Moving on...

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

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

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

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

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

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:

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

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

Baby Allen Liu

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

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

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:

1. Backup the [Organization]_MSCRM database.
2. Backup the custom reports if you have any.
3. Uninstall CRM 4.0 from the CRM server.
4. Remove the MSCRM_Config database.
5. Reinstall CRM 4.0 and choose to setup a new Organization option during the install.
6. Restore the existing [Organization]_MSCRM database.
7. Logon to the CRM server and launch CRM Deployment Manager.
8. Import existing organization and then follow the wizard to remap the users in the new AD.
9. 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”

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

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

Happy Chinese New Year

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

Chinese Restaurants around Indianapolis

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.

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

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.