Due to a license upgrade issue, I recently had to perform an uninstall and reinstall of Dynamics CRM 4.0 server. The uninstall/reinstall process is usually fairly straightforward: backup your current organization_MSCRM database, uninstall CRM via Add/Remove Programs, restart the box, delete the MSCRM_Config DB and then reinstall CRM. Seems easy enough right? Not on this fateful December day…
While the backup of my DB and customizations went off without a hitch, my reinstall of the server component was less than smooth. I found that, consistently, the install was failing with the message Action Microsoft.Crm.Setup.Server.ProvisionBusiness Action Failed. Method not found: Void Microsoft.Crm.BusinessEntities.SecurityLibrary.DeletePrincipalFromGroup
I looked through the various MS forums and blogs and was not able to find an error that matched exactly what I was experiencing. My only hint was the ‘DeletePrinicipalFromGroup’ piece of the error message. Perhaps there was an issue in AD?
After attempting many different things without luck, I finally was able to fix my issue and get the install to complete by doing the following:
- During my many failed reinstall attempts I found that the uninstall process did not delete the ‘junk’ groups from my CRM OU. I also found that the reinstall process did not delete these junk groups when the install failed. I found that I had 8 (!) different SQLAccess, PrivReporting, PrivUser, Reporting and User groups! I deleted these groups from my OU to make sure that CRM had a totally empty OU in which to insert the CRM groups.
- I deleted my custom bin and ISV folders in CRMWeb. During an uninstall, all files are cleaned out from your CRM directories with the exception of the bin and ISV folders. I made backups of these folders and then deleted them from the directory.
We’ll begin testing this weekend and will report our findings here in this blog.
Some of the included fixed in UR 8 include:
974529(http://support.microsoft.com/kb/974529/ ) Some child records and related records are unexpectedly visible to the previous record owner after you reassign records to another record owner in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0
977867(http://support.microsoft.com/kb/977867/ ) The Import Organization Wizard takes a long time to import an organization in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0
978006(http://support.microsoft.com/kb/978006/ ) The lookup view only shows the quotes or the contracts that are in “Draft” status when you try to link a custom entity to a quote or a contract in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0
978103(http://support.microsoft.com/kb/978103/ ) You cannot delete a custom many-to-many relationship after you run the Microsoft.Crm.SE.FixMissingBulkDeleteFailureRelationship.exe tool in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0
In addition to all other fixed included in UR 1 thru 7.
In this blog I’ll be talking about synchronizing contacts with the outlook crm client. We all know that one of the biggest selling points of Dynamics CRM 4 is its robust integration with Outlook. However, an often underutilized set of features is the ability to highly tune the contact synchronization on a per user basis. What do I mean by this? Lets jump right into 3 examples of commonly used scenarios by many of our clients.
Synchronize contacts I’m the owner. This is the default rule.
Synchronize contacts based on a marketing list. Yep – very simple to then say synchronize all contacts from accounts a, b, and c by simply adding to a marketing list.
Synchronize contacts based on a complex rule. In my case I synchronize all contacts for any accounts that have an active project and I’m the project owner.
A. Synchronize contacts I’m the owner. This is the default rule.
Out of the box the outlook crm client will synchronize contacts ‘that I am the owner’ and that ‘are active’.
Verify this by going to CRM Menu, Modify Local data groups, then double click on the ‘my contact rule’. If you have the offline enabled outlook crm client you will see many more rules.
List of rules – the non-offline enabled client only has a single rule:
The out of the box contact synchronization rule:
B. Synchronize contacts based on a marketing list.
We often see clients that like the default rule, but there are key accounts whose contact they also want synchronized. We can do this on an ad hock basis by utilizing a marketing list. For this example, I created a new marketing list called ‘Alex Synchronized Contacts’ of type account and added a couple key accounts.
Then we create a new synchronization rule. Yes we can more than 1 contact synchronization rule. The new rule simply selects contacts, that have a parent customer (account) and this account belongs to a marketing list ‘Alex Synchronized Contacts’.
