Many users find the primary nav bar a little confusing to work with. It takes some practice using it to get used to clicking the right area to invoke the change that is desired. There are a number of small inconsistencies that when added up, make it confusing to use. Here are some perspectives that I have observed with customers using the new nav bar for the first time, even though they know CRM 2011 and how CRM is organized:

1. The dropdown icons appear in the wrong location - for example, if the user is in the 'Sales' area and wants to move to the 'Service' area, they tend to click on the dropdown icon to the immediate right of 'Sales'. This triggers a nav bar area to appear but the contents of that are the entities that are listed under Sales. The correct user action would be to click the dropdown to the immediate right of the "Microsoft Dynamics CRM" text to see Sales, Service, and other areas listed, then to select that area. The user experience for CRM is not consistent with the traditional UI designs in the web or on computers that we are accustomed to. Customers anticipate to change the current selection when they see the dropdown, and that context is associated with the label that the dropdown is placed next to.

2. There is a mix of icons, separators, text, and dropdowns in the main menu area and it confuses users as to how to interact with each of them. Some of the dropdowns highlight the text that they are associated with and pull down the menu. Others are next to the labels, but have a separator there and have a different action. For example, the dropdown to the right of "Accounts" in the Sales area drops down to a recent account view, yet the dropdown next to the sales label drops down and shows entities in the sales area. "SALES" is all-caps and bold, yet "Accounts" is mixed and normal weight. The home icon is between the "Microsoft Dynamics CRM" and its dropdown and the Sales icon. Most people expect to click the top left icon to go home. When they click on the Dynamics Sail icon, they initiate a dropdown to display the areas.

3. Advanced Find is difficult to locate. Customers are searching all over the top nav bar to look for the find interface. They use all of the dropdowns and hover over all of the icons on the right of the bar as well (the settings and help). It usually takes them quite a while to locate it under the "..." icon dropdown, that is contextually located in the content section with all other actions in that command bar being related to the current entity. The advanced find functionality should be prominent in the top menu. Because of its location, it is not visible on some views in CRM, such as in the service section.