Customer Effective Blog

Using the (free) CRM Adapter for Microsoft Dynamics GP

The CRM/GP integration was featured front and center at Dynamics Convergence this summer in Atlanta.  The demo (below)  is  a pretty good demonstration of what a seamless supply chain - CRM workflow should look like.  Like any out of the box solution, it has it's bound to have it's limitations, but it's already creating a buzz with GP customers who are anxious upgrade their CRM experience.

 

 

The integration directions and included entities are below.  Some entity information is not bidirectional.  For example, a product entered in CRM cannot be integrated back to GP as a Sale Item, but GP Sales Items will integrate to CRM as a Product.

Like I said, this is a free adapter for active Microsoft Dynamics GP customers who have a current SA Support Plan.  Please let Customer Effective know if you have any questions about GP/CRM integration.

 

Join Customer Effective for the 2010 CRM User Conference

Don’t forget to register for the third annual Customer Effective CRM User Conference taking place on October 13- 15, 2010 at the Westin Poinsett hotel in downtown Greenville, South Carolina.

 

This year’s conference will highlight a keynote address from Jamie Tozzi, General Manager, Microsoft CRM, US Dynamics; the launch of CRM 2011; customer presentations, a customer panel and customer awards ceremony; and more!

 

Thursday evening, we will host a Customer Appreciation Dinner catered by Larkin’s on the River at the Wyche Pavilion, overlooking the Reedy River in downtown Greenville.

We hope you will join us, as always, registration is free but space is limited so please register now.

 

 

Conference Registration Information

 

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Applications Exam (MB2-632)

If you have ever worked for an Information Technology organization, chances are that you have had to get “certified” in a particular application or software suite. Depending on the application, this can sometimes be an intimidating task. I am currently working to become a Microsoft Certified IT Professional for Microsoft Dynamics CRM. The first step will be completing the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Applications Exam MB2-632. For more information on the various types of Microsoft Professional certifications for Dynamics, please visit here. The purpose of this blog is to outline my experience in preparing for this exam and provide readers with some helpful tips, training methods and resources for the MB2-632 exam.

Everyone prepares for exams differently. Some people respond better to hearing training, in the form of speaking trainers/presenters. Some people like to watch training in the form of videos. Still others like to have a training document/book, complete with highlighters and notes. As this is my first Microsoft Exam, I wasn’t sure which avenue would prove most successful for me – so I explored a lot of them! Here’s a recap of some of the types of training I utilized:

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Books:

• Positives: One-stop shop for content. A used copy of most of the books runs about $20.
• Negatives: The book is very large and weighs about 3 pounds. Carrying it around is cumbersome if you are used to having a computer bag with your files and laptop. Bulky.
• Some Example Books

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Online Training:

• Positives: The training has multiple modules. During the module, there are visual walkthroughs for many of the tasks and activities. Each module has mini-exams at the end to test your knowledge.
• Negatives: The speaker begins to get monotonous after a few modules. If you are not a Microsoft Customer or Partner and do not have access to the “free” training, it can be expensive. Online training for this course is $349.
• The online Collection 8913: Applications in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 can be found here.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Application:

• Positives: Nothing can help a person learn and application faster than actually practicing in the application. The free trial was fast and easy to install.
• Negatives: The trial period lasts 30 days.
• The signup is located here.

Personally, I found that the book, along with using the installed online application was sufficient to get a good working knowledge of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0. By “reading and practicing”, I was able to read through a few chapters of content and then go through some of the exercises in the book. The default data in the installed trial application is rather deficient. I would suggest creating a sample fictional company and then taking the time to populate the “company” with some default information, including price lists, products, customers, accounts, contacts, etc. It will help immensely in working through the various activities and tasks in the training – whatever format you choose.

Taking the Exam:

I’ve done some preliminary research on the exam itself. On the surface, the exam consists of 100 multiple choice questions. You have 50 minutes to complete the questions. The passing score is 70% or higher. There are a lot of mixed comments on the test itself. After reviewing some of the sample questions available throughout the web, I tend to agree. The questions are very picky, testing your knowledge of very tiny minutia around system navigation, processes and Microsoft nomenclature. It’s the kind of question where you read the four answers and all four of them look possibly correct.

With this said, there are a number of ways to get in some “practice” before the actual examination. Most of the training books, courses and materials I previously mentioned have practice questions. There are some organizations that offer sample questions and testing. Feedback on these has been fairly good, even if it helps familiarize you with the test taking methodology.

Once you are ready to sit for the exam, contact Prometrics for testing times and locations.

Good Luck!

______________________________________________________________________

Additional information can be found on the following websites:

Microsoft Dynamics Website

Microsoft Dynamics Training Website

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Training

Collection 8913: Applications in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0

Your First Interactive Look at Dynamics CRM 2011

Want to get a in-depth look at CRM 2011 before the public beta is available?  Sign up for XRM Virtual User Group's free “First Look” web conference on September 7, 2010 at 12:00 PM EST/9:00 PST.  You can register here: http://www.xrmvirtual.com/events/interactive_crm2011

“Join Senior Technical Product Manager Eric Boocock for a dive into CRM 2011 before the Beta. Learn about new features and opportunities for developers at the 90 minute session. Bring your questions! September 7 at 9am pst.”

del.icio.us Tags: Dynamics CRM 2011,Microsoft CRM,XRM Virtual User Group

When should I use a Marketing List in Dynamics CRM?

