Laura Robinson wrote this
The Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Accelerators have been rolling out over the last couple of months and one of the questions we’ve been working on in the CRM Online TS team is, how can we make these accelerators work for Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online? CRM Online, at the moment, operates under three distinct constraints as compared to the On-Premise or Partner Hosted versions:
- Because Microsoft hosts the servers there is no custom code on the server
- WLID Authentication
- No custom reports uploaded to the server
More information about the differences between Online and On-Premise can be found on MSDN.
In light of these constraints, some of the 4.0 Accelerators will not work with Online at all, some will work partially if you import just the customizations but with minimal value (e.g. eService Accelerator), and others will work partially with minimal effort and still provide value to customers. Two of the accelerators that provide value to an Online org are: Extended Sales Forecasting and Event Management.
These accelerators contain custom entities, security roles, and workflows that can be imported to CRM Online and provide some value to an Online organization that is looking for a forecasting or event management template or solution. Please note that there are some components with these accelerators that will not work in Online; in particular the Extended Sales Forecasting accelerator contains custom .rdl files to upload which are not possible in Online.
Event Management provides web portal customizations to allow for extranet event management registration, which is not possible to incorporate into Online. In the following blogs, I discuss how these accelerators can be used in CRM Online as well as some workarounds for the components that cannot be incorporated: Extended Sales Forecasting, Event Management.
Cheers,
Laura Robinson