“You’ve got the Holy Grail of Process Management Tools”
— Microsoft Program Manager
AgileXRM has been around for quite a while now and has been fully tried and tested, out there in many clients around the globe, including many hard-to-convince enterprise and public sector customers, helping them manage their Business-critical processes.
AgileXRM started life back in 2006, in the Dynamics CRM 3.0 era, and has since grown and matured through the amazing evolution of Dynamics CRM On-Premise to Dynamics 365 Online and on to the remarkable Power Platform (Dataverse), Microsoft’s Business Application Platform.
All these years, we have been happily occupied with evolving the product through all the feedback we received from our customers, to cater for their ever-changing and increasingly demanding real-world business scenarios. Our customer base was growing just through word-of-mouth!
It is now time to make AgileXRM available to a much larger audience, and what better way to make our product more reachable in the market, than by offering a Free-Forever version of it. With AgileXRM Community Edition you can verify for yourself, the value it brings to your Digital Transformation strategy and how it complements the Power Platform.
Below we try to answer some questions you may have:
What is the value of AgileXRM for me?
In short, you will be receiving the following:
- A Microsoft Visio-based Modeler to let you model processes and dialogs
- Powerful dialog functionality for creating guided interactions for any type of user
- A Business Process Engine (BPM) to manage the lifecycle of your processes end-to-end
- A Process Monitor to let you visually see and manage running processes
The answer also depends on you background:
- If you are new to Power Platform and just starting
Power Platform is many things to many people. You may be looking at Canvas Apps in conjunction with data sources like SharePoint to create your Apps. Or maybe you have already recognized the need for Dataverse as your data repository and want to create more solid and manageable Model-driven Apps. If it is the latter, then AgileXRM would add great value.
AgileXRM Value: AgileXRM keeps Model-driven process-apps Low-Code (mostly No-Code). Because with AgileXRM, you avoid having to use javascript in your Dataverse Forms and avoid needing to write custom C# code (Plugins etc.). Also being a BPM tool, you will be modelling and configuring your business processes and your User Interfaces/Interactions explicitly with Microsoft Visio, a visual tool that is designed to be understood by business users. Anyone can create very complex process-apps easily and cleanly without extensive knowledge of Dataverse customization.
- If you are already using Power Platform to some extent and want to do more
Having delved into the platform already, you probably have recognized how some requirements are harder to implement, either needing resources with expert knowledge or requirements that need too much effort to implement.
AgileXRM Value: AgileXRM allows you to reach much further and quicker without requiring a higher level of Dataverse knowledge.
- If you are already deep into Power Platform and have created many complex solutions
There is no better person than you to know exactly where the pain-points are:- Difficulty in correctly capturing the business process requirements
Business users usually use a flowchart diagram to describe their process requirements, but they will never see it again in the produced apps
AgileXRM Value: From requirements capture to creation to execution, everyone uses the same Process Model. Everyone sees the same model at design-time and at runtime and it is understandable by everyone.
- Cost/effort in creating the solutions
Good expert resources are hard to find in the market and certain requirements demand excessive amounts of code leading to over-customization of the platform
AgileXRM Value: Implement complex business requirements much faster and by non-developers. Avoid over-customization of the platform by keeping everything truly Low-Code. - Cost/effort of maintaining the solutions
The business logic is split in many parts and hard to see the overall picture, especially when project resources leave or when business requirements change once in production, and how those changes affect existing processes that are mid-flight
AgileXRM Value: The process logic is being documented with the end-to-end process model as What You Model Is What You Execute, and it is easy to see what needs to be changed and where in the model. You can even compare different versions of the process to see exactly what changed and where. - Cost/effort in troubleshooting when things go wrong
Given the end-to-end business process is split across many components (Flows, Workflows, Actions/Custom API, Business Rules, Business Process Flows, Plugins, Custom Pages and client-side javascript), it is hard to identify what failed and what needs to be fixed. And even when it is identified and fixed, it is hard to evaluate how the changes affect existing processes which are still in progress
AgileXRM Value: Firstly, you can model error-handling in your business process using alternative paths. Then, there is also a Retry mechanism, but if eventually a step in the process fails, the process is Suspended, and the error is made visually visible in the Process Monitor and recorded in Dataverse against the Process record (and admins are notified). If it is an external issue and it is fixed, Resuming the process is enough to continue. If it is a logic error in the process model, you can correct it, publish it and then Migrate existing running processes to the new corrected version. - Handling high volumes and business-critical processes
When the correct running of the processes is of paramount importance to the business because it touches the organization’s bottom-line, you are aware of the pressure for all of it to work correctly
AgileXRM Value: Our customers, in both private and public sectors, run Business-Critical Processes with millions of process instances per month. AgileXRM JUST WORKS!
- Difficulty in correctly capturing the business process requirements
What can I do with AgileXRM Community Edition (CE)?
You can use the full functionality of the Licensed Edition, for up to 25 Users for Free and Forever. You get the Visio-based Process Modeler, the Process Engine, the Process Manager and AgileDialogs.
- Model and configure end-to-end Business Processes for any of your Dataverse or Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement Apps
- Visually monitor where you are in the process
- Handle unforeseen situations by managing the running processes
Things like jumping from any step of the process to another step. Or even migrating a running process to another version - Model and run powerful dialogs (screen flows, agent scripts, wizard-like self-service guides etc.) for internal and external users (Contacts or anonymous users do not need a license)
AgileXRM CE is single-server. If you require High Availability, Archiving or more than 25 Users, you would need to get a License.
How do I get my copy of AgileXRM CE?
Simple: Go through this dialog(Powered By AgileXRM) on our web site and just follow the steps to register.
How is AgileXRM CE deployed to my environment?
AgileXRM CE will be deployed to your chosen Azure tenant and your chosen Dataverse Environment (or Dynamics 365 Org). Everything is done via another nice dialog(Powered By AgileXRM) that will guide you through the steps of the deployment process automatically. You’ll receive a link to this dialog once you register.
You are going to need the following:
- Azure Global Administrator credentials for the Consents
- Azure Subscription Owner credentials (usually same as above) for deploying the Process Modeler and Process Engine VMs to your Azure Tenant
- Dataverse Environment with System Administrator credentials for deploying the AgileXRM Solution and Consent
If you do not have one, create a Trial Dataverse Environment here, clicking Start free button - Visio Plan 2 License as the Process Modeler uses Microsoft Visio
If you do not have one, get a 30-day Visio Trial here
NOTE: You can also use a Visio 2019 Product Key (Standard or Professional Editions), if you have one
What if I do not want to (or cannot) deploy anything to our Azure tenant?
You have two options:
- If you just want to try AgileXRM CE, you can create a new Azure Trial here
You get US $200 of credit and you can deploy everything there, which gives you 30 days to try everything - Let us know when going through the registration dialog and we can provide you with one of our AgileXRM Online Trial tenants. This way, nothing is deployed to your Azure tenant.
You are still going to need a Dataverse Environment (or Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement Org) and an Azure Global Administrator credentials for the Consents.
What is the best way I can try the capabilities of AgileXRM CE?
We do Free PoC’s. We highly recommend that you let us help you to implement your first process-app. That way, you quickly get up to speed and will be able to realize the value that AgileXRM brings to your Power Platform projects.