Dynamics Biz Apps Blog

Exception message: The base class includes the field ‘reportViewer’, but its type (Microsoft.Reporting.WebForms.ReportViewer) is not compatible with the type of control (Microsoft.Reporting.WebForms.ReportViewer).

1. Download and install Microsoft Report Viewer Redistributable 2008. http://207.46.19.190/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=cc96c246-61e5-4d9e-bb5f-416d75a1b9ef&displaylang=en

2. Search and replace within the web.config Microsoft.ReportViewer.WebForms, Version=8.0.0.0 to 9.0.0.0

3. Do an issreset following the changes

This corrected the reports.

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While using custom forms for Cases you cannot Resolve the Case or Reactivate the Case like you can on the default form. This is due to a file that the default forms sources but the custom forms do not.

To resolve this you can add the Javascript to the Onload event of the custom form to activite the buttons on the ribbon which then allow you to Resolve or Reactivate a Case.

Download Javascript

Sourced: Thanks to Adam Nafke with Magma Design Automation for discovering and resolving.

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 http://support.microsoft.com/kb/914921

Within CRM 4.0 and 2011 you cannot access the field mappings area for the Invoice Product, Order Product, Opportunity Product, and Quote Product entities in the Microsoft Dynamics CRM UI. To map between these entities you must query the sql database for the specific relationship GUID’s. 

In Sql run the following Query:

select SourceEntityName, TargetEntityName, EntityMapId from EntityMapBase where SourceEntityName in (‘opportunityproduct’, ‘quotedetail’, ’salesorderdetail’) and TargetEntityName in (‘quotedetail’, ’salesorderdetail’, ‘invoicedetail’);

With the appropriate result place the GUID in the following URL, setting the server:port and organiziontion appropriatly.

 http://crm:5555/Contoso/Tools/SystemCustomization/Relationships/Mappings/mappingList.aspx?mappingId={GUID}

This will return a UI that will allow you to add the desired mappings.

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Recently we discovered that we could not log into the Plugin Registration tool. It would display the follow error message:

unable to retrieve the organization from the discovery service

Followed by this long detailed error message.

Unhandled Exception: System.InvalidOperationException: Metadata contains a reference that cannot be resolved: ‘https://crmnaorg54346.crm.dynamics.com/XRMServices/2011/Discovery.svc?wsdl’.
at System.ServiceModel.Description.MetadataExchangeClient.MetadataRetriever.Retrieve(TimeoutHelper timeoutHelper)
at System.ServiceModel.Description.MetadataExchangeClient.ResolveNext(ResolveCallState resolveCallState)
at System.ServiceModel.Description.MetadataExchangeClient.GetMetadata(MetadataRetriever retriever)
at System.ServiceModel.Description.MetadataExchangeClient.GetMetadata(Uri address, MetadataExchangeClientMode mode)
at Microsoft.Xrm.Sdk.Client.ServiceMetadataUtility.RetrieveServiceEndpoints(Type contractType, Uri serviceUri)
at Microsoft.Xrm.Sdk.Client.ServiceConfiguration`1..ctor(Uri serviceUri)
at Microsoft.Xrm.Sdk.Client.ServiceConfigurationFactory.CreateConfiguration[TService](Uri serviceUri)
at Microsoft.Xrm.Sdk.Client.ServiceProxy`1..ctor(Uri uri, Uri homeRealmUri, ClientCredentials clientCredentials, ClientCredentials deviceCredentials)
at Microsoft.Xrm.Sdk.Client.DiscoveryServiceProxy..ctor(Uri uri, Uri homeRealmUri, ClientCredentials clientCredentials, ClientCredentials deviceCredentials)
at PluginRegistrationTool.CrmConnection.get_DiscoveryService()
at PluginRegistrationTool.CrmConnection.RetrieveOrganizations()
at PluginRegistrationTool.ConnectionsForm.OpenConnection(CrmConnection con)
Inner Exception: System.Net.WebException: Unable to connect to the remote server
at System.Net.HttpWebRequest.GetResponse()
at System.ServiceModel.Description.MetadataExchangeClient.MetadataLocationRetriever.DownloadMetadata(TimeoutHelper timeoutHelper)
at System.ServiceModel.Description.MetadataExchangeClient.MetadataRetriever.Retrieve(TimeoutHelper timeoutHelper)
Inner Exception: System.Net.Sockets.SocketException: A connection attempt failed because the connected party did not properly respond after a period of time, or established connection failed because connected host has failed to respond 72.215.225.9:443
at System.Net.Sockets.Socket.DoConnect(EndPoint endPointSnapshot, SocketAddress socketAddress)
at System.Net.ServicePoint.ConnectSocketInternal(Boolean connectFailure, Socket s4, Socket s6, Socket& socket, IPAddress& address, ConnectSocketState state, IAsyncResult asyncResult, Int32 timeout, Exception& exception)

To solve this we had to delete two files.

