I also wrote about how you can get qualified in CRM  through the MS Dynamics CRM 2011 Certification Tracks and Exams. Again, some of this was getting out of date so I have included information in this single post about the courses and the exams to take if getting certified in CRM 2011 is your goal.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 is going through a period of very high adoption, with many CRM 4.0 customers upgrading their on premises system to CRM 2011, or switching to a cloud solution with CRM Online. People with skills in Dynamics CRM are in high demand as a result, as well as internal staff looking for ways to get their knowledge updated to the latest version.

Microsoft Official Courseware (MOC) courses for CRM 2011

Although there are four main exams (Applications, Customization, Installation, Extending) there are many more courses, most of which are already released, others around the corner. All of these are discussed in this article.

What’s Missing?

November 2011 saw the R7 release, which was also rolled into Update Rollup 5 (and UR6). This included new features such as the Activity Feeds / Posts / “What’s New” wall for internal social-media style following of updates. Other highlights included changes to charting capability through the UI (multiple series for example) and some additional field types being supported in dialogs (lookups and dates in particular), as well as record URL values being available to Workflows without extra code.

None of the official courses cover this material yet, and none of the exam requirements list the need to know about it, although in the real world you may want to get familiar with these areas in order to get the most out of the features available.

Unchanged CRM 2011 courses

What’s New in CRM 2011

The “What’s New in Dynamics CRM 2011” course 80289A is probably a little bit “old hat” now and I don’t expect many people would sign up for this one-day introduction to CRM 2011. Note, this course does not cover new features in the R7 release (see above), it covers things which were new compared to CRM 4.0. Having said that, none of the courses below have been upgraded to cover this content yet either, but it’s the “what’s new” title which could be misleading here.

Applications Courses

The big difference from the CRM 4.0 approach is the splitting up of Applications into four separate one day instructor-led course:

80290A: Marketing Automation in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011

80291A: Sales Management in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011

80292A: Service Management in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011

80293A: Service Scheduling in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011

80290 covers Marketing Lists, bulk (aka Direct) e-mail, Templates, and Campaigns. 80291 includes sales-oriented Goals, Reports, exporting to Excel, some charts, dashboards and Workflow processes. 80292 deals with Service Cases, Contracts, Queues, using Workflows with Queues, service-related Goals, Dashboards and Reports. 80293 specifically looks at service activities, services, resources and booking these using built in scheduling tools and conflict checking.

These four courses, plus some real-world experience, should provide you with the necessary knowledge to pass exam MB2-868 – Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Applications.

Installation and Deployment

80296A: Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Installation and Deployment is two-days of instructor-led material, during which you will actually install CRM 2011 from scratch (in a Virtual Machine environment).

Coverage includes different installation and upgrade scenarios including internet-facing deployments (IFD), how all the components fit together, including things like the e-mail router and Reporting Services. This course gives you the core information you need to prepare for exam MB2-867 – Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Installation and Deployment.

New or updated courses and exams

New version of 80294  Customisation course

80294B: Customization and Configuration in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 is a three-day classroom based course which is designed to prepare you for exam MB2-866 – Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Customization and Configuration.

I taught this updated B revision for the first time last week and it was a huge relief compared to the A version with almost all the kinks and errors ironed out. This is a pretty full three days, so come prepared for long hours and lots of information. Even if you have some knowledge of CRM 4 there is sufficient new material covering the new features to make this course really worthwhile if you are considering an upgrade. Theoretically the course covers all the skills needed to build and customise your CRM 2011 deployment to meet your business requirements.

There’s lots of coverage of the organisational and security model (business units, security roles, users and teams, and field security), other key features such as managing auditing and using solutions, and plenty of material on customising entities, fields and relationships and on the front-end user interface components such as views, charts and forms.

What you won’t cover is anything to do with processes (workflows and dialogs), how to use JScript for client-side event-driven interaction, Reports, .Net plugins etc. Lots of areas which may feel like “customisation” are intended for end-users to do for themselves and so are covered on the applications courses (eg workflows, reports), others are seen as “developer” topics and are dealt with on the Extending course 80295 (see below).

