Microsoft Announces Dynamics CRM Online December 2012 Service Update

Microsoft has announced its planned December 2012 Service Update for Dynamics CRM Online, formerly known as "Polaris", which includes a new "Flow" user experience option (though this name appears to have been dropped in the official materials) for sales and customer service, cross browser support, new integration points for Yammer, Skype, and Bing Maps, Office 2013 compatibility, a bulk data API, and a new statement of direction to accompany the news.

From Dynamics CRM product marketing director David Pennington's blog post announcing the plans:

The December 2012 Service Update reimagines the way sales and customer service professionals work with CRM. We're moving away from the traditional data-centric lists and forms approach, this service update will add new user experiences that simply and visually guide users through their business processes. We're expanding the range of supported browsers for Microsoft Dynamics CRM to give more flexibility in the devices and platforms you use. Embedded Bing maps have also been added to the new user experience to add location context for Lead, Contact and Account addresses in the system. Rounding out our experiences investments there will be support for Microsoft Office 2013 across Outlook, Word and Excel integration.

We're adding new application capabilities including predefined best practice sales and service business process definitions which are highly configurable and will accelerate time-to-value for organizations. From a social and collaboration standpoint we're adding new connections with Yammer and Skype.

The release preview guide contains some interesting new details about the