A common question when building a list of records in Microsoft Dynamics CRM is “should I use a view or a marketing list?”  This question doesn’t always have a straightforward answer, because there is some overlap in functionality, as you can see from the table below:

	Advanced Find / View	Marketing List
List of Contacts, Accounts or Leads	X	X
List of other entity records	X
Automatically refreshed list	X
List that is not automatically refreshed		X
Multiple-step logic/list composed using a variety of lookup, advanced find, and ad-hoc members		X
“Not” queries from related records		X
Quick Campaign	X	X
Campaign		X
Mail Merge	X	X
Bulk E-mail	X	X

A common misconception when doing mailing lists or direct e-mails is that you HAVE to use a marketing list.  This is not true—you can use either a marketing list or a view/advanced find.  The answer to the question will depend on the the nature of the list and what you want to do with it.  Here are the main differences:

1.  Entities:  Marketing lists can only include members from the account, contact, or lead entities.  Views/advanced find can include any entity, including custom entities.

2.  Auto refresh:  A view is automatically refreshed every time that you open it.  You can perform an advanced find, save the query, and the next time you select that view, you will see the latest data.  Marketing lists are not automatically refreshed.  This is by design.  Since marketing lists are used to maintain a list of subscribers for a mailing list or attendees for an event, you typically don’t want the members of the list dynamically changing.  Imagine if you had an annual conference attended by clients in a certain industry.  You built a marketing list for the 2010 event and invited the attendees.  If the list automatically refreshed, you could potentially have somebody show up on the list that wasn’t invited, or have someone fall off the list, if the industry on their record changed.  This would be problematic for the event planning staff.

That being said, in some situations it might be nice to have a marketing list automatically refresh.  This is not offered as out of the box functionality, but there are some solutions documented, such as Muhammad Ali Khan’s blog post using workflow to automatically refresh marketing lists.

3.  Multiple-step logic:  One of the key strengths of Marketing Lists is the ability to build a list using multiple queries or steps, or create a list that is based on an advanced find, and then add some other records to the list that are not part of the advanced find—for example, get all contacts who are named John, then add three Larry’s to the list, then remove everyone from the list who is in Michigan.  Say you have a newsletter that goes out to all of your clients, but you also want to add some additional recipients that are not clients to the list—Marketing lists can be built from an advanced find, then you can add additional records to the list in an ad-hoc manner. 

4.  “Not” queries from related entities:  One thing to keep in mind about Advanced Find, it is great at telling you what IS true, but not that effective at telling you what is NOT true, especially what is not true about related entity records.  For example, I could do an advanced find for all companies where City is not Chicago—that’s very straightforward; however, I can’t do an advanced find for all companies that have NOT ordered product X, or all companies where a related contact name is NOT “John.”  The reason is the way that “NOT” works with advanced find.  Say a company has ordered product X, product Y, and product Z.  If I do advanced find for companies where related product does not equal Product X, this company will still be returned, because it has order records for products that are NOT product X.

Marketing list’s capability to build a list based on multiple advanced finds can answer my “NOT” question.  I can build a marketing list, use advanced find to add all companies to the list, then use advanced find to remove companies from the marketing list where related product equals product X.  The resulting list will be a list of just companies that have not ordered product X.

5.  Campaigns:  If you want a list of companies or people to associate with a campaign, use a marketing list; however, Quick Campaign recipients can be either a view or a Marketing List.

del.icio.us Tags: Marketing Lists,Dynamics CRM,Microsoft CRM

CRM Pre-Filtered Reports and SSRS P1 Parameter Error

A few weeks ago, we upgraded some environments to SQL 2008 R2.  After that upgrade, we started to see a strange issue when uploading a report with pre-filtering to CRM.

The report will upload fine, but when you run the report, you get an error regarding parameter P1.

When you upload pre-filtered reports in CRM, CRM adds a parameter called P1 to the report, which is used in pre-filtering.  This parameter is a hidden parameter used behind the scenes by CRM.  It appears that since my upgrade to 2008 R2, the parameter is not being correctly set.  I’m not sure if this is a bug, or a quirk with this environment, but if you have a report that has this issue, I have a way to fix it.

The fix for affected reports

If you have reports that are returning this error, here’s how you can get them to work correctly:

1. Go to SQL Server Reports Manager.  This url is typically something like http://yoursqlserverurl/reports.  You will need to be logged in as a user that has Content Management permission in SSRS.
2. You will see a folder for each crm organization.  Click the folder for the affected organization.
3. If the folder is empty or says “there are no items to display,” click the “Details View” button on the right side.
4. You should now see a subfolder called “4.0.”  Click it.
5. In the 4.0 folder, you will see a list of the reports deployed in the selected organization.  You can use the search to search by report name.

6.  Hover your mouse by the desired report.  A yellow drop-down arrow will appear.  Click the arrow and select “Manage.”

 

7.  Go to the Parameters link on the left side of the Manage report form.  You will see a row for the P1 parameter.  Check the box for “Hide” to make the parameter hidden.

