Poking my head out of the sand

Wow, it's been a long time. I kept trying to come back and write something, but between working on new projects and trying to figure out what I could actually write about, well…

 

So, anyway, just to catch up. I left the CRM team at the beginning of the year to work in an incubation / greenhouse team within MBS. We were initially focused (well, "focused" might be too strong of a word) on hybrid application models. That is, we were looking at ways to create applications that spanned the firewall either directly or indirectly. One of our motivating factors was to introduce a collaboration element to MBS assets. We tossed around a handful of interesting scenarios, and in true Microsoft style, we went way overboard in developing the initial scenario (a building contractor doing collaborative bidding and design on home remodel projects).

 

One of the good things that came out of all that scenario work was a prototype for a "data projector" that could take internal line of business data and project it onto a shared, hosted workspace. I can't go into a ton of detail around this yet because the concept itself was useful enough that we're going to pursue it as a product. That means I need to be hush-hush about it until the official product team makes an announcement.

 

In the meantime I'm looking at the CRM platform through the eyes of an ISV (again) to see what we might be able to do with it in terms of building non-CRM products. Watch this space for more information as we learn things (like the callout implementation from CRM for notes and documents is just plain broken).

 

PS - Caitlyn is doing great, she sleeps through the night and has since we brought her home. Talk about a blast watching her learn about all the cool things in her new world.