CRM and Updates

Partners: How do you keep up with the following product updates that impact MS Dynamics CRM? Shoot how does Microsoft keep up?

1. MS Dynamics CRM 3.0 RollUp 1 (Current Version)
2. MS SQL 200o SP4a (if applicable)
3. MS SQL 2005 SP2  (if applicable)
4. MS Exchange 2003 SP2 (current 32 bit verson)
5. MS Exchange 2007 (64 bit ... doesn't apply yet)
6. MS Small Business Server 2003 R2 (with SQL 2005)
7. MS Small Business Server 2003 SP1 (with SQL 2000 SP4a)
8. Windows Server 2003 R2 or 2003 SP2
9. .NET v1.1, 2.0 and 3.0
10. Microsoft SQL Reporting Services
11. MS Outlook 2003
12. MS Outlook 2007
13. Windows Mobile 5.0
14. Windows Mobile 6.0 (very soon)
15. MS CRM Outlook Client v3.0c
16. MS CRM Mobile Client v3.0
17. MS CRM Mobile Express Client v3.0
18. Internet Explorer v6.0
19. Internet Explorer v7.0
20. Windows XP SP2
21. VISTA

OK  now each of the above products has a life cycle, a development team and product releases, hot fixes, patches, security releases and more.

If we take out the whole "custom code" variable it is still a TON to digest.

Now add in some custom code which can be unique to a specific client. I break up custom code into two categories. ]

1. Scriptlets: A word I made up to define tiny scripts run on an OnChange or work flow event. A scriptlet might do something like format a phone number field.  AND
2. Core Code: Programmed custom code that extends feature sets and that is embedded into the CRM code set from Microsoft. This code is more likely to be impacted by changes made on other base appplications and changes to CRM by Microsoft despite their incredible good best practice models and available SDK. This code might offer new items on menus (sales tax calculation for instance), more calculations, different portals and more.

So if we have customers that have unique "Core Code" added to their MS Dynamics CRM footprint, how do partners then keep up with each individual client's custom code and the impact that can happen by any of the 21 items listed above.

I can see scriptlets being usful and shared amoung all of a partner's core clients, but I want to know the secret for the rest.

Comments

[Dave]

Good question.
Now add the hotfixes and updates to the Outlook client for a large number of existing users....

[Anonymous]

It's very simple, put everything in CRM on a new entity called InstallHistory linked to account.