New! Workflow and Dialog Processes in CRM 2011

Course 80444 Workflow and Dialog Processes in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 has been announced for release in March. I am pleased this is still a one-day course and kept separate from customisation as there is a key target audience here for super-users and business managers to be able to build their own workflows or dialogs to help manage their day-to-day processes within specific areas of the organisation.

It would make sense for some people to do the four applications courses or 80294B followed straight on by this new Processes course. I would certainly not suggest anyone take this course as a starting point if they do not already have a good grasp of CRM (4 or 2011), how entities and relationships between them work, and the types of data and business processes they need to manage.

Given the timing of this course release, it does look very likely that it will include coverage of the latest R7 features such as using lookups and date time fields in Dialogs, allowing users to go back through a Dialog without losing answers they already provided, and using dynamic values in Workflows to create Activity Feed posts with “mentions”, and including URLs in e-mails which provide links to records for the recipient. Once the course actually arrives I’ll confirm these and update this post.

This course does not have a specific exam associated with it, although it will help give a deeper understanding of Processes, which are included on exam MB2-868 Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Applications.

Introduction to CRM 2011 – new course

Course 80442 Introduction to Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 provides an introduction to CRM 2011 in a new one-day instructor-led format. This is ideal for people with no previous experience of Dynamics CRM as a foundation for other courses.

It is also aimed at business managers or project teams at an early stage of their implementation (perhaps still undecided if CRM is the right platform) to give them a grounding in the core capabilities of CRM without getting too bogged down in the technical details not taking the several days required for the Applications or Customisation courses.

The course covers key CRM concepts, the Web browser interface, Outlook CRM client, searching and reporting, data import, mail merge, charts and dashboards.

This course does not have a specific exam associated with it.

Extending CRM 2011 – exam now available

Course 80295A Extending Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 was released in August 2011 and is a three-day course aimed at Developers who need to write custom code, plugins and workflow assemblies to provide functionality which is outside the capabilities of the core application itself. This course also covers related areas such as client-side programming with JScript, customising the Ribbon and the Sitemap by editing the XML for a solution and integration with other systems using a variety of techniques.

The related exam MB2-876 Extending Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 was released in December so people who have already taken this course can now finally prove their skills. Now that all the key exams are out, hopefully there will soon be some news on exactly what the requirements are for the various IT Pro Tracks, but at the moment the Microsoft Learning page for Dynamics CRM Certifications is still only listing CRM 4 qualifications and requirements.

Administration in CRM 2011 – still no official news

I have not yet seen any announcements regarding an updated Administration course to match and replace the previous80002 Administration in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0. If I find out anything about plans for this, I’ll update this post.

Official E-learning, classroom training and books

The easiest way to find all the official Microsoft options in one place is to start with the Microsoft Training Catalog for CRM.

This includes Online training courses and instructor-led classroom training which map to the exams, as well as some courses which are more general (such as 80442 Introduction to CRM  2011). The classroom training also provides links to search for training providers near you, although this simply lists partners that may or may not offer the specific courses you are looking for, so you will need to check their own websites to see if they have public scheduled courses to suit you.

You will also find links to the exams with full details of the objectives covered and their weightings. There are also links to “Learning Plans” which guide you to resources specifically aimed at gaining the skills to pass a particular exam, but it seems that all the plans available describe the CRM 4 tracks, not CRM 2011

Confusion over e-Learning course codes

I have seen various comments in blogs and forums about not being able to find the appropriate online training courses which match the available classroom training. it seems that Microsoft sometimes add an “e” on the end of the course code – for example if you look at the preparation materials page for exam MB2-866 CRM 2011 Customization it shows the classroom course 80294A and online training 80294AE.

However, if you visit the CRM training catalogue linked above and try searching for this code, you simply won’t find it. You need instead to search for the “regular” code and it will show the classroom and e-learning options.

As a further tip, I would generally drop the final letter which signifies the “revision” of the course (version number if you like). If you search for revision “A” after the “B” version has been released you may get no results, or worse may be guided to the old revision which has been superseded by an improved, error-corrected and refined version. You will see from the Customisation exam preparation materials page that a B revision is mentioned, but not linked, showing that this is planned and in progress, but not yet released.

Get Microsoft Official Courseware for free!

