Darren's CRM Blog

Moving on...

2010-07-26T19:02:00.004-05:00

Hi All,

I would like to post a quick note here to let everyone know that I am moving this blog to Windows Live Space. The reason for this move is because some users from China can't access this Google blog. In addition, I am combining the English and Chinese Blog together so I can manage the blog posts in a single location.

The new blog URL is: http://liudarren.spaces.live.com/

Also I gave up my CRM MVP status and joined Microsoft as a Senior Consultant focus on CRM and CCA. I'll start blogging again soon.

Thanks!

Microsoft CRM 4.0 Update Rollup #7

2009-10-22T10:28:00.001-05:00

Microsoft has released CRM 4.0 Update Rollup #7, this is one of the major update that you don’t want to miss.

The outlook client is completely re-engineered. It resolved a ton of issues related crashes, etc… If you like to know more, please read more on the Microsoft CRM team blog.

http://blogs.msdn.com/crm/archive/2009/10/22/update-rollup-7-for-microsoft-dynamics-crm-4-0.aspx

To download the client, just click on the link below.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=a4893988-7804-4e23-ab58-740441cc696e

The Microsoft KB related to this rollup is below.

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=971782

Microsoft CRM 4.0 Update Rollup #6

2009-08-27T14:15:00.001-05:00

Microsoft has released CRM 4.0 Update Rollup #6. You may download the rollup from Microsoft’s website.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=79f90982-c039-41c2-af8e-3119ecf27790

CRMUG Summit 2009 – 9/14 to 9/18

2009-08-23T21:41:00.000-05:00

Just want to let everyone know that the CRMUG Summit 2009 is going to held on Pheasant Run Resort and Conference Center in St Charles, Illinois. This Summit features a ton of educational sessions related to Microsoft Dynamics CRM. In addition, you can social and networking with other Dynamics CRM users, experts, peers, partners, Microsoft product managers and specialists. I will be working with other MVPs and experts to lead two of the sessions during the Summit.

If you haven’t register for the Summit, hurry up to register by visit the CRMUG website.

Location: Pheasant Run Resort and Conference Center
4051 East Main St.
St Charles, IL 60174, USA
Cost: $499.00 (Member), $649.00 (Non-Member)

I look forward in meeting you in the Summit.

Silverlight 3 Jumpstart by David Yack

2009-08-22T01:42:00.001-05:00

Microsoft Silverlight has help many businesses to create rich web applications. If you already a .Net developer and want to get yourself up to speed on Silverlight, I recommend that you get David Yack’s new book, Silverlight 3 Jumpstart.

This book is not like the references books, it focused on the key parts of Silverlight that are relevant for business application developers. This book is just little over 200 pages, you can get through the entire book pretty quick. The list price of the book is $39.99. If you like to get more information, just visit the book’s website (http://www.silverlightjumpstart.com/).

IE Tips: Enable Setting IE Home Page

2009-08-05T09:17:00.000-05:00

Recently I got a new Lenovo T400 laptop from work to replace my outdated IBM T60. I got it back from IT support, they locked my IE home page to an internal site through group policy. Since I travel quite a bit and not in the office, it takes me 5 to 10 seconds every time that I open a failure page in IE because it tries to load that internal site. It was very annoying for me.

I Bing, I found a way through registry that I can re-enable setting IE home page again. I like to blog it for my future reference and for anyone who has this problem.

So to re-enable setting IE home page again, here are the steps:

Start | Run | Type regedit.
Navigate to this registry key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Control Panel.
Right click on HomePage, select Modify.
Change the value from 1 to 0, then click OK button.
Restart Internet Explorer.

After you updated the registry, you should able to change your Home Page in your Internet Explorer.

Baby Allen Liu

2009-08-04T09:36:00.000-05:00

This is my CRM blog and I preferred to put things related to CRM in this blog. However I like to share my joy with the CRM community that my wife gave birth to a baby boy last month. We named him Allen. I have been pretty busy helping my wife out with this little kid and trying to get some sleep at night. :) Now you know why that I didn’t blog much recently. :P

Quick Tip: At least one recipient could not be resolved to a record in the system

2009-04-28T16:17:00.001-05:00

If you trying to send an email to an address not associated to a CRM record, you received an error telling you that “At least one recipient could not be resolved to a record in the system”.

