learn more about TIBCO Cloud Integration – http://www.scribesoft.com/scribe_online