We now have two rules and both are active. Contacts matching either rule will be synchronized to crm.
C. Synchronize contacts based on a complex rule.
This is where the ability to have individual rules really helps out. Think of your job role and which contacts you want to be made readily available in your outlook and more importantly in your mobile device. In my case, I want all the contacts for any account that has an active project and I’m the project manager. Projects are a custom entity that is related to accounts which we use to keep track of projects and projects tasks.
So what would this rule look like?
And once again we can have this new rule along with other rules active.
Picture your business process — whatever it may be — working at its greatest potential. Picture your Excel spreadsheets, sticky notes, e-mails, lists, tasks and data processing programs all in the same application. Picture your entire business working faster, with up to date, accurate information. Do you know what you’re picturing?
You guessed it… it’s xRM — made by Microsoft, configured for your business by PowerObjects. xRM is built just the way your business works. Most out-of-the-box technology solutions make your business model change to fit the technology. When you adopt xRM the technology changes to fit your business.
Where did xRM come from?
xRM stems from Microsoft Dynamics CRM (customer relationship management), which helps businesses effectively manage sales and marketing processes. The Dynamics CRM platform is easy to customize. Because of this, the idea evolved that anything imaginable can be managed with Microsoft Dynamics CRM, not just sales and marketing. The term xRM (anything relationship management) soon followed. Think of a noun you need to keep track of, collect data on and analyze. Whether it’s test results, animals, products, geography or devices, xRM is your ticket to managing it better. So what if your business manages many different nouns? Well, xRM can manage ALL those nouns — at the same time, in the same application.
Buy / Build Debate Solved with xRM!
Buy an out-of-the-box system or build from scratch. This is always the dilemma for companies needing a custom system. Both buy and build have major pitfalls. xRM is the perfect combination of buy and build.
We have begun to hear report from our client of a potential new small glitch. For some reason the outlook crm environment check sometimes keeps insisting that there is a pending reboot, even though the user has rebooted many times and nothing has been installed since then. The simples fix for this is to create a new registry key that tells the outlook crm client to ‘ignore its environment check’.
Send surveys inside Microsoft Dynamics CRM with PowerSurvey. This new tool is brought to you exclusively by PowerObjects. To see what this product can do, watch our how to video posted below.
Stay tuned for more videos about our cool Dynamics CRM enhancement features.
There are some siginificant issues with the latest Update Rollup (7) for Microsoft Dynamics CRM. While thankfully, none seem to be of the ’show stopper’ variety, I would certainly classify them as annoyances.
While there are some fairly significant performance and stability improvements in this rollup, CRM users and administrators will need to evaluate the costs/benefits of their particular scenario before deciding to update now or waiting for a possible “version 2.0″ of the rollup.
I had a perplexing situation this morning that I am sure some others have come across before.
I was trying to get the ID of an element in my CRM system I am developing. IE8, with the built-in Developer Tools has made this a MUCH easier process than it had been in the past. No more hunting through pages of code; now I can get what I am looking for with a simple click of the mouse. As I have done countless times before, I went to the Tools and selected ‘Developer Tools.’ Usually this would launch the Developer Tools and I would be in business. But this time, nothing – nada. No windows, no messages, nothing.
I then tried to use the F12 shortcut key to get the Developer Tools to display. No dice there either, though the taskbar did indicate that the developer tools were being displayed. I tried clicking on the icon in the taskbar but that did not produce any results either. I was now convinced that I had a much more serious issue on my hand.
First, I tried to re-register iedvtool.dll. This did not work
Next, I completely uninstalled and reinstalled IE8. This did not work either.
Finally, I decided to try one last Hail Mary pass before I resigned myself to hunting for elements the old fashioned way. I would try ALT + SPACE and see if somehow the developer tools area was minimized off the screen. Sure enough, pressing ALT + SPACE and then selecting MAXIMIZE made the trusty IE8 Dev Tools appear once again.