To enable sending emails to the addresses not associate to any of the CRM records, all you have do is to update the CRM Email setting. Just navigate to Settings | Administration | System Settings, click on the Email tab, change “Allow messages with unresolved e-mail recipients to be sent” radio option from No to Yes, then click the OK button to save the system settings.

Try to send the email again and to see if it works!

Renaming Active Directory and Redeploy CRM

2009-03-31T19:26:00.000-05:00

I came across an issue today that the client would like to rename their AD because of some business decisions. They are wondering how to move CRM under the new domain. Well to move CRM from old domain to the new domain, here are the steps that you can follow:

Backup the [Organization]_MSCRM database.
Backup the custom reports if you have any.
Uninstall CRM 4.0 from the CRM server.
Remove the MSCRM_Config database.
Reinstall CRM 4.0 and choose to setup a new Organization option during the install.
Restore the existing [Organization]_MSCRM database.
Logon to the CRM server and launch CRM Deployment Manager.
Import existing organization and then follow the wizard to remap the users in the new AD.
Verify that you can logon back to the CRM environment.

That’s it! If you run into any this issue in the future, now you can follow the steps above to redeploy CRM.

“I AM A PC”

2009-03-06T16:15:00.001-06:00

All MVP repeat after me, “I am a PC and I am a MVP"!”

http://www.microsoft.com/video/en/us/details/6d53ed7b-f784-4c00-b145-3c1123debc40

Creating a Birthday Contact List

2009-02-27T13:48:00.001-06:00

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

2009-02-21T12:33:00.001-06:00

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

2009-02-21T12:26:00.000-06:00

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

2009-02-11T15:49:00.001-06:00

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

2009-02-10T23:28:00.001-06:00

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

2009-02-02T15:53:00.000-06:00

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

Happy Chinese New Year

2009-01-26T16:03:00.000-06:00

Happy Chinese New Year of the Ox! Let this year be a BULL year for CRM around the world!

Chinese Restaurants around Indianapolis

2009-01-20T16:07:00.000-06:00

My company’s head quarter is located in Indianapolis, so I travel to Indiana a lot for work since most of my projects are around Indianapolis and South Bend. Since I work in Indiana so much, I want to find an “authentic, authentic” Chinese restaurant where all local Chinese eat at. I finally found one and I also believed it’s the only one Chinese restaurant people will go for dinner and dim sum.

The restaurant name is Great Garden, it’s located in Indianapolis (Not so safe area according to my co-workers). The address of the restaurant is 3623 Commercial Dr. Indianapolis, IN 46222 and the phone number is 317-290-2628.

I did a search online and I found a Chinese forum for international students listed all of the acceptable Chinese, Japanese and Korean restaurant around Indianapolis. I copied and pasted on my blog just in case you are looking for authentic Chinese, Japanese, and Korean food. I will try the all restaurants indicated below and let all of you know if it’s acceptable according to my standard. :) I am really picky on food.

Chinese

Great Garden
3623 Commercial Dr.
Indianapolis, IN 46222
Tel:317-290-2628

Shen Yang
3902 Georgetown Rd.
(317) 280-1978

The Journey
7155 E. 96th St.
Indianapolis IN, 46250

Japanese

Asaka Japanese Restaurant
6414 E 82ND St
Indianapolis, IN 46250-1584
(317) 576-0556

Sakura Japanese Restaurant
7201 N Keystone Ave
Indianapolis, IN 46240-3243
(317) 259-4171

Ocean World
1206 W 86th St
Indianapolis, IN 46260-2204
(317) 848-8901

Korean

Bando Restaurant
8015 Pendleton Pike
Phone: 897-8277

Dami
10989 Allisonville Road
Fishers, IN 46038

Mama's House Restaurant
8867 Pendleton Pike
Indianapolis, IN 46226-4111

Vietnamese

Saigon Restaurant
3103 Lafayette Rd.
Phone: 927-7270

Sizzling Wok
4351 Lafayette Road
Phone: 297-3441

King Wok
4150 Lafayette Rd
Indianapolis, IN 46254
(317) 295-8090

So enjoy!

