xRM is what differentiates QoS-IT from other PSA solutions.
Microsoft’s xRM is a new approach to how business applications should be written & delivered, which is different than the way proprietary software are designed.
xRM is a platform that business applications are sitting on it (on premises or cloud applications). They coexist in CRM & Outlook via a seamless integration between the two and therefore they are always available to users with minimal switch between applications.
All xRM applications have the same look & feel, using the platform’s UI (User Interface), Customization, SDK (development tools) & security.
Process driven applications (like the incident resolution process) are built on Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) and integration between different applications is done via Windows Communication Foundation (CF).
Building applications with the xRM approach benefits QoS-IT users. The application is scalable and new features can be added as need arises. Managing vendor’s software licensing renewals is a good example for such requirement. To create new tables in the SQL database (to manage software licenses) just click: Settings>Customization>New and create new entity, which creates the table in the SQL database. Add attributes (fields) to the SQL table, as many fields that are required to describe the license agreement that you manage on behalf of your customer, renewal date, licensing period and price. Click and add the attributes to the user interface and define views, security roles and access privileges to the entity. Link between databases tables (entities). The software license entity is linked to the vendor entity and also to the Account (the customer) entity. If the vendor provides web services to query the license status you can automate the creation and update of the software license entity in xRM using web services querying the information from the vendor’s web site.
Create workflows to mainstream the way you work:
- An email to customer notifying the upcoming license’s renewal date
- An email to distributor requesting price proposal for the software renewal (inserting fields from the license entity)
- Create opportunity record for sales person to follow up license renewal
- Create pop up task on the salesperson’s Outlook calendar to ensure the opportunity is not missed
- When renewal is paid, the workflow closes this record and creates new record with similar information and updates the new renewal date, to automate next renewal anniversary.
For more examples on xRM benefit view: www.qos-it.com/blog
Or read on Microsoft MSDN: An Introduction to XRM for a .Net Developer