Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Our "Big 5"...

Some of you may have heard that a few of our team members are currently journeying through the African safari. (Not the “I’m in Africa on safari” excuse to avoid emails, they really are there!) Martin and one of our SmartConnect developers, Ruaan, decided to eliminate another item from their “bucket lists” and dirt bike through South Africa, with the hopes to see the “Big 5” on the way. While they are away, the rest of us at eOne are holding down the fort and hoping they won’t get EATEN by something they come across. (I mean, we do have to release SmartConnect 2013 in just a few short months!) Although they may be excited about their journey, they are missing out on some exciting things back at eOne. So, while they’re missing out – you don’t need to at all. Here is our “Big 5” list for the next few weeks:

1.     eXtremeCRM2012: We are beyond excited to participate in the CRM partner-focused event in Las Vegas next week. This is our first year as a sponsor of the event and we look forward to connecting with both familiar and new faces in the CRM world. We’ll be showing SmartConnect at our booth (T9), but if you’re attending and you’d like a private, sit down meeting with the team just let me know. We’ll have a SmartConnect developer (Kevin Jones), consultant (Chris Hanson), and yours truly there and we’d love to grab a meal, a coffee, or just move away from the expo hall and help answer your integration questions. Drop me a line (abbey.cooper@eonesolutions.com) and let’s get something on the schedule!
 
2.     GPUG SummitIn mid-October we’ll be heading to Seattle, WA to sponsor one of our favorite events – the GP User Group Summit. This event brings together GP customers and partners and provides them with sessions to dive deep into the GP product, learn from other users, and find out the best solutions available from multiple vendors in the channel. We have the privilege of presenting a number of sessions at the event, so please join us:

·         Wednesday, October 17th at 10 am: Enhancing Your Use of SmartList with Microsoft GP
·         Wednesday, October 17th at 11:15 am: Make GP Do Things You Have Never Dreamed of Without Writing Code
·         Wednesday, October 17th at 2 pm: Eliminating IM, Enhancing SmartList, and Making GP Hassle-Free
·         Wednesday, October 17th at 3:30 pm: Excel Report Builder – How2
·         Thursday, October 18th at 8 am: SmartList Builder Deep Dive Insights
·         Friday, October 19th at 11 am: Make Microsoft Dynamics GP Fit Your Business with the Extender Challenge
 
3.     CRMUG Summit – The CRM User Group Summit is being held in mid-October in Seattle, as well. We will be available to discuss SmartConnect in the expo hall or during the sessions and would love to take time to meet you at the event. Let me know if you’d like to sit down with the team and talk about all things CRM integrations!

4.     Excel Template Improvements: Previously all of our Excel templates have required a SOAP toolkit download in order to call the SmartConnect web service. That toolkit is no longer supported through Microsoft, so we have redesigned the VBA behind it to call our web service without needing any additional files. We will release the first fix on our GL Journal Entry template shortly and will roll out the fix on the remaining templates this fall. Watch for the Tech Tuesday article next week for more information! If you have questions, reach out to chris.dew@eonesolutions.com.

5.      WEBSITE: In just a few short weeks we will be rolling out a brand new website. Not only will it be “aesthetically pleasing,” but highly functional. I’ll post another article when we release the site, but in the meantime here are some of the new things I know you’ll love:

·        Support: Simply submit your support issue online and you’ll instantly be added to our support queue. Not only that, but we’ve added a Support Forum and Support Blog where you can join in on product discussions and learn from fellow users.
 
·       Knowledge Base: We’ve updated the knowledge base section so you’ll be able to do a quick word search to access the thousands of tech articles we have designed to help you, our customers and partners.
 
·       Payment Options: This is one of my favorite updates as it allows partners to login, easily process an order, prorate the renewal date, purchase discounted maintenance plans and more.
 
·       Renewals: When viewing your renewals you will have the option to sort by customer, by expiration date, send yourself a quote or make the payment right there on the spot.
 
·       Reg Keys: As usual, reg keys will be available as soon as the order it placed, but you now have the option to send the keys out to an email address of your choice, as well. You can also send multiple versions of the keys.
 
·       Videos, Screenshots, Visuals: The website has a ton of video demos embedded, screenshots of key products, and visuals to help you understand the products further.

Watch for the website to be released by the end of October!
Do you have a “Big 5” list for the next few weeks or months? Any thoughts on our “Big 5”? Drop me a line at abbey.cooper@eonesolutions.com to share! I’d love to hear from you.
 

Friday, September 7, 2012

Where in the World is eOne??


Sunday marks the start of our fall conference and user group tour. We’re excited to begin the tour in our US headquarters’ hometown and the birthplace of GP – Fargo, ND. We’ll start at The Partner Event for a time connecting with folks in the channel who, like us, are trying to gather new ideas on leadership, sales and marketing. The Partner Event is an excellent opportunity to step away from the busyness of the office and focus on learning new skills to better serve our customers. You’ll see Chris Dew at the Sunrise Scramble (3K Run/Walk) bright and early on Monday morning. (As you know Chris is our resident “runner,” but will be doing his best to walk it this year as he’s nursing a knee injury! This is your year to beat him and get some bragging rights!) I, on the other hand, will be hanging out with the rest of the folks back at the conference – so if you're not a runner, come grab a coffee with me and we’ll have a chat!

Once we wrap up The Partner Event on Tuesday afternoon we’ll start bright and early on Wednesday at Microsoft’s Technical Airlift. We are excited to be exhibitors for the conference and look forward to connecting with all our "techie" friends out there who know that above all other conferences, this one is for you! Be sure to spend time talking with our consultants about your SmartConnect and Node Builder projects and learn about the latest features we’ve added. We know that consultants are some of the most important people in a partner organization and we would love to connect with you. Drop Chris Dew (chris.dew@eonesolutions.com) a message if you’d like to connect with him next week to discuss your project.
Our next stop? Vegas! More on that to come later...
We look forward to seeing you next week!

Tuesday, September 4, 2012

New Season Brings Exciting New Changes


Over the weekend my husband and I went hiking at a beautiful State Park in Pennsylvania. It was so nice to take a little break, enjoy the great outdoors and unwind from a week of work. Throughout our hike I couldn’t help but notice the leaves on the trees were not only starting their change into gorgeous shades of red, orange, and deep yellow but they were falling off the trees and floating to the ground in droves. It is amazing how seasons come and go so quickly, isn’t it? There’s no way around it, autumn is upon us.

At eOne, the mark of this new season brings a lot of excitement. We have been hard at work recruiting and hiring bright new talent, prepping to roll out our new website, gearing up for a ton of user groups and improving our products. For the next month or so, I’ll be sharing these new changes in detail with you every week. This week, let me start with our new talent for eOne:
Ken Hepworth
A big welcome to Ken Hepworth who joins the eOne team in Australia. QA is definitely one of the most important roles at eOne – without it, we would not be serving our 2000+ customers well.  Ken comes to us with over 12 years of experience, having focused on testing developer tools. Ken will head up our SmartConnect QA efforts and is a key addition to the team.

Danielle Boldenow
Joining the eOne office in Fargo, ND, is Danielle Boldenow, who will serve as Sales Assistant/Office Manager. As a recent Mass Communications grad, with experience heading-up the Social Media efforts as an intern for a local non-profit organization, Danielle’s insight and willingness to serve the team are a welcome addition!

We hope to have even more announcements like this soon as we are still looking for the best support techs, AX and CRM consultants, and pre-sales guns out there. If you're interested, send your resume to Martin: martin.olsen@eonesolutions.com.