Microsoft CRM V3 was released in East Asia, namely in Japan and People’s Republic of China (PRC) in May this year. However, the product availability date in these markets may vary. In this blog, I would talk about the East Asia release and the features and functionalities that were added to this release in order to address the market specific requirements for these countries.
This is first of the series of blogs designated to highlight the features that were added to Microsoft CRM V3 East Asia release. This blog will namely cater to the features that were added to System Settings to cater to the requirements of Japanese and PRC market.
Product Localization
Microsoft CRM V3 in East Asia was localized in Japanese and Simplified Chinese. Not only that, the East Asian release was built on Microsoft CRM V3 which is Unicode compatible. We’ve also added the support of GB18030 characters for PRC and got it certified for this market.
East Asian Specific Features
There were a host of features that were added to the East Asian release mainly to cater to the different globalization requirements for these markets. In this section, I’ll talk in details about some of these features.
Regional Formats & Support
Additional Name Formats
Additional formats were added to the list of names formats supported by Microsoft CRM like Last Name First Name and LastNameFirstName.
Support for Japanese Emperor Calendar
Support for Japanese Emperor Era Calendar is provided in Microsoft CRM V3 East Asia release which is not there in Microsoft CRM V3. With the support of Japanese Emperor Era Calendar, there is also support for additional date formats which pertain to the Japanese Emperor Era Calendar. In Titan, this feature to support multiple calendars will be extended to the core product and users can choose different calendars based on their locale.
Fiscal Period
For setting the fiscal period, in Microsoft CRM V3 East Asia release, the users can set the Fiscal Period Monthly and have an option to name the monthly fiscal periods by months.
Fiscal Year
Currently in Microsoft CRM V3, the Fiscal Period nomenclature is based on the year in which the end date of the Fiscal Period falls. If we’ve a Fiscal Period from starting from July of 2006 and ends in June of 2007, Microsoft CRM V3 automatically names the Fiscal Year as FY 07. However, with Microsoft CRM V3 East Asia release, the users have an option to name the Fiscal Year either on the year in which the Start Date of the Fiscal Year falls or on the End Date.
Going by the previous example, now you can name the Fiscal Year as FY07 or FY06.
