Three reasons why any Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 user should love IE 8

 

Today, Microsoft officially released Internet Explorer 8.  There are many reasons to like IE8, including improved standards compliance, better performance, accelerators, and improved security; however, there are three things that CRM users should especially like about IE 8.

1.  It is fully tested and supported.  IE8 has undergone a rigorous 12 month beta, and Dynamics CRM was one of the key "test products" for the IE team when working through their validation and tests. The IE team and CRM team worked closely together to insure that Dynamics CRM worked with IE8, and IE 8 is now an officially supported browser for Dynamics CRM 4.0.

2.  Built in development tools.  If you are the developer type, you probably used tools like DOMspy or the Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar to identify CRM page elements, like Nav Bar links, to use in creating javascript.  With IE 8, there is no more need for these tools, as the developer tools are built into the browser (under Tools menu-->Developer Tools)

3.  Color coded tabs.  This is a major usability enhancement for Dynamics CRM.  As any user of Dynamics CRM can attest, CRM can open many IE windows.  For example, when you open up an Account, a new window is launched, then if you open an activity associated with the account, another window opens.  Tabbed browsing in IE 7 helped get control of these windows by allowing users to have one IE window open with multiple tabs.  However, one potential problem is that if you also have some other sites open, perhaps researching a potential customer on MSN Money, the CRM windows can get lost among all of your other sites.

Another issue arises if you work with multiple CRM environments.  If you are a CRM configurator, it is not uncommon to be working in both a dev and prod environment.  This was very difficult since if records from multiple environments were open, it was nearly impossible to identify which environments those records belonged to, without checking the URL of the window.

IE 8 solves these problems by grouping tabs from related sites together, and color coding them, so you will never mix up your CRM tabs with your Twitter tabs.

Here is a pretty extreme example of three CRM environments open in one IE 8 window:

Quote from Microsoft:

“We’re thrilled to have IE8 in market and released. During the past 12 months we have worked closely with the IE team and Dynamics CRM has been one of the key “test products” for the IE team when working through their validation and tests. During the process we naturally identified issues and resolution to those were vigorously pursued and implemented. At this point we only have 1 known issue and we’re happy to be able to state that IE8 is an officially supporter browser for Dynamics CRM 4.0. We expect the Implementation Guide to be updated in April 2009 to reflect this supported status for IE8.”

Technorati Tags: Internet Explorer,IE8,Dynamics CRM

Comments

[barry.b]

if you've got data sitting in a Dynamics window, on a tab, for a while, it's still going to be stale data isn't it?

unless you want to go down the road of polling for data changes and updating via Ajax (jQuery, Atlas, whatever)

having a bunch of windows open all day - especially if each tab is displaying different related data - might get pretty messy, methinks...

no?

[Joel Lindstrom]

Barry,
You raise a good point. The purpose of my example was not to encourage people to have a bunch of records open all day--actually, this will help you NOT do that. A user typically intereacts with a specific record for only a matter of minutes, not all day. An issue can be that without IE8, the records open in disconnected windows, or in tabs that are mixed with other web tabs, and it can be easy for a user to lose one of those tabs and keep it open all day unitentionally.

Consider a typical example:
Landy is a sales rep. He opens up CRM, finds the account for XYZ Manufacturing, opens the record
He sees that there is an opportunity associated with XYZ, so he opens that. Then he goes to the activity tab on the opportunity, and he opens the last phone call associated with the opportunity. He also may have Yahoo Finance open in another tab to research XYZ Manufacturing.
Just through this process, Landy now has five tabs open, along with whatever other websites he may have open. Without IE8, since each of these tabs are mixed with the other website tabs or open in separate windows, it can be very easy for him to forget to close one or two of them when he gets done working with XYZ.

IE 8 solves this issue by keeping the tabs of CRM organized together in the order in which they were opened, so he can very easily spot which sets of tabs go with CRM, and which go with Yahoo, and which go with Twitter, and which go with Sharepoint, etc.

This helps users avoid the scenario you described, and keep it from getting messy.

Another point is that CRM content does refresh automatically--for example, if you have an account view open and create a new account, when you go back to the tab with the account view on it, it contains the new data.

[Donna Edwards]

Great blog, as always, you do a great job

[Lee Meyrick]

Hi, do you know if CRM 3.0 has been validated against IE8?

[Joel Lindstrom]

All of the testing that I'm aware of has happened on 4.0. Since CRM 3.0 works in IE7, it should work in IE8, at least in compatibility mode.