Bill Owens on Microsoft Dynamics CRM

My Blog has moved

2010-05-25T16:44:00.003-04:00

Many people have asked where my post are for the first half of 2010, my company had me posting to another blog and maintain two was near impossible. I am now down to just this blog one blog and I have moved it to I have moved my blog to http://blog.aresgrp.com/crm. Now that I am down to done, I will have a couple of new entries posted before the end of May. I will not be posting to this blog any more. Please update your feeds.

Buy vs Build

2009-10-31T10:12:00.001-04:00

Jonas Deibe - Dynamics CRM, C#, JS wrote this

Buy versus build judge yourself! I would think xRM as a way of accelerate application development.

Costs

Benefits

Buy (xRM)

Locked to vendor

Locked to vender schedules

Customizations to fill GAPs (if any)

Licenses

Configuration more than development

Faster go to market

Use vender enhancements

“Standard”

Shop GAP’s as modules or vertical solutions

Build (.Net or any other langauges)

Expensive

Longer delivery cycles

Harder to rapidly change

Innovation

Tailor application bit by bit

Re-use existing infrastructure

Better control over developer process

Checkout the introduction to xRM for some inspiration http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yru5CkANOKA

Published Monday, August 31, 2009 8:19 AM by Jonas Deibe

It’s baaa-aaack! For a Limited Time – The Big Easy 3.0!!

2009-10-31T10:03:00.001-04:00

Great news for Microsoft CRM partners and customers; from November 1st, 2009 through January 2nd, 2010 you can take advantage of one of our most popular promotions ever. Applicable to Open, Open Value and Open Value Subscription license types, both Corporate and Government customers are provided with partner subsidy funds to help with the implementation of their Microsoft solution. The following product groups are included:

The Big Easy Offer 3.0 Product Groups:

Developer and Designer Tools
Dynamics CRM
Exchange Server
Forefront
Office Communications Server
Office System
Project and Visio
SharePoint Server
SQL Server
System Center
Windows Server System
Windows Server Solutions

Get more details here: https://partner.microsoft.com/US/bigeasyoffer A Windows Live ID linked to your partner organization is required.

New Update to the Dynamics CRM Statement of Direction now available!!

2009-10-31T10:00:00.001-04:00

Hot off the presses we now have access to the freshest information on Dynamics CRM, Mobile Express, CRM Accelerators, the CRM Adapter for GP, xRM and the highly anticipated release of CRM “V.next.”

What an edge-of-your-seat thrill ride! Sure to be a best-seller – OK, it’s free – but I couldn’t put it down! Make sure to get your copy today at these fine outlets:

PartnerSource:

https://mbs.microsoft.com/partnersource/marketing/statementofdirection/MD_CRM_SOD.htm

CustomerSource:

https://mbs.microsoft.com/customersource/documentation/whitepapers/MSD_CRM4StatementOfDirection

Example of Dynamic Entity Retrieval

2009-10-30T20:33:00.001-04:00

by Danny Varghese 01.31.09

There have been numerous requests on other blogs about sample code to on how to retrieve entities in CRM. One way is to use the CRM web service to retrieve business entities, however by doing so, you're only limited to out-of-the-box entities with system attributes. To retrieve anything more "dynamic," you'll have to employ other methods. Please remember that in order to retrieve any record, you must have the proper permissions on that entity.

Below is a code example of how to retrieve a record with an id using dynamic entity retrieve:

public DynamicEntity RetrieveEntity()

//variable initialization

TargetRetrieveDynamic target = new TargetRetrieveDynamic();

RetrieveRequest retrieveRequest = new RetrieveRequest();

RetrieveResponse retrieveResponse = null;

DynamicEntity entity = null;

target.EntityName = <name of entity here>

target.EntityId = <id of entity here>

//initialize request parameters

retrieveRequest.ColumnSet = new AllColumns();

retrieveRequest.ReturnDynamicEntities = true;

retrieveRequest.Target = target;

//build the response object

retrieveResponse =

(RetrieveResponse)GetCrmService().Execute(retrieveRequest);

//retrieve the service order item from the response

entity = (DynamicEntity)retrieveResponse.BusinessEntity;

return entity;

The above example is a simple one, but the example below retrieves all contacts that have an account id = some id, and also retrieve the records with only a certain attributes. This is probably a more robust example encompassing many retrieval options:

private ArrayList RetrieveMultipleContacts(ICrmService crmService, Guid parentAccountId)

{

//variable initialization

ConditionExpression condition = new ConditionBLOCKED EXPRESSION;

FilterExpression filter = new FilterBLOCKED EXPRESSION;

QueryExpression query = new QueryBLOCKED EXPRESSION;

RetrieveMultipleRequest request = new RetrieveMultipleRequest();

ColumnSet cols = new ColumnSet();

RetrieveMultipleResponse response = null;

ArrayList contacts = new ArrayList();

//Set the condition for retrieval

condition.AttributeName = "parentcustomerid";

condition.Operator = ConditionOperator.Equal;

condition.Values = new string[] { parentAccountId.ToString() };

//Set the properties of the filter.

filter.FilterOperator = LogicalOperator.And;

filter.AddCondition(condition);

//Set the attributes needed to be returned. NOTE: The CRM Sdk has an erroneous example

//of how to set the attributes for retrieval.

cols.Attributes.Add("address1_line1");

cols.Attributes.Add("address1_line2");

cols.Attributes.Add("address1_line3");

cols.Attributes.Add("address1_city");

cols.Attributes.Add("address1_stateorprovince");

cols.Attributes.Add("address1_postalcode");

cols.Attributes.Add("address1_country");

cols.Attributes.Add("telephone1");

cols.Attributes.Add("fax");

//Set the properties of the QueryExpression object.

query.EntityName = EntityName.contact.ToString();

query.ColumnSet = cols;

query.Criteria = filter;

//Set the query for the request and set the flag to return

//dynamic entities

request.Query = query;

//retrieve the contacts

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

foreach (BusinessEntity cont in response.BusinessEntityCollection.BusinessEntities)

{

contacts.Add(cont);

}

return contacts;

}

I hope these examples help someone, happy coding!

Report on Opportunities Lost to Competitors

2009-02-27T14:07:00.001-05:00

There is an out-of-the box relationship between competitors and opportunities in CRM that allows you to track many competitors to any one opportunity. However, when you close an opportunity as lost to a competitor, you may select one specific competitor within the Close Opportunity window. This is a different relationship in CRM than competitor to opportunities.

What if you want an all-up view of all your lost opportunities showing the competitors that you lost to?

When trying to get this report, many people naturally turn to advanced find views (AFVs) to try to create a query for this data. This approach won’t return all the data you need in an all-up Lost Opportunity report with Competitors because you cannot create an AFV on the Opportunity Close Activity. The closest you can get with AFV is to look for Activities, filter the Activity Type = Opportunity Close, and filter Competitor = [fill in the blank].

This only works when filtering one competitor because you cannot display a column for Competitor in this view – there is a 1:N relationship between Activity and Opportunity Close.

Thus, the way to get this view of your data is to create a Report (Workplace –> Reports)using the report wizard. The report wizard differs from AFV in that it allows you to JOIN data from different data tables (entities) rather than be restricted to lookup fields in 1:N relationships between data tables (entities). Here’s how to do it:

Go to Workplace –> Reports –> Report Wizard:

Name the report and specify primary and related record types:

Set a filter to return all activities = opportunity close (like I mentioned with the AFV), and Opportunity Close Competitor “contains data”:

Lay out fields in your report. In this example I’ve included Est. Revenue on the related Opportunity so you can quantify exactly how much revenue was lost to the competitor. You can summarize by this amount in your report in order to create a chart in the next step:

Add a chart if you want to:

Final Report:

With pie chart or bar chart:

Enjoy.

Posted: Monday, February 16, 2009 10:37 PM by Laura Robinson

Windows Live ID, a primer

2009-02-27T14:01:00.001-05:00

Windows Live ID is the authentication tool that is part of the Windows Live Service. With it you get free email, blog page, photo galleries, document storage, and more. Social networking tools such as Groups are also available. Groups allow you to invite people to participate in discussions, document sharing, events and calendars, and more.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online uses the Windows Live ID ( WLID ) to authentication who the user is. You can also integrate the Windows Services with your Microsoft Dynamics CRM application.

Integration with the Windows Live Service can enhance your CRM experience. Using the document storage service, Sky Drive, can allow you to share documents with other users and people not in your CRM system such as customers, business partners, and colleagues.

I’ve created a video that will introduce you to Windows Live ID and it’s services. The video also shows how you can use Windows Live Groups and Document Storage with Microsoft Dynamics CRM.

Windows Live ID Overview

How to integrate your Windows Service Storage - SkyDrive with CRM Online

Also, you'll want to watch the video by fellow technology specialist Kevin Williamson on how to add users to Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online.

Cheers,

Jon White

Bridge2CRM = (Microsoft Dynamics CRM + iPhone)

2009-02-27T13:47:00.001-05:00

by menno 24. February 2009 21:42

As you all might know is that I own an iPhone and absolutely love it. For me it is the ultimate device of being able to combine business with my personal life. I can view my Exchange email or meetings and at the same time I can listen to my favorite music, update my Twitter or Facebook status all through an easy to use interface!

Wouldn’t it be nice to have the ability to update or access Microsoft Dynamics CRM information via your iPhone? Bridge2CRM leverages the iPhone interface by integrating it with the power of Microsoft Dynamics CRM. Make phone calls on your iPhone directly from CRM, get map directions, send emails, and manage your CRM data; all from the easy and intuitive iPhone platform.

It works with Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online or with your on-premise deployment. For more details or to schedule a demo, please visit SoftBridge’s web site.

Preview: Mobile Express for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0

2009-02-19T15:00:00.001-05:00

Preview: Mobile Express for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0

We work all the time and everywhere. Getting information, giving information, communicating and keeping up. It is only natural that an application designed for letting businesses connect with their customers should be capable of working anywhere and anytime too.

This week, we released a preview of Mobile Express for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0. No one should think that this is the start or the finish of Microsoft Dynamics CRM mobility though. As we’ve looked at the needs for mobile CRM we’ve see not one experience but many experiences - we think that there are as many ways to take CRM mobile as there are uses of CRM. Mobile Express is one of those experiences.

Mobile Express for Microsoft Dynamics CRM provides users with a Web based CRM client that works on any HTML rendering device, small or large. The user interface can be customized to show only the types of objects that an organization wants to expose to mobile users. We see this choice working well for organizations with remote users who are frequently connected to a network and who may not need constant access to their CRM data but who want to have the flexibility to call it up when needed.

One of the interesting things that we’ve seen over the last few years is the desire to “never give a laptop computer to a sales person again” (an actual customer’s words). For organizations like this, a rich client on a smart device makes a lot of sense. Independent software vendors make full Microsoft Dynamics CRM applications for Windows Mobile (TenDigits, CWR Mobility, ADC), RIM Blackberry devices (TenDigits), the iPhone (softBridge) and Nokia phones (CRMMobile+). These applications typically have offline capabilities and can act as full PC replacements for some workers. I love these rich clients because while they have a broad range of CRM capabilities they can also be tailored to the specific needs of the jobs that people are doing with them.

And while I don’t expect too many people to be pulling out the Windows Mobile SDK to build their own mobile applications, building your own mobile solution may be cost effective and provide you with the best solution. In cases where there is a very limited set of tasks that users need to perform, special device functionality is needed or where you have development expertise in house, a bespoke solution can make sense. The solution could be as simple as e-mail alerts sent to mobile users or as complex as a .NET Compact Framework client. And some organizations are taking a mixed approach here: building an application for some users and purchasing one for others.

You can download the Mobile Express for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Preview and give us feedback through newsgroups at:

https://connect.microsoft.com/site/sitehome.aspx?SiteID=624

Barry Givens

Published Monday, February 16, 2009 8:44 AM by crmblog

Keyboard Shortcuts in MSCRM

2009-02-19T14:01:00.001-05:00

David Fronk Dynamic Methods Inc. 1/09/2009 04:43:00 PM

I'm all about using CRM more efficiently and if I can limit my time going from mouse to keyboard I'm much happier. Here are some keyboard shortcuts that I found to be really useful:
From any CRM Form you may use:
Save - CTRL + S
Save and Close - ALT + S
Save and New - CTRL + SHIFT + S
Delete the record - CTRL + D
Close - ESC or ALT + F4
Expand or Collapse Form Assistant - CTRL + SHIFT + F
Move to next field - TAB
Move to previous field - SHIFT + TAB
Trigger lookup field to autofill (only in CRM 4.0) - CTRL + K
This is where you would type part of the word in the lookup field and instead of tabbing out of the field you can use CTRL + K to trigger the search to run and autofill the field.
All regular Windows shortcuts, such as:
Copy - CTRL + C
Cut - CTRL + X
Paste - CTRL + V
Select All - CTRL + A

You can search the MSCRM Help file for "Keyboard Shortcuts" and you can then find some more.

David Fronk
Dynamic Methods Inc.

