SkyDrive Pro is cloud storage for business. It's the place where employees can store, sync, and share their files across multiple devices with ease and security.

With SkyDrive Pro you can collaborate with others in real time and edit documents from virtually anywhere via a web browser using Office Web Apps.

Accessing your files from multiple devices (including Windows Phone, Windows 8, iOS, and Android devices) is a cinch with native SkyDrive Pro and Office Mobile apps. Not only does SkyDrive Pro deliver the frictionless user experiences that employees expect in a file sync solution, it's backed by a platform that provides industrial-strength content management, compliance, and content management controls. 

We're continually improving the SkyDrive Pro service. The new SkyDrive Pro apps are now available in the Window Store and App Store. Today, we're pleased to announce three new significant improvements to SkyDrive Pro for Office 365 business subscribers - to help you be more productive:

• Each user now gets 25 GB of SkyDrive Pro storage space (up from 7 GB)
• You can now increase users' SkyDrive Pro storage beyond the default 25 GB - up to 50 GB and 100 GB
• With the new Shared with Me view, you can easily find documents others have shared with you

Note:

• The storage you allocate will come from your tenant's overall pool
• You cannot reduce one users storage to increase another users store, nor can you allocate one users storage to user or other team site (aka, back to the tenant pool).
• SkyDrive Pro is based on SharePoint. In SharePoint Online the file upload limit is 2GB (see SharePoint Online: software boundaries and limits - link) 

Read more here

For our Microsoft Dynamics partners we have just released the guides and training presentations for CRM 2013 Pricing and Licensing. If you are a partner I encourage you to download and get familiar with the guides - and if you are a customer I encourage you to setup a meeting with your partner to learn more about the great new flexiblity and simplicity we've introduced in our licensing.

Licensing and Pricing guides

• CRM 2013 On-premises Licensing and Pricing guide - provides a comprehensive overview of key licensing features, licensing for on-premises deployments, licensing programs, and pricing information.
• CRM 2013 SPLA Licensing and Pricing guide - provides a comprehensive overview of key licensing features, licensing for partner-hosted deployments, licensing programs, and pricing information.
• CRM Online Licensing and Pricing guide - provides a comprehensive overview of licensing features, programs, and pricing information.

Briefs

• CRM 2013 On-Premises Licensing Brief - High level overview of licensing for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 On-premises deployments.
• CRM Online Licensing Brief - High level overview of licensing for Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online.

Presentations

• CRM 2013 Licensing Level 100 Presentation - Partner ready level 100 presentation for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 provides an overview of key licensing features, licensing for cloud deployments, licensing for on-premise deployments, key competitive advantages, and partner calls to action.
• CRM 2013 Licensing Level 200 Presentation - Partner ready Level 200 presentation for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 provides complete overview of licensing features, licensing for cloud deployments, licensing for on-premise deployments, license upgrade paths, key competitive advantages, Pricing summary, and partner calls to action.
• CRM Online Licensing Level 300 Presentation - Field ready Level 300 Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online presentation provides complete overview of licensing features, licensing for cloud deployments, license upgrade paths, key competitive advantages, pricing details, licensing scenarios, and field calls to action.
• CRM 2013 On-premises Licensing Level 300 Presentation - Field ready Level 300 Microsoft Dynamics CRM On-premises presentation provides complete overview of licensing features, licensing for on-premises deployments, license upgrade paths, key competitive advantages, pricing details, licensing scenarios, and field calls to action

Pricing

• CRM Online MOSP pricing - Microsoft Online Services Program pricing for licenses available with Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online Fall 2013 service update. Information includes pricing for user subscription licenses, subscription add-on licenses, and premium support offerings.

To download the guides and presentations you need access to Partner Source. Click here to access the collateral on Partner Source (URL: https://mbs.microsoft.com/partnersource/pricing/pricesheets/dynCRMpricesheet.htm)

Update April 2014:https://mbs.microsoft.com/partnersource/northamerica/pricing-ordering/price-sheets/dynCRMpricesheet

See also

• Comparison of the new CRM Online 2013 subscriptions - link

One of our most important events this year is the launch of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 coming this fall. The new release offers great benefits to you. We expect the many new features and functionality to drive tremendous growth in your CRM business over the next year.

In order to help you prepare for this exciting launch, Microsoft is delighted to introduce our new interactive Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 Operations Resource Guide. This guide includes all the information and resources you need to understand how to sell and support Microsoft Dynamics CRM with your customers in an easily accessible and new interactive format. 