1. Under Users\username\LiveDeviceID delete the LiveDevice.xml file.
2. Within the Plugin Registration Folder delete the Connections.config file.
3. I have run into cases where you did not have to reboot and cases where you did have to reboot as well, no set pattern.

After these two files were removed (they regenerate), were we able to access the Discovery Service via the Plugin Registration tool.

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With the release of 2011 the list.aspx Metadata Browser has gone away. However, in viewing the new internal Metadata Browser it appears to have more than made up for it’s loss.

The new Metadata Browser has been released with the lastest SDK and is now  internal to 2011. To view the browser you need to import the solution from the SDK file. The browser installation files are located in SDK\Tools\Metadatabrowser and is imported to 2011 as a Solution.

Once the Solution has been added and published the Metadata Browser can be accessed via Settings within the Customizations section. The initial view is basic but allow for filtering from some list selections on the Entity and a search filter on the Properties.

However, the real information becomes available by right clicking the Entity Schema Name and choosing View Details. You can also choose Edit which will take you to the Entity within Customizations. The Copy function only copies the text value of the name.

Once the Entity Metadata View is open you have access to a lot more details within the Entity. You even have the ability to expand properties to gain more information. On the left is a navagation bar that gives you all the information the previous Metadata Browser provided before as well as a new Privileges view.

Option Sets
Option Sets can be expanded significantly showing all relevant details.

Attribues
The Attributes view provides a list of all the fields as well as a Property window on the right. Within this view you can expand some properties to gain more information.

Privileges
The new Privileges view will provide an excellent location for troubleshooting security and Role permission issues.

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I am seeing more and more clients with Rollups installed but not having done the manual changes following the installation. Customer Effective has a great article on this and I believe is worth publishing here.

_____________________________________________________________

You are probably aware that approximately every 8 weeks Microsoft releases an Update Rollup, a cumulative set of updates and fixes.

When deploying an Update Rollup, it’s important to realize that update rollups include two categories of updates:

1. Bug fixes—these are fixes to issues where CRM is not working as designed, and they are applied automatically when you install the update rollup.

2. Design changes—these are updates where CRM is working by design, but Microsoft has made a change in the way CRM works. For example, there were recently some updates that changed how CRM handles housekeeping of completed system jobs. Design changes require a manual change on the CRM server, typically a registry change, to enable the update, since Microsoft doesn’t want to change the system design for users who expect it to work the way it was originally designed.

The changes that require a registry change to enable are included in knowledge base article for the update rollup under the section “Hotfixes and updates that you have to enable or configure manually.”

This is why it’s important to read the knowledge base articles associated with CRM update rollups before you roll them out. Read through the changes included. I only make the changes that require registry changes if the fix addresses an issue that I’m seeing in my environment. Making changes that fix issues that you are not experiencing can have unintended side effects. It’s ok to pick and choose which ones you enable.

This is also why, if you read a blog or hear somebody from Microsoft say “Rollup X fixes that problem,” don’t automatically assume that the problem is fixed because you have installed the update. Read the small print—there may be additional steps required to enable the change.

Sourced From: Customer Effective

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Did the administrator approve the email address? As that is new in CRM 2011, where the system administrator will have to go to the user records that are set to use the Email Router and click on “Approve Email” in the CRM Ribbon. If the user Outgoing profile is set to Router, and they have a valid Primary Email address, the user still will not show up in the Email Router until the administrator selects Approve E-mail on the user record.

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For the second year in a row a Hitachi Consulting customer has taken the top CRM prize at Convergence. Last year it was Panduit and this year Magma Design Automation.

Magma was a great project to work on and I am happy that all the hard work paid off.

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If the SystemUser entity is modified so the AccessMode attribute defaults to ReadOnly you will recieve the following error message when trying to add a user to CRM 2011 Online.

