Creating a Birthday Contact List

I have another blog posted on the Microsoft CRM Product team site. Click on  the link below to check it out.

http://blogs.msdn.com/crm/archive/2009/02/27/creating-a-birthday-contact-list.aspx

CRM 4.0 Build Versions

Here's the latest build numbers for Dynamic CRM.

RTM: 4.0.7333.3
Rollup 1: 4.0.7333.1213
Rollup 2: 4.0.7333.1316

To find out your current build number, you may run the following query against your [ORGANIZATION]_MSCRM database.

Select * FROM BuildVersion

CRM 4.0 Product Key

If you need to do a redeployment and you are looking for the existing CRM 4.0 product key, you may find it in the MSCRM_CONFIG database. All you have to do is to run the following query against the MSCRM_CONFIG database.

SELECT LicenseKey FROM ConfigSettings

Email Router Issue Continues

The client contacted me this morning telling me that they still seeing the same amount of messages in the forward mailbox. The number of messages didn’t reduce at all. That makes me wondering why this is happening. So I did a LiveMeeting session with them. We logged on to the mailbox via OWA, we saw the new messages in the inbox got processed, the reason that the Exchange admin console still showing the 44,000 messages because the messages got moved to the undeliverable folder. Ah… that’s why we didn’t see the number of messages reduce in the Exchange admin console. Once we move the messages from the undeliverable folder to inbox, the router starts to process the messages.

I checked the event view, I saw some errors and warnings like this one below:

Event Type: Error
Event Source: MSCRMEmail
Event Category: None
Event ID: 0
Date: Date
Time: Time
User: N/A
Computer: Computer Name
Description:
#9628 - An error occurred while delivering the e-mail message with subject "Subject" in mailbox E-mail Address for delivery to http://crm/CRM. System.Web.Services.Protocols.SoapException: Server was unable to process request.
at System.Web.Services.Protocols.SoapHttpClientProtocol.ReadResponse(SoapClientMessage message, WebResponse response, Stream responseStream, Boolean asyncCall)
at System.Web.Services.Protocols.SoapHttpClientProtocol.Invoke(String methodName, Object[] parameters)
at Microsoft.Crm.Sdk.Proxy.CrmService.Execute(Request Request)
at Microsoft.Crm.Tools.Email.Providers.CrmPollingMailboxProvider.DeliverMessageInternal(EmailMessage emailMessage)
at Microsoft.Crm.Tools.Email.Providers.ExchangePollingMailboxProvider.DeliverMessageInternal(EmailMessage emailMessage)
at Microsoft.Crm.Tools.Email.Providers.CrmPollingMailboxProvider.DeliverMessage(EmailMessage emailMessage)
at Microsoft.Crm.Tools.Email.Providers.CrmPollingMailboxProvider.Run()\r\n
0x80044150
Generic SQL error.
Platform
For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.

This was a known error from Microsoft. After we upgraded CRM to RU #1 by installing the rollup on the server, clients and the email router, the issue is resolved.

OK, just in case you run into similar issue, I hope this will help you.

CRM Email Router 3.0 to 4.0

Have you ever dealt with Email Router issues before? In my opinion, the Email Router is one of the complicated components in CRM.  There are two versions available, on-premise and online. To configure the router, you have three different ways to do it and it all depends on your own environment and your preference. If you want know how to configure the email router step by step, please refer to the MS CRM 4.0 Email Router Configuration Scenario.

Today I encountered another issue related to the email router. One of my clients upgraded to CRM 4.0 couple months ago, however they didn't upgrade their email router. So they are running CRM 4.0 and using the CRM 3.0 Email Router. Since CRM 3.0 used the forward mailbox option, all users had the forwarding rule deployed to their exchange profile to cc emails to the forward mailbox. Since CRM 3.0 not able to promote tracked emails to CRM 4.0, all of emails remained in the mailbox and the mailbox was full. Users were getting email error telling them the mailbox reached its size limit. I logon to the mail account via OWA and I saw more than 44,000 messages in the mailbox.

To resolve the issue, I had to uninstall the CRM 3.0 Email Router and then reinstall the CRM 4.0 Email Router. I also configured it to use the forward mailbox option after the install.  I don't have to redeploy the forwarding rule because the old rule is compatible with CRM 4.0. If you would like to remove or redeploy forwarding rule, you may use the CRM 4.0 Rule Deployment Wizard (You can't use the CRM 3.0 Rule Deployment Wizard to configure the rule after you upgraded CRM to version 4.0, you need to use the CRM 4.0 Rule Deployment Wizard to do so). If you configure everything correctly, the email router will start processing all of the emails in the forward mailbox. It will not promote all of the messages in the forward mailbox all at once. It will process small amount of emails every 10 minutes to limit the resources it will consume in the environment. So to process 44,000 messages, it will take some time.

OK, I hope that this will help you just in case you encounter something similar to this.

Improving MS CRM Performance and Securing Data with SQL 2008

Microsoft just released a white paper today on improving CRM performance and securing data with SQL 2008. The paper contains great information on how to leverage SQL Server 2008 features such as Compression, Filtered Indexes, Data Encryption, etc… to improve MS CRM Performance if implemented correctly.

Also this paper contains an overview of MS SQL Server 2008 features and some benchmark results and recommendations from Microsoft.

So download and read it as soon as you can. you may download this paper from Microsoft’s website by clicking on the link below. Enjoy reading this white paper. :)

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=b5bb47a4-5ece-4a2a-a9b5-5435264f627d&DisplayLang=en