You can't find what? Installing CRM 4.0 from a network share

posted at: 01.17.2008 at 12:38 AM by Aaron Elder

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While not officially a new feature of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0; the ability to install CRM from a network share (or shared drive within Virtual PC 2007) is very much welcomed.  Generally speaking this should "just work", however some of you may be getting an error when you attempt to run setup and clicking next after selecting the SQL server to use.  The error looks something like this and says setup cannot find the file Reserved.sql.

The reason for this seems to be that the Config folder is not copied from the setup source location into the temporary location from which it actually runs.

To fix this as follows:

• Simply copy the Config folder from your network share into the temporary location (noted in the error dialog)
• Click OK on the error dialog
• Click Next again to try again

This time, setup will find the files it needs and all will be well in the world.

Cheers,

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

Now I am the master - Tips for running CRM 4.0 with as a service account

posted at: 2:40 PM by Aaron Elder

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Many companies prefer to run applications as a service account instead of as a built-in account like NETWORK SERVICE.  While each approach has its own distinct benefits, this article provides some additional steps, tips and things to verify if you want to do the installation as a service account.

First, be aware that when you as setup to install CRM as a service account, the Environment Diagnostic Wizard will give you the following warning:

"Verify Domain User account SPN for the Microsoft Dynamics CRM ASP.NET Application Pool account."

 

This is safe to ignore as the steps below will take care of the issue this warning is concerned with.  Asking for Help on this item points you to this article which while useful, isn't very straight forward.  I have provided additional steps and things to verify in the procedure below.

Note that these steps are not always required.  You will know these steps are needed if after installing as a service account you get the following error from Microsoft CRM.

Error:
Caller does not have enough privilege to set the CallerOriginToken to the specified value.

 

Procedure:

1. Using Windows Support Tools, setup the SPNs for the machine and service account (Important: needs to be done first)
   
   setspn –A HTTP/servername:5555 domain/serviceusername
   setspn –A HTTP/servername.company.com:5555 domain/serviceusername
   
   Note: Don’t forget the PORT
   Note: Don’t forget to do both the FQDN and the NetBios name
   
2. Trust for Delegation enabled in AD for the Service Account AND CRM Machine
   
   Note: This option is only available after you add the SPN for the both the NetBios name and FQDN) in step #1
   
3. Verify / add the service account to the CRM installation’s PrivUserGroup
   
   Note: This step must be done after installation. There is a known issue were setup will remove the user used for installation (the "setup user") and if this user is the same as the service account user, it will be missing.
   
4. The service account needs to be added to the local machines IIS_WPG group
   
5. Restart the CRM server.  Also depending on your domain's replication settings, some of these changes may take a few minutes to propagate.

Cheers,

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

Various Ways To Hide/Unhide A Field/Section In CRM

by Danny Varghese 03.28.08

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Intro

When customizing forms in CRM, one of the most commonly used and simplest things to do is a hide a field on the form.  This may be hiding one or numerous fields on the form.  Often times, developers may need to use several “hidden” fields for other purposes.  In this case, he/she could place all those fields in a section on the form, and then hide the section.

Hiding A Field

To hide a field use the following code snippet:

 crmForm.all.<insert schema name of field>_c.style.visibility = ‘hidden’;crmForm.all.<insert schema name of field>_d.style.visibility = ‘hidden’; 

 

OR

crmForm.all.<insert schema name of field>_c.style.display = ‘none’;crmForm.all.<insert schema name of field>_d.style.display = ‘none’; 

You will have to hide both the “_c” and “_d” parts of the field.  The “_c” appended to the field is the label of the field, and “_d” is the data contained in the field.

Un-hiding A Field 

To un-hide a field, use the following code snippet:

crmForm.all.<insert schema name of field>_c.style.visibility = ‘visible’;

crmForm.all.<insert schema name of field>_d.style.visibility = ‘visible’;

 

OR

 

crmForm.all.<insert schema name of field>_c.style.display = ‘block’;crmForm.all.<insert schema name of field>_d.style.display = ‘block’; 

 

Hiding A Section

 

To hide a section (which will in turn, hide all fields in that section), use the code snippet below:

 crmForm.all.<insert schema name here>. parentElement.parentElement.parentElement.style.display = 'none'; Un-hiding A Section

To un-hide a section, use the code snippet below:

crmForm.all.<insert schema name here>. parentElement.parentElement.parentElement.style.display = 'block';

Creating an activity report which includes the related people

Ronald Lemmen - CRM, C# and Cme

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In an activity CRM grid, it is not possible to add attributes from the activity type (letter, phonecall etc) itself. The fields to and from on the entities phonecall, letter, fax are therefore not eligable for addition on the CRM grid. It would be very useful to see those though. The same is valid for the to, cc and bcc in email and required and optional attendees in appointments. In this post I won't be giving a solution to show the attributes in the grid, instead I will give a workaround by using reports.

The only attributes which you can select in the grid are the attributes which are belonging to the entity activitypointer. These include the activityid, startdate, statecode, but also the regardingobjectid. So the question is, how to get the to, from, cc etc. For this you can use the function which I have posted in my previous post. This function accepts an ActivityID and an ActivityPartyType. So what is this type? Look at this page: ActivityPartyType. You will find a list of values mapped to what kind of field you want to add to your report.

By using that function you can create your query for the report. An example would be:

SELECT
activityid, activitytypecode, scheduledstart, subject, owneridname, statecodename,
regardingobjectidname,
(SELECT DBO.fn_PGGM_GetActivityPartyList(activityid, 1)) [to],
(SELECT DBO.fn_PGGM_GetActivityPartyList(activityid, 2)) [from],
(SELECT DBO.fn_PGGM_GetActivityPartyList(activityid, 5)) [required]
FROM
filteredactivitypointer

This query does select some default attributes and it adds the regarding, to, from and required fields. Add this query to the generation of a report and you'll be set to go.