Error: Read-Only mode is not supported in this version of Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online. The following user was not added: username (LiveID Email)

To correct this, you need to modify the attribute and have it default to Read-Write. After making the change and publishing the customizations, you will be able to add new users.

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Server: router server

Outgoing Status: Failure – An error occurred while checking the connection to the Microsoft Dynamics CRM server https://dev.crm.dynamics.com/orgname. Metadata contains a reference that cannot be resolved: ‘https://dev.crm.dynamics.com/orgname/XrmServices/2011/Organization.svc?wsdl’. The remote server returned an error: (404) Not Found.

The proxy settings are configured in the browser for the current user. Email router configuration manager process is run as the current user and hence is able to pick up the proxy settings. Email router service is run on the “LocalSystem” account which does not pick up the proxy settings.

To allow the router service to detect proxy settings, you should configure the service to run as the logged in user.

Open Services Management (Services.msc)
Stop the MSCRM Email Router Service
In properties of the service, change the Log on account from “LocalSystem” to the current logged in user.
Start MSCRM Email Router service and test.

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The Email Router will not work with CRM Online Beta out of the box, you must modify the configuration file for it to be compatible with Online. 

Setting the E-mail Router to work with Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online

1. On the computer where the E-mail Router was installed, open the Service folder in the E-mail Router installation folder. If you chose the default installation folder during Setup, this is <drive>:\Program Files\Microsoft CRM Email\Service

2. Open the file Microsoft.Crm.Tools.Email.Management.config file for editing.

3. Remove the XML comments (<!– and –>) from around the following statement: <add key=”DiscoveryUrl” value=”https://dev.crm.dynamics.com” />

<!–  (remove)

<add key=”DiscoveryUrl” value=”https://dev.crm.dynamics.com” />  (keep)

–>  (remove)

Note

4. Follow the steps in this procedure only to connect the E-mail Router to Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online. For connections to Microsoft Dynamics CRM (On-Premises Edition), leave the XML comments in place in the Microsoft.Crm.Tools.Email.Management.config configuration file.

5. Save the file.

6. Start the E-mail Router Configuration Manager.

7. When configuring the email router for CRM Online you must enter the Organization name. Previously this would be the name as it in the upper right of the CRM client. However, with CRM Online you need to use the Unique as found in the following location.

Setting \ Customizations \ Development Resources \ Organizations Unique Name

 Organizations Unique Name           crmNAorg63505

 Therefore your deployment URL for CRM Online will be displayed as:

https://dev.crm.dynamics.com/crmNAorg63505

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This describes the steps to install the SharePoint List Component for MS CRM 2011, as well as configure a SharePoint Web Application if you do not already have one. Most of the content was originally posted by Mark Kovalcson on his blog at MS CRM 2011 SharePoint List Component Installation, but additional notes have been added throughout the steps. Pay special attention to items in red.

Installing the SharePoint List Component

Note that to perform the following functions you will need to be part of the Site Collection Administrators Group. If you plan on setting up a new SharePoint Web Application you will need to be part of the Farm Administrators Group.

Warning if you downloaded the file just as this was introduced it contains an unsigned assembly that will give you an error message shown when you would see it during the installation below. A fix was put out by MS a few days later. If in doubt download it again.

Download the SharePoint List Component
CRM2011-SharePointList-ENU-amd64.exe file and run it on your VM.

Pick a place to unpack the contents. You will be browsing to the crmlistcomponent.wsp file from SharePoint later.

Before installing the List component you need to relax the Browser File Handling to “Permissive” for the Web application that you are sharing with MS CRM 2011.
Go to SharePoint Central Administration and click on Manage web applications.

Select the web application that you are sharing with MS CRM and click on General Settings.
For additional information on setting up a new SharePoint application see instructions at the end.

Scroll down to Browser File Handling and click on permissive then scroll to the bottom and click OK.

Now visit your SharePoint Site and click on Site Actions then Site Settings.

Click on Solutions under Galleries

Click the Solutions Tab, and a ribbon will appear. Click on Upload Solution in that Ribbon.

Now browse to the crmlistcomponent.wsp file that was unpacked earlier and click OK.

Now you need to Activate this solution.

Note: that if the Activate Button is not available you may need to run the following command in Windows PowerShell to provision the SPUserCodeV4 service.