What I discovered was that the developer tools will remain in the state they were in when they were closed. In my case, I had the dev tools minimized off the screen, and rather than reseting when I closed IE, the tools were still minimized off the screen when I opened the program again.
Drive cost out of everyday business process and interactions by downloading Microsoft’s new accelerator: Portal Integration. This accelerator allows organizations to expose data from Microsoft Dynamics CRM to the web through a secure portal. Business analysts can use point-and-click configuration rather than web development to decide which entities and fields will be visible to the portal users.
With the new Portal Integration Accelerator you can create as many portals as you need for multiple audiences. Common uses of the Portal Integration Accelerator for Microsoft Dynamics CRM may include a portal for non-employee or contract sales reps to track opportunities, a distributor portal to allow distributors to track opportunities, or a portal for vendors and contractors to collaborate on a project.
The Portal Integration Accelerator is available at no additional cost. Those running in an on-premise environment should contact their Microsoft partner about the external connector license, which is not required for those running Microsoft Dynamics CRM in a hosted environment.
Once upon a time, in a galaxy far, far away, I wrote a blog describing the process one would go through if they wished to configure hotfix auto updates for Outlook clients on their CRM server. The process was painful: we had to extract the contents of the hotfix file and do some hunting to extract the LinkID and PatchID for our configuration file, we had to set up a site where the hotfix could be downloaded from, we had to change some setting in IIS, etc. CRM administrators used to fear and dread the day a hotfix was released for they knew a ton of work was ahead of them to get it installed and make it available for users to download and install on their Outlook CRM clients. Thankfully, Microsoft has responded to administrator comments and have revamped the way hotfixes are distributed.
Previously, Microsoft did not make their LinkID’s known, even though the Outlook CRM client was programmed to obtain the hotfix from a Microsoft website and NOT through a local crmpatches folder. Without a registry key change, client machines would try to access http://go.microsoft.com/linkid=KBxxxx.exe, which would result in a failure, as that was not a valid LinkID. In order to solve this issue, admins were forced to create a crmpatches site and apply registry key changes to every client machine to point to this new crmpatches site, rather than Microsoft. Now, Microsoft includes the LinkID directly in each hotfix’s Knowledge Base article. Hooray!
There also was the issue of the PatchID. Each hotfix is assigned a GUID and we must insert this GUID into our XML configuration file. In the past we would have to do a /x command (extract) on the hotfix.exe file and do some searching to find this GUID. This was not necessarily difficult, but it was cumbersome to do so. Again, Microsoft has responded to these complaints and have also included the PatchID in the hotfix Knowledge Base Article! Double hooray!
So what does that mean for you, the intrepid CRM admin? Essentially, you can take the sample XML file that is printed below, insert the new LinkID and PatchID into the file (from the Knowledge Base Article) and upload it onto your server. Easy as that!
Two Notes on this Process:
1. Don’t forget to add a <Delete> node into the XML file in order to make previous hotfix/update rollups unavailable for download. Since Update Rollups are cumulative, you don’t want to have your users downloading Update Rollup 7, followed by 6, 5, 4, etc. This is a frequently missed step.
2. The LinkID will contain an ampersand (&) in it, and ampersands are handled a little different in XML. Instead of just using &, we need to use &. For example, if the KB article says the LinkID is: 157191&clcid=0×409, you will put 157191&clcid=0×409 as the LinkID in the XML file. If you do not do this, users will receive a An error occurred parsing EntityName error. Again, this is a criminally overlooked step.
My sample XML configuration file is below. As a reminder, we need to run this via clientpatchconfigurator.exe on the server. Please see my previous blog if you need clarification on how to run the clientpatchconfigurator.exe.
Happy CRMing!
<ClientPatches>
<Create>
<ClientPatchInfo>
<PatchId>{THE PATCHID FROM THE HOTFIX KB ARTICLE}</PatchId>
<Title>This is what the User Will See as the Title</Title>
<Description>Not required, but I put in a short description of what the fix is for</Description>
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