WaveAccess launched new marketplace for MS CRM add-ons sale in the Russian market

Today shop.wave-access.com sells a variety of business applications for the Microsoft Dynamics CRM platform.

At this online store everyone can see available MS CRM solutions, download free add-ons, request demos, and even calculate the approximate cost of implementing solution.

The shop is completely Russified and ready to work with russian customers.

By the way, at the shop.wave-access.com customers can also download CRM Gamification tool fo free and get CRM adoption increased:

CRM Gamification leaders’ board: when a game becomes a sport

One of the most discussed topics on Convergence 2013 was the topic about low CRM user adoption. In this section we’d like to mention popular report by Scott Jeffer, Manager, CRM & Database Strategist at New York Yankees. Scott talked about the success of the introduction of CRM gamification product named Hero. Even in such an unexpected industry as sport is, CRM gamification has shown excellent results.

Speaking about the problems of implementing Hero, Scott noted that part of CRM users were disappointed when viewed their score in the game. They expected more from themselves and less from colleagues. In such a situation, a very good solution would be a leaders’ board, where users can track their real-time progress and monitor closest colleagues’ progress.

In WaveAccess CRM Gamification Tool leaders’ board is realized in the next way: it displays the user’s score, the closest player’s score and the gap in points between that player and the user. You can output the results as a histogram, or traditionally as a list, or combine them:
         

The reviews of CRM Gamification Tool users show that leaders’ board is a good bet in the game and it is used very often by competitors.

You can install CRM Gamification Tool for free from our website http://www.wave-access.com/Public_en/ms_crm_gamification_product.aspx

New WaveAccess CRM Gamification Tool features

Gamification is a progressive phenomenon, so gamification products must keep pace with the times. Today we launch new features of WaveAccess CRM Gamification Tool.

1. A new convenient way to display the achievements

Track your progress easier! New visual bar graph shows how many points you have and how many points have your closest competitors.                     

If you like previous version of leader board more, settings allow to leave everything as it was:
 

or combine both options for even greater clarity:

2. The opportunity to choose up

Have you noticed tab «Teams» at the screenshots? Yep, now it is possible to form teams and compete entire departments.

3. Filters

Another nice thing is a new filter for more detailed statistics. For example, the filter allows to show the activity of the certain user or team by type (sales, marketing, etc.) or time period (week, month, year). This handy statistics allow heads of departments, and the players themselves, to understand what user succeeds in working with Microsoft CRM more than others.

Recall that WaveAccess continues to accept proposals for the CRM Gamification Tool improvement. If you want to download CRM Gamification Tool or share an idea with us, please visit: http://www.wave-access.com/Public_en/ms_crm_gamification_product.aspx

We thank you all who submit proposals. Together we make CRM Gamification Tool better!

7 popular MS CRM add-ons

Microsoft Dynamics CRM can be greatly expanded by adding different features necessary for each individual company. We rated CRM add-ons that are requested by MS CRM users more often than others.

1. Microsoft Outlook Integration
Microsoft Outlook is the most popular mail service among Microsoft CRM users, that's why there was a need of integration since the earliest CRM versions appeared. Microsoft Dynamics CRM and Microsoft Outlook Integration provides users with a number of options:
-    CRM Address book can be used to send emails to customers whose cards were instituted in Microsoft Dynamics CRM;
-    Data updating: users can edit customer records, tasks and messages both in the Microsoft Dynamics CRM web client and in the Microsoft Outlook client;
-    E-mail monitoring: send and receive messages via CRM;
-    Off-line mode: you can work with the data without access to the server by editing the local copy of the data.
Demo shows how Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 works inside Microsoft Outlook, making it easier than ever to keep track of customer information: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3OvgJga5QHM
Now there are a lot of integration add-ons, for example, by Microsoft or by CRM Software Solutions.