C:\> cd “C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\BIN”

C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\BIN> .\ stsadm -o provisionservice -action start -servicetype Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPUserCodeService -servicename SPUserCodeV4

Note: The error below will only happen if you are still using the Initial download of the CRM2011-SharePointList-ENU-amd64.exe file.

You should see this if you have the right version.

The SharePoint List Component is now in place.
To test this in CRM.
Go to Settings, Document Management and click on Document Management Settings. Enter your shared SharePoint site. Click Next

You can pick Account, Contact or not select where you Document Library will be based. I selected Account below. Click Next

When it is all done, click finish.

Create a Test Account if you don’t already have one. Add a document of some kind. It will prompt you for a location to automatically create a SharePoint Folder the first time you do this per Account. Click OK.

Click the Open SharePoint link to see the document in SharePoint. Both sides can now work with documents in this folder.

Setting up a SharePoint web application

Note: that to perform the following functions you will need to be part of the SharePoint Farm Administrators Group.

From the SharePoint Central Administration Screen, click Manage Web Applications.

In the top-left, click New.

Setup your new web application with the default properties, giving it a valid name, and click OK.

When you create you SharePoint Application, you will be given the following confirmation. In order to access the web site however, you must create a Site Collection. Otherwise, when you browse to your website URL, you will be given a 404 File Not Found Error.

The easiest way to do this click on the link provided in the Application Created dialogue box.

Alternatively, if you forget to click this link, you can navigate the to the Central Administration Home page, and choose Create Site Collection from the Application Management Section.

Create a Top Page Site Collection to allow your Web Application a home page to land on and click ok.

Finally, make sure to add any users that will be accessing the document management features from CRM to the appropriate User Groups in your SharePoint site.

Once the SharePoint installation is complete, you can install the List Components.

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Description: This is a quick overview of the process to import multiple users into CRM using the import wizard.

First download a Template for Data Import for the Data Management section in the CRM organization you intend on importing your users into. It will create and xml file capable of being modified and opened from Microsoft Excel.

Attached is a sample for an online instance

Warning: Be sure to use the correct import template for online v. on premise. The required fields are different. If you download your own template first it will include the required fields and any additional fields you have added.

Once you have filled out your spreadsheet with all the users you want to import, browse to data management again, and click on the Ribbon button to start an import.

Browse to your user.xml file

Click next and ensure no errors are reported.

Choose Default (Automatic Mapping) for your data map and click next.

Click through until the wizard is finished. Navigate to Data Imports under the Data Management section to monitor the progress of you import.

Note: CRM 2011 Beta occasionally takes a while to complete uploads. Data imports are asynchronous processes that wait for server resources before processing. Because full data center resources have not yet been provisioned for 2011, sometimes the servers are backed up.

That’s it. Your import should finish with new users created. If you have any errors, open the import job and browse the errors, correct them, and try again.

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Added with Rollup 7 was a new link on the CRM web client header. This allows the users to easily download the CRM for Outlook installation. However, if this is not desirable it can be removed with the following registry setting.

HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\MSCRM. Add a new DWORD \ DisableOutlookSetupLink. Set it to a value of 1.

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With the release of Microsoft CRM 2011 Beta all informamtion about the product is now available for public discussion. Below is the link to down load the on premis version of the 2011 beta.

Download the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Beta.

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Sometimes after setting up a new organization it may be necessary to change the display or friendly name as show in the CRM Masthead.

To change this name open the Deployment Manager with the default Deployment Administrator or an added Deployment Administrator.

1. Select the Organization you wish to change the friendly name
2. On the right, choose Disable to allow for this Organization to be edited as shown below. (Note: this should be done when there are no users on the system otherwise disabling will prevent access to the Organization)

3. Once disabled, selected the Organization and choose on the right Edit Organization and change the Display Name.

4. Once the name has been updated continue with the wizard without changing any other settings.
5. When the wizard is complete, highlight the Organization and choose Enable on the right to allow users to access the system again.

At this point your system will reflect the new display name entered.

Known Issue: If you have not installed any rollups you may run into an issue with a friendly name that contains spaces and and plugins you have running on the system. The lastest accumulated rollup will address this issue.

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I recently needed to create an audit trail for new and existing activities. This was accomplished by triggering a workflow to create a new record within an associated entity to our Contact record. The workflow is triggered anytime an new activity is created or updated.