Note: make sure that the function gets added to your database and assign the correct rights. See the post around the function for details.

Happy reporting!

CRM 4.0 E-Mail Connector Logger Tool

Published Wednesday, July 02, 2008 2:19 PM by benlec

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Hi all,

 

I’ve just made this tool to easily enable logging for the E-Mail Connector in CRM 4.0

The logging for the connector can be enabled by modifying the configuration file for the service like explained in this article:

 

http://blogs.msdn.com/benlec/archive/2008/03/25/how-to-implement-logging-for-the-microsoft-crm-4-0-e-mail-connector.aspx

 

The tool looks like this:

 

 

It’s based on XPath to read and modify the Config File.

 

Here is how it works:

1°) Execute the tool on the E-Mail Connector box, it will detect and read the config file.

2°) The drop down list you see shows you the Deployment you have configured, you need to select one of these.

3°) Once the deployment is selected, it will retrieve the different profiles you configured (Incoming Users & Queues, Forward Mailbox and Outgoing profile)

4°) You can select the section you want to activate logging for. If you need to only activate logging for Incoming E-Mail on Peter Chimaera, then select the 1^st Checkbox only and select Peter from the Drop down.

5°) Choose a FileName (there will be a default filename proposed) and a LogLevel.

6°) Click [Enable Logging]

 

Important Notes:

- Don’t close the tool once you enabled logging. It will STOP the logging. (it has some dialog box which reminds you the usage anyways)

- One you are done with your tests, click [Stop Logging]

- The log files will be placed in the SAME folder as the Microsoft.Crm.Tool.EmailAgent.xml file

- There will be no update of the Configuration during the test (if in the meantime a new user is configured, it will not take it in consideration) because once you click [Enable Logging] the tool will set the ConfigUpdatePeriod to ZERO to prevent any unexpected update during the test (to prevent cancelling logging).

 

Risks:

- There should be no risks to do this because the tool automatically Create a backup of the EmailAgentXML when we attempt to Enable Logging.

If an unexpected error occurs, the backup will be restored. The backup is restored also if you exit the application….

- You can run it if the EmailAgentXML has already been modified because it will check if the LogLevel and LogFile tag exists already or not and will either modify or create the tags accordingly.

Regards

Benjamin

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0: Star-Casts (*Casts)

Posted: Saturday, January 26, 2008 1:04 PM by Sanjay Jain

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Enjoy the following collection of various Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 casts produced by me and my colleagues at Microsoft. We would welcome your feedback and suggestions for future ones.

Last Updated: 02/25/2008

Changes: Added 3 new  

Count:

·         Pod-Casts: 1

·         Video-Casts/Web-Casts: 4

·         Screen-Casts: 24 (Planning – 9; Installing – 10; Operating – 5)

 

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Pod-Casts
Icon	Description	Author
	What's New: CTO Campus Management Corp on Microsoft Dynamics Build/Buy Partner	Sanjay Jain

 

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Video-Casts/Web-Casts
Tags	Description	Author
Overview	CRM 4.0 Overview	Philip Richardson
Platform	CRM 4.0 Deep Dive	Philip Richardson
Report	CRM 4.0 Reporting with Barry Givens and Phil Richardson	Philip Richardson Barry Givens
Workflow	CRM 4.0 Workflow with Praveen Upadhyay	Ben Riga Praveen Upadhyay

 

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Screen-Casts
Tags	Description	Author
Planning
Multi Language	Multi Lingual	Philip Richardson
MUI, Multi Language	Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Multi-Language User Interface (MUI) with Sanjay Jain	Sanjay Jain
Multi Currency	Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Multi-Currency with Sanjay Jain	Sanjay Jain
Data Migration	Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 : Data Migration Manager with John O'Donnell	John O’Donnell
Data Migration	Data Migration	Philip Richardson
Data Import	Web Import	Philip Richardson
De-Dup	Duplicate Detection	Philip Richardson
Relationship	Many to Many Relationships	Philip Richardson
Relationship	Many to Many Relationships	Humberto Lezama Guadarrama
Installing
Installation	Install CRM	Philip Richardson
Installation	Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 : Installation with John O'Donnell	John O’Donnell
OCS	Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Office Communication Server 2007 with Sanjay Jain	Sanjay Jain
Outlook	CRM for Outlook	Philip Richardson
Outlook	Configuring the Outlook Client for CRM 4.0	Philip Richardson
Users	Add Multiple Users	Philip Richardson
Configure	Navigation Areas Configuration	Humberto Lezama Guadarrama
E-Mail Router	The CRM 4.0 E-mail Router with POP3	Michael Lu
E-Mail Router	CRM 4.0 E-mail Router with a Forward Mailbox	Michael Lu
E-Mail Router	CRM 4.0 E-mail Router with Exchange	Michael Lu
Operating
Report Wizard	Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 : Report Wizard with John O'Donnell	John O’Donnell
Workflow	Workflow: Basic	Philip Richardson
Workflow	Workflow: Complex	Philip Richardson
Workflow	Workflow: Activity	Philip Richardson
Mail Merge	Mail Merge	Michael Lu

 

Disclaimers:

·         These casts are produced on various versions of the product including pre-release versions, so may not reflect the latest behavior of the product.

·         Provided “AS-IS”

 

Sanjay Jain

Microsoft Dynamics ISV Architect Evangelist

 

 

CRM Outlook Client update

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.