2. Phone Integration
Features set depends on the type of call center or PBX system. The most requested functions are:
 - ability to make a call to a customer  directly from Microsoft Dynamics CRM by a single mouse click;
 - automatically forward external phone calls from customers to the Microsoft Dynamics CRM users assigned to them;
 - pop-up the Microsoft Dynamics CRM form with information about the caller immediately before the call begins;
 - record all phone calls in Microsoft Dynamics CRM and listen to them on demand.
There are a lot of solutions, too. For example, by WaveAccess.

3. Microsoft SharePoint Integration
Microsoft SharePoint is a popular platform for collaboration and content management. After the integration with MS CRM, user can create, retrieve, view, and delete documents on a server that is running SharePoint, from Microsoft Dynamics CRM.
Microsoft Dynamics CRM integration with SharePoint Server is enabled by default, but Microsoft recommends to extend the functionality.

4. MailChimp Integration (e-mail marketing)
MailChimp - simple and reliable platform for e-mail marketing. MailChimp & CRM integration allows to:
  - send mails directly from CRM, using existing contacts from CRM;
  - track email statistics, such as sendings, successful deliveries, openings, clicks, bounces etc.;
  - transfer statistics into CRM.
MailChimp Integration you can get at MailChimp and PowerObjects.

5. Microsoft CRM Gamification
Gamification add-on introduces game elements into CRM and increases user adoption. As a result, working with CRM becomes a new command team sport. The application allows you to assign a specific number of points for necessary actions in CRM (add a contact, update the phone number, call, etc.).

Gamification add-on forms CRM user rating according to the number of points. You can set the title awarded after getting a certain number of points, for example, Novice, Master, Expert, etc., or create customized corporate ranks.
You can download CRM Gamification Tool for free at WaveAccess.

6. Business cards scanning
Scanning add-on can scan business cards and shows results as a database with fields: name, company, title, contact details, etc. information contained on the card.
Application also allows to get data from this database and transfer it into CRM.
You can get business card scanning solution, for example, at ms-dynamics-crm.

7. Documents creating
Documents creating add-ons allow you to create documents (doc, docx, pdf, ...) with data from CRM and manage them. Application works with both standard and custom objects. Thus, it is possible to create, for example, invoices and other complex documents.
Key features:
  - creation of Word documents with data from MS CRM;
  - sending documents as attachments via e-mail;
  - converting documents created in formats pdf, xls, doc, docx, odt.
With this feature user can, for example, open an account and get an overview of all related documents.
There are a lot of Documents creating solutions, for example, DocumentsCorePack by Mscrm-addons.com

WaveAccess top managers attended Convergence 2013

18-23 of March WaveAccess directors attended a large annual event – Microsoft Convergence. This year Convergence was held in New Orleans.

This conference is traditionally attended by customers, partners, and ISVs (Independent Software Vendors) from around the globe. Convergence gives its attendees opportunity to learn new details about the Dynamics, talk to customers, meet with Microsoft developers, ask questions, and bring valuable information back.

Microsoft Convergence 2013:
·         6 days;
·         290 sponsors & exhibitors;
·         more than 11,500 attendees;
·         85 countries representing;
·         7,800 tweets using #Conv13 trending in the top 10;
·         6K users of mobile site;
·         500+ pages viewed.

Attending Microsoft Convergence was a great opportunity for WaveAccess to meet our longtime European and American partners.

We thank all participants, speakers and sponsors of the exhibition and look forward to the Convergence ​​2014!

MS CRM 2011 Rollup 12 issues

Last week our CRM Online Organization was updated with Rollup 12. Below we listed changes in MS CRM that affected us:

1.       As it was promised by Microsoft, there is no crmForm object anymore.

2.       The pages are loading not in IE8 mode, but in IE9, 10.
First, IE9 javascript has multi – browser format and some objects are slightly modified. For example, there is no lastIndex property in the result of  string.match () method. Then it may affect the layout of the page.

