Microsoft announces General Availability of Social Engagement as Spring '15 release wave, Social CRM loom

As Microsoft's stock price enjoys a big day (up 9.9% at the moment) following better than expected earnings for Q3 2015, the Dynamics CRM team announced the general availability Social Engagement, an update to Microsoft Social Listening that adds a new user interface and new social analytics and action tools.

"The new name is more than just a branding change. It reflects a completely reimagined user experience for companies, extending beyond social listening and sentiment analysis to offering true social engagement," writes Microsoft CVP Bob Stutz in a blog post announcing the release.

The user interface redesign includes dashboards with new filtering options on authors, post types, assignee, and labels. It also adds new visulizations such as phrase clouds, top fans, top critics, and top hashtags.

Social Engagement also includes new capabilities aimed at the customer service manager who may want to monitor and take action on social channel communications by tracking and responding in the right format on the right social platform.

These enhancements are a precursor to further enhancements to Dynamics CRM that will tie in social capabilities. Some social case management capabilities will be available with the Spring '15 update to CRM Online through a feature called link2CRM. link2CRM will take a social post and create a case, opportunity or lead (also any custom entity), according to a Microsoft spokesperson. "For example, a customer service representative who sees a support issue ...