The report should work now.

del.icio.us Tags: SQL 2008 R2,Pre-filtereing,Microsoft Dynamics CRM

Getting Rid of the CRM Export to Excel Warning Message

When you export to Excel from CRM, when you open the exported spreadsheet in Excel, you will receive the following warning:

This warning is due to a security feature in Excel 2007 and greater that checks the contents of a file to make sure that they match the file extension.  Given that the CRM data is exported using XML and saved with an .xls format, Excel doesn’t think that the format of the file is correct.

While this is probably designed to prevent some legitimate security concerns, it winds up having the opposite effect for people who export frequently from Excel—since this message will be popping up for them frequently, they will be conditioned to always click “Yes,” and as a result be prone to allow more legitimate security warnings to be ignored.

There are two options for getting rid of this warning:

1.  Group Policy – Adam Vero at the “Getting IT Right” blog has a good post on how to globally suppress this warning using group policy.  http://blog.meteorit.co.uk/2010/07/01/annoying-file-format-warning-when-exporting-crm-records-to-excel/

2.  Per Computer – You can easily get rid of this warning using a simple registry change on your computer.  The following instruction are for Excel 2010.  If you have 2007, the only change would be the location of the registry folder will be …\Microsoft\OFFICE\12.0\EXCEL\SECURITY.  Normal warnings apply—don’t modify your registry unless you know what you are doing.

   1. Open your Registry (Start -> Run -> regedit.exe)
   2. Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\MICROSOFT\OFFICE\14.0\EXCEL\SECURITY
   3. Right click in the right window and choose New -> DWORD
   4. Type “ExtensionHardening” as the name (without the quotes)
   5. Verify that the data has the value “0″

 

del.icio.us Tags: Microsoft CRM,Excel,export warnings

CRM for Outlook Install Warns About Minimum IE Version

Occasionally I will see people with brand new PC’s who cannot install CRM for Outlook.  The installation will fail with an error that the PC does not meet the minimum required version of Internet Explorer.

In this case, this error does not make sense—the PC is new, running the latest version of Windows.  Obviously, it includes a version of Internet Explorer greater than v6.

In the cases where I’ve seen this error, it is usually a computer from a manufacturer such as HP.  These are fine computers, but they typically have a lot of “bloatware” installed, including some proprietary Internet Explorer plugins.  The HP Touchsmart 600, in this example, included a HP-specific version of the Windows Live Bing toolbar.  These add-ons can sometimes change the default settings of Internet Explorer, making it appear to the CRM for Outlook installer that the correct version of Internet Explorer is not present. 

If you have this error, the following process should fix it:

1. Uninstall or turn off any installed toolbars/IE Add-ins.   This even applies to other Microsoft add-ins, such as the Bing/Windows Live bar.
2. Reset Internet Explorer Settings.  Go Tools—>Internet Options—>Advanced Tab.  Under “Reset Internet Explorer Settings” click the “Reset” button.  Note—this will put IE in a new state—any “remembered” url’s or passwords will no longer be there.  Favorites will still be preserved.
3. CRM for Outlook should now install without issue.

Bonus tip—have you been using your computer for several years, and IE (or CRM specifically) is slowing down?  Resetting IE settings can help make your browser feel like new again.

del.icio.us Tags: Internet Explorer,CRM for Outlook,Windows 7,Internet Explorer Minimum version

Embedding CRM Pre-filtered Reports in CRM Iframes

Sometimes you want to enhance a form beyond the standard form components.  For example, you want to display a graph of related records, or show a custom block of text, or data from a different system, not stored in CRM.

One of the easiest way to do this is by displaying a SSRS report in an iframe.  There are several blogs that include instructions for doing this, but many are not done in a way that really works well in Dynamics CRM 4.0.  Most of the posts I’ve seen detail embedding a report URL directly from the SSRS server, not through the CRM Report Viewer.

While these approaches can work with CRM 4, they have several disadvantages:

1. They don’t take advantage of pre-filtering
2. If it is a report that you also run through the report menu, it requires that you maintain two versions of the same report (one in CRM, one External to crm).
3. Embedded reports are not available to IFD users (or on-prem users without direct access to reporting server)
4. Embedded reports are not available offline

I prefer to do things in a way that works well no matter how you access CRM—on premises, IFD, offline, etc.

Fortunately, it is possible to embed a report in a form iframe in a way that harnesses the standard CRM report viewer, and also harnesses crm reporting functionality, such as the CRM_URL parameter and pre-filtering.  Here’s how to do it:

1. Upload your pre-filtered report to CRM, just like you would for reports run via the CRM report menu, selecting the entity to which you want to relate the report
2. Add an iframe to the form that you want to embed the report.  In this example, I call it IFRAME_report.  Give it a URL like “about:blank.”
3. Run your report for a specific record.  Open a record from the desired entity, click the reports button.  Select “Run on Current Record” and select the desired report.

5.  When the report runs, copy the URL of the Internet explorer window.  It will look something like https://crmserver/crmreports/viewer/viewer.aspx?action=run&id=%7b315C371A-4693-DF11-A498-000C29F9FFEC%7d&context=records&recordstype=10007&records=%7bDE38FBCE-79D0-DE11-A9E1-000C29F9FFEC%7d&helpID=CPUH.rdl

You will notice that the URL contains two GUIDS.  The first(colored RED in the example) is the ID of the CRM report record, the second (colored GREEN in the example) is the ID of the record to which the report is pre-filtered.

