1. The customization tool Resco Woodford should be installed on the CRM environment. The tool, which is a managed CRM solution, can be downloaded here.

2. Auditing needs to be enabled on the Woodford project. Open up the Woodford project, and setup auditing according to your requirements. Save and publish the project.

3. Now we need to customize a web resource that is part of the Woodford solution and setup your personal Google Maps API key. Since the Woodford solution is managed, it cannot be modified directly. So, navigate to the Customizations-pane of the Settings Area, and modify the Default Solution. Open up the Web Resource “Global Properties for Map Providers”, modify the Javascript and insert the Google Maps API key that you have acquired from Google:

4. Publish the Solution. Now do a change to the account record using the Resco MobileCRM client, and synchronize the changes to the server.

5. Navigate to “Auditing” in the MobileCRM area in Dynamics CRM, and you can now see where the change to the Account was made on a map by clicking the “Mobile Auditing Map”-button:

As you can see, it is very simple to setup location based auditing in Dynamics CRM, utilizing the Resco MobileCRM framework and the Woodford customization tool.

A significant difference between the 2 vendor’s offering is Resco has the Resco MobileCRM Studio – “a developer platform fully integrated with Microsoft Visual Studio that includes Resco designers and components and controls”.  If you want to build a Mobile Dynamics CRM app that you can extend with custom UI components and custom business logic then Resco is the only way to go (aside from bespoke custom development).  Resco’s approach though is to give you the source code and a development framework so you are not just tacking customisation around their product like you would do if customising Microsoft CRM.  So going down this path is not for the faint hearted.  Unfortunately neither CWR or Resco have a lightweight extensibility model yet. 

For the purpose of this article I am not looking at the Resco MobileCRM Studio but rather comparing CWR and Resco’s offerings from a configuration perspective.  Both vendors have invested significantly in providing a configurable application that lets CRM Administrators rather than programmers configure out the forms, views and user experience.  Most CRM customers out there will not have an appetite for mobile application development so let’s see what Resco and CWR have to offer them:

Last updated: 18 July 2012 (Resco v5.4.0.0, CWR v5.0.1.7)

Home screen:

Resco MobileCRM	CWR Mobile CRM

Mobile Dashboard:

Resco MobileCRM	CWR Mobile CRM
Not available on iPhone. iPad:

Opportunity List View:

Resco MobileCRM	CWR Mobile CRM

Opportunity Form:

Resco MobileCRM	CWR Mobile CRM

The mobile experience is similar on both apps.  CWR Mobility have aligned their app to the look and feel of Microsoft Dynamics 4.0 (which is even more evident in their configuration tools I will talk about later). 

I definitely prefer Resco MobileCRM’s Form layout – e.g. the Opportunity form you see above.  CWR Mobility’s Mobile CRM forms are in desperate need of a face lift. 

The user experience works on both apps but the Resco UI is definitely a nicer place to be hanging out.

For those customers that are concerned about storing customer data on the mobile device Resco has the edge with its ‘always online’ option.  However with CRM 2011 soon to support Safari on iPad, customers who don’t want offline capabilities may be better to just use the native web client on iPads rather than pay additional licenses for a mobile client.  The same option will exist for Windows 8 tablet / Surface users.

Here’s how the 2 mobile apps look on the iPad:

Firstly Resco:

And here’s CWR on the iPad:

Resco make a lot better use of the real estate available on the iPad.  In a generic CRM demo where I want to show off that CRM can run on iPads I will always go with Resco you get a much better wow factor response.

Device Support Comparison:

Whilst CWR and Resco support a similar set of mobile platforms there are some differences…

CWR supports the following mobile devices:

Resco supports:

The big differences there are:

• Only CWR supports Blackberry (do business still make their staff use BlackBerrys?  Are they that cruel?)
• CWR’s Android support does not include Tablet support.  Resco has separate mobile apps for Android phone and Android tablet.
• Resco supports the older version of Windows phone (Windows Mobile 6.5)
• Resco has a mobile apps for Windows 7, XP, Vista
• Resco has a mobile app for Windows 8

Resco having a mobile app for Windows 7, XP, Vista and Windows 8 is very interesting to me.  This offering gives you an alternative user experience for your laptop/desktop workers.  It includes offline support.  This is an interesting client option, it sits somewhere between the native web client and the Outlook client.  If using Outlook is an issue but offline access is required then this could be of interest.   It looks pretty slick too, here it is running on my Windows 7 laptop:

Interestingly enough it sounds like this sort of ‘app’ like user experience is exactly where Microsoft sees Microsoft CRM going in future releases as they embrace the Windows 8 Metro user experience.

