Exciting Developer Experience with MS CRM SDK 4.0.12

Advanced Developer Extensions

Advanced Developer Extensions for Microsoft Dynamics CRM, also referred to as Microsoft xRM, is a new set of tools included in the Microsoft Dynamics CRM SDK that simplifies the development of Internet-enabled applications that interact with Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0. It uses well known ADO.NET technologies. This new toolkit makes it easy for you to build an agile, integrated Web solution!

Advanced Developer Extensions for Microsoft Dynamics CRM supports all Microsoft Dynamics CRM deployment models: On-Premises, Internet-facing deployments (IFDs), and Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online. The SDK download contains everything you need to get started: binaries, tools, samples and documentation.

Authentication for Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online

Newly added authentication documentation and sample code for Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online that does not require using certificates, making it easier for you to write code for your online solutions.

There are quite a few other updates in this version of the SDK package. Refer to the release history on the first page of the CHM for a complete list.

The latest verion of SDK 4.0.12 is available for download. Download it.

Take a 10 Minute Quick Start Walkthrough here.

Enjoy!

Customer Care Accelerator available for Microsoft Dynamics CRM in Codeplex

Customer Care Accelerator for Microsoft Dynamics CRM is available for download on the CRM Accelerators codeplex site.

The Customer Care Accelerator focuses on delivering contact center enabling functionality, such as the ability to create a unified desktop by combining data elements from disparate line of business applications and displaying it in a single user interface. The core Customer Care
business scenarios highlighted by this accelerator include the following:

 Integrated desktop: Customers can aggregate information from diverse business applications into an integrated desktop providing employees with a 360° view of the customer interactions. Customer service representatives have immediate access to business critical information to serve customers quickly and efficiently, increasing customer satisfaction and loyalty.
 Duplicate Data Entry: Organizations can streamline business processes by creating desktop automation workflows. Process automation eliminates the need for agents to re-enter the same data in multiple applications. Minimizing duplication helps to reduce human error and ensures a consistent customer service experience.
 Computer Telephony Integration (CTI): Organizations are provided with a consistent framework to connect CTI systems with key lines of business.
 Activity Reporting: Contact center managers have swift access to agent desktop transaction reporting, helping them to identify process bottlenecks. This capability is currently addressed by ICC Accelerator AIF component.

CCA is available as permissive shared source and is a reference example that can be adapted to fit the needs of a customer as well as additional business scenarios.

Happy CRMing

How xRM can Stretch IT?

Theorem with Proof. Excellent...! I just got this news letter from Microsoft.

Get CRM usage information using the IIS Logs

One of the frequent requests I come across is the usage log to monitor adoption. Here is a ready-made solution for you. The article describes how to make use of the IIS logs to get useful information about who is accessing CRM and when.

This technique uses some SQL objects (tables, view and functions), and a reporting services report. The source code for these is available on the MSDN Code Gallery.

Now I will wait for your invitation to the Happy Adoption Day..!!!

Update Rollup 4 for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0

A Quick Update:
The CRM team has just released Update Rollup 4 for CRM 4.0 which you can download from here.

· KB article: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/968176
· Download center page: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=0ddf8e83-5d9c-4fe7-9ae6-f2713a024071

Communications Panel for Microsoft CRM 4.0

While reading Dynamics related blogs today, I found the announcement of Communication Panel for Dynamics CRM 4.0, an interesting add-in for CRM 4.0. I am delighted to see this as it seems to make perfect match - Office Communications Server [OCS] and Dynamics CRM.

The Agent Communications Panel for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 works with Microsoft Dynamics CRM and Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2, and enables agents to manage their communications (make calls, receive calls, conference, and chat) from their Microsoft Dynamics CRM system.

The Agent Communications Panel embeds with CRM itself:

Agent Communications Panel is an XBAP, published to a Web server and opened from a Web browser.

A few interesting facts:

• Make and Receive Phone Calls

• Make and Receive Instant Messages

• Add Audio to an Instant Messaging Session

• Conferencing

• Manage Your Activity Records

And many more……

Download Center: Click here

CRM 4.0 Update Rollup 3 is now available via the download center.

CRM 4.0 Update Rollup 3 is now available via the download center.

· KB article: http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=961768

· Download center page: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=05453fa4-9551-4a88-9852-634a9ad0e140&displaylang=en

Update Rollup 3 is the first UR post-transition to the new rollup servicing model. A very significant advantage of this model is the release predictability as Microsoft ships an update rollup every 8 weeks. The next rollup will release on May 7th. All the major product groups have moved to this rollup servicing model and many more are transitioning now as it’s been a win for Microsoft and our customers.

A few interesting facts about this Update Rollup:

· There are 91 new fixes in this rollup, of which 67 came from the SE Help project. Since UR3 contains the previous two Update Rollups, there are 384 fixes included in UR3 (of which 218 fixes came from the SE Help project).