Yes, it’s true, you can get hold of the Microsoft Official Courseware (MOC) documents for CRM entirely free and perfectly legitimately. All you need to do is become a Microsoft customer for CRM – which you can do simply by signing up for a free 30 day trial of CRM online. Once you are signed up you will get access to “Customer Source” – a portal with all kinds of useful information and resources, and access to download a pdf version of the training courses.

What’s the catch?

This is a great way to get hold of the training materials and at the same time sign up for a 30 day trial of a live CRM environment where you can try things out to hone your skills. However, the courses include various lab exercises to walk you through the skills being demonstrated, which depend on having the virtual machines installed and set up with this pre-prepared environment which is ready to use. The only way to get access to those is through an approved training provider, so you will have to figure out and work through your own examples to see the same functionality in action, and in some cases this can be a bit of a pain.

Also, if you prefer to read things on paper where you can also scribble and make notes it may cost you quite a lot in printing. Of course it is possible to just write separate notes, or to use software to annotate the downloaded files. Even Adobe’s own Acrobat Reader has a feature to add comments, I’m told, although personally I use Foxit Phantom to edit and comment pdfs. This can get clunky and awkward and works best if you have a dual monitor setup (or two machines).

The biggest downside is that you don’t get free access to a Microsoft Certified Trainer (MCT) who is an expert in their subject to walk you through the course, answer specific questions you may have, help out with areas you are unsure about and add loads of value by incorporating their own real-world experience into their training. If you are trying to learn about CRM 2011 from scratch (ie you are not fully up to speed on CRM 4) then instructor-led training in a classroom environment with all the right virtual machines is definitely the best option. (Of course, I would say that, as an MCT myself.)

User and administrator guides

Microsoft have recently released some documentation which is intended to help users get the most out of their CRM solution. These are Word documents which are simply consolidated and reformatted information from the CRM 2011 Help provided with the on-premises version.

Personally I find these much more useful than the help system if you are trying to actually discover and learn new things about CRM. The online help is sometimes easier if you are simply trying to find an answer to a specific task.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 User’s Guide

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Administrator’s Guide

One tip if you are using Word 2010 is to turn on the Navigation pane – go to the View tab of the Ribbon, and tick the box for this. You will now have the “contents” shown as a hierarchy of all the headings in the document and you can simply scroll and click to navigate, which is much easier than having to go back to the contents pages and click links from there. The Navigation pane also incorporates the search feature, so it appears if you press Ctrl+F as well.

Quick Start Guides

As well as these longer reference documents they have also produced a couple of “Quick start” guides. These are very thin on content and really only of use for people who have signed up for CRM online directly and not had the benefit of working with a Microsoft partner who would (I hope) provide at least this basic level of training as part of a system handover.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Quick Start Guide for Business Users

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 for Outlook Quick Start Guide

Other resources

In a follow up post I’ll provide some links to other resources, including great blogs and online videos to help you get to grips with CRM for your own business or prepare for the exams. In the meantime, please feel free to add more in the comments (but note that my usual zero tolerance policy on “braindump” sites or places hosting illegal copies of copyright material applies).

Of course, like every other exam this was done under NDA, so I can only give some general thoughts and not discuss specific questions or answers.

All change

I find many exams for a new product version like this seem to deliberately ask lots of questions about the new or changed stuff rather than the old elements that have remained largely the same (this was certainly true of the MCAS exams for Office 2007). I can only assume this is to avoid people coasting through on old knowledge from CRM 4, although it does seem to risk not testing some of the core knowledge.

Obviously some features are unchanged and some questions still cover them, but the feeling is that to pass the exam you really need to have studied the new material and properly practiced using these new skills. Of course, in the real world of actually getting on and using CRM 2011, knowledge passed along from previous versions is all very useful as well.

Are we nearly there yet?

In order to avoid worrying about running out of time, what I tend to do is make some very quick and rough calculations when the information comes up at the beginning about how many questions there will be and how much time is allowed. If it’s easy enough to work out in my head, I figure exactly how much time per question. If not, I just figure out for a bunch of them – however many makes the maths easier, say 5 or 6, and likewise round the time down a bit if it makes it easier to figure out, which also gives you some slack time at the end.

If you have 75 questions , you have 1/15 of the time for every 5 questions, and 15 is easy to divide into hours. So for a two hour exam that’s 8 minutes for every 5 questions (15 goes into 60 four times, so into two hours 8 times).

