Business Action Virtual Tour Recording – Day 2 – Compelling Experiences

This past week we presented the content we developed for the Business Action World Tour virtually via Live Meeting.  We had hundreds of people register and join us for these events.  The number one question people had was about getting access to the recordings for these events.  I now have all the recordings and will publish these along with the Questions and Answers we fielded along with the calls. 

On Day 2 (Monday, April 28) we talked mostly about Windows Presentation Foundation and Silverlight and how you can take advantage of them to build compelling experiences for Dynamics CRM. We also showed a couple of groovy Dynamics CRM-specific demos that drove the point home.

I’ve provided the link to what I think is the best quality recording but have included an edited Q&A log combining questions from all 3 events.  We presented each session 3 times a day (2:00AM, 9:00AM and 6:00PM Pacific time).  Thanks to Trond Brande and Almut Tadsen for handling the 2:00AM calls.  Girish and I would have been pretty sleepy by the end of the week if they hadn’t done such a great job.  :)

Live Meeting Recording and PowerPoint Deck

I would recommend watching the High-Fidelity Recording available here. 

Update:  I’ve also posted the PowerPoint decks for all the sessions on my SkyDrive.

 

Questions and Answers from Day 2

 

Question: Which Vector Graphics is supported (.eps, .AI etc) ??
Answer: You'd have to convert them to XAML before using them, there are tools doing this

Question: This TimeManager app is available for download? Is it production or only for demo purposes?
Answer: That's demo only and not available publicly

Question: How is the connection between crm and Silverlight solved? via 2 web services?
Answer: yes, connection is web services

Question: What version of CRM is this?
Answer: 4.0

Question: Is this integration between CRM and Project?
Answer: You mean Microsoft Project Manager? No, this is a Silverlight application we created for demo purposes

Question: Is the dashboard available for download?
Answer: unfortunately not

Question: But do we have any guidelines or documentation on the same?
Answer: There will be links at the end of the presentation where you can find more information

Question: Is this Dashboard was developed using the CRM SDK? WebService means R u passing this info from CRM
Answer: The dashboard was developed using CRM Web services

Question: For the project dashboard demo, that u just demonstrated,did u also use SSRS?
Answer:  We did not use SSRS for this dashboard

Question: Is Silverlight integration possible for CRM Online or limited to CRM on-premise deployment?
Answer: Silverlight may be used in CRM Online.  You would use an iframe to insert the Silverlight control.  You would have to host the Silverlight control on another server.

Question: "Time and Expense" and "Projects" is an adaptation with development to manage projects? Is this available to download or get information about this.
Answer: It is available here: https://code.msdn.microsoft.com/crm4dpedemo

Question: Is this Dashboard was developed using the CRM SDK? Web Service means R u passing this info (Project/TimeSheets) from CRM to server which posts back with dashboard page? Where the web service is hosted?
Answer: The web service is hosted in the CRM Server. 

Question: Will WPF take advantage of hardware graphics acceleration
Answer: Absolutely. WPF takes full advantage of whatever graphics hardware you have available. It will scale up or down depending on what is available. This is one of the main differentiators from Silverlight. Since Silverlight is a web app and by definition cross platform it cannot take advantage of local hardware.

Question: Will the code also be available for review? This demonstration for the time sheet is very interesting but I haven't used WPF or Silverlight so having the code would be great!
Answer: Yes. Girish will be publishing the code for how we built these. He needs to clean up the code a little. This may take a few weeks. :) Look for the code of these on Girish's blog at https://blogs.msdn.com/girishr

Question: Hardrock Cafe app?
Answer: is at the following location: https://memorabilia.hardrock.com/

Question: What are the options for distributing WPF applications to end-users of CRM?
Answer: Click Once Deployment - https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/t71a733d(VS.80).aspx

Question: Can you suggest resources for charts in WPF? Can you compare the capabilities of building charts in WPF, Reporting Services, and Excel?
Answer: <Answered verbally>

Question: What does RIA Platform stand for?
Answer: RIA = Rich Internet Applciations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rich_Internet_Application

Question: Can we get our hands on the demos used?
Answer: <Answered verbally>

Question: I posted a question but didn't get response - my question was about the CRM customisation of time & expenses and project. maybe i didn't confirm correctly.
Answer: <Answered verbally>

Question: Would we expect to see these technologies in future releases of Dynamics CRM?
Answer: <Answered verbally>

Question: Code Gallery project for Customizations?
Answer: Here is the link: https://code.msdn.microsoft.com/crm4dpedemo

Technorati Tags: Microsoft,Dynamics CRM,XRM,Windows Presentation Foundation,WPF,Silverlight

Comments

• Anonymous
  May 05, 2009
  Well the good news is the sessions have been recorded, and can be found on Ben Riga’s blog including
• Anonymous
  May 06, 2009
  Last week I had the opportunity to present four webcasts as part of the Business Action Virtual Tour
• Anonymous
  May 06, 2009
  Last week I had the opportunity to present four webcasts as part of the Business Action Virtual Tour
• Anonymous
  May 06, 2009
  El otro día anunciaba una serie de eventos online en directo sobre cómo extender nuestros desarrollos