ICU MSCRM

Book Review: Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 New Features by Jim Wang and Darren Liu

2012-01-19T13:39:00.000-05:00

I've been meaning to post my review of this new book by Jim Wang and Darren Liu, but it's been a very busy few months for me. Apologies to Jim and Darren for the delay! On with the review:

by Jim Wang and Darren Liu

(Disclosure: I know Jim and Darren through Microsoft's MVP program. Jim is a current MVP, and Darren is now working for Microsoft - otherwise he'd probably still be an MVP for CRM.)

I've got to admit that when I first heard about Jim and Darren's book on the new features in CRM 2011, I anticipated that the book might be 50 or 75 pages - after all, in my book, the Dynamics CRM 2011 Bible, I only dedicated about 10 pages to covering the new features that distinguish CRM 2011 from the previous version, CRM 4.0. So I was surprised and curious when I discovered that the book is actually 288 pages in total.

The book is available from Packt Publishing, and is actually includes in-depth information that goes well beyond describing the new features of CRM 2011 as it goes into some detail on how to take advantage of the new features in the platform. It walks the reader through an "XRM" scenario (where "X" can stand for anything, not just "Customer" relationship management). A better title might have been "Exploring the New Features of CRM 2011." But I won't quibble with titles.

Starting with the first chapter, the reader is guided through setting up a development environment so he or she can follow the authors through the process of building out their sample XRM scenario, an "Airline Compensation Management" (ACM) solution. This is a great example of how the CRM platform has evolved well beyond traditional Customer Relationship Management, and can provide a foundation for a wide variety of business applications.

Chapter 1 (Setting up the Development Workspace) covers the tools and software you'll need to have in place to practice what you learn in the book. Chapters 2 & 3 guide you through the initial configuration and setting up some sample data. Chapters 4 through 9 cover programming the ACM solution (client-side and server-side), integrating with SharePoint, layering on some BI with charts and dashboards, and even implementing an integrated portal in Azure. The final chapter helps the reader understand the solution framework and how to use solutions for transporting your customizations between environments.

I found the book easy to follow and clearly written. Jim and Darren do a great job of sharing some of the insider tips they've learned through years of experience with CRM and calling the reader's attention to important tips and idiosyncracies of working with CRM 2011. There are many helpful screenshots and illustrations along the way.

In particular, I found Chapters 5 & 9 to have some great content for developers who are familiarizing themselves with CRM 2011. Chapter 5 has a nice diagram that explains the mechanics of plugins and a useful introduction to the concept of plugin development. Chapter 9's walkthrough of adding buttons to the ribbon, which includes sample code, should be a big help to everyone who has fought the valiant fight with the CRM 2011 ribbon!

All in all, Jim and Darren have done a great job in packing a lot of content into this book and showing a nice real-world example for building a solution on top of CRM 2011. You definitely get a good understanding of the new features in CRM 2011, but you also will learn how to start using them for your own business applications!

Again, I wish I could have gotten around to posting this review sooner, but if you haven't yet availed yourself of this resource, it will make a great companion to the Dynamics CRM 2011 Administration Bible ;-)

Follow my latest blogs at ClickDimensions

2011-12-19T17:39:00.001-05:00

I recently joined ClickDimensions as the Chief Customer Officer, and have started blogging there. The blog includes a ton of great CRM-related tips and articles, especially about marketing with Dynamics CRM.

I actually reviewed ClickDimensions' solution back in April 2011, so I'm thrilled to now be part of the team. The ClickDimensions solution is an amazing piece of software - well, actually, many pieces of distributed services in the cloud that tie into the native CRM platform where they are easily used by marketers and salespeople. Read my review to learn more about what it does. (And they've added a ton of new features since I wrote it!)

If you're interested in email marketing, marketing automation, and getting ROI out of your Dynamics CRM system, check out their product tour.

Join me at Decisions Spring 2011 Virtual Conference on June 17

2011-05-03T09:50:00.000-05:00

I'll be presenting a session for CRM administrators at the upcoming Decisions Spring 2011 virtual conference on June 17, hosted by MSDynamicsWorld.com: What CRM Administrators Need to Know About CRM 2011. I'll cover the most important technical considerations that administrators need to be familiar with when considering implementing or upgrading to CRM 2011.

MSDynamicsWorld.com has been hosting these semiannual events for a couple of years now, and they are tremendous, free resources for learning and networking. The conference kicks off on Tuesday, June 14, with sessions dedicated to Dynamics AX. The 15th is focused on GP, the 16th on NAV, and the 17th on CRM.

You'll have the opportunity to ask questions of the presenters via live chat, and interact with other attendees and experts in a virtual networking lounge.

To register: https://presentations.inxpo.com/Shows/MSDynamics/06_11/Registration/Decisions06_11RegistrationPage.html?AffiliateKey=13512&AffiliateData=BLOG

Un Nuevo Blog en Espanol Sobre Microsoft CRM

2011-05-03T09:08:00.000-05:00

Mi amigo Pablo Peralta ha colaborado con compañeros Jimmy Larrauri (también un MVP) y desarrollador Atilio Rosas para poner en marcha un nuevo blog en español acerca de Microsoft Dynamics CRM.

El blog se puede leer en http://www.elblogdedynamicscrm.com.

Es genial ver a la creciente comunidad internacional de usuarios de CRM en los países de habla española, y este nuevo blog debe ser de gran ayuda para ellos.

Marketing Pro? You need to read this!

2011-04-05T17:07:00.002-05:00

I've been working in the Microsoft Dynamics CRM industry for, oh, seven years now. Since Microsoft first released the product. The first implementation of CRM that I did for a customer was with version 1.2 way back in 2004. In very short order, my customer and I found that there were, shall we say, gaps in the product's functionality. Back in those early days the options for filling these gaps were pretty limited.

There was one fellow that was doing some pretty smart work, and whose company's products made my life as a systems integrator that much easier. Fast forward to 2011, and the Microsoft CRM ecosystem has matured along with the product itself. But that same gentleman is still offering solutions that make my life easier - and making the CRM projects I work on able to deliver that much more value to my clients. That person would be John Gravely, who last year started a new company called ClickDimensions.

ClickDimensions is a great example of a cloud-based, seamlessly integrated solution that delivers real value to CRM marketers. If you're familiar with Google Analytics, imagine having that data driven directly into your CRM system and tied to existing leads or contacts. And wouldn't it be great if you could generate rich, HTML emails for CRM marketing campaigns? Imagine being able to see when someone clicked on an email you sent, visited your site and spent some time reading a few pages - right inside CRM.

Want to know if your social media campaign is paying dividends? What about if it's the right time to call an important prospect? Or if several of your competitors are lurking on your website? Would that be valuable to you as a professional marketer?

(A diagram of ClickDimensions' integration with your website's forms - tying the power of the Cloud into your marketing!)

(They also have a great blog: http://clickdimensions.typepad.com/clickdimensions/)

Full disclosure: I need to point out that my company, C5 Insight, is a reseller partner for ClickDimensions - but we wouldn't be reselling their solution if we didn't believe in its value and power.

Email Router Fun

2011-04-01T12:08:00.000-05:00

A couple of quick tips for setting up queues and workflow-generated emails with CRM Online. These are two separate things, but I ran into them recently:

1) If you create a Queue in CRM Online, such as support@mycompany.com, and you want that Queue to be able to send and receive email, make sure the owner of the queue is able to also send and receive email, and that the owner's user account is "approved" for email, if your System Settings require this for email to be processed.

2) If you have an administrative account set up in CRM and you want this account to be the sender of workflow-generated emails, make sure to log into CRM as that administrative account and, in the user settings, check "Allow other Microsoft Dynamics CRM users to send E-mail on your behalf."

Upgrade Paths for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011

2011-03-08T16:11:00.002-05:00

You may have heard that Dynamics CRM 2011 requires 64-bit architecture. This is true and is giving some folks some heartburn when they start to think about upgrading their CRM 4.0 deployments, many of which are still living in a 32-bit world.
There are three potential upgrade paths, as well as another alternative that I would urge you to consider. Let’s take a look.

In-Place Upgrade

An in-place upgrade is pretty straightforward: You’ve got an existing CRM 4.0 system that is running on hardware and software that is supported for CRM 2011. You fire up the setup.exe for CRM 2011 and it detects that CRM 4.0 is in place and asks if you want to proceed with an upgrade.
PROS: Straightforward, no need to lay out money for new hardware.
CONS: Risky – if the upgrade fails, you need to know how to roll back to your backups; Disruptive – while you’re upgrading, your users won’t be able to access CRM.

Upgrade Database During Install

In this scenario, you install CRM 2011 to a new 64-bit application server, and connect to a SQL server with an existing CRM 4.0 database. The 4.0 database will be upgraded during the install. This is a decent option if you’ve already got your SQL database on support hardware and SQL versions. It’s a little easier to recover from in case of failure than an in-place upgrade, since all you need to do is restore your databases.
PROS: Leverages your investment in 64-bit SQL hardware/software; once-and-done installation if you succeed.
CONS: Similar risks to the in-place upgrade though perhaps slightly less disruptive to end users.

Upgrade via Import

This is my preferred manner for upgrade. Essentially you build a new 64-bit environment for a clean install of CRM 2011 – the application servers and database servers are brand new and without remnants of CRM 4.0. After you’re satisfied with your new CRM 2011 environment, you simply restore a backup of your 4.0 database to the 2011 SQL Server, and then, using the CRM 2011 Deployment Manager, import the 4.0 org database into your new deployment. I’ve done this several times now, and it works like a charm, upgrading the org during the import process.
PROS: Nice, new, bug-free 2011 environment; opportunity to perform upgrade tests multiple times before your “go-live” upgrade; no disruption to users.
CONS: This is the most expensive scenario, requiring new hardware (or at least separate hardware) for the 2011 deployment. Also, you need to manually copy over things like supporting ISV files and applications that you may have had in place in your 4.0 environment.

Consider This

Lastly, I’d recommend that you evaluate CRM Online while considering your upgrade options. Now is a great time to take advantage of the improved functionality, affordability, and ease-of-maintenance that CRM Online provides. If you have been managing a CRM 4.0 on-premises deployment, and want to move to the latest version of CRM, there are many good reasons to consider the cloud. C5 Insight can upgrade your database for you and then migrate your customizations and data to Microsoft’s data centers, allowing you to go back to running your business instead of running servers. Think about it!

Originally posted at my C5 Insight blog.

My Book is now Available! Dynamics CRM 2011 Administration Bible

2011-02-17T16:20:00.001-05:00

Great timing, coming just one day after Microsoft released CRM 2011: I just received my very own copies of the book I co-authored with Geoff Ables, the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Administration Bible, from Wiley Publishing. It's now available for order from your favorite bookseller!

CRM 2011 Released for On-Premise and Partner-Hosted Installation

2011-02-16T09:29:00.000-05:00

Microsoft is moving quickly on the heels of the January release of CRM 2011 Online, and this week's release of the 2011 Implementation Guide and SDK, they have now released the RTM version of Dynamics CRM 2011 for on-premise and partner-hosted installation. Available from the Microsoft download site.

Complete SDK for CRM 2011 Released

2011-02-16T08:41:00.000-05:00

For those of you who have been keeping score, Microsoft has been making available a number of pre-release versions of the SDK for CRM 2011. There was a Beta SDK and a Release Candidate SDK. The complete, official SDK for CRM 2011 has now also been released (version 5.0.1), and is chock full of good things for developers and customizers. It can be downloaded here.

CRM 2011 Developer Training Kit

2011-02-10T08:34:00.000-05:00

Microsoft has put together a very nice package to help developers learn how to extend Dynamics CRM 2011. The Dynamics CRM 2011 Developer Training Kit includes videos, presentations, code samples and hands-on labs with detailed instructions. Best of all: it's totally free. Read about it on Girish Raja's blog and then download it here.

Building a Virtual CRM 2011 Server for Demos and Development

2011-01-26T14:59:00.000-05:00

David Yack has done a great video tutorial on building a virtual server for CRM 2011 to use in development or for demos. Girish Raja posted it to his blog on MSDN. Take a look.

Nice work, David!

CRM 2011 Online Released!

