Update Rollup 1 for Microsoft CRM 3.0 is available

Posted on November 30th, 2006 mitch  Print No comments

Greetings Everyone,

Microsoft has finally released an update for CRM 3.0 containing many of the hotfixes produced for CRM 3.0 since it shipped.

For more information, please visit:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/922815

Thanks, Mitch

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Free CRM Utility Released: CRM SMTPSettings

Posted on November 29th, 2006 mitch  Print No comments

This utility is mostly used by organizations that run CRM Professional, since the Exchange email server can be located on a different server than the CRM Server. If you have not installed the SMTP mail service on the CRM Server and you do not wish it to perform outbound email functionality, you would use this utility to reconfigure CRM to utilize an existing SMTP server, such as Exchange.

For more information about this process, please review the following KnowledgeBase article: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/906471

Here is a screen shot of the user interface:

You will need to have your CRM Installation CD1 on hand before running CRM SMTPSettings because it requires a utility found on the CD ( Microsoft.CRM.Tools.EncryptPwd.exe ) to operate.

CRM StartStop can be found in the Premium Content section on my company web site.  Registration is required but the utility is free. 

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Free CRM Utility Released: CRM StartStop

Posted on November 29th, 2006 mitch  Print No comments

Occasionally, I need to stop all of the CRM services ( and web site ) so I can perform some type of update.  I got tired of doing this manually, and as an off-shoot of another project, I created a small utility that will start and stop the following CRM-related services:

The CRM Web Site

MSCRMBulkMailService
MSCRMDeletionService
MSCRMWorkflowService
MSCRMFaxRouterService
MSCRMExRouterService

CRM StartStop can be found in the Premium Content section on my company web site.  Registration is required but the utility is free.

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Free CRM Utility Released: CRM Tracer

Posted on November 29th, 2006 mitch  Print 2 comments

I do a lot of server-based development with CRM and as a result, I am constantly turning on ( and off ) CRM diagnostic tracing to see what is happening behind the scenes.

If you would like to more about CRM's tracing feature, please review:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/907490

A few months ago, I wrote ( and later rewrote ) a utility that would make the registry changes for me.  This speeds up the process and I don't have to worry about introducing an invalid setting into the tracing engine.

CRM Tracer will work with both the CRM Server and CRM Client.

Here is a screen shot of the interface:

CRM Tracer can be found in the Premium Content section on my company web site.  Registration is required but the utility is free.

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New CRM Accelerators Site Launched

Posted on November 29th, 2006 mitch  Print 1 comment

Greetings everyone.

Well, I finally got around to finishing up the update to my company web site: CRM Accelerators

It has been quite an adventure.  As with most web sites, you can't see most of what I did.  I actually find it a bit irritating that I spent so much time on something that is really nothing more than 5-6 web pages.

As I mentioned in a previous article, I attempted to utilize some of Microsoft's new AJAX technology on the site to improve the user experience.  It worked fine until I upgraded to from the Atlas CTP to the beta of Microsoft AJAX.  It seems that godaddy.com doesn't like the way they built the AJAX extensions. 

Godaddy runs ASP.NET sites in a "modified medium" level of security and sometimes this causes issues with components who expect to have more wide-ranging control of their environment, or which make calls to other components that violate predefined ASP.NET security rules.

Anyway, after fooling around with it for half a day, I exceeded my maximum "waste of my time" counter and I just ripped all of the AJAX crap off the site and with with standard ASP.NET.  It will get fixed sooner or later and I'll reapply the technology again.  It's not that hard and probably won't take me more than a couple of hours to reinsert the AJAX controls.

This week I'll also be releasing three free CRM-related utilities, which can be downloaded from the new site. Registration will be required to access the Premium Content area, but that's about it.

Later, Mitch

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Conversation extracts from the evening

Posted on November 24th, 2006 mitch  Print No comments

I had the opportunity to visit with some friends that I hadn't seen in quite a while this evening.

Excerpts from our conversations:

From Ron, who has a new girlfriend:

If I can make it through the next several months alive, I'll probably settle down with this one.

From Jerry, after I told the introduction to a story of mine:

Anything that begins with, "She started the night off normal." has got to be good.

Meanderings

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Are you experiencing CRM Outlook client lock-ups or hangs?

Posted on November 22nd, 2006 mitch  Print No comments

Greetings Everyone,

I ran into an issue at one of my customers that someone on the CRM Newsgroup mentioned as well so I thought I'd see if anyone else had seen similar patterns.

Situation:

The initial download of CRM information to an Outlook client takes an extremely long time, fails with various errors, or locks up Outlook.

Configuration:

You have installed a custom Callout on either the Account or Contact CRM Entity.

So, if you have a Callout installed, and you've seen the above symptom, please drop me a description of your Callout and the way the problem shows itself:  via email to [mitch at infinite-x dot net].

I wanted to gather as much info as I could before contacting CRM support.

Thanks, Mitch

Dynamics CRM, Outlook Client

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Got any limes?

Posted on November 22nd, 2006 mitch  Print No comments

I have a little tradition that I celebrate late in the evening of Thanksgiving day that I want to share with you.

Back in 2003, when I was still working at the Empire, I had a Thanksgiving from hell.

After a week from hell, backing up one of my teammates who had a customer with a Critical Situation, one of my own customers decided to do something beyond their capabilities and created a situation that required them to call us for assistance.  They did so at around 8:30pm Dallas time, the Wednesday before Thanksgiving.

