General Availability of Viva Sales

Microsoft announce that Viva Sales is generally available as of 3 October, 2022. Viva as a brand is about improving the employee experience, with the Viva Suite aimed at employees in any role across a business.

Viva Sales, however, is tailored to improve the employee experience for a specific role – sellers – and it enables these users to use Office 365 and Teams to automatically capture, access and register data into a CRM system, eliminating the administrative burden of manual data entry.

Viva Sales is included in Dynamics 365 Sales Enterprise and Premium licences, and is also available as a standalone licence priced at $40 per user per month.

Find the announcement here: https://bit.ly/3fZC28I, with links to other useful resources such as pricing information and an “Introduction to Viva Sales” course on Microsoft Learn.

Viva Sales in preview

Microsoft announce that Viva Sales is in preview. Viva as a brand is about improving the employee experience, and the Viva Suite is aimed at employees in any role across a business. Viva Sales is tailored to improve the employee experience for a specific role – sellers – and enables users to use Office 365 and Teams to automatically capture, access and register data into a CRM system, eliminating the administrative burden of manual data entry. In the public preview, Viva Sales will be available at no additional charge to organisations who use Microsoft 365 and Teams, and you’ll need to be licensed for Dynamics 365 to try out the full experience. Further details on licensing will be released when Viva Sales is generally available.

Find the announcement here: https://bit.ly/3bPH0TR, and a useful FAQ here: https://bit.ly/3vRZPwz.

Dynamics 365 Get Licensing Ready track

The Dynamics 365 track on Get Licensing Ready has been updated for all the recent changes up to and including February 2020, and the content has been split into two modules – Licensing the Dynamics 365 CRM applications, and Licensing the Dynamics ERP applications. Head over to GLR to learn about the licensing with video and reference material and to take a test to prove your knowledge: http://bit.ly/GLRD365.

Microsoft Data Centres in Canada

The Microsoft data centres grow again: two data centres are now open in Canada offering Azure and Office 365 with data residency for business customers in Canada, and CRM Online available later this year in Q3. There are also plans for a new data centre region in Seoul, South Korea.

Find the Microsoft announcement here: http://bit.ly/1XLVxPZ and if you’re interested in where customer data is stored for Office 365 and CRM Online, then these interactive maps are worth a look: http://bit.ly/1YQuBwP.

Adxstudio, from Microsoft, Licensing Guide

Microsoft acquired Adxstudio towards the end of 2015 since the Adxstudio Portals are built natively on Dynamics CRM and make it easy for customers to extend CRM to the web (original announcement: http://bit.ly/1LZLxtC).

There’s now an Adxstudio, from Microsoft, Licensing Guide which shows the options both on-premises and hosted CRM customers have for licensing Adxstudio Portals. The bottom line – it’s not yet available through Microsoft Volume Licensing agreements.

For the full story, find the guide in our Dynamics Licensing Guides section: http://bit.ly/MSlicensingguides.

Additions to CRM Online Licences

Microsoft announce new ways for customers to acquire Office 365, Power BI and CRM Online.

Firstly, there will be a CRM Online Professional Add-on to Office 365 E3, E5 and Business Premium, which will cost $50 per user per month.

Then we can also expect to see a new, low-cost Employee Self-Service licence for CRM Online.

You can find the announcement, along with information on the new features of CRM 2016, here: http://bit.ly/1GTderi.

CRM 2015 Licensing Guide

There’s an updated CRM Server 2015 Licensing Guide for October 2015 with three sections added.

The first is on Licence Mobility with confirmation (as usual) that you need SA on CALs as well as the Server licences to use VL licences on a partner-hosted infrastructure or Azure.

The second section is Azure-specific and states that CRM Online users may also access CRM Server running on Azure.

And finally there’s an Additional Software section which explains that a Marketing Connector and Reporting Extensions are provided as part of a CRM Server licensed solution.

We’ve put all the Microsoft Licensing Guides here: bit.ly/MSlicensingguides

Office 365 and CRM Online – Australia

Microsoft announce that Office 365 and CRM Online are now available from Australian datacentres. Office 365 is also the first cloud productivity service to provide IRAP assurance in Australia – the Australian Government’s Independent Registered Assessors Program (IRAP) for Unclassified Sensitive government data.

Read the announcement here: http://bit.ly/1Dr23Ub.