CRM Online - InitializeEx() failed.

2008-12-30T14:55:00.001-06:00

I created an ASP.net form and I tried to post the form data to CRM via the CRM web service. I was able to run the application locally on my development machine, however when I deployed my project to the server, I received the InitializeEx() failed error. The stack trace shows the following:

[ApplicationException: InitializeEx() failed.]
   Microsoft.Crm.Passport.LogonManager.Initialize(String environment) +349
   Microsoft.Crm.Passport.LogonManager.Logon(String userName, String password, String partner, String policy, String environment) +30

The reason that you received this error message is because the default app pool user does not have permission to initiate the msidcrl40.dll file which called by the IdCrlWrapper.dll

To resolve this issue, I added the following line to my web.config file

<identity impersonate="true" userName="[LOCAL ADMINISTRATOR USERNAME]" password="[ADMIN PASSWORD]" />

If you don't want to touch the web.config file, you may do it through your IIS if you have access to it. Right click on your web site to open up the Properties of your Web site, then click on the ASP.NET tab, then click on the Edit Configuration button.

On the ASP.Net configuration setting screen, click on the Application tab. Check the Local Impersonation checkbox in the Identity settings section. Enter the local Administrator user name and password, then click OK to close the opened windows.

I tried to run my application again and I was able to insert records into CRM from my ASP.net form now. Hope this can help you in your next CRM project.

SQL 2008

2008-12-21T16:58:00.001-06:00

I installed SQL 2008 on my desktop today so I can checkout the new 2008 features. Immediately I can tell you that I like the IntelliSense feature that's built-in to the SQL Management Studio 2008. The table names and field names automatically popup for you. This makes SQL programming much easier.

Also I came across a problem when I try to modify a table already existed in a database, it gave me a error telling me that "Saving changes is not permitted". I do a live search, I found the answer from Robert John MacLean's blog. All I have to do is to go to Tools | Options | Designers in SQL Management Studio 2008, uncheck the "Prevent saving changes that require table re-creation" option and click "OK". Now I can save my changes to the table.

Create Activities using the Dynamic Entity Way

2008-12-19T11:17:00.001-06:00

I haven't touch CRM SDK for a while since I am working on another project not directly related to CRM. One of my old client required us to populate CRM with some more training data so they can use it for their training. So I have to modify the training processor that my teammates wrote to add activities to CRM. It appears to me that everything in the training processor have used Dynamic Entity for create, update, and delete.

To create an activities using dynamic entity is pretty straight forward, however I got stuck when I have to deal with the sender and recipient fields on a phone call, email, appointment and fax activity. Sender and Recipient field are ActivityParty type, I have done some research online and I was not able to find a way to associate the two fields to an activity using the dynamic approach. After going through the SDK and I was able to figure it out. I would like to share it since you might have to do the same in your next project.

Method 1: Not using Dynamic Entity

activityparty actParty = new activityparty();
actParty.partyid = new Lookup();
actParty.partyid.Value = new Guid("ENTER CONTACT GUID");
actParty.partyid.type = "contact";

activityparty actParty2 = new activityparty();
actParty2.partyid = new Lookup();
actParty2.partyid.Value = new Guid("ENTER USER GUID");
actParty2.partyid.type = "systemuser";

phonecall call = new phonecall();
call.from = new activityparty[] { actParty };
call.to = new activityparty[] { actParty2 };
call.description = "Test";

crmService.Create(call);

Method 2: Using Dynamic Entity

Property subject = new StringProperty();
((StringProperty)subject).Name = "subject";
((StringProperty)subject).Value = "Test";

Property description = new StringProperty();
((StringProperty)description).Name = "description";
((StringProperty)description).Value = "Test";

// Create From:
Property party1 = new LookupProperty();
((LookupProperty)party1).Name = "partyid";
((LookupProperty)party1).Value = new Lookup();
((LookupProperty)party1).Value.type = "contact";
((LookupProperty)party1).Value.Value = new Guid("ENTER CONTACT GUID");

