Developing Mobile Apps for Microsoft Dynamics CRM: the fine print.

David Evans recently presented on Developing Mobile Apps at eXtremeCRM 2014. The big message from his presentation is that this is a rapidly evolving area where relevant information quickly becomes obsolete.

David’s presentation was about a seemingly straightforward task:

1. develop a simple Windows Phone mobile app to log into MSCRM and pull some data
2. develop the equivalent app for Android phones.

This process revealed some of the traps inherent in developing for today’s mobile app world.The forty minute session, however, was not long enough to go into a lot of detail, so David is providing a series of posts on his personal blog (blog.ozdave.com) with practical guidelines on the mobile app development process.

The first of David’s posts provides background to OAuth2.0, the open source authentication protocol for logging into Dynamics CRM from the mobile environment, using Azure Active Directory. David describes the authentication process, provides links to relevant sites, and gives advice on what to avoid and where short cuts can be taken. Subsequent posts will go into detail about the steps involved in developing the two apps.

Developing at this level is not always necessary. Companies such as Resco and CWR Mobility, who joined David on his session at eXtremeCRM, have products that can be used to short cut the app development process.

For those of you excited at the possibilities offered by developing point apps on the fly, however, learning to navigate around the potential pitfalls of app development is imperative. To do this, take advantage of Microsoft’s Windows Phone development environment, and have a look at David’s blog post on this area, starting with OAuth 2.0.