Problems Running CRM 4.0 Reports Post-Installation or Upgrade, Even after installing Microsoft CRM Data Connector

by Shelley Lane 07.16.08

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When installing CRM 4.0 (or upgrading from 3.0) in an environment where SQL Server, SQL Reporting Services and CRM will all be on separate physical machines, you must use the Microsoft CRM Data Connector to bypass authentication issues. Once you’ve done this, your servers will all be able to communicate without issue and your reports will work swimmingly!

 

Well, almost. Recently, I encountered two separate instances (a new install and an upgrade, both using the Data Connector) where we had run all of the installs without any problems, but attempts at running any reports lead to the dreaded "Page Cannot Be Displayed" error.

 

In one case, the event log on the SQL Reporting Services server had several security audit failures. In there other case, there were no errors to be seen. However, both situations were the result of our Report Manager not being properly configured.

Follow these steps to verify that yours is configured correctly and, hopefully, save yourself some time.

1. Open up Report Manager (http://SRSServer/Reports)
2. Click on OrgName_MSCRM
3. On the right-hand side, on the toolbar, click Show Details
4. Click on the 4.0 folder
5.  Then locate and click on MSCRM_DataSource
6.  Verify that Connection Type is set to "Microsoft CRM Data Extension" and Connect using: is set to "Credentials supplied by the user running the report"
7. Click Apply

 

Picky Lists? - Upgrading from Microsoft CRM 3.0 to 4.0

Aaron Elder has a post Here on some info on upgrading 3.0 to 4.0. I have copied it below.

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There is a lot of confusion out there around what will and will not upgrade and what happens after you upgrade from CRM 3.0 to 4.0.  The root of this is around the fact that the way Picklist INT valuing has changed in CRM 4.0 to better accommodate future growth.  In particular if you customize a system-provided Picklists under CRM 3.0, the INTs assigned would be sequential to the system values.  So if the last value provided by Microsoft was 4, your picklist option would get 5.  In CRM 4.0, this has changed to start all user-defined picklist options on system-provided picklists to start at 200,000 instead.

In an effort to answer the questions around upgrade from 3.0 to 4.0 vs. installing from scratch; I have done some in depth research and provided the results below.  I did a clean upgrade on our vanilla CRM 3.0 VPC and then imported a full export into a clean CRM 4.0 VPC.  It seems to have worked with the exception of the fact it won’t import the “Bulk Operation” entity; which appears to be safe to ignore (TBD after more tests and feedback).

The table below has the results:

Notes	Upgraded from 3 to 4	Vanilla 4.0
Add new item to system picklists	Starts index at 200,000	Starts index at 200,000
Create a new custom picklist	Starts index at 1	Starts index at 1
Customize a system picklist that was previously extended in CRM 3.0	Starts index at 200,000 Previous values preserved	N/A
Customize a custom picklist that was previously created in CRM 3.0	Starts index where last index left off	N/A
Import and publish previously created custom entity with picklist into CRM 4.0 “vanilla” installation	N/A	Picklist values preserved, new values start where they left off (Ex: 3)
Import and publish previously modified system picklist into CRM 4.0 “vanilla” installation	N/A	Picklist values preserved, new start at 200,000
Customization XML File	According to Visual Studio, the “upgraded” image’s customization XML has “inconsistent linefeed endings” and provides the option to normalize them.  This doesn’t seem to affect anything.	No Errors
Customization XML File	No such value	Adds a new “AppDefaultValue” to picklists <AppDefaultValue>-1</AppDefaultValue>
Customization XML File	Saved Query’s XML has empty “descriptions”.  Example: <Descriptions> <Description description="" languagecode="1033" /> </Descriptions>	The “descriptions” node is not exported unless there is a description.
Registry HKLM\Software\Microsoft\MSCRM Database Version	7.0.7219.0 (Very odd)	7.0.7333.3
Registry HKLM\Software\Microsoft\MSCRM CRM_Server_Version	7.0.7333.3	7.0.7333.3
File System I compared the entire CRM Server folder and found the following differences between a “vanilla” 4.0 system and an “upgraded” one.  All files appear to be identical.	As a few legacy files remaining: \crmweb\_resources\isv.config.xml \server\gac\*.* \tools\[Few files part of Rollup Updates 1&2] \server\bin\assembly\workflow.config \server\bin\assembly\ microsoft.crm.platform. workflowassembly.dll	None of these files exist in a clean 4.0 install; everything else is identical.

 

After doing the upgrade, I decided to do several tests to see where we stood.

Here are those results: 

Test	Result
Import “upgraded” customizations into vanilla system (All Entities)	Passed (Note: Bulk Operation does not import, this seems to be "safe to ignore" but I need to do more tests)
Publish all customizations on “vanilla” system	Passed
Add new entity with custom picklist, import from “vanilla” image into “upgraded” image	Passed
Customize a system picklist on the “vanilla” image and import it into the “upgraded” image	Passed
Publish customizations imported from “vanilla” into “upgraded”	Passed
Do a full export from the “vanilla” image and import and publish them in the “upgraded” image	Passed
Import and publish previously modified system picklist into CRM 4.0 “vanilla” installation and customize in “vanilla” system	Passed
Import and publish previously modified custom picklist into CRM 4.0 “vanilla” installation and customize in “vanilla” system	Passed

 

Cheers,

 

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.