Customization advantages

Part 1 of "11 things to know about customization"

If your idea of customizing a business application is a developer writing code, Microsoft Dynamics CRM will represent a big change for you. Since version 1.0, Microsoft Dynamics CRM has been developing a set of metadata-driven tools to help you change Microsoft Dynamics CRM so that it fits your business without the need for a developer to write any code.

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Safely upgrade customizations

Is easy for developers to extend

Provides many solutions for your needs

Safely upgrade customizations

Microsoft Dynamics CRM addresses a common problem that business applications have faced: after code-based customization, maintenance costs made it difficult to upgrade. Without the ability to easily upgrade, you couldn't take advantage of new features in later versions.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM addresses this problem by managing the data that defines your customizations – the metadata. The Microsoft Dynamics CRM customization features use XML definitions that describe how you customize Microsoft Dynamics CRM. Because these definitions follow a known schema, Microsoft Dynamics CRM can safely manage your customizations when you are ready to upgrade.

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Is easy for developers to extend

Although the core application customization tools let you define most common types of customizations, there are frequently some business requirements that need integration with other systems, or the creation of a highly specific process that is unique to your business. Developers can extend the capabilities of your Microsoft Dynamics CRM deployment while maintaining the opportunity to upgrade later.

Developers do not change Microsoft Dynamics CRM code, they use Web services and XML configurations to add their custom extensions to Microsoft Dynamics CRM. Because the Web services and XML configurations provide a consistent interface in each new version of Microsoft Dynamics CRM, customized extensions using supported methods can be safely upgraded.

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Provides many solutions for your needs

Because this is a Microsoft product, there are lots of companies, business consultants, and other software companies around the world creating solutions for Microsoft Dynamics CRM. You can take advantage of this community of Microsoft Dynamics CRM users, consultants, and developers to find solutions to meet the needs of your business.

In the Microsoft Dynamics CRM newsgroups and forums, you can post questions and find answers to common challenges. Your business-consultant partners can use their experience and solutions, developed for their other customers, to help you. And finally, you will find a variety of solutions from other software companies that have additional functionality for Microsoft Dynamics CRM or integrate Microsoft Dynamics CRM with other solutions.

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