I was fairly exhausted by that point so when someone opens one of those Critical Situation ( "the sky is falling and my business is failing" ) issues, and requests a callback in 6 hours, I was unable to put two and two together to figure out something was amiss.

So there I was, at the office on Thanksgiving day, at 2:30am calling the customer and attempting to round up a resource to fix whatever it was they had broken.  This went on and off for most of the day and finished about 5:30pm with again the 2:30am callback request.

So there I am, Thanksgiving evening, tired, irritated that my Thanksgiving dinner was interrupted and even more irritated that I was going to have to be at the office again in the middle of the night.

I think a drink would be in order.

Have you ever had a drink called a Caipirinha?  It's made of a Brazilian liquor called Cachaça, sugar and lime.

I already had a bottle of Cachaça, and some sugar.  All that I was missing was the lime.  And it was the evening of Thanksgiving and ALL of the grocery stores were closed.  What, oh what, was I to do?

So I called a friend who was having his wife's family over for dinner and asked, "Got any limes?"  He said he thought someone brought some, so I ran by and confiscated the limes – all 1/4 of whole lime, cubed…

Unfortunately, that was not nearly what I required so I started a trek through the wildes of Coppell, Texas looking for limes.  In every 7-11 and gas station I did go, and finally, finally, I found some limes.  I think.

They were now yellow, so I asked the attendant, "Are you sure these are limes?"  To which he replied, "They used to be."  Good enough, so back home I did trek with my pseudo-limes in hand.

After a tasting a couple of expertly muddled and mixed Caipirinha's, I was relaxed enough to forget the troubles of the day and took a several-hour long nap in front of the fireplace.

2:30am again found me back at office to again wrangle resources to get this problem solved.  English resources it turns out – because the problem was in England.  Like across the Pond?  Like outside of your support contract which covers North America only, England.

An no, I'm not bitter at all.

Anyway, for here are two jewels of advice that will help you avoid a similar issue:

1) DO NOT allow Unix administrators to muck about with Windows and its components ( like DNS and IIS ).

2) If you move a customer's web site from their location to your location, it is of tremendous advantage to have the customer update their main internal DNS to point to the new IP address.  That IP address is used by external visitors to locate and view your web site.

See, not bitter at all.

Anyway, limes, sugar and Cachaça are on hand and tomorrow evening ( Thanksgiving ), I will have myself a sip and a toast and give thanks for not being on-call during the holidays ( among a few other things ). 

And I still call my friend Bruce to see if he has any limes. I mean heck, what would a tradition be if you didn't do it the same way every time.

For those of you in the United States, have a happy and safe Thanksgiving.

Peace out.

Meanderings

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CRM 3.0 Error message of the day

Posted on November 22nd, 2006 mitch  Print 2 comments

I was working on a solution on my test system this morning and received the following error while attempting to send an email.

So, the question is: Which exactly was invalid?

My Visibility?

My Modification of said Visibility?

Or my access level that would not allow me to Modify my Visibility?

Those are all questions that I just didn't feel like answering at 6:00am this morning, but I guess I'll have to figure it out sometime. :)

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Troubleshooting CRM 3.0 Outlook Client Synchronization Issues

Posted on November 21st, 2006 mitch  Print 2 comments

If you ever run into a situation where the Outlook client is freezing during one of the Synchronization processes, here is a work around that will at least allow you to regain control of Outlook long enough to modify the settings.

If you carefully examine the following Windows Registry key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\MSCRMClient

You will find the settings that control the CRM Outlook client.  Here is a key of interest:

RunOutlookSyncOnStartup

Possible Values:  1 and 0

Outlook Client Option: Synchronize the items in my Outlook folders at startup

This setting is normally 1 which will instruct the Outlook Client to begin synchronization efforts immediately after Outlook is started. If you have issues with the synchronization process, you will probably see Outlook hang and/or become unresponsive.

Set this setting to 0 allow Outlook to start so you can regain control of the synchronization process or at least look to see what they use has decided to download and hopefully determine the issue causing the hang.

Additional Information:

There are a few other interesting registry settings in this section that are normally controlled through the CRM Outlook Clients Options page, but which you may need to modify to stop synchronization attempts while you are troubleshooting.

RunOutlookScheduledSync

Possible Values:  1 and 0

Outlook Client Option: Synchronize the CRM items in my Outlook folders every

Set this setting to 0  if you do not wish the CRM Client to perform the synchronize process at the interval specified on the CRM Options page.  Set it to 1, if you do want to synchronize Contacts.

SyncContact

Possible Values:  1 and 0

Outlook Client Option: Contacts

This setting controls whether or not Contacts will be synchronized at all. 

Set this setting to 0 to not synchronize Contacts and 1, is you want to synchronize Contacts.

SyncCalItem

Possible Values:  1 and 0

Outlook Client Option: Appointments I'm attending

This setting controls whether or not Appointments will be synchronized at all. 

Set this setting to 0 to not synchronize Appointments and 1, is you want to synchronize Appointments.

SyncTask

Possible Values:  1 and 0

Outlook Client Option: My tasks

This setting controls whether or not Tasks will be synchronized at all. 

Set this setting to 0 to not synchronize Tasks and 1, is you want to synchronize Tasks.

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