K9CRM

Hi Everyone,

Writing in the blog after a long long time. Been busy with a lot of CRM 2011 stuff and a huge project in hand and no time to write. After deployment, now have a little bit of free time to write about thousands of issues that I have run into and resolved. Well here’s the first.

I was in the process of doing a lot of customizations to the CRM 2011 entity ribbons when I ran in to the below hurdle. Solution import fails at the ribbon component and this is the generic error message generated.

“An error has occurred. Try this action again. If the problem continues, check the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Community for solutions or contact your organization's Microsoft Dynamics CRM Administrator. Finally, you can contact Microsoft Support”

Had no way of identifying what the actual issue was other than to run a platform trace. so here’s the outcome for that.

>Crm Exception: Message: Found more than one RibbonDiff entity., ErrorCode: –2147220970

Didn’t have any references in Google (at that time, don’t know what the situation is now) did a dig with the exception message and found a support article.

So here’s the Cause:

• You will receive a similar error message when one of the IDs of your ribbon elements (Custom Action, Command, Local Label etc.) is duplicated within a single Entity / Global <RibbonDiffXml> node.
• Important to note that, when you upload the customization with a duplicate ID for the first time, CRM imports the solution without any issues. Every ribbon import after that point fails with the above message.
• At the import of the customization, CRM picks the nodes to be updated from the master RibbonDiffXml, based on the ribbon element IDs included in the customizations file. When it finds many elements with the same ID in the master RibbonDiffXml, it simply returns a failure without processing the ribbon customizations further.

Here’s the Solution:

• Export the RibbonDiffXml for the entities that you have performed customizations.
• Open the customizations.xml and check for ribbon elements with duplicate IDs and correct.
• Comment the entire RibbonDiffXml node for the problematic entity and insert a <RibbonDiffXml/> to create a blank ribbon. (Revert to default)
• Import the customizations, which should result in a success if you have identified the problem and corrected properly.
• Remove the <RibbonDiffXml/> which you have inserted later and uncomment your original – corrected, ribbon definition.
• Import the customizations and publish.
• Shouldn’t be a problem after that :)

References:

• The clue to look for this cause was the below KB Article.
  • http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2503029 
• Although this refers only to Local Labels, this will be true for all types of ribbon elements.

An exciting news to share with all of Microsoft Dynamics Community in Sri Lanka about a brand new user group dedicated to exploring our own Business Applications Family. Here’s an Introduction:

“Dynamics | Sri Lanka” represents a group of independent Business Management Application enthusiasts, working together to cultivate, gather & share knowledge on both business and technology aspects of Enterprise Resource Management (ERM) & Customer Relationship Management (CRM) business philosophies.

Comprising of employers & consultants of the above concepts or users & professionals using, implementing and enhancing business management applications related to above concepts, are free to come aboard this platform, to move forward in this space with togetherness.

All enthusiasts are welcome to join the group in this site at:

http://technetsrilanka.net/groups/microsoft_dynamics_ug/default.aspx

And On Linked-In at:

http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=3042372&trk=hb_side_g

Here’s a common error you can get when you are using MS CRM Multi-Language Packs.

Since this is not experienced bay many users around the world the resolution for same is also not written in many places. Therefore I thought of publishing this in the blog even though I by myself didn’t find the resolution. Special Thanks to my CRM/BI Buddy Kevin Tan for sending the solution for same. Here’s what you do:

1. This error occurs when the language in the database is not installed in the Windows server on which MS CRM is installed or the in the client PCs used to access MS CRM.

2. According to Microsoft, “The list of cultures in the Windows API is slightly different from the list of cultures in the .NET Framework. For example, the neutral culture zh-CHT "Chinese (Traditional)" with culture identifier 0x7C04 is not available in the Windows API. If interoperability with Windows is required (for example, through the p/invoke mechanism), use a specific culture that is defined in the .NET Framework. This will ensure consistency with the equivalent Windows locale, which is identified with the same LCID.”

