Dynamics CRM 2011 - Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011

Neuer Pricing and Licensing Guide Dynamics CRM 2011, Feb 2012

2012-02-23T23:25:00.002-08:00

Neuer Pricing and Licensing Guide Dynamics CRM 2011, Feb 2012

FyI auf PartnerSource steht ab sofort eine neue Version des Pricing and Licensing Guides (Feb 2012) für Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 zur Verfügung.
In dem neuen Dokument sind vor allem Änderungen in Bezug auf die folgenden Themen beinhaltet:

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 - SPLA Lizenzmodel
Cancellation Policy für das Web Self-Service Program
Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 - Nutzungsbestimmungen in bezug auf Activitiy Feeds
Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 -Erweiterte CAL und SAL Use Rights Matrix
Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 - Program/Channel Summary

Den neuen Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 -G uide finden Sie auf Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 PartnerSource unter dem folgenden Link:
https://mbs.microsoft.com/downloads/partner/pricing/CRM/MD_CRM2011_Pricing_Licensing_Guide_Feb2012.pdf

Unterstützung weiterer TK-Systeme und Handy-Integration mit Dynamics CRM 2011

2012-02-23T23:23:00.001-08:00

Unterstützung weiterer TK-Systeme und Handy-Integration

C4B erweitert Funktionen der UC-Reihe

Erweiterte Handy-Integration: Anwender entscheiden, ob Anrufe per Mobiltelefon oder über die Telefonanlage des Unternehmens aufgebaut werden.

Auf der CeBIT präsentiert C4B das Service Release 2 für die UC-Produktreihe. Anwender erhalten damit CSTA-Schnittstelle, Fax-Langzeitarchivierung und mehr.

Mit dem Service-Release 2 für XPhone Unified Communications 2011 erweitert C4B die Kommunikationssoftware um weitere Funktionen. Die sollen CRM-Anwendungen, mobile Mitarbeiter und Telefonanlagen besser als bisher einbinden.
Über die künftig verfügbare CSTA-Schnittstelle unterstützt die Lösung Avaya-Telefonanlagen sowie die von Alcatel-Lucent stammenden Systeme OmniPCX Enterprise und OmniPCX Office; bislang konnten Kunden nur Telekommunikationssysteme von Cisco (UC 500) und Siemens nutzen. Anschaltungen an HiPath-4000-Anlagen (ab V6) von Siemens könnten nun auch ohne CAP-Server realisiert werden.
Mobile Anwender lockt C4B mit einer "erweiterte[n] Handy-Integration mit Foto-Anzeige". Über eine Web-Oberfläche können Nutzer entscheiden, ob Anrufe per Mobiltelefon oder mit der One-Number-Funktion über die Telefonanlage des Unternehmens aufgebaut werden.
Der XPhone UC Server soll künftig auch als selbstständiger TAPI Service Provider agieren. So können verteilte Standorte mit unterschiedlichsten Telefonanlagen über eine einheitliche Schnittstelle genutzt werden. Die TAPI-Software eigne sich dabei auch für den Einsatz in Terminal-Server-Umgebungen. Sie ist unabhängig von Windows-Domänen sowie als 32- und 64-Bit-Version für verschiedene Windows-Versionen erhältlich.
XPhone Unified Communications kann nach dem Update in das CRM-System Microsoft Dynamics eingebunden werden und unterstützt DATEV pro. XPhone Unified Communications 2011 SR2 soll Ende Februar erscheinen; für Bestandskunden ist das Upgrade kostenlos.

Außerdem kündigt C4B an: Eine Fax-Langzeitarchivierung für XPhone UC Fax, weitere Funktionen für die automatische Anrufzentrale XPhone UC Auto Attendant und die CTI-Einzelplatzlösung XPhone Express 2011.
C4B präsentiert ebenfalls ein Service Release 2 für den Web-Verzeichnisdienst XPhone Virtual Directory 2011. Die Lösung laufe nun auch eigenständig und versorge mobile Anwender per Smartphone oder Tablet mit Zugriff auf sämtliche Firmenkontakte.
XPhone Virtual Directory 2011 SR2 unterstützt jetzt neben Outlook auch Lotus Notes und kann auf den Webservice von "Das Telefonbuch Deutschland" zugreifen. Als weitere Neuerungen nennt der Hersteller eine integrierte Näherungssuche; bei unbekannten Durchwahlen zeigt diese den jeweils passenden Firmendatensatz an. Des Weiteren lassen sich Adressbücher nun priorisieren und gruppieren.
Interessierte können sich die vorgestellten Lösungen auf der CeBIT anschauen. Dort präsentiert sich C4B in Halle 13 auf Stand D37.