Accelerators and Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online

2009-02-12T15:45:00.001-05:00

Laura Robinson wrote this

The Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Accelerators have been rolling out over the last couple of months and one of the questions we’ve been working on in the CRM Online TS team is, how can we make these accelerators work for Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online? CRM Online, at the moment, operates under three distinct constraints as compared to the On-Premise or Partner Hosted versions:

Because Microsoft hosts the servers there is no custom code on the server
WLID Authentication
No custom reports uploaded to the server

More information about the differences between Online and On-Premise can be found on MSDN.

In light of these constraints, some of the 4.0 Accelerators will not work with Online at all, some will work partially if you import just the customizations but with minimal value (e.g. eService Accelerator), and others will work partially with minimal effort and still provide value to customers. Two of the accelerators that provide value to an Online org are: Extended Sales Forecasting and Event Management.

These accelerators contain custom entities, security roles, and workflows that can be imported to CRM Online and provide some value to an Online organization that is looking for a forecasting or event management template or solution. Please note that there are some components with these accelerators that will not work in Online; in particular the Extended Sales Forecasting accelerator contains custom .rdl files to upload which are not possible in Online.

Event Management provides web portal customizations to allow for extranet event management registration, which is not possible to incorporate into Online. In the following blogs, I discuss how these accelerators can be used in CRM Online as well as some workarounds for the components that cannot be incorporated: Extended Sales Forecasting, Event Management.

Cheers,

Laura Robinson

Convergence 2009 – March 10-13, 2009 | New Orleans, LA

2009-02-12T15:34:00.001-05:00

Discover the Power of Possibilities at Convergence and gain your competitive edge.
In today’s difficult economic environment, there has never been more value in attending Convergence. This year is geared toward helping you leverage your Microsoft Dynamics solutions to increase visibility into operations and maximize efficiencies. You will gain exposure into new technologies, better understand your current business management software, and gather insights you need to unleash your current solution’s full capabilities. Attend Convergence and learn how to:

Easily analyze your financial data and respond to changing business conditions.
Effectively forecast and manage your cash flow and compliance with clear understanding of reporting and process automation capabilities.
Access your comprehensive client information and stay connected to the needs of your customers.
Leverage your implementation with related applications like SQL Server and the Microsoft Office products which are an integral part of an integrated Microsoft Dynamics business solution
Improve fiscal responsibility and the delivery of public services.
Boost efficiencies and improve accountability with accurate financial tracking and reporting

Click here to learn more about Convergence New Orleans and how to get registered!

Open vs. Scheduled Appointments In CRM

2009-02-12T14:52:00.001-05:00

by Danny Varghese 01.23.09

In CRM, when creating appointments, you can set the status to Open or Scheduled. But why would a user set the status to one or the other?

According to the SDK, the status and state codes are different:

For CRM Outlook users, the only real difference seems to be the scheduling. When other users look at your calendar during this time period, if the appointment was marked Open, the time block will be marked as "tentative." If the appointment was marked Scheduled, the time will show up as "busy" in Outlook.

Email Templates v. Mail Merge Templates: What's the Difference?

2009-01-10T17:54:00.001-05:00

Posted: Saturday, January 10, 2009 12:37 AM by Laura Robinson

A question came up recently about email versus mail merge templates - when do you use one over the other? What are the advantages and disadvantages of each? In response, I put together a quick grid comparison of different features:

Feature	Email Template	Mail Merge Template
Insert merge fields	X	X
Insert custom attribute lookup fields		X
Are available to send in bulk	X	X
Preview before sending in bulk		X
Edit before sending in bulk		X
Place content in the body of an email	X	X
Respect do not contact rules	X	X
Create personal or organization-wide template	X	X
Can be used in workflow	X
Can be created globally for use across multiple entities	X
Can be created for custom entities		X
Requires the Outlook client to create template		X

Enjoy.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 5.0 features

2008-12-19T16:04:00.001-05:00

STEFANO DEMILIANI wrote this write up found here

If you're interested to know what will be the key features of the future Microsoft Dynamics CRM 5.0, I recommend to check Simon Hutson's post.

Remember that the next Microsoft CRM version is actually planned for release late 2009/early 2010 (there's not a codename now), so this is a really first preview.

This is the Simon's feature list (cross posted here):

New Features For End Users

Enhanced Navigation - I guess it was inevitable, but CRM5 uses the same "Fluent UI" (aka the Ribbon) as Office 2007. This new "command bar" replaces the CRM 4.0 "tool bars" at the top of each page, and is context sensitive. In addition, the "command bar" is fully customizable and you can add your own buttons much like you can with ISV.Config file today.

Incidentally, something that isn't discussed but appears on the ribbon is the "Add to Queue" command, from which I can only surmise that you will be add any entity (including custom entities) to a Queue.
Single Page Forms - The form model in CRM 4.0 made use of tabs to divide a form into multiple pages. In CRM5 tabs are displayed in the same way as section, with each form just having a single, scrolling page. As you can see from the navigation page of an Account entity, tabs are now displayed as a series of "quick access" navigation shortcuts under the "Information" link.
Data Filtering - One often requested feature is the ability to filter data in grids, much like Excel. Now you can navigate to the "DataView", click the "Filter" command, and you can perform your own in-line filtering.

Again, although not explicitly stated, it looks as though you can quickly save your filters as a View, as well as setting your own Default View.
In-line Visualizations - Although not Business Intelligence in the true sense of the phrase, CRM5 allows you to visualize numeric data using in-line charts. This is not SQL Server Reporting Services, but looks very much like the .NET charting solution from Dundas.

The charts themselves are drill-through enabled and you can select a number of different chart formats such as Bar, Column, Funnel, Line, Pie & Scatter.
Team Ownership - Entities in CRM 4.0 were either User Owned or Organisation Owned. Now Team Owned entities are added in CRM5, and integrated into the role-based security model.
Native SharePoint Integration - Integration with Windows SharePoint Services for document management, which includes site and document library provisioning, document metadata, item security, and check-in/check-out capabilities.
Unstructured Relationships - The next generation of "set regarding" and "relationship roles" functionality, allowing you to define ad-hoc relationships between any two entities.

New Features For Administrators

Flexible Form Layout - We now have much more flexibility in how forms are laid out, for example, we can position sections side-by-side, as well as field labels on top, left or right of each field. Best of all, we can now configure "In-Line Sub-Grids" for child records, so a combination of IFrames & JScript is no longer required to make this work.
Filtered Lookups - One of the most requested features has finally made it into the product. Whilst customizing the form, you can choose a pre-defined view or better still you can filter by a related lookup on the same form.
Form Headers & Footers - Now that all tabs, sections and fields appear on a single, scrolling form, it is quite possible the form will get become quite long and you will end up scrolling up and down more often to find the information you require. In order to make the most commonly required visible at all times, you can now place these fields in a header or footer so that they will always be displayed regardless of the scrolling.
Solution Management - With CRM 4.0, you had to implement a manual process when customizing your solution, to make sure that you didn't overwrite previous customizations, or disrupt any 3rd party ISV solutions. In CRM5 we had now added the concept of solutions.

A solution is a defined set of entity customizations, workflows, e-mail templates, security roles, plug-ins etc. that can be managed as a single unit. Each solution is version controlled so presumably your can have multiple versions of the same solution installed, and roll-back to a previous version if necessary.
You can also define solution dependencies where one solution can only be installed if another solution is also installed. For example, you might have a base solution for your whole organisation, with a departmental specific solution built on top of it.

Namespace collision is avoided by defining publishers, with each publisher having a unique namespace. This avoids the common issue where the default namespace "new_" is used for all customizations, leading to potential namespace conflicts.
One final plus point is that you can now specify which attributes will be exported as part of a solution, rather than having no choice but to export the whole entity.
Multiple Option Sets - Otherwise known as "Global Picklists", you can define these at the solution level, and re-use them across multiple entities.
Drag & Drop Form Editor - One of the most time consuming customization tasks in CRM 4.0 is the form design. Every time you want to add, remove or re-position tabs, sections and attributes, you have to go through a multi-click process. With CRM5, you can now drag and drop all elements of a form, speeding up the process considerably
Audit - Although not explicitly mentioned during the sessions, I spotted an "auditing" setting on the attribute designer form, allowing you to turn auditing on or off.

New Features For Developers

Custom Code Sandbox - There is a new server role for running custom plug-in code and custom workflow activities without requiring full trust. This means that it will be possible to run custom code in the CRM Online environment and achieve true parity between On-Premise, Partner-Hosted and Microsoft-Hosted deployments.
Plug-In Transaction Support - In CRM 4.0 you could register a plug-in to run either before (pre-event) or after (post-event) the CRM platform operation. However, you were not able to run as part of the transaction itself, so you had to right your own compensation logic in the event the CRM platform operation failed. CRM5 addresses this limitation, and you can now choose to register you plug-in as part of the platform operation. The CRM5 plug-in registration tool has been modified to support this.
Automatic Plug-In Profiling - CRM5 will keep track of how a plug-in is executing, what resources it consumes, if it is causing unexpected exceptions and whether or not it is violating security constraints. If a particular plug-in fails a number of times it is automatically disabled from executing, helping to maintain system integrity.

I want to add here only that also the CRM Workflow side will be improved a lot and the WF usage will be extended.

Do you remember how many times we've asked the Team to have filtered lookups? So natural request I think... In CRM 5.0 we'll have this feature!!

I have also a personal request: I hope on improvements regarding data import and data migration. CRM 4.0 helps a lot on data migration but it's not always so easy to migrate large amount of data from a custom system to CRM (due to the import processes that sometimes are "freezing").

Technorati Tag: Dynamics CRM

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Help Update 4.2 (On Premise)

2008-12-19T16:02:00.000-05:00

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Help Update 4.2 (On Premise)

The Microsoft Dynamics CRM documentation team has updated the Help for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 based on feedback from customers and partners. In this update, you will find expanded information and clarifications in many topics, as well as bug fixes and new topics to support late-breaking product features.

This Help update is available for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 for English and all supported international languages.

Note: This update is not available for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Service Provider Edition, and is not necessary for Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online.

Update Rollup 1 for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 (KB 952858)

2008-12-19T15:59:00.000-05:00

Update Rollup 1 for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 (KB 952858)

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. This update rollup fixes over 30 known issues, including issues regarding Microsoft Dynamics CRM for Outlook.

Update Rollup 1 is available for all languages that are supported by Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0.

To maintain parity between the client and server components of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0, this update rollup includes packages for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Server and Microsoft Dynamics CRM for Outlook.

For more information about this release, see Microsoft Knowledge Base article 952858: Update Rollup 1 is available for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0.

Understanding How Outlook Synchronization Handles Deletions

2008-11-26T10:34:00.000-05:00

When Microsoft Dynamics CRM for Outlook and Microsoft Dynamics CRM synchronize, records that you delete in Microsoft Dynamics CRM for Outlook are also deleted in Microsoft Dynamics CRM, with the following exceptions:

If a contact is deleted in Outlook and the contact is not owned by you, the contact is deleted in Microsoft Dynamics CRM and Microsoft Dynamics CRM for Outlook.
If a contact is deleted in Outlook and is owned by you, the contact is not deleted in Microsoft Dynamics CRM or Microsoft Dynamics CRM for Outlook, but the link is broken and the record is not updated or recreated in Outlook.
If a contact is deleted in Microsoft Dynamics CRM or Microsoft Dynamics CRM for Outlook and the contact is owned by you, it is not deleted in Outlook, but the link is broken and the record is not updated.
When you delete an e-mail message, contact, completed task, past appointment, or service activity in Outlook, it is not deleted in Microsoft Dynamics CRM, but the link is broken. However, if you delete a pending (incomplete) task or future appointment in Outlook, it is also deleted in Microsoft Dynamics CRM.

Forrester ranks Microsoft Dynamics CRM ahead of Salesforce.com

2008-11-26T09:32:00.001-05:00

Sanjay Jain psoted this:

Recently, Forrester announced the results of its rankings for its CRM Sales and Customer Service Wave reports. Forrester ranked Microsoft Dynamics CRM as the #1 solution in the Direct Sales Management category, beating out Salesforce.com, Oracle Siebel, SAP CRM, and all others in SFA. Also, Dynamics CRM was ranked as #1 in the “Record Customer-Centric” category over Salesforce, Oracle, and SAP. This category focuses on complex B2B relationships where customer service is driven from within the CRM solution.

Earlier this year, Forrester published two other wave reports: Midmarket CRM Suites and Enterprise CRM Suites. These reports evaluate leading CRM products from an all-up perspective in terms of overall value and long-term viability for companies in the midmarket and enterprise segments. In both of these reports, Forrester ranked Microsoft Dynamics CRM higher than Salesforce.Com. In the midmarket category Dynamics CRM beat Salesforce.com to finish #2 behind Oracle Siebel. In the enterprise category, Dynamics CRM beat Salesforce.com to finish #3 behind Oracle Siebel and SAP-CRM.

You may access the full reports below from our corporate site (microsoft.com).

· The Forrester Wave^TM: Sales Force Management, Q4 2008: click here.

· The Forrester Wave^TM: Midmarket CRM Suites, Q3 2008: click here.

· The Forrester Wave^TM: Enterprise CRM Suites, Q3 2008: click here.

Sanjay Jain

Microsoft Dynamics ISV Architect Evangelist

Blogs: Team’s Blog + Sanjay’s Blog

Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Email correlation and smart matching

2008-11-26T09:23:00.001-05:00

Microsoft Dynamics CRM Team Blog posted this

What is correlation and why is it required.