(More Info: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.globalization.cultureinfo(v=VS.71).aspx)

3. In this case, the language Id in the database was 18441 (Singapore-English). This language is not found in Windows Server 2003-SP2.

4. To fix this take the following steps:

a.) Update the LocaleId column in the Organisationbase table to 1033 (English-US).

b.) Update the LocaleId column for all the users with the erroneous localeId with 1033  in the UserSettingBase table.

c.) Delete the organization in CRM from Deployment Manager.

d.) Import the organization again.

First of all I would like to wish all the readers a very Happy Sinhala & Tamil New Year, May all of your lives thrive with love and happiness.

Now starting off the discussion I wish to share my experience in the industries such as Trading, Distribution, where one can easily identify that their sales management is always tied up to a hierarchy of sales territories. This structures mainly based on a geography of a certain region or the entire world, depending on the reach of the company, where the main sales territory is divided in to countries, states/provinces, Districts/Cities etc. When CRM/PRM requirements arise in this arena and when the application is Microsoft Dynamics CRM, alas! a trouble arise. MS CRM Sales Territory Structure is as Flat as the earth.

As you can see from the above entity relationship diagram, MS CRM Sales Territory doesn’t have any self parenting relationships by default and it doesn’t allow you to create a custom Self Parenting Relationship as well. So how can we handle this?

You might say, Easy! Lets create a custom entity for sales territories, lets create a self parenting relationship and create one to many relationships with all relevant entities such as Account, Lead, User etc. Well “technically” yes, but making this the conclusion, you should see what are the client requirements related to “Sales Territory”? Can this simple solution address all of these? Well from my experience here are some of the requirements which may arise in similar scenarios. In order to understand this better lets take a small scenario as well. ABC Company has the following sales territory structure

1. Territory Based Security and Rights Assignment

In this case my client wanted to have Head of Sales at the Company Level, Country Managers, Regional Sales Managers, Area Sales Managers, Sales Coordinators and Sales Executives. They wanted Sales Executives to view & manage Sales Records (Leads, Opportunities, Quotes etc) and Customer Records (Accounts and Contacts) only within the areas assigned to them while Area Sales Managers should have the rights over all records within all Sales Territories assigned to their subordinates.

E.g.: City 1 can be managed by a single sales executive

        His Superior should be able to manage an owned sales territory which is Stated D (City 2 and Rest of State D except City 2) as well as his sales territory which is City 2.

        Country Manger will have all powers over all sales territories within the country.

2. Automatic, Lead, Customer Routing

In this organization, anyone can contribute to sales by entering any sales lead that they hear of. The lead will then be routed to the appropriate sales resource based on the sales territory of the lead after which it will be followed up and then if materialized an incentive will be available for the introducer of the lead.

Leads should tightly associate to geographies (geo addresses) in order for this to happen. Geography should be then coupled with the sales territories for routing.

3. Territory Based Sales Performance Management

Primary base of sales budgeting, forecasting, performance monitoring via KPIs for this company was sales territories. Sales Targets will be assigned at product sub-category level, sales territory level and time periods (fiscal) which will then be aggregated to form Company Targets. Marketing Budgets, Incentives were also derived from same. Primary measures were: Revenue, GP, No. of Units, Average Selling Price & GP Percentage.

In this context MS CRMs existing sales quota process was pretty useless and had to build a model from scratch.

As you can see a simple custom entity to represent “Sales Territories” will never address these requirements which are pretty common in trading/distribution organizations or retail (Mass marketing) organizations. So how shall we address same. Here’s my solution.

1. First of all there should be a self parenting hierarchy to represent sales territories. Can I create a simple custom entity? Well… With reference to Requirement #1, all of organizations sales record security is based on this sales territory hierarchy. So can we use business units for same? May be we can use it so easily we can have that security & rights assignment fulfilled.

