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Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Standalone Sandbox Using VirtualBox Part 2

Back to Part 1... Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Standalone on VirtualBox Part 1

2: Add the ASP.NET role service:

Install CRM 2011

Great! We are ready to finish and fulfill our goal.  From the host machine unmount the SQL Server 2008 R2 and mount the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Server 2011.  When you mount Microsoft Dynamics CRM Server 2011 from the host machine go to CRMDEMO2011 and run the splash.exe from the ‘D:’ drive.

1: Select: Install Microsoft Dynamics CRM Server

2: Toggle: Get update for Microsoft Dynamics (recommended)

3: Specify the SQL Server, in this guide we are saying it is CRMDEMO2011, the local machine:

4: Specify the Organizational Unit, the Active Directory root we prompted the server to:

5: Specify what CRM services will run as, use the CRM2011NET\CRMDEMOADMIN account:

6: Specify the database name:

7: Get Excited!  Here’s your first glimpse of the URL for your new CRM environment:

8: Blast off! Click install and wait with your http://crmdemo2011 url in the clipboard to paste that sucker into IE.  But wait…make sure you allow the Microsoft Dynamices CRM Reporting Extensions Setup to run.

Login to http://crmdemo2011 with the CRMDEMOADMIN user and gloat with pride:

All-in-all, this installation should only take 3 hours or less once you have all the components downloaded and in place.  The first time can take up to 6-8 hours because you have to download all the ISOs and get familiar with VirtualBox.  But, once you make a copy of the CRMDEMO2011.VDI at a point that you consider a starting point then you can start from there to cut out more time.  Which by the way…now is a good time to back up that CRMDEMO2011.VDI file.  Looking forward, another idea from here is using the VM created to install the SharePoint and Outlook components. 

Good Luck…

Back to Part 1... Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Standalone on VirtualBox Part 1

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Standalone Sandbox Using VirtualBox Part 1

One of the best approaches to learn CRM is to have a sandbox.  A lot of recommendations out there suggest having your IT administrator provide you with a CRM sandbox to play in.  That is fine and is surely a good idea, but personally creating a sandbox will certainly give you the satisfaction of getting your hands dirty and will give you a little respect with your colleagues.  So here we are going to look at getting a basic MS CRM 2011 up and running with Oracle’s VirtualBox.

So why VirtualBox?

1. It is free
2. Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 requires a 64-bit operating system to install
3. Microsoft does not provide a desktop virtual platform that supports 64-bit guest OS.  Microsoft's 64-bit virtual platform, Hyper-V, only runs on Windows server.  Even the 64-bit version of Windows Virtual PC will not support 64-bit guest operating systems.
4. VirtualBox can mount and run Hyper-V images, including the Microsoft provided demo VPC. (PartnerSource or Customersource login required).

So unless you have access to a server with Windows 2008 installed, VirtualBox is your best option for setting up a standalon virtual sandbox on your PC.  Note that when Windows 8 is released, Microsoft will support Hyper-V on the desktop, so our recommendation may change at that time.

The steps included in this post should be applicable to setting up a standalone sandbox in "virtually" any other virtualization platform. 

Performing the steps in order is very important to keep things easy.  Here are the brief steps we are going to perform:

• Create a VirtualBox Instance
• Install Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard 64-bit
• Promote server to  Active Directory domain controller
• Install SQL Server 2008 R2
• Install IIS and ASP.NET
• Install CRM 2011

This guide will enable us to create a brand new CRM environment within less than 3 hours, but there are a few prerequisites that you will want to have downloaded:

• Windows Server 2008 - Standard or Enterprise
• CRM 2011 Server Edition
• SQL Server 2008 R2 (x86, x64, ia64) - Standard or Enterprise
• Product Key for CRM 2011 Sever.  *IMPORTANT: A valid key is a must to finish the install.

Other tools needed:

• ISO mounting tool, this guide is using MagicDisc.  Use your own ISO mounting tool if you have one more familiar to you
• VirtualBox, which can be found at www.virtualbox.org

I am only going point out the installation steps necessary to get a very basic CRM 2011 environment up and running.  This means that if a step is not mentioned I used the default.   If you are interested in adding features please do so, as the scope here is just the bare bones.     

 

Create a VirtualBox Instance

*IMPORTANT: Hardware virtualization must be enabled in the BIOS.  This is an easy toggle and will not cause any issues to your system, but you will receive an error about VT-x/AMD-V and will not be able to boot Windows Server 2008 until this change is made.  The setting lingo varies from Bios to Bios but a common word in all will be ‘virtualization’, so look for that.

Create a new VM host; in this case CRMDEMO2011 is the name.  The defaults are fine for this example, but you may want to bump up the RAM if you are going to do some presenting or adding SharePoint, Outlook or Visual Studio.  I also strongly recommend that you bump up the disk space to a minimum of 40gigs if you are going to use SharePoint, Outlook or VisualStudio.  In any case, make sure you set the version of Windows to 8 (64 bit) or 2008 (64 bit).  Both work, but the ‘8’ version automatically sets the RAM higher which is probably better.

1: Create VM Host

 

2: Mount Windows Server 2008 R2 ISO

We are going to use our mounting software from our host machine and mount the Windows Server 2008 R2 there.  Make note of the drive that the mount is using, in this case ‘I:’.

 

3: Attach Drive with ISO to VM

The Windows Server 2008 R2 ISO is mapped on drive ‘I:’ from your host machine.  Attach the ISO by going to Settings -> Storage -> IDE Controller -> select Empty or create a new controller and map it to Host Drive ‘I:’ or the drive you used for the Windows Server 2008 R2 ISO.  When the VM starts the drive will be ‘D:’. 

Summary:  On host mount Windows Server 2008 R2 ISO on drive ‘I:’, on VM (CRMDEMO2011) the drive will be ‘D:’.

 

4: Start VM

Starting the VM with the Windows Server 2008 ISO attached to the ‘I:’ will start the install with ease because it is now a part of the boot sequence.

 

Install Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard 64-bit

Installing a new Windows Server 2008 R2 is pretty straight forward.  Go through all the defaults.  You will want to add your product key here if you have one.  You may want to allow all the updates to happen if you have a nice network connection.  Once that is all done, it is not a bad idea to back up your CRMDEMO2011.VDI file.  That way you have a nice blank server ready to go for future use.

Two things for VirtualBox:

1:  After you are done with the server install, go ahead and install the guest additions, so you can get a nice full screen:

 

2:  A very important VirtualBox command:  [RIGHT CTRL] +Delete = CTRL+ALT+DELETE for the VM…probably the only one you really need to know.  This will drive you nuts if you don’t know it…you will hate VitualBox if you don’t remember!

 

Promote Windows Server 2008 to Active Directory Domain Controller

This step is in my opinion the most daunting.  For many years I have be conditioned that installing a domain server is a one and done deal.  That two domain server on the same network is really bad.  Yes, having two or more domain controllers can be bad, but here we are going to set it up so we do not compromise our host network.  Unless you really know what you are doing, DO NOT mess around with the AD settings or the VM network settings, especially while on your corporate network without the guidance from your local neighborhood IT guru.  CRM requires a domain, and since we are going for a standalone installation, we have to promote the CRM server itself to the domain controller role.  Additionally, promoting the server before we install SQL helps avoid additional configuration steps as a result of the server’s name and user accounts changing.

Promoting a domain controller is done from the commandline by running:

c:\>dcpromo

Seven tweaks are necessary:

1: Toggle: Create a new domain in a new forest

 

2: Name our network: CRM2011NET.local

 

3: Change forest function level to: Windows Server 2008 R2

 

You may get:

 

Selecting “Yes, the computer will use an IP…” is fine and keeps you from having to look at network settings.

You may also get:

 

Select ‘Yes’

 

Put in a password and you are done creating an Active Directory Domain Server…Congratulations!  You will have to reboot after dcpromo has done its thing.  The Domain we created is CRM2011NET, we will want to log back into the server using that domain. 