DynamicEntity actParty1 = new DynamicEntity();
actParty1.Name = "activityparty";
actParty1.Properties = new Property[] { party1 };

DynamicEntityArrayProperty from = new DynamicEntityArrayProperty();
((DynamicEntityArrayProperty)from).Name = "from";
((DynamicEntityArrayProperty)from).Value = new DynamicEntity[] { actParty1 };

// Create To:
Property party2 = new LookupProperty();
((LookupProperty)party2).Name = "partyid";
((LookupProperty)party2).Value = new Lookup();
((LookupProperty)party2).Value.type = "systemuser";
((LookupProperty)party2).Value.Value = new Guid("ENTER USER GUID");

DynamicEntity actParty2 = new DynamicEntity();
actParty2.Name = "activityparty";
actParty2.Properties = new Property[] { party2 };

DynamicEntityArrayProperty to = new DynamicEntityArrayProperty();
((DynamicEntityArrayProperty)to).Name = "to";
((DynamicEntityArrayProperty)to).Value = new DynamicEntity[] { actParty2 };
 
// Create Phone Call Activity:
DynamicEntity activity = new DynamicEntity();
activity.Name = EntityName.phonecall.ToString();
activity.Properties = new Property[]{subject, description, from, to};

TargetCreateDynamic target = new TargetCreateDynamic();
target.Entity = activity;

CreateRequest request = new CreateRequest();
request.Target = target;

CreateResponse response = (CreateResponse)crmService.Execute(request);

That's it! Hope this will help you in your next project! :)

CRM 4.0 - Install CRM Language Pack

2008-12-17T17:28:00.001-06:00

It's my first time using Camtasia, I just want to make a simple video to test Camtasia and to see if it works on my blog.

Cool, it works!

CRM 4.0 List Web Part Available!

2008-12-17T15:04:00.001-06:00

CRM 4.0 List Web Part is available to download today. The list web part supports Multi-tenancy, IFD, 64bit and many more new enhancements comparing to the previous release.

System Requirement:

Windows Server 2003 or Windows Server 2008
Microsoft Dynamics® CRM 4.0
Microsoft Windows® SharePoint® Services 3.0 SP1
Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Server (MOSS) 2007 SP1
Microsoft® Internet Explorer 6 with SP1 or later versions

To download the list web part, click on the link below.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=3b6eb884-ec15-4288-a2a3-d0b47e057458&DisplayLang=en

Close Opportunity via SDK

2008-12-17T11:19:00.001-06:00

To close a CRM opportunity is different comparing to other CRM entities. If you want to close an opportunity, you need to use the WinOpportunityRequest and LostOpportunityRequest in the CRM SDK instead of the SetState requests. The code snippet below simply shows you how to set an opportunity to Win status via the CRM SDK.

opportunityclose close = new opportunityclose();
close.opportunityid = new Lookup();
close.opportunityid.Value = targetOppId;

WinOpportunityRequest request = new WinOpportunityRequest();
request.OpportunityClose = close;
// Update the status code according to your environment
request.Status = 1;

crmService.Execute(request);

Integrating CRM using SQL Integration Services (SSIS)

2008-05-07T17:18:00.001-05:00

The article that I wrote on integrating CRM using SQL Integration Services (SSIS) is posted on the CRM Team Blog. I hope this will help you in your next CRM integration project. You can click the link below to read the article. http://blogs.msdn.com/crm/archive/2008/05/07/integrating-crm-using-sql-integration-services-ssis.aspx

I would like to thank Darren Hubert, Matt Bonig, and Jeremy Hofmann on showed me the work around and helping me understand how to use SSIS to call web services. Thanks Guys!

Hiding Views in CRM 4.0 Using Plug-in

2008-02-25T22:44:00.001-06:00

There are many new moving parts added to CRM 4.0 and I am learning something new every day from the community, the projects that I am working on and the people around me. What I have learned this week by working with Sean McNellis at Microsoft is to hide Views using a simple CRM 4.0 plug-in.