Steps
1. Create a new entity, in this case we called it Activity Stage.
2. Create a 1 – M relationship from Contact to the Activity Stage entity.
3. Create the Activity Stage attributes, populate the form and associated list view, these will populate from the workflow.
4. Create a date\time attribute for a time stamp of the activity change, we will use the Workflow Execution time for the time stamp.
5. Create a workflow for each type of activity you want to audit, in our case we created one for Task, Phone Call and Appointment. In addtion we created a picklist set to the type of activity based on which type of workflow activity is triggered.
6. Within the workflow, set the Scope to Organization
7. Set the Starts When to Record is Created and Record Attribute Changes, in our case Modified On.
8. Add a Create Record step and Choose Activity Stage as the entity.

9. Map the appropriate attributes from the Activity as show below.

Within the new Activity Stage entity, anytime an activity is created or updated a new Activity Stage record will be created. The new entity is then set to readonly for the end users or further restricted by role.

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kb946585

SQL Reporting Services 2008

If the Network Service Account is not used as the Log On As for the Sql Reporting Service you will need to add permissions to the Config and Organization databases for the selected Log On Service User.

- On the Microsoft SQL Reporting Services server, click the Start button, and thenpoint to Administrative Tools, and then click Services.
Locate the SQL Server Reporting Services service and note the value that is listed in the Log On As column.

- Grant the appropriate account permission to access the Microsoft Dynamics CRM databases.

- If SQL Reporting Services and the SQL Server databases are installed on the same server and the account identified in step 1 is Network Service, follow these steps:

- Start SQL Server Management Studio. To do this, click the Start button, and then point to All Programs, point to Microsoft SQL Server 2005, and then click SQL Server Management Studio.

- Expand Security, expand logins, right-click Log On As User, and then click Properties.
Click User Mappings.

- Click to select the Organization_name_MSCRM check box, and then click to select the public check box and the CRMReaderRole check box.

Note The Organization_name placeholder is a placeholder for the actual organization name.

- Click to select the MSCRM_Config check box, and then click to select the public check box and the CRMReaderRole check box.
Click OK.

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Although this is not really CRM its related as I spend half my day on the phone with CRM.

Google Voice and Video Chat was released August 25th and allows you to make phone and video calls from your gmail account free anywhere in the US.

I have been using MagicJack for the past year with good results but there are some locations that do not allow for a clear connection and some numbers that reject a MagicJack call.

Setup with straight forward and only took a few minutes. In addition you can route incoming calls to any other other number.

Video and phone calls from Gmail

Download

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How to Create a Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4 Report Subscription in less than 15 minutes

UPDATE FOR 2011: 2011 Report Subscriptions

Scheduling report subscriptions is fairly easy if you know the right steps to take. Following the steps below should get you up and running with report subscriptions fairly quickly and you can begin Wowing your users with the delivery of reports directly to their Outlook Inbox.

The first step you need to take is to open your CRM application and navigate to Workplace, Reports. Identify and Select the report that you want to schedule, select More Actions from the top menu bar and select Schedule Report from the dropdown.

I will select the Account Distribution report for scheduling:

A wizard dialogue window will open. Select On Demand and Next. We don’t need to select On Schedule because we don’t necessarily want to run Report Snapshots; we want to setup a Subscription for delivery. If you decide you want to create Snapshots in addition to a Subscription, you can do that later from the Report Server:

If you want to change the Default Parameters used for the Subscription, select Edit Filter, select the filtering criteria, and Save or leave the defaults provided and Select Next

Select “No just save the Snapshot Definition and select Save. The report Snapshot Definition was successfully credited. Select Finish:

Now if you look at your Report grid in CRM you will see a new report listed with the same name referenced on the Save wizard dialogue window. In this case the report name was: Account Distribution – On-demand Snapshots 7_17_2009 9_15 AM:

If you select the report and select the Edit Report button, a new window will open showing you the details of the report. Select Administration and you will see that the report is set to Individual View only as users in the Organization do not need to view this report directly from the Dynamics Application. Leave the Settings and close the window.

Now we will move on to the CRM Report Server

You can access your Reporting Services Home page by using the URL http://NameofReportServer/reports. The Reporting Services Home page URL is different than the Report Server which is located at http://NameofReportServer/reportserver so ensure you are using the correct URL.

