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.

Effective Dashboards for Microsoft CRM

Ask yourself:  How effective is my CRM program?  Am I getting everything I need to manage my business and make informed decisions? 

 

If any of your answers aren't backed by CRM supported facts, then you should keep reading.  If you've partnered with Customer Effective in the past, you know about our User First Design Formula.  Nearly everything we do is weighed against it's impact to the end user - from the Executives to Administrators to End Users.  Within the methodology we feel it is extremely important to inspect what your business does and surface value-added detail through CRM.  Yes, we are talking about Dashboards and Managing by Metrics.

 

A common approach taken to resolve this business need leverages SharePoint and custom web parts.  All of these are exposed via CRM.  Recently, Customer Effective has added a new tool to it's CRM project toolkit.  If you are a customer working with us, you know about Interactions.  Our value added add in that truly provides a one stop shop for that 360 degree view of what is happening with your customers, prospects and organization.  Effective Dashboards bring additional tools to the end users.  Out of the box, CRM doesn't provide end users a simple way to build visual elements and add them to your deployment.  The SharePoint approach is still extremely valuable and a recommended strategy for projects that really push Business Intelligence.  Effective Dashboards can supplement this approach or be utilized on it's own.

 

Effective Dashboards gives trusted end users or Business Analysts, where security appropriate, the ability to create a dashboard on the fly that leverages CRM entities.  You can take this responsibility out of the hands of the IT department to build specific web parts and manage a SharePoint site.  Imagine being able to build a dashboard based on CRM records from within CRM.  Salesforce.com commonly targets this "missing" functionality in CRM.  For Customer Effective, that is no longer an issue.  In fact, we believe we now are able to address Business Intelligence in a way that Salesforce.com cannot.  You now have multiple BI delivery points and possible solutions.  Did I mention we will bring this to the table for all of our projects going forward?  As part of our project offerings, we bring all of our toolkit items to the table for your use. 

 

What do you need to know about Effective Dashboards?  Just like views, Effective Dashboards leverage Advanced Find functionality.  You have the ability to create both System-wide and My Dashboard applications.  Yes, you can drill through the dashboard charts and graphs to CRM records.  It honors your security model.  You can create a dashboard to look at your business metrics and expose it in CRM in hours instead of weeks.

 

 

You can learn more about Effective Dashboards and the rest of our project offerings, hear real world examples from our customers and gain a deeper insight into Microsoft CRM at the Customer Effective User Conference.  The event is being held October 29th and 30th in Greenville, South Carolina.

 

You can find more information about the User Group here: Customer Effective 2009 User Conference.   If the User Conference doesn't fit your schedule, you can contact us at (877) 252-2171 or (864) 250-2170.

Optimize Scribe Insight Webinar

Our friends at Scribe Software are offering a free webinar October 1 at 11 AM EST on the topic of optimizing Scribe Insight performance. 

Presenters:

Eddie Cole, Senior Software Engineer
John Gravely, Vice President of Marketing and Product Marketing for Scribe Software
Brendan Peterson, Technical Support Analyst

This will be a great session for anyone who uses Scribe and wants to optimize their integration processes.

Sign up here.

For a preview, see Brandon’s blog post from the Scribe blog Getting the biggest bang for your buck--Improving Scribe Insight Performance.

 

Technorati Tags: Microsoft CRM,Scribe,migration

CRM Data Integration Considerations

UK MVP David Jennaway has a fantastic post on the CRM Team Blog today about the considerations when integrating external data with Microsoft Dynamics CRM.  It is a great overview of the various approaches—when to move data into CRM, and when to integrate data by leaving the data in the external system and displaying it in CRM via a report.

I find that frequently integrations can be simplified using the report method.  if no CRM processes are driven by the data, and the data does not need to be displayed in CRM views, a report can be a quick way to make data available to CRM users without having to move the data into CRM.

Worth the read--Check out the article here.

Technorati Tags: Microsoft Dynamics CRM,data integration

The CRM Configurator’s Dilemma: Repurpose or Create?

As you configure Microsoft Dynamics CRM, one question that frequently arises is should I create a custom entity or repurpose a system entity.  By repurpose I mean take an entity that is designed for one purpose and modify its fields and form layouts to serve a different purpose.    Say you are configuring CRM for a property management company.  There are no system entities in Microsoft CRM called “properties” or “leases,” but there are entities that are somewhat similar, such as Contracts and Opportunities.  It can be tempting to say “I’m not doing sales opportunities, let’s repurpose the opportunity as the Property entity.”  The perception is frequently that adding additional entities will complicate the configuration. 