In terms of priority, the breakdown is as follows:

	Update Rollup 1	Update Rollup 2	Update Rollup 3	Total
P1 (severe bug)	51	22	14	87
P2 (loss of functionality with no workaround)	48	50	39	137
P3 (loss of functionality with workaround)	47	68	34	149
P4 (Customer Design Change Request)	0	7	4	11
Total	146	147	91	384

New version of the CRM SDK 4.0.8 is available for download.

This release of the Microsoft Dynamics CRM SDK includes new documentation and sample code to support server-to-server authentication with Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online. SDK is available for download @ http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=82E632A7-FAF9-41E0-8EC1-A2662AAE9DFB&displaylang=en

Dynamics CRM Mobile Express Preview now available

The Day has Come. Microsoft has released a "preview" of Mobile Express for CRM, a free mobile application for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0. Read more about it here. Download it here (registration required).

Join the Mobile Express for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Connect program and suggest ideas of how to make the product better.

Sort records by multiple columns in MS CRM

When you’re in a hurry to find a record you need, or want to see groups of records, sorting a list of records is frequently the quickest method. You can easily sort records by one or more columns.

To sort a list of records, click a column heading. The arrow indicates the direction of the sort: for ascending, and for descending. To change the sort order, click the heading again

To sort by an additional column, press CTRL+SHIFT while you click the additional column heading. Each column will show the arrow that indicates the sort direction. The columns are sorted based on the order you click the column headers.

Microsoft CRM web site! A new look and feel - Runs on Windows Azure

The Microsoft CRM web site http://crm.dynamics.com got a complete new look and feel! The new site runs on Windows Azure and relies on underlying Microsoft SQL Server, Silverlight, and ASP.Net services from Azure.

Check it out now.

ISV Utilities for Comparing Customizations and Transferring Configuration Data Released

Hurray...! "Developer's Most Required" ISV Utilities for Comparing Customizations and Transferring Configuration Data Released. I would like to thank the ISVs who took initiative to Build these Utilities. Great Work Guys :)

Inna Agranov
Microsoft Corporation

February 2009

Summary

Learn how to build and use two new powerful tools developed for Microsoft Dynamics CRM. The Customization Comparison Utility lets you compare the customization files between two Microsoft Dynamics CRM systems and the Configuration Data Utility lets you transfer custom configuration data from one Microsoft Dynamics CRM system to another.

Download the Visual Studio 2008 and Visual C# code samples for this article:

• CustomizationComparisonUtility.exe
  
  
• ConfigurationDataUtility.exe
  
  

The Readme.doc documents that are included with the sample code contain information about how to set up and build the sample applications. The user guides contain detailed information about how to use the sample applications and view the results.

Applies To

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0

Microsoft Visual Studio 2008

Introduction

Microsoft Dynamics CRM is a highly customizable system. Not only you can modify different sections of the product, you can also create new components to address business needs. The Microsoft Dynamics CRM platform offers a robust set of tools, APIs, and documentation that helps you build custom business applications. As the applications built on the Microsoft Dynamics CRM platform become more and more complex, a need for specialized support tools grows. In this article you will learn about two very useful tools that help you analyze the impact of customizations on the system and maintain consistent configuration data across multiple Microsoft Dynamics CRM systems.

Evaluating the Impact of Customizations with the Customization Comparison Utility

To evaluate the impact of customizations, it is helpful to compare customization files between the source and the target systems before you import customizations. The Customization Comparison Utility helps you accomplish this task.

Analyzing Customizations

Often you have to export custom components from one Microsoft Dynamics CRM environment and import them into another, for example, from development into test or production. However, before you import customizations, it is very helpful to assess the impact of customizations on the target system. The system where you import customizations may have been changed since the last installation. You have to consider the extent of the changes and how they may affect the new installation. While some of the changes, such as renaming of the attributes or adding new attributes, are minor, other modifications, such as deletion of entities or changes in the forms may have a significant effect on the system.

Analyzing and understanding the system customizations may result in more successful deployment of a new version of the application. This analysis minimizes the risk of overwriting important customization data in the target system. For example, if only several attribute names have changed, you may be able to do a plain import using the import/export functionality built into Microsoft Dynamics CRM. However, if some key components were deleted, such as entity forms, you may have to merge the customizations with the changes in the target system. Comparing customization files between the two systems helps you determine which approach will result in more successful deployment. This is also very useful when you are diagnosing the problems between two systems. By comparing the customization files, you can often identify possible causes of the existing problems.

