What is it?

Mobile Express is Microsoft long awaited solution for mobile devices. It allows CRM data to be made available in any mobile device via a customized web interface. The organization administrator selects which entities, and which fields are made available. This will be another reason for all of you iphone and blackberry addicts to keep clicking away – now with CRM data.

A couple of the highlights are:

• Works on any mobile browser (needs a constant internet connection)
• 32bit and 64bit versions are available
• Works with multitenant environments (yeah!)
• Configure your windows to only display useful fields
• Existing views are used

Installation

Installing is fairly straight forward, simply follow the wizard. However, a there are a few caveats to keep in mind.

1. In a couple of our servers the installer seemed to take 10-15 mins. Don't kill it, have patience…the progress meter goes from 0 to 100 when it finished J
2. A reboot was required.

Configuring Mobile Express

1. Login with an account that is a crm administrator.
2. Go to customizations, then click customize mobile express
   
3. Select which entities will be avail in mobile express. Custom entities work too!
   
4. For each entity you selected, select the columns that will be avail in mobile express.
   
5. Select the order of the columns to be displayed. And remember that these screens are very small so only add useful and essential columns.
   
6. When ready, click publish all. This will also publish standard crm customizations. It is the same publish all from standard crm.
   
7. By default all out of the box security roles should allow a user to 'go mobile'. This is a setting in the security roles.
   

Using Mobile Express

1. From your phone, go to your crm web site url, but add a /m
   https://CRM.MyCompany.Com/m

Other Tips

The folks at the Dynamics Team created a blog with good tips:
http://blogs.msdn.com/crm/archive/2009/07/16/microsoft-dynamics-crm-mobile-express-tips.aspx

Where do I get it?

Download Mobile Express for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 directly from Microsoft by clicking here.

If your CRM is hosted by PowerObjects, give it a try. It should already be installed and ready to go.

Contact us with any questions.