6.  Using CRM onload jscript, change the URL of your iframe to the URL of the report, replacing the ID of the record with the ID of the record displaying the iframe.  Here’s a code snippet—replace the URL in the example with the url copied in step 5:

var newTarget = "/crmreports/viewer/viewer.aspx?action=run&id=%7b315C371A-4693-DF11-A498-000C29F9FFEC%7d&context=records&recordstype=10007&records=%7b" + crmForm.ObjectId.replace('{','').replace('}','') + "%7d&helpID=CPUH.rdl";
   crmForm.all.IFRAME_report.url = newTarget ;
   crmForm.all.IFRAME_report.src = newTarget ;

The result will be a report embedded in an Iframe which will be available to all CRM users, no matter their connection type.

del.icio.us Tags: Microsoft Dynamics CRM,CRM 4,Reports,prefiltering

Register for Customer Effective's 2010 User Conference

Customer Effective's third annual User Conference will take place October 13 - 15, 2010 at the beautiful, historic Westin Poinsett hotel in downtown Greenville, SC.

We're looking forward to another great conference full of engaging customer presentations, informational discussions from our MVP team and more! We're also excited to discuss the CRM 2011 Launch in our Microsoft Keynote Address.

We hope to see you in October. Space is limited, and registration is free!

Visit our website for more details and registration information.

Click here to Register now!

Contact and User Conflicts Resolved in Microsoft Dynamics CRM

In prior posts we have discussed conflicts that can happen when a contact and a user share the same e-mail address.  Traditionally, if the same email exists on a user and a contact record, it could cause problems when activities like e-mails were tracked in CRM.  Sometimes these issues were minor, such as the activity being connected to the contact record instead of the user, but other issues were more major—the most troubling one was when you tracked a meeting request that included the email address that was duplicated in CRM, sometimes when it synched back to outlook from CRM, it would resolve to the contact instead of the user, which would cause the appointment to be removed from the user’s outlook calendar—not good when it is an important meeting getting removed from your calendar so you forget about it.

As mentioned in an earlier post, Update Rollup 12 for Dynamics CRM fixes this issue. 

The way that the duplicate e-mail synch conflicts are resolved is by giving the user record top priority.  When resolving a tracked activity using the email address, CRM now first matches against the User records.  If it finds a match, it stops.

This is a great improvement and should make life easier in those cases where you need to have people as both contacts and users.

 

del.icio.us Tags: Users,contacts,Microsoft CRM,Dynamics CRM

Error in Custom UI XML – Hoover’s + Outlook 2010 + UR12

Be aware that there is a problem with the apostrophe in the Access Hoover’s menu when combined with Office 2010 and CRM UR12.

The apostrophe was in the isv.config entries for the Access Hoover's menus in CRM for Outlook- The application builds the menus for outlook and apparently it grabs menu names as it goes to use as IDs. – When it picked up “Hoover’s” – it attempted used that as a menu resource id and failed.

 

 

I did a search for "Hoover\'s" and for “Hoover’s” in the isv.config file and replaced with "Hoovers", reimported and everything works fine now.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM Named a Leader by Two Independent Research Firms

News Release from Microsoft

Microsoft Corp. today announced Microsoft Dynamics CRM has garnered recognition as a Leader from two leading independent research firms, Gartner Inc. and Forrester Research Inc. Forrester acknowledged Microsoft Dynamics CRM for offering a flexible customer service solution, earning a Leader position in The Forrester Wave™: CRM Suites Customer Service Solutions, Q3, 2010 (July 2010) report, while Gartner placed it as a Leader in the Magic Quadrant for Sales Force Automation (July 2010) report.

These acknowledgements follow recent placements for Microsoft Dynamics CRM among the Leaders in The Forrester Wave™: CRM Suites for Midsized Organizations, Q2 2010 (June 2010), The Forrester Wave™: CRM Suites for Large Organizations, Q2 2010 (June 2010) and the 2010 Magic Quadrant for CRM Customer Service Contact Centers.

"We provide a strong vision and a road map of ongoing innovation to help customers get the maximum return from their CRM investments," said Brad Wilson, general manager, Microsoft Dynamics CRM. "With the upcoming release of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011, customers will reach new levels of productivity and collaboration with a low total cost of ownership, and partners will unlock new opportunities with a single development environment for cloud-based and on-premises deployments."

Results From Gartner

Gartner's Magic Quadrant for Sales Force Automation evaluates vendors on their ability to execute and completeness of vision. Evaluation criteria weighed for each included product/service, overall viability, sales execution/pricing, customer experience and operations, and offering (product) strategy, business model, innovation and geographic strategy, respectively.

According to Gartner, "Vendors placed in the Leaders quadrant of Gartner's Sales Force Automation Magic Quadrant demonstrate a market-defining vision of how technology can help the top sales executives achieve business objectives. Leaders have the ability to execute against that vision through products, services and demonstrated solid business results in the form of revenue and earnings. Leaders have significant successful customer deployments in North America, EMEA and Asia/Pacific in a wide variety of vertical industries with multiple proof points above 500 users."

Results From Forrester Research

To assess the market of CRM suites customer service solutions software and see how vendors compare with one another, Forrester evaluated the customer service strengths and weaknesses of the top CRM suites vendor products against 196 criteria organized into three high-level categories: current offering, strategy and market presence. According to Forrester, vendors in the Leader category have both a strong product and strategy.