2011-01-17T12:38:00.000-05:00

Microsoft today announced the immediate availability of CRM 2011 Online. According to the press release, CRM 2011 will be available for on-premise and partner-hosted deployment on February 28.

This is exciting news for those of us who have participated in the beta testing of this version of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011. CRM 2011 has a new solution framework to package and distribute customizations, an extremely enhanced Outlook client, and many more improvements.

The company is also offering significant incentives to customers who make the switch from salesforce.com. Having conducted several side-by-side comparisons of Microsoft CRM and salesforce.com for my clients, I feel very confident in saying that CRM 2011 offers a compelling and hard-to-beat solution that raises the bar for the entire CRM marketplace.

Register Now for the CRM 2011 Launch

2010-12-13T14:43:00.000-05:00

"Attend this FREE global virtual launch event and watch Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer introduce Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011. Learn how it is designed to help you boost sales, improve marketing, enrich customer service interactions, and accelerate line of business application development through xRM."
Register here.

Two LiveIDs for two different CRM Online orgs?

2010-11-23T08:17:00.000-05:00

I've got two LiveIDs that I somehow accumulated over the years, and I also belong to numerous Microsoft CRM Online organizations for CRM 2011 beta testing, development, and client work. As a company, we sometimes set up a LiveID for our clients when we sign them up for CRM Online, as well.

So it's not unusual that I'll need to be signed into two different CRM Online orgs that require two different LiveIDs.

The problem is that Internet Explorer caches your authentication, so after you sign into the first online org, when you go to sign into the second one, you won't have a chance to enter your second LiveID credentials.

The solution? Very simple: Open an "InPrivate" browsing session for the second org. In IE8, click on Safety > InPrivate Browsing (or press Ctrl + Shift + P).

InPrivate browsing launches a new IE session that doesn't communicate with the first session's cached credentials. So you can be logged into two CRM Online orgs with two different LiveIDs at the same time.

What Do You Want to Know About Integration?

2010-09-13T14:29:00.003-05:00

I'm hard at work wrapping up final chapters of the Dynamics CRM 2011 Administrator's Bible with my co-author, Geoff Ables. One of the final chapters deals with integrating Dynamics CRM with other systems. Integration can mean a lot of things, and I think the chapter is shaping up to be informative and helpful.

But it occurred to me that you might have some good ideas and questions that you'd like answered. So, what do you want to know about integration? Leave a comment on this post to let me know.

Thanks!

Ready for Beta?

2010-09-09T14:12:00.004-05:00

Are you ready?

Performance of Custom Queries

2010-08-17T17:54:00.004-05:00

I got this tip from a developer at a client of mine a while back and I've been meaning to share it. They had created some custom aspx pages that lived inside the CRM sitemap that helped users search across CRM and other data. The CRM queries were using FetchXML just like a regular advanced find view, but they were performing really slowly. Sometimes they were taking as long as 16 seconds to return results. No way were the users going to live with that.

After some digging around, a DBA finally was consulted (maybe we should have asked him for his opinion earlier!). It didn't take him long to give us a helpful tip that led to fixing the query and getting it to return results in under 1 second.

The tip?
It turns out that SQL will ignore indexes when a query is run against a table when the query has a LIKE clause that uses "CONTAINS" (basically where there's a % sign before and after the value), as in

SELECT * FROM contacts WHERE lastname LIKE '%Smith%'

The remedy? Form your queries so they use the equivalent of a "STARTS WITH" so SQL will use the index:

SELECT * FROM contacts WHERE lastname LIKE 'Smith%'

Microsoft Demos Dynamics CRM 2011

2010-07-14T07:22:00.003-05:00

Microsoft unveiled the next version of Dynamics CRM at the Worldwide Partner Conference this week. They also announced the name of what has been referred to as version 5: Dynamics CRM 2011.

Some highlights of what they revealed:

A public beta will be available in September 2010, starting with CRM Online
CRM Online will continue to roll out internationally with the RTM release, becoming available in 40 countries
A new marketplace for pre-built solutions will be launched in September

Additionally, they demonstrated some of the features of CRM 2011 that have been the subject of much buzz:

Role-based forms and views
Inline visualizations
User-created dashboards
Guided dialogs (think of automated, real-time workflows with user input and feedback)
Tight SharePoint integration supported natively

More Weirdness with the Sales Pipeline Report

2010-06-24T16:28:00.005-05:00

So here's a new one. It's been known amongst us CRM geeks for some time that the built-in Sales Pipeline report has some, let's say, quirks. For example, if you want to group the report by your Sales Process using the parameter drop-down, you'll first have to have a Workflow applied against the Opportunities, and the workflow must contain "Stages" which have the names of each step of your sales process. This is where the Pipeline Report gets its groupings.

If you run a workflow against the Opportunities, and update the Opportunity salesstagecode or stepname fields, this out-of-the-box report will not show you your pipeline with these groupings.

Well, today I discovered something even stranger. I was testing a sales process for a client, and set it to be a manual workflow so I could run it on demand during testing. I ended up running it three times agains 50 opportunities. Guess what? The Sales Pipeline report showed that there were 150 opportunities in my pipeline! Each opportunity was counted once every time a workflow with stages had been run against it.

So I realized that since it's pulling its groupings from the completed workflows, I could just delete the workflows from the histories, and that would take care of it right? Well, only sorta. I also had to use the scale group job editor to kick off the deletion service, since the report doesn't filter out completed workflows that have been marked for deletion.

One of these days I'm just going to have to rebuild that Sales Pipeline report from scratch!

UPDATE: A support engineer at Microsoft informed me that a hotfix should be released soon that fixes this behavior in the Sales Pipeline report. Thanks, John!

You say you're in Dublin and want to learn more about Dynamics CRM?

2010-06-03T23:39:00.003-05:00

Well, isn't that a coincidence! I'll be speaking at epicenter 2010 next week, Ireland's largest software show and developer conference.

More about my session is at this link. Oh, and my good friend and fellow CRM MVP, Ronald Lemmen will be speaking as well.
It's not too late to get tickets!

New Article on MS CRM Team Blog: Interactive Funnel Dashboard

2010-05-06T07:12:00.002-05:00

I have a new article on the CRM Team blog on MSDN. It details how to make an interactive sales funnel dashboard, as demonstrated in this YouTube video.

Update Rollup 10 for MS Dynamics CRM 4.0

2010-04-14T08:44:00.003-05:00

Update Rollup 10 is now available for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0. It contains some recent hotfixes. Seems the major change included is for the Outlook client: it moves some of the Outlook client files from the Roaming profile to the Local profile, which should improve logon/load times for users who access CRM through Outlook.

More info and a link to the update rollup are available here.

the SELECT permission was denied on the object 'FilteredActivityPointer'

2010-03-31T07:58:00.005-05:00

While testing out some user profiles in a development environment, I was presented the following error when trying to run the Activity report, which is included with Microsoft CRM:

the SELECT permission was denied on the object 'FilteredActivityPointer'

I had been able to run the report while logged in as the administrator user that was used during the install, but no other users could, regardless of their security role. Digging into the problem, I opened SQL Server Management Studio and took a look at the permissions on the FilteredActivityPointer view:

This sure didn’t look right. So, I compared this to some other filtered views, and found that the other filtered views had permissions for the ReportingGroup and the CRMReaderRole from SQL Reporting Services.

To restore the privileges to this view, I ran the following script against the CRM database:

GRANT SELECT ON dbo.FilteredActivityPointer
TO [DYNAMICS\ReportingGroup
{0f55c689-67f1-4fba-93d5-231e488a960e}]
GO

I did the same for the CRMReaderRole:

GRANT SELECT ON dbo.FilteredActivityPointer
TO [CRMReaderRole]
GO

These simple scripts add the user specified to the view, and set the checkbox for the Select permission.

Here’s the result, which, upon testing, allowed users to run the Activity Report:

I suspect that this is due to a bug in the organization deployment process. This organization was not the default organization – I created a new Org for this project. Somehow, I think permissions did not get properly propagated to all the views.

There should be exactly one form in production for {ObjectTypeCode}

2010-03-26T11:00:00.002-05:00

I had this error crop up today - the key phrase seemed to be:
"There should be exactly one form in production for 10009" and, per the URL in the error message it seemed to be triggered on a request for an icon for a custom entity. Strange.

Event code: 3005
Event message: An unhandled exception has occurred.
Event time: 3/26/2010 11:41:30 AM
Event time (UTC): 3/26/2010 3:41:30 PM
Event ID: 7a05487c52a4410ca2d7c0388566b66f
Event sequence: 124
Event occurrence: 1
Event detail code: 0

Application information:
Application domain: /LM/W3SVC/2/ROOT-4-129140911906159536
Trust level: Full
Application Virtual Path: /
Application Path: C:\Program Files\Microsoft Dynamics CRM\CRMWeb\
Machine name: CRMSERVER

Process information:
Process ID: 3764
Process name: w3wp.exe
Account name: NT AUTHORITY\NETWORK SERVICE

Exception information:
Exception type: InvalidOperationException
Exception message: There should be exactly one form in production for 10009

Request information:
Request URL: http://CRMSERVER:5555/ORG/_Common/icon.aspx?objectTypeCode=10009&iconType=NavigationIcon&inProduction=1&cache=1
Request path: /ORG/_Common/icon.aspx
User host address: ::1
User: DOMAIN\User
Is authenticated: True
Authentication Type: Negotiate
Thread account name: NT AUTHORITY\NETWORK SERVICE

Thread information:
Thread ID: 3
Thread account name: NT AUTHORITY\NETWORK SERVICE
Is impersonating: False
Stack trace: at Microsoft.Crm.Application.Platform.Customization.RetrieveInProductionOrganizationUIByOrgId(Guid organizationId, Int32 objectTypeCode)
at Microsoft.Crm.Application.Pages.Common.Icon.GetIconBits(Int32 objectTypeCode, IconType iconType, Boolean inProduction)
at Microsoft.Crm.Application.Pages.Common.Icon.ConfigurePage()
at Microsoft.Crm.Application.Controls.AppUIPage.OnPreRender(EventArgs e)
at System.Web.UI.Control.PreRenderRecursiveInternal()
at System.Web.UI.Page.ProcessRequestMain(Boolean includeStagesBeforeAsyncPoint, Boolean includeStagesAfterAsyncPoint)

A little digging showed that we had an incorrectly registered step in a plugin. Looking at the plugin registration tool showed that there was a step registered for one of our plugins for a Primary Entity of 'none'. I think that while I was registering a step for pluging, I hit the tab key and the step window disappeared. I just opened a new Step registration dialog and proceeded on my happy way. Next time I'll be more careful!

CRM Grid Editor - All done with Javascript

2010-03-25T11:05:00.003-05:00

It's not very often that I see something new for Microsoft CRM that really impresses me to the point where I feel like I need to tell everyone about it. After all, CRM 4.0 has been out in the wild for more than 2 years now, and in that time many people in the CRM community have contributed the add-ons, tricks and code snippets to fill in short-comings in the product, or generally improve it's useability.

Today, however, is different. A colleague brought a blog post to my attention that really blew me away. The post is from Dave Berry, on his CRM Entropy blog, and it includes the code and instructions for implementing a feature that I've been missing in CRM since the v1.0 days: the ability to edit records in a list view, or grid.

We've built similar functionality using server-side technologies that have worked quite well. But they are complex and can be a challenge to implement. Dave's code is built completely in javascript and is embedded behind buttons via the ISV.Config XML. We've tested it out on some dev machines, and it's fast and very intuitive. Because it's all handled via the ISV.Config, I believe this will work on CRM Online as well.

I can easily foresee this client-side extension becoming a staple of every CRM project we do. Congratulations, Dave, on a job well done!

New Whitepaper on Sharing Data Between CRM Deployments

2010-03-22T11:32:00.003-05:00

The E2 Team at Microsoft (Enterprise Engineering) has released a new whitepaper and build guide about how to share data between two CRM deployments or organizations. The release can be downloaded here.