One of the important scenarios in email management within CRM is to have the incoming email get associated with the correct object it’s regarding to. Consider the scenario where you have created an email related to a case and sent to a customer. The customer responds to the email. The incoming email is tracked in CRM and should now get automatically associated with the same case it is being responded to.

We take a two step approach in finding out the correct regarding object for an incoming email. The first steps is to find the correlated outgoing email to which the customer has responded and the next step is to get the regarding object out of the co-related email and set it on the incoming email.

How was correlation done in CRM 3.0?

In CRM 3.0 every outgoing email from CRM was suffixed with a CRM token in its subject. The CRM token was in the format CRM:0001001 and was configurable via the system settings. When an incoming email was tacked in CRM the email would be checked for the presence of CRM token. If one was found, the system will then looks for the most recent email with the same email token to correlate the two. Once correlation is done, the regarding object of the correlated email if found was set on the incoming email.

How is correlation done in CRM 4.0?

Most of our customers did not want to have a fancy looking token suffixed to the subject line of every email sent out of CRM. So in CRM 4.0 we introduced a new concept of smart matching that is used to correlated emails. The usage of email token is optional and can be configured though system settings. The following blog article talks about it.

http://blogs.msdn.com/crm/archive/2008/01/29/what-s-new-in-microsoft-dynamics-crm-4-0-e-mail-integration.aspx

But there is subtle difference in how the email token is used in CRM 3.0 and CRM 4.0 version. In CRM 3.0 the presence of the token was the only way to identify and correlated emails. In CRM 4.0 the presence of the token only increases the accuracy of the correlation but does not determine it. Thus it’s possible that an incoming email having an email token does not get correlated to the outgoing email with the same email token. This is especially true if the customer has updated the subject of the email, but retained the token thinking it would be ok.

How does smart matching work:

Smart matching relies completely on the existence of similarity between emails. The subject and recipients (from, to, cc and bcc) list are the two important components that are considered with checking for similarity.

When an email is sent from CRM, there are two sets of hashes generated for it and stored in the database.

a. Subject hashes:

To generate subject hashes, the subject of the email, which may include the CRM token if its usage is enabled in system settings, is first checked for noise words like RE: FW: etc. The noise words are stripped off the subject and then tokenized. All the non empty tokens (words) are then hashed to generate subject hashes.

b. Recipient hashes:

To generate the recipient hashes the recipient (from, to, cc, bcc) list is analyzed for unique email addresses. For each unique email address an address hash is generated.

Next when an incoming email is tracked (arrived) in CRM, the same method is followed to create the subject and recipient hashes.

To find the correlation between the incoming email and the outgoing email the stored subject and recipient hashes are searched for matching values. Two emails are correlated if they have the same count of subject hashes and at least two matching recipient hashes.

How can smart matching be configured?

One size never fits all and so the above described constrain for correlation, which is the default behavior of out of box CRM, can be configured to suite individual needs.

There are four registry keys that allow you to manipulate the smart matching behavior. These registry keys need to be added under the CRM server registry hive only. I.e. HKLM\Software\Microsoft\MSCRM

1. HashFilterKeywords

a. Description: This is a regular expression that is used to cancel out the noise in the subject line. All matching instances of the regular expression present in the subject line are replaced with empty strings before generating the subject hashes.

b. Default value: ^[\s]*([\w]+\s?:[\s]*)+

Basically it indicate that we internally (by default) will ignore any word at (multiples of it) at the start of the subject line that has a “:” at the end of it example:

	Subject	Ignored words
1	Test	None
2	RE: Test	RE:
3	FW: RE: Test	FW: RE:

Note: By default we do not ignore starting phrases in the subject line like “Out of office:” as this does not have the first word with the “:” next to it. For ignoring this phrase you can update the regular expression in the registry as “^[\s]*([\w]+\s?:[\s]*)+|Out of office:”. Do not place the double quote that I have around the string in the example into the registry. The text in the registry should only be the regular expression you want to use for ignoring words from the subject line.

2) HashMaxCount

    a. Description: This is the max number of hashes that will be generated for any subject or recipient list. I.e. if the subject after noise cancellation contains more than 20 words only the first 20 words are considered.

    b. Default value: 20

3) HashDeltaSubjectCount

    a. Description: This is the maximum delta allowed between subject hash counts of the emails to be correlated.

    b. Default value: 0

4) HashMinAddressCount

    a. Description: This is the minimum hash count matches required on the recipients list for the emails to be correlated.

    b. Default value: 2

Limitations:

The email hashes are generated when the email are sent out. If you change the HashFilterKeywords or the HashMaxCount via registry key only the new outgoing and incoming emails will be affected. The existing email hashes are not recalculated. Also CRM does not provide any out of box functionality to re-calculate the hashes.

Also the smart matching currently does not have a time limit on how old the correlated email could be. In CRM 5.0 we would address this along other improvements to smart matching.

Shashi Ranjan

CRM, Performance Point and MOSS (CRM+PPS+MOSS)

2008-11-26T09:05:00.001-05:00

Published Tuesday, October 21, 2008 10:00 PM by Jonas Deibe

Extending CRM with BI capacity has been on the radar for a while and with the new BI accelerators this will be an easy customization. The same applies to CRM and MOSS integrations. Since I have spent some time in this very interesting area I tough why not share some parts (screen captures). My goals was to build an application with Sales support (CRM) extend it with document management/collaboration (WSS/MOSS) and analyses, drilldown reporting plus dashboards (PPS)
The end application would be fully integrated and user navigation will be from the CRM client. Since its all installed on-premise authentication is single sign on (SSO). One very important goal is to let the end user not to know what underlying product she is using, it just doesn’t matter as long it works and supports the end-users business/processes.

The first step to do is to install the software. I use two servers and a client in my lab.
• Installation domain controller and Exchange (Server1)
• Installation SQL Server, AS for OLAP’s, Reporting Service (default port 80), CRM server (port 5555), MOSS Server (random port NOT default web 80), Performance Point Server (Monitoring), Visual studio (Server2)
• Installation of Client with Office package, Visual Studio (Client)

The installation process might take some time so don’t expect to install it all on an afternoon.
Details on how-to configure each product is not in scope of the blogs post (might be a later post)

The end result is a very powerfull application; below you see some screen shoots

CRM Webclient, Sharepoint site and PPS webparts rendering Dashboards from OLAP cube

Sharepoint Document Library. Context menu about to open workflows on current document.

Drill down to product from opportunities, all depending how the cube has been designed

PerformancePoint Monitoring SDK
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb848116.aspx

Working with Online Analytical Processing (OLAP)
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms175367.aspx

MOSS Developer center
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/office/aa905503.aspx

CRM 4.0 sdk
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa477293.aspx

Hide Annoying Script Error Popups

2008-11-26T09:00:00.001-05:00

David Fronk Dynamic Methods Inc. wrote on Friday, October 17, 2008

While working on a server recently I noticed that any time I closed an Account form I would get prompted to send error data back to Microsoft. I couldn't figure out what was causing the script error and the annoying window to pop up at first but I wanted to get rid of the pop up. The one that looks like this:

Most people just get fed up with seeing this and either constently click Send or Don't Send. Well, there's an easier way around this. The last hyperlink on the message says "Change error notification settings."

By clicking on this a new window will open up to your CRM Personal Options page and take you right to your Privacy tab.

And your options here are to either always be prompted (default), always send automatically, or to never send error messages. If you choose to either always send or never send you will not see the annoying script error pop up box again. You will be free to go about using CRM without being interrupted by these windows again.

Evidently my script errors were related to the Presence Control. There is a Microsoft KB article on how to turn off the Presence Controls throughout the system, click here (you will need a PartnerSource log in to view the KB article) to see how to turn it off.

Happy script error window free CRM using!

David Fronk
Dynamic Methods Inc.

Update Rollup 1 is available for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0

2008-11-26T08:39:00.002-05:00

Goto Microsoft's page on the rollup and download it there
Warning... It might be good judgement to wait a month to see if this update has any issues before you apply it to your production system

Caution about exporting and importing customizations
When customizations are exported from Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Server, we do not encourage you to import the customizations to Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Server in the following scenarios:

The server from which you are exporting customizations does not have Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Update Rollup 1 installed. However, the server to which you are importing the customizations has Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Update Rollup 1 installed.
The server from which you are exporting customizations has Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Update Rollup 1 installed. However, the server to which you are importing the customizations does not have Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Update Rollup 1 installed.

For more information about key issues that are fixed in Update Rollup 1, click the following article numbers to view the articles in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

957792 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/957792/ ) Error message when you try to import an organization to Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0: "Error| Import Organization (Name=[Company_Name], Id=[OrganizationID]) failed"

957701 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/957701/ ) A workflow stays in the In Progress or Waiting status when you run the workflow in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0

952046 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/952046/ ) The Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 client for Outlook may stop responding when other Outlook add-ins are also installed on the computer

956129 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/956129/) You may receive an error message when you try to save an appointment, promote an e-mail message, or run the E-mail Router in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0

954811 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/954811/ ) Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Deployment Manager takes a long time to open on a Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 server

955234 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/955234/ ) The changes that you made in offline mode are lost when you go online in the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 client for Outlook

949564 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/949564/ ) Windows Internet Explorer stops responding when you edit the working hours for a user in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0

956805 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/956805/ ) Error message when you edit an order that has the price locked in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0: "Crm Exception: Message: The product and the unit cannot be updated while the entity is locked., ErrorCode: -2147206371"

956869 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/956869/ ) Error message when you create a new organization or import an organization in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0: "Service msftesql was not found on computer '[Computer_name]'"

954349 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/954349/ ) You cannot select a price list even though a Price List lookup button exists in the Create Entity form or in the Update Entity form in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0

954800 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/954800/ ) Microsoft Outlook stops responding when you open, close, reply to, or forward e-mail messages in the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 client for Outlook

952724 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/952724/ ) You cannot view any e-mail messages in the folders after you install the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 On-Premise client for Outlook

952925 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/952925/ ) Error message when you try to add a user to Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 from a trusted domain: "An error has occurred. Try this action again"

951718 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/951718/ ) You receive script error messages when you browse through pages under the Microsoft Dynamics CRM folder in the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 client for Outlook

955049 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/955049/ ) Error message when you try to go offline in the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 client for Outlook: "Failed move data for entity 'Saved View' during action Insert, countRows=13"

948121 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/948121/ ) Outlook may stop responding when you exit Outlook, go offline in the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 client for Outlook, or go online in the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 client for Outlook

951884 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/951884/ ) The Microsoft.crm.Application.Hoster.exe service stops running when you run the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 client for Outlook with Offline Access

948043 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/948043/ ) You cannot import the customizations from a Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 system that you upgraded to another Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 system that you also upgraded

948045 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/948045/ ) Outlook stops responding when you track an Outlook contact in the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 client for Outlook

948155 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/948155/ ) A date or a time may not be converted to UTC time in the database for some time zones in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0

948172 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/948172/ ) Error message when you delete a queue item from a queue in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0: "Record is unavailable"

951179 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/951179/ ) Error message when you try to go offline in the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 client for Outlook with Offline Access: "Failed move data for entity"

949141 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/949141/ ) Error message when you click "View in CRM" after you create an appointment in the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 client for Outlook: "At least one recipient could not be resolved to a record in the system"

954916 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/954916/ ) Error message when you print an activity from the Activities view in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0: "Error: 'LOCID_UI_DIR' is undefined"

950175 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/950175/ ) You cannot use Outlook as expected until all Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 add-ins are loaded

950680 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/950680/ ) The workflow rules no longer run when you use the Deployment Manager Import Organization Wizard to import an organization in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0

953905 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/953905/ ) An update is available for the time zone and daylight saving time changes in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 and in the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 client for Microsoft Office Outlook

951300 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/951300/ ) The Full-Text Search feature cannot find Microsoft Knowledge Base articles and the status of some contracts cannot be set to Expire when you run the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Deployment Manager

952019 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/952019/ ) The Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 E-Mail Router service stops processing e-mail messages after a specific period of time

Complete list of issues that are fixed in Update Rollup 1 for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0

For more information about any of the issues that are fixed in Update Rollup 1, click the following article numbers to view the articles in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

957701 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/957701/ ) A workflow stays in the In Progress or Waiting status when you run the workflow in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0

955056 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/955056/ ) The "Mail Merge" function in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 transfers special characters incorrectly to Microsoft Word

954673 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/954673/ ) The e-mail message is not sent after you finish the Create Quick Campaign Wizard in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0

953291 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/953291/ ) You cannot use the SetFocus() function to retain focus in a field in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0

954549 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/954549/ ) Internet e-mail messages that contain dangerous or nonprintable characters in the Subject line are sent directly to the Microsoft Dynamics CRM forward mailbox when you use Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 client for Outlook

957703 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/957703/ ) The Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 client for Outlook stops responding when you change an option in the Options dialog box

953284 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/953284/ ) When you send an e-mail message in the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 client for Outlook, the message remains in the "In progress" folder of the "My work" queue

955286 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/955286/ ) Deployment Manager stops responding when you open Server Manager in Deployment Manager in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0