Before you repurpose system entities, you should first consider several things:

1.  Consider the future—is there any chance that you might need the entity in the future?  Sure, you might not use sales opportunities right now, but can you say for sure that there is no chance that another department might not see what you are doing in CRM and decide that they want to use it too?  If you repurpose a system entity and later have a need for it, you will paint yourself into a corner and make it very difficult to impossible to change course down the road.

2.  Consider the overhead—While the perception is that repurposing system entities will simplify a CRM configuration, frequently the opposite is true.  In the example of the property management company that repurposes opportunities for properties, by doing so they are bringing many unnecessary fields into their property configuration, some of which cannot be removed from the form (such as price list, is revenue system calculated, and the convert to order button).  Other system entities such as campaigns, cases and contracts all have fields like subjects and date fields that can’t be removed from the form.  Sure these things can be hidden using javascript; however, that will add a lot of unnecessary complexity to the configuration when compared to a custom entity with only the fields and links that are necessary, and the more javascript you add to repurpose entities, the more things you will need to test and potentially re-do the next time you upgrade.

3.  Consider the user experience—due to the added overhead of a repurposed system entity, typically a custom entity containing only the fields and links that are necessary will be more user friendly than a repurposed system entity.  Take a simple example, like the entity icon.  Microsoft CRM does not allow you to modify the icons of system entities, so when you repurpose a system entity, your property entity will still have the standard CRM Opportunity icon.  This can be very unintuitive for users.  A custom entity, however, can have an icon of a house or office building, or whatever makes the most sense.

Simplicity in a CRM configuration is not determined by the total number of entities in the system, but rather in how they are presented (or not presented) to users.  Really no user should see every entity in the system when they log in to CRM—they should see only what is necessary for them to do their job.  Adding custom entities will not complicate their experience, especially if you remove the unused system entity links from their view.

In case you don’t know how to do this, here are some related links:

Microsoft CRM Sitemap Surgery Tips

Using the sitemap privileges element to hide sitemap subareas for certain users

Technorati Tags: Microsoft CRM,Microsoft Dynamics CRM,configuration

Record count limits when Exporting from CRM to Excel (and a special case for Marketing Lists)

When a user exports to Excel from Advanced find there is a setting in the database that determines the maximum number of records that can be exported. –

The default setting is to allow export of a maximum of 10,000 records, this limits the impact of the export on database performance.  – If your organization needs to, the value can be changed to allow more records to be exported at a time.- In CRM 4.0 it’s the value in the MaxRecordsForExportToExcel in the organizationbase table. -I’d suggest working with a certified Dynamics CRM partner or Microsoft Support before making any changes to the organization base – since a mistake in the organizationbase table can really ruin your day.

 

Special case for Marketing Lists…

Currently, (August 2009), there is a known bug associated with exporting members of a Marketing List when you export from the Marketing List Members view, (not from advanced find) – The maximum is based on 10x the number of records displayed per page. - In other words, if you have 50 records displayed on a page, 1000 records can be exported; if you have 250 records displayed on a page, 5000 records can be exported.  (The workaround is to export the same records by building an advanced find which shows records associated with that marketing list - and exporting from there.- There is a fix in development for this, contact Microsoft Support for more information/status/availability of this patch.)

Encrypting Microsoft Dynamics CRM data

I recently had a case where sensitive data needed to be stored in Microsoft CRM, and the company management wanted to make sure that the data would be securely encrypted. 

One of the great new features in SQL Server 2008 is Transparent Data Encryption (TDE).  TDE encrypts everything in the database while being transparent to applications.  The encryption is sticky, so files are encrypted as they are detached or backed up

TDE is fully supported with Dynamics CRM 4.0.

For more details see Improving Microsoft Dynamics CRM Performance and Securing Data with Microsoft SQL Server 2008 by the CRM E2 Team.  It contains a great overview of TDE, and benchmarks showing potential performance impact of encryption.

Thanks to Matt Parks for reminding me about this white paper.

Technorati Tags: CRM,Microsoft CRM.,encryption

Mobile Express for CRM 4.0

In case you haven’t heard, Microsoft CRM Mobile Express for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 was released recently.  Mobile Express is a mobile browser friendly interface for CRM 4.0 that makes it easy for users to look up CRM data and enter data on the go.  Mobile Express is a free download.