Security Roles:

1. Sales Executive – Create, Read, Write, Append, Append To Rights to all customer and Sales Records (Own Records)

2. Sales Coordinator - Create, Read, Write, Append, Append To Rights to all customer and Sales Records (Business Unit Access)

3. Area Sales Manager & Above– Create, Read, Write, Append, Append To access to all customer and Sales Records (Parent, Child Business Unit Access.

 

2. Now that we have created sales territories we need to assign records to these territory sales people based on geography. So we need a geography entity structure. Self Parenting? Yes… Have to. And it should be related to BU Structure (Many to One)

Then in order to identify which records belong to which territory, all relevant records, such as account, lead etc should relate to geography and via geography to sales territory (Business Units)

Now when a particular lead or account is created in the system, it should be assigned with a geography. This can be done as a part of populating the contact address where the user will fill in the specifics such as PO BOX, Street etc and then pick the city, suburb from a list which in turn will populate the remaining fields of the address such as

• > District
• > State / Province
• > Country

In my part of the world, the addresses are not very well structured but in countries where it is more systematic, you may be able to enter a postal code or a zip code and have the most of the address populated.

This also increases the convenience for the end user and this increases the User Adaption Rate, which is Key for the success of the solution.

Here’s the lead address assignment tool which was created for the project in order to make this convenient for the end user.

Added the below button to Record Tool Bar to Bring up the Geography Selection Tool. This pops up at the creation (1st Save) of each record as a dialog box, making the process mandatory for the users to enter the Geography and Address.

This is the Tool Screen Cap :

Behind this interface is a simple model of code which

i. constructs the tree of geographies by retrieving multiple geography entity instances from CRM (Code for this tree construction will be given in the next article)

ii. populates the generic address fields based on the hierarchy level of the selected geography

iii. retrieve the Sales Territory of the selected geography, find out the CRM User who’s managing this territory and display to the user (Circled)

iv. Assign the record to that user up on confirmation (Clicking of OK Button).

Then for the System Administrators, managing these complex relationships with the traditional CRM UI can be very difficult. So a separate sales territory admin tool was built.

The tree view all the way towards the left side will show the Sales Territory Hierarchy in a easily browsable manner. Once a Sales Territory is selected in the tree, the middle tree view will list down the Users according to the user reporting hierarchy and the right tree view will show the portion of the geography hierarchy associated with the sales territory.

This allows the admins to easily add, remove territories, associate users and geographies with them and have a much more graphical representation of the Territory model which cannot be offered out of the box via CRM UI.

 

3. Then came the requirement to manage the budgets. Here’s the entity structure which was used for that:

Sales targets were entered at the granular level using the Sales Targets Entity by each responsible user. A separate workflow process was built to assign a task (to-do-item) for each user to enter their target values for each product sub-category (Product Line). These were then aggregated to form the divisional, Territory wise, and Product (Main Category) level targets.

Monitoring was entirely done, using KPI’s configured into a BI Data Cube or a UDM which consumed MS CRM Data. Target Values for the KPIs were given from the above Sales Targets and then the actual values were derived from Sales Order / Invoice Info.

So that’s it. As you can see it was so much more than creating just a custom entity to represent sales territories. Hope this article has given the basic idea for modeling Hierarchical Sales Territories  and other requirements which are commonly associated with it. And also how the flexibility of Microsoft Dynamics(TM) CRM 4.0 can be used to address complex customer requirements via careful entity relationship modeling, identification of processes and data flow.

Don’t forget to pass on your comments :)

We all know how easy and it is to work with MS CRM UIs. How you can add fields, and make them drop down lists, option buttons, check boxes all pretty simple. But what if the client asks for buttons, indicators grid views in the Window. The answer is an IFrame.

One of my clients had a requirement to compare the sales cycle stages and activities done for a particular sales opportunity with the standard sales process and provide an indication to see whether the follow-up process is on target with the estimated closing date. The green indicator next to the estimated close date in the above screen capture shows that information visually. It turns green of the opportunity is on track, and turns yellow and red if not.