From the description:

While using a single CRM instance is probably the simplest way to accommodate the data sharing needs within an organization, using multiple instances of Dynamics CRM may be preferable in a number of scenarios. This release includes two documents, a white paper and a build guide, focused on sharing data across multiple CRM organizations. The white paper provides an overview of the levels of integration available for sharing data across multiple Dynamics CRM organizations, together with details about the techniques that are used for integration at the Application and Data levels, which include Web Services, Web Services-based solutions, Filtered Views, and SQL Server Replication. The build guide explains how to configure the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 April 2009 VPC base image to enable data sharing between a Publisher organization and multiple Subscriber organizations. The configuration demonstrates how to use Microsoft Dynamics CRM to maintain referential integrity between multiple organizations by leveraging Microsoft SQL Server 2008 transactional replication.

Book Review: Sams Teach Yourself MS CRM in 24 Hours

2010-02-11T16:52:00.002-05:00

Sams Publishing recently released a new title in their “in 24 Hours” series, penned by Anne Stanton, which provides a good overview of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0.

I had the opportunity to meet Anne a few years ago at an event at Microsoft’s Redmon headquarters. She’s been very active in the CRM user community, so we’ve crossed paths several times. In her book, she does a great job in laying out, in a logical way, the requisite knowledge for people who are new to Microsoft CRM. She has added in a good number of useful insider tips, shared from her real-world experience with a diverse group of customers. A few other CRM experts contributed chapters to help round out the content.

The book starts with the fundamentals, and layers on a good dose of in-depth information – everything from security role configuration to data migration and customization. Overall, it’s a great book to help users understand the out-of-the-box features of this application. Congrats, Anne!

Quick Optimization Tips

2010-01-07T11:06:00.001-05:00

There are plenty of whitepapers, blogs and other resources for optimizing the performance of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0, but in my experience, there are several key things that have the greatest impact on the user experience. Here’s my list of the top ways to improve CRM performance for your users, culled from the wide variety of resources out there:

Client Machine Temporary Internet File Settings: First, in IE8, go to Safety > Delete Browsing History and place checkmarks next to ‘Temporary Internet Files’ and ‘Cookies’ – then press Delete. (In IE7, go to Tools > Delete Browsing History). Then, change the settings for Temporary Internet Files as follows: Go to Tools > Internet Options. In the Browsing History section, click on “Settings.” Under the “Check for newer versions of stored pages” select “Automatically” and set the amount of disk space to 250MB.
For the Outlook Client:

Run Diagnostics Wizard to check performance and fix errors
In the Outlook client options, configure the following settings:

Synchronization Tab:

Select only record types that the user needs to be synchronized
Increase the interval for synchronization to 60 minutes
For Offline client, select “Do not create duplicates”

On the Address Book tab:

Select “Match only against contacts synchronized to Microsoft Dynamics CRM”
Select “Match only the items I own”
For the Offline Client: Deactivate unused local data groups, and Configure offline synchronization to run in the background every 15 minutes

CRM Web Server Optimization:

Content Expiration: In IIS, go to the CRM web site properties and click on the HTTP Headers tab. Specify for content to expire in 15 days and click OK.

CRM Database Server Optimization:

To minimize the performance impact on the Microsoft SQL Server that is used for Microsoft Dynamics CRM, whenever possible, search on three or fewer columns and select indexed columns, such as Address1: Street 1, that are appropriate for creating a SQL index. You can also improve performance by adding a non-clustered index, such as Address1:ZIP/Postal Code, to search columns.
Querying on Custom Entities: When you add columns to Microsoft Dynamics CRM database entities, the columns are included in an extension table rather than the entity‟s base table. To optimize the performance of queries on custom entities, ensure that all columns on the ORDER BY clause derive from a single table, and build an index that satisfies the ORDER BY requirements and as much of the query‟s WHERE clause selection criteria as possible. Determining this ideal index is likely to be an iterative process. However, when you implement this correctly, the performance benefit can be very significant.
Segregating the Database and Transaction Log Files: Transaction log files creation can be write-intensive during periods when there is a high volume of data being added, changed, or removed from the application. For optimal performance, ensure that database files and transaction log files are located on separate sets of physical disks.
Rebuild Indexes: Maintenance plan should include rebuilding indexes.

Of course, last but not least, you should also have the latest update rollups applied on your CRM server and client machines.

Update Rollup 8 Released

2009-12-17T13:34:00.002-05:00

Microsoft has released Update Rollup 8 for CRM 4.0. Download it here.

Seems to contain mostly fixes for minor issues, but it does add support for Exchange 2010.

The AsyncOperationBase Table: What are all those records anyway?

2009-12-07T15:22:00.001-05:00

There have been several KB articles and updates published to help control the size of the AsyncOperationBase table, which can cause your CRM database to grow very large, very quickly. (See here and here.) But just what are all those records anyway?

I pulled the following lists together from the SDK and technet in order to put this info in one place, where it’s a little more user-friendly (at least for me!).

First, the list of AsyncOperationTypes:

Value	Field	Description
1	Event	Specifies a system event.
2	BulkEmail	Specifies a bulk e-mail operation.
3	Parse	Specifies an import file parse operation.
4	Transform	Specifies an operation to transform parse data.
5	Import	Specifies an import operation.
6	ActivityPropagation	Specifies a campaign activity propagation operation.
7	PublishDuplicateRule	Specifies an operation to publish a duplicate detection rule.
8	BulkDetectDuplicates	Specifies a bulk duplicate detection operation.
9	CollectSqmData	Specifies an operation to collect SQM data.
10	Workflow	Specifies a workflow operation.
11	QuickCampaign	Specifies a quick campaign operation.
12	PersistMatchCode	Specifies an operation to update the matchcode.
13	BulkDelete	Specifies a bulk delete operation.
14	DeletionService	Specifies a Deletion Service operation.
15	IndexManagement	Specifies an index management operation.
16	CollectOrgStats	Specifies an operation to collect an organization's statistics.
17	ImportingFile	Specifies an import subprocess operation.
18	CalculateOrgStorageSize	Specifies an operation to calculate an organization's storage size.
19	CollectOrgDBStats	Specifies an operation to collect an organization's database statistics.
20	CollectOrgSizeStats	Specifies an operation to collection an organization's size statistics.
21	DatabaseTuning	Specifies an operation for database tuning.
22	CalculateOrgMaxStorageSize	Specifies an operation to calculate an organization's maximum storage size.
23	BulkDeleteChild	Specifies a bulk delete subprocess operation.
24	UpdateStatisticIntervals	Specifies an operation to update statistic intervals.
25	FullTextCatalogIndex	Specifies an operation to generate an organization full text catalog index.
26	DatabaseLogBackup
27	UpdateContractStates	Specifies an operation to update contract states.
28	ShrinkDatabase
29	ShrinkLogFile
30	ReindexAll	Specifies an index management operation.
31	StorageLimitNotification
32	CleanupInactiveWorkflowAssemblies
38	ImportSampleData

Next, here’s a list of the different state/statuscodes that each of these operation types can be in:

State	Status	Numeric status value
Ready	WaitingForResources	0
Suspended	Waiting	10
Locked	InProgress	20
Locked	Pausing	21
Locked	Canceling	22
Completed	Succeeded	30
Completed	Failed	31
Completed	Canceled	32

Hope this is useful to you! Have fun with it.

Update Rollup 7 - With Major Improvements to Outlook Client

2009-10-22T12:34:00.003-05:00

In a rare feat of cross-organizational synergy, Microsoft is releasing Update Rollup 7 for CRM on the same day as Window 7 is officially released!

UR7 contains support for Windows 7 and recent releases on the server side, but the big news is the major improvements for the Outlook client.

More information about this imminent release is at the CRM team blog.

Dynamics Salary Survey

2009-10-09T11:44:00.002-05:00

A recruiting firm in the UK asked if I would post this on my blog and ask my readers to participate in their annual survey of salaries for people in the Microsoft Dynamics world. I'm posting this because I think it's exciting that Microsoft has been able to build an eco-system around their Dynamics products, and, for those of us who make a living in this ecosystem, this kind of research should help define the value of our contributions to our respective employers and see what standards are emerging for our chosen careers. Please take a moment to consider completing the survey:

Nigel Frank International would like to invite you to complete what is to be our
annual survey of Microsoft Dynamics salaries worldwide.

The survey will only take a couple of minutes to complete and your response and any personal details will be kept strictly confidential. The survey is available in the following languages for your convenience; English, German, French, Dutch, Danish, Spanish, Italian, Norwegian, and Finnish.

As a thank-you for your contribution we will send you a PDF report of the results once they have been compiled. This will give you an insight into the salaries, opinions and demographics of your Microsoft Dynamics counterparts worldwide.

Please find a link to the Microsoft Dynamics Salary Survey 2009 below:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=oyKnQyB3GWcw3xwDjIiSOQ_3d_3d

Your response will be greatly appreciated and will help to give everyone in the
Microsoft Dynamics community a greater understanding of their profession.

Configuring Internet Facing Deployment for Microsoft CRM 4.0

2009-08-31T12:03:00.004-05:00

After running the tool to configure the CRM website for an Internet Facing Deployment (see the articles here and here) we got the old familiar Runtime Error: Server error in / Application. We turned on remote errors and saw the underlying error message was even less helpful: "Object reference not set to an instance of an object."

After some digging, it turns out there was a registry key on the CRM server that incorrectly identified the identifier of the CRM website in IIS.

The 'website' registry key at \HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\MSCRM had a value of '/LM/W3SVC/1' and it should have been '/LM/W3SVC/5'

You can see the identifier for the CRM website in this screen capture from IIS:

All we had to do is navigate to the registry key and change the value to reflect the identifier that we saw in IIS.

Update Rollup 6 for MS CRM 4.0 Released

2009-08-27T14:31:00.001-05:00

Whew! Those guys on the Sustained Engineering team at Microsoft keep cranking them out. Seems like we've just finished deploying UR5 on all our implementations. Now, they've released Update Rollup 6. From the article, it looks to contain just a very small number of fixes. Download it at: https://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=79f90982-c039-41c2-af8e-3119ecf27790#filelist

Change Left Nav Links to Point to Custom Associated Entities

2009-08-26T11:27:00.003-05:00

In an earlier post, I talked about the shortcomings of the out-of-the-box Address entity. In a recent project, we replaced the system Address entity with a custom Address entity. When we added a 1:N relationship for Contacts:New_Addresses, the link to the new address entity showed up on the left hand nav of the Contact form, as expected. However, it was added at the bottom of the left hand nav links under the "Workflow" link.

We wanted to keep the Addresses link where it was, but load the associated view of our custom entity instead. So when a user clicks on the "More Addresses" link, they will see the list of custom address records, rather than the out-of-the-box addresses. Here's the OnLoad code we used:

// load the custom address entity instead of the system addresses
// in the associated view
// I used the IE Developer Toolbar to find the id of the custom entity's loadArea
if (document.getElementById('navAddresses') != null) { document.getElementById('navAddresses').onclick = function() { loadArea('new_contact_new_address') };
}
// Hide the link to the custom address entity that was added under the workflow link
// when we created the 1:N relationship
if (document.getElementById('nav_new_contact_new_address') != null) { document.getElementById('nav_new_contact_new_address').style.display = 'none';
}

Update Rollup 5 for MS CRM 4.0 Released

2009-07-02T11:28:00.002-05:00

Looks like the next rollup update is now available from Microsoft: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=5101d801-976b-4c11-bdfc-000b970ef4a3

Including External JavaScript Files

2009-06-04T08:59:00.003-05:00

There are a number of blogs out there with good information on how to include external javascript files in your CRM OnLoad events. I’m only adding this post to the mix to bring together some of the different information out there for easy reference.

CRM provides three primary places to add client-side code: OnLoad and the OnSave for the form, and OnChange for individual fields. In the form editor for an entity, OnLoad and OnSave scripts can be added to the form properties. Each field has its own properties area where OnChange scripts can be added.

For easier management of client-side code, we often use just the OnLoad area to store all the javascript we add for a particular form. We’ll define the functions we want to use throughout the form, and call them from field or form events. You can use attachEvent to hook into events on individual fields so you don’t need to add javascript behind every single field. An attachEvent works like this (notice my function is calling the FireOnChange method as well):

/* define your function */
function MyFunction(){
crmForm.all.myfieldname.FireOnChange();}

/* attach your function to the onclick event
crmForm.all.myfieldname.attachEvent('onclick', MyFunction, false);

Check out Mitch Milam’s blog at http://blogs.infinite-x.net/2009/04/20/changing-a-checkbox-field/ for a look at how he used attachEvent.