950521 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/950521/ ) An English-language MSN Money Web page opens when you double-click a URL that includes a Japanese ticker symbol or a Chinese ticker symbol in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0

955065 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/955065/ ) You may experience layout issues or formatting issues when you run a report in some versions of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0

952733 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/952733/ ) Changes to the contact data filter do not synchronize with a user's Outlook contacts in the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 client for Microsoft Office Outlook

951640 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/951640/ ) Error message when you view a workflow in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0: "The requested record was not found or you do not have sufficient permissions to view it"

954655 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/954655/ ) Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 does not perform a uniqueness check on a product number after you add a custom attribute to a Product entity

952979 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/952979/ ) Error message when you use the Advanced Find function to view saved views in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0: "There was an error in showing this linked entity"

952311 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/952311/ ) Error message when you click the Refresh list button on a grid of a view in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0: "Order by columns do not match those in paging"

949564 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/949564/ ) Windows Internet Explorer stops responding when you edit the working hours for a user in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0

956585 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/956585/ ) Error message when you install Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0: "System.Exception: Action Microsoft.Crm.Setup.Server.InstallConfigDatabaseAction failed"

951549 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/951549/ ) Error message when you try to remove a manager from a user in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0: "An error has occurred"

951065 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/951065/ ) Error message when you try to use the Advanced Find function to add contacts to a marketing list in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0: "An error has occurred"

953099 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/953099/ ) A workflow is triggered unexpectedly in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0

952874 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/952874/ ) An automatically generated invoice number is one character short when you create an invoice in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0

954917 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/954917/ ) You cannot create a follow-up activity if you set the "Assign to" field to a queue in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0

950430 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/950430/ ) You can submit a Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 form even if a required lookup field does not contain a valid value

950475 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/950475/ ) The Status Reason value of an appointment record is changed to a default value when you run the Dismiss function on a tracked Outlook calendar reminder in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0

948530 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/948530/ ) An update of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 does not change the Microsoft Dynamics CRM database if you install the MUI Pack on a computer that runs Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0

953340 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/953340/ ) E-mail messages from a CRM user to a queue are not delivered in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0

955247 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/955247/ ) Error message when you try to close an opportunity in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0: "A validation error occurred. The length of the 'subject' attribute of the 'opportunityclose' entity exceeded the maximum allowed length of '100'"

954811 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/954811/ ) Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Deployment Manager takes a long time to open on a Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 server

954256 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/954256/ ) Error message when you schedule a service activity that involves equipment or a facility in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0: "At least one recipient does not have an e-mail address or is marked as 'Do Not Allow' e-mail"

953842 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/953842/ ) Error message when you try to convert an existing lead in some quick campaign responses to entities in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0: "The requested record was not found or you do not have sufficient permissions to view it"

952046 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/952046/ ) The Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 client for Outlook may stop responding when other Outlook add-ins are also installed on the computer

955234 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/955234/ ) The changes that you made in offline mode are lost when you go online in the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 client for Outlook

951309 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/951309/ ) Labels are not translated as expected after you import labels into Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0

956129 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/956129/ ) You may receive an error message when you try to save an appointment, promote an e-mail message, or run the E-mail Router in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0

950414 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/950414/ ) Error message when you promote an e-mail message in the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 client for Outlook: "An error occurred while promoting a Microsoft CRM e-mail message" Error message when you promote an e-mail message in the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 client for Outlook: "An error occurred while promoting a Microsoft CRM e-mail message"

947818 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/947818/ ) A field that does not have a name appears on the Non-Event Dependencies tab in the Form Properties dialog box after you create a new custom entity in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0

949719 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/949719/ ) Error message when you track a received e-mail message or when you send a tracked e-mail message in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0: "An error occurred promoting this item to Microsoft Dynamics CRM"

950006 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/950006/ ) An e-mail activity is not added to a case when you convert the e-mail activity to a case in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0

952925 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/952925/ ) Error message when you try to add a user to Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 from a trusted domain: "An error has occurred. Try this action again"

951477 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/951477/ ) Error message when you run the "Send Direct E-mail" functionality by using a user-defined query in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0: "Either you do not have access to the record or the record does not exist"

950202 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/950202/ ) The translated labels disappear when you add a new value to a picklist field of an attribute for an entity in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0

951274 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/951274/ ) Error message when you try to import an organization into Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0: "Exception System.DirectoryServices.DirectoryServicesCOMException (0x80072030): There is no such object on the server"

951319 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/951319/ ) You receive error messages when you create an appointment in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0

950886 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/950886/ ) Error message when you start the report wizard or when you perform the Bulk Import activity in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0: "The logged on user does not have the appropriate security permissions to view these records or perform the specific action"

951502 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/951502/ ) You cannot open an e-mail message that is sent from a Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 user

953185 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/953185/ ) The Resume function does not work as expected when you run the function for the Update Contract States job in the Turkish version of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0

948008 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/948008/ ) A new follow-up activity is still owned by the original user after you change the user in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0

950542 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/950542/ ) Synchronous plug-ins do not respond to the events that are triggered in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0

952149 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/952149/ ) The Male label and the Female label are translated incorrectly in the Czech version of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0

951252 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/951252/ ) One or more customizations may be unexpectedly deleted on a report when you use the report wizard to modify the report in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0

951919 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/951919/ ) A workflow rule does not continue even though the "Wait" conditions are met in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0

949068 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/949068/ ) The Regarding field in an e-mail activity contains no value when you use a template that contains a Regarding field in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0

948876 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/948876/ ) Internet Explorer stops responding when you use the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Web client to save or to send an e-mail message that has a large body

948604 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/948604/ ) Error message when you try to provision a language in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0: "Cannot insert duplicate key row in object 'dbo.LocalizedLabel' with unique index 'ndx_LocalizedLabel_ForSingleSelect'"

948035 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/948035/ ) FIX: The "New Record" button and the "Add Existing Record" button are missing in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0

952019 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/952019/ ) The Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 E-Mail Router service stops processing e-mail messages after a specific period of time

952115 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/952115/ ) The dynamic value fields contain no content when you use an e-mail template to send a direct e-mail message in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0

950374 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/950374/ ) Text appears in a single line when you open the Preview page for an activity in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0

954916 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/954916/ ) Error message when you print an activity from the Activities view in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0: "Error: 'LOCID_UI_DIR' is undefined"

948843 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/948843/ ) You may experience slow performance when you run or edit workflows in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0

948126 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/948126/ ) Not all workflows are displayed in a lookup window for the relationships of an account in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0

947978 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/947978/ ) Some string variables are not passed to a custom Web form after you set a custom Web page as the default home page in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0

952815 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/952815/ ) Error message when you run an Advanced Find query in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0: "Microsoft CRM Unhandled Error Details: Server Error in '/' Application"

949732 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/949732/ ) A bit type field is unexpectedly set back to the default value when you run a workflow rule to update some other fields of a record in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0

954498 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/954498/ ) The marketing list still contains the members that you want to remove when you click Update Marketing List in the Manage Members page in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0

951206 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/951206/ ) A FetchXML statement that contains the <Link-Entity> statement may return incorrect data or incorrect data in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0

951301 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/951301/ ) Error message when you try to go offline in Microsoft Dynamics CRM for Microsoft Office Outlook with Offline Access: "A SQL Server error occurred. Try this action again due to configured cascading"

950088 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/950088/ ) E-mail messages are not sent from Outlook Web Access, from Outlook Mobile Access, or from Outlook Rules after you open the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 client for Outlook

952945 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/952945/ ) The Privacy tab on the Set Personal Options page does not contain a link to the error reporting privacy statement in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0

952547 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/952547/ ) A record moves to the bottom of the grid area if you expand the preview section of the record in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0

951538 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/951538/ ) The value in the Actual End column is incorrect in the "My Received E-mails" view in the E-mail type activities list in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0

950154 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/950154/ ) Error message when you change the Parent Account field in an opportunity form in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0: "No Attribute"

949925 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/949925/ ) A service case is not assigned to a user when you click Assign in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0

950229 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/950229/ ) Error message when you try to add a product to an opportunity in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0: "An error occurred during pricing of a detail line item"

954800 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/954800/ ) Microsoft Outlook stops responding when you open, close, reply to, or forward e-mail messages in the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 client for Outlook

952673 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/952673/ ) Error message when you try to open a Calendar view in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0: "Event Journaling Invalid Recipient Type"

951098 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/951098/ ) The Year view of the MiniCalendar view does not display the data correctly if you click to select the "Show week number in Calendar views" check box on the Customer Regional Options - Personal Options form in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0

948588 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/948588/ ) Error message when you import customizations in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0: "Failure: bulkoperation: Invalid Argument"

948172 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/948172/ ) Error message when you delete a queue item from a queue in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0: "Record is unavailable"

951884 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/951884/ ) The Microsoft.crm.Application.Hoster.exe service stops running when you run the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 client for Outlook with Offline Access

952576 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/952576/ ) The "RetrieveTeamsSystemUserResponse" class does not return all attributes in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0

948746 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/948746/ ) Error message when you execute a plug-in on a nondefault organization instance in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0: "The request failed with HTTP status 401 unauthorized"

950175 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/950175/ ) You cannot use Outlook as expected until all Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 add-ins are loaded

951690 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/951690/ ) An e-mail activity does not appear in the Preview page when you try to preview the e-mail activity in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0

947860 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/947860/ ) FIX: Error message when you use the Response messages of the SetStateEmailRequest object to set e-mail messages to Completed in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0: "Crm Exception: Message: The specified sender type is not supported"

949347 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/949347/ ) The "Move Up" button and the "Move Down" button are not available when you open the Attribute page for a bit type attribute in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0

956720 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/956720/ ) The scheduled due time of an activity is unexpectedly changed to "12:00 AM" after you specify a snooze time or you dismiss the activity in a reminder in the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 client for Outlook

949569 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/949569/ ) The Duplicate Detection function cannot detect duplicate records when you use a pre-update plug-in assembly in the update process in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0

948002 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/948002/ ) The started time and the completed time are incorrect in workflows on an entity record in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0

948298 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/948298/ ) The records list in the Look Up Records dialog box is not filtered by a new contact in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0

951268 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/951268/ ) The decimal separator that you specify in the user settings in a non-English version of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 unexpectedly changes after you upgrade to Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0

948629 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/948629/ ) Error message when you try to go offline in the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 client for Outlook with Offline Access: "Failed move data for entity 'Plug-in Assembly' during action Insert, countRows=[Number]"

948157 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/948157/ ) Error message when you create a new record or open an existing record in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0: "Invalid Argument"

951174 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/951174/ ) The content in the Notes tab may not be displayed when you click the Notes tab in an entity page in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0

947401 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/947401/ ) Error message when you import customizations to another Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 organization: "Identifiers cannot be more than 50 characters long"

948005 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/948005/ ) The OnSave event code or the OnLoad event code is not triggered after you modify a step in a workflow rule in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0

952724 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/952724/ ) You cannot view any e-mail messages in the folders after you install the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 On-Premise client for Outlook

948770 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/948770/ ) Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 may close unexpectedly when you click the lookup button in a customer type field that triggers the OnChange event

948045 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/948045/ ) Outlook stops responding when you track an Outlook contact in the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 client for Outlook

948155 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/948155/ ) A date or a time may not be converted to UTC time in the database for some time zones in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0

948122 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/948122/ ) The collection of installed localized labels is incomplete when you use the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 metadata Web service to retrieve the collection

951179 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/951179/ ) Error message when you try to go offline in the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 client for Outlook with Offline Access: "Failed move data for entity"

949086 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/949086/ ) You receive Outlook sync messages when you view a shared calendar or a shared contacts folder in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 client for Outlook

951849 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/951849/ ) Error message when you run the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 E-mail Router service on a computer that has multi-core processors: "An item with the same key has already been added"

952018 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/952018/ ) A POP3 provider delivers hundreds of copies of the same e-mail messages to a Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 database

Editing Marketing List Views

2008-11-07T10:23:00.002-05:00

Microsoft has always hidden the ability to modify the viewsfor Marketing List views. Almost always my customers are calling me up andasking how to modify the views in Marketing Lists. I hope that this post willhelp everyone out.

First there are three different entities that a Marketinglist can hold. Accounts, Contacts, and Leads. Each one of these entities hasfour views within Marketing List views.

· Active Members

· All Members (Default view)

· Inactive Members

· Quick Find Marketing List Members

So if you were counting, there are 12 different views thatyou may need to modify. To edit one of these views you will need to openInternet Explorer and use the following URL’s.

In the following table you will need to replacecrm.yourdomain.com with the domain access that you use to connect to CRM. Youwill replace YOUR_ORGANIZATION with the organization you have setup in CRM.Example I connect to CRM with crm.affiliated.com and the organization name isCRM. I would use https://crm.affiliated.com/crm/tools/vieweditor/viewManager.aspx?id={a424ac61-bec9-48b0-a3e0-4bb903bd186e}to edit Account Active Members.