4: Rename computer back to original name

Making the server a domain controller renames the computer to something weird, rename computer back to CRMDEMO2011 and reboot. 

5: Create domain users

Create a few domain users is done from the commandline by running:

c:\>dsac

Create at least these users:

1: CRM2011NET\CRMDEMOADMIN

2: CRM2011NET\CRMSQLADMIN

3: CRM2011NET\Sal.Salesman

4: CRM2011NET\Mark.Marketing

 

Put the users in the ‘Users’ CN:

 

Make the password the same for all users and make it so it never expires to make things easier:

 

6: Make CRMDEMOADMIN and CRMSQLADMIN the administrators of CRMDEMO2011

7: Logout/Login

*IMPORTANT: Logout out as CRM2011NET/Administrator and log back in as CRM2011NET/CRMDEMOADMIN.  Installing SQL and CRM as the domain administrator will cause strange installation errors.

 

Install SQL Server 2008 R2

1: Login to CRMDEMO2011 as CRM2011NET\CRMDEMOADMIN.

2: From the host machine unmount the Windows Server 2008 R2 and mount the SQL Server 2008 R2.  When you mount SQL Server R2 from the host machine go to CRMDEMO2011 and run the SETUP.EXE from the ‘D:’ drive.

3: Install a new instance of SQL with a minimum of the following components selected:

 

4: Set the service accounts to the CRMSQLADMIN user:

 

5: Add CRMSQLADMIN as an administrator:

 

 

Install IIS and ASP.NET

Installing IIS is accomplished by adding the Web server role to the server using the server management console. In addition to the IIS role we’ll need ASP.NET, which must be selected separately. Once these two things are selected, the installer will install them both simultaneously.  Starting the Server Manager can be started from the commandline:

C:\>ServerManager

1: Select Web Server (IIS) by selecting Roles -> Add Roles:

 

Continue... Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Standalone on VirtualBox Part 2

 

 

 

Entity Relationship Diagrams in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011

Visual representation of entity relationships and metadata can be very useful in a CRM project. Thankfully, Microsoft has provided pre-built Entity Relationship Diagrams (ERD) for the eleven of the most important out of the box entities in CRM2011. They are available here in Visio format.

You can also create ERDs for custom entities. The generator is buried deep inside of the SDK (…\sdk\samplecode\cs\metadata\diagram ). You will need Visual Studio and Visio 2010 to run the document generator.

1. First, open the above file path and open the file MetadataDiagram.csproj in Visual Studio.
2. Next, from the toolbar, click the Build Solution icon.
3. You could run the program now. However, it will map all of the entities, their attributes and their relationship to each other. This will take a very long time, but more importantly, it's complexity may render it useless to most people. What I have found useful it to map one entity at a time, or at the most two or three.
4. In order to draw one or more specific entities, click the debug tab, then enter the logical name in the Command line argument box. You can enter as many entities as you would like to map here. For instance, if you would like to map accounts, then simply enter "account". If you would like to map an custom entity then enter "new_entityname". If you would like to map the relationships between you custom entity and accounts, then enter "account new_entityname". Remember, that will map your new entity, accounts, and the relationships between them. If you want a map for accounts and another map for your custom entity, you will need to run the program twice.
5. To run the program, hit the Start Debugging button in the toolbar.
6. This will bring up a command prompt. It will ask for a CRM server and a port. It is very simply orgname.domainname.net (no https:, etc.) Then you enter your username and password just as you would if you were logging into CRM as a user.
7. The program will run (usually a few minutes) and create a Visio document in the path: (..sdk\samplecode\cs\metadata\diagram\bin\Debug ). The name of the file will be simply "account.vsd". It is important to note that if you use the program to create another account diagram, and there is already a file called "account.vsd" in the Debug file, the command prompt will issue an error and the document will not be created. It is a good best practice to move your finished files from the Debug folder as you finish them.


A sample of the output is below. This is for the entity 'sharepointsite' in ootb CRM.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Reporting Extension (SRS Data Connector) Installation Service Account Warning

The Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Reporting Extensions, previously known as the SRS Data Connector, will sometimes return an error message during installation that is intended to be a warning, not an error. The message that you see is ‘A Microsoft Dynamics CRM Server component is using the same account as the instance of SQL Server Reporting Services.’

There are several conditions which will provoke this message

· A Microsoft Dynamics CRM Server 2011 component is installed on the computer where Microsoft Dynamics CRM Connector for SQL Server Reporting Services Setup is being run.

· The SQL Server Reporting Services account is a member of the Active Directory SQLAccessGroup security group. This can occur when the Reporting Services is running under the same account as another Microsoft Dynamics CRM component.

· All Microsoft Dynamics CRM Server 2011 components, SQL Server, and Reporting Services are installed on a computer that is running Microsoft Windows Server Small Business Edition where Microsoft Dynamics CRM Connector for SQL Server Reporting Services Setup is being run.

· The SQL Server Reporting Services account is set as "Local Service."

To get around this error, follow the steps below. Once this is completed, you will still see the error message however the ‘Next’ button will be available and you can continue with the installation. This does require a registry setting change, so it is recommended that the registry be backed up PRIOR to making any changes. One thing to note before using this, if you change this key on your CRM server, any checks that are supposed to take place during the CRM installation will also be ignored. This should only be used with great care and turned off after the Reporting Extensions installation is completed. Failure to do so may result in checks being ignored during other installations and could have negative consequences.

1. Close the installer window

2. Find the MSCRM key in the HKLM\SOFTWARE\MICROSOFT directory

3. If the MSCRM key does not exist, create it in the HKLM\SOFTWARE\MICROSOFT directory

4. Once you have the key, create a new DWORD value named IgnoreChecks and set the value to 1

5. Launch the installer and follow its instructions. When you get to the environment checks the ‘Next’ button will be available.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Email Router Throws 5.7.1 Client Could Not be Authenticated When Sending Emails

I was working on a 2011 upgrade and came across an issue when running the Email Router on a Windows Server 2008 R2 machine. I installed the router with no issues, but when someone sent an email it failed. The following message was in the event viewer of the machine the router was installed on:

‘5.7.1 – Client could not be authenticated.’

During our troubleshooting, we found that the Email Router worked on a Windows Server 2008 machine with no Exchange authentication challenges. A Network Monitor trace confirmed the authentication challenge on the Windows Server 2008 R2 machine as an Exchange challenge. Research confirmed that Exchange 2007 was setup to accept anonymous users.

The solution to this was to set the authentication method to ‘Anonymous’ in the email router configuration manager. On the Windows Server 2008 machine, the authentication method was set to ‘Windows Authentication,’ however there is a conflict when sending authentication from a Windows Server 2008 R2 machine to an Exchange Server 2007 environment which is configured to accept anonymous users. It is also important to note that in this particular environment the Exchange server as well as the server with the Email Router are on the same network.

CRM 2011 Client Install Issue and .Net Framework 4

In my opinion, Microsoft has done a great job regarding the stability of the CRM 2011 client installation. We have successfully uninstalled CRM 4 client and installed the CRM 2011 client on 1000’s of client workstations with very few issues. On a recent new deployment of CRM 2011, we had one client out of seventy-five that would not install the client at all. 