I played with the beta of Mobile Express 4 several months ago, so I was excited to see what the final release looked like.  Here are my initial reactions:

1. The installation is one of the easiest installations I have ever done—it is literally a hotfix.  The total installation time is less than 3 minutes. It does require you to restart your CRM server, so be sure to do it at a time that won’t disrupt your users.

2.  It is a great complement for IFD implementations.  If you used the 3.0 version of Mobile Express, you had to set up an externally available URL for users to use.  ME4 simplifies this by using the existing IFD url.  So if your CRM external URL is https://crm.contoso.com, after installation, you will have a mobile url https://crm.contoso.com/m that will direct users to the mobile express site.  Especially if you already have an IFD enabled implementation, Mobile Express is a no brainer—with really very little work you gain a lot of functionality and user convenience.

3.  Configuration is very convenient.  After installation you will find a Mobile Express configuration link in Settings—>customizations.  This allows a user to configure Mobile Express and select ME form layouts without having to log on to the server.

Some considerations as you roll out Mobile Express:

1.  Configuration of forms is separate from CRM form customization—you have to select which entities and attributes are available from Mobile Express—this allows you to lay out the mobile form in a way that makes the best use of the smaller form factor.

2.  Mobile access is controlled via CRM security.  After installation you will see a new permission called “Go Mobile” in CRM security roles.  This permission is enabled by default for all roles, and it gives you an easy way to exclude users from being able to use Mobile Express if there are security concerns.

3.  It works with virtually any mobile device.  I have tested on an iphone, Windows Mobile, and Blackberry.  It is also an option if you have limited use users that use a Mac or Linux and just need to look up data, since it works from browsers such as Safari, Firefox, Opera, etc.

4.  Blackberry users--if you have problems accessing your Mobile Express site, check your browser options.  Enabling javascript and changing the emulation mode to IE mode may help.

Technorati Tags: Microsoft CRM,Microsoft Dynamics CRM,mobility,iphone,blackberry

Lead or Languish: Why Microsoft Dynamics CRM Programs Require Top Management Leadership

Recently, I've been writing for MSDynamicsWorld.com.  This website discusses all things Dynamics.  There are news articles, best practice advice and general information about CRM as well as AX, GP, NAV and SL.  You can check out my latest column on the importance of Executive Leadership in a CRM Program right here -

Lead or Languish: Why Microsoft Dynamics CRM Programs Require Top Management Leadership

Microsoft CRM IFD Users Unable to Access Help Files

When you configure Microsoft Dynamics CRM Internet Facing (IFD), users may be presented a Windows login dialogue box when they try to access the CRM Help menu.

They will not be able to log in with the login box, and they will get an "Access denied" error message.

To fix this issue, edit the Help virtual directory on the CRM web site to accept anonymous authentication.  In IIS MGR 6.0, expand Microsoft Dynamics CRM web site tree under the Web sites folder.  Right Click on "Help" and select properties

 

On the Directory Security tab, click "Edit" under the "Authentication and Access control" section

Click the checkbox to "Enable anonymous authentication."  Click OK.

That's it.  Now your IFD users can access help files.

 

Technorati Tags: Microsoft CRM,IFD,internet facing deployment,help files

MSCRM 4.0 Documentation Generator (Excel Add-in)

The MS CRM 4.0 Documentation Generator Available for download as an open-source project. http://crm4documentation.codeplex.com/  A compiled installer is available for download in the ‘release’ section – full source code is available in the project as well.

The utility operates as an add-in for Microsoft Office Excel 2007 to automatically generate documentation for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 - [This is a fork off the original CRM 3.0 project.]

Functionality
This tools generates documentation from an exported CRM 4.0 Customizations file (zip or XML):

• Entity Forms - including Tabs, Sections, Field Names, Types and Descriptions
• Picklists - List Picklist Field Names, Text and numeric Values for Picklists on a form
• JScripts - Extract the scripts associated with the Form/Attributes on the form. (This is still a work in progress)

Installation
The add-in will run on Office 2007 Excel (with Visual Studio Tools for Office (3.0))
Extract the installation files and run Setup.exe - it will attempt to install any prerequisites.
Once complete, Start Excel.
The first time Excel runs with the add-in, you will be presented with a customization installation message - choose "Install."

Usage
Open the Add-Ins ribbon, press the load button to load your XML, then press the "Forms" button.
Once you've created a "Forms" documentation spreadsheet, Open a new blank spreadsheet and click the "Scripts" button, and then repeat with the "Picklists" button.