3.       Forms layout has been changed. Before that the controls were located like this  <tr ...> <td :> <input :>, and now a new div <tr ...> <td :> <div :> <input:> has been added

 4.       window.showModalDialog ('/ _controls / lookup / lookupinfo.aspx? ...) returned the objects before and now it returns the string in JSON format.

WaveAccess experience in resolving Breaking Script Issues When Upgrading Microsoft Dynamics CRM customization for multiple-browser support

Microsoft released a beta version of MS Dynamics CRM that supports multiple browser types, but this also includes significant changes that will influence a great number of users and organizations that use Microsoft Dynamics CRM.

Even though Microsoft provides code samples and documented best practices to simplify development and facilitate future upgrades, it doesn’t stop users from facing the problems with breaking customizations and solutions that don’t work anymore.   Only solutions that have been created with the help of supported APIs for CRM 2011 as documented in the Software Development Kit for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 and Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online will continue to work without issues. But what if your solution use unsupported methods?

Of course you can use Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Custom Code Validation Tool, however it only highlights the problem, and it doesn’t provide a solution.

Below you can find some examples how problems that have been identified with the help of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Custom Code Validation Tool can be solved using JQuery and new SDK.

insertCell	$("<tr>").appendTo
document.all	$(element)
attachevent	$(element).bind
innerText	$(element).text
FormType	Xrm.Page.ui.getFormType()
crmForm	Xrm.Page
AddParam	addCustomView
Clear	setValue(null)
SubmitCrmForm	Xrm.Page.data.entity.save
GetLabelControl	controlObj.getLabel()

Actually this table listed a small portion of the issues, but even these issues might require time consuming efforts.

You might have a question “what are the most typical problems you might face?”.

To help you answer, below we listed the 6 mostly frequently met situations and issues that our customers had:
1.    Assign event directly:
document.getElementById('new_field').onclick = FormerClientChange;
instead you can use functions:
Xrm.Page.getAttribute("new_field").addOnChange(myFunction);
2.    Rename element in navigation
if (document.getElementById('nav_myitem') != null) {
        if (document.getElementById('nav_myitem').children.length > 1) {
            if (document.getElementById('nav_myitem').children[1].tagName == "NOBR") {
                document.getElementById('nav_myitem').children[1].setAttribute('title', "Some text");
                document.getElementById('nav_myitem').children[1].innerText = "Some text";
            }
        }
    }
instead you can use functions:
Xrm.Page.ui.navigation.items.get("nav_myitem").setLabel("Other Addresses");
3.    Hide the field
document.getElementById('new_field').style.visibility = 'hidden';
instead you can use functions:
Xrm.Page.getControl("new_field").setVisible(false);
4.    Hide navigation element
        document.getElementById('nav_myitem').style.display = 'none';
instead you can use functions:
Xrm.Page.ui.navigation.items.get("nav_myitem").setVisible(false);
5.    To use XMLHttpRequest do not use ActiveX objects directly:
objXMLHttp = new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP");
instead you can use functions from jQuery $.ajax or the following function:
function GetXmlHttpObject() {
    var objXMLHttp = null;
    if (window.XMLHttpRequest) {
        objXMLHttp = new XMLHttpRequest();
    }
    else if (window.ActiveXObject) {
        objXMLHttp = new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP");
    }
    return objXMLHttp;
}

If you do not have time for dealing with such issues we can help you
•    Identify whether any unsupported methods have been used in your solution
•    Resolve all identified issues
•    Conduct  testing
Please contact us info@wave-access.com or +1 866 311-24-67 to find out more.

Kind words from happy clients: Thomson Reuters about WaveAccess work.