View	Entity	URL
Active Members	Account	https://crm.yourdomain.com/YOUR_ORGANIZATION/tools/vieweditor/viewManager.aspx?id={a424ac61-bec9-48b0-a3e0-4bb903bd186e}
All Members	Account	https://crm.yourdomain.com/YOUR_ORGANIZATION/tools/vieweditor/viewManager.aspx?id={51de84dd-732f-440f-a506-26123a19ab50}
Inactive Members	Account	https://crm.yourdomain.com/YOUR_ORGANIZATION/tools/vieweditor/viewManager.aspx?id={d9c57fee-71ad-48e2-a17b-4ebbd01ec328}
Quick Find Marketing List Members	Account	https://crm.yourdomain.com/YOUR_ORGANIZATION/tools/vieweditor/viewManager.aspx?id={4d149ed9-12f1-4cd3-8427-418674f21bed}
Active Members	Contact	https://crm.yourdomain.com/YOUR_ORGANIZATION/tools/vieweditor/viewManager.aspx?id={33a05713-9d37-4ce8-b41f-bc515f426271}
All Members	Contact	https://crm.yourdomain.com/YOUR_ORGANIZATION/tools/vieweditor/viewManager.aspx?id={2f0d0ede-d356-4b1e-83bd-e978f10e3eeb}
Inactive Members	Contact	https://crm.yourdomain.com/YOUR_ORGANIZATION/tools/vieweditor/viewManager.aspx?id={09963269-65e7-4f70-963f-a61ee495e705}
Quick Find Marketing List Members	Contact	https://crm.yourdomain.com/YOUR_ORGANIZATION/tools/vieweditor/viewManager.aspx?id={afdb8a51-9681-4cc9-aaa4-29449e5bc9e1}
Active Members	Lead	https://crm.yourdomain.com/YOUR_ORGANIZATION/tools/vieweditor/viewManager.aspx?id={9237f5bf-3f99-4034-8501-e279334774bb}
All Members	Lead	https://crm.yourdomain.com/YOUR_ORGANIZATION/tools/vieweditor/viewManager.aspx?id={fc1b8995-4e44-4d65-99be-1e945953564c}
Inactive Members	Lead	https://crm.yourdomain.com/YOUR_ORGANIZATION/tools/vieweditor/viewManager.aspx?id={0459ccfb-bd0f-4e0b-95e7-cac9bc3688fa}
Quick Find Marketing List Members	Lead	https://crm.yourdomain.com/YOUR_ORGANIZATION/tools/vieweditor/viewManager.aspx?id={e76ac89f-97c3-42da-a8bc-2b201429eba5}

Good luck. I hope this helps.

CRM Accelerators – Part V – Sales Methodologies Accelerator

2008-10-15T14:40:00.001-04:00

Sales Methodologies Accelerator – Due to be released in Q3 2008

The sales methodologies accelerator is for customers who work with or want to work with one of the leading sales methodology vendors, including: Target Account Selling (TAS), SPI Solution Selling and Miller Heiman. Each of these vendors has their own distinct software products which need to be integrated with Microsoft Dynamics CRM to provide a holistic approach to sales management.

The sales methodologies accelerator will provide customizations, advice and guidance for customers on how these sales methodologies can be configured, managed and integrated with Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0.

Kind regards,

Reuben Krippner

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Step by Step

2008-10-15T14:34:00.001-04:00

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Step by Step allows you to work at your own pace through the easy numbered steps, practice files on CD, helpful hints, and troubleshooting tips to master the fundamentals of working with the latest versions of Microsoft Dynamics CRM including CRM 4.0 and CRM Online. You will learn the specifics of tracking customer communications, how to use e-mail templates for mass communication, the ins and outs of reporting and data analysis, and other essential tasks. With Step by Step, you can take just the lessons you need or work from cover to cover. Either way, you drive the instruction, building and practicing the skills you need, just when you need them! Includes a companion CD with hands-on practice files.

This book lets you take just the lessons you need or work from cover to cover you set the pace Covers all the fundamentals, from tracking customer communication to reporting and data analysis Features easy-to-follow lessons and hands-on skill-building exercises Includes a companion CD with skill-building exercises.

Mike Snyder is recognized as an industry-leading CRM expert. He is cofounder and principal of Sonoma Partners, a Chicago-based consulting firm that specializes in Microsoft CRM implementations. Microsoft twice awarded Sonoma Partners the Global Microsoft CRM Partner of the Year. Jim Steger has architected and led multiple award-winning Microsoft CRM deployments, including complex enterprise integration projects. He has been developing solutions and writing code for Microsoft CRM since the version 1.0 beta. He acted as a technical reviewer for several of the Microsoft CRM certification exams. Jim is also a cofounder and principal of Sonoma Partners.

Mike Snyder

CRM Accelerators – Part VIII – Business Productivity Accelerator

2008-10-15T14:33:00.000-04:00

Business Productivity Accelerator
The business productivity accelerator is a toolkit of timesaving customizations and workflows for Dynamics CRM 4.0. Here is a subset of the components to be delivered:

Business data auditing workflows
Customizations to manage a customer reference program with Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0
Generic service process workflows for complaints management
Simple integration with web software services such as stock prices, mapping and web search
Birthday/Anniversary auto-email workflows
There are many other ideas under development for this accelerator and the final list will be communicated at release.

Kind regards,

Reuben Krippner

Published Wednesday, October

CRM Accelerators – Part VII – CRM Notifications Accelerator

2008-10-15T14:31:00.000-04:00

CRM Notifications Accelerator

The CRM notifications accelerator allows users to subscribe to the CRM “business events” that are significant to them, e.g. a salesperson is interested in new leads and opportunities assigned to them whereas a customer service representative is interested in new service cases assigned to them. Once the user has subscribed (each user manages their subscription profile) to the types of events that are important to them they can elect how they want these event notifications to be delivered. Notifications are delivered via a Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feed and can be consumed with many desktop tools including Microsoft Outlook 2007 or the standard news feed Windows Vista® gadget.

The CRM notifications accelerator further drives system and process efficiency for users by giving them visibility into the business events which are directly relevant to their role.

Kind regards,

Reuben Krippner

CRM Accelerators – Part VI – Extended Sales Forecasting Accelerator

2008-10-15T14:26:00.002-04:00

The extended sales forecasting accelerator enriches the out-of-the-box sales forecasting capabilities in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0. Principally, sales users of Microsoft Dynamics CRM can review their individual sales pipeline and quickly classify opportunities as committed, excluded or upside. Sales managers can monitor and track sales targets, budgets and performance against these forecasts for specific time periods (e.g. months and quarters).

Underpinning these capabilities will be new Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 reports that summarize sales performance for the organization, business unit, team or individual salespeople.

Kind regards,

Reuben Krippner

SQL 2008 and MSCRM 4.0

2008-10-07T08:14:00.001-04:00

Friday, October 03, 2008 David Fronk Dynamic Methods Inc.

We successfully completed our internal upgrade to SQL 2008 and it is awesome. We did a complete revamp of our system and moved our CRM server and SQL server to a virtualized 64bit server then upgraded SQL to 2008 and it is great. The speed is fantastic and the move and upgrade were easy. The SQL 2008 upgrade was very easy and we're reaping the benefits. The enhancements to reports alone are worth it from a CRM perspective.

Check out some of the screenshots but if you are familiar with the slick looking reports that Excel 2007 has then you will be familiar with what SQL 2008 now has. There are gauges that Excel doesn't have (to my knowledge) that SQL 2008 has so that's one welcomed addtion.

Also, you can check out the Customer Effective Blog about this as Joel Lindstrom posted on this before SQL 2008 came out. My guess is that Joel has upgraded his system as well but you never know. We did and we're fans.

Here are some screenshots:

David Fronk

Dynamic Methods Inc.

CRM Accelerators – Part IV – Enterprise Search Accelerator

2008-08-26T17:38:00.001-04:00

Reuben Krippner Published Tuesday, August 26, 2008 8:13 AM

Last week we introduced the Event Management Accelerator which is part of the CRM Accelerators for Microsoft Dynamics CRM customers and partners to be released in the next few months, each week we will unveil more details of each accelerator. In this article we feature the Enterprise Search Accelerator.

Enterprise Search Accelerator – Due to be released in Q3 2008

The enterprise search accelerator allows Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) customers to view and search for Microsoft Dynamics CRM data directly from their SharePoint portals.

By combining these two technologies users from different areas of the business will be able to:

View and edit any Microsoft Dynamics CRM data such as accounts, contacts, opportunities, sales orders, invoices, service cases and any custom entity data through SharePoint. The Microsoft Dynamics CRM security model is preserved and enforced so that users can only view or edit CRM information that their security role allows.
Launch a SharePoint search which can return documents, emails, web content and Microsoft Dynamics CRM data.

The enterprise search accelerator provides one enterprise portal that users can search and view important customer information and documents from several sources within the organization.

Additionally, the technology, Business Data Catalog (BDC), and techniques used with this accelerator can be employed to surface data from other line of business applications to further enrich the SharePoint portal.

The BDC makes it easy for people to connect to, find, and act on information stored in structured line-of-business systems (such as Microsoft Dynamics CRM) by using a declarative framework to securely integrate them into search results.

With the BDC customers and partners can configure actionable audience-specific portals, dashboards and mash-up interfaces for this data without writing any code.

The following image is taken from the beta version of the Enterprise Search Accelerator:

Kind regards,

Reuben Krippner

Microsoft Dynamics CRM On-Premise and On-Demand: What’s the Difference?

2008-08-22T09:44:00.002-04:00

Stephanie Dart Published Friday, August 15, 2008 8:41 AM

As part of Microsoft’s CRM strategy to deliver the “Power of Choice” to customers and partners, we offer Microsoft Dynamics CRM in a variety of subscription or ownership models:

On-premise: Customers purchase the licenses and run the application on their own servers.
On-demand: Customers subscribe to the software service on a per user per month basis:

Partner-hosted: Microsoft partners host the application in their facilities on behalf of customers, and provide customer service and support.
Microsoft-hosted: Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online is hosted in Microsoft corporate datacenters, delivered to customers over the Internet.

With all the deployment choices offered, people often ask about the differences between them. Let me start with the similarities:

All are based on the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 code base, making it easy for customers to migrate across on-demand and on-premise deployments.
The core functionality of Microsoft Dynamics CRM is the same regardless of how it is deployed, offering a full-suite of Sales, Marketing and Service functionality - as well as workflow automation and customization capabilities.

Where the deployment options differ is in the level of customization available and authentication mechanisms used. The table below shows a comparison between the on-premise, partner hosted and CRM Online solutions:

	On-Premise	Partner Hosted	CRM Online
Authentication Method	Active Directory	Active Directory	Windows Live ID
Authentication Interface	Integrated Active Directory / Forms based	Forms based	Windows Live ID
Custom Entities	Yes	Yes	Yes (100/200)*
Custom Workflow	Yes	Yes	Yes (100/200)*
Form Scripting & Events (Jscript)	Yes	Yes	Yes
Custom Reports Built with Ad-hoc Wizard	Yes	Yes	Yes
Dynamic Export to Excel	Yes	Yes	Yes

* The number of customer entities and workflows depends on the product edition

Since the capabilities are essentially the same across all deployment models, the decision to go on-premise or on-demand should be driven by criteria such as budget, existing IT infrastructure and resources. For more information on the offerings available visit http://www.crmchoice.com.

Cheers,

Stephanie Dart

CRM Accelerators – Part III – Event Management Accelerator

2008-08-22T09:34:00.000-04:00

Reuben Krippner Published Tuesday, August 19, 2008 10:09 AM

Last week we introduced the eService Accelerator which is part of the CRM Accelerators for Microsoft Dynamics CRM customers and partners to be released in the next few months, each week we will unveil more details of each accelerator. In this article we feature the Event Management Accelerator.

Event Management Accelerator – Due to be released in Q3 2008

The event management accelerator gives companies the ability to easily manage the planning, execution, tracking and reporting requirements for events. The event management accelerator focuses on three areas of event management, namely:

Event Planning - logistics around an event such as:

Booking the venue
Presenters
Catering
Presentation content preparation

Event Attendance - all aspects around managing the attendees such as:

Inviting the target audience via phone, fax, letter and email
Managing registrations via phone, letter, fax, email and web
Tracking all people who actually attended the event

Event Review – Microsoft Dynamics CRM reports that measure the effectiveness of the event:

How many people attended the event?
What was the revenue impact of the event?

A core component of the event management accelerator will be a web application that customers and partners can deploy to allow Web registration for their events and track these registrations in Microsoft Dynamics CRM.

The web application will also provide location mapping integration using Microsoft Live Maps!

The following image is taken from the beta version of the Event Management Accelerator:

Kind regards,

Reuben Krippner

CRM Accelerators – Part I – Analytics Accelerator

2008-08-22T09:31:00.001-04:00

Reuben Krippner Published Tuesday, August 05, 2008 10:08 AM

Last week we introduced the CRM Accelerators program for Microsoft Dynamics CRM customers and partners, each week we will unveil more details of each accelerator. In this article we feature the Analytics Accelerator.