Credit
The foundation of this project is the result of the work of Merijn van Mourik in the CRM 3.0 Documentation Generator Project. - I've been unable to reach Merijn, if anyone has contact information, please pass it along.

Thanks!
Scott Sewell
CustomerEffective

Tips on Moving Your Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Deployment to a New Server

So you need to move your your Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 to a new server.  Maybe your CRM server is getting old, or maybe your usage requirements have outgrown the capacity of your current hardware.

Times like this can make even the most seasoned CRM administrator nervous.  However, if you follow a few a few basic steps, it should be a relatively pain free experience.

1.  Backup.  It goes without saying, but is worth repeating.  Backup.

• MSCRM Database
• Config Database
• Export of customizations (including sitemap and isv.config)
• Custom reports

2.  Follow the instructions.  Microsoft has provided detailed instructions in KB 952934 for several common scenarios, inluding:

• Move the Microsoft Dynamics CRM databases to another SQL Server and SQL Server Reporting Services server in the same domain, and leave the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Server on the existing server
• Redeploy the Microsoft Dynamics CRM deployment that includes the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Server within the same domain or to another domain.
• Move the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Server or one of the Microsoft Dynamics CRM server roles. However, leave the SQL Server and the SQL Server Reporting Services server intact

3.  If you are redeploying to a new SQL and CRM server, make sure that your SQL server has enough disk space for the redeployment.  When you import your organization, the SQL log file will grow at least as large as the database.  So if you have a 25 GB CRM database, you will need over 50 GB of free space on the SQL server for the process

4.  If you are redeploying to a new SQL and CRM server, remove any unnecessary records from your database to make the process go faster.  When you import the organization with the deployment manager, so any records you can remove will speed up the import.  For example, delete completed system jobs from the asynchronousbase table.

Technorati Tags: server,migration,Dynamics CRm

Newsfeed Business Productivity Accelerator Released

The latest accelerator for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 was recently released.  This accelerator is a combination of a dashboard report and a collection of workflows that give you a great way to track user activity in CRM. 

Out of the box, the following events are included in the dashboard report:

- New case created

- Case reassigned

- New campaign created

- Sales opportunity closed

The most exciting thing about the Newsfeed Dashboard report is that it is extremely easy to configure additional events to show up on the dashboard.  The report works by querying the Notes (annotation) table looking for subjects that begin with "Newsfeed:"  To add additional events to the dashboard, just create a workflow to create a note against the selected entity and make the subject begin with "Newsfeed:"  This even works with custom entities.

 

The dashboard report also includes drill through hyperlinks to the record, so you can click on an event on the dashboard and open the record in Dynamics CRM, and it is formatted very nicely to include CRM colors, fonts, and icons.

Based on my initial tests, the Newsfeed Business Productivity Accelerator is very complete and could be easily deployed with little or no modification (other than creating workflows for your specific CRM events).

Good Read--Improving Microsoft Dynamics CRM Performance and Securing Data with Microsoft SQL Server 2008

Microsoft has released a new white paper called Improving Microsoft Dynamics CRM Performance and Securing Data with Microsoft SQL Server 2008.

As the title says, this paper details some of the new compression, index, encryption, and backup capabilities of SQL Server 2008, and benchmarks of the improvements seen when used with Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0.

I found the topic of sparse columns to be especially interesting:

Sparse columns are ordinary columns that have an optimized storage for NULL values. Sparse columns reduce the space requirements for NULL values at the cost of greater CPU overhead to retrieve not NULL values. Sparse columns and filtered indexes enable applications, such as Windows SharePoint Services, to efficiently store and access a large number of user-defined properties by using SQL Server 2008.

The white paper describes when sparse columns and filtered indexes should be used, and when they should not, and how strategic use of these capabilities can significantly improve performance and reduce file size when space is at a premium.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Rollup 2 Released

UPDATE--users have commented about an error after installing rollup 2 where they can no longer publish workflow rules.  Here is the solution:

you need to manually open the Microsoft CRM Web site web.config file in an editor like Notepad and add the following section to it in order to continue being able to publish workflows:

 

In the section <authorizedTypes>

…multiple lines here

 

                                                <authorizedType Assembly="mscorlib, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089" Namespace="System.Globalization" TypeName="CultureInfo" Authorized="True"/>

 

</authorizedTypes>

----------------------------------

Microsoft has released Update Rollup 2 for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0.  This cumulative update includes a large number of hotfixes released after Rollup 1.

You can download the rollup here.