Taking this approach a step further, it sometimes makes sense to store the javascript in an external .js file. In that case, the form’s OnLoad properties will just contain a reference to an external file, sort of like an ‘include’ statement that appends our external .js file as the form loads in the browser. Here’s an example from http://www.henrycordes.nl/post/2008/05/External-js-file-and-CRM.aspx:

/* Place in the OnLoad area of a form */
function IncludeExternalScript(scriptFile)
{
  var netRequest = new ActiveXObject("Msxml2.XMLHTTP"); 
  netRequest.open("GET", scriptFile, false); 
  netRequest.send(null); 
  eval(netRequest.responseText); 
}
/* There is an ISV folder in the CRM webroot */
/* that your filepath should point to */
IncludeExternalScript('/ISV/_customscript/customscript.js');
CallFunctionInCustomScriptjs();

One thing to be aware of with this approach is that if you set up any users with the full Outlook client that allows them to work with CRM offline, all your calls to external script files will fail when they are offline since the file is on the CRM server. You can include a check before you add the external script and then do something like disable all the form’s fields if they are offline, but this starts to defeat the purpose of using the external file to start with.

Also, there are various methods of attaching external scripts. This method seems to work well, but you should be aware that the file will be cached in the browser, so if they make a change, users may not get the changes right away. One way around this is to go into IIS and navigate to the ISV folder and add a custom header to the external file to control caching. More info on this is at http://ronaldlemmen.blogspot.com/2008/07/javascript-files-and-caching.html.

The CRM Address Entity: There’s more to it than you think!

2009-05-18T11:51:00.002-05:00

I’ve been working with Microsoft CRM in production environments since 1.2 was released, but apart from some minor tweaks to the form I haven’t had to work with the Address entity in too much depth. Until now. I was surprised to find that there are a lot of, er, “undocumented features” that make this built-in entity behave quite differently than I expected. The SDK has a few remarks about the Address entity, but it took me a while to put all the pieces together, and I thought I’d share what I’ve found:

1. Two blank address records are created for each Account and Contact. Out of the box, CRM Accounts and Contacts have built-in fields to capture two addresses. These fields are address1_street1, address1_city, address1_stateorprovince, etc., as well as another whole set for address2 fields.

Whenever an Account or Contact is created, the CRM platform creates two blank address records related to that parent Account or Contact.

The purpose of these two blank address records is to store synchronized data that is entered in the address fields on the Account or Contact itself. The platform handles keeping these two entities in synch. If you change the values stored in the Contact’s address fields, the associated Address record is updated automatically.

2. The first two Address records that the platform creates are hidden in the “More Addresses” associated view on the Account or Contact. I guess this is because these addresses should be maintained on the Account or Contact, not in the Address entity itself. The purpose seems to be so that addresses added on the Account or Contact form are available when you do an address lookup on a quote or order. (Note that you’ll need to enter data in the “Address Name” field on the Account or Contact if you want it to show up in the Address Lookup view as well.)

3. You cannot update the Address record via workflow. You can create workflows based on the Address entity, but it’s not available to update itself. Not sure why, though…

4. You can’t modify the relationship mappings between the Account entity or the Contact entity and the Address entity. And you can’t add custom relationships to the Address entity.

5. Addresses are not available on Security Roles. You want to restrict users from editing or deleting Addresses? Can’t do it, at least not with Security Roles. Go figure…

6. There’s no built-in way to add the parent Account or Contact to the Address form. Adding the “Parent” field to the Address’s Advanced Find or Lookup views only returns a blank column as well. This seems to be a shortcoming or a bug of some sort. For all other entities with a N:1 relationship, you can add the ‘1’ part of that equation to the ‘N’ form. For example, if you create an entity called “Projects” with a N:1 relationship to Accounts, you can add the Account lookup field to the Project form. The lookup field actually consists of an array that contains a GUID, a string for the record’s name, and the object type code (OTC). In the case of Addresses, the only thing stored in the Address table is a field for the GUID. Without the name of the related object and the OTC, the interface can’t present a normal, functioning lookup field.

WORKAROUNDS:

With all of these limitations, organizations that need to manage multiple addresses for their Accounts or Contacts, and that need to perform logic against these addresses regularly, may need to do some workarounds. Among the options to consider: create a plug-in that “un-hides” the first two address records so they’re visible in the “More Addresses” associated views. Another option would be to create a custom entity with a N:1 relationship to the Account or Contact. This option has the benefit of allowing you to do the full range of mappings and workflow that you can do with just about any other entity. The downside is that if you want the address fields on the Account or Contact to be used and available for mail merges and Outlook synchs, the custom entity option will require some more create workflow solutions.

New Updates and Rollups

2009-05-18T11:06:00.002-05:00

I haven’t had a chance to blog in a couple of weeks, and there have been a number of new releases from the CRM team at Microsoft:

1. Update Rollup 4 has been released.

2. The Implementation Guide has been updated.

3. The SDK has been updated, and

4. The CRM On-Premise Help files have been updated. (Remember to backup your Help files if you’ve customized them!)

New Article on the Microsoft CRM Team Blog

2009-05-04T16:02:00.003-05:00

I have a new article on the Microsoft CRM Team Blog today with some tips on building a virtual development server for CRM using Windows Server 2008 and SQL 2008. Check it out!

US States Picklists Values

2009-04-30T10:20:00.008-05:00

How many times have you had to make a picklist for the US states on a CRM 4.0 form? Well, rather than having to manually add each of the 50 states (52 if you count DC and Puerto Rico), I've got an XML file pre-made with the values of the US States that I copy into the customizations.xml for the particular picklist attribute I'm editing. I thought I'd share it here to save you some time as well.

Download it here.

To use it, export the XML for the entity you are working with, and open it in Visual Studio or your favorite XML editor (Notepad will work). Do a find to locate the picklist attribute you want to edit, and look for the node under it. It should look something like this:

Copy the contents of the downloaded file and then select everything from the starting
tag to the ending tag in the customizations.xml and paste the contents of your clipboard into it. Verify that the XML looks correct, save your customizations.xml and import it back into CRM. Publish the entity and, voila, you have all 50 states available from your picklist.

UPDATE: Due to popular demand, I've also posted a similar text file that includes the countries of the world (265 of them). Note that this list has the United States and Canada listed first and second, with the rest of the world's countries in alphabetical order.

New Demonstration VPC for CRM 4.0

2009-04-19T17:59:00.002-05:00

Microsoft has released a new demonstration VPC image for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0. The image is built using SQL Server 2008 and Visual Studio 2008, and is available on PartnerSource. It is set to expire in August 2010. Happy demo'ing!

Agent Communications Panel for CRM - Call Center Functionality Using OCS

2009-04-17T11:44:00.004-05:00

Microsoft recently released the "Agent Communications Panel for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0" which provides an out-of-the-box integration with Office Communications Server for call center functionality within CRM.

"The Agent Communications Panel for Microsoft Dynamics
CRM 4.0 is an application add-in to Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0. It works with
Microsoft Dynamics CRM and Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2, and
enables agents to manage their communications (make calls, receive calls,
conference, and chat) from their Microsoft Dynamics CRM system. The Agent
Communications Panel is an XAML browser application (XBAP). It is published to a
Web server and opened from a Web browser."

I haven't had a chance to set it up and play with it yet, but it looks like it's a logical extension to CRM that should be well-received. You can download it here.

Error Importing Customizations

2009-04-03T09:35:00.005-05:00

On a development environment where I had imported a new organization, the developer was getting an error when trying to import customizations from another system (both on Update Rollup 3), and was unable to publish any customizations either. On importing, he got the following error:
“Failure: customeraddress: A SQL Server error occurred. Try this action again. If the problem continues, check the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Community for solutions or contact your organization's Microsoft Dynamics CRM Administrator. Finally, you can contact Microsoft Support.”

In the event log on the server was an error that said:

EventID: 19457
Source: MSCRMWebService
Customization Import failed. Error: Could not find stored procedure 'p_PublishMetadata'.

In digging into the database in SQL Server Management Studio, I saw that this sproc and another called 'p_PublishLabelsByObjectId' were listed not as dbo owned like the rest of the stored procedures, but user owned (DOMAIN\Username.p_PublishMetadata, for example).

I changed the ownership using the following query and publishing and importing started to work:

sp_changeobjectowner 'p_PublishLabelsByObjectId', 'dbo'

and then the same for the other stored procedure:

sp_changeobjectowner 'p_PublishMetadata', 'dbo'

(You'll get a caution about changing ownership that you can ignore.) Close SQL Management Studio and re-open it to verify that the ownership has changed (refreshing didn't work for me for some reason).

Somehow, when this organization was imported, the ownership didn't get set correctly on these two stored procedures. Tip of the hat to Luke Rogers for the tip on changing ownership of stored procedures one at a time.

Environment: SQL Server 2008 Standard, Microsoft CRM 4.0 UR3 Professional with the original organization disabled, and a new organization imported.

Re-Awarded MVP for CRM

2009-04-01T09:24:00.003-05:00

Got the email today notifying me that I was re-awarded MVP status for CRM! This makes it 4 years running. I'm extremely grateful to Microsoft and the CRM community - it's been an incredible experience working with CRM and getting to know a lot of the folks on the product team. The MVP program has been tremendously helpful in growing my knowledge and professional development. The CRM team and the other CRM MVPs have been a great group of people to work with and get to know.

Role-Tailored Dashboard Links

2009-03-30T17:19:00.003-05:00

Most organizations with CRM will eventually want to have some kind of dashboards to help their employees focus on the KPIs and CRM lists that are important to them. Creating the dashboards themselves is outside the scope of this article, but there are a variety of ways to build them, from the popular SharePoint dashboards with PerformancePoint analytics, to custom webpages with embedded gauges and reports.

But once you build a dashboard for one set of users, others are sure to follow. Usually it's the sales managers who first push to have dashboards so they can monitor their team's pipeline and close ratio. But then the salespeople themselves will want a custom dashboard, and then the service folks, and soon after that, every group of users and department in your organization is pushing for a dashboard.

So how do you keep from cluttering up your sitemap navigation with 15 links to dashboards that are irrelevant to the majority of your users? Here's one approach: use a combination of security roles and custom entities to display dashboard links to the right group of users. Follow the steps below:

1) Build your dashboards. In this example, we'll pretend we have a dashboard for sales managers, and a separate one for salespeople. The sales managers don't actually sell anything, so they don't want to see info about their specific pipeline and alerts about the accounts they own. And the salespeople shouldn't be distracted by looking at the aggregrate numbers and new opportunities from across the organization. So we've built different dashboards for each of them. (This example has screenshots from CRM 3.0, but the same principles and techniques apply to CRM 4.0 as well).

2) Add the dashboards to your sitemap navigation by editing the XML. Add a "SubArea" tag with a unique ID and the Url of the dashboards' location:

The result should look like this:

3) Now add two custom entities. I've added one called SalesDash (schema name is "new_salesdash") and one called SalesMgrDash (schema name is "new_salesmgrdash"). I've made them Organization-owned (rather than User-owned) and I've selected to not show them in any area of CRM. I've also made sure not to allow Activities or Note to be attached to them. These entities are only there so I can reference them in the security roles, I don't want anyone actually using them.

4) Next, edit the Salesperson and Sales Manager security roles so they have Read privileges on the respective new custom entities you've just created. The Salesperson security role should be able to read instances of the SalesDash entity, but not have any privileges on the SalesMgrDash entity. The Sales Manager security role can read the SalesMgrDash entity, but not the SalesDash entity.

5) Lastly, go back to your Sitemap XML and set privileges on the dashboard links to display them only to users whose security roles grant them read access to the appropriate entity:

Now your dashboards will only show up in the Sitemap for the right individuals, and your sitemap won't look cluttered with a bunch of irrelevant links for all the wonderful dashboards you'll be creating!

IE8 Released - and CRM 4.0 is officially supported on it

2009-03-19T15:18:00.004-05:00

Microsoft this afternoon released Internet Explorer 8, and word from the CRM team is that CRM 4.0 is officially supported on this new browser. The CRM team worked closely with the IE team to test the browser against CRM, and, except for one minor outstanding issue (I don't know yet what that issue is) the IE8 team has knocked out all the issues that the CRM team identified.