The client install wizard appeared to be installing the client as expected bit at the end of the installation it would just fail (See part of error log below)

|   Info| Installing Microsoft Dynamics CRM for Outlook
16:35:37|   Info| Launching external process:
16:35:37|   Info|      CmdLine:  <msiexec /i "C:\Users\JVOORH~1\AppData\Local\Temp\MSCRM_{6EB7FE7E-8866-4581-8910-80AED84ECD94}\Client.msi" /q INSTALLLEVEL="3" INSTALLTYPE="INSTALL" SOURCEFOLDER="C:\Users\JVOORH~1\AppData\Local\Temp\MSCRM_{6EB7FE7E-8866-4581-8910-80AED84ECD94}" TARGETDIR="C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Dynamics CRM" INSTALLDIR="C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Dynamics CRM" /l+ "C:\Users\jvoorhees\AppData\Local\Microsoft\MSCRM\Logs\crm50clientmsi.log" LOGFILE="C:\Users\jvoorhees\AppData\Local\Microsoft\MSCRM\Logs\crm50clientmsi.log"    ALLOWRUN="1" REBOOT=ReallySuppress NOSELECTION=1>
16:35:37|   Info|   WorkingDir: <C:\Users\JVOORH~1\AppData\Local\Temp\MSCRM_{6EB7FE7E-8866-4581-8910-80AED84ECD94}>
16:35:39|   Info| Installation of Microsoft Dynamics CRM for Outlook failed. Exit code: 1603. Result: Fatal error during installation. 
16:35:39|   Info| Uninitializing COM.
16:35:39|   Info| Uninitialized COM.
16:35:39|   Info| Uninitializing COM.
16:35:39|   Info| Uninitialized COM.
16:35:39|   Info| === Setup bootstrap logging started 11/8/2011 4:35:39 PM ===
16:35:39|   Info| Bootstrap version: 5.0.9688.1533.
16:35:39|   Info| User: jvoorhees.
16:35:39|  Error| Installation of Microsoft Dynamics CRM for Outlook failed.

There was not a lot of detail to work with from the log. After trial and error, we discovered that repairing/re-installing the .Net Framework 4 client fixed the issue. Open up control panel, go to add/remove programs, highlight .Net Framework 4 pieces and click on uninstall/change.

Controlling Tabs and Sections with JScript in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011

The options for managing Microsoft Dynamics CRM forms dynamically has increased tremendously in CRM 2011 – we can now, more than ever, tailor the look of a form to the specific type of record displayed.

Here are 2 functions I use to manage the form at runtime to show or hide sections or tabs based on data in the form.

The first function, “toggleTabDisplayState” hides or shows a tab and can show it collapsed or expanded. Call the function by passing in the ‘name’ of the tab, desired ‘display state’ [either “expanded” or “collapsed”] and whether the tab should be visible [ true or false ].

The second function, “toggleSectionDisplayState” hides or shows a section by setting its isVisible attribute to [ true or false ].

In this Example, I’ve named the “Prospect” tab: “tabProspect” in the form configuration - and based on whether a (previously set) variable “typeProspect” is true or not, I want to hide or show this tab – and when it’s displayed, I want it expanded. – I also want to hide/show the Customer tab based on whether the record is for a prospect or not.

// If the 'Prospect type' == true, 
//    then Show and expand the Prospect tab and hide the Customer section
// Otherwise, 
//    Show the Customer Section and hide the Prospect Tab
if (typeProspect == true) {
    toggleTabDisplayState("tabProspect", "expanded", true);
    toggleTabDisplayState("sectionCustomer", false);

}
else {
    toggleTabDisplayState("tabProspect", "collapsed", false);
    toggleTabDisplayState("sectionCustomer", true);
}


function toggleTabDisplayState(tabName, tabDisplayState, tabIsVisible) {
    //Hide/Show and/or Expand/Collapse tabs     
    var tabs = Xrm.Page.ui.tabs.get();
    for (var i in tabs) {
        var tab = tabs[i];
        if (tab.getName() == tabName) {
            tab.setVisible(tabIsVisible);
            tab.setDisplayState(tabDisplayState);
        }
    }
}

function toggleSectionDisplayState(sectionName, sectionIsVisible) {
    //Hide or Show Sections 
    var tabs = Xrm.Page.ui.tabs.get();
    for (var i in tabs) {
        var tab = tabs[i];
        tab.sections.forEach(function (section, index) {
            if (section.getName() == sectionName) {
                section.setVisible(sectionIsVisible);
            }
        });
    }
}

CRM 2011 and Restoring the SSRS server

To make a long story short, if you aren't careful, bad things can happen when you lock down a CRM IIS server. There are many articles on the internet that cover this topic, but changes to IIS range from local security permissions to registry hacks. We learned the following details as a result of an IT department hardening IIS. The one item a local IT department did in this situation was to remove “Domain Users” from the local users group.

I wanted to validate the SSRS connector installation on a fresh SSRS box installation. After building the base Windows 2008 server, installing and configuring SSRS, I thought it would be pretty straight forward to reinstall the Microsoft CRM 2011 SSRS connector. I was surprised when I got an error message and then noticed that “no default reports” existed on the new SSRS server. It turns out that Microsoft Dynamics CRM stores information in the config database that indicates that the SQL Server Reporting Services connector was previously installed. In the end, this makes sense because if you edited a “default” CRM report, you would not want a new CRM installation to write over the top of it. Although, it would be nice if when you uninstalled the last SSRS server that the bit would be reset to the default value so when you reinstall the SSRS connector it would reinstall the reports.

Here is how we came to understand the details on how Microsoft Dynamics CRM tracks information related to SSRS reports being installed.

• After we rebuilt the SSRS server, we ran the SSRS connector install on the SSRS server and no reports were installed and I received a new error message
• Since this was a development environment, we uninstalled CRM (since our deployment was all on one box except for SSRS) and reinstalled it to the exiting configuration and org databases and still no reports. My theory was that there must be a flag in the DB that tells the install not to republish reports because of it being an “existing” installation. You would not want to overwrite any customizations that you might have made to an existing MS report.
• We also found an our old friend “publishreports.exe” still included as part of the CRM installation on the IIS web server and not the SSRS server. If you recall this utility allows you to republish all the standard reports back to your SSRS installation hosting your CRM reports in CRM version 3 and 4.

We opened up a case with Microsoft support, and they clarified how it works. It stores a flag in the “MSCRM_Config” database that prevents the install from redeploying the reports when the SSRS connector is reinstalled. The following screenshots were provided by Microsoft Support and our direct relationship with them (Thanks Arpita!)

In the MSCRM_CONFIG database the Organization table now includes a value called “AreReportsPublished.”  If this flag is flipped, the installation of the Microsoft CRM 2011 SSRS Data Connector will take no action.

The following are the steps to redeploy your reports:

1) Please check to verify that the flag has indeed been flipped (Value 1). The following SQL Statement should show you the info needed.  AreReportsPublished should be the first column returned for each record.

Use [MSCRM_CONFIG]

Select * From Organization

2) If the value is 1, run the following update script to reset the flag back to 0……Be sure to set the proper Unique Name for the customers Org

Use [MSCRM_CONFIG]

Update Organization set AreReportsPublished = 0 where UniqueName = 'CRM'

3) Once the AreReportsPublished value is confirmed to be 0, you can run a repair on the Data Connector and it should read that value and import and publish the CRM standard reports.

The other option you have is to redeploy the reports using the “publishreports.exe” here’s how…

On the CRM server (not the SSRS server) change to the tools folder under CRM directory and run “PublishReports.exe “NameOfYourOrg”

Hope it helps!

Scribe GP/Microsoft CRM 2011 Templates and CRM Online

I recently worked on integrating Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Online with a local deployment of MS Great Plains 10. While you might assume that this might be an easy task considering that Scribe has had the GP templates around for a while now, it presented some challenges stemming from the security around CRM 2011 online hosting. The native Scribe GP templates need adjustments to connect to CRM 2011 online.

Scribe pointed us to the following blog post that will help you get started. We won’t go into all the details covered in the posting but here are the key points that you will need to do in order to make this work.

• You will need two CRM online accounts for this modified process which means customers have to pay for additional user licenses.
  • One of the accounts needs to have the “isintegrationuser” set to 1. You need to create your own DTS to flip this value.
  • You will need to modify all DTS connection that point to CRM 2011 to use one of the accounts you created above. There is one exception so please review blog posting.
• You will have to modify the “publishers” associated with CRM 2011
• The steps related to installing and configuring “Order History Monitors & Views for Microsoft Dynamics CRM” will not work because you cannot create an ODBC connection to the CRM DB located in the cloud.