Virtuelle Telefonanlage - OpenScape Secure Cloud - Virtuelle Telefonanlage -

2012-02-23T03:55:00.000-08:00

neue Virtuelle Telefonanlage - Virtuelle Telefonanlage
Fragen? Tel: 040 30 698 77 0

Cloud Telefonie Lösung von Siemens Enterprise Communications

Mit OpenScape Secure Cloud wird die Cloud Telefonie Lösung von Siemens Enterprise Communications (SEN) bezeichnet. Mit dem Zusatz Secure möchte SEN hervorheben, dass ein Schwerpunkt der SEN Telefonanlage aus der Cloud, die Anforderung nach einer sicheren und zuverlässigen Lösung erfüllt.

Videos von Siemens Enterprise Communications zur OpenScape Secure Cloud

Schritt 1: Passt Secure Cloud zu mir?
Inhalt

Beschreibung der Cloud allgemein
Vergleich der Cloud mit lokalen Lösungen
Vorteile der Cloud, Auslagerung der Technik in die Cloud
Bedeutung der Cloud Kommunikation
Dienste in der Cloud:
Sprache, Video, Web Collaboration, einheitliche Oberfläche, usw.

Schritt 2: Was kann OpenScape Secure Cloud für mich tun?
Inhalt

Beschreibung der Lösung für den Anwender
Einbindung von Handys
One Number Service
Unterschied der Secure Cloud im Vergleich zu klassischen Telefonanlagen
Vorteile der Cloud:
automatische Updates, Flexibilität, Sicherheit
Unified Communications

Schritt 3: Noch nicht überzeugt?
Inhalt

Beschreibung der Infrastruktur
Rechenzentren, Sicherheit
Redundanz im Rechenzentrum und lokal beim Kunden (OpenScape Branch)

Schritt 4: OpenScape Secure Cloud im Einsatz
Inhalt

Erfahrung von Kunden mit der OpenScape Secure Cloud
Kundenbeispiele

Schritt 5: Erstellen Sie Ihren Business Case
Inhalt

Business Case
Argumente zum Einsatz der Cloud im Unternehmen
geringe Investition
kaufmännische Vorteile
Flexibilität, Zukunftssicherheit

Since installing rollup 6 we have been getting intermittent ‘Access Denied’ messages as per the forum entry below.

2012-02-23T01:20:00.000-08:00

Since installing rollup 6 we have been getting intermittent ‘Access Denied’ messages as per the forum entry below.
http://social.microsoft.com/Forums/en/crmdevelopment/thread/57032ef6-c690-4ab2-a7e1-21f1081e5350?prof=required
We have added an additional key (HKLM>Software>Microsoft>MSCRM>IgnoreTokenCheck (Dword)=1) and the issue does appear to have been resolved.
Have any other customers experienced this issue? What security implications might there be to adding this key entry?
Thanks in advance

============
Another MVP that wants to be unnamed for now had this to say about it.

I think I’ll restrict my answer to this audience for now, as I have a tendency to get into trouble when blogging about this registry value.

The token checks are designed as a protection against cross-site request forgery (CSRF) attacks. The general idea is that CRM will generate a new token when you submit an initial request (e.g. opening a form), when you save the data, the client code will send the token along with any data to update, and the server will check the token to see if it’s valid. There are a couple of schools of thought on the necessity of this:

1. One view is that, in a well-designed system like CRM, data modification can only occur via the POST method (and not a GET – i.e. you don’t modify data solely by passing information on the query string). Internet Explorer security settings will not allow cross-site POSTs. As a result, you would only be subject to a CSRF attack via a successful cross-site scripting (XSS) exploit. And if you are suffering an XSS exploit, you’ve got bigger problems than worrying about a CSRF. So, token checks don’t really make a difference, and can be disabled
2. The other view is that you should always defend in depth when it comes to application security. So, even though other security mechanism should make the token defence redundant, you still implement it anyway

============
Corey Hanson had this to say:

I found an issue that is included in Update Rollup 7 that may be related. The repro steps in the issue are

1. Deploy CRM with https protocol and do NOT specify the port number (which is default to 443 then).
2. Open an existing Account or create an account
3. Update the value for "Account Number" and save it.
4. Update this value again in the same form.
5. Click Save button.

I'm assuming that the steps 2-5 could be other actions as well to repro the issue, so possibly the marking the appointment as completed could be as well.

If you contact support there is a COD available for this issue, if you want to see if it resolves your scenario. The case would be free of charge since it is due to a bug in UR6. Or you can wait till UR7 is released on March 8th, 2012.

Thanks

Corey Hanson, Dynamics CRM Supportability PM

============

Another MVP that wants to be unnamed for now had this to say about it.