As many of you may already know that Microsoft took off the capabilities of sharing views which many people used in CRM 3.0 to hide unwanted System Views from the user's view list. There have been many posts in the CRM newsgroup community on how to hide the views.

My colleague, Jeremy Hofmann found a clever way of hiding the views by updating a bit field in SavedQueryBase table against the MSCRM database. Unfortunately manipulating with the MSCRM database is not encouraged and also not supported by Microsoft. So what can we do?

What I have learned is that we can manipulate with the SavedQuery entity through a simple plug-in to control what shows up on the user's view drop down list. There are many neat things that you can do through the savedquery class offered by the SDK, you can read about it in the 4.0 SDK.

In this post, I will show you how to hide some Contact System views by writing a simple plug-in. I will intercept the retrieve operation that CRM used for getting the views and then append more condition logics to the its query expression.

Before:

C# Code:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Text;
using Microsoft.Crm.Sdk;
using Microsoft.Crm.Sdk.Metadata;
using Microsoft.Crm.Sdk.Query;
using Microsoft.Crm.SdkTypeProxy;
using Microsoft.Crm.SdkTypeProxy.Metadata;

namespace CrmAddon.Crm.Plugin
{
  public class HideContactViewsPlugin : IPlugin
  {
    public void Execute(IPluginExecutionContext context)
    {

            // Query the SavedQueryBase table to retrieve the Query Id
       Guid[] Views = new Guid[] { 
                new Guid("9818766E-7172-4D59-9279-013835C3DECD"), //NA-Contacts: No Orders in Last 6 Months
                new Guid("9C241A33-CA0B-4E50-AE92-DB780D5B2A12"), //NA-Contacts: Responded to Campaigns in Last 6 Months
            };

            if (context.InputParameters != null && gHiddenViews.Length > 0)
            {
                if (context.InputParameters.Properties.Contains(ParameterName.Query))
                {
                    QueryExpression qe = (QueryExpression)context.InputParameters.Properties[ParameterName.Query];

                    //only apply this action if the query is for 'views' or saved queries
                    if (qe.EntityName == "savedquery")
                    {
                        if (qe.Criteria != null)
                        {
                            if (qe.Criteria.Conditions != null)
                            {

                                //Append more condition logic to the default query that's used by CRM. In this case, I filtered on the savedqueryid to exclude the views from the Ids identified above.

ConditionExpression queryCondition = new ConditionExpression("savedqueryid", ConditionOperator.NotIn, Views);
                                qe.Criteria.Conditions.Add(queryCondition);
                                context.InputParameters.Properties[ParameterName.Query] = qe;
                            }
                        }
                    }
                }
            }
        }
    }
}

Plug-in Registration:

Message: RetrieveMultiple
Primary Entity: savedquery
Stage of Execution: Pre Stage
Execution Mode: Synchronous

Sample Registration Snapshot:

...

...

After:

As you can see that the "Contacts: No Orders in Last 6 Months" and "Contacts: Responded to Campaigns in Last 6 Months" views are removed from the drop down list. The new CRM 4.0 SDK is really powerful and you can definitely do more with it. E.g. hide/show the view based on the user id or team, etc...

I hope this will help you on your next CRM project. :)

Updated CRM SDK - 4.0.1

2008-01-24T09:37:00.001-06:00

New CRM 4.0 SDK released, you may download it from the Microsoft download site.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=82E632A7-FAF9-41E0-8EC1-A2662AAE9DFB&displaylang=en

CRM 4.0 MSDN Keys Available

2008-01-21T10:20:00.001-06:00

Hi Folks,

If you are MSDN w/ Premium subscribers, the MSDN key for CRM 4.0 is available on the MSDN site.

CRM 3.0 - Set State for Activities

2008-01-14T21:01:00.001-06:00

Finally, I got my Windows Live Writer working again on my laptop. Windows Live Writer definitely my favorite blogging tool. :)

I built a Set State callout for my client recently, what I have learned during development was that before setting state of the activity record. It will automatically call the CRM web service to set the Actual End Date of the activity before setting the status. So this means there's two web service calls in the background for changing the state of any activities.