The ability to use the GP templates and CRM 2011 online is mentioned in the release notes.

Lesson learned: always read the release notes for Scribe templates (and any Microsoft Dynamics CRM updates). They include important information about system requirements, and can save you from making time-wasting mistakes.

Hope it helps!

CRM 2011 - Missing Ribbon Bar

An existing customer of ours, in the process of upgrading to CRM 2011, was testing an upgraded development organization against workstations that previously had the CRM 4 Outlook client installed on them. They encountered this strange behavior relating to the Outlook ribbon bar missing. This only happened on one of the desktop clients they were testing from. Initially they tried uninstall the CRM 2011 Outlook client and the ribbon bar would magically reappear.

The process that they were following:

• Uninstall CRM 4 Outlook client
• Install CRM 2011 Outlook Client
• Configure CRM 2011 Outlook Client
• Open Outlook

The workstation was Windows 7. I did not spend a lot of time troubleshooting because I found this MS KB article. In addition to that, we do know that there were some ribbon bar issues were introduced in earlier MS CRM 2011 releases. As a result of that we recommend doing the following process of for changing Outlook clients for CRM 2011.

We updated the client installation process as follows:

• Close Outlook
• Uninstall CRM 4 Outlook client
• Install CRM 2011 Outlook Client
• Install CRM 2011 Outlook Client rollup 3
• Configure CRM 2011 Outlook Client
• Open Outlook

Obviously, if that does not work the following KB article did fix their particular issues.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM Security - The "Append" and "Append To" Rights

Here’s an easy example to help remember the distinction between the Append and Append To Rights defined in CRM's Security Roles.

Consider the situation when a user needs to set the Parent Customer field on the Contact. Beyond the obvious ‘write’ permission on the contact, they also need the “Append” right for that Contact and the “Append To” right for the intended parent Account record.

For more information, Joel Lindstrom provided an explanation in this blog post. (http://blog.customereffective.com/blog/2009/11/microsoft-crm-append-vs-append-towhats-the-difference.html)

Gain and Secure Employee Buy-in to Your New CRM System

Most workers value tools provided by their organization that help them do their jobs better. Some covet a platform that will reduce their time spent on cumbersome, manual-intensive activities, keep them more organized, and make it easier to find data. Others desire a tool that allows them to spend more time with clients and prospects. For instance, if employees are convinced that a new CRM system can help them be more effective in their respective roles and enhance their efficiency, they will be more motivated and inclined to learn and incorporate it into their daily routine. However, if employees feel that the new CRM system will not increase their overall productivity, they will demonstrate a resistance to change and be reluctant to learn the new platform. New technology tools that come with steep learning curves and actually add extra time-consuming steps to already existing arduous tasks will certainly not be embraced by employees. Similarly, users will not be fond of a new CRM system that takes an extraordinarily long time to implement and that does not even provide the core functionality improvements requested and absolutely needed by the user base. As new users become frustrated and confused by the new system, they will spend more time complaining at the water cooler rather than working on mission critical tasks. The users’ growing disdain and lack of commitment to adopting the new CRM system can unfortunately become an enormous roadblock for a successful CRM implementation. Without employee buy-in, the gains achieved through the CRM implementation will be quite minimal and few and far between. The buy-in must come from all levels of the company, from upper management to power users to less frequent users of CRM.

After selecting a CRM solution, executive management must ignite a sense of excitement as the implementation project commences. In order to execute a smooth transition to the new CRM system, upper management must also demonstrate a steadfast commitment to completing the implementation on time, exude a passion for learning and mastering the system, and actually use it every day themselves. Management must not only be positive, supportive, and passionate about the CRM system, but also communicate early and often with the user base and explain why exactly the firm is embarking upon this CRM initiative. By clearly articulating the benefits of the CRM system and how it will help the firm and specific departments meet strategic business objectives, employees will recognize that their time invested in training and familiarizing themselves with the system will not be wasted. Upon hearing and experiencing how the CRM system is going to help their on the job performance and yield personal advantages, users will be more likely to embrace and support the implementation project. Frequent communication and extended training support are keys to boosting a firm’s adoption rates. It should be noted, though, that tactfully securing employee buy-in needs to occur well before UAT. Moreover, end-users should not be left alone to figure out the system on their own after UAT. They more than likely will need continued assistance and motivation as they become acclimated to the new system. To further accelerate adoption rates, executives and project champions must continue to engage users, offer encouragement, and share CRM success stories. Doing so will renew a sense of focus, urgency, and pride in leveraging the CRM system of choice across the user base.

If you are currently evaluating CRM systems and are clamoring for ways to help employees automate their marketing, sales, and service activities, then you should consider investing in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011. The familiar, intuitive Microsoft Office interface and tight integration with Outlook in CRM 2011 provides a better, personalized user experience, which will drive user adoption throughout your organization. The comprehensive solution suite of CRM 2011 offers flexible point-and-click customizations and deep configuration capabilities that can actually meet the needs of end-users. As employees come to trust and appreciate the robust, yet easy-to-learn functionality of CRM 2011, they will want to learn the system faster, utilize it more frequently, and share their knowledge with co-workers more often. By gaining user buy-in to CRM 2011, you will definitely increase not only user adoption, but also the firm’s overall ROI on its technology purchase.

Firms Can No Longer Afford to Ignore Adopting CRM as a Strategy

Research from Bain & Company indicates that as little as a 5% increase in client retention can provide companies with a 75% boost in profits. In today’s intensely competitive global marketplace, an increasing number of best-in-class firms utilize CRM to drive performance across the enterprise and retain and add clients. Over a decade ago, some viewed CRM as optional or a “nice-to-have.” Today, though, CRM is a strategic business differentiator and essential to the long-term growth and success of an organization. The cost of not investing in CRM is significant. Negative results include smaller profits per customer, flat or declining revenues, eroding market share, lower margins than industry peers, lower returns on poorly-targeted and executed marketing campaigns, higher costs to acquire new clients, longer sales cycles, missed cross-sell opportunities, declining customer satisfaction rates, higher client attrition rates, increased turnover of valuable employees, lower shareholder value, hindered employee productivity, and uninformed, error-prone, and untimely decision making.

Oddly enough, some companies are still hesitant to invest in CRM. Often, these non-CRM adopters are complacent due to past success and they still adhere to product and service-centric strategies and metrics. Michael Porter, a Harvard Business School Professor and one of the world’s renowned experts on strategy and competitive advantage, elaborates: “If all you're trying to do is essentially the same thing as your rivals, then it's unlikely that you'll be very successful. It's incredibly arrogant for a company to believe that it can deliver the same sort of product that its rivals do and actually do better for very long. That's especially true today, when the flow of information and capital is incredibly fast.” Merely relying on a stellar track record and a pristine reputation to produce referrals and new business may have some sort of payoff in the short-term, but it certainly will not lead to any long-term sustainable competitive advantage. Besides offering unique in-demand products and solutions, companies must differentiate themselves by embracing a client-centric focus and implementing CRM throughout all levels of the organization.

Other reasons commonly cited for a reluctance to adopt a CRM strategy and utilize a CRM system include conflicting and more pressing IT priorities, budgetary constraints, or preferences for home-grown proprietary solutions. In other situations, lack of consideration for CRM may derive from a misunderstanding of what CRM entails. CRM is so much more than managing contact records and address books. It is about focusing on customers, building relationships, and capturing and tracking real-time data across multiple channels to better understand client needs and preferences so that they keep returning. Furthermore, CRM involves transforming and streamlining business processes to generate lasting client value, retain and satisfy more clients, and ultimately grow revenues. That being said, companies can no longer afford to ignore implementing a CRM strategy and investing in a leading-edge CRM system, such as Microsoft Dynamics CRM. IT initiatives must be re-prioritized and budgets must be reallocated to include room for CRM. Core legacy systems are no longer viable. They cannot integrate with other core systems, they are not scalable, they cannot grow with your business, they cannot provide real-time information, and they cannot push data to multiple electronic devices. Firms delaying CRM strategic investments will continue to lag and lose ground to industry leaders.