Analytics Accelerator – Due to be released in Q3 2008

Many customers and partners will be familiar with Analytics Foundation for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 which was a business intelligence feature pack for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0. Analytics Foundation for Dynamics CRM 3.0 included Dashboards, Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) and a suite of new reports. Analytics Accelerator for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 expands on this, and is designed to support a range of business intelligence “maturity” levels for customers and partners. The Analytics accelerator has been built to cater for differing business intelligence skill-sets and experience levels. Elements of the accelerator include:

Sales, service and operations dashboards delivered with Microsoft SQL Server® Reporting Services (SSRS).
Sales, service and operations dashboards and scorecards delivered with Microsoft PerformancePoint® Server.
Additional reports delivered with SSRS.
Two Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) cubes which are designed to allow customers to conduct in-depth analysis and key performance indicator (KPI) monitoring based on Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 data. Customers can consume these cubes through Microsoft Excel®, Microsoft SharePoint® technologies and Microsoft PerformancePoint Server. The first OLAP cube is designed for simple setup and consumption, the second cube is more detailed and requires a more advanced knowledge of analytics and OLAP technologies within Microsoft SQL Server.
Predictive analytics to provide statistical guidance in areas such as lead and sales opportunity management. There are several sample applications which ship as part of the accelerator that showcase how customers can leverage predictive analytics directly within the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 user interface.
The analytics accelerator will work with SQL Server 2005 with some components enhanced to take advantage of SQL Server 2008.

The Analytics accelerator will be free of charge for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 customers and partners.

The following images are taken from the beta version of the Analytics Accelerator (NB: these may change between now and the release of Analytics Accelerator)

Beta version of the Analytics Accelerator landing page in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0

Beta sample sales dashboard for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0

Kind regards,

Reuben Krippner

CRM Accelerators – Part II – eService Accelerator

2008-08-22T09:01:00.002-04:00

Reuben Krippner Published Tuesday, August 12, 2008 9:18 AM

Last week we introduced the Analytics Accelerator which is part of the CRM Accelerators for Microsoft Dynamics CRM customers and partners to be released in the next few months, each week we will unveil more details of each accelerator. In this article we feature the eService Accelerator.

eService Accelerator – Due to be released in Q3 2008

The eService accelerator provides businesses the ability to deliver self-service capabilities to their customers while tracking and managing these interactions in Microsoft Dynamics CRM.

Customer Service is generally considered a cost center where cost-savings and productivity are the top priorities for most businesses. This stands in stark contrast to marketing and sales which is usually viewed as a profit center where revenue generation is the focus. People that manage call centers or customer service operations are constantly looking for new processes and technologies that can help them drive customer service efficiencies. Essentially, they want to service more customers at less cost while at the same time maintaining (or even improving) customer satisfaction. This can be a difficult equation for organizations to solve.

eService provides the mechanism to help businesses solve that difficult equation. At its core, eService is comprised of a range of technologies that allow businesses to provide online support to customers, which can “deflect” calls and in-person visits, or at minimum reduce a portion of the cost to manage a service issue. As demographics shift worldwide and Internet technologies become more pervasive, many customers prefer to use an eService channel.

The Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 eService accelerator provides customer self-service capabilities (via a web portal) as a configurable out-of-the-box offering. The web self-service portal exposes the following CRM functions to customers:

Customer authentication into the portal and workflows to manage the setup of a contact as a web self-service customer.
Customer profile updates to contact details; this capability is configurable allowing organizations to choose which attributes of the profile they want to expose to the customer portal such as name, contact details and communications preferences.
The ability to view, create, edit and close service cases. There are two permission levels available to web portal customers:

Account-Level: these customers can view and modify all cases raised against the account they are associated with.
Contact-Level: these customers can only view and modify service cases that they themselves have raised.

Online service scheduling allowing customers to search for convenient times and then book service appointments with the organization.
Search against the Microsoft Dynamics CRM knowledge base (KB) using keywords. Once the appropriate KB article has been located the customer can then email that article to themselves or others.

The accelerator can either be used within the customer’s own web portal or they can use the pre-built portal solution provided by Microsoft in the ASP.NET 2.0 Small Business Starter Kit http://www.asp.net/downloads/starter-kits/small-business/. All source code from the customer portal solution is provided so that customers and partners can extend the solution further and tailor it to their specific business requirements.

The following images are taken from the beta version of the eService Accelerator:

Beta sample Customer Profile edit page

Beta sample KB Search page

Beta sample Service Scheduling page

Kind regards,

Reuben Krippner

Automatic Update Strikes Again. (KB953838)

2008-08-22T07:56:00.001-04:00

Murphy and Microsoft must be bed partners. Imagine going to your biggest CRM implementation to provide your training for roll out. As you bring up the system and start training you get a file download prompt for blank.aspx. Interesting, it could just be the machine. However, 80% of all the computers are getting it. Every time you move another entity, you get that wonderful prompt. It is annoying the first 10 times, but words cannot describe the feeling you have after two days of training with it.
After dome digging it turns out Microsoft put out an IE Update on 8/12 that dropped the mapping on client machines to aspx pages. Nice! And as many people who work with web pages can tell you “about:blank” is used as a white space filler on i-frames. Nice testing Microsoft! Well, enough of my complaining. There is an update that is automatically applied (if you have auto updates turned on) called KB953838. If you have IE 7 installed, you may not have the issue. If you have this issue you have a couple of options.

CRM Statement of Direction (SOD) – August 2008 Update

2008-08-11T15:41:00.001-04:00

The statement of direction for CRM has been updated. There are now Print Screens of some of the Accelerators and new due dates. Take a look.

CRM4 Outlook Client – Issues and Fixes

2008-08-11T15:39:00.001-04:00

Smiti Shah Published Wednesday, August 06, 2008 10:50 AM by crmblog

This must-have fix is likely the most common perf/stability issue out there, especially on Outlook 2007. This fix resolves the issue. A current workaround exists by turning off the To Do bar.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/952724

2. With E-mail Auto Promotion Enabled, Outlook may not close cleanly/properly.

This fix addresses a memory allocation issue that can occur somewhat unpredictably. If your users are using e-mail auto promotion, I encourage you to deploy this hotfix.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/948121

3. Contacts with birthdays earlier than 1/1/1970 causes Outlook to crash

This was caused by an API change by one of our dependencies.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/948045

4. Items in Shared Calendars will report Sync Issues

We do not support Shared Calendars in CRM 4.0, we encountered a couple of cases where some code was getting executed against a shared calendar and causing problems.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/949086

5. Cannot Promote an E-mail where the name of the attached file contains a ‘&’ symbol.

If the attachment to an e-mail contains the ‘&’ symbol, it will fail to track in CRM.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/949719

6. Selecting Dismiss on Outlook Calendar reminder for Service Activity causes record to change Status Reason back to default value for that record.

Selecting Dismiss on Outlook Calendar reminder for Service Activity causes record to change Status Reason back to default value for that record

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/950475 (not yet published)

7. OWA Sent Emails Get Stuck in Outlook Draft Folder When Outlook Is Open And CRMADDIN is Enabled

When you have both Outlook and OWA open, and you have the Microsoft Dynamics CRM client for Microsoft Office Outlook installed, and you send an email form OWA, the email will be stopped in the Draft folder instead of being sent

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/950088

Smiti Shah

CRM Accelerators – Part I – Analytics Accelerator

2008-08-06T11:21:00.001-04:00

Reuben Krippner Published Tuesday, August 05, 2008 10:08 AM by crmblog

Last week we introduced the CRM Accelerators program for Microsoft Dynamics CRM customers and partners, each week we will unveil more details of each accelerator. In this article we feature the Analytics Accelerator.

Analytics Accelerator – Due to be released in Q3 2008

Sales, service and operations dashboards delivered with Microsoft SQL Server® Reporting Services (SSRS).
Sales, service and operations dashboards and scorecards delivered with Microsoft PerformancePoint® Server.
Additional reports delivered with SSRS.
Two Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) cubes which are designed to allow customers to conduct in-depth analysis and key performance indicator (KPI) monitoring based on Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 data. Customers can consume these cubes through Microsoft Excel®, Microsoft SharePoint® technologies and Microsoft PerformancePoint Server. The first OLAP cube is designed for simple setup and consumption, the second cube is more detailed and requires a more advanced knowledge of analytics and OLAP technologies within Microsoft SQL Server.
Predictive analytics to provide statistical guidance in areas such as lead and sales opportunity management. There are several sample applications which ship as part of the accelerator that showcase how customers can leverage predictive analytics directly within the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 user interface.
The analytics accelerator will work with SQL Server 2005 with some components enhanced to take advantage of SQL Server 2008.

The Analytics accelerator will be free of charge for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 customers and partners.

The following images are taken from the beta version of the Analytics Accelerator (NB: these may change between now and the release of Analytics Accelerator)

Beta version of the Analytics Accelerator landing page in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0

Beta sample sales dashboard for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0

Kind regards,

Reuben Krippner

CRM Outlook Client update

2008-08-05T07:20:00.000-04:00

An optional software update is now available for Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online for Microsoft Office Outlook. This optional software download includes an update that can increase the performance and reliability for everyday system use.

From Microsoft Office Outlook, users can automatically download this update by navigating to the CRM menu found at the top of their Microsoft Office Outlook screen (see below). Within the CRM menu, there is an option to check for software updates – which will download this update so that installation can begin. The user will then be presented with a set of instructions on how to download and apply this update to their client configuration.

Additional information about the client updates can be found online at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/954491. Refer to Knowledge Base article KB 954491 for a summary of items addressed in this update.

If you experience problems downloading or installing this update, please contact Microsoft Dynamics CRM Support. Support contact information can be found at http://crm.dynamics.com/crm_training_and_support/index.html.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM Statement of Direction

2008-07-28T07:10:00.000-04:00

This document outlines the future direction of Microsoft Dynamics CRM through to the next major release, Microsoft Dynamics CRM “V.Next”, which will be aligned with the Office 14 wave of product releases due in late 2009/early 2010.

Customer Link:

https://mbs.microsoft.com/customersource/documentation/whitepapers/MD_CRM_SOD

Partner Link:

https://mbs.microsoft.com/partnersource/marketing/statementofdirection/MD_CRM_SOD

*Note* that this document is intended to be periodically updated as details are developed and it is not intended to be a detailed specification as items may change or be dropped over the course of time. Notice of any updates will be provided.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online Video Gallery

2008-07-22T10:42:00.000-04:00

Please see the link below to review a gallery of how-to videos using Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online. The videos include topics such as end-to-end scenario’s for Sales, Marketing, and Customer Service. There are also video’s for customizations, imports, and workflow.

All of the videos are the work of the CRM Online Technology Specialist team. Keep checking back for more as we will continue to add new videos. Feel free to ping us if there is something you would like to have covered.

www.democrmonline.com

CRM Online Customer Evidence Video – Total Structures

2008-07-22T10:38:00.000-04:00

Another great testimonial from a Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online customer.

Total Structures manufactures structural staging systems to be used in rock concerts, trade shows, etc. The vice-president of this company discusses the advantages to the company of an integrated CRM system, why he chose Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online and describes their successful implementation process and how Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online helps them keep the promises they make to their customers.

MSCRM 4.0 User Guide from Microsoft

2008-07-22T08:55:00.001-04:00

Download Here
The Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 User’s Guide includes all of the basic end-user information available in Help, including documentation on sales, marketing, and customer service features, as well as step-by-step instructions on working with Advanced Find and workflow. And it’s in an easily printable format.

Microsoft Partners and MVPs have told us that they want to provide customized documents for their customers. To make it easy to customize the document, we’re making a version available in Microsoft Office Word 2007 (.docx) format.

We’ve also talked to Microsoft Dynamics CRM customers, such as salespeople and customer service reps, who’ve expressed frustration at having to print out each Help page individually. Based on this feedback, we’ve included an Adobe Acrobat (PDF) version that serves as an all-in-one document you can distribute in your organization.

You can download both versions from the Microsoft Download Center.

Although the User’s Guide is currently available only for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 (on-premise) and only in English, we have plans to release the document for Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online and for additional languages. (We also plan on improving the formatting of the document over time; Word doesn’t seem to like 499 pages.)

How it Works: SQL Server Reporting Services and Dynamics CRM

2008-07-21T12:53:00.001-04:00

Barry Givens Published Friday, July 18, 2008 10:14 AM

At Tech-Ed Developer in Orlando a few weeks back I lead an interactive session on CRM and Business Intelligence. The session was open to any CRM and BI topic so I expected a lot of hard questions about data mining and the like but the topic of greatest interest turned out to be the CRM and SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) integration. This should be helpful to folks with questions about deployment practices or with an interest in exposing CRM reports to users outside of the CRM application.

First things:

With CRM 4 reports are an entity within CRM. They have meta data and CRM security is applied to determine whether or not a user may view the report . Note that that is the report, not the underlying data. Users can have access to CRM data that a report points to and not have access to the report itself. Likewise a user may have access to a report but not the data that it would show (in which case the user could run the report but it would return no data).
The SQL Reporting Services Report Viewer is an ASP.Net control which runs on the CRM 4.0 Web server. In CRM 3.0, and when you interact with the SSRS Report Manager, that control is running on the Web server fronting SSRS. When you choose to run a report from CRM 4.0 the ASP.Net control requests the report and data from the remote SSRS box. In practical terms: in CRM 3.0 the URL for a report was the URL for the SSRS Web server; in CRM 4.0 the URL for a report is the CRM Web server.