As you progress through the exam, try to answer every question first time through, rather than deferring any until the end. Periodically check whether you are on track for time. If you are, keep going at that pace, if not, then step it up and now consider leaving some until the end. If I hit a tricky question and I know I am ahead on time, I can afford to take a deep breath, go through it one more time and if necessary use up any of the “ahead” time I have to get it answered and still not get behind.

Overall, I was not pushed for time at all, and had plenty of opportunity to go back and review some questions which I had noted down as maybe deserving more attention, but did not need to change any answers.

Personally, when I read a question I tend to try and come up with the ideal answer in my head, then look for this in the options available. If I get exactly what I was looking for that’s great, and I can choose this answer with a high degree of confidence. Once you start reading the choices available it is easy to be confused by “distractors” – answers which are similar or close to the right one, but missing some important factor (such as they won’t work with a specific version of something mentioned in the question).

If you find an answer you like the look of, even if you can’t be sure why, my advice is always to go with your gut. You can spend a lot of time second-guessing your own answers and not really getting anywhere. There’s nothing more frustrating than going back and changing an answer, yet still not knowing if the original one was right. Trust your instincts, use the Force if necessary, but a subconscious half-memory can sometimes give you those few vital extra marks needed for a pass.

Choose all that apply

Yes, the much-hated “choose all that apply” type of question is back (this is not specific to CRM exams, Microsoft have publicly announced that this question type was being reintroduced). In case you don’t know what I mean, these are multi-choice, multi-answer questions where you don’t even know how many answers to select.

Often these are posed along the lines of “you want to do <some objective>. Which of the following would achieve this goal? (choose all that apply)” Variations might be that you need to choose all the answers that are each one part of an overall solution, or that complete the goal on their own.

Other questions using this style may be aimed at things like system pre-requisites – maybe the answers describe various combinations of hardware and operating system and you have to say which would be suitable to have software X installed (eg CRM server, or Outlook client).

My gut feel is always to select at least two, since it feels like a question with only one answer would not use this type, and I would probably avoid selecting all the answers as I assume at least one is incorrect to trip me up. But this is pure superstition and trying to reverse-psych the person who wrote the question, I have no evidence to say whether this is a sound approach.

CRM 2011 Solutions

One major change to the way CRM customisations are organised, and especially how they are imported and exported is the use of “Solutions”. I felt there were far more questions about this than I would have expected given the  skills measured page shows this objective is considered to be about 13% of the knowledge required.

You may also notice that Solutions are covered by one of the four areas under “Configuring a Microsoft Dynamics CRM Organizational Structure” as well as their own section, so maybe they are worth another 4% from there.

Either way, in order to level things up, all questions are weighted according to those percentage figures, so that even if you had 25 out of 75 questions on that topic, the scores are adjusted to normalise it back down to 13% (plus the extra bit for the overlap in other areas).

I would add that it is important to understand what happens when you layer managed and unmanaged solutions, and remove them again, possibly in a different order. What is the outcome in the real world of importing two solutions which both edited the main Account form?

Also what happens when you import a managed solution with or without managed properties and what can you then change or edit, and how does this affect solutions you import on top. I did not feel the MOC course materials or labs covered this in enough detail, so find some time to play with this a bit to feel comfortable with it.

Richard Knudson has boiled down some information on his CRM Trick Bag blog about how managed properties of managed solutions work, and what options are available, which I wish I had spent more time on as it seemed disproportionately represented on the exam.

A field by any other name

Another minor point for people who already know CRM4 – some of the terminology has changed so make sure you expect the new wording on answers and don’t dismiss these as “distractors”.
So, attributes are now called fields throughout the interface, since most people used to call them this anyway (except hard-core database folks who just call them columns, which may confuse end-users), and when you create custom attributes fields you need to choose the right data type, and the names for these have changed too.

Changes to Data Types for Fields

The data types in CRM 2011 are basically the same as in 4.0 but are now called different things in many cases, mostly more explanatory and verbose. Some might say this is to “dumb down” the techie speak to make more sense to normal people and end-user customisers:

*ntext is effectively deprecated and the new “multiple lines of text” uses nvarchar(max) instead for improved performance (now that CRM 2011 sits on SQL 2008 as a requirement).