"Microsoft Dynamics CRM shines by offering customer service flexibility for large and midsized organizations," wrote William Band, vice president and principal analyst, and James Kobielus, senior analyst, Forrester Research, in the report. "It supports flexible options in deployment (on-premises, on-demand and partner-hosted deployments); how to pay (license, subscribe, finance); and how to use (Outlook client, browser, SharePoint site, other interfaces). Microsoft Dynamics CRM provides strong support for: phone agents; call center infrastructure; agent collaboration tools; knowledge base; customer data management; analytics; email response management; architecture and platform; business process and workflow tools; integration; security; and Web 2.0 tools."

The Gartner Sales Force Automation Magic Quadrant and The Forrester Wave™: CRM Suites Customer Service Solutions, Q3 2010 (July 2010) reports are available at http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/itanalyst/default.mspx. Readers who want to learn more about Microsoft Dynamics CRM should visit http://www.microsoft.com/dynamics, follow the Microsoft Dynamics CRM conversation at http://www.twitter.com/msdynamicscrm and engage with the community at http://www.twitter.com/msdyncomm.

Dynamics CRM 2011 Videos

Microsoft has released a video from the partner conference. I highly recommend watching the video, the presenters show demos of some of the new features and abilities.  With the software being released at the end of this year online, now is the time to start planning your conversion from CRM 3/4 to 2011.

Partner Conference Video (60 minutes): http://65.55.21.250/showcase/en/US/details/f9625bd7-7009-4bed-ab7a-c3fbb548d6ac 

For our more technical audience, there are three videos on Channel 9 that I encourage you to review.  The videos are one-on-ones with the program managers and technical staff at Microsoft on the CRM 2011 team, they walk through some of the new features and deep dive on some technical concepts.

• Platform Team Review
• http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/benriga/CRM-5-Chatting-with-the-platform-team/
• Deploying Line-Of-Business Solutions
• http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/benriga/CRM-5-Deploying-Line-Of-Business-Solutions/
• Secure Code on the Server
• http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/benriga/CRM-5--Secure-Code-on-the-Server/

Dynamic Drill-Through Using Logical Entity Names: Multiple Entities

In May our own Joel Lindstrom had a great blog on how to use Logical Entity Name in a dynamic drill-through. If you ever have a report that drills into more than one custom entity using a UNION statement, consider adding the entity name into each section of it.  For example, say you have two entities called new_widgets and new_doodads (both highly technical terms) which are in a UNION query.  In the SELECT statement, add a line ‘new_widget’ as entity_name and ‘new_doodad’ in the corresponding section of the UNION clause.

Once in the dataset, this can now be referenced in the JumpToUrl section of the report.  The key part here will be at the end of the JumpToURL as follows:

…& LogicalName= “ & Fields!entity_name.Value

as opposed to:

…& LogicalName= new_widget”

This will insure that if you have multiple entities in one report all of your links will work. 

Dynamic Jump To Report Method

If you’ve ever run across a situation where you would like a CRM report to jump to one or another based on the value of a certain field or parameter, you’ve no doubt run into a stumbling block. Does this scenario sound familiar?  You have a report where one field is “Color”, another is a location, and the other is count of widgets of that color.  You’re logic is such that if the Color field value is “Red” you want to jump to the “Red” report and if the color is “Blue” the “Blue” report.  Assume that you have a color parameter to restrict records to one color or another (and that this is a really great example).

In this scenario, create two columns, both having the Fields!Color.Value as their value.  In one of those columns have the Jump To report value be Red.rdl and the other Blue.rdl.  The trick here is to set the visibility of the columns to be conditional based on the color parameter.   So when the parameter is set to Red, the “Red” column will show jumping users to the proper report.

Certainly this has its limitations,  but in a pinch it might be just what the doctor ordered.

Custom Search Button in (Almost) 5 Letters

I had a requirement on a project a while back to implement a custom search button on a report.  As luck would have it, CRM MVP Mitch Milam wrote a great blog on the subject on the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Blog. That  blog was written in the context of modifying the ISV, and I was able to use it in a “button” of sorts on the report in question.  Do read that blog, it is well worth it.

Since then it occurred to me that there was another way as well to accomplish the same goal in reports using CRM report pre-filtering.  The following is a synopsis of the steps I took:

1. Create the child report.
   • This simple list report would have the basic fields you might have pulled into the Advanced Find.  Of course, be sure you give users the ability to drill through to the CRM record.
   • Here’s where the 5 letters come in:  use CRMAF_ as an alias to the Filtered Views (i.e. SELECT [whatever] FROM FilteredAccount as CRMAF_FilteredAccount) in your dataset.  This will cause the familiar CRM filter form to be invoked when the report is run.
   • Load the report to CRM, and remove it from the Reports area so it does not show in the Available Reports view.
   • Set the default filter as appropriate. Keep it simple: my direction was “Keep it so simple that no one has to think.” I liked that.
2. Create a “button” in your parent report by making a fancy looking text box with something to the effect of “[Entity] Search”
3. Set the Jump To Report on the button to the child report you created in step 1.

Enjoy.