Lastly, firms in the process or in the need of establishing a CRM vision can benefit by watching this brief four minute video produced by Software Advice entitled “What is the current state of the CRM software market,” which is an executive interview with Brad Wilson, Microsoft Dynamics CRM General Manager. As always, Customer Effective can help assess your organization’s readiness for CRM and prepare you for a successful Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 implementation that meets or exceeds time and budget targets.

Best Practices for CRM Environments

At the 2010 CRMUG Summit at the end of October, I lead a session with Chris Condron from FM Global called “Best Practices for CRM Environments.” 

During this session we covered best practices for CRM administrators to keep a CRM environment running smoothly (and by extension, keep users happy).

• Automation—The best system administration is automatic.  By automating system administration processes, you guarantee consistently repeatable results.  Some of the areas that should be automated include environmental refreshes, configuration deployments, and client installations and updates.
• Sandboxing development—Some frequent CRM deployment issues happen when there isn’t a clear distinction between dev and production.  A best practice that can avoid these issues is by sandboxing dev in a separate environment from your UAT/Production environments. 
• Source control—CRM is a very agile, customizable system; however, it is still important to apply standards of good source control practices to your configuration changes.
• Performance and sharing—Sharing is a very powerful tool for your CRM security strategy; however, if sharing is not properly implemented, it can cause performance degradation.   The CRM database Primary Object Access table is used by crm to record privileges for each record shared with a user or a team.  If this table gets too large, performance of system views and searching can be impacted.  If you are sharing a large number of records, team sharing is recommended (instead of sharing with individual users), as it reduces the number of records in the POA table.
• Backup—Disasters happen.  Having a good backup strategy is vital—knowing how often to back up, and what components to back up is the most critical component in disaster recovery.

Chris and I  will be presenting an encore presentation of this session on 12/9/2010 at 1:30 PM ET.  If you are not currently a member of the CRMUG, you can find out more at www.crmug.com.

del.icio.us Tags: CRM Best Practices,CRMUG,encore presentation.

CRM Update Rollups and Hotfixes and Updates That Must Be Enabled or Configured Manually

You are probably aware that approximately every 8 weeks Microsoft releases an Update Rollup, a cumulative set of updates and fixes. 

When deploying an Update Rollup, it’s important to realize that update rollups include two categories of updates:

1. Bug fixes—these are fixes to issues where CRM is not working as designed, and they are applied automatically when you install the update rollup.

2. Design changes—these are updates where CRM is working by design, but Microsoft has made a change in the way CRM works. For example, there were recently some updates that changed how CRM handles housekeeping of completed system jobs. Design changes require a manual change on the CRM server, typically a registry change, to enable the update, since Microsoft doesn’t want to change the system design for users who expect it to work the way it was originally designed.

The changes that require a registry change to enable are included in knowledge base article for the update rollup under the section "Hotfixes and updates that you have to enable or configure manually.”

This is why it’s important to read the knowledge base articles associated with CRM update rollups before you roll them out. Read through the changes included. I only make the changes that require registry changes if the fix addresses an issue that I’m seeing in my environment. Making changes that fix issues that you are not experiencing can have unintended side effects. It’s ok to pick and choose which ones you enable.

This is also why, if you read a blog or hear somebody from Microsoft say “Rollup X fixes that problem,” don’t automatically assume that the problem is fixed because you have installed the update. Read the small print—there may be additional steps required to enable the change.

 

del.icio.us Tags: CRM,update rollup,best practices

Improving CRM Performance by Setting the Preferred Domain Controller

The other day we helped one of our customers bring their production CRM environment back online. Earlier in the week, they lost one of their Microsoft Active Directory domain controllers. When the controller went down, users could no longer access CRM. All users were getting the error message below when trying to access CRM.

Server Error in '/' Application.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The server is not operational.

Description: 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.
Exception Details: System.Runtime.InteropServices.COMException: The server is not operational.

We were able to recover from the failure of the Domain Controller by setting the “PreferredDc” key to the HKLM\Software\Microsoft\MSCRM registry hive. This key sets where CRM goes first to get security information for user requests. 

Before setting this value, it is important to remember that if you lose the domain controller specified in the PreferredDC registry key, CRM performance may be impacted; however, if you are having some performance issues or weird conditions related to authentication, you might want to give it a try.

For implementations that have huge MS infrastructures and many users and security requests, they could spin up an additional DC and then point CRM to that domain controller. This way users and security requests would have a dedicated DC to handle CRM authentication requests. The following link references the KB article from MS.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/954811

Additional notes:

After adding the key you will need to reboot your server.

You may want to take a look at what domain controller CRM is sending user security requests to, and which DC is responding. Example(s): If you have a large exchange environment, you might not want to send CRM requests to the same domain controllers where the exchange servers are sending their requests. Or if you have a Windows 2008 AD infrastructure with read-only domain controllers, you may want to see if CRM is sending requests to them and try sending them to a read-write domain controller using this key.

 

Increasing CRM User Adoption

Implementing a new Microsoft Dynamics CRM system and strategy will most likely modify the way employees work, which inevitably will lead to some users unfortunately resisting change. After all, it is human nature for employees to initially not want to modify a routine or procedure that they are currently comfortable with doing and that has met expectations in the past. The fact that some users may be slow to embrace Microsoft Dynamics CRM poses a challenge, as firms want to maximize their return on investment in CRM as quickly as possible. In order to increase Microsoft Dynamics CRM user adoption and overcome those resistant to change, companies must find ways to motivate and actively engage the user base.

For all Microsoft Dynamics CRM deployments, firms of all sizes should have an Executive Steering Committee with a designated Project Sponsor. As the firm’s CRM champion, the Project Sponsor must be readily available to support and encourage new Microsoft Dynamics CRM users as they become acclimated to their new system. The firm’s CRM strategy should be well-defined prior to the implementation and often communicated to its users. It is crucial that the executives emphasize that the Microsoft Dynamics CRM application will enhance the users’ productivity, save them time, and optimize their interactions with all stakeholders, from clients to partners to suppliers to prospects. It is also important to clearly articulate the benefits that the solution brings to the organization and how it will help the firm and each individual user meet concrete short-term and long-term goals. In order to set the right expectations, all departments should be informed of their specific roles during the implementation and as users of the system. Workflows that may have to be adjusted should be identified and conveyed to the appropriate functional units. The Executive Steering Committee should also relay to the users which Key Performance Indicators will be tracked and reported in Microsoft Dynamics CRM in order to instill more accountability and establish a new higher standard of excellence. Additionally, the Steering Committee should always provide users across the organization with brief updates on the progress of the CRM implementation milestones. Lastly, it is highly recommended that a detailed training plan be devised and shared with the users well in advance of the actual training dates.

To help facilitate a smooth implementation and increase user adoption, Project Sponsors must advocate that CRM is so much more than just a software application. It is an ongoing strategic initiative that goes well beyond the initial purchase and roll-out. In order for Microsoft Dynamics CRM adoption to increase more rapidly, it is crucial for Project Sponsors to 1) reiterate and remind the users of the firm’s strategic vision and commitment to CRM, 2) provide users with recurring updates on the implementation timelines, 3) seriously listen to user feedback and suggestions, and 4) provide users with thorough and ongoing training.

Customer Effective can certainly tailor an extensive training program to meet your unique needs and increase your CRM user adoption. We can lead and assist with the training of end-users to help them use Microsoft Dynamics CRM more proficiently and consistently.

Development Environment for MS Dynamics CRM Online Customers?