Here is a comparison chart of the features of the mobile apps:

(As at 13 Jan 2012: Resco v5.1.2.0, CWR Mobility v5.0.1.4)

I found it annoying that Resco’s default view definitions do not filter out inactive records (I would rather not have my closed leads and opportunities and inactive customers showing up in my lists).  However, it only take 5 minutes to change this configuration. 

CWR clearly spent a lot of time and effort aligning their user experience here to match Microsoft CRM 4.0.  It looks good, its intuitive and feels robust but now that we have CRM 2011 it suffers from looking a little out-dated.

View configuration in CWR is a more familiar and robust experience then it is in Resco with the one exception of defining filters where Resco has a nicer UI (but the functionality is much the same). 

Resco’s iFrame functionality is very interesting and could push the app ahead of CWR Mobility’s in some scenarios providing an easy integration mechanism.

In general the CWR configuration application feels more robust, with little quirky events in Resco leaving me feeling cautious about the maturity of the product, although this visibly improves with every release. 

Home Page Editor:

View Designer:

Form Designer:

And here’s CWR Mobility’s configuration tool…

Main menu:

Site Map editor:

View Designer:

Form Designer:

Ok, the mobile apps just get downloaded by end users for free via the App store, the user punches in the connection details you would provide to them and on first synch the mobile app picks up your company’s particular configuration, that bit’s easy.

For Resco, the Woodford configuration tool is supplied as a Silverlight application that you can run locally or if on CRM 2011 you can import into your Microsoft CRM organisation as a managed solution and then run from a new link on your CRM menu:

Resco store’s its configuration information in your CRM database.  There is no middleware for Resco, the mobile app connects directly to your CRM system.  The synchronisation logic sits in the mobile app.  The mobile app reads the MobileCRM configuration definitions from the CRM database via the CRM web services and then synchronises data the same way.

What this means is your CRM system needs to be internet accessible.  Either you need to be running CRM Online or be partner hosted or have IFD / Claims Based Authentication configured on your on premise system.  i.e. if you can’t access your normal Microsoft CRM system from an internet cafe without VPN then you won’t be able to use Resco either.

The CWR Configurator is a standalone web application that CWR Mobility allow you to launch from the CRM menu:

CWR Mobility took a different approach with their application architecture (or more correctly, Resco took the different approach as CWR Mobility were around first).  CWR Mobility have a middleware component – the CWR Mobile CRM Server.  They offer this as an on premise offering or they can host it for you.  The below table explains the configurations they support:

The architectural difference is interesting.  Resco tout their lack of middleware as an advantage as  it is a simpler architecture and there is no need for an additional server / server component.  But I have heard colleagues talk about CWR Mobility’s middleware as an advantage as it provides better separation of application roles.  I’m not yet sure either way. 

CWR does offer an architecture though that does allow you to open up your CRM system for mobile access without opening up your entire CRM system to the internet.  Not sure whether a customer would ever have that specific requirement though.

Previously I had CWR winning this showdown.  As at 11th April 2012 I am less sure.  I had CWR winning because it is the more functional, more robust, more mature product.  However, I preferred (and still prefer) Resco’s UI.  The fact that CWR had automatic synching was a big advantage which Resco has now met.   I still feel CWR is the safer bet for enterprise customers, Resco’s product just needs to mature a bit further.  However, in terms of look and feel and functionality Resco is starting to look like the winner.  It is also very noticeable that Resco are releasing new functionality at an impressive rate and increasing their functional lead over CWR.

I will add though that Resco as a company seem to be more about custom Mobile CRM application development and the Woodford product they have released probably takes priority 2.  Their Mobile CRM SDK gives them a whole other feature set where CWR Mobility currently has no comparative product, so businesses need to consider whether mobile CRM development is of interest or not.  In my opinion both products are lacking basic jscript support.  Not being able to easily inject jscript into the forms via configuration like you can in the web client is a real problem.

Please share any experiences you have had with either product and correct anything I have wrong.  I will update this post as updates to the products are released.

Update (7 Feb 2012):  Today it has been announced that Microsoft will start offering a Microsoft-labelled CWR Mobility offering from Q2 2012 [delayed to Q4] called Microsoft Dynamics® CRM Mobile:

The solution will be cloud hosted and charged on a per user per month basis.  You will use the CWR Mobile client, it will connect to this new offering which in turn will connect to your CRM system (which will need to be internet accessible).  CWR Mobility had a cloud offering before and Microsoft are taking this over.  The table below explains when you will buy the CWR product from CWR vs. from Microsoft:

Microsoft’s announcement suggests closer ties between these companies going forward which will be a point of concern for anyone going down the Resco path.  But then again Microsoft didn’t just go out and buy CWR like they could have so things are still up in the air from my perspective.  The pressure is certainly on Resco to keep pushing out quality product to make customers look beyond CWR’s ties to Microsoft.   So far, they have risen to the occasion impressively.  l can’t wait to see what happens next!