Dynamics CRM Orion- Pie in the sky or Henny Penny?

With the celestial code names we get how could I resist writing this blog post?

I love (LOVE) new technology. Is it perfect? Nope, far from it, but that’s part of what I like about it. Finding those deficiencies, working around them to find my solutions. Learning new things, teaching new things. It’s all a huge part of what I love about my job.

So for Orion/2013 with just about everything from a UI perspective being new, I am giddy. I am so giddy that I can likely get past any deficiencies we may (will?) discover along the way. Lots of changes under the hood too, but for most users they will never know, but that’s the way it’s supposed to be. Users don’t care HOW it works, just THAT IT WORKS.

And they want it to work the way they think, and that’s one reason I am really liking the process-based focus we will be getting. I was not too happy with it in Polaris, it seemed half finished (if I am being generous). I heard many people say it was advertising what was coming next. Well, based on that advertising, no one should want what’s next. However, with what I’ve seen and read, we SHOULD be happy with Orion and the process-based experience. Thinking from a single entity point of view seems really short-sighted, this true 360 view will go far. Before 360 was a marketing term, now it can be used to more accurately define the user experience.

I am a hopeful skeptic when it comes to the extensibility of Orion. I honestly have not had enough exposure to make a call on it yet, good or bad. But since at this point of the game I have little if any influence over it, I just need to learn it and learn how it works FOR me and AGAINST me, then adapt.

I am looking forward to building custom business processes for my use and that of my customers. I can’t wait for the cool ideas I get from my untainted CRM newbie students. They have the best ideas because they don’t know the limitations yet, they only see possibilities.

For me, Orion is certainly more pie in the sky than Henny Penny. I think that the partially finished Polaris update we had made people (rightfully) scared for the next release. If Orion were simply a grown-up Polaris, I would be skeptical too. But, it is not.

Just for fun, some history. CRM version 1.0 had no code name, but its official name was Microsoft Business Solutions Customer Relationship Management v1.0. There was no CRM v2.0. CRM 3.0 had a code name of Danube Phase II. CRM 4.0 was known as Titan (but was actually Kilimanjaro internally first, but that’s too hard to spell). CRM 2011 had no code name but was CRM vNext or CRM 5.0. And then the updates started getting those code names too…Polaris and Gemini for updates to CRM 2011 and now CRM 2013 came from Orion. Our next two updates have been named Leo and Vega. So as far back as Titan, we’ve had pie in the sky names.

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