Update: Optimized Dynamics CRM Organization Import

Several weeks ago, I posted about the new optimized CRM organization import.  To recap, when you want to make a copy of an existing CRM environment, such as when you have a production environment and want to set up a dev copy, you use the import organization functionality in the CRM Deployment Manager to “import the organization” from a copy of the MSCRM database.  The change, introduced in Update Rollup 8, adds a registry key called OptimizeOrgImport.  When this value is set to 1, the import process is much faster.

There is one consideration, which I discovered by accident this week.  I was importing a copy of an existing organization on the same CRM server and creating a copy of that organization for dev purposes; however, during the import process, it would fail with an error of

System.Data.SqlClient.SqlException: A row with a duplicate key cannot be added to the object ‘dbo.SystemUserOrganizations’-object with unique index ‘SystemUserOrganizations_CrmUserId’

It turns out that I should have read KB 977867 closer.  Under the “More Information” section, it says:

When you use the registry entry OptimizeOrgImport and have the value of this entry set to 1, you cannot import the same organization database more than one time. If you want to import the same organization database more than one time, you must do one of the following things:

• Set OptimizeOrgImport = 0 and use the normal import process.
• Delete the organization, and then import the organization again.

It appears that to increase import performance the optimization process does not change the id of organization when it creates the organization in the MSCRM_config database, so if you try to import a database for an organization that already exists in the MSCRM_config database for this deployment, the import will fail.  If you are importing to a CRM deployment on a different server, this is not an issue.

After changing OptimizeOrgImport to 0, the import succeeded.  Lesson learned—always read the “small print.”

del.icio.us Tags: Microsoft Dynamics CRM,import organization,deployment manager

Controlling The Size Of Your Microsoft CRM Database—Automatically Deleting Completed System Jobs

As we have posted previously, one thing to monitor is the size of the system job table in CRM. If you have many workflows or other system jobs, the AsynchronousBase table can grow very large.
Our friends at PowerObjects posted about some options to keep the CRM Asynchronousbase table from growing out of control recently on their blog http://www.powerobjects.com/blog/2010/07/15/completed-workflows-are-now-disappearing-in-microsoft-dynamics-crm-%E2%80%93-managing-the-size-of-the-asyncoperationbase-table/ .

Setting AsyncRemoveCompletedWorkflows to a value of 1 will automatically cause completed workflow instances to be deleted. AsyncRemoveCompletedJobs will remove successful job records that are not workflows, such as expansion tasks.

This is a big help in keeping your database size in check. Keep in mind that it only kicks in for new jobs after you make the change--if you have existing completed jobs or workflows you will have to clear them out.

del.icio.us Tags: Microsoft CRM,system jobs,asynchronoubase table

Update Rollup 12 for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0

Microsoft has released Update Rollup 12 for Microsoft Dynamics CRM.  Update Rollup 12 is a cumulative update including all updates in the previous 11 Update Rollups, as well as many new fixes.  As usual, we recommend only installing the Update Rollup if you are having any issues resolved by it. 

Read the knowledge base article here and you can download the update here.

Keep in mind that if you are updating the Outlook client, Update Rollup 7 is a prerequisite.  On the server, you do not have to have any prior updates installed to install UR 12.  This update includes some fixes for email tracking, as well as the pesky "disappearing appointment" phenomenon.

From the Knowledge Base article, here is the list of fixes unique to update rollup 12:

• The Rule Deployment Wizard now supports Microsoft Exchange 2010.
• When you try to use Set Regarding feature in an email message to set a campaign to link to the email message, you receive the following error message: "An error has occurred".
• Assume that you create an appointment in Microsoft Dynamics CRM. When you update the appointment in the Microsoft Dynamics CRM client for Outlook, a duplicate appointment is created unexpectedly in the Outlook calendar of the recipients of your appointment.
• When you edit entity attributes in Microsoft Dynamics CRM on a computer that is running Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 together with Windows Internet Explorer 8, the CPU usage is high.
• When you change column properties in the report Wizard in Microsoft Dynamics CRM, you receive a "script exception" error message in the Report Wizard. This problem occurs after you install Update Rollup 8 that contains the fix 10413 for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0.
• Email messages are not removed from the queue after the status of the email messages are programmatically set to Completed.
• When you import customizations, you receive an error message that indicates that a SQL exception has occurred. The error message resembles the following: "Exception: System.Data.SqlClient.SqlException: 'FilteredCampaignResponse' has fewer columns than were specified in the column list."
• After you add the SDKSerializeSendEmailAPI registry entry from the Microsoft knowledge base (KB) article 981053, email messages that are distributed through campaigns cannot be sent. For more information about hotfix 981053, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

  981053   A workflow rule that contains a step to send an e-mail message causes a deadlock when many instances of the workflow are executed at the same time in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0

• When you switch between subareas that were added by customizing a sitemap, Internet Explorer 8 or Internet Explorer 7 crashes.
• When you set the primary key of an entity by using a PreCreate plugin, the Duplicate Detection window returns a "Duplicate Found" error message if a duplicate record exists. The error message resembles the following:

  Error: Exception of type 'System.Web.HttpUnhandledException' was thrown.
  
  Error Message: An unhandled exception occurred during the execution of the current web request. Please review the stack trace for more information about the error and where it originated in the code.
  
  Error Details: Exception of type 'System.Web.HttpUnhandledException' was thrown.