In an other occasion, one of the support companies using MS CRM 3.0 wanted to have multiple contacts mapped out to a case. Since CRM 3.0 doesn’t allow creation of relationships between system entities and multiple relationships between the same entities I had to find alternative ways to achieve this.

The above picture has a pick list which is populated with the contact names from the same organization (account) as customer. which keeps this information. How is this possible?

Actually, the green indicator and the pick list are actually not on the CRM form. These are loaded in Iframes which are not made visible with a bit of tips and tricks. Checkout the form designer for the above form. You can clearly see the Iframe there.

Creating the IFrame

Now how do you make it seem like its on the CRM form? Simple, Adjust the Iframe properties as below:

1. Enter Standard configuration such as Name and URL etc.

2. You can choose to enter a label name for the Iframe but opt not to display the label on the form

3. From Row layout select the number of rows that you want to set as height for your Iframe. This depends on whet you are planning to display. If this is a small indicator or a field it could simply be 1 row. If what you are showing is like a report part or a grid view, which can be really cool show you may use as many rows as needed.

4. Opt not to display the border of the Iframe.

Now that you have created the Iframe, its time to worry about what to display.

Creating the ASP.net Page thats embedded in to the IFrame

Key thing is to style the page in such a way that it appears similar to the CRM UI Style.

1. Get rid of page borders etc in order to ensure that the new control is perfectly aligned with the controls on the CRM form.

2. Add the Background color #EAF3FF to the page which is the background color of CRM Form

3. For all the controls displaying text, font is Tahoma, Size 11px, Color Black. Almost all controls have a 1px wide solid border colored #6699CC

Much of these information can be found in the CRM4 Ux Design Guide which comes with SDK.

Passing values to IFrame

You may pass any value to the Iframe using a similar Jscript as below which can be used on Form Load, or any Change Event of Any Field

//When the schema name of the field is ‘customerid’

var keyField = crmForm.all.customerid.DataValue;

var subjField = crmForm.all.name.DataValue;

//Pass the Value to the Iframe

crmForm.all.IFRAME_myIF.src='http://localhost:8081/IFpage.aspx?keyfd='+keyField+'&subject=' + subjField;

Await, for the 2nd part of the article: Addressing Complications in passing Values from Iframes to CRM form.

Hey Guys,

I recently encountered this error in installing Microsoft PerformancePoint Server 2007 in a fresh new server. It said:

“Configuration failed.

Error 1:  Access is denied. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80070005 (E_ACCESSDENIED))”

Naturally, I turned to see whether anyone else has encountered this error and to see what has been done to resolve this error. I found this great post in a MSDN  forum which is by Aseem Nayar, an MSFT.

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en/ppsmonitoringandanalytics/thread/94eea55b-e92f-44ee-a2b6-a559e8dd7784

This error is caused mainly by the setup application being unable to register the relevant assemblies of PPS Monitoring in the Global Assembly Cache (GAC) may be due to a permission issue. In his post Aseem explains step by step how to register all the assemblies in GAC.

However in his post there’s a small detail to be added, which is an additional file to be copied. I have quoted his answer along with my modification  (which is highlighted in Red) below:

____________________________________________________________________________

Hello,
Did you ever get a resolution for this issue?  I just ran into it and it seems to be a machine permissions problem.  I was able to get around the issue by registering the dll's.  What you can do is:
1.  Search for the file gacutil.exe and msvcr71.dll. I used the one in the .net directory

2.  Copy the gacutil.exe and msvcr71.dll files to the PPS assemblies folder and the en folder located in the pps assemblies folder. We need one in each folder.