You will see a list of all your Report folders after the page opens. In this example you do not see the full name of the Report folder but you will see the full name in your deployment. In the upper right-hand corner of the Reporting Services Home page, select Show Details

You will notice that the page layout changes slightly and you can now see a new link name Edit

Select the Report folder that contains the reports for your CRM 4.0 deployment and select the 4.0 folder

After you select the 4.0 folder, you will see a list of your CRM reports. Locate the report that you created in the CRM application. You can easily find it as the report name, which in this example was “Account Distribution – On-demand Snapshots 7_17_2009 9_15 AM”, is included in the Description field.

Select the Edit Icon link located to the left of the report

Select the Subscriptions tab

Select the New Subscription button

This will open the window that allows you to enter the details for the report subscription

You can now enter the information that will determine how the report is delivered, who receives it and the report delivery frequency.

• Leave the default delivery method of E-mail selected

• Enter the e-mail address for the recipients

• I generally include my e-mail address in the BCC field to ensure the report runs  as expected at least the first few times and the format is what I intended

• Enter the Reply-To e-mail address

• Modify the Subject line for whatever you prefer

• This will be the subject line of the e-mail

• At a minimum Replace “ @ReportName” with the actual Report Name otherwise the value will be the GUID of the report which is not a user friendly name

• Leave the Include Report and select the Render Format option you prefer. I generally use Excel as this gives users the option to manipulate the report data in a format familiar to them.

• Leave the Include Link only if it is ok with you that users open the Report directly from the Report Server rather than through the CRM application

• Set Priority

• Add Comments

• Select the Schedule you want the Report to run by selecting the Select Schedule button

• Select the OK button and the Subscription is created and saved

Saving the Subscription will create a SQL job that runs on the date and time you indicated to deliver the report to your recipients. If you have not yet setup your Report Server for E-Mail Delivery then review this MSDN article for the steps needed to implement that service.

Once you create a few subscriptions, you will be able to take a few shortcuts that will reduce the steps needed to create new subscriptions. After generating one or two of these subscriptions, you will be an expert.

NOTE: You may see following error while creating report subscription :
“Failure sending mail: The selected report is not ready for viewing. The report is still being rendered or a report snapshot is not available.Mail will not be resent”

This error occurs because of the way report excution set in the report server.
If you change the Excution property to “Always run this report with the most recent data” , it will resolve the issue

Source From: Donna Edwards

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I have been struggling with Microsoft’s concept of CRM load balancing and server roles. After reading everything that I could get my hands on it appeared that just installing two or more full CRM installs would be the simplest and most redundant solution in some situations. While doing more research I found this blog entry from Customer Effective’s CEBlog that outlines the solution in a very simple and straight forward way which I have included below.

Can I run two Async Services?
According to the CRM Planning Guide at the botton of page 4-59, Miscrosoft says you can run two asyn services at once on seperate platform servers or full application servers. However, there is an known issue that is corrected in Update Rollup 7 or via this KB975490
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Separate Server Roles and Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0
One of the choices when deploying Microsoft Dynamics 4.0 is whether or not to separate server roles.

When you install Dynamics CRM on a server, the application layer (web server, CRM application) and the platform layer (asynchronous service, discovery service, sdk) run on the same server.

There are several reasons that you would want to separate server roles. For example, if you have a heavy quantity of asynchronous activity, such as imports, workflows or plugins, you don’t want to affect availability of the application, and you don’t want asynchronous operations to have a long backlog and slow down the amount of time it takes for new asynchronous operations to be processed.

Traditional Approach
The traditional way to separating server roles with Dynamics CRM 4.0 Enterprise was to select the separate server roles option when installing. This gives you the option to install the roles that you want on a server, so you can have one server be the application role, and have another be the platform role, for example.

Complexity
Before you do this, you should be aware that going with the separate server roles may introduce some complexity into your environment. When everything runs on one server, everything uses the same server URL; however, if the platform role is separated, things that hit the discovery service, such as the outlook client, email router, and custom code will need to hit the URL of the platform server, not the application server URL, and having two different addresses may add some confusion for certain users. If you elect to deploy your environment Internet facing, or IFD, so you have CRM available to people not on your network, there is a lot of complexity and frankly this option is not very well documented in the IFD scenarios documentation.