I hope these few titbits will help anyone planning to take the exam in the near future. If you have any more tips of your own to contribute, please feel free to add them in the comments, or just use it as an opportunity to claim “bragging rights” when you pass!

PS: comments to this blog are moderated, so if your comment does not appear right away I may not have got round to approving it yet. If you are asking for, offering or linking to brain dumps, exam questions, “pass guaranteed” content or anything similar, don’t be surprised that your comment won’t see the light of day. I reserve the right to remove or edit any such comments as I see fit.

MS MOC course 80295A Extending CRM 2011

This will be a three-day course as expected, and includes lots of topics such as:

• querying CRM by various methods, including LINQ queries, FetchXML and OData,
• developing custom workflow activities and plug-ins,
• application events and the xrm.page model
• customising the Ribbon
• publishing web resources including Silverlight applications

No news on a release date for the related exam yet, but of course lots of people want to go get the training in order to be able to bring their skills up to date for actually getting on with the job of developing for CRM 2011, and not necessarily in order to pass an exam.

(and for fellow MCTs, yes, this course is available in the download centre so you can start preparing)

Dude, where’s my transcript?

The only strange thing here is that whether you have already passed this exam or take it now, it won’t count towards making you an MCITP on CRM 4 until September. Why would that be? Answer: because internally at Microsoft Learning, the matrix of which exams count towards which qualifications is handled by the Transcript Database, and there is a planned update to that taking place in September.

This means that any exams you take now which are not already featured in the database / matrix simply don’t count towards anything, and will not show up on your official MCP / MCT transcript that you can access through the Microsoft Professionals portal or share with anyone else. Essentially, you can’t prove you have passed any of the new CRM 2011 exams, for example, because they don’t have a pigeonhole for that yet, so “computer says no”.

Update October 2011: They have fixed one part of the transcript database so it does at least show up the exams you have passed, but for MCTs it is still frustrating as the whole Dynamics range of products is shown in strange ways. I can apparently teach subjects in which I have no knowledge at all, while on the other hand I can’t cover courses for which I have passed the relevant exam. Hopefully this will be largely resolved when they finally release the requirements for the CRM 2011 tracks.

What about the tracks for installers and developers?

While this is only a small change to the Applications track, I wonder if this is a sign that the other tracks will follow, such as allowing exams in Exchange 2010 rather than 2007 for the Installation track.

This also bodes well for the MS Dynamics CRM 2011 Certification Tracks and Exams which look more likely to use current versions rather than older ones, which will make them more relevant and achievable for a longer time into the future.

Update October 2011: Yes it was a sign of further changes! The Installation and Deployment track now includes 70-432 (SQL Server 2008 Implementation and Maintenance) and 70-431 (SQL Server 2005) as an elective alongside the Exchange 2007 and Windows Server 2008 exams. This looks promising for people wanting to qualify as an IT Pro in CRM 4 using 70-432 and being able to count this towards CRM 2011 too (but not the SQL 2005 version which is not supported for CRM 2011).

Does this change make anyone out there an MCITP in Applications or Installation who was not already? What other exams do you think should be included as electives for the CRM 4 or 2011 tracks? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

Microsoft Learning have launched a new central certification website for all your needs as a Microsoft Certified Professional, Trainer or Office Specialist:

http://www.microsoft.com/learning/members/

This is essentially a starting point: at the top of the page you will see “tabs” for each the three different branches’ own micro-sites. This provide more consistency between the three sites, as well as making sure that you can easily take advantage of all offers, discounts or services which apply to your particular specialist area or areas.

From what I have seen of the MCT and MOS ones (which I am most interested and involved in) they are great little pages full of all the links you need to all the resources you want, and some that you may need and did not even know about.

Included are links to the logo builder pages, how to download or order a certificate, create an online virtual business card or update the profile information which Microsoft holds about you (including which newsletters and updates you receive by email).

This is not a replacement for lots of the resources which already existed, such as Born To Learn, or the MCPeStore, or to view or share your transcript; rather it is a single page to go to which brings links to all those resources together in one place.

Don’t overlook the links at the top of the page directly below the tabs (you can get to these by hovering over each tab, or once you have clicked on a tab the ones for that section stay visible.

