Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales is a

customer relationship management Customer relationship management (CRM) is a process in which a business or other organization administers its interactions with customers, typically using data analysis to study large amounts of information. CRM systems compile data from a ra ...

software package developed by

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washing ...

. The current version is Dynamics 365. The name and licensing changed with the update from Dynamics 2016.

Release History

Microsoft CRM 1.2

Microsoft CRM 1.2 was released on December 8, 2003. Microsoft CRM 1.2 was not widely adopted by industry. It was not possible to create custom entities but there was a

software development kit A software development kit (SDK) is a collection of software development tools in one installable package. They facilitate the creation of applications by having a compiler, debugger and sometimes a software framework. They are normally specific to ...

(SDK) available using

SOAP Soap is a salt of a fatty acid used in a variety of cleansing and lubricating products. In a domestic setting, soaps are surfactants usually used for washing, bathing, and other types of housekeeping. In industrial settings, soaps are use ...

and

XML Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing arbitrary data. It defines a set of rules for encoding documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readable. T ...

endpoints to interact with it.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0

The second version was rebranded as Microsoft Dynamics 3.0 (version 2.0 was skipped entirely) to signify its inclusion within the Dynamics product family and was released on December 5, 2005. Notable updates over version 1.2 are the ease of creating customizations to CRM, the switch from using

Crystal Reports Crystal Reports is a business intelligence application marketed to small- and medium-sized businesses by SAP. History Terry Cunningham and the Cunningham Group originated the software in 1984. Crystal Services Inc. marketed the product (origin ...

to Microsoft SQL Reporting Services, and the ability to run on

Windows Vista Windows Vista is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was the direct successor to Windows XP, which was released five years before, at the time being the longest time span between successive releases of ...

and Outlook 2007. Significant additions released later by Microsoft also allowed Dynamics CRM 3.0 to be accessed by various

mobile device A mobile device (or handheld computer) is a computer small enough to hold and operate in the hand. Mobile devices typically have a flat LCD or OLED screen, a touchscreen interface, and digital or physical buttons. They may also have a physical ...

s and integration with

Siebel Systems Siebel Systems, Inc. () was a software company principally engaged in the design, development, marketing, and support of customer relationship management (CRM) applications—notably Siebel CRM. The company was founded by Thomas Siebel and Pat ...

. This was the first version that saw reasonable take up by customers. You could create custom entities and (1xN) relations between the system/custom entities.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0

Dynamics CRM 4.0 (a.k.a. Titan) was introduced in December 2007 (RTM build number 4.0.7333.3 Microsoft CRM build numbers from version 4.0 to version 8..;). It features multi-tenancy, improved reporting security, data importing, direct mail merging and support for newer technologies such as

Windows Server 2008 Windows Server 2008 is the fourth release of the Windows Server operating system produced by Microsoft as part of the Windows NT family of the operating systems. It was released to manufacturing on February 4, 2008, and generally to retail on Fe ...

and SQL Server 2008 (Update Rollup 4). Dynamics CRM 4.0 also implements CRM Online, a hosted solution that is offered directly by Microsoft. The multi-tenancy option also allows ISVs to offer hosted solutions to end customers as well. Dynamics CRM 4.0 is the first version of the product, which has seen significant take up in the market and passed the 1 million user mark in July 2009. Additional support for NxN relations was added, which solved a lot of 'in between' entities. "Connections" were also introduced in favour of "Relations". The UI design was based on Office 2007 look and feel, with the same blue shading and round button as "start".

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011

Dynamics CRM 2011 was released to open Beta in February 2010. It then went into Release Candidate stage in December 2010. The product was then released in February 2011 (build number 5.0.9688.583) Browsers such as

Internet Explorer Internet Explorer (formerly Microsoft Internet Explorer and Windows Internet Explorer, commonly abbreviated IE or MSIE) is a series of graphical user interface, graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft which was used in the Microsoft Wind ...

, Chrome and

Firefox Mozilla Firefox, or simply Firefox, is a free and open-source web browser developed by the Mozilla Foundation and its subsidiary, the Mozilla Corporation. It uses the Gecko rendering engine to display web pages, which implements current and ...

browsers are fully supported since Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Update Rollup 12. Because of this browser compatibility R12 was highly anticipated but also caused a lot of stress for customers that had used unsupported customizations. R12 broke those customizations and clients had to rethink their changes. Microsoft offered additional wizards to pinpoint the problems.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013

Dynamics CRM 2013 was released to a closed beta group on the 28th of July 2013. Dynamics CRM 2013 Online went live for new signups in October 2013. It was released in November 2013 (build number 6.0.0000.0809).

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2015

On Sept. 16, 2014, Microsoft announced that Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2015, as well as updates to its Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online and Microsoft Dynamics Marketing services, will be generally available in the fourth quarter of 2014. Microsoft also released a preview guide with details. On Nov 30, 2014 Microsoft announced the general availability of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2015 and the 2015 Update of Microsoft Dynamics Marketing. On Jan 6, 2015, Microsoft announced the availability of a CRM Cloud service specifically for the

US Government The federal government of the United States (U.S. federal government or U.S. government) is the national government of the United States, a federal republic located primarily in North America, composed of 50 states, a city within a feder ...

that is designed for

FedRAMP The Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) is a United States federal government-wide program that provides a standardized approach to security assessment, authorization, and continuous monitoring for cloud products and servi ...

compliance.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2016

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2016 was officially released on November 30, 2015. Versions for CRM 2016 was 8.0, 8.1 and 8.2. With version 8.2 the name, Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2016, was changed to Dynamics 365 Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2016 was officially released on November 30, 2015. It includes advancements in intelligence, mobility and service, with significant productivity enhancements. In June 2016 was developed a special application which sends scanned info from business cards into MS Dynamics CRM named Business Card Reader for MS Dynamics and Call Tracker application in 2017.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales

Microsoft Dynamics 365 was officially released on November 1,2016 as the successor to Dynamics CRM. The product combines Microsoft business products (CRM & ERP Dynamics AX). The on-premises application, called Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement contained the following applications: * Dynamics 365 for Sales * Dynamics 365 for Customer Service * Dynamics 365 for Marketing * Dynamics 365 for Field Service * Dynamics 365 for Project Service Automation The offerings Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations cover the ERP needs, such as book-keeping, invoice and order handling and manufacturing. In Dynamics 365 version 9.0.0.1 many notable features like Virtual entities in Dynamics 365, Auto Numbering Attributes, Multi Select Options sets etc. were introduced.

Support & End of life

Mainstream Support for Microsoft Dynamics 4.0 ended on April 9th, 2013. Extended support for Microsoft Dynamics 4.0 ended on April 10th, 2018.

References

External links

* {{Microsoft Dynamics CRM Customer relationship management software 2003 software