Click the title of this post to visit the IE8 download site.

UPDATE: Some folks are reporting problems with CRM in Outlook once they've loaded IE8. Here are a couple of things to try if you're running into this problem:
1) In Internet Explorer's options on the security tab, click the button “reset zones to default level” and make sure IE is running in “Protected Mode”
2) Disable the pop-up blocker for your CRM address

Tag: You're It!

2009-03-17T14:22:00.006-05:00

At Convergence, one of the keynote speakers demoed a new beta technology called "Tag." Similar to a barcode, tags are colorful little unique labels that, when photographed with a properly-equipped mobile device, can act as hyperlinks from physical objects to websites or contact cards out in the ether.

The idea is that people can download the little mobile app onto their phones, and if they see a "tag" on a product, or billboard, or business card, etc., they can snap a picture and their phone will automatically link to the website URL encoded in the image. There's been a similar app for the iPhone that lets users upload a barcode and get product information from the web, but in the case of tags, Microsoft is currently allowing anyone to create a tag (just go to microsoft.com/tag and sign up), and the algorithm behind the tags allows for more data to be stored in it than a typical black and white QR or datamatrix code.

What I haven't learned yet is whether there's an API so you can submit URL strings through a webservice and get back tags in a binary format that you could stuff into a database. I'm thinking about applications for CRM: For example, let's say you have field service reps who have to do service on machinery. They might have a mobile device with access to CRM data. Tags could be used to store a link to the machinery's record in CRM, and the field service rep could pull up service history and related customer information just by snapping a pic of the tag on the piece of machinery. That's just one possibility. But for this to work, you'd want to have a custom app in CRM that generates tags every time a new "machinery" record was created. Hmmm... lots of possibilities.

Update Rollup 3 for MS CRM 4.0 Released

2009-03-16T07:42:00.003-05:00

As promised, Microsoft's Sustained Engineering team has stuck to a more rigorous schedule of releasing update rollups for CRM. Update Rollup 3 has been released. For a comprehensive description of the rollup and related information, read the article on the Microsoft CRM Team Blog.

What If

2009-02-24T21:20:00.002-05:00

The following may be off-topic, but there's no more relevant topic that any of us must be concerned with right now than the rapid evaporation of liberty amidst the doublespeak coming from our "leaders."

What if we wake up one day and realize that the terrorist threat is a predictable consequence of our meddling in the affairs of others?

What if propping up repressive regimes in the Middle East endangers both the United States and Israel?

What if occupying countries like Iraq and Afghanistan – and bombing Pakistan – is directly related to the hatred directed toward us and has nothing to do with being free and prosperous?

What if someday it dawns on us that losing over 5,000 American military personnel in the Middle East since 9/11 is not a fair trade-off for the loss of nearly 3,000 American citizens, no matter how many Iraqi, Pakistani, and Afghan people are killed or displaced?

What if we finally decide that torture, even if called “enhanced interrogation techniques,” is self-destructive and produces no useful information – and that contracting it out to a third world nation is just as evil?

What if it is finally realized that war and military spending is always destructive to the economy?

What if all wartime spending is paid for through the deceitful and evil process of inflating and borrowing?

What if we finally see that wartime conditions always undermine personal liberty?

What if conservatives, who preach small government, wake up and realize that our interventionist foreign policy provides the greatest incentive to expand the government?

What if conservatives understood once again that their only logical position is to reject military intervention and managing an empire throughout the world?

What if the American people woke up and understood that the official reasons for going to war are almost always based on lies and promoted by war propaganda in order to serve special interests?

What if we as a nation came to realize that the quest for empire eventually destroys all great nations?

What if Obama has no intention of leaving Iraq?

What if a military draft is being planned for the wars that will spread if our foreign policy is not changed?

What if the American people learn the truth: that our foreign policy has nothing to do with national security and that it never changes from one administration to the next?

What if war and preparation for war is a racket serving the special interests?

What if President Obama is completely wrong about Afghanistan and it turns out worse than Iraq and Vietnam put together?

What if Christianity actually teaches peace and not preventive wars of aggression?

What if diplomacy is found to be superior to bombs and bribes in protecting America?

What happens if my concerns are completely unfounded – nothing!

What happens if my concerns are justified and ignored – nothing good!

-
Statement of Congressman Ron Paul
United States House of Representatives
February 12, 2009

Expand A Virtual Hard Disk

2009-02-24T18:06:00.004-05:00

I recently created a new virtual server for development purposes, and made the newbie mistake of leaving the maximum hard drive size set to 16GB. Even though I set it up to be a dynamically expanding hard disk, it was only after I installed Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008, CRM, SharePoint, Office, Visual Studio and 25 other tools, that I realized I was about to run out of space on my system drive. As a Microsoft fan, I use Virtual PC 2007, which in this case meant that my toolset was a little limited in managing my VPC images.

After doing a bit of searching, I came across numerous posts that had a lot of cumbersome ways to expand the system partition on a virtual machine. Laziness being the mother of invention, I was determined to find a simpler way. And I am glad to report that not only did I find an easy way, but it was also totally free. Here's what I did:

1) Download and install VMWare's VCenter Converter.

2) Convert my VHD to a VMWare hard drive. VMWare Converter lets you specify a new size for the new hard drive. I set it to 40GB. The conversion took about 15 minutes, and the result was a 14GB vmdk hard drive file. (No need to boot it up in VMWare).

3) Downloaded and install the VMDK2VHD utility - also free - from http://vmtoolkit.com/files/folders/converters/entry8.aspx.

4) Launched the VMDK2VHD and pointed it at the file I had just created with VM's Converter.

About 40 minutes later I had a new VHD file. I pointed my original VMC file to use this new VHD file, started it up, kept my fingers crossed, and...voila! I now have a bunch of free space on my image!

CRM Mobile Express Preview Now Available

2009-02-18T15:56:00.000-05:00

Microsoft has finally released a "preview" of Mobile Express for CRM, a free mobile app for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0. Read more about it here. Download it here (registration required).

How To Uninstall SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services

2009-02-01T10:45:00.002-05:00

I was setting up a CRM development server with SQL 2008 and made the quick, uninformed, and ultimately time-consuming decision to install Reporting Services in SharePoint integrated mode. I was also going to install WSS 3.0, so I thought I'd try this out.

Unfortunately, I found out later that CRM 4.0 does not support reporting services in SharePoint integrated mode. So, if I had been thinking clearly, this would have been a not too difficult problem: just uninstall reporting services and reinstall it in the right mode.

My problem: I couldn't figure out for the life of me how to uninstall Reporting Services for SQL 2008. I tried everything I could think of to remove it. It wasn't listed separately under the Programs and Features list, and I couldn't find any other way despite hours (ugh!) of searching.

I finally figured out that if I went to the Add/Remove Programs area (Programs and Features in Server 2008), and started an uninstall of SQL Server 2008, I would get the option to select which feature of SQL I wanted to remove. Duh. I feel like an idiot.

Update Rollup 2 for MS CRM 4.0 Released

2009-01-15T16:58:00.000-05:00

Microsoft has released Update Rollup 2 for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0. Microsoft's Sustained Engineering team for CRM is planning to release rollups every other month from here on out in order to respond to issues, bugs and improvements more quickly. Update Rollup 2 includes all the previous updates and hotfixes (including UR1). Downloads are available for the CRM server, clients, the email router, SQL reporting services and Data Migration Manager.

It can be downloaded at: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=aa671769-61e9-45c4-919f-c88199aa4241&displaylang=en&tm

Will Your Business Survive or Thrive in '09?

2008-12-29T12:21:00.002-05:00

This is a bit of an open-ended article - I'm really looking to spark a discussion and hear feedback from you: In thinking about the "current situation" that we've all heard so much about, and the apprehension that many people have for what 2009 might bring, it occurred to me that both of these things - the turbulence of the last quarter and the uncertainty for the future - have implications for businesses that make use of CRM systems.

It's an axiom of recessionary times that businesses that excel at keeping their existing customers and who increase their profile in the marketplace will have a better chance at survival, whereas companies that fail on either of these two fronts will have a much harder time staying afloat. Companies that make effective use of CRM - and who are improving their use of CRM with tools like social media - should have a competitive advantage in this environment.

So my questions for discussion are: Does your company see CRM as a competitive advantage? And what are your plans for improving your use of CRM in 2009 to maintain or improve your competitive standing?

"CRM 5" Preview

2008-11-13T09:36:00.001-05:00

Simon Hutson has a great blog post where he's compiled a lot of the publicly available information about what Microsoft is cooking up for the next version of CRM, creatively code-named "CRM 5." Lots of exciting stuff for us CRM geeks!

Slightly Off-Topic: A CRM Innovator Hits the Nail on the Head

2008-11-06T10:32:00.005-05:00

Sridhar Vembu, the head of AdventNet and Zoho.com (a SaaS vendor with an online CRM product), has a great analysis of the prevailing economic theories that have failed so ignominiously of late - even though their main advocates don't (or can't, or won't) acknowledge their failure. Read it at http://blogs.zoho.com/in-the-news/coherently-yours-professor-krugmans-track-record-of-economic-commentary

Some tenuous connections to CRM: 1) It's good to see a lead innovator in the CRM marketplace who has his head on straight when it comes to sound economics - always a good thing for customers who will invest their time and treasure in building a product into their businesses; 2) CRM as an approach to doing business has always occupied an interestingly tense position between the promise of improved customer relationships and meeting the business objectives of pointy-haired MBAs. If the pointy-haired set embraces fundamentally flawed business models, the execution of their grand CRM schemes aren't likely to pay off in the long run.

Solution Accelerators Released

2008-10-30T09:04:00.003-05:00

Microsoft has begun to release the much-anticipated Solution Accelerators for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0. The first to be released are the "CRM Notifications Accelerator" and the "Extended Sales Forecasting Accelerator."

They are currently only available on Partnersource, but will soon be made available to a wider audience.

UPDATE 11/13/2008: Accelerators are now being posted on CodePlex for the general public: http://www.codeplex.com/crmaccelerators/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=19071

A CRM Wish List

2008-10-09T09:05:00.004-05:00

I was recently asked to name the one improvement that I'd like to see made to CRM. I had a hard time limiting my response to one item. Don't get me wrong - I love working with Microsoft CRM. Even after 5 years, I'm still amazed at the product's flexibility to address business needs. But the question got me to thinking, and it's been a while since I compiled, in one place, my wish list for product improvements. So here they are, in no particular order. Leave your suggestions for CRM improvements in the comments section!

More frequent releases of product improvements. Probably the biggest thing I would change about the last 5 years of my career if I were given supreme power over the universe and Microsoft would be to have the CRM Product Group make more frequent releases of feature enhancements and functional improvements. We had a version 3.0 and now we have version 4.0, but there should have been 3.1, 3.2, 3.3, etc. in the interim with little improvements made and new features added along the way. I'm not talking bug fixes or update rollups - those are a given with any product. But to really stay competitive and keep delighting your customer base, I think it's important to show that innovation doesn't take 24 months to surface.
Search: the ability to search across entities from one place - ie, a quick find that isn't limited to one entity.
Ability to select a piece of Sales Literature and send it to a CRM Contact/Account/Lead via email
More robust editing of HTML in Email templates (with CSS support)
Actually release the Mobile Express client already
Built-in ability to expose fields from related entities on a form
Field-level security!
Ability for workflow to update attributes on inactive records (version 3.0 could do this!)
Email Activity enhancements: a) Ability to select secondary email addresses to send email; b) Email to custom entities; c) Associate tracked email activities to all matched records (if a duplicate email exists in the system, the email is unresolved rather than being associated with both); d) Aggregate email threads in History; e) Email preview panes
Combo boxes (multi-select picklists)
Recycle bin like MOSS
Reusable or linked picklists (across entities - so they keep in synch and don't need to be manually edited multiple times)
GUI/Drag and drop sitemap customizations
User-selected default views

Leave your suggestions for CRM improvements in the comments section!