This is a move to more frequent rollups than there were in the past. 

According to Microsoft, "Dynamics CRM 4.0 Update Rollups are planned on an “every other month” basis going forward.   So Update Rollup 3 should be on the horizon for mid-month March 2009, Update Rollup 4 mid-month May 2009, etc.   This will provide a consistent release schedule and allow for more planned testing and deployment of hotfix packages going forward."

Technorati Tags: Microsoft CRM,updates

Configuring an IFD-only Microsoft Dynamics CRM Implementation

As you are probably aware, you can configure Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 to be fully accessible from outside of your network using the CRM IFD tool.  Using this simple executable you can configure your CRM environment to work only "On Premises" (only over the network) or "IFD + On Premises" (Windows authentication while on the network, forms authentication when off the network).

But what if you want to configure CRM to work exclusively in IFD mode?  Consider the following scenario--you have some users who are in the office and some who use CRM remotely, and you want to standardize your user processes and CRM URL for all users.

You will notice when you run the CRM IFD tool that there is no option for IFD only; however, it can be done.

To configure IFD Only, you would still select IFD + On Premises, and enter in the IP address of your server.  The trick is the subnet--this determines which PC's are internal vs. external.

So if you want everything to be treated as external and sent to IFD, you would enter the IP address of your server, but enter a subnet that is different than your network.

For example, if my internal subnet was 255.255.252.0 and my CRM server ip address was 10.10.10.10.  I could put 10.10.10.10 - 255.255.255.255 in the subnet, and then all users would be considered outside of the subnet and would get the IFD sign-in page, except if they log on from the CRM server.

 

Technorati Tags: Microsoft CRM,IFD,forms authentication only

"Poor Man's" Business Intelligence for Microsoft Dynamics CRM

-This is a post that I wrote for the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Team MSDN Blog.  

Business Intelligence (BI) is getting a lot of attention these days. It makes sense that companies want to use the data collected by business systems like Microsoft Dynamics CRM to make better decisions, be more effective and impact the bottom line. Technologies from Microsoft, such as SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS), SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS), and Performance Point have made BI more accessible and more affordable.

But where should a company that is just starting out with Microsoft Dynamics CRM start to “dig deeper” into their data? BI is more of a strategy than a technology, and there are several easy, inexpensive ways to analyze CRM data before spending the time and money to roll out a more complex BI platform.

1. “Advanced” Advanced Find. Anyone who has spent much time in Microsoft CRM is familiar with Advanced Find; however, from my experience, most users just tap the surface. Sure, Advanced Find can give you a list of Accounts where the Address 1: State/Province = “NY,” but it also can filter the list by virtually any related entity, so advanced find can be a pretty powerful BI tool. For example, with one advanced find you can get a list of all accounts in NY that have had a phone call in the current month where a contact is named “Frank.”

Advances Find is even more useful now that CRM 4.0 can display fields from other entities in the search results, and take your query into report builder to further enhance the output.

Advanced Find Considerations

As CRM users gain more experience with CRM, they typically come across some questions that Advanced Find alone cannot answer.

a. “NOT” questions—these are queries where you are looking for records where certain data does NOT exist. For example:

• Which contacts have NOT been called in the past 3 weeks?
• Which accounts ordered in 2007 but NOT in 2008?

The issue with “NOT” questions and Advanced Find is that Advanced Find queries the data that is in CRM. With a NOT question, you are looking for data that does NOT exist in CRM. In the case of a one-to-many relationship (such as orders related to accounts), if you search by “does not equal,” you will return any record that has a related record that does not equal the search criteria, even if another related record exists that does equal the search criteria.

For example, say I want to see which accounts ordered in 2007 but did not order in 2008, and I have an account that has two orders in history, one in 2007, and another in 2008. If I do the following advanced find:

This account would be returned because it has a related order that is NOT in 2008, even though it also has an order that IS in 2008.

b. Multi-step ad-hoc analysis—this is where you want to get a data set and slice and dice based on additional criteria. Once you perform an Advanced Find, you can save the query and run it again, or use it as the starting point for additional advanced find queries; however, sometimes there is a need to be able to get a data set and then further refine it based on additional criteria. For example, a sales manager may want to see everybody that has purchased product X, but then remove everyone who has also purchased product Y.

So where do we go when advanced find doesn’t get us there?