So I came across a situation this week that I was not sure how to handle.  I have a client that has a Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online solution.  They are contracting our organization to help them develop and configure some additional functionality.  So the question came up:  “Where do we do the development work?”  I realized I wasn’t exactly sure of the answer.  - so I decided to go find out.

Traditionally, when medium-to-large organizations are implementing any sort of new technology or application, there are multiple types of environments.  These include, but are not limited to the following:

• Development Environment
• Test Environment
• Production Environment

As the names imply, each environment is reserved for a particular type of activity in the context of a large system implementation.  Management cringes at the idea of developers “free-wheeling” around on production servers – hence the use of “development” environments whereby programmers and technical consultants build out their solutions.  Similarly, Test Environments are usually “playgrounds”, reserved for User Acceptance Testing (UAT) – otherwise known as “Scripting”.  Users can test-drive the application without repercussions from errors or problems encountered while working through pre-defined test scripts.

So with these concepts in mind, let’s circle back to the original question for my MS Dynamics CRM Online customer who wants to do development.  “Where do they do development work?”  There are a couple of options here.  I will go through each of them and provide a few details around each:

• Buy Another Online Account:  The customer always has the option of buying another “temporary” account to conduct their development and/or testing.
• Rent a Hosted Server:  There are a number of organizations that offer what is essentially “server leasing”.  This can be a dedicated or shared server.  In this example, MS Dynamics would be installed on the server.  The developers would then do their testing on this server "(“box”) and the export the configuration when finished.
• Request a Sandbox/Demo Subscription:    After contacting the Microsoft Regional Sales Manager for my client, another option is that my client can open a new 30-Day Trial Subscription.  This type of subscription can be found here.  The Sales Manager is going to extend this to a 6-Month Pilot Subscription, which should be plenty of time for the planned configuration.

Out of the options above, in my opinion, there’s not a “correct answer”.  - As it largely depends on the type of project / configuration changes that the organization is looking to implement.  Larger-scaled implementations will command a more structured approach.  More simplistic implementations may allow for a more nimble team that only needs a sandbox environment for a brief period of time. 

One other point of consideration is the current production system data and configuration.  This will be handled as well, with assistance from Microsoft.  We’ll import the customizations, after exporting to a .XML file.  Our Microsoft Sales Manager is going to submit a support ticket in order to get the existing data migrated over to our new Pilot Subscription.  Shortly thereafter, we should be in a good position to begin our new configurations!

Here are a few links to good information that I found as I researched this subject:

How to Differentiate Your CRM Environments

Setting Up a Mirror Production Environment

Good luck with your MS Dynamics CRM Online projects!

Is 13 the lucky number?

Microsoft has released Update Rollup 13 for Dynamics CRM 4.0 today.  This is the latest cumulative update for Microsoft Dynamics CRM, and includes all fixes in Update Rollup 1-12.

This update fixes some of the biggest known issues with using CRM with the new Internet Explorer 9 beta, including jscript errors when creating accounts or other records.  This means that you can now start to use the great IE9 beta. I would caution to not run it on a production PC, since it is a beta.

We have seen some environments with Update Rollup 11-12 have errors when adding members to Marketing List.  This fix is included in Update Rollup 13.  I tested on an environment that had the issue with Update Rollup 11, and it worked after installing UR 13.

• You can download Update Rollup 13 here
• You can read the knowledge base article here
• You can read the official CRM Team blog announcement here

The following is the full list of new fixes included in Update Rollup 13:

Hotfixes and updates that were released as individual fixes

Update Rollup 13 for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 contains the following hotfixes and updates that were released as individual fixes:

• 2306930 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2306930/ ) "System.Data.SqlClient.SqlException: Subquery returned more than 1 value" error message when you try to use the Advanced Find option to add members to a marketing list in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0

• 2387536 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2387536/ ) You experience high CPU usage and high memory usage when lots of notifications are generated in a short time on the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 server

• 2306918 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2306918/ ) You experience slow performance when you move to views that include custom attributes in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0

• 2346217 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2346217/ ) Outlook crashes when you finish a mail merge process by using the Edit Individual Documents option in the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 client for Outlook

• 2385412 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2385412/ ) You are prompted to log on unexpectedly when you try to create a new record from a lookup form in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0

• 2406746 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2406746/ ) An IRM-protected email message is promoted to an email activity in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 unexpectedly

• 2308072 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2308072/ ) Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 E-mail Router cannot resume to process email messages after Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 E-mail Router encounters an issue

Issues that were not previously documented in a Knowledge Base article

Update Rollup 13 for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 resolves the following issues that were not previously documented in a Knowledge Base article:

• You receive an error message when you set a value in the Duration field of a record in the Arabic version of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0.
• The Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 client for Microsoft Office Outlook downloads notification events for all organizations instead of dowload notifications only for the configured organization. Therefore, you experience high CPU usage and high memory usage.
• When you try to reopen an Opportunity entity, you do not have the rights to complete the process unexpectedly. Additionally, the value in the ActualRevenue field and the value in the ActualCloseDate field are reset to a null value even though the opportunity is not reopened.
• If you enable the Duplicate Detection feature for entities that you try to import to Microsoft Dynamics CRM, you cannot use the Import Data feature to import the entities. This problem occurs if the entities contain lookup attributes.
• The deletion service cannot delete records successfully because of the inefficient queries in the CleanupInactiveWorkflowAssemblies stored procedure.
• When you run a duplicate detection job, the Potential duplicate records grid displays incorrect data.
• Consider the following scenario:
  • You receive an e-mail message from a router that uses a POP3 e-mail account.
  • The e-mail message contains an attachment that uses the UTF-8 encoding.
  In this scenario, the attachment shows invalid characters.
• When you import an organization to Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0, Deployment Manager crashes. This problem occurs on computers that run the 64-bit version of Windows Server 2008 or that run the 64-bit version of Windows Server 2008 R2.
• When you change the privileges on a security role, the date in the Last Modified On field is not updated.
• You cannot run the Configuration Wizard in the Microsoft Dynamics CRM client for Microsoft Office Outlook with Offline Access if the user account contains an apostrophe (').
• When the Microsoft Dynamics CRM E-mail Router processes e-mail messages from the Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 mailboxes, the current end date is incorrect.
• The Microsoft Dynamics CRM E-mail Router does not track the Out of Office (OOF) e-mail messages.
• Emails receive a duplicate tracking token when you create the emails from a workflow.
• Assume that you run the Beta version of Internet Explorer 9. When you try to create an account, you receive a script error.
• Assume that you run the Beta version of Internet Explorer 9. When you run the Print Preview function, you cannot select the All records on all pages option in the Print List dialog box.

del.icio.us Tags: Dynamics CRM 4.0,Microsoft CRM,Update Rollup 13,Marketing Lists

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.

 

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.

Marketing Effectiveness with Microsoft CRM

Whether your company has a mature CRM program fostering growth and managing relationships or your company has recently decided to add a CRM solution to support your business model, we are finding that customers are starting to increase their focus on marketing capabilities.  Microsoft CRM provides users with a great starter set of tools for everything from managing marketing campaigns, to building dynamic marketing lists, to tracking and analyzing the productivity of your efforts.  I am not going to write about the individual feature sets within Microsoft CRM for marketing, but instead I am going to focus on some guided stages to ensure marketing success when coupled with an effective marketing management solution.

 

At their basic cores, Marketing and Business Development, work to ensure that your brand awareness is high, prospects and customers are educated on your offerings and your sales teams have a steady flow of potential business to win.  Marketing departments work to cover as many customer touch points as possible - this often includes outbound marketing efforts like email marketing, direct mail, print or television ads, social media communications and trade show attendance.  All of these activities are meant to drive customer interaction to your company –through your website, an inbound sales phone number or a social media forum. The vast majority of these touches are designed to gather information about potential revenue targets.  Another evolving area of marketing is social media and its impact on brand awareness management.  This topic in and of itself is a rather complex and ever evolving set of processes to be discussed later.