CRM 4.0 Plug-In

2007-10-16T08:21:00.001-05:00

I posted a blog article about CRM 4.0 Plug-In on our company blog, hope to give CRM developers some ideas on what CRM plug-in is, etc...

click the link below to view the article.

http://crowechizek.typepad.com/crm/2007/10/microsoft-dyn-2.html

CRM 4.0 VPC

2007-10-09T17:55:00.001-05:00

CRM 4.0 is available for partners to download, you can download the image from the link below:

https://mbs.microsoft.com/partnersource/products/mscrm/

The CRM application expire 11/20/2007 and the VPC image itself expire 11/30/2008.

CRM Titan - Data Import/Migration Tool

2007-10-01T17:11:00.001-05:00

The new CRM Titan data import tool has been improved from the previous version and it's also easier to import data into CRM. The data migration tool contains the following new features:

Ability to import most record types, including custom types, not just the four types (accounts, contacts, leads and campaign responses) that may be imported before.
Automatic mapping of imported records. (e.g. if you have a pick list contain Value A, B, C and D. It will automatically does the lookup and the mapping of the pick list value, if it can't find the value, it will automatically add the value to the pick list field)
Ability to re-use data maps. (If you have a import process that imports data in a file that contains the the same file format (same columns and data type), you don't have to recreate the mappings every time when doing the import. You can create the mapping once and reuse it the next time when you import the file with the same data format)
Email notification when import jobs are done. During the import process, there's an option that you can set to have CRM notify you that the import jobs are done.
Duplicate detection enhancement. Works with the dup check system in CRM. If a duplicate is detected, it will not import the record.
Improve error handling. If a import job failed, you will able to see why the job fails.

The migration tool for Titan can do more than the Data import tool of course. You can :

Related records from multiple record types
Create custom entities and attributes automatically during the data migration process.
Migrate Notes and attached files (I have not try this myself, still need to verify)
Records can assign to multiple Microsoft CRM 4.0 users.

CRM Data Migration tool is a separate install and it didn't install by the default CRM installation. Both Data Migration and Import tool will first go through creating/updating the metadata first, then import the data to CRM.

There's a lot more you can do with the data import and migration tool now, I am still digging the tool to see what it can do. :)

CRM Titan - Cross Entity View

2007-10-01T16:32:00.001-05:00

When you trying to create a view or do an advance find in CRM, you are restricted in CRM version 3.0 to only display the fields of the entity you are currently working with. The ability to show related entity data, although often requested, was not possible. With Titan (CRM 4.0), you can now display the fields from the primary entity and related entities. For example, you may want to return opportunity records with columns related to the estimated opportunity amounts and close dates but also see the account name and state in the view (or resulting Excel export), with Titan, this is now possible.

I will provide a more detailed example later this week, but for the moment I wanted to show off a new feature in the next CRM release that I think will make many users (and implementers) very happy. Take a look at the screen shot for a quick preview (click on image thumbnail to get a full size image).

Secondary Lookup

2007-03-22T23:54:00.001-05:00

From the CRM blogs, many people asked how to add a secondary lookup to the Account and Contact form? Due to CRM 3.0's limitation, we are not able to create another relationship between account to contact or contact to account.

To add another lookup, we need to use JavaScript to inject some codes to the CRM form. The way that I am showing here will not create a relationship between the entities. Instead, it will store the Name and the GUID with the record. I used JavaScript to add a lookup fied to the form. In this sample, I will add a secondary contact lookup to an Account.

Pro: You will able to create the lookup field and also able to use the CRM lookup box. You can create as many as you wanted. :=)

Con: If the Name changed for the contact, it will not update the name that store in the account entity. If you want to upda the name, you need to write a postcallout to update the name in the account record.

Here are the steps to create a secondary lookup:

Step 1: Create two custom attributes in the Account Entity.

Display Name: Secondary Contact
Schema Name: new_secondarycontactname
Type: String
Description: Stores the Contact name

Display Name: Secondary Contact Value
Schema Name: new_secondarycontactvalue
Type: String
Description: Stores the GUID for the Contact

Step 2: Add two newly created attributes to the account form.