• After appointments are tracked in Microsoft Dynamics CRM, the appointments dissapear from the Outlook calendar of the user in the Microsoft Dynamics CRM client for Outlook.
• By default, the Record a closed campaign response check box is selected in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0. After you apply update rollup 12,this check box will not be selected by default.
• The Quick Find feature is slow to perform searches because the query runs two times.
• When you view related data in Microsoft CRM Mobile, the data is not displayed if the data contains more than 30 characters.
• The Neglected Accounts report shows accounts that have recent activity.
• Duplicate records are not displayed when you edit records if the duplicate rule contains a lookup condition.
• Microsoft Dynamics CRM is now updated to be compatible with the update that is described in the following Microsoft Knowledge Base (KB) article: 981793 May 2010 cumulative time zone update for Windows operating systems 
• Assume that you customize the length of the address fields on a lead entity to a value that is greater than the default length. When you save the record, you receive an error message that resembles the following:

  Error: Exception has been thrown by the target of an invocation.
  
  Error Message: Exception has been thrown by the target of an invocation.
  
  Source File: Not available
  
  Line Number: Not available
  
  Request URL: URL
  
  Stack Trace Info: [SqlException: String or binary data would be truncated.The statement has been terminated.

• After you send email messages to a queue in Microsoft Dynamics CRM by using the POP3 protocol together with a text format, the "Unicode (UTF-8)" encoding option, and the MIME format that uses the "None" encoding text, the email activity content is not readable in the queue in Microsoft Dynamics CRM. 
• When you run a report that is created by using the Report Wizard, you receive the following error message: "Query execution failed for data set DSMain."
• When you install the Microsoft Dynamics CRM client for Outlook together with Microsoft Office 2010 on a computer, and then you apply Update Rollup 11, you notice that the ISV buttons and menus do not appear on the Office Ribbon.
• Outlook crashes after the CRM synchronization fails when you use the Czech version of the Microsoft Dynamics CRM client for Outlook.

Our Annual User Group Conference is October 13 - 15, 2010

Mark your calendars for this year's annual Customer Effective CRM User Conference. Hosted at the beautiful and historic Westin Poinsett in downtown Greenville, South Carolina, the 2010 Conference will once again highlight engaging customer presentations, break out sessions discussing tips and tricks of CRM from our MVP team and interesting keynote speakers.

Plus, you can learn more about the next big release of CRM:  CRM 2011

Watch the video from last year's conference and please be on the lookout for more information about registration. A link to our conference registration website will be available soon.

Quickly Create Custom Entities and Attributes in Dynamics CRM

The other day I had a large custom entity to create in Microsoft Dynamics CRM.  This entity had over 150 custom attributes of various types, and my brain and fingers were already starting to ache just thinking about manually creating this entity.  I had an excel spreadsheet with an extract from a legacy system that had each of these fields defined, and I was dreading typing them in manually.

Then I remembered a tool in my CRM tool chest that I rarely use—the  CRM Data Migration Manager.  If you read the Customer Effective blog regularly, you probably know that we typically use Scribe Insight for integrations and migrations.  The standard CRM import tools are good for simple data imports, but lack the depth of features to do updates or scheduled migrations.

However, there is one feature of the Data Migration Manager that doesn’t exist in any other import tool (as far as I know).  That’s the ability to create new entities or attributes.  And while you may use other tools, such as Scribe, for the actual data migration, this functionality of the DMM can make it a very useful tool to add to the mix. 

Using the Data Migration Manager I cut what otherwise would have taken and hour and a half down to 10-15 minutes.  My fingers thanked me.

So here is how you would use the CRM Data Migration Manager to create a new entity:

Step 1: Create a spreadsheet of your data.  The columns should be the database/schema names you want your attributes to have.  Include at least one row of sample data.

Step 2: Launch the Data Migration Manager and create a new mapping.

Step 3: Select “Create a custom Microsoft Dynamics CRM Entity.

Step 4: Define the Entity, including the name and the primary attribute.

Step 5: The wizard will guide you through creating the new attributes.  Select the field type for each field.

 

Step 6:  When finished, the Data Migration Manager will create the entity and attributes for you.

Ready to go!

del.icio.us Tags: Microsoft CRM,Dynamics CRM,time saving,create entity,Data Migration Manager

Microsoft CRM 4.0 database structure (to find your data and report on it)

Having become so familiar with the CRM database structure I almost take it for granted.  There is great value in how Microsoft designed and built the database and how it handles creation of new entities.  I found myself explaining the benefits of how the database is structured twice this week so I figured that warrants a post.
 