If you have ever passed a Microsoft exam and want to continue certification as part of your career or personal development, go and check out the Microsoft Certified Members’ site today.

As a follow-up to my previous post about the new Dynamics CRM 2011 exams and certification tracks, this article describes the official courses available to help prepare you for gaining CRM 2011 certification, or upgrading your skills from a previous version, or simply to find out more about the software to help you do your job without actually taking any exams.

All the courses described below are available now on the courseware download library (for MCTs) and on PartnerSource (for suitably certified MS Partners), except where stated.

Microsoft Official Courseware (MOC) courses for CRM 2011

Although there are four main exams (Applications, Customization, Installation, Extending) there are many more courses, some of which are already released, others around the corner. All of these are discussed in this article.

What’s New in CRM 2011

The “What’s New in Dynamics CRM 2011” course 80289A is a one-day introduction to lots of the new features, and as with many Microsoft applications this was the first to be released in order to be able to give people a first taste of what was to come. Expect lots of shiny new features to be demonstrated without a great deal of technical depth to the content.

Dare I say it? – like many “What’s new” courses this is more about marketing than training. For partners who have access to the course material for free, this is a good way to make sure everyone knows what has changed since 4.0, so that they can go off and investigate those in more detail in their own time or through other training courses. Internal project managers working for organisations who want to use CRM but will get a partner to do the actual heavy lifting may benefit from this overview. For people that actually need to get on and use CRM 2011, your time would be better invested in one (or all) of the courses below.

Installation and Customization

Both these courses are fairly similar to their CRM 4.0 equivalents.

80296A: Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Installation and Deployment is two-days of instructor-led material, during which you will actually install CRM 2011 from scratch (in a Virtual Machine environment). This course gives you the core information you need to take exam MB2-867 – Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Installation and Deployment.

80294A: Customization and Configuration in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 is a three-day classroom based course which is designed to prepare you for exam MB2-866 – Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Customization and Configuration.

Given the timing of these, I expect most Learning Partners (CPLS) to offer these in the same week, back-to-back, hoping that people will do 5 straight days of training and leave with loads of knowledge stuffed into their heads. While this suits the training provider and the trainer (on staff or freelance) to fill up a whole week rather than having two or three days they can’t necessarily charge for, it may result in delegates trying to cram too much information in a short space of time. If you have the choice, I would suggest taking these separately with a couple of weeks in between to let it all soak in.

For anyone already qualified in CRM 4.0, it might be perfectly justifiable to blitz this in one go as you won’t be trying to learn so much new material. There are definitely more new things on the Customization course than on Installation, so much so that some subjects only get very sketchy coverage compared to their 4.0 equivalent (workflow being the example that stands out most).

Applications Courses

The first big difference from CRM 4.0 is the splitting up of Applications into four separate parts (déjà vu for anyone who remembers learning CRM 3). Each of these is a one day instructor-led course:

80290A: Marketing Automation in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011

80291A: Sales Management in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011

80292A: Service Management in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011

80293A: Service Scheduling in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011

For those of you wondering, the difference between the last two is broadly 80292A covers Cases, Contracts, Queues, Knowledge Base and dashboards / reporting; 80293A is concerned with Services and Service Activities. At first glance, 80292A has a reasonable amount to cover in a one-day course for people totally new to Dynamics CRM, while 80293A looks a bit thin (less than half the page-count of 80292A). In reality a lot of training providers will try to sell these bundled together so the boundaries between whole days may be a little blurred anyway.

I would expect anyone already qualified on CRM 4 to be able to cover the service material quite quickly – the biggest changes really are around the fact that teams can properly own records now, have security roles associated with them to provide access to records across business unit boundaries, and using queues associated to teams makes all this a much more seamless administration job than with CRM 4.0.

Across all of the Applications courses there are new elements to consider: the new layout and Ribbon, integration of charts, dashboards, SharePoint grids, goals and targets and so on. The hardest part of this course design must have been deciding which items to include in which modules. Unfortunately the end result is that if you want to know how to use queues for sales management, you really need the service management course, and some features are given minor coverage on more than one course in context of different parts of the CRM platform (goals, for example is covered on Sales and Service). That said, I expect lots of people will do these back to back anyway, and possibly in an accelerated or “boot camp” training programme (especially for upgraders).