SQL Error When Trying to Import Custom Entity

2008-10-07T16:24:00.000-05:00

This error cropped up recently when moving customizations for a client from their dev server to their production server. The import looked like it was working, but then an error window popped up saying there was a SQL Error with cc_EntityName_DuplicateMatchingRecord. Turns out, this is a known issue, as stated in the CRM 4.0 Server Readme file - but who ever reads those things?!

Custom entity cannot be imported to a new system when duplicate detection has been enabled and then disabled.
The error message that you may receive is "Either the file could not be uploaded
or Import failed.”An additional message contains a reference that includes the
name of the custom entity and the text "A SQL Server error occurred.” This error
will occur when you try to import a custom entity into a new system if the
custom entity had had duplicate detection enabled but now has duplicate
detection disabled. To work around this issue, turn duplicate detection on for
the custom entity before you export it. After the custom entity is imported to a
new system, disable duplicate detection for the custom entity.

Problems with the Outlook add-in for CRM 4.0?

2008-09-25T16:00:00.003-05:00

If you're experiencing problems with the Outlook add-in for Microsoft CRM 4.0, check out this helpful resource on the CRM team blog. Chances are there's a quick fix.
http://blogs.msdn.com/crm/archive/2008/08/06/crm4-outlook-client-issues-and-fixes.aspx

Create a Link to a File or Directory from a CRM Record

2008-09-19T12:43:00.002-05:00

If you are like many of our clients, you still retain a lot of Word and Excel documents about your customers. Wouldn't it be nice to be able to link directly to the appropriate folder from the CRM record for that customer? Here's how to use some OnLoad script to turn a regular text field into a link to a folder.

1) Add a text field attribute called 'folderlink' to your account form. Give it a maximum length of 300 characters to make sure you have enough space for long paths.
2) Paste the following code into the OnLoad event for the Account entity's form:

if (crmForm.all.new_folderlink != null)
{
crmForm.all.new_folderlink.style.color = '#0000FF';
crmForm.all.new_folderlink.style.textDecorationUnderline = true;
crmForm.all.new_folderlink.style.fontWeight = 'bold';
var folderunc = crmForm.all.new_folderlink.DataValue;
{
crmForm.all.new_folderlink.ondblclick = function()
{
window.open(folderunc);
}
}
}

3) That's it. Now save and publish your form and paste a path to a folder into that field and try it out. You'll notice that the script above also formats the text in the field to be blue, bold, and underlined so it looks like a standard link, helping your users intuitively understand that they can click on it to open the folder.

Line Breaks for nvarchar TextArea fields in SQL Reports

2008-09-11T17:23:00.003-05:00

This one had me stumped for a while. I was writing a report for a CRM client who had a number of nvarchar textarea fields on an entity in CRM. The fields had lots of free-form text with line breaks in them. For example:

This is line 1.
This is line 2.
This is line 3.

When I was creating the report in Visual Studio/SQL Reporting Services, the fields rendered correctly, but when I deployed it to CRM and ran the report, all the lines ran together, like this:

This is line 1. This is line 2. This is line 3.

I tried everything I could think of to format the field in the report layout, but nothing worked. After some googling around, I realized I needed to do some manipulation in my query. So I changed the relevant part of my select statement to something like this:

REPLACE(CAST(CRMAF_FilteredEntity.new_CustomField AS nvarchar(MAX)), CHAR(10),
CHAR(13) + CHAR(10)) AS CustomField

What this does is renders the field and replaces the line feed ("CHAR(10)") with both a Carriage Return and a Line Feed ("CHAR(13) + CHAR(10)"). And now my reports render correctly!

Update to CRM Online Includes Keyword Ad Integration

2008-09-08T15:55:00.003-05:00

Microsoft today released an update to its Dynamics CRM Online service that includes a fully-integrated, end-to-end keyword advertising management utility. The free tool, imaginatively called "Internet Marketing," allows CRM Online users to design search engine marketing campaigns by helping them select and bid for keywords with major search engines, track click-throughs and landing pages, track leads generated from keyword campaigns, and report on conversions into opportunities and closed sales.

CRM Online users now have a true, end-to-end online marketing tool that allows them to report on actual revenue generated by their search engine marketing investments. And best of all, it's free to Dynamics CRM subscribers!

To activate the service, CRM Online users need to go to the Settings area of CRM, click on Business Management, and click the new "Internet Marketing" link to launch the activation wizard.

CRM As A Rapid Development Platform

2008-08-21T11:36:00.003-05:00

I'm late in getting this post out, but better late than never! Dave Yack released his book "CRM As a Rapid Development Platform" last month. It's an indispensable tool for every developer who is building on top of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0. It's available in printed form or as an e-book, and also includes a ton of code samples and some helpful videos. It's 645 pages long, so you're sure to find plenty in the book that you weren't aware of, even if you've been working with CRM for a long time! I don't know how Dave found the time for this monster, but I'm glad he did!

User's Guide for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0

2008-08-20T08:24:00.002-05:00

This was one of the most popular downloads for 3.0, and I suspect it will be for 4.0 as well. The user guide is a printable version of the extensive help files that come with CRM. This should be especially useful since nobody ever actual clicks the "Help" links inside CRM ;-)

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=0DB4D487-1BAA-4619-9BC5-074D73C3997D&displaylang=en

The underlying connection was closed: A connection that was expected to be kept alive was closed by the server.

2008-07-30T22:23:00.002-05:00

In a recent upgrade environment, now running CRM 4.0, I found that reports stopped working from CRM. What was strange was that reports could still be run from the SQL Reporting Services website, just not from CRM - not even on the CRM server, so I knew it wasn't just a Kerberos authentication problem (and SQL was on the same box with CRM anyway!). After checking and re-checking all the settings in the SSRS website, the registry hive for CRM, and everywhere else I could think of, I opened a support ticket with Microsoft.

But whenever I have to ask for outside help, I feel like I need to re-double my efforts in locating the problem and fixing it myself. (I should probably just open tickets all the time!). After much searching, I found an obscure reference on a SQL forum about this error (The underlying connection was closed: A connection that was expected to be kept alive was closed by the server.) and a mention of an update for SQL 2005. I logged onto the SQL server and ran Windows Update, and there it was - KB948109. Downloading this update and installing it fixed the problem. After the update, there was an error in the event log indicating that the .NET Framework 2.0 could not recompile, but upon running a report and waiting a long time for the app to compile, reports started working again throughout the network. Yay!

Here's a link to the update for more information:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/948109

A Complex Upgrade

2008-07-21T15:02:00.005-05:00

I had the opportunity this past weekend to do an upgrade that challenged just about every skillset that can possibly be required during a CRM implementation. It took 14 hours, and involved changes, installation or configuration of: Small Business Server, DNS, Active Directory, SQL Server, Windows Server components, database restores, IIS, Reporting Services, registry hacks, virtual servers, Office service packs, and possible several other things I'm not recalling right now. For those of you who are masochists, here's a lengthy narrative to describe the process:

CRM 3.0 SBE was on a virtual server running Small Business Server 2003 – R1, not R2, so it was using SQL 2000. CRM 4.0 requires SQL 2005 SP2, so we could not do a straight upgrade in place on the SBS box. Rather than upgrade Small Business Server to SBS 2003 R2, since they had already installed a new SQL 2005 server, we backed up the CRM databases and restored them to the new SQL 2005 box – which, by the way, was also a new virtual machine.

We then re-configured the existing CRM 3.0 installation to use the new SQL 2005 databases, and tested that everything was working. One thing I did not do – though I thought about it at the time, and ruled it out for the sake of time – was to move the SQL Reporting Services databases to the new SQL 2005 server and upgrade SQL Reporting Services for the existing CRM 3.0 installation. In the end, I might have saved more time by having the SSRS reporting function pre-migrated to SQL 2005.

So we restored the CRM databases to SQL 2005, and then we were ready to start an in-place upgrade to CRM 4.0 right on the SBS box. We had to add SP2 to SQL 2005 before upgrading, and we found out that the IT partner had pretty much given us a raw server for CRM, so we had to install IIS and ASP.NET support, as well as indexing and message queuing, and full-text indexing for SQL. While we were at it, we went ahead and installed SQL Reporting Services on the SQL 2005 server to get it ready for our final step, which was to install CRM 4.0 a second time on the new CRM server and import the organization that had just been upgraded on the SBS box.

We had to add a registry entry to disable loopback checking to get the Reporting Services website to work, and of course run the configuration wizard for Reporting Services. Additionally, there are a couple of custom add-ins that I had developed for 3.0 which required some tweaking and migration of their own in order to make them available to the new 4.0 installation.

At this point, everything seemed to be functioning correctly, but as soon as we powered down the SBS virtual server, reports stopped functioning from the new CRM 4/SQL 2005 environment. My suspicion was that some of the Active Directory security roles that had been controlled by the SBS box had not replicated to the new Primary Domain Controller that was replacing the SBS box. So after trying to manually configure these unsuccessfully, we brought the SBS box back online to see if our suspicions were correct. We also installed the SQL Reporting Services Connector for CRM, but unfortunately, we couldn’t get reports working again, and we’re going to have to wait until the SBS box is completely decommissioned, with the FSMO roles, DNS and Active Directory fully migrated to the new Primary Domain Controller.

We installed the Email Router for CRM and configured the Incoming and Outgoing rules. This is still a highly un-intuitive process, and after a few minutes of trial and error, the tests of the Email Router configuration returned successful results.

Another glitch we ran into was when we were trying to install the Outlook client the first time. Actually, the installation of the Outlook client went fine, but when running the configuration wizard, after entering the new address of CRM, we kept getting errors that the Outlook add-in couldn’t resolve the CRM address (the error message suggested that maybe the CRM server was shut down). Turns out these error messages were misleading. I initially thought there was some confusion due to using the same port number for the new CRM website as for the original one, so I changed the port numbers IIS was using, and still had no luck. After some digging, we found that the configuration wizard was in fact resolving correctly to the new CRM server, it just wasn’t getting the right message back from the database because there were still some lingering entries in the DeploymentProperties table that had the SBS server name in them. Here’s the SQL script (thanks to the CRM newsgroups) to update the database to make sure it contains the right server:port entries if you have remnants from a previous install:

UPDATE dbo.DeploymentProperties SET NVarCharColumn = 'newcrm:5555' WHERE
ColumnName IN ('ADWebApplicationRootDomain', 'AsyncSdkRootDomain',
'ADSdkRootDomain');
UPDATE dbo.DeploymentProperties SET NVarCharColumn =
'HTTP' WHERE
ColumnName IN ('ADRootDomainScheme');

After manually updating the database to get rid of these remnants of the old SBS installation, we were able to successfully configure the Outlook add-in.

So, between virtual machines, an upgrade, a re-deployment (or, more precisely, a reinstallation of CRM that pointed to existing databases that had been upgraded both to SQL 2005 and CRM 4.0, and an import of the CRM Organization), and various and sundry updates, patches, hotfixes and setting configurations, CRM 4.0 is up and running. Performance is great, with sub-second response times and form loads, and I’m confident we’ll get the reports working once the SBS box is totally out of the mix.

UPDATE: I got the SQL Reporting Services website working. Once the SBS box was removed from the network and all the FSMO roles and DNS had been migrated to the new domain controller, I was able to add the correct security permissions to the SQL Reporting Services website.

What was strange was that the installation/upgrade added the folder to the SSRS website for CRM 4.0. (In CRM 3.0, there was a flat hierarchy in the SSRS website - you had a folder called MyOrganization_MSCRM, and inside were all the RDL files and data source settings for the CRM reports. In 4.0, when you upgrade from 3.0, you get a new folder under this called simply "4.0" and all the new reports are under this folder.) I couldn't see the 4.0 folder at first when I browsed to http://sqlreports/reports, so I tried adding it. That's when I got an error message saying this folder already existed. Even though I had domain admin permissions. If you click the "Show Details" button you should see the 4.0 folder, but I didn't.

I checked another CRM installation's SSRS website, and copied the URL that takes you directly to the 4.0 reports folder: http://sqlreports/Reports/Pages/Folder.aspx?ItemPath=%2fMyOrganization_MSCRM%2f4.0&ViewMode=Detail and it took me to the folder, where, oddly, the folder had been checked to remain hidden in the folder view. I removed this checkmark, and then went to the security settings for the folder and added the Active Directory groups for CRM report users, as well as the NT Authority\NETWORK SERVICE account, and voila - CRM could now see the SQL Reports for 4.0.