The CRM database is structured with views that prevent the need to query the tables directly.  Each entity in CRM consists of two tables in the database.  For example, the account entity consists of the AccountBase and AccountExtensionBase tables.  The AccountBase table contains the out of the box attributes and any custom attributes are in the AccountExtensionBase table.  The database has a view named Account that automatically joins those two tables so when querying for data you would query the view and use a query such as ‘select * from account’.  This view also has joins to related tables based on foreign key ids to retrieve the name text value of the related entity.  For instance, it contains the ownerid but also contains the owneridname which returns the name of the owner.  This can prove handy when creating reports.
Another view also exists named Filtered<entity name> (i.e. FilteredIncident).  This view has the same structure as the Incident view yet also applies the system security to that view.  This allows someone to write a report using the FilteredIncident view named ‘My Cases’ and distribute it to the entire organization.  When executed, the report is filtered to only show Cases that the executing user has access to.
Most tables and views in CRM bear the same name as it is labeled in CRM yet a system customizer can rename an entity.  Case is one object out of the box that has underlying tables with a different name.  The Incident tables and views represent the Case entity in CRM.  Any custom entites you create contain the customization prefix in the table and view name as defined in the CRM System Settings.  Once the new entity is created, the supporting tables and views as I defined above are automatically created for you and no additional work is needed on the database end.
If ever you are unable to locate the tables and views that support an entity, you can locate that in the Microsoft Dynamics CRM interface.  In CRM, click “Settings” in the Wunderbar, click “Customization” in the navigation links on the top left of the screen, and then select “Customize Entities”.  Find the entity you are interested in by viewing the “Display Name” column as that represents the name used in the user interface.  The “Name” column will show you what the underlying table/view name is in the database.
When you open an entity in the CRM customization area, you can locate the 1:N, N:1, and N:N relationships for that entity in the left navigation area.  It will display the name of the foreign key id field in the related entity if you are viewing a 1:N relationship for instance.
This post should give you an idea of the database structure in Microsoft Dynamics CRM and the value it provides for reporting or other purposes.

Customer Effective Joins Elite 2010 Microsoft Dynamics Inner Circle and President’s Club

Greenville, SC - - July 21, 2010 - - Customer Effective Inc., a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner focused on Microsoft Dynamics CRM, announces their appointment to the prestigious 2010 Inner Circle for Microsoft Dynamics and the President’s Club. The elite Inner Circle group includes only the most strategic Microsoft Dynamics partners from across the globe whose sales achievements rank them in the highest echelon of the Microsoft Dynamics global network of partners. Members of the Microsoft Dynamics Inner Circle have performed to a high standard of excellence by delivering valuable customer solutions that help organizations achieve increased success. The President’s Club award recognizes the top five percent of Microsoft value-added resellers worldwide. This marks Customer Effective’s fourth Inner Circle and fifth President’s Club achievement.

“We’re excited to recognize Customer Effective as a leader in the Microsoft Dynamics global partner community for promoting and delivering solutions that drive customer success,” said Doug Kennedy, vice president of Microsoft Dynamics Partners. “By providing the highest level of sales and innovation, customers can have absolute assurance they are dealing with the ‘best of the best’ when working with Customer Effective.”

This recognition of the Microsoft Dynamics Inner Circle and President’s Club came during the annual Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC) held recently in Washington, D.C. As Microsoft’s premier partner event, WPC provides the partner community with the opportunity to learn about Microsoft’s road map for the upcoming year, establish connections, share best practices, experience the latest product innovations and learn new skills.

“We've had another very good year,” said Scott Millwood, President of Customer Effective. “Not only was it a great year for our partnership with Microsoft and our customers but for us as a company. Being named to The President’s Club and Inner Circle again is a huge honor. Our entire team is grateful for the recognition and excited for what’s to come in 2011.”

About Customer Effective

Customer Effective, with headquarters in Greenville, South Carolina, is a leading innovator in relationship management solutions based on Microsoft Dynamics Customer Relationship Management (CRM). The company is a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, CRM Consultant and Solution Implementer having completed hundreds of Microsoft CRM implementations and development projects. Recent CRM and Microsoft awards include recognition as a 2010 Partner of the Year Finalist, 2009 Microsoft Dynamics Financial Services Partner of the Year, being named to the 2010 Microsoft Dynamics President’s Club, recipient of the 2010 Microsoft Dynamics Inner Circle distinction and a member of the 2008 Inc. 500 list. For more information, visit www.CustomerEffective.com.

WPC 2010 News Roundup

The Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC 2010) is happening in Washington DC this week.  In case you didn’t have a chance to attend, here’s some of the biggest news coming from WPC regarding Dynamics CRM:

• Introducing Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 – the next version of CRM (aka CRM 5 or CRM.Next) has officially been named Dynamics CRM 2011. 
• CRM Online has been expanded to 40 countries and 41 languages
• The public beta of CRM 2011 will be available in September.  You can register to be notified when the beta is available.
• See the keynote from Stephen Elop, President of Microsoft Business Division.  Start watching at about the 3 hour 12 minute point.
• Dynamics CRM has 23,000 customers with 1.4 million users
• CRM 2011 will be available Online by end of this year, on premises beginning of 2011.
• Microsoft is launching an online store of Dynamics CRM solutions that will be available in September 2010.  It will be a online marketplace of solutions that you can try and buy.
• New demo vpc for CRM 4 is available for partnersource and customersource members.  Includes the portal accelerators and a tool that caches pages to increase performance

Lots of exciting stuff—we’ll have more information about CRM 2011 in the next few weeks—stay tuned.

del.icio.us Tags: Dynamics CRM 2011,Microsoft CRM,WPC 2010

Scribe vs. Biztalk

When looking at data migration or integration options, a frequent question is why should we use Scribe instead of Biztalk? Scribe has created a very detailed and unbiased white paper that compares the two solutions and explains when you should use Scribe and when you should use Biztalk. Their point about the adapters is very good--the Biztalk adapters require a fair amount of coding to implement, while the Scribe adapters provide a more complete solution for data driven integrations.

You can read more about it and download thermite paper here: http://blog.scribesoft.com/2010/07/scribe-or-biztalk-you-ask.html