I think I’ll restrict my answer to this audience for now, as I have a tendency to get into trouble when blogging about this registry value.

1. One view is that, in a well-designed system like CRM, data modification can only occur via the POST method (and not a GET – i.e. you don’t modify data solely by passing information on the query string). Internet Explorer security settings will not allow cross-site POSTs. As a result, you would only be subject to a CSRF attack via a successful cross-site scripting (XSS) exploit. And if you are suffering an XSS exploit, you’ve got bigger problems than worrying about a CSRF. So, token checks don’t really make a difference, and can be disabled
2. The other view is that you should always defend in depth when it comes to application security. So, even though other security mechanism should make the token defence redundant, you still implement it anyway

=========
As I am sure you are aware Microsoft and CRM specifically work under the defense in depth philosophy. The WRPC token scheme is like you said designed to help reduce the surface area of forgery and single click attacks. Because the tokens use both page and timestamps this reduces the ability for man in the middle play backs.

Overall, I would only suggest using this registry key when doing load simulation (the reason the setting exists at all), or when it is needed due to a regression as this case. As Corey replied on the public thread a COD hotfix is available for this issue and is a much better solution.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 & 4.0 Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 & 4.0 München

2012-02-23T01:16:00.001-08:00

Inkey offers assistance on Dynamics CRM, including:

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 & 4.0 München
- Requirements gathering, Analysis, Feasibility study and Designing a CRM solution
- Customization and configurations
- Dashboards
- Managed, unmanaged solutions
- Client extensions, ISV config, Site Map and ribbon control changes
- Security Roles, Connections
- Template configuration, E-mail, Mail merge, contract
- Workflows/Dialogues configuration
- Integration with SharePoint server

Custom Development münchen
- Custom Asp . NET page
- Silverlight 4.0
- Xrm Applications
- XML, JavaScript, AJAX, IFrames
- Plug-in development
- Custom workflow activities
- Internet Facing Deployment (IFD) support and development
- Outlook offline support and development
- Fetchxml based reports
- BIDS 2008, Reporting Services(SSRS 2005, 2008)

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 & 4.0 Data Migration München
- SCRIBE 7.0.2
- Dynamics CRM in-built migration tool
- From ACT! to Dynamics CRM 2011
- From Sales Force to Dynamics CRM 2011
- From CRM 4.0 to Dynamics CRM 2011

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 & 4.0 Installation München
- Dynamics CRM 2011 and 4.0
- Internet Facing Deployment (IFD) setup
- CRM Outlook support

Up gradation from CRM 4.0 to CRM 2011 online/on-premises

Monitoring HTTP Output with Fiddler in .NET HTTP Clients and WCF Proxies

2012-02-22T01:43:00.002-08:00

Monitoring HTTP Output with Fiddler in .NET HTTP Clients and WCF Proxies

Http monitoring tools are essential when doing any kind of Web development whether it’s for plain Web development, Web Services or any sort of HTTP client work. When things go wrong it is often highly useful to take a look under the hood and dig into the raw HTTP request data to see what HTTP headers were sent from the client to server and what headers and responses come back.
For plain Web development most of the time I actually use FireBug inside of FireFox, but when more detailed HTTP wire debugging is required I quickly revert to Fiddler, because it tends to provide more information and options on dealing with request data. But even more importantly, FireBug – cool and useful as it is as the Swiss Army knife for Web development debugging - is limited to life inside of FireFox, so it does nada when you need to look at content outside of the browser such as when a .NET application fires HTTP requests against a server.
One of the reasons that Fiddler works so well is because it has a nice, simple and very usable UI that makes it easy to monitor HTTP requests. It also includes a nice request builder which is great for building up requests for testing without having to run code to generate a request against a service for example. In addition there are a few handy viewers that simplify viewing common types of content.

Before I get into the discussion of using Fiddler with .NET HTTP clients like WCF or Web Service proxies or WebClient/HttpWebRequest objects, here are a few basic tips when using Fiddler for debugging in general:

Running Fiddler against local Addresses

If you’re using Fiddler with a localhost or 127.0.0.1 address you’ll find that Fiddler will not monitor requests. The reason for this is that local addresses typically bypass any proxies (and the network adapter in general) and so localhost or 127.0.0.1 doesn’t show up.
Luckily there’s an easy workaround for this: Instead of using a local address use the NetBios Machine name or the local IP address:
http://rasnote/weblog/default.aspx
or
http://192.168.0.104/weblog/default.aspx
And voila you have access to local addresses.
Visual Studio Web Server (Cassini)
What about the ASP.NET local Web Server (Cassini)? There’s a nasty hack for accessing Cassini requests through Fiddler:
http://127.0.0.1.:88/default.aspx
Notice the . after the 127.0.0.1 and before the port number. I’ve only had luck in using 127.0.0.1. as the domain/address -localhost or the local machine name don’t work.