These four courses, plus some real-world experience, should provide you with the necessary knowledge to pass exam MB2-868 – Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Applications.

Extending CRM 2011

Course 80295A “Extending Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011” is planned for release on August 4th and aimed at Developers who need to write custom code, plugins and workflow assemblies to provide functionality which is outside the capabilities of the core application itself.

(The link provided above does not work at the moment, but should go will now take you to the right page once that goes live with details about the course.)

It seems likely is now confirmed that this will be a three day instructor-led course like it’s predecessor for CRM 4.0, 8969B.

Workflows in CRM 2011

There’s no real detail about this course yet, not even a course number, other than Microsoft saying that a Workflow course for CRM 2011 is planned for the coming year to replace 80003A “Workflow in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0”.

This is one of the areas with some new functionality, providing interactive workflow “dialogs” as well as “processes” (like CRM 4.0 workflows). It will be interesting to see if this will remain a one-day course or whether they will produce two days of slightly deeper coverage to cover the new features and make up for workflow being almost completely dropped from the other courses (the CRM 4.0 Applications and Customization courses both used to cover this, albeit not in great depth).

Administration in CRM 2011

I have not seen any announcements regarding an updated Administration course to match the previous 80002A “Administration in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0”. If I find out anything about plans for this, I’ll update this post.

I see lots of people asking about the CRM 2011 certification track, exams and courses and although most of this information is available, it is not very well linked together. So, to try and get things straight and written down in one place, here’s my take on “how to get certified in CRM 2011”.

Individual CRM 2011 exams

There are three core exams already available for CRM 2011, very similar in concept to their 4.0 equivalents, and the details of what is required for each one are on these pages (and their various tabs for skills measured, preparation materials etc):

MB2-866 – Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Customization and Configuration

MB2-867 – Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Installation and Deployment

MB2-868 – Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Applications

The fourth exam “Extending Dynamics CRM 2011” is not yet available, but it is planned for release in August, and I’ll update this page once details are up on the Microsoft Learning website. Update: the details for Course 80295A Extending MS Dynamics CRM 2011 are now available.

Technology Specialist and IT Professional Tracks

Passing any one of the CRM 4.0 or CRM 2011 exams will earn you a “”Microsoft Dynamics Certified Technology Specialist” (aka MCTS or just TS) accreditation. TS certification is available for a whole range of current Microsoft technologies, they are not specific to Dynamics or CRM.

Passing a combination of exams for CRM 4.0 along with related technologies such as SQL, Windows server 2008 or .NET would get you a “Microsoft Certified IT Professional” (aka MCITP or IT Pro) accreditation, specifically for Applications, Installation and Deployment or Developer tracks. Full details of what combinations of core and elective exams can be used for CRM 4 are on this Microsoft Learning page for Dynamics CRM. Note that in some cases you would have to pass exams in old versions of various things, such as Vista, or “Deploying Business Desktops with Windows Server 2003 and Microsoft Office 2003”. Annoyingly, there was no way to cover the same elective with an equivalent exam in a newer technology such as Windows 7 or Office 2007 (or 2010).

Unfortunately that page has not yet been updated to show the combinations which will give the equivalent IT Pro qualifications for CRM 2011, although many of the individual 2011 pages point there, presumably in anticipation of it getting changed soon.

Update 24th July: The layout of the pages for MCTS and MCITP for Dynamics have been substantially changed, which means a) I expect the new information for the MCITP tracks will be there very soon and b) I can’t link directly to the most relevant part of the page because they use lots of expanding/collapsing sections.

Further update: although the Applications track for CRM 4 was updated a while ago, and the Installation one has now been updated to include SQL server (see below), they have still not published the requirements for 2011 as of October 7th.

However, on the individual exam pages it does give some hint of which MCITP tracks each one counts towards, so we do have some insight here if you join up the dots. To make things simple, here’s my take on what to expect based on figuring out and reading between the lines of what is published, and some sensible guesswork about related electives on current versions (note: this is not an official version, just my own conclusions).

IT Pro Applications

You can use MB2-866 (Customization) and MB2-868 (Applications) as credit towards this, according to the exam pages. If 2011 follows the same structure as CRM 4.0, this will probably be 868 as a required exam and 866 as an elective, probably with 70-432 (SQL Server 2008) and 70-680 (Windows 7 configuration) as alternatives.

