With back-to-school time upon us, what would normally be an exciting time for educators and families preparing students to return to class is instead filled with additional stresses presented by a global pandemic. Parents and caregivers are wondering what remote learning will be like and how to get and use the technology their children need to be successful. Teachers are concerned with delivering excellent instruction and making sure everyone is able to learn even when classes are virtual. Everyone is concerned with keeping their family healthy and safe.

To help schools implement their plans to allow students and staff to return to classrooms safely, Microsoft partner Mazik Global created a back-to-school solution based on Microsoft Power Platform, Dynamics 365, and the Dynamics 365 education accelerator, which is a set of pre-built components designed to speed up development of solutions for K-12 and higher education.

The Mazik Global solution provides a tool for students and staff to assess, track, and report on COVID-19 symptoms. For younger children, the solution allows parents or caregivers to answer screening questions about a child’s symptoms or potential exposure on their behalf.

The solution ensures schools have the key data they need to monitor quickly shifting conditions. For example, the higher education solution provides a back-to-school dashboard that gives an overall analysis of the status of their workforce as well as helps them mitigate exposure to others. The data connects directly to the dashboard and provides insights through a command center that allows administrators or other authorized staff to review risk and symptoms in near real time.

Mazik Global also created a safe, less-intensive, symptom tracking solution that:

• Alerts faculty and students promptly when to self-isolate.
• Allows the campus to operate on a near regular schedule.
• Provides reassurance and trust through messaging and app notifications.
• Demonstrates commitment to keeping a safe and healthy campus for all.

We’re grateful that partners like Mazik Global are able to build upon Microsoft technology to assist educational institutions return to the work of educating and supporting students and families.

Ready to build your own education solution?

The education accelerator takes the unified data approach of Microsoft Power Platform a step further to help you build solutions for schools more quickly. To get started, download the education accelerator, which includes a higher education component and a K-12 component, from AppSource.

Read the documentation to learn more, or reach out to our team with your questions.

The post Build back-to-school solutions with the Dynamics 365 education accelerator and Microsoft Power Platform appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

As discussed in our recent blog post, we are delighted that the global rollout of the December 2012 Service Update is nearing completion. Anyone can now sign up for trials of Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online that include the core capabilities of the December 2012 Service Update (cross-browser support, updated user experience, new scenarios that utilize Skype and Bing maps capabilities, business process definitions, and many others).

The iPad Safari sales experience and Yammer capabilities have been split from the initial core rollout and will be available in February. These additional capabilities will further build on the value we have recently delivered. We will keep you informed about the availability of the iPad and Yammer capabilities in early February.

We know that there has been some confusion about the rollout for this release and we apologize for any inconvenience this has caused.

The post Latest news on the December 2012 Service Update Release appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Today we’re announcing the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online December 2012 Service Update. This new service update comes on the heels of continued success for our business. We continue to drive double-digit revenue growth and we’re closing in on our 3 millionth user! Momentum is with us and the December 2012 service update is yet another significant milestone for our business.

The December 2012 Service Update reimagines the way sales and customer service professionals work with CRM. We’re moving away from the traditional data-centric lists and forms approach, this service update will add new user experiences that simply and visually guide users through their business processes. We’re expanding the range of supported browsers for Microsoft Dynamics CRM to give more flexibility in the devices and platforms you use. Embedded Bing maps have also been added to the new user experience to add location context for Lead, Contact and Account addresses in the system. Rounding out our experiences investments there will be support for Microsoft Office 2013 across Outlook, Word and Excel integration.

We’re adding new application capabilities including predefined best practice sales and service business process definitions which are highly configurable and will accelerate time-to-value for organizations. From a social and collaboration standpoint we’re adding new connections with Yammer and Skype.

For the developer we’ve got new cloud extensibility options and a bulk data API to help you work on large datasets in Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online.

The release preview guide for the December 2012 service update which details all the new features and functionality can be downloaded at here. We’re also posting our new Statement of Direction which outlines our key investment areas for the next 36 months. I encourage you to read the documents to learn about the fantastic range of new capabilities we’re delivering over the short and long term. It is truly an exciting time to be engaging with Microsoft Dynamics CRM!

The Microsoft Dynamics CRM team can be followed on Twitter at @MSDynamicsCRM, and by using the hashtag #MSDYNCRM. Also Check out and share our new video and let us know what you think.

Feel free to ask your questions or tell us what your favorite feature is!

David Pennington
@pennington03
davidp@microsoft.com

The post December 2012 Service Update is Here for Microsoft Dynamics CRM! appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Data. You’ve got a LOT of it. You use it every day for reporting and analysis to determine effective campaign management to your clients and prospects. But with 600 Tweets, 20,000 Bing searches, and 700 Facebook posts per second, marketers are no longer in control of their brands, thanks to the real-time web. But that doesn’t mean you have to accept defeat and succumb to these new challenges. By bringing your data together across channels, it’s possible (even easy!) to successfully embrace real-time marketing and evolve campaign management to conversation management – turning previous challenges into ROI opportunities. The key simply lies in establishing data as the new marketing creative.

Connecting deeply with customers has been the marketers’ mission for more than a century, and has developed from offline channels to online channels. Gone are the days when marketers could deploy a campaign to the masses based on common traits of the majority. In the era of real-time marketing, generic marketing messages are at best ignored, and at worst a reason for consumers to opt-out of a brand’s messages forever. That’s why the new era of real-time marketing isn’t about print, broadcast, exported data, or interactions alone. It’s about using what you know about your customers (key data insights) and listening to what they tell you through your interactions with them to develop marketing creative. Data- not colors and vector files-is the new creative of the real-time web.

To engage in meaningful dialogue- regardless of whether one is conversing with a friend or a business prospect-one must first know something about the person he’s talking to in order to build a healthy relationship. That’s exactly why marketers need a combination of new and traditional data-from CRM and analytics to social and real-time web data-to effectively build relationships with their customers and maintain them across channels and over time. Marketers need to capture and use this winning combination of data to impact creative elements before they’re even created. Brands will be able to deliver more targeted, relevant, and engaging messages- across channels, and specific to each customer’s unique perspective.

Seamless real-time integrations with your CRM system will not only eliminate the challenges of multiple data sources and disjointed databases-they will provide marketers with one view of their customers (and all of their customer data and insights). When this single view of all customers is further enhanced with the emerging forms of social and real-time web data, things like segmenting audiences, automating programs, and sending highly personalized messages on a large scale become easy.

To learn more about maximizing the effectiveness of your marketing program check out why more than 400 organizations worldwide integrate Microsoft Dynamics CRM with ExactTarget to send targeted, relevant messages to their subscribers via email, mobile, social, and sites.

How are you using Microsoft Dynamics CRM to effectively engage your customers and prospects?

ExactTarget

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