2. Marketing Lists—they’re not just for campaigns anymore.

Marketing list functionality in Microsoft CRM takes advanced find to the next level. One really powerful feature of a CRM Marketing List is the ability to not only add members to a list based on an advanced find, but also being able to use additional advanced find queries to further refine the members of the list. You can:

• Add Members
• Remove Members
• Evaluate Members

Say that you want to see a list of Accounts that have ordered in 2007 but have NOT ordered in 2008:

Step 1: Create a new marketing list, selecting Account as the member type

Step 2: Click the Marketing List Members navigation bar link and click the “Manage Members” button.

Step 3: On the Manage Members form, select “Use Advanced Find to Add Members.” In your advanced find, select Accounts where related Order submitted date is after 1/1/2007 and before 12/31/2007. This will return a list of all accounts that ordered in 2007.

Step 4: Click the “Manage Members” button and select “Use Advanced Find to Remove Members.” In your advanced find, select Accounts where related Order submitted date is after 1/1/2008 and before 12/31/2008

The resulting list will include all accounts that ordered in 2007 but did NOT order in 2008. So now say that the sales manager sees the list, and he wants to further refine it to only include those companies that have purchased product X. He can now further refine the marketing list to only include accounts that meet those criteria:

Step 5: Click the “Manage Members” button and select “Use Advanced Find to Evaluate Members.” In your advanced find, select Accounts where the related Order’s related Order Product equals Product X

Evaluate Members compares the Marketing List Members to the results of an advanced find and removes any members from the list that are not returned by the advanced find results. Now the list will include only the accounts that ordered in 2007 but did NOT order in 2008, where the ordered product equals Product X.

Marketing list provide very powerful, yet easy to use out of the box functionality to slice and dice your customer data.

Marketing Lists Considerations

The main limitation of marketing list functionality is that marketing list members can only include Accounts, Contacts, and Leads. You cannot create marketing lists of custom entity records.

3. “Excel”-erate your CRM data

There is good reason why the most widely used business intelligence application in the world in Microsoft Excel. It is affordable, it is ubiquitous, and it is easy to use. And it is also very easy to interface Excel with your CRM data. You can connect directly to the CRM data source and do very complex queries from Excel; however, you don’t have to go that far to analyze your CRM data with Microsoft Excel.

The most basic interface between CRM and Excel is the export to Excel button that is found on any view in Microsoft Dynamics CRM (even on the marketing list we built in #2).

As with Advanced Find and Marketing lists, I have found that many users have a basic understanding of the export to Excel functionality, but don’t see some of the real power of taking your CRM data into Excel.

For example, take the process of territory rationalization. Company X has grown from a small company with 2 salespeople to a larger sales staff. When they started, they didn’t really have well defined territories, but now that they have grown, the sales manager wants to organize the sales rep’s territories by state. To do so, she wants to see where each rep has the biggest concentration of accounts to figure out the best way to draw the territory lines.

She wants to find out which sales representatives have accounts in North Carolina who also have accounts in South Carolina.

Step 1: Export the “Active Accounts” view to Excel, selecting the “Dynamic Pivot Table” option and selecting the following attributes:

• Account Owner
• State/Province

Step 2: Create the pivot table, selecting owner for the rows, State/Province for the columns, and accountid for the Value.

Step 3: Filter the Pivot Table data using Excel’s filtering capabilities. This is somewhat tricky—at first it appears that you cannot filter the columns in the pivot table; however, it can be done.

a. In Excel 2007, select the data tab

b. Click on a cell directly outside of the pivot table

c. Click the advanced filter button. The cell range of your pivot table should auto-populate. If it does not, you can fill it in.

d. Click the filter button—you should now see the excel drop-down filters on each of the pivot table column headers.

See a screencast of how to use advanced filter with pivot tables.

Now the sales manager can filter both the SC and NC column to NOT show blanks, and return a list of every sales rep with accounts in NC and SC. She can then continue to slice and dice the list based on geographic criteria. This is just a simple example—once you get your data into Excel, you can perform very complex analysis of your data.

The point of my post is that you do not have to delay implementing a business intelligence strategy with Microsoft Dynamics CRM if you don’t have the time or resources to invest in a BI platform. I would encourage you to become more familiar with the out of the box analytical capabilities of Microsoft Dynamics CRM. These tools will not satisfy every BI requirement, but they are a great way to quickly dig into CRM data and get some quick wins without having to invest a lot of time, money or resources. They can give you an easy, affordable way to determine what questions you should be asking so you will be ready for a more complex business intelligence platform when the time is right.

 

Technorati Tags: business intelligence,Microsoft CRM,Excel