Take out the label for "Secondary Contact Value" field. We will use JavaScript to hide the "Secondary Contact Value" field later.

Step 3: Insert the following code to the Account form onLoad event.

The code below will replace the Secondary Contact text field with a Lookup box.

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

crmForm.all.new_secondarycontactvalue.style.visibility="hidden";

customSecondaryLookup("new_secondarycontactname");

  catch(e)

    alert(e.description);

function customSecondaryLookup(displayFieldName)

   try {

           var fld = crmForm.elements[displayFieldName];

           var temp = fld.value;

           if (temp.length == 0){

              fld.insertAdjacentHTML("afterEnd","<table class='lu' cellpadding='0' cellspacing='0' width='100%' style='table-layout:fixed;'><tr><td><div class='lu'>&nbsp;</div></td><td width='25' style='text-align: right;'><img src='/_imgs/btn_off_lookup.gif' id='" + displayFieldName + "' class='lu' lookuptypes='2' lookuptypenames='contact:2' lookuptypeIcons='/_imgs/ico_16_2.gif' lookupclass='BasicCustomer' lookupbrowse='0' lookupstyle='single' defaulttype='0' req='0'></td></tr></table>");

           else

fld.insertAdjacentHTML("afterEnd","<table class='lu' cellpadding='0' cellspacing='0' width='100%' style='table-layout:fixed;'><tr><td><div class='lu'><span class='lui' onclick='openlui()' oid='" + temp + "' otype='2' otypename='contact'><img class='lui' src='/_imgs/ico_16_2.gif'>" + crmForm.all.new_secondarycontactvalue.value +"</span></div></td><td width='25' style='text-align: right;'><img src='/_imgs/btn_off_lookup.gif' id='"+ displayFieldName +"' class='lu' lookuptypes='2' lookuptypenames='contact:2' lookuptypeIcons='/_imgs/ico_16_2.gif' lookupclass='BasicCustomer' lookupbrowse='0' lookupstyle='single' defaulttype='0' req='0'></td></tr></table>");

      fld.parentNode.removeChild(fld);

      fld = crmForm.elements[displayFieldName];

      fld.value = temp;

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

Step 4: Insert the following code to the Account form onSave event.

The code below will stripe out the GUID for the Contact from the return lookup HTML and save it to the Secondary Lookup Value field.

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

var S_CONTACT_NAME = crmForm.all.new_secondarycontactname.parentElement.parentElement.firstChild.innerText;

crmForm.all.new_secondarycontactvalue.value = S_CONTACT_NAME;

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

Step 5: Save the Account Form.

Step 6: Publish the Account Form.

Happy Programming!

GP and CRM Integration

2006-12-11T10:24:00.001-06:00

For those who would like to get GP and CRM integrated, I am highly recommend using Scribe. Scribe provides a template for the integration. All of the standard fields are pre-mapped, what you needed to do is to modify the template for any custom fields that you created in CRM or GP that you would like them to integrated.

In order to do the integration, you need eConnect for getting data out of GP which eConnect is provided to you for free. You also need Scribe Workbench (Tool to define the mappings), Scribe Insight (Like a job scheduler), CRM Adapter and GP Adapter. The cost of the Scribe pakage is around $4,000, which can save you a lot of time and effort comparing to other integration methods. The other benefit of using Scribe is that you can use Scribe for other data integration and migration.

Access Rights Mask

2006-10-27T09:41:00.001-05:00

If you wonder how the number is generated for access certain records in CRM. Here's a reference for you.

Access Right Values:

Read = 1
Write = 2
Append = 4
AppendTo = 16
Create = 16
Delete = 65536
Share = 262144
Assign = 524288

So if you want to grant read and write access, then just add up the read and write value. (e.g. Read (1) + Write (2) = ReadWrite (3) )

Welcome

2006-10-24T14:50:00.000-05:00

Welcome to Darren's CRM Blog! I started this blog so I can post some of the customizations that I did on the projects that I have worked on. In here, I would like to thank Byran Phillips and Jeremy Hofmann for "making" me starting this blog. :=)