3.  Create a .bat file with the below command's and run it from the

C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server\3.0\Monitoring\Assemblies directory.

gacutil /i ChartFX.WebForms.Adornments.dll
gacutil /i ChartFX.WebForms.Base.dll
gacutil /i ChartFX.WebForms.Dhtml.dll
gacutil /i ChartFX.WebForms.dll
gacutil /i Microsoft.PerformancePoint.Scorecards.Client.dll
gacutil /i Microsoft.PerformancePoint.Scorecards.Common.dll
gacutil /i Microsoft.PerformancePoint.Scorecards.DataSourceProviders.Standard.dll
gacutil /i Microsoft.PerformancePoint.Scorecards.DPE.dll
gacutil /i Microsoft.PerformancePoint.Scorecards.Modeler.Framework.dll
gacutil /i Microsoft.PerformancePoint.Scorecards.ModelerPlugins.dll
gacutil /i Microsoft.PerformancePoint.Scorecards.RDLGenerator.dll
gacutil /i Microsoft.PerformancePoint.Scorecards.Script.dll
gacutil /i Microsoft.PerformancePoint.Scorecards.Server.dll
gacutil /i Microsoft.PerformancePoint.Scorecards.WebControls.dll
gacutil /i Microsoft.PerformancePoint.Scorecards.WebParts.dll
gacutil /i Microsoft.PerformancePoint.Scorecards.WizardFramework.dll
gacutil /i Microsoft.PerformancePoint.Scorecards.WizardFramework.XmlSerializers.dll
gacutil /i Microsoft.PerformancePoint.Scorecards.Workspace.dll
gacutil /i Microsoft.ReportingServices.Interfaces.dll
cd en
gacutil /i Microsoft.PerformancePoint.Scorecards.Client.resources.dll
gacutil /i Microsoft.PerformancePoint.Scorecards.Common.resources.dll
gacutil /i Microsoft.PerformancePoint.Scorecards.Modeler.Framework.resources.dll
gacutil /i Microsoft.PerformancePoint.Scorecards.ModelerPlugins.resources.dll
gacutil /i Microsoft.PerformancePoint.Scorecards.Server.resources.dll
gacutil /i Microsoft.PerformancePoint.Scorecards.WebControls.resources.dll
gacutil /i Microsoft.PerformancePoint.Scorecards.WebParts.resources.dll
gacutil /i Microsoft.PerformancePoint.Scorecards.WizardFramework.resources.dll
pause
4.  After you have run it reboot the machine and run through Monitoring Configuration again.
Thank you,

• Marked As Answer byAseem NayarMSFT, ModeratorThursday, February 19, 2009 6:35 PM

__________________________________________________________________________

I tried posting a comment to the original thread as well but was unable to do so as the thread was already closed. Many thanks to Aseem for this valuable insight.

Whiz or novice I’m somewhat in shame to tell you that I was unable to configure MS CRM Internet facing deployment for the last few months since its released. I did everything from CRM Side, configured DNS and other infrastructure components accordingly but where I got stuck was ISA. With only a moderate understanding of ISA 2006 I tried my best to get it published but was not able to complete same. This didn’t mean that i wasn’t able to publish my company's’ CRM deployment to Internet, but I was not getting the desired outcome, which is this beautiful Screen.

I was stuck with the below dialog box which served the purpose but not as “Sexy” as the above sign in screen.

The other drawback was that the CRM Outlook client was not able to authenticate and connect to the CRM Server when it was outside corp. network and naturally people were complaining.

There are plenty of resources in getting IFD configured and some of these even included information on getting the ISA settings applied. But since non of these guides helped me in getting this resolved I decided to publish one of my own guides to on IFD. This doesn’t at all to invalidate the effort and contributions made by other experts as they helped me in getting it completed up to 99.9%. (The issue actually was just a missing “Check – Box” on ISA publishing Rule)

So, Here are my Steps:

CRM & Infrastructure Configuration:

1. First of all its recommended to get the much needed understanding of IFD environment and what’s really happening to your CRM server once you configure it. For same I’m highly recommending the following reading “Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4 IFD Setup Scenarios.docx”

(http://www.microsoft.com/DOWNLOADS/details.aspx?FamilyID=3861e56d-b5ed-4f7f-b2fd-5a53bc71dafc&displaylang=en)

2. Identify the CRM Organizations you want to publish out if you are running multiple organizations (MS CRM 4.0 Enterprise edition only).