Using the Customization Comparison Utility

The Customization Comparison utility lets you easily compare two Microsoft Dynamics CRM customization.xml files. Unlike other XML comparison tools, this utility can read and understand Microsoft Dynamics CRM schema. The results of comparison show the differences in entities, attributes, forms, views, workflows, security roles, entity maps, and relationships. You can use this tool before you import customizations into a system to evaluate the effect they will have on the system.

Use the tool to compare XML customizations files between the source and the target systems. If you use a zipped customization file, make sure that it contains only one customization XML file. The following illustration shows the results of comparison between two customization files. The compared items include entities, roles, workflows, entity maps, and relationships. You can drill down into each item to see more details. From the entities, you can view the changes in attributes, forms, and system views. You can easily see the changes in source and target. It shows the items that are present in the source file and not present in the target file and the items that are present in the target file, but not in the source file.

In addition to reviewing the results of the comparison in the grid, the tool includes a report that you can easily export to Microsoft Office Excel for additional analysis.

The tool offers a command line version that you can run from a command prompt.

For more information about how to use the tool, see the Customization Comparison user's guide included in the download package for this utility.

Transferring Configuration Data with the Configuration Data Utility

When you work with multiple environments, such as development, test, and production, or multiple Microsoft Dynamics CRM organizations, keeping consistent configuration data across all systems can be very important. The Configuration Data Utility helps you achieve this. It lets you export custom configuration data from a source Microsoft Dynamics CRM system and import it to a target Microsoft Dynamics CRM system.

Storing Configuration Data in Custom Entities

In Microsoft Dynamics CRM you often use custom entities to store business information. However, you could also use custom entities to store system configuration data. For example, if an application integrates Microsoft Dynamics CRM with a third-party system, you could create a configuration entity with attributes such as pollingtime, url, and retries to store the configuration data needed for the integration. This is very convenient because the data stored in the configuration entity can be used by the system administrators to configure a new application or update an existing application. To keep the configuration data up to date, you may have to frequently upload the new data, or have an automated task to do it.

Using the Configuration Data Utility gives you a simple and efficient way to transfer custom configuration data from one system to another. One of the main benefits of this utility is that you can import configuration data from multiple custom entities at the same time. While it only imports and exports data for custom entities, the tool can handle useful scenarios, such as importing records that reference other records that are also being imported.

Important
For the tool to work correctly, the schema for the source entities and the target entities must be identical.

Note
In more complex cases, use the Microsoft Dynamics CRM data export and import tools or Data Migration Manager to transfer data for custom and system entities. For more information about these tools, see Microsoft Dynamics CRM online Help.

Using the Configuration Data Utility

Use the Configuration Data Utility to export the source system configuration data and import it into a target system. The tool provides a convenient interface that lets you select the custom entities that contain the configuration data in the source system, save the data into a data file, and then import the records from the data file into a target system.

To run the tool, you must be a system administrator with appropriate privileges to create, read, and update entity instances.

The following illustration shows the entities in the source system that are selected for export.

For import, specify the target server where you import the configuration data and the data file that you created during export, as shown in following illustrations.

For more information about how to use the tool, see the Configuration Data Utility user's guide included in the download package for this utility.

Update Rollup 1 is now available for CRM 4

Microsoft has released Update Rollup 1 for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Server, Microsoft Dynamics CRM for Microsoft Office Outlook, and Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 E-mail Router.
For more information about this release, see Microsoft Knowledge Base article 952858.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?kbid=952858

To download the update, click here.

User login issue for Custom Roles in MS CRM

I hope this blog should resolve your Issues. The culprit is that the role assigned to user. User, who logs into MSCRM for the first time should have the "Write” permission on the entity "User Settings" (check under the "Business Management" tab in the role).

Once you login the first time with that permission, CRM does some backend "house-keeping" tasks that will take care of your issue with login.


Thanks to Shaak :) who pointed out this in a Discussion Forum.

CRM 5 - An Overview

I was thinking of summarizing the Professional Developers Conference and bring out key features of CRM 5. Simon made my life easy. He has a very good Preview. Thanks to Simon :). There are quite a few exciting features in CRM 5.

Very interesting stuff so check it out.

Stay tuned...!

Microsoft Box.net - Great Thoughts and Brilliant Ideas

I was crawling through Menno - CRM freak’s blogs and came across the following blog. Menno has proposed a collection of brilliant Ideas which I appreciate.

Valuable Suggestion. Take a look at Menno’s blog here.

CRM 4 Outlook Client – Issues, Fixes and Patches

Smiti has published a list of outlook Issues and fixes. Please have a look at the patches released from Microsoft in the following link: Click here

Important

• A hotfix is intended to correct a specific problem.
• Apply the hotfix only to systems that are experiencing the specific problem.
• Installing the incorrect hotfix can cause damage to your system.
• If you are not sure whether the hotfix is the correct one for your system, do not install it.
• Hotfixes are included in subsequent service packs that are safer to install through Microsoft Update