CRM 2011 Update Rollup 12 imminent

*** Updates below

There has just been a refresh on a lot of the CRM 2011 downloads on Microsoft's downloads page. If you click search and sort by 'newest to oldest' it'll bring up quite a few CRM 2011 downloads on the first 3 pages.
One of the downloads refreshed is the 5.0.13 SDK download. To me this points to an imminent Update Rollup 12 release which will, hopefully, also bring new Service Release functionality. This was previously meant to be released with the now non-existent Update Rollup 9 (as you may recall we jumped from Update Rollup 8 to 10).

I have my fingers crossed for this!


*** Update 14/01/2013
As of 07/01/2013 the Update Rollup 12 download link has been live with download links only for the client elements of the update. Going over the KB article linked from the download page it seems Microsoft was aiming at releasing the on-premise server update files on 10/01/2013. That was 4 days ago.
My personal estimate is that the client updates went live in order to support the server updates deployed on Microsoft's CRM Online hosting service. I am not sure why there's a delay in releasing the on-premise server updates and can only guess there have been some issues with the deployment to CRM Online. Hopefully we should be getting our much anticipated on-premise Update Rollup 12 very soon.

*** Update 15/01/2013
Going through the KB article this morning I noticed a slight change in wording. Microsoft are no longer promising the on-premise server components on 10 January as before but rather just in January 2013. The exact wording follows.

Update Rollup 12 for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 will be available for on-premise customers in January 2013.

*** Update 21/01/2013
Yet more delays with the on premise server components of Update Rollup 12. It seems Microsoft found a critical bug with the Update Rollup 12 release just after publishing it and it was swiftly removed. The message about this went out on the 15th but has only found its way to my Google search feed today. The exact wording follows.

I'd like to give an update on the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Update Rollup (UR) 12 Release. We originally made UR12 available on Thursday, January 10th, to deliver multi-browser support for our On Premises customers. After discovering an issue that could potentially impact a customer's database, we withdrew the UR12 Server bits to ensure that no On Premises customers would be affected. Unfortunately, these bits were available on the Microsoft Download Center for a short period of time. If you downloaded the UR12 Server bits, please do not install them. We plan to repost the UR12 Server bits within the next week, and we will keep you informed as to when they are available. We have taken measures to improve our engineering processes and methodologies going forward, and we take your feedback very seriously. We apologize for any inconvenience this has caused. 

** Update 30/01/2013
Surprisingly, Microsoft kept the vague (and once altered) release date of January 2013. Update Rollup 12 for CRM 2011 has been officially and fully released today.
Finally!

"Gamification"

I sometimes roam through CodePlex in search of new interesting projects to follow and solutions I can use. In one of my recent roamings I came across a very interesting new concept - "Gamification". I'll get back to that in a bit.
What I came across on CodePlex was a CRM 2011 solution called "The Game for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011". Perplexed by this I kept reading.

Back to the new concept. I couldn't have put it better myself so I'll just quote the solution author on this.

The concept of ‘gamification’ is a simple one. To apply game design to non-game applications in order to make them more fun and engaging. Gamification has been used successfully across forums such as those maintained by Microsoft (http://social.microsoft.com/Forums) in order to encourage contributor participation and reward them for achieving a number of points and achievements. The result of this has been a flourishing forum community.
 

 Still puzzled and rather doubtful, I decided to try installing and configuring The Game on a test CRM organisation I had lying around. The installation itself was a simple CRM solution import and went by quite swiftly. Once complete I had a plethora of configuration entities all intertwined.
As I'm an active PlayStation 3 player (mostly spending my time on Dust 514 lately), things really started to look familiar now. I could set up games, define ranks and link them to games. I could even set up point thresholds at which users advance to the next level!
What really threw me back was the ability to also create and fully configure achievements. To anyone who's played even the simplest console game this should be quite clear. Using all the different configuration elements I could create a game based on my CRM system's existing business process.
Remember that boring old sales process? Moving through leads, opportunities and then the drudging quotes and orders?

After about half an hour's configuration (and learning curve) I was able to transform this whole sales process from a boring 100% business driven system into a system that still provides everything it did before but is also fun to use. Adding these gaming elements really livened up the system and I can easily imagine users being more enthusiastic about selling.
So what did I actually add? There were some workflows required (most of my learning curve was devoted to those) for the basic functionality of the game. Once those were in place I had the following structure for the game:

• New opportunities gained the user 5 points.
• New quotes gained the user 10 points.
• New orders gained the user 25 points.
• Closed opportunities gained the user 20 points.

In addition to the above, I also implemented some achievements. These were set up as follows:

• Opportunities opened and closed within 2 days granted users the "Swift Salesperson" achievement. This granted them an additional 40 points and a £50 cash reward (cash rewards went though accounting, naturally).
• With some additional workflow tools I granted every user on their first closed opportunity the "First timer" achievement. This granted an additional 50 points.
• With some additional workflow tools I was also able to count returning orders and users received the "Bulker" achievement for that. This also granted an additional 20 points per return order.

I can highly recommend this solution and method (obviously only where appropriate). I will be considering this for my future CRM implementations.

I now call England my home

In the past few months I'd been very preoccupied in migrating from Israel to England. I am now happy to call England my home.

To anyone considering a similar move, I can highly recommend it. :)