 

The success of most marketing efforts is based on an individual interaction’s ability to achieve an end goal.  For example, in an email marketing effort, the end goal may simply be to inform your potential customers about your brand or introduce a newer, better version of a legacy product to your existing customer base.  In the example of the new product introduction, there are many steps to this process.  We will walk through the business processes to manage this type of a campaign while mindfully visiting a successful CRM roadmap for marketing success.

 

Step 1 - Determine the Marketing Effort

 

Before you do anything in any CRM application, you need to understand your marketing effort and the desired goal or direction.  This likely includes the scope of the effort, budget, start and end dates, expected response or success measurement and who is the target.  In Microsoft CRM, the out-of-the-box Campaign Management functionality is a good place to start.  You can find numerous articles and posts on how this functionality works in Microsoft CRM.  Microsoft CRM is a great tool, out of the box, to track these efforts - including strategic direction meetings to content task definition, ownership and review.

 

While Planning Tasks allow you to track, manage and maintain the campaign direction and planning execution, Campaign Activities outline the tactical execution of the marketing campaign.  These activities include email communication execution and scheduling phone calls for account managers.  Again, there are numerous places to understand the unique uses for each of these items.  One key component to marketing campaigns is marketing lists.  All of the time spent within the organization to build and maintain your CRM database comes into play at this point.  The Advanced Find functionality is a key component of marketing list creation and administration.  Be sure to spend time working with and understanding the intricacies of Advanced Find and the subsequent marketing lists.  These skills are required to communicate with your target audience whether that is through email, direct mail or voice.

 

One additional item to take into account when planning your campaign relates to effectiveness.  It is important to spend time documenting what will constitute a successful campaign.  Be sure to address success metrics like response rate, budget, leads cost versus pull through or many other analytical items.  You should ideally put yourself in the position to know if a campaign has been successful.  If you have expectations that an email marketing campaign is going to have a 15% response rate, be sure to capture that metric up front.  You have a lead generation marketing campaign that targets a specific set of unqualified suspect records in your CRM database.  It is important to know the source campaign of an opportunity (pull through from the lead to a qualified sales opportunity).  Be sure to differentiate lead or contact record source campaign tracking for a lead versus the pull through of a lead to an actual sales opportunity.

 

Once you have identified your marketing efforts, campaign tactical steps, target audience and success metrics, you are ready to launch your campaign.  The basics of marketing management are achieved with the out-of-the box functionality within Microsoft CRM.  You can extend the information you are capturing at the various points, which is not a difficult extension to perform.  In the next article, the topics will include different integration options to bolster your Microsoft CRM marketing management - like email marketing, social media and web analytics.

Dynamics CRM 4.0 and Exchange OnLine

Several people have asked me recently if Dynamics CRM 4.0 will work with Exchange Online, Microsoft's new hosted version of Exchange 2010.  It seems like many companies are considering outsourcing Exchange to Microsoft, which to me sounds like a great idea.

The answer to the question of compatibility with Microsoft Dynamics CRM is "yes!"

As of the Nov. 2009 R4/Update Rollup 7 Email Router, Exchange Online is now an option.  The CRM team achieved this by changing the e-mail router to use exchange web services for sending and receiving emails--so in effect, they have totally changed what is happening under the hood while preserving the functionality and the user experience.

This means that you can have full email sending and tracking capabilities using CRM with Exchange Online, including forwarding in-box or workflow emails sent using the email router.

Some small considerations:

1.  You can't have CRM E-mail routher configured to use both on premises Exchange and Exchange OnLine.  You have to use one or the other
2. Exchange Online doesn't send emails AS another user, it sends them ON BEHALF OF another user--what this means is that emails like workflow generated emails where an administrator sends an email as a different user would appear differently than they do with on premised Exchange--they would say "Mary Jones on behalf of John Smith."  Microsoft says that if you want to enable sending as other users with Exchange Online, you can, but it requires you to log a support call.

See Configure Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online E-mail Router with Exchange Online for details on setting up the E-mail router with hosted Exchange.  While this refers to Crm Online Email Router, just about everything is the same for on premises deployments of CRM connecting to Exchange Online.

Separate Server Roles and Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0

JUNE 2011 Author update:  When this post was written, there was a limitation in CRM 4.0 that prevented the asynchronous service from being run on multiple servers in a Dynamics CRM 4.0 implementation.  While the approach recommended in this post was a good recommendation at the time, the reader should be aware that subsequent Update Rollups have resolved conflicts preventing the asynchronous service from running on multiple servers.  I would recommend that if you want to scale your deployment to multiple servers, consider using a network load balanced cluster with the asynchronous service running on both nodes.  This will provide improved performance for users as well as high availability for failover.

 

ORIGINAL POST--MAY 2010  

One of the choices  when deploying Microsoft Dynamics 4.0 is whether or not to separate server roles.

 

When you install Dynamics CRM on a server, the application layer (web server, CRM application) and the platform layer (asynchronous service, discovery service, sdk) run on the same server. 

 

There are several reasons that you would want to separate server roles.  For example, if you have a heavy quantity of asynchronous activity, such as imports, workflows or plugins, you don't want to affect availability of the application, and you don't want asynchronous operations to have a long backlog and slow down the amount of time it takes for new asynchronous operations to be processed.

 

Traditional Approach

 

The traditional way to separating server roles with Dynamics CRM 4.0 Enterprise was to select the separate server roles option when installing.  This gives you the option to install the roles that you want on a server, so you can have one server be the application role, and have another be the platform role, for example.

 

Complexity

 

Before you do this, you should be aware that going with the separate server roles may introduce some complexity into your environment.  When everything runs on one server, everything uses the same server URL; however, if the platform role is separated,  things that hit the discovery service, such as the outlook client, email router, and custom code will need to hit the URL of the platform server, not the application server URL, and having two different addresses may add some confusion for certain users.  If you elect to deploy your environment Internet facing, or IFD, so you have CRM available to people not on your network, there is a lot of complexity and frankly this option is not very well documented in the IFD scenarios documentation.

 

IFD and Separate Server Roles

 

if you have separate server roles, you will need to expose both the app server website and the platform server website externally.  You will need to run the ifd tool on both the application and the platform server--this is not documented in the ifd scenarios document, but is required if you want external users to be able to configure Outlook clients in ifd mode, You will need to have ssl certificates on both the application and platform server, which will cost you extra.  The IFD scenarios document doesn't say this, but you will have to have your platform server URL be organization specific--if your CRM URL is myorg, for example, you will need the URL to be something like  myorg.platform.company.com.  again, not documented, but CRM will expect the org name to be in the Url when you configure the Outlook client.  Users will have to configure their outlook clients using the platform server URL, not the CRM application URL.  The reason for that is the outlook client connects to the discovery service during configuration, and the discovery service is part of the platform role, not the application.  having a different CRM URL for outlook client and web client can be very confusing to some users.

 

An Easier Approach

 

As we have seen, the traditional approach to separating server roles may add some complexity to your CRM deployment; however, that doesn't men you shouldn't do it.  Rather, there is another approach that achieves the same goals.

 

This approach is to install the full CRM application on both servers, both pointed at the same CRM databases.  On server A, stop the asynchronous service, and on server B, start the asynchronous service.  Drive all of your users to the URL of server A.

 

The end result is that, like with separate server roles, you have all application traffic handled by server A, and all asynchronous load handled by server B, but you avoid all of the complexity of traditional separate server roles.  Users will be able to use the same URL for the web and outlook interfaces, and Internet facing deployment will be much more straightforward, requiring only on URL or ssl cert.

 

Thanks To Alex Fagundes at Power Objects for providing input for this post.

Delete Old CRM 4.0 Trace Files before running a New Trace

In my previous post, I pointed to the new hosted location of the CRM 4.0 Trace File utility.

The CRM Trace output is great because it produces very detailed information on what is happening on the server during a specific time.