3. Find out the unique names of these organizations which you use in the local URL to access via web in the internal network. This also can be taken from the Deployment Manager under organizations. Using these names you’ll have to create your external DNS records in the following syntax:

{unique name}.your-external-domain.your-tld

following table gives examples of these external access URLs, that you need to configure where the external domain name is given as externaldomain.com.

	Internal Access URL	Unique Name	External Access URL
01	http://crm01/org1/	Org1	http://org1.externaldomain.com
02	http://crm01/orgabc	orgabc	http://orgabc.externaldomain.com

 

5. Download CRM IFD Tool (http://www.microsoft.com/DOWNLOADS/details.aspx?familyid=69089514-6E5A-47E1-928B-4E4D4A8541C0&displaylang=en) and copy same to your CRM installation Tools folder (C:\Program Files\Microsoft Dynamics CRM\Tools)

6. Run the IFD tool which will bring up the below screen

5. Configure the IFD Settings according to your environment settings, which are explained below

7. Once you have correctly configured these settings you are done with the CRM configuration. Now its up to ISA to correctly publish this server. 

ISA Server Configuration:

8. Open ISA Server Management Console, go to tasks on the right pane and select “Publish Website”

9. On the wizard, start by giving a proper name for your rule, and click next

10. Select Rule action as Allow and click next

11. Select “publish Single Website or Load Balancer” and Click next

12. If you are planning to publish it with SSL enabled, (Which is highly recommended) select the below option:

Otherwise select the “not secured connections…” option.

13. Provide the internal URL (without http:// prefix) and the IP address of the Server

 

14. On the below screen select the publish path as “All” by typing /* on the “path” entry box

Ensure that the “Forward the original host header instead of the actual…” check box is Checked. (this is one of the things that i initially didn’t do and which caused repeated failures)

15. Under Public Name Details, specify “Access Requests for” as “This Domain Name” and provide public which is {unique name}.externaldomain.com, (in our test case for “Orga” it will be orga.externaldomain.com)

and publish the entire path by providing /* on the path specification. Use the “Site” preview to check the external URL is correct.

16. On the next screen select, new web listener, and on the second wizard which opens specify a proper name for the listener.

17. Depending on how you will be publishing CRM select whether to use SSL or not on the next screen.

18. Select the External Network on the web listener IP address selection screen. If you have multiple IP addresses bound to the external interface of your firewall you can select a specific IP address for which the External CRM DNS entries are valid, using the select IP address button.

19. If you have selected SSL connections for the listener in the previous step, select the appropriate SSL certificate which is valid for the external URL of the CRM server and associate it with the listener on the next screen using the select certificate button. you will have to install the certificate on the ISA server prior to this selection.

If you are not using SSL, the wizard will skip this step.

20. On the next screen, on Authentication Settings, Select No Authentication from the drop down list.

22. Finish and Close the Web Listener wizard and move back to the Rule Creation Wizard, Select the Web Listener you created and click Next

23. On the Authentication Delegation Settings Screen, select “No Delegation, but client may authenticate directly”

24. On the User Sets, Select access for all users

25.  Click Next and Finish the Wizard. Are we done? I’m Afraid Not. These are the things i later discovered to make it work.

26. Double Click on the newly created rule and open the Rule Properties.

27. Select To tab and under proxy requests, select “Requests appear to come from the original client”

 

28.    Click apply and Navigate to the Listener tab. Click properties button to access the properties for the selected listener.

29. Go to Authentication tab and click on advanced to bring in  “Advanced Authentication Options” dialog box. Check, Allow client authentication over HTTP and click ok. (Note: you have to do this only if you are not using SSL on your listener, If you are using SSL this check box will be disabled.)

30. Click ok twice and apply all changes to ISA using the Apply button on the top of the console. and NOW YOU ARE DONE. 

Enjoy the CRM IFD environment which is usable both via web and via CRM Outlook Client.