It is always so pleasant to get the words of gratitude from our favourite clients:

"We have been working with WaveAccess for over 2 years on projects relating to development of software and searches for scientific applications.
We are very impressed with how quickly the professionals at WaveAccess understand the requirements and use cases needed for scientists and realized them in the software in the best way possible. Troubleshooting was never a problem – WaveAccess colleagues responded quickly by taking good immediate care regarding any hiccups that are unavoidable in the software development process.
The WaveAccess team is very professional and reliable in communication especially in engagements involving several companies. They have a core unit of highly-skilled software engineers and also a flexible pool of freelance contractors if the project needs some unique expertise not represented in the core team. The core team’s combined skill set covers all popular software development languages and frameworks.
I would recommend WaveAccess for any of your software development needs."

Svetlana Bureeva
Director, Professional Services
IP & Science
Thomson Reuters
© 2012

It is a big honour for us to work with such client as Thomson Reuters.
We are looking forward to showing all our customers the same high level of professionalism and expertise.

Thomson Reuters is the world’s leading source of intelligent information for businesses and professionals. The Scientific business of Thomson Reuters provides information and knowledge to accelerate research, discovery and innovation. This information is essential for drug companies to discover new drugs and get them to market faster; researchers to find relevant papers and know what’s newly published in their subject; and businesses to optimize their intellectual property and find competitive intelligence. Learn more on Thomson Reuters IP&Science web-site:
http://ip-science.thomsonreuters.com/

Turn Microsoft CRM usage into a Game with FREE CRM Gamification tool!

Gaming elements inserted into the working day — it sounds like paradox, but it’s not a waste of time. On the contrary, it’s an effective solution to increase company’s productivity. Gamification becomes more and more popular among employers as way to motivate their employees.  Everyone who uses it enjoys its novelty and clarity.

To transform Microsoft CRM into a game we developed the Gamification plug-in that allows you turning boring CRM work into enjoyable task and fun.
Why should anyone really enjoy filling in the endless number of CRM fields? No one actually seems to enjoy this part of their job, meanwhile CRM systems need to be constantly and consistently updated in order to work effectively.

But if you turn boring routine into an achievement located inside a game, with point values for different CRM activities (such as adding a contact, updating telephone numbers and other contact info, and so on), your old CRM window will take on a new look and everything will change.  
Your administrator can set the points values for each CRM activity. You can decide which CRM actions you want to encourage (for example, making telephone calls) by assigning larger points values to them.

Every player has their own score in the game. Any time you can evaluate your actual position compared to other players.
Players will earn gold and silver stars for reaching specified scores. By default there are five player levels:Novice, Advanced, Veteran, Expert, Master, Grandmaster.
Gamification tool can, of course, be customized with player levels that better fits your requirements.  You can also set the point levels needed to achieve each level.
So it works out that the more an employee works and the better he does his job, the higher is his position on the company leader board.

The trend of gamifying CRM is constantly growing. The number of employees and companies using game-like CRM grows every day. Gamifying CRM becomes a new type of company sport. But, readymade solutions to implement game elements in CRM are, at the moment, not numerous. Gamification is very easy to install. It’s in fact more like a plug-in. Along with all its other advantages, Gamification is offered absolutely free.

You can download GameSolution for free from our official site:

http://www.wave-access.com/Public_En/ms_crm_gamification_product.aspx

 

WaveAccess anniversary

Last month WaveAccess celebrated the 12^th anniversary.  The company has come a really long way and built a reputation as a reliable and efficient partner. 

Traditionally we had an amazing get-together for all employees and their families to commemorate the occasion. But Company Day is not only a nice party, it’s a great chance to sum up all the results of previous-year performance and accomplish the goals for the future.

The 12^th year was very eventful. Our team has grown significantly: now we have 120 employees in our offices worldwide. WaveAccess gained new interesting projects and successfully continued cooperation with old clients. We were deeply focused on the development of our CRM and R&D services and may confidently say that the company has achieved a significant progress in this area. 

We are going to continue playing an active role in IT-industry and help our customers to grow and improve their business.

WaveAccess thanks our clients for their trust and looking forward continuing successful collaboration.

Check updates on our web-site: http://www.wave-access.com