Because CRM 4.0 reports are always run in a delegated mode the CRM and SSRS integration has to handle security. There are two ways to do this in CRM 4.0. One way to do this is to use integrated authentication where trust for delegation is required between the CRM server, the SSRS server and the SQL server with the CRM db. This was the required configuration on CRM 3.0 and frankly, it was a bit of a headache for folks to manage [see HOW TO: Configure Kerberos authentication for Microsoft CRM 3.0 and Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services and Microsoft CRM 3.0: Additional Setup Tasks Required if Reporting Services Is Installed on Different Server . ]

The other mechanism is to use the SQL Server Reporting Services MS CRM connector. This connector runs as an SSRS Data Processing Extension and handles all of the delegation for you. The use of the data connector is recommended for Internet facing deployments and anywhere users are not using NT Auth to connect to CRM. When using the Data Connector users of CRM cannot directly access the RDLs in SSRS – all management of reports must be done through the CRM reporting UI; users connecting to the SSRS Report Manager will get an access denied message if they try to browse Reports.

Choosing a deployment type is up to you and of course there are pros and cons either way. The following table describes some of those (if you have others throw them in the comments).

Capability	SQL Server Reporting Services Data Connector	Kerberos Authentication
Works with Internet Facing Deployments	Yes	No
Schedule reports using the Report Scheduling wizard in CRM	Yes	No
Uses NT credentials to connect to SQL Views	No	Yes
Access CRM reports outside of CRM	No	Yes
Use the CRM Report Wizard	Yes	Yes
Keeps CRM data secure	Yes!	Yes!

The table speaks for itself and I think that for most organizations the Connector is probably the right way to go. But let me point out one item that is near and dear to me: “Access CRM reports outside of CRM”. One of the great things about SSRS is its direct URL access to reports; along with that are the ability the embed reports into Microsoft Office SharePoint sites, in Performance Point dashboards, on your own ASPX pages using the ASP.Net control or my favorite: embedded with forms of the CRM application itself. If you use the connector you won’t be able to use URL access for reports; this is so useful though that we made sure to give you a work around.

If you have the “Add Reporting Services Reports” privilege you’ll see a command on the Action menu of the Report form titled “Publish Report for External Use”. This command will publish your report and any child reports to a directory in SSRS that is open to all CRM users. You can embed the URL to that report, along with any arguments on the query string, within CRM or the Report Viewer controls.

You won’t get any feedback that this worked so you’ll just have to trust but verify that it did. Doing this multiple times will also overwrite any existing report with the same name in the target directory so this isn’t the most… elegant… solution but there isn’t a demo environment that I have that doesn’t take advantage of it.

Cheers,

Barry Givens

PinPoint

2008-07-21T12:52:00.000-04:00

Microsoft Dynamics CRM is a full participant in the beta for PinPoint, a unified online business marketplace for small and medium-sized business customers and partners. Pinpoint helps customers discover, discern and engage with Microsoft partners to fulfill their unique technology needs, while unlocking business opportunities for partners.

Partner Conference: CRM Mobility with CWR

2008-07-17T07:28:00.002-04:00

Posted By: benriga | Jul 15th @ 6:03 PM

Another Dynamics CRM ISV that caught my attention at last week's Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference was CWR Mobility. Mobility is something I spend a lot of time thinking about and the Windows Mobile solution that CWR has put together is state-of-the-art when it comes to line-of-business apps on the go. What really got my attention was the inventive way they managed to embed it into the Dynamics CRM Online infrastructure. From an end-user perspective all you have to do is sign up for their service and they take care of all the hard work by reaching out across the cloud and installing and configuring the app. Nice!

Partner Conference: CRM Mobility with CWR

LinkedIn to Microsoft Dynamics CRM

2008-07-16T17:02:00.002-04:00

Published Wednesday, July 16, 2008 10:11 AM by crmblog

Guest blogger CRM MVP Matt Wittemann is the director of the CRM practice at Customer Connect and has been working with CRM since it was first released. Matt has a passion for helping businesses get more profitable and efficient through the effective use of CRM tools and improved processes.

LinkedIn is slowly releasing APIs to allow developers to integrate their popular business networking site with external applications. One of the first widgets they’ve released is the LinkedIn Company Insider. This widget allows web sites to show LinkedIn connections from a given company from within the context of the web site. More information is available at http://www.linkedin.com/static?key=developers_widget_companyinsider.

Of course, this would be tremendously helpful to salespeople who are trying to find the inside track when working a Lead in Microsoft Dynamics CRM. The following sample shows how to integrate this LinkedIn widget with CRM so it shows in an iFrame on the CRM Lead form.

The result is that you can open a Lead record and the iFrame will show you how many LinkedIn users work at the Lead’s company. You can click on them to open a new window to view all the connections, and, of course, you’ll get the most out of the widget if you have a LinkedIn account so you can reach out to these people in your sales process.

(Isn’t it cool that the top three people that come up for Microsoft are all CRM folks? Sorry Phil, Jim and Menno! I needed a real world example to show the functionality of this widget!)

To install this widget in CRM, create an iFrame on the Lead form. There’s plenty of documentation on the web and in the SDK on creating iFrames for CRM, so I won’t go into the steps here. But make sure to place a check next to the option to pass parameters to the iFrame and remove the checkbox that restricts cross-frame scripting. You might also want to set the iFrame to be 4 or more rows high and expandable to fill any available space.

In my sample, I named the iFrame “linkedin” and I pointed it at my custom HTML page, which I put in the handy ISV folder inside the CRM web site. In previous versions of CRM, developers had to venture into unsupported territory and create their own custom folders inside the CRM web site folder structure, but in 4.0 there’s a handy ISV folder. Place a simple HTML page in the ISV folder with the following code, and point your new iFrame at this page by using a relative URL like “/ISV/linkedin.html” (be sure to replace the file name with whatever you’ve called your HTML page).

The HTML:

<html>

<head>

<script src="http://www.linkedin.com/companyInsider?script&useBorder=no" type="text/javascript"></script>

</head>

<body>

<center>

<span id="getlinkedin"></span>

</center>

<script type="text/javascript">

var parentForm = parent.frames.document.crmForm;

new LinkedIn.CompanyInsiderBox("getlinkedin",parentForm.all.companyname.DataValue);

</script>

</body>

This simple code in your HTML page references a javascript file housed on LinkedIn’s server, and the script in the body of the page gets the value from the Company Name field on the Lead. (This won’t work if the Company Name field is empty or missing from your Lead form – you can also consider adding some error checking to this sample for your production environment.)

Cheers,

Matt Wittemann

Accessing Dynamics CRM from a Mac

2008-07-16T14:41:00.001-04:00

Posted: Tuesday, June 03, 2008 10:15 PM by K|Dubya

While requests to use Microsoft Dynamics CRM and CRM Online from a Mac are not terribly frequent, it comes up every once in a while so it is definitely worth addressing.

Supported clients for Dynamics CRM include Internet Explorer 6 (SP2) and later, and Outlook 2003 (SP2) and later. Unfortunately, Entourage is not a supported client. And, supported operating systems are all of the Windows flavor.

So, while there's no direct method to do this, there's always a way, right? Here's a compilation of ideas.

Use Virtual PC, Parallels or Bootcamp software to run Windows on the Mac
Utilize a Citrix/Terminal Server connection.
Read Sonoma Partners' blog on using Firefox with the View Page in IE Tab add-in.: http://blog.sonomapartners.com/2007/11/microsoft-crm-r.html
Read John Straumann’s thoughts on a J2EE approach: http://mscrmguy.blogspot.com/search/label/MSCRM%20on%20a%20MAC%3F
Read Ben Vollmer’s blog entry from a while back: http://blogs.msdn.com/midatlanticcrm/archive/2006/08/15/Using-Microsoft-CRM-with-a-Mac.aspx

Keep in mind that none of these methods are supported, but that's not to say they won't work.

HTH - Kevin

Microsoft Dynamics CRM Mail Merge Templates

2008-07-16T11:53:00.001-04:00

Shashi Ranjan wrote on Tuesday, June 10, 2008 8:23 AM

In this blog article I would like to give you more insight into Microsoft Word document that can be uploaded into Microsoft Dynamics CRM as mail merge templates. We will talk about

Different word document formats
Different versions of word XML formats
Controlling version of blank template used in CRM.
Upload to CRM via web and outlook client.

When talking about mail merge, we need to be aware of the three types of documents.

1. Mail merge template document (.DOT or .DOTX/ .DOTM).

- The template document is the one that is used as a basis for creating the main mail merge document.

- On the local client box, the word mail merge templates are typically located inside the folder templates folder (i.e. C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Templates\<language>\<type>)

2. Mail merge main document (.DOC or .DOCX, .DOCM).

- The main document is the template used for generating the individual documents. It contains the link to the data source and the mail merge tags.

- The mail merge engine works on the main document and generate the individual documents.

3. Mail merge generated document.

- The individual documents are the output documents generated by the mail merge engine.

- These documents can be directed as email, fax or to a single document that can be printed out.

A CRM mail merge document has to be a word XML file. Users can upload both mail merge template document and mail merge main document to CRM as CRM mail merge template files.

To upload the documents into CRM, the user might need to convert the files into their XML representation. Converting a word document into XML file can be easily done by using the “Save as” option in word.

CRM supports both versions of the Microsoft Word XML file format.

2003 Microsoft Word called wordml
2007 Microsoft Word call the open office format.

There are issues running document open macros on Word 2007 when template documents are used. Also files like .DOCM and .DOTM contains macros and can not be saved in 2007 word XML format. The new XML format does not allow macros. For these, the user would need to save the documents in 2003 XML format. So the safest bet is to use and upload the main document of the mail merge in 2003 XML format to CRM.

Currently, when using blank mail merge template in a CRM web mail merge run, we also use a blank 2003 format word document as a base to start with. If you ever want to flip it to use the 2007 format, say if all your users use the new Office 2007 documents then you can do that by replacing the BlankMailMerge.XML file located in the folder “C:\Program Files\Microsoft Dynamics CRM\Server\ApplicationFiles” with another file that is in word 2007 format.

Note: the location of the CRM mail merge button on word 2007 depends on the template format version that was used.

Uploading Templates to CRM

Both outlook client and web clients can be used to upload templates to CRM. If you already have word XML file that needs to be uploaded, you can navigate to the Settings->Templates->Mail Merge template section and create a new or edit an existing mail merge template record and upload the document in the file attachment section. When templates are uploaded via web no processing of the uploaded document happens at upload time.

On the other hand when working inside the CRM outlook client. Users can start mail merge from the grid or the template detail page and then on the final screen of mail merge wizard, click the Upload to CRM button. When uploading the template vi2 to a Microsoft Outlook client, the users field selection, language id, associated entity etc are all automatically set to the settings they started with. Also the uploaded template file is processed to get rid of the data source and the linked query. So if the user opens the template document next time Word warnings about the Data source not found are not triggered.

Cheers,

Shashi Ranjan

Publishing a Newsletter in Microsoft Dynamics CRM

2008-07-16T11:51:00.001-04:00

James Matteson wrote on June 03, 2008 8:37 AM

One of the marketing issues I’ve run into in Microsoft Dynamics CRM is that of the routine publishing of a newsletter. Sending newsletters to customers and prospects is a common marketing strategy and one that some Microsoft Dynamics CRM marketers have found perplexing. Some of the reasons for this are as follows:

In Microsoft Dynamics CRM you must ensure that every subscriber has been properly configured to receive your newsletter. You also have to provide the means for them to “opt out” if they don’t want to receive it. This issue is complicated by the Microsoft Dynamics CRM architecture that requires (with good reason) that accounts, leads, and contacts (the folks you want included in your subscriber list) are distinctly maintained. Therefore, you cannot create just one list of subscribers (marketing list), you possibly need three.
Composing a newsletter in Microsoft Dynamics CRM can also be a challenge. The e-mail templates available out-of-the-box in Microsoft Dynamics CRM are configured to be text-only. While quality text-only newsletters are in distribution, many marketers want to use images and complex formatting. Using images from within Microsoft Dynamics CRM is limited to web-based images. Sometimes marketers can become annoyed that they cannot simply drag and drop images inside Microsoft Dynamics CRM, like they do in Outlook or Word, but have to use images already available or published on the Web. The process for using web-based images is simple, getting used to it is the human factor.
Also, marketers that have complex formatting requirements must use Microsoft Word or Outlook (or some other compatible tool) for newsletter composition. This means they might need special templates, knowledge of Mail Merge, and should posses some problem-solving skills to overcome any unique issues that arise while composing and distributing their newsletters over a vast range of possible platforms.
Once all of the above issues are addressed, attention must be given to tracking subscriber responses to the newsletter. We’ve already published several articles about campaign responses and generating metrics around the marketing process. These are also available by drilling down into the new Microsoft Dynamics CRM Resource Center. (Under Areas, select Marketing.) In addition, there are a host of third-party products that could be used to extend functionality in meeting tracking and metric requirements.

I am preparing a new article for Microsoft Dynamics CRM customers that I hope will collect all of the newsletter issues in one place and bring clarity to the detailed process of publishing a business newsletter from Microsoft Dynamics CRM. It’s draft title is 4 things to know about managing e-mail newsletters in Microsoft Dynamics CRM OP or Online. Look for it in the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Resource Center in the next few weeks, I would appreciate any comments you might have to share with me.

