Email Router Fun

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."

Workflow or Plug-In?

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

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. ;-)

CRM Workflow Emails Not Being Sent

I hope this helps anyone who runs into a similar problem: I ran into a problem on a client's CRM server yesterday where the emails being generated from CRM's workflow rules were not being sent out, causing the workflow rule to fail. This had been working in the past, but suddenly it was not. There were a bunch of failed and paused rules in the workflow monitor. taking a look at the failure messages there revealed two different messages:
"Invalid association. the request association is not valid." and "Invalid Visibility Modification Access."

Both of these error messages, along with an error on the CRM server's event log, pointed me to look at the antivirus software. I had run into a problem once before with a CRM server that was running McAfee antivirus that was blocking outbound traffic on port 25 - the port that carries SMTP mail. This client also was running McAfee, and some googling turned up the following KB article (support.microsoft.com/kb/916925) which, among other things, suggests placing the W3wp.exe process in the antivirus software's exclusion list. (I'm not sure if this problem only occurs with McAfee, it just so happens that these are the two cases I've come across, which was helpful since it helped me narrow down the problem a little more quickly than I might have.)

The only problem was that the W3wp.exe process was already excluded from being blocked by the A/V software. In this instance, the CRM server was relaying mail to the Exchange server for outbound SMTP mail, so I thought I'd change the registry settings to make it use the SMTP service in IIS on the CRM server. Before doing this, however, the IT wiz at my client's company discovered that the AntiVirus software was also blocking the CrmWorkflowService.exe - something that's not listed in Microsoft's KB article. By adding this to the exclusion list, workflow email started flowing again.

Workflow Nightmares

Well, I have been waking up at night with this workflow problem bouncing around in my head. Usually when I get a tough one like this I file it away in my subconscious processor and I'll wake up at 3am with some new idea about how to approach it. So far, I haven't had too much luck with this one:

My client needs a way (a quick and easy way, it goes without saying) to look up leads in CRM that haven't been contacted in certain time frames. The salespeople were accustomed to using ACT and doing lookups for leads that were old, but not that old, or in some cases, they might look for leads that were last reached more than a year ago -- the time frame varies.

There's no doubt, though, that this is a very useful kind of search for a salesperson. They have their own leads to work, but the database is also set up so that a lead is free unless it has been called on, in which case it becomes a protected lead and gets assigned to the salesperson who called the lead. After 30 days if they haven't called the lead, they get a task in CRM that tells them to call the lead again or it will go back in the shark tank in 5 days.

The whole lead life cycle I have pretty well hammered out with workflow. It's not perfect, and won't be until there are some major upgrades in CRM's Workflow Manager.

Now, you may be wondering what this lookup dilemma has to do with workflow: Well, I basically have two options for doing complex queries on the database: Use the SDK to create something from scratch or use an add-on like c360's SearchPac. Well, I have SearchPac on another CRM deployment and I tried experimenting with this kind of lookup. Joined the leads with Activities of the Phone Call type, set dates, etc. The problem is that CRM uses Fetch to query the db and Fetch currently has no mechanism for searching null values, so the queries never quite can be built the way I would need them to be.

As far as the SDK goes, I am not enough of a wizard to build my own search utility for CRM. And the problem is that the client needs this done quickly. We are at the point where salespeople are doing searches in their old ACT database in order to find leads to call. Ugly!

So here's where the workflow comes in. I have an inkling that if I create a custom picklist for the lead record and incorporate updates to this field in my workflow, I could add a column to the Leads Advanced Find view that would show the salespeople what they want. The picklist would have values like:
-Less than 1 month ago
-1 to 2 months ago
-2 to 3 months ago
-3 to 6 months ago
-6 to 12 months ago
-More than a year ago

At the point in the workflow where a lead stays protected, the field would be updated to "Less than 1 month ago" (because for the lead to stay protected it has to have been contacted within the last month).

Then, at the point in the workflow where the lead reverts to the sharktank I could put in Wait commands so it would wait 30 days and change the field to "1 to 2 months ago" then wait another 30 days and change to "2 to 3 months ago" etc.

I think this is going to work. I really need to build a test environment though so I can play with this. Then I need to change the time values so I can test it speeded up to see it work. Oh, what joy! Well, I'm going to get started. I have my work cut out for me.

I'll keep you posted!

Working Out The Workflow

So, as I said in my last post, it took quite a bit of work to get Timberline's workflow worked out in Microsoft CRM. I ended up with a number of rules and subprocesses that I have been tweaking since going live with CRM companywide in September 2004. Initially I had overlooked part of the workflow that I had put in place that effected thousands of leads and made about 20,000 activities that were superfluous. One thing I am hoping for in the release of CRM version 2 is the ability to run actions against all the pages of a view. I had to delete these extra activities 100 at a time -- 200 pages worth! Not fun.

The workflow needs a number of improvements still, but it is running fine for now. Fortunately, the end users are not too demanding about the automation at this point. I have posted a few times on the Microsoft CRM public newsgroup about some of the tricks I used to get the workflow ironed out. Here are a few links to threads from the newsgroup that are useful for workflow:

Creating Loops in CRM
Escalating Customer Service Cases in CRM
Sales Process Tips

One of the difficulties with Microsoft CRM's current workflow toolset is that it doesn't let you see the actual code you are creating. You just plug in statements from lists into If,Then statements. There is a Workflow monitor, but I have found this to be of limited use. It is helpful if you've accidentally created an infinite loop, and to abort workflow processes that are running, but it doesn't do a very good job if you are searching for a particular record or if you want to make sure your workflow is running as you expected.

There also is a rather shameful lack of clear and complete documentation on CRM's workflow tools. Examples are scarce and even Microsoft Business Solutions' training materials aren't very comprehensive or clear about the logic that the workflow tool uses. I think CRM is a great product, and Microsoft was very ambitious to get as much in to version 1 and 1.2 as they did. I expect to see a number of good improvements in version 2, as my conversations with some folks on the MS CRM team have indicated they are highly committed to delivering an excellent product that reshapes the broader CRM marketplace.

Anyway, I'd be glad to swap or share workflow XML files. If you are having problems with your workflow, let me know and I'll see if I can help. At the very least I'll lend a sympathetic ear, and I may even be able to point you in the right direction to successfully complete your deployment!