"Data, looks like resistance to the Borg is futile to maximizing our sales pipeline."

Arguably, the most noticeable feature in the Dynamics CRM 2011 Beta is the new Dashboard functionality.  It brings to the table such a new level of easy and powerful customization that one could say Microsoft has truly “brought BI to the masses.”

What makes the Dynamics CRM 2011 Dashboards so special?  Let me count the ways:

• Easily create a custom Dashboard on the fly by clicking the New button on the Outlook ribbon or from the web client.
• Keep your custom dashboard for yourself, or share your creation with other colleagues on your team (similar in functionality to Views).
• Easily add CRM Views to the Dashboard.
• Drag in your own bar charts and line charts, add a sales funnel, or add a connected Bing Map so you can see the locations of the customers you’re visiting today.
• Drill-down capability, so you can view individual records.
• Use iFrames to provide a window to other Portals or internal/external websites.
• Use the advanced tools in Dashboard customization to incorporate custom SSRS reports that display data from other systems.

These tools provide all the fodder that the imaginative user and developer will need to design useful Dashboards on-the-fly.

Dashboard Help Section

For those new to managing Dashboards, Microsoft provided a help section that is available upon your first login to Dynamics CRM 2011.  This section can be hidden permanently as soon as you feel you’re familiar with the tools.

Dynamics CRM 2011: Dashboards Help section

Creating a New Dashboard in CRM 2011

Upon creation of a new Dashboard, CRM asks for your preferred layout format.  So far so good…

Dynamics CRM 2011: Dashboards Layout

In the next Dashboard customization screen, we can add the following resource types:

• Chart
• List
• Web Resource, which can consist of:
  • Web Page (HTML)
  • Style Sheet (CSS)
  • Script (JScript)
  • Data (XML)
  • Images (JPG, PNG, GIF, ICO)
  • Silverlight (XAP)
  • Style Sheet (XSL)
• iFrame

Dynamics CRM 2011: Dashboards Toolbar

In less than five minutes, I instantly built my sample Dashboard by:

• Adding a bar graph of Activities by Priority
• Adding a Grid View of My Accounts
• Adding a JPG image
• Adding the mobile website of Twitter Search for #MSDYNCRM

See the screenshot of my creative (albeit questionably productive) Dashboard below.

Dynamics CRM 2011: My Sample Dashboard

While my sample Dashboard won’t win any productivity awards, it’s my own Dashboard to view, tweak and share with my colleagues.  My next step would be to try and incorporate Bing Maps imaginatively.

As always, the most important step is to take that initial dive, and imagine the possibilities!