IFD and Separate Server Roles
if you have separate server roles, you will need to expose both the app server website and the platform server website externally. You will need to run the ifd tool on both the application and the platform server–this is not documented in the ifd scenarios document, but is required if you want external users to be able to configure Outlook clients in ifd mode, You will need to have ssl certificates on both the application and platform server, which will cost you extra. The IFD scenarios document doesn’t say this, but you will have to have your platform server URL be organization specific–if your CRM URL is myorg, for example, you will need the URL to be something like myorg.platform.company.com. again, not documented, but CRM will expect the org name to be in the Url when you configure the Outlook client. Users will have to configure their outlook clients using the platform server URL, not the CRM application URL. The reason for that is the outlook client connects to the discovery service during configuration, and the discovery service is part of the platform role, not the application. having a different CRM URL for outlook client and web client can be very confusing to some users.

An Easier Approach
As we have seen, the traditional approach to separating server roles may add some complexity to your CRM deployment; however, that doesn’t men you shouldn’t do it. Rather, there is another approach that achieves the same goals.

This approach is to install the full CRM application on both servers, both pointed at the same CRM databases. On server A, stop the asynchronous service, and on server B, start the asynchronous service. Drive all of your users to the URL of server A.

The end result is that, like with separate server roles, you have all application traffic handled by server A, and all asynchronous load handled by server B, but you avoid all of the complexity of traditional separate server roles. Users will be able to use the same URL for the web and outlook interfaces, and Internet facing deployment will be much more straightforward, requiring only on URL or ssl cert.

This is the approach that we recommend—it will make your life much easier.

Thanks To Alex Fagundes at Power Objects for providing input for this post.

Sourced From: CEBlog

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MS CRM Online Resource Center

Although the Resource Center within MS CRM can be often overlooked, it brings together links and information in one location that can be a time saver and a central source for information including:

Information to help you get started.

Tips to make you more productive.

In-depth descriptions of product features and recommendations for using them to build your business.

Examples and advice from subject matter experts.

Easy access to other online resources related to Microsoft Dynamics CRM.

You can find information related to Microsoft Dynamics CRM within the Resource Center, Help, and on other resources available on the Web. Search automatically finds articles, videos, and Help topics based on a word or phrase. Help topics are usually step-by-step procedures based on a specific task. Articles are about end-to-end solutions.

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MS CRM XML-Generator for Picklist-values

Using this nifty little tool enables you to generate the needed XML-Code for creating picklist values. Although the browser-based customizing tools of Microsoft Dynamics CRM are very elegant, it still takes time to create the needed values, because it has to be done one at a time. Caution: Only use this tool, if you are really comfortable with manually editing exported XML-Customization Files! Use it at your own risk.

Sourced From: beatnik’s microsoft crm blog

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Mobile Express and Blackberry

After implementing Mobile Express in our Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 environment, we found that some users with Blackberry smartphones could not open the Mobile Express site. We knew it was not a bug with Mobile Express, as these same phones could successfully launch Mobile Express in some of our client’s environments, just not ours.

Through the process of elimination, we found that the issue was Blackberry Browser related. The Blackberry actually has two browsers—the Blackberry Browser and the Internet Browser. When you launch the web browser on the Blackberry, if you go to options, General Options, you will see a dropdown for Browser. The default setting is Blackberry Browser, but you can change that setting to Internet Browser. The issue we found was that the Blackberry browser does not correctly interpret security certificates from some providers—that explained why these phones could correctly load the Mobile Express site from some environments but not from others.

Sourced From: Joel Lindstrom, a Solutions Consultant for CustomerEffective

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4.0 on Windows Server 2008-based computers

To add the above roles before you install Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 follow these steps:
1. Click Start, click All Programs, click Administrative Tools, and then click Server Manager.

2. Right-click Roles, and then click Add Roles.

3. Click Next to get to the Server Role Screen.

4. Mark the checkbox for the following roles, and then click Next.
Application Server
File Services

5. Click Next to get to the Roles Services for the Application Server.

6. Select the checkbox next to Web Server (IIS) Support. When the Add Roles Wizard box comes up, click Add Required Role Services, and then click Next.

7. Click Next to get to the Web Server Role Services, keep the existing checkboxes that are marked and mark the checkbox next to IIS 6 Management Compatibility, and then click Next.

8. Click Next to get to the File Services Role Services, mark the checkbox next to Indexing Service , and then click Next.

9. Click Install

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