Open for business: a Dynamics CRM app store that *could* replace Dynamics Marketplace
If you recall, when Microsoft released Dynamics CRM 2011 in February, 2011, it included an integration to the Microsoft Pinpoint site for Microsoft Dynamics CRM, affectionately labeled Dynamics Marketplace within the CRM application. Although intended to become a dynamic (get it?) catalog of add-ons, services, and solution providers, it’s been almost three years and the marketplace hasn’t really caught on. If I had to pinpoint (get it?) the problems with the Dynamics Marketplace, I’d pin it on the following issues:
- It is not actively curated, neither by Microsoft nor by the community. On the Most Popular tab, the entry with the most reviews has 15; the next runner-up has 5 and it drops from there.
- The process to purchase or deploy a solution to your Dynamics CRM server is very manual – there is no click-to-purchase or click-to-deploy capability and no centralized payment or licensing system, so you have to deal with each vendor individually.
- It is up to individual vendors to support trial or demo options… and not all do.
Clearly, there is some room for improvement here, but this is not a high priority area for Microsoft – Dynamics CRM 2013 continues to show the same catalog of solutions and service providers, with no attention spent on enhancing the experience for CRM administrators.
While doing some research for a customer, I stumbled upon Prodware and their CRM App Store. Like the Pinpoint site, the CRM App Store exists as a web-based catalog of Dynamics CRM solutions, but that’s where the similarity ends. On their blog, I read about the Tax Calculation solution, clicked on the link for the product page, and clicked on the link to Try – I was redirected to a site where I could either request information about Dynamics CRM or download the CRM App Store managed solution (an integration that puts the online catalog right inside Dynamics CRM for an administrator to discover and deploy new CRM add-on packages). I decided to give the whole system a test drive and here is what I found out:
When navigating the app store, you might get a sense that it is familiar – the developers modeled the app store after the Windows 8 Store.- The solutions appear to be heavily biased toward a single publisher called FocusLive. It’s not clear what FocusLive’s relationship is with Prodware, but there is definitely a link – the FocusLive website links to the same app store as Prodware, including a listing on the Microsoft Dynamics Marketplace Pinpoint site.
- Other solutions all appear to be paid offerings, most likely sold through Prodware as a channel partner.
- The deployment process is fairly smooth. I pushed the app store into a Dynamics CRM 2013 demo server and was able to navigate the catalog of solutions. After selecting the Tax Calculation solution, the app store assisted me in deploying the solution directly to my CRM instance with no manual download required; the app store did, however, also need to deploy the App Store License and FocusLive Framework solutions in advance of the actual solution I was deploying.
The app store allows me to filter to just the solutions I have deployed, as well as statistics about each deployed solution – as an administrator, that makes it easy for me to track licenses and expiration dates, as well as if updates exist.- In full disclosure, I haven’t tried deploying a paid solution, so I can’t speak to the experience of payment processing and licensing.
- I received emails when I registered, when I confirmed my account, and when I deployed the Tax Calculation solution. Seemed like just the right amount of email – not pushy, but clearly there if I needed additional guidance.
The app store shows up as a top-level area in the new CRM 2013 navigation.
If it was my call, I would have tucked it away in the Settings area, as a custom sub-area, rather than bulk up the root-level of the sitemap. Call me a purist, but I like a very minimalist root-level on my CRM sitemap.
Considering that this is the first Dynamics CRM app store that I have seen, Focuslive and/or Prodware did a nice job creating a first-generation product to help CRM administrators automate the deployment and management of CRM solutions for their end-users. I wish them well with this endeavor – it would be great to see a comprehensive catalog/app store for Dynamics CRM administrators.
General Specialist 
Hi,
I went ahead after reading this blog entry and didn’t have quite the same experience but that might be because I’m relatively new at CRM. I installed the CRM App Store ok, a process that required a CRM App Store login, yet when I selected the Tax Calculator, it again insisted that I log in, even though I was. When I tried logging in again, it rejected me. In frustration I ended up creating a brand new login, and I managed to install the Tax solution. I read the user guide, which was useful to a point, however I’m not sure exactly how it works. I can’t seem, for instance, to create an order, assign a tax code, and have it apply to the total cost. I just want to apply a blanket 10% tax (GST) to the order total, which is what I’ll be doing on all my orders. Did you get the product to work for you?
David
David, to be completely honest, I didn’t actually try to use the Tax Calculator solution. I only selected it to test the functionality of the CRM App Store.
Now I’m no accountant, but given your use case, you should be able to use a workflow or plugin to automatically set the tax value on the order. For a standard, flat tax, I don’t see a need to rely on a complex tax solution – those are better-suited for scenarios where you have variable tax rates or multiple tax jurisdictions in which you sell.
Hi David,
The Tax add-on works the same why MS CRM calculates the total amount of the order. It sums the amount of all related order products. More than that – you can set default tax code for the order and each time you add new order product we will use this default tax (and still you can modify it manually) . When you recalculate the order we will recalculate the tax as well.
I hope this is clear now – if not I will be happy to demonstrate it for you.
Figured it was worth closing the loop on this. Over the summer, Microsoft (my current employer) unveiled the Microsoft AppSource, a one-stop shop for the business solutions to meet your needs. Stocked with try-before-you-buy solutions from Microsoft and our partners, this is an answer to the gap that Prodware’s CRM App Store was aiming to address.