Special thanks to ForeFront TMG Product team on their article at http://blogs.technet.com/isablog/archive/2008/07/23/publishing-microsoft-crm-4-0-through-isa-server-2006.aspx which explained all of the above steps except for the few I dug up myself, which are Step 27 and 29.

Hi to All Technet SL Users,

We had a great user group meeting yesterday and my sincere thanks goes out to everyone who attended.

As I promised yesterday, here are the exciting new commands sequence which you can use to setup your test environment conveniently by booting your physical box off of a VHD.

Prerequisites:

1. OS Requirement: You can only boot Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 this way.

2. If you are using Server 2008 R2, Your PC needs to be at least EM64 Compatible.

Step 1: Create Your VHD

1. You you have any of the above OSs already installed on your physical hard drive, you can easily use the Disk Management Snap In to Do this via GUI.

1.1 Just go to Actions > Create VHD

1.2 Specify Name,  Location and Size

1.3 Ensure that you have selected “Fixed Size” instead of “Dynamically Expanding”. This is required to use this hard disk for booting.

2. If your PC doesn’t have and OS Installed you can use command line tools for same.

2.1 Boot from either Windows 7, or Server 2008 R2 DVD. Select Install Now

2.2 At the Setup, Press (Shift + F10) to get Command Prompt.

2.3 Do Your Magic:

   At The Prompt Type : DISKPART

   create vdisk file=d:\w2kr2rc.vhd type=fixed maximum=20000

Step 2: Boot from Your VHD

1. Repeat steps 2.1, 2.2 If you have not done it already.

2. Type DISKPART

3. at the prompt type select vdisk file=d:\w2kr2rc.vhd

4. Then type attach vdisk

5. Type exit 2 times to get out of the prompt.

6. Continue with the OS installation process but at partition selection, make sure you select the disk you just created.

Why Wait more…. Enjoy S2k8R2

Special thanks to Menno Te Koppele blog http://www.tekoppele.com/Blog/post/2009/01/21/Your-Ultimate-Demo-or-Development-Environment!.aspx) for opening my eyes on this.

In every demo of Microsoft CRM, when we are trying to differentiate it with other CRM vendors, we usually have BIG things to tell. But when the prospect asks in turn, “Show me how you audit transactions in your product..?” we take a short pause before answering. “Well we have Created Date, Modified Date for each record…..” (& embarrassment)

Now its no more, “Microsoft CRM Business DATA Auditing Accelerator” has used simple entities and workflows to create a good customizable auditing mechanism for MS CRM. To think that I used a custom plug-in to do this before :(

Here’s the Link to download:

http://crmaccelerators.codeplex.com/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=27404

Refer to the included installation guide which carries great information of applying the configurations and customizing the Auditing Capabilities.

Good News: Its a very very simple mechanism which allows even a novice in CRM to implement and Use

Bad News: All the field changes, status changes and Events that are selected for monitoring can create a big overhead in your SQL sever as these are published as triggers to the DB

Enjoy Auditing…

Hi Techies,

Since CRM 3.0, I have engaged in designing over 5 Call center solutions based on Microsoft Dynamics CRM. In all those, popular voice brands such as Avaya and CISCO dominated the communications platform, integrating with Microsoft CRM to record customer interactions and to display customer information to the call center agent.

On the other hand I also have been a user of Office Communicator, to make calls, receive calls and all sorts of communication needs and was quite aware of its power. So naturally, I was wondering why these technologies can’t integrate to provide a complete "Microsoft" experience with much more features bundled. Now I’m happy to say that this wait is finally over when the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Agent Communications Panel was released few weeks back.

Of course, as a first generation product it needs some improvement to compete with the other vendors but, after testing the same I feel that it’s very nicely done..!

Please refer to my post at: http://crmlk.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!F30F5B210AE41C3C!221.entry for screenshots and more details.

Cheers,

Amal_k9