New Post on MS CRM Team Blog: LinkedIn with CRM

2008-07-16T12:57:00.002-05:00

I've got another new post on the Microsoft CRM Team blog here. This one is about integrating LinkedIn information with leads in CRM. Check it out!

The Best Windows Mobile Client for Microsoft CRM

2008-07-14T19:48:00.003-05:00

Mobile options for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 are proliferating, but the one that stands out above the rest continues to be the mobile client from Netherlands firm, CWR Mobility. The company released it's client for 4.0 during Microsoft's Convergence this spring, and recently announced the upcoming availability of an online only version for Microsoft's hosted CRM Online.

CWR's mobile expertise pre-dates Microsoft's foray into the CRM realm, and their insight into ease of use and secure deployment is evident in this latest release. Microsoft has highlighted their mobile application in numerous venues, and it is a favorite among CRM MVPs.

The CWR mobile application for offline use fully supports custom entities with fast background synchronization and a variety of Windows Mobile and PocketPC devices. Check out CWR at http://www.cwrmobility.com.

Workflow or Plug-In?

2008-06-30T14:03:00.002-05:00

Humberto Lezama Guadarrama, a member of Microsoft's CRM team, posted a helpful table that will make the decision process easier when you're trying to decide whether to use a plug-in or CRM's powerful workflow engine to handle a specific function. Thanks, Humberto! Very helpful.

New Post on the MS CRM Team Blog

2008-06-30T13:06:00.002-05:00

I've got another post on Microsoft's CRM Team blog on MSDN. It's about using workflow to automatically set the primary contact for an account. You can view it here.

Note: My good friend Mitch Milam graciously pointed out that he had already posted a similar blog on his site. Personally, I think my post is superior, but Mitch's isn't too bad. ;-)

Microsoft CRM Metadata Browser

2008-06-11T13:42:00.002-05:00

For those of you who like to get in under the hood of your CRM system, there's a great feature in both CRM 3.0 and 4.0 that lets you easily display a lot of the information you'll want to know when customizing your system: the Metadata Browser. It lists all of your CRM entities - even your custom entities - and lets you see all the fields and relationships each entity has, as well as things like the Object Type Code and other settings.

The Metadata Browser is easy to access. Simply navigate to http://yourCRMserver/sdk/list.aspx
(obviously replacing 'yourCRMserver' with the name of your CRM server!)

You'll get a nicely formatted webpage with a table listing all of your entities. If you click on the Definition icon for one of the entities you'll see a list of all of the attributes for the entity with all of the attributes for each attribute (now that's some meta-metadata!).

XRM and CRM 2.0

2008-05-06T16:34:00.000-05:00

Traditionally, the 'R' in CRM has meant managing the relationship between the company that owns the CRM software and their customer, not necessarily managing the relationships those customers (contacts/leads/accounts) may have with one another. This is the thought behind the idea of XRM or CRM 2.0 - whatever trendy name they're giving it these days - the idea that your customers (contacts/leads/accounts) should have some interplay between each other and also should have some control over how those relationships are described. This way, in addition to the relationships you assign to your customers, they can self-identify relationships as well.

When you get accustomed to Web 2.0 communities like LinkedIn, Facebook, etc, you start to see these relationships, but there's no parallel in traditional CRM applications. Essentially, if CRM is to evolve as a platform that keeps pace with how people use the web, then it will need to become the back end for a community that is hosted by the company that owns the CRM software. This way you'd become aware of new relationships that exist that you previously weren't aware of. The meta-layers of relational information would give you real insight into your relationships.

Can somebody start building a LinkedIn integration for MS CRM? ;-)

I'm not totally sold on how this can play out in the business world, but the reality is that the nature of the 'R' in CRM is changing rapidly, and an enterprise that wants to have authentic relationships with its customers is going to need to engage them where they live, or risk being abandoned.

For more on this topic, check out: http://crm20.pbwiki.com/

List of Available Updates and Hotfixes for CRM 4.0

2008-04-30T10:05:00.002-05:00

Here's a good starting point if you're troubleshooting problems with CRM 4.0. Bookmark this link and check it regularly as Microsoft updates the article whenever they have a new fix available.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/949256/en-us

Upgrading CRM 3.0 SBE to CRM 4.0 Professional: Part II: The Outlook Client

2008-04-28T14:47:00.002-05:00

I posted previously about my experiences upgrading CRM 3.0 SBE (the Small Business Server edition) to CRM 4.0 Professional. One major area I wanted to address also was the upgrade of the Outlook client. We've dealt with a lot of upgrades of the laptop, or offline, client, and run into some issues.

Basically, you want to uninstall the 3.0 client and then do a clean install of the 4.0 client. Of course, you need to be logged in as the user who will be using Outlook/CRM, and have local admin rights.

The problem is that the uninstall of the 3.0 client is not very clean, especially with the laptop client, because it leaves behind the SQL Express databases, and there's no easy way to see them. Simply deleting the files after the uninstall is not enough. You actually have to delete the databases from SQL using Management Studio. Since most people don't have management studio installed on their machines, and due to networking differences, many computers won't be visible to your SQL Server's Management Studio, the workaround we found to work best is to download the SQL Server Management Studio Express (SSMSE) directly onto the laptop. It can be downloaded here.

Once installed, open SSMSE and connect to the local CRM database on the laptop (not on your CRM server!) and right-click and delete the two CRM databases. Then go back and remove any leftover folders or directories before proceeding with your installation of the 4.0 client.

PS: We've seen a few instances where the Outlook client crashes with the 4.0 client installed. Microsoft has a hotfix available, though apparently not for the particular scenario that was causing this crash. We'll keep you posted if we find a fix for this as well!

CRM Online is Ready For Your Business

2008-04-23T16:10:00.001-05:00

Microsoft has released the much-anticipated CRM Online (formerly called CRM Live), the Microsoft-hosted, SaaS version of Dynamics CRM 4.0. To sign up, go to the website or contact your Dynamics partner.

Upgrading CRM 3.0 SBE to CRM 4.0 Professional

2008-04-21T11:03:00.002-05:00

Well, I promised to blog on this, and it's taken me longer than I expected to find the time. I recently performed my first upgrade of CRM 3.0 SBE (on Small Business Server 2003 R2) to CRM 4.0 Professional.

First, a little background on system requirements if you are considering an upgrade to CRM on you Small Business Server. The newest version of CRM, version 4.0, requires SQL Server 2005, which means that if you have not upgraded your SBS 2003 to "R2" then you are probably still running SQL Server 2000. So the first thing you'll need to do is get SBS up to the R2 (that's shorthand for Release Version 2) which upgrades SQL to 2005, installs WSUS and also upgrades a number of other items in Small Business Server Premium.

If you've got R2 in place, you shouldn't have to do anything more than insert the CRM 4.0 disc (or download the installation package from Microsoft.com). Of course, you will want to have good backups of your server, and especially your SQL databases.

When you first begin installing CRM 4.0, the installer goes out to the web to check for updated installation files. So you will need an internet connection. It also installs and initiates the C++ runtime (and it will do this each time you try to run the CRM 4.0 installation, even if you've already downloaded it). So make sure you've got a good internet connection!

When I started this upgrade, I got to the point where the installer checked all the system requirements (more about that below) and when I proceeded to install, it kept failing with a weird error about the MsiInstallerServerAction. It said something like "the patch package could not be opened." I thought this might be related to the Windows MSI installer, so I went on a wild goose chase and ran Windows Update several times to get the server fully patched. It turns out the problem was because the antivirus software on the server was preventing the installer from opening the installation package! I could have kicked myself because I typically disable antivirus software when performing a complex installation like this, but it had slipped my mind this time. So take that as a warning: disable your antivirus solution while running your upgrade.

After working that out, I started running the installation and when I got to the part again where it checks all the system requirements (the part where you want to see a bunch of green checkmarks show up) I got a warning that "setup has detected that there are one or more bulk import jobs pending in the existing Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 system." I searched through CRM and the database and could not locate any pending bulk import jobs. All of them were in a successful completed state, so I still don't know what this warning was about. I then proceeded with the upgrade, and after the installer started running it took about 35 minutes to complete.

After that I started doing my post-upgrade testing. One thing I found was that because CRM 4.0 was designed for multi-tenant, some custom dashboards in this particular installation were not showing images correctly. This is because the relative URLs in the custom .aspx page needed to be re-written to include the organization name. Where they had been pointing to "_custom/_imgs/image.jpg" for example, they needed to be re-written to "orgname/_custom/_imgs/image.jpg" (this particular custom dashboard had it's root folder inside the root folder of the CRM server which, strictly speaking, is unsupported).

Further testing since the upgrade has uncovered a number of minor bugs, mostly related to script errors when viewing or closing windows in the CRM web client. The script errors aren't related to custom scripts, but there appears to be some problems with code inside 4.0 that Internet Explorer 7 doesn't like. I'm still compiling the steps to reproduce these errors and haven't tracked them down. In most cases when a user gets these errors they are saving and closing (or just closing) a form for an activity or a history view on a record, and they get an error window that allows them to send the details to Microsoft. If they click through this the record they were working on is typically saved correctly, so, like I said, it's an annoyance at this point, but doesn't seem to have a critical impact. I'll post again later if/when I track down the source of these errors.

Google and Salesforce.com's Partnershp to Step Into Enterprise Arena Will Likely Make A Splash Only with SMBs

2008-04-14T20:37:00.002-05:00

Salesforce.com and Google announced today that they are deepening their partnership by integrating Google Docs (an online spreadsheet and word processing tool) with Salesforce.com's online CRM solution. This is supposed to be a shot across the bow of Microsoft's enterprise business. The problem is that, for all the hype about web 2.0 and hosted apps, enterprise businesses are going to remain wary about putting too much of their data "in the cloud." As one commenter on Scoble's blog said "if enterprise data - HR, SCM, Financials, data warehouse - is not involved, it’s not an enterprise app." I think SFDC & Google are more likely to gain traction with smaller businesses - which is definitely a key market for Microsoft - and won't likely further Google's strategy to siphon away Microsoft's bread and butter enterprise and upper-mid-market customers. Even though Marc Benioff likes to talk a big game, it's more probable that, as Microsoft's Dynamics CRM improves its scalability for the enterprise, the market will fragment between small bizes opting for hosted systems like SFDC (and don't forget Microsoft CRM Online) and bigger players who want their data behind a firewall and opt for less volatile (and, yes, less sexy) Microsoft.

Update Rollup 3 Pulled

2008-04-14T20:27:00.002-05:00

Thanks to Guy Riddle for the early scoop on this news. (I don't know how he found the time to post such an extensive blog about this - he's at the MVP Summit in Seattle, as I am, and I haven't had nary a free minute!).

Apparently Microsoft has pulled Update Rollup 3 due to a regression in one of the fixes included in the update package. You should not install Update Rollup 3 until Microsoft has re-released it. If you've already installed it, have your partner open a ticket with Microsoft to get their instructions. Microsoft shouldn't charge for the ticket in this case. They are working on a fix for the fix ;-) and it should be available again soon. I'll keep you posted.

New CRM Blog

2008-04-11T16:10:00.000-05:00

Our company, Customer Connect, has launched a new CRM focused blog at http://www.askcrm.com/. Check it out for helpful tips and code samples.

Getting Ready for the MVP Summit in Seattle!

2008-04-08T18:51:00.002-05:00

Six days and counting! Every year Microsoft hosts all the MVPs in Seattle and Redmond for a week of sessions with product teams and keynotes. This year's MVP Summit has a jam-packed schedule, during which I will be spending some time with some of my friends at Microsoft on the CRM team and have the opportunity to share my feedback on their work, as well as learn more and meet with other MVP colleagues. And it's always nice to visit Seattle at this time of year and enjoy the city! Looking forward to it!

New Article on MSDynamicsWorld.com

2008-04-07T20:41:00.002-05:00

I've got a new article published on MSDynamicsWorld.com about assessing your organization's readiness for CRM 4.0. It includes some important factors to be aware of if you are planning on deploying CRM on-premise. The article can be read here.