James Matteson

CRM Customer Video

2008-07-16T11:40:00.000-04:00

Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Data Mining Add-ins for Microsoft Office 2007 with Microsoft Dynamics CRM

2008-05-27T08:22:00.002-04:00

Found on MS CRM Team Blog, by Reuben Krippner

SQL Server 2005 Analysis Services (SSAS) provides tools for data mining with which you can identify rules and patterns in your data, so that you can determine why things happen and predict what will happen in the future—giving you powerful insight that will help your company make better business decisions.

You can use data mining to answer questions such as:

What will customers buy? What products sell together?
How can a company predict which customers are at risk for churning?
Where has the marketplace been, and where is it going?
How can a business best analyze its Web site usage patterns?
How can an organization determine the success of a marketing campaign?
How can businesses prevent poor quality data from entering the system?

In March 2008, Reuben Krippner presented two breakout sessions at Convergence US on Extensibility with Microsoft Dynamics CRM.

During these sessions I covered a number of live demonstrations of how you can extend and integrate Microsoft Dynamics CRM. One of the “big hit” demos involved the use of the SQL Data Mining Add-in for Microsoft Excel 2007 with Microsoft Dynamics CRM. I have packaged up this example as a hands-on-lab for you to try for yourself. It is very important to note that as part of your investment in Microsoft Dynamics CRM the underlying SQL Server 2005 platform provides you with very powerful Analysis Services. Everything that is used as part of this example is included with SQL Server 2005 Standard and Enterprise editions and the Excel add-in is completely free of charge – incredibly powerful and your only investment is time!

For loads of background materials on SQL Server Data Mining go to http://www.microsoft.com/sql/technologies/dm/default.mspx

A few explanatory notes first! As always, the samples are supplied as is with no support or warranty provided by Microsoft. Feel free to take this utilize as you see fit. Special thanks go to Philip Rawlinson from the Microsoft Dynamics CRM UK team who set out the concepts for me to borrow and extend! This utility will work identically with either Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 or 4.0.

Steps to follow:

Step 1: Install the Data Mining add–in for Excel 2007 (check that this has installed correctly by starting Excel 2007 and you will see a new section in the ribbon called ‘Data Mining’.

Step 2: Start Excel 2007

Step 3: From the ribbon interface in Excel 2007, select Data à From Other Sources à From Microsoft Query

Step 4: We need to create a data source for Microsoft Dynamics CRM – this connection will point at the Microsoft Dynamics CRM filtered views (more on this later).

Step 5: Select <New Data Source> and click OK.

Step 6: Set the name of your data source to be Microsoft Dynamics CRM. Set the driver to be SQL Server and then click the ‘Connect...’ button.

Step 7: Pick a server from the list provided or enter ‘.’ if this is on the local SQL Server. Click Options >>.

Step 8: Select your CRM database from the Database drop-down list. It should have a name like organizationname_MSCRM. Click OK.

Step 8: Click OK.

Step 9: Scroll down the Available tables and columns list and expand FilteredSalesOrder. Select the following columns from FilteredSalesOrder:

salesorderid
ordernumber

Step 10: Scroll down the Available tables and columns list and expand FilteredSalesOrder. Select the following columns from FilteredSalesOrder:

salesorderid
productidname

Step 11: Click Next>

Step 12: Click OK – we will manually build the join in the next step

Step 13: Drag and drop salesorderid from FilteredSalesOrder to salesorderid from FilterSalesOrderDetail – this creates the join between the two views so that the sales order relates to the individual products purchased as part of that sales order.

Step 14: Click the Return Data button to publish this data to our Excel worksheet.

Step 15: Click OK on the Import Data dialog box

Step 16: Delete the two salesorderid columns in our worksheet as we do not need them anymore. Right-click the column-heading and select Delete.

Step 17: Click the drop-down arrow on the ordernumber column heading and select Sort A to Z

Step 18: Select Data Mining from the Excel 2007 ribbon and then click Associate – The ‘Associate’ Algorithm is a mathematical formulae that is built to detect patterns in data and lends itself to analysis for cross sell initiatives.

Step 19: Click Next in the wizard

Step 20: Click Next in the wizard.

Step 21: In this next screen you can change the parameters of the Data Mining Model

To learn more about these parameters please refer to:

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms174768.aspx

Step 22: Change the Minimum Support value to 5 for your first run to ensure you get a result set back (this is the minimum count of similar transactions to include in the model), if this also fails perhaps lower this and also the probability. Again to learn more about these parameters use the link above.

Step 23: Click Next

Step 24: Check the box marked Enable Drill Through and click Finish.

Step 25: View the results – Here we are looking for a high ‘Importance’ and then a high ‘Probability’. In the example here we can see that a rule has been detected where there is high probability of selling a ‘Road Bottle Cage’ with a ‘Road 150 Red’. Again for more information on the parameters please go to the article link above. Click the Copy to Excel button to bring the results back to your Excel worksheet.

Step 26: Click on the Dependency Network tab to see the rule set depicted graphically in terms of the associations between products purchased.

Step 27: With this insight you could now set up a marketing campaign and target those individuals where they have bought one product but not another. The possibilities are endless and this just illustrates the use of one of the data mining algorithms at your disposal, e.g. this could be used in service organisations to find the most common combinations of service issues or where one issue directly causes another.

Have fun with these samples! The world of predictive analytics awaits and is free-of-charge!

Kind regards,
Reuben Krippner
Published Monday, April 28, 2008 7:58 AM

CRM 4.0 E-mail Integration Overview

2008-05-22T16:12:00.001-04:00

A few days ago, David West posted about the new e-mail features in CRM 4.0. For many of you, this list of new features is probably music to your ears, but if you’re a newcomer to CRM you might be a little overwhelmed. The e-mail integration story we have in CRM is both powerful and very flexible—enough to cover nearly any IT setup out there. This post is designed to give you an overview of our e-mail integration story and set the groundwork for future posts where we will dive deep into our e-mail feature set.

Let’s start by looking at the basic building blocks:

A Microsoft Dynamics CRM organization
An e-mail server

Between those two bullet points, there are a vast number of deployment permutations. Your CRM org might be on-premise, on-premise + internet-facing, hosted, or on CRM Live. Your e-mail server might be inside the corporate domain, outside the corporate domain, behind firewalls, and might be POP3, Exchange, Notes, etc. You could easily be dealing with multiple CRM orgs and multiple mail servers. And CRM also does e-mail processing based on business rules.

Unlike previous versions of CRM, for 4.0 we wanted to have a story which would work with all these permutations. Basic solutions involving direct connectivity between e-mail server to CRM and vice versa fell flat quickly. What we needed was a bridge to connect the two that was flexible in different deployment topologies. This bridge needed to handle e-mail send/receive for the multitude of mailboxes across a business, do the appropriate e-mail processing, and connect to multiple CRM organizations.

For CRM 4.0, we have two “bridges” that the administrator can choose from:

E-mail Router
CRM for Outlook

The generic topology looks like this:

For incoming e-mail, CRM for Outlook and the E-mail Router regularly check for new messages in the mailboxes they’ve been configured with. When new mail is found, it is picked up, processed, and promoted to CRM.

For outgoing e-mail activities created in CRM and marked for sending, CRM for Outlook and the E-mail Router will poll CRM, pick up the mail, and push them out through the configured SMTP server.

Important: Without utilizing the E-mail Router or CRM for Outlook in your deployment, CRM will have no functioning e-mail capabilities (e.g. no e-mail marketing campaigns).

Which Bridge to Use?

Depending on your requirements, you can mix and match between the E-mail Router and CRM for Outlook on a per-user basis (though you must use the E-mail Router for Queues). As always, there are pros and cons.

CRM for Outlook: Single User Routing

Pros	Cons
Sent e-mail appear in Sent Items folder of Outlook	CRM for Outlook must be running and connected to process mail
Works with the mailbox already configured in Outlook	Do not need to manage inbox forwarding rules
Does not require an administrator to manage

This is a good option for CRM deployments without an IT staff, such as hosted offerings or CRM Live.

E-mail Router: Centrally Managed Routing

Pros	Cons
Can be used with forward mailboxes (more on this in a future post)	Standalone component
Connect to multiple CRM organizations	Requires an administrator to manage
Queue integration (unmonitored mailboxes)	Need to manage inbox forwarding rules when used with a forward mailbox (see video)
Ideal for centrally managed deployments
Supported for deployment on server or client OS

This is a good option for centrally managed CRM deployments, typically those on premise.

E-mail Router Supported Protocols

While CRM for Outlook piggybacks on the default mail server configured in Outlook, the E-mail Router supports the following protocols out-of-the-box.

POP3 (new for 4.0)
Exchange (via the DAV protocol, only Exchange 2003 and 2007 supported)
SMTP for outbound e-mail

We recognize that this is not an exhaustive list of e-mail protocols out there. In an upcoming blog post, Dominic Pouzin will discuss how you can write your own e-mail plug-in, providing options to connect to systems like Lotus Notes, Yahoo! Mail, etc.

To see is to believe…

There’s no better teacher than experience. I highly recommend taking a look at a few short videos I’ve made to illustrate connecting the E-mail Router to a POP3 server and also to Exchange.

The CRM 4.0 E-mail Router with POP3
The CRM 4.0 E-mail Router with Exchange

The CRM 4.0 E-mail Router with an Exchange Forward Mailbox

Michael Lu

Published Thursday, February 07, 2008 8:32 AM
by crmblog

Error When Creating A New Appointment

2008-05-22T09:57:00.001-04:00

Danny Varghese wrote this blog on 03.14.08

One of our clients recently had an issue where a user got an error message when trying to create a new appointment. Upon saving, a dialog pops up “The record you are requesting is currently unavailable. Either the record was not found or you don’t have sufficient permissions to view it.” When getting that message, I thought it was a permission issue, but that was quickly ruled out. After much searching, I ran across a post on Ronald Lehman’s blog. He posted the solution to this, but I wanted to reference this as well because our client received it a few times. Also, it took me quite some time to find this post, so hopefully we can give it more exposure. The url for Ronald’s blog post is: http://ronaldlemmen.blogspot.com/2007/05/error-when-creating-new-appointment.html.

Basically he goes on saying that this is caused by an “orphan” record in CRM. The SystemUserBase table in CRM should have a one to one correlation with the Resource table. That is if a record exists in the Resource table, but not in the SystemUserBase table (as was our case), then this error would be received.

After running the query he suggested and “cleaning” up the data, that resolved the issue.

Sorting By Multiple Columns In Microsoft CRM

2008-05-22T09:55:00.000-04:00

Microsoft CRM views in 3.0 are a great way to view important parts of records in a clear concise manner. The views also offer sorting which is an even greater plus for many users. What may not be known however is that users can sort by multiple columns!

Simply hold down the SHIFT key, and viola! This can be especially helpful for views that have columns with data that have similar values. A prime example is in CRM, if there are hundreds, or even thousands of Contact records, and the view might have first and last name columns. The likely hood of having duplicate first names is high. So if a user wants to sort by first and last names, he/she can hold down the SHIFT key, and click on the first name and last name column.

Online Directory of Microsoft Dynamics Add-on Products

2008-05-22T09:10:00.001-04:00

Are you looking for some add-ons to MSCRM? There is a website out there with a very large list of add-ons available for MSCRM. Click Here to open the site

Upgrading your Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online subscription

2008-05-22T07:18:00.001-04:00

For customers wanting to upgrade the subscription of your Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online subscription, here is the process to do so. This would apply to customers wanting to upgrade from a 30-day free trial, Pro to Pro Plus, or 12 to 24 month subscription terms.

You can initiate this process by clicking on the link below

Upgrade Subscription Wizard

or

Clicking the "Upgrade subscription" link from within the Organization Notifications and Status area of Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online. (Settings->Administration->Organization Notifications and Status)

Posted: Wednesday, May 21, 2008 1:54 PM by bgalicia

Purchasing Additional User Licenses for your Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online subscription

2008-05-22T07:11:00.001-04:00

The CRM Online has a great article on buying more licensing.

For customers wanting to add additional user licenses to your Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online subscription, here is the process to do so.

You can initiate this process by clicking on the link below
Purchase Additional User Licenses Wizard

or

Clicking the "Buy user licenses" link from within the Organization Notifications and Status area of Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online. (Settings->Administration->Organization Notifications and Status)

Posted: Wednesday, May 21, 2008 1:39 PM by bgalicia

Follow-up Fall-down

2008-05-21T16:19:00.002-04:00

We have noticed that sometimes the follow-up wizard will not allow you to assign the activity to someone else. You must open the activity and change the owner. I have found a KB Atricle on this:
"A new follow-up activity is still owned by the original user after you change the user in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0" Article ID : 948008

SYMPTOMS
Consider the following scenario in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0. On an account form, you try to create a new follow-up activity in the Form Assistant. In the Form Assistant, you change the user in the Assign to field to another user. Then, you click Save and Open. In this scenario, the new follow-up activity is still owned by the original user who was in the Assign to field.

This problem also occurs if you change any field in the Form Assistant that is mapped between the source entity and the selected activity entity. For example, this problem also occurs if you change the Phone Number field in the follow-up activity. The Phone Number field is mapped to the Main Phone field on the account form. In this case, the value that exists on the source entity overwrites the value that you specify in the follow-up activity.