One of the things you'll find in the guide is all the great recordings from the recent Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 Training Blitz Day - Technical Track

• Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 Application Upgrade New Features
• Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 Application Control New Features
• Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 Application New Features
• Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 User Interface New Features
• Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 Setup and Upgrade New Features
• Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 Customization New Features
• Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 for Tablets New Features
• Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 Processes New Features
• Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 Server-Side Synchronization and Microsoft Office Outlook New Features
• Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 SDK New Features
• Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 Blitz Day – Technical Track (Part 1 of 3)
• Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 Blitz Day – Technical Track (Part 2 of 3)
• Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 Blitz Day – Technical Track (Part 3 of 3)
   

You will also find links to other training, events, licensing Q&As and support

To access the guide, please log into PartnerSource using the below link:

• https://mbs.microsoft.com/partnersource/ordering/orderingnews/MSDYN_CRMOperationalResources

To help you prepare for your upgrade to Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013, we have created the Custom Code Validation Tool for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013. 

When using JavaScript code in Microsoft Dynamics CRM, it is possible that some code will stop working or cause an error when you upgrade. The Microsoft Dynamics CRM Custom Code Validation Tool helps identify potential problems so that a developer can fix them.

Please run this tool on your CRM instance to help identify potential issues with custom JavaScript in JavaScript libraries and HTML web resources. It will detect issues in the custom web resources that will no longer work after the upgrade is completed.  The most common issues that this tool targets are:

• CRM v4 client SDK calls
• CRM 2007 end points
• Common DOM manipulations

Running this tool before upgrade will enable you to identify issues and fix them prior to your scheduled upgrade so that your upgrade process can run smoothly.

Since launching Office 365 two years ago, we have continued to invest deeply in our infrastructure to ensure a highly available service. 

We measure availability as the number of minutes that the Office 365 service is available in a calendar month as a percentage of the total number of minutes in that month.  We call this measure of availability the uptime number.

Within this calculation we include our business, government and education services. The worldwide uptime number for Office 365 for the last four quarters beginning July 2012 and ending June 2013 has been 99.98%, 99.97%, 99.94% and 99.97% respectively. 

Read more here

MarketingPilot and Microsoft Dynamics CRM is an end to end solution. The combination of these two tools offers businesses a complete integrated marketing management (IMM) solution that provides insight into ROMI and campaign performance like never before.

Watch these six new videos on YouTube for more:

• Introduction to MarketingPilot - link
• Microsoft Dynamics CRM and MarketingPilot - link 
• Marketing Spend Management & Budgeting w/ MarketingPilot - link 
• Content Marketing with MarketingPilot - link 
• Marketing Job Management with Marketing Pilot - link
• Media Planning & Buying with Marketing Pilot - link 
  
  

Office 365 offers a variety of plans to meet the needs of different organizations. If you already have a subscription to Office 365 and are thinking about changing plans please read on.

You can switch plans:

• In the same service family -- Use the Switch plans wizard in the Office 365 portal to upgrade from one plan to another within a service family. For example, if you are currently subscribed to Office 365 Small Business, you can move to Office 365 Small Business Premium, or from Office 365 Enterprise E1 to Office 365 Enterprise E3.
  x
• From a standalone plan -- Use the Switch plans wizard to move from a standalone plan to an Enterprise plan; for example, from Exchange Online to Office 365 Enterprise E1.
  x
• To a different service family -- You can switch to a plan that isn’t in the same service family, but you will need to switch plans manually, without using the Switch plans wizard.

Read all the details here

(Note from the author: the below post was written when CRM 2013 hadnt launched yet, hence scarce on details. You might want to jump directly to a detailed post written post launch - "CRM 2013: Understanding Multi-Entity Search")

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One of the great features expected in the upcoming CRM 2013 for tablets is the ability to execute a Search query across multiple entities at once. 

When you perform a Multi-Entity Search, the results of the query are

• grouped by entity
• sorted by the order specified in the Quick Find View for the entity

 Fig 1: Search results from entities Accounts, Contacts and Activities

The feature uses the underlying Quick Find feature to submit multiple Quick Find queries that are processed in parallel. 

Note

• The feature is expected to work on CRM 2013 for tablets (Win 8 and iPad) - not in the web client, nor the CRM for Outlook client in this release
• The feature is expected to search 10 entities at the most

See also

• CRM 2013: Understanding Multi-Entity Search (added Oct. 7th 2013) - link

Disclaimer

"Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013" is a pre-release product under development. The information in this blog post represents my personal understanding and expectations as of the date of this blog post. All pre-release product release dates and features specified are preliminary based on current expectations, and are subject to change without notice.