I’m hoping they will get right up to date and include 70-681 (Deploying Windows 7 and Office 2010) as an option as well, rather than the out-dated Vista and Office 2007 equivalent. The requirement seems likely to remain as one core exam with no choice, and two electives out of three or four choices, so you can gain an IT Pro with only three exam passes this way, although many claim that the Applications exam can be one of the hardest CRM passes because of the breadth of knowledge required.

IT Pro Developer

866 Customization counts as credit here, and will almost certainly be one of the two required exams, along with “Extending Dynamics CRM 2011” (no choice), for which full details have not yet been released (as mentioned above, this is due in August).

868 Applications will be one of the possible electives (two required) along with a selection of .Net exams (possibly on v3.5 only, not 2.0, and already-retired exams are unlikely to count). If this is similar to the CRM 4.0 Developer track, SQL exams won’t count as electives here.

IT Pro Installation and Deployment

One required exam, 867 Installation (which does not count towards any other MCITP), and three electives for a total of four passes makes this similar to Developer in scope. Electives cover the more common system administration “IT pro” subjects, so expect to see current version exams here such as 70-662 Configuring Exchange 2010, or Windows Server 2008 exams 70-642, 70-643 or 70-647.

The CRM 4.0 track did not count SQL exams here either, which I always found a little odd. News: The CRM 4 tracks have been updated, first they showed changes to the Applications track and now the Installation and Deployment track includes SQL Server 2008 or 2005 exams as possible electives (exams 70-432 and 70-431 respectively). This means it looks pretty certain that SQL 2008 will count as an elective for the new tracks, but not 2005 since that version of SQL is not supported for CRM 2011

What about SharePoint?

In CRM 4.0 there was no real built-in integration with SharePoint, so although course 80141A Integrating CRM 4.0 and SharePoint Server 2007 covered this subject, there was no exam and it therefore did not count towards any of the MCITP tracks. Conversely, regular SharePoint skills and exams could not be used as electives since this was not a core component of the CRM platform.

With much closer integration now being part of the out-of-the-box solution, I expect we will see the SharePoint 2010 Configuration exam 70-667 added as an elective for the MCITP Applications or Installation tracks or possibly both, as this is just as valid a part of the toolset of a CRM consultant as Exchange skills (and certainly more relevant than how to configure Vista!).

Training for CRM 2011

I’ve written a follow-up post about the CRM 2011 MOC courses which are available to give you the knowledge to pass the above exams as well as the additional ones covering extra skills for using CRM 2011 in the real world.

Have you started your training for CRM 2011 yet? Do have any experiences to share about any of the new exams (within NDA of course)? Are you already working with 2011 but not re-certified yet? When are you planning on upgrading your certificates? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

In the UK this means an increase from £88 to £99, so if you want to save that extra £11 then get your exams done before the end of June. Both of these prices are ex-VAT, so for those of you paying your own way through a certification track that means you will need to find an extra £13.20 from your own pocket, or £15.40 more than a year ago thanks to the VAT increase as well. If you already have pre-paid vouchers which are still valid, you should be able to use these for some time, but read the small print on the page linked below.

More information on prices for other countries, details of voucher eligibility and plenty of FAQs on the Microsoft page about the exam price rise.

UK MCTs will have already seen that their exam discount will increase at the same time by 5% which takes out a lot of the sting here, but early adopters in the training community will no longer get the super-bonus discount for taking exams within the first 90 days of release, which is not such great news.

I passed the Excel 2010 exam during a break at a conference last year, but I’ve been waiting for the Expert level exams to come out so I can go and do the Word and Excel Expert ones as well as Outlook and PowerPoint in a single day to get them all done at once for my MOS:Master certification. This is what I did for my MOS 2003 and similar to MCAS 2007 (when I did Vista as well, but there were no “expert” exams for 2007), and I just find it the best way to “blitz” them and get them all passed in one go.

(Just in case anyone missed it by the way, the Office exams are now back to the “MOS” branding rather than MCAS, and anyone with an MCAS 2007 certificate is retroactively awarded a MOS 2007 in its place.)

Good luck to anyone planning to take these; let me know in the comments how you get on!