One thing to note however is that the log files can become VERY large – and starting a new trace does not remove the log files from previously executed traces.

Additionally, the trace utility zips up everything in this directory each time, and if the directory contains old trace files, the actual file in question may be located among hundreds of older logs.)

To maintain the directory, you can manually delete the files from the server by opening Windows file explorer and navigating to the C:\Program Files\Microsoft CRM\Trace\ directory. 

The file names follow a specific format:

[SERVERNAME]-w3wp-CRMWeb-[DATE YYYYMMDD]-[SEQUENCE#].log
[SERVERNAME]-CrmAsyncService-bin-[DATE YYYYMMDD]-[SEQUENCE#].log

(The actual directory used by the trace may be located elsewhere on your server. – You may need to search the drive to find the actual location for your environment.)

Files that are in use won’t be available to delete without a re-start, but deleting the older files should be sufficient.

A tip suggested by Steve Onufrock is to use a simple batch file to delete the older logs before initiating a new trace.

REM ==============================
ECHO ON
del /q DriveLetter:\Program Files\Microsoft CRM\Trace\*.log
ECHO OFF
REM ==============================

[You’ll need to verify the location of the trace directory before implementing it – and please use this carefully, since you’re deleting files on the server, a small mistake could render your server unusable.]

CRM 4.0 Server Trace and Support Tools' New Home

The indispensable Microsoft Dynamics CRM Trace, Support & Diagnostic tools have moved to a new location -

http://blogs.msdn.com/emeadcrmsupport/archive/2010/04/13/crm-support-tools-hosted-by-the-emea-dynamics-crm-support-blog.aspx

The tools are invaluable for troubleshooting permissions errors and other surprises. -

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/907490 describes the process for enabling the trace manually, but the CRM Diagnostic Tool puts a nice face on it – and will zip up a copy of the resulting trace and environment information into a package for support.

NOTE: This tool does not work remotely, it has to be executed locally on the Target server!

They were created and formerly hosted/managed by Benjamin Lecoq – a former Microsoft Escalation Engineer.

Update Rollup 10 for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 is available.

Update Rollup 10 is a cumulative update rollup that includes all the fixes for the issues that are documented in Update Rollups 1 through 9.

The Build number for CRM 4.0 UR10 is 04.00.7333.2741

The updates for both Client and all Server Apps can be downloaded here: Download

For Full details about what is included in Update Rollup 10, see http://support.microsoft.com/kb/979347 

* Prerequisites for installing UR10 *

For the both the CRM Outlook Client and the CRM Data Migration Manager, at a minimum, CRM Update Rollup 7 must be installed prior to installing UR10.

On the server, the previous update rollups are not required before installing UR10.

Although it’s desirable, the server and the clients do not have to be updated at the same time to the same UR.

* Hotfixes and updates that you have to enable or configure manually *

Please note – CRM Update Rollup 10 for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0, like UR1-UR9 contains hotfixes and updates that you must enable or configure manually – both at the client and the server level.

It’s worth the time to take a few minutes and walk through the notes that describe the fixes that require manual configuration – usually just adding or modifying a registry key – it’s too easy to miss out on some fixes or functionality improvements available.

You can enable or configure these hotfixes and updates on the server that is running Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 by following the instructions in the Microsoft Knowledge Base (KB) articles listed in the KB article.

* Auto-updating CRM Clients in a deployment *

Recent updates have removed the need to be running as a local administrator to install the CRM for Outlook Client Update Rollups. It’s now, more than ever, feasible to deploy the client updates via the CRM Client Auto Update feature. –

See this blog post for more information on how to set up / deploy the clients via AutoUpdate. http://blogs.msdn.com/crm/archive/2008/05/08/crm-client-autoupdate.aspx  (The Keys needed for UR10 are listed in the section “Microsoft Dynamics CRM for Microsoft Office Outlook Auto Update IDs and Link IDs” of http://support.microsoft.com/kb/979347)

Five Resolutions Every Marketer Must Make in 2010

Guest Blog Post from our Friends at ExactTarget

At ExactTarget we are always looking for new ways to help our customers improve their online marketing programs. This year, we thought we’d start the year off as most people do, with a set of New Years Resolutions. These 5 Resolutions can help keep your marketing program fit and in shape!

ExactTarget’s new whitepaper, Five Resolutions Every Marketer Must Make in 2010, outlines the plan simply and succinctly:

1. Be helpful, not just social.

2. Engage your subscribers.

3. Treat subscribers like friends.

4. Design for your subscribers.

5. Get back to basics.

Build richer subscriber data through the integration of Email and CRM

The Five Resolutions Every Marketer Must Make in 2010 whitepaper emphasizes the importance of understanding, engaging and educating your subscribers. The more you know about your customers and prospects, the more effectively you can communicate with them.

ExactTarget’s integration with Microsoft Dynamics CRM lets you manage and automate a wide variety of marketing campaigns that leverage information about your leads, contacts and accounts. The integration between ExactTarget and Microsoft Dynamics CRM lets you:

· Automate.  Use Email Marketing Automation capabilities and templates to create date and event-based scenarios that execute automatically.

· Extend. Extend personalized, relevant, one-to-one communications from email to the web with ExactTarget’s Landing Page functionality.

· Personalize.  Reinforce subscriber relationships with personalized emails on behalf of your Lead, Contact, and Account owners.

· Analyze. Use real-time tracking results to send follow-up messages to an engaged group of subscribers.

ExactTarget and Customer Effective partnership

We’re proud to partner with Customer Effective to deliver this integrated offering. To learn more about the integration of ExactTarget for Microsoft Dynamics CRM please visit the ExactTarget Extensions Network. Customer Effective is certified in the ExactTarget for MSCRM integration. They are well positioned to help you understand how to leverage ExactTarget in your specific Microsoft Dynamics CRM environment.

Troubleshooting Error 404 in CRM's Email Router Configuration

This article explains how to troubleshoot the below error message received when testing Incoming access in CRM's Email Router Configuration Manager:

Incoming Status: Failure - The remote Microsoft Exchange e-mail server returned the error "(404) Not Found". This user or queue does not have a mailbox. Create a mailbox and try again. The remote server returned an error: (404) Not Found.

The first thing to check is credentials, make sure you typed in the username, password and domain for the user properly.  Verify and re-type these in the Incoming profile.

If you are still receiving the error, ensure that you can log into Outlook or Outlook Web using the credentials specified in the Incoming Configuration.

If this does not work, compare the email address that you set up on the User or Queue in CRM with the username that set in the Router's Incoming Configuration Credentials.  If the portion of the email address before the @ symbol does not match the domain login name, you could be experiencing the issue identified in this article:

http://social.microsoft.com/forums/en-US/crm/thread/8dabcc12-3453-468c-9094-c58024190789/

For example if your Incoming Routing Profile is set to log in as contoso\askus, and the queue is set up with an email address of info@contoso.com, the router may be having a problem matching up the accounts.  You can test this out by changing the address in CRM to askus@contoso.com and then test to see if this resolves the error.

You may have to do some re-configuring within Active Directory and Exchange in order to get things working as you would like them to.

 

Implementing Field Level Security in CRM 4.0 - Options and Constraints

The CRM E² team has released an excellent new white paper Field-level Security in Microsoft Dynamics CRM: Options and Constraints,  available for download from the Microsoft Download Center at:  http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=471f8670-47b3-4525-b25d-c11a6774615c

“This document provides selected aspects of the conceptual application of the Dynamics CRM security model, with details about the various options and constraints that are associated with using supported custom logic to control of access to data at a more granular level than is provided by Microsoft Dynamics CRM out-of-the-box.”

I found it helpful in thinking about how to frame discussions around customer requests for field level security, and a good explanation of potential gaps / holes left behind by different approaches.

It’s an excellent resource and introduction / background on the challenges of layering in additional security on top of CRM’s existing security model.