How well do you know your accounts? Is your client about to announce a merger? Have they opened a new division in Hong Kong? This blog will focus on how Microsoft has integrated Bing Search to give you the ability to get up to the minute news about your companies and help unlock opportunities through leveraging the power of Bing News.
With Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2016 Update 1, comes a whole new take on “Insights”. For the very first time Company News Timeline is offered for mobile devices through the Microsoft Dynamics CRM App for Windows Phone and IOS.
How Company News Timeline works is by integrating Account information with the Bing Search engine, presented through a responsive mobile interface. A simple swipe to on your Account screen will present a brand new view that will firstly search all related news about the Account, and then present this in a timeline format in a chronologically descending order.
The installation process is as follows:
- Sign into https://portal.office.com with your Global Administrator or CRM Sys Admin account.
- Click on Admin > CRM
- Click on “Manage all CRM Online Instances” and select the install you wish to add the solution
- Click on “Solutions”
- Click on “Company News Timeline”
- Click on “Install”
- The solution has now been installed.
To use the new feature, firstly download the Microsoft Dynamics CRM App to your mobile device.
- Navigate to Accounts
- Select an Account
- And swipe from the right to the left until you see the Active News screen
- News can also been grouped by Topics (these are news themes that have been determined by the Bing Search engine). To change topics, click on topic and select the topic.
- Additionally you can perform the same function from the Contacts menu (however note that it will only provide you with news about the linked Account rather than the individual)
My final thoughts are that firstly this is an innovative way of presenting insightful information about companies, and secondly that the installation process through the CRM Admin Center is proving to be a substantially better experience than the traditional Solution deployment method. I hope this is a sign of more exciting developments for the Microsoft Dynamics CRM ecosystem. Until then, I’m keen to hear your thoughts about this new feature, so if you have comments please do share below.