CRM 4.0 Email Tracking Token Can be Turned Off

2008-04-03T14:30:00.002-05:00

Nice feature of CRM 4.0: Users and system administrators alike have never been fond of the tracking token that CRM places in the email subject line in order to track email replies to the correct account or contact in CRM. In CRM 1.2 and 3.0 this token could be turned off completely, but then it was impossible to track replies to CRM emails. With version 4.0, administrators can still use the tracking token for precise tracking, but CRM now offers the ability to turn off the tracking token and still track most messages. CRM 4.0 uses a combination of the email's sender, recipient and subject to figure out which records to relate inbound email to, even without the token! To turn the tracking tokens off in CRM 4.0, go to Settings > Administration > System Settings, and click on the Email tab. See the image below for the checkbox to de-select to disable the tracking token:

Re-Awarded MVP for 2008

2008-04-01T19:38:00.001-05:00

Just got word today that I've been re-awarded the Microsoft MVP award for CRM for 2008. Thanks to Microsoft, Customer Connect, and the CRM community!

Follow Me on Twitter

2008-04-01T19:32:00.004-05:00

OK, if you're really addicted to web 2.0 and don't have enough information overload, you can now follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/MattNC. Twitter is like a mini-blog that users post to in short entries (less than 140 characters) from their mobile phones, the web, or instant messengers. I just signed up today so we'll see how frequently I post (or "tweet" as it's called in the lingo of Twitter). Typical "tweets" answer the basic question "What are you doing?" so posts often read like the minutiae of individuals' lives: watching a TV show, trying to stay awake in a meeting, reading about a new technology, etc. It's a little creepy and voyeuristic, but we'll give it a try and see how it goes.

CRM Live Re-Named to CRM Online

2008-03-27T16:13:00.002-05:00

Microsoft has announced a name change to their hosted CRM service. The service, now known as Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online is still targeted for a Q2 release.

Formerly known as Microsoft Dynamics CRM Live, the hosted version of CRM 4.0 will maintain the same functionality as previously announced, and, according to Microsoft, is simply being renamed in order to align it with their Online brand of B2B services.

Bill Patterson, Microsoft's Director of Product Management for the hosted service said in a communique:

"In recent months, Microsoft has launched the new Online brand, with tremendous investment in and focus around on-demand technology for business users. Whereas the Live brand is focused on consumers and small businesses, the Online brand is fully aligned with our existing Microsoft Dynamics CRM strategy of delivering outstanding solutions for small businesses, midsized companies, and large enterprises. As a result, we will be launching the new service as Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online."

More than 100,000 visitors since I started tracking!

2008-03-20T20:12:00.003-05:00

Some time in the last few days my blog had its one hundred thousandth visitor since I started tracking the site's traffic! I started this blog back in November 2004 in order to have a place to keep my CRM-related ideas and tricks where I could reference it easily and share it with a few other people. I started tracking the site's traffic about 6 months later when I realized I was getting a lot more visitors than I anticipated. Since then I have posted 125 posts and have had many more visitors than I ever thought I would. I've also had the opportunity to meet a number of folks through the blog as well. Here are some recent statistics on the site's traffic as of 3/20/2008 at 9pm EST::

Total Visitors: 100,799
Average Per Day 136
Average Visit Length 2:01
Last Hour 4
Today 174
This Week 954

Thanks to everyone who has visited and especially to those who have commented on the blog and shared their experiences with Microsoft CRM!

Update Rollup 3 Now Available (Microsoft CRM 3.0)

2008-03-19T10:28:00.001-05:00

Microsoft has released Update Rollup 3 for Microsoft CRM 3.0. There are server and client install files that include all the hotfixes and updates that have been released for version 3.0 to date. To download it go to: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=d5b1fbbe-dfc2-4a33-b5fd-cae99e8e9dab&DisplayLang=en

SQL Reporting Services Login Issue With CRM 3.0 - Another Fix

2008-03-14T14:11:00.002-05:00

Ever since CRM 3.0 hit the market there have been issues with getting reports to work with new installations. Particularly troublesome is when the SQL Server is on a different server than CRM. There are a number of KB articles and documents that Microsoft has released pertaining to this problem. It often comes down to the now-infamous Kerberos double-hop: When a user requests a report through the CRM interface their credentials are passed (via Kerberos) to the SQL Reporting Services server. No problem up to that point. But then the SRS server requests the data from the SQL Server and may fail to pass the originating user's credentials to the SQL Server. This is the double-hop that the credentials need to make. The problem can be complicated by duplicate SPNs, trust for delegation not being correctly configured and many other factors depending on the network topology.

I thought I had seen them all, but an installation we did this week presented new challenges. Users were getting the dreaded error: "Cannot create a connection to data source 'CRM'. Login failed for user '(null)'. Reason: Not associated with a trusted SQL Server connection."

I followed all the standard KB articles out there (links at the end of this post) to no avail. I am stubborn so it was a while before I gave up and got Microsoft involved. I'm glad I did. Their friendly engineer sent me a number of diagnostic tools and had me go through many steps to make sure everything was configured correctly. What finally got the problem resolved was the following:

Adding the CRM installation account credentials to the data source:
1) Open Report Manager (http://server/reports).
2) Click the Show Details button on the MSCRM_DataSource.
3) Click the Edit button for the DataSource.
4) Select the "Credentials stored securely in the report server" radio button and enter the credentials for the CRM installation account or a domain administrator.
5) Select the following two checkboxes:
- "Use Windows credentials when connecting to the data source" and
- "Impersonate authenticated user after a connection has been made to the data source."
6) Click "Apply" and attempt to run the reports as a user logged on to a client machine.

So, the lesson is, if you've tried everything, try something else. I don't recall ever having to set this before in numerous other CRM deployments, but in this case, this is what did the trick. Hope you find this helpful. If not, here are some other troubleshooting resources:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/909509/en-us
Additional Setup Tasks Required if Reporting Services Is Installed on Different Server

Help Wanted! Hiring CRM Consultant/Developer

2008-03-12T09:21:00.002-05:00

Over the last year, our firm, Customer Connect, has experienced a tremendous upsurge in demand for Microsoft CRM. With the recent release of 4.0, that demand is only increasing. As a result, we are actively recruiting talented, experienced CRM consultants and developers. If you (or someone you know) is interested and has the technical chops, please visit our Careers page (http://www.customer-connect.com/Careers/tabid/384/Default.aspx) and read the full job description and submit a resume.

A little background on Customer Connect: We are located in the Charlotte, North Carolina area. Our firm is a small group of talented professionals with a passion for delivering excellence and value. One of the main criteria for this role is that the individual must have an "ownership" mentality; that is, they must take ownership of the successful outcome of their projects and ownership of the relationships we build with our clients. Each of our team members is given a lot of independence to make decisions and guide our clients through the complexities of rolling out a CRM solution.

New Version of SDK for CRM 4.0 Available

2008-03-12T08:12:00.003-05:00

Microsoft has released an updated version of the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 SDK, version 4.0.3. It contains updated code samples and an improved version of the Plug-in registration tool. It can be downloaded here:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=82E632A7-FAF9-41E0-8EC1-A2662AAE9DFB&displaylang=en

Start A Workflow From JavaScript OnChange

2008-03-06T15:49:00.004-05:00

Mitch Milam has a very useful post on his blog about launching a workflow rule from an onChange event on a CRM 3.0 form. A few commenters on his blog have mentioned that they get errors when they use his script in their forms, however. I think this is because they are copying his script right from his blog post, including the line numbers and curly quotes. You need to re-type the code properly and include escape characters so the script engine can interpret the code properly. To save some time, I have posted a text file that you can download as a shortcut to re-typing the OnLoad script yourself. Right-click the following link and "Save As" to download this file (MAKE SURE TO CHANGE THE EXTENSION FROM XML TO .TXT - in the 'Save As Type' select "All"): Save the target of this link to your local machine.
Hope you find that useful, and happy coding. (Thanks, Mitch for this very useful script!)

CRM 4.0 on Mac OSX 10.5

2008-02-19T10:09:00.001-05:00

For the curious: Here's a screenshot a client sent us of CRM 4.0 on Mac OSX 10.5. They used VMWare's Fusion 1.1 to run Windows inside their Mac. The nice thing about Fusion is that it opens the desired program in it's own window, so it doesn't look like you are connecting to a different desktop like Terminal Services or Virtual Server/PC.

Editing the Sitemap in CRM 4.0

2008-01-22T11:32:00.000-05:00

I was banging my head on the wall trying to figure out why a simple edit I made to the sitemap in a new CRM 4.0 deployment was not working. The sitemap lets you add or re-arrange the left hand navigation in the main area of CRM. I was trying to move the Service Calendar to the top of this list in the left hand nav. In 4.0 you need to use a new "Titles" element to add a custom title, and, as in 3.0, you can define whether the navigational item shows up based on a user's priveleges in a certain entity. I made a simple change to the sitemap and when I tried to import it, I got the "either the file could not be uploaded or this is not a valid customization file" error. I checked and re-checked my XML and it looked fine.

It wasn't until a co-worker suggested I try moving the "Title" node above the "Privileges" node that CRM let me import the customizations file. I wouldn't have thought the order mattered in this case, but apparently it did.

Here's what DID work:
<SubArea id="ServCal" icon="/_imgs/ico_18_servicecal.gif" url="/sm/home_apptbook.aspx" availableoffline="false">
<Titles>
<Title lcid="1033" title="Scheduling Matrix">
</Titles>
<Privilege entity="activitypointer" privilege="Read">
<Privilege entity="service" privilege="Read">
</SubArea>

Here's what DID NOT work:
<SubArea id="ServCal" icon="/_imgs/ico_18_servicecal.gif" url="/sm/home_apptbook.aspx" availableoffline="false">
<Privilege entity="activitypointer" privilege="Read">
<Privilege entity="service" privilege="Read">
<Titles>
<Title lcid="1033" title="Scheduling Matrix">
</Titles>
</SubArea>

Microsoft CRM 4.0 Software Development Kit (SDK)

2008-01-17T15:17:00.000-05:00

Other blogs have made note of it, but for those of you haven't heard about it, or haven't downloaded it yet, the CRM 4.0 SDK is available now on Microsoft's download site.

CRM 4.0 Internet Facing Deployment (IFD)

2008-01-16T13:04:00.000-05:00

Microsoft has released a document detailing how to set up CRM 4.0 for an Internet-Facing Deployment so it can be accessed by users across the internet. Very helpful and timely!

Starting To Get Excited About the Global MVP Summit

2008-01-15T15:14:00.000-05:00

It's getting closer! Microsoft hosts a global summit in Seattle and Redmond approximately once per year for MVP award recipients. This year's summit is April 14-18, and promises to be another information-packed and rewarding event. Last year, Bill Gates gave the keynote, and I got to spend some time with the CRM development team, although a number of them were at Convergence which was being held the same week. This year, the summit was scheduled to make it easier for folks to attend both Convergence and the MVP Global Summit. I'm looking forward to learning more about the inner workings of the CRM product team and what they've got in mind for version 5.0 (which they've already got some people working on, believe it or not). Plus, it's always great to see the other MVPs and Microsoft knows how to put on a big event, rolling out the red carpet all over Seattle and the Redmond campus. I can't wait!

Comparison of System Requirements for CRM 3.0 Small Business Edition and CRM 4.0 Professional

2008-01-03T11:18:00.000-05:00

I just put this together for one of my clients that is evaluating which version to deploy, CRM 3.0 SBE or CRM 4.0 Professional. They've got the infrastructure to do either, and of course everyone wants the latest and greatest, but some companies are more conservative about deploying a brand new release of a major software system before the first service pack or update rollups are available. I think they're coming down on the side of deploying 4.0, which is exciting, but in the interest of comparison I put this System Requirements table together.

Edit: Larry Lentz correctly pointed out that the table below doesn't contain system requirements so much as system recommendations. For performance reasons, I rarely recommend to my clients to use the minimal system requirements that Microsoft lists for a product, and frequently their "recommended" configurations can be improved upon. (For example, for CRM 3.0, the minimum requirement for the server RAM is 1GB, but the recommended amount is 2GB. For my clients, I often recommend 3 or 4GB of RAM to get the best performance.) Anyway, thanks for helping me clarify that, Larry!