Using Fiddler with other Browsers

Fiddler works automatically with Internet Explorer. When Fiddler and IE are both open requests made in IE are automatically monitored in Fiddler (unless you explicitly turn monitoring off). You can also use Fiddler with other browsers by configuring the proxy settings manually or by running Fiddlers configuration script.
Fiddler by default uses the proxy address of 127.0.0.1 and port 8888. You can manually configure this in just about any browser. For example in FireFox you can set up the proxy settings like this:

Alternately you can use Fiddler’s startup configuration script which can be fired when FireFox starts. You can set this up on the dialog above like this:

The full script reference looks like this:
file:///C:/Users/rstrahl/Documents/Fiddler2/Scripts/BrowserPAC.js
When set this script is set FireFox checks if Fiddler is running when it starts up and if so sets the Proxy automatically. Otherwise no proxy is set. However, unlike IE this setup will not detect when Fiddler is shut down so requests will try to use the proxy that is then no longer there. You either have to stop and restart FireFox, or alternately you can manually go to the above dialog on hit the Reload button to reload the script.
This process is not quite as smooth as it is with IE, but using the startup script is pretty easy as long as you remember to re-start FireFox to pick up the latest running status of Fiddler. I can live with that for debugging scenarios.

Getting Fiddler to work with .NET Client Requests

If you’ve run .NET client requests and tried to capture them with Fiddler you’ve probably noticed that .NET client requests don’t show up. This makes sense since proxy information must be configured somehow first in .NET as it doesn’t use the default settings that are provided through WinInet and the registry.
The scenario is as follows: You’re debugging a Web Service or a WebClient request in a client application or a test project and you would like to see what the HTTP response from the server looks like.
Most of the .NET HTTP clients – WebClient, HttpWebRequest, WCF or Web Service Clients – all have Proxy properties that you can set explicitly. In code this looks like this:

AppletService service = new AppletService();
service.Proxy = new WebProxy("127.0.0.1",8888);
WebServiceProxies.AppletService.Files[] files = service.RetrieveConfirmationList("0020575", "esa479");

Fortunately you don’t have to do this in code for every request. Instead you should preferrably use configuration file settings in the <system.net> section to configure the proxy:

<configuration>
  <system.net>
    <defaultProxy>
      <proxy  
              usesystemdefault="True"
              bypassonlocal="False" />
    </defaultProxy>
  </system.net>
</configuration>

The above reads the default system settings and uses them. So when Fiddler starts it sets the system settings and your application then can read and use these settings.
This should work fine for real client applications, however, if you’re running in a server application like ASP.NET you probably don’t want to do this because a registry lookup is required which can be really slow for a server application because it typically doesn’t have rights to access these settings.
If you need to look at HTTP client requests made by an ASP.NET application it’s best to configure the proxy explicitly by providing the proxy information in the web.config file and setting usesystemdefault=”False”

<configuration>
  <system.net>
    <defaultProxy>
      <proxy
              usesystemdefault="False"
              bypassonlocal="True" 
              proxyaddress="http://127.0.0.1:8888"              
              />
    </defaultProxy>
  </system.net>
</configuration>

This should let you see any Http requests fired from your server application i n Fiddler.

Make sure you enable All Processes in Fiddler

In Fiddler 2.x there was a change that allows filtering requests via a very unobvious status bar selection list. By default only browser requests can be tracked and all application requests are run through the proxy but don’t actually show up in Fiddler. To let your .NET applications (or any other application other than a browser including WinInet Clients) you need to make sure you set the filter to “All Applications”:

Clicking on the panel cycles through the options which is Web Browsers, Non-Browser, None and All Processes.
Thanks to Ryan Heaney who via Twitter pointed out this option which I completely overlooked and didn’t even find until he pointed it out. Talk about unobvious UI feature, although it’s actually nice ONCE you know where it is. It’s useful to keep other apps like feedreaders and twitter from posting to Fiddler when the setting is not set to All Processes.

The Underlying Connection was Closed

[section added 05/24/2009]
When running multiple authenticated requests with Fiddler in a .NET app you might see the following error:
The underlying connection was closed: A connection that was expected to be kept alive was closed by the server.
This is due to the fact that .NET by default closes connections after each requests, but Fiddler expects the connection to the proxy to be kept open (which is standard client proxy behavior). Typically what you’ll see is that the first request works, the next will fail with the error. If you retry the next will work, then fail again as the connection is closed on subsequent requests, re-opened when you retry.
There are two ways around this:

Tell .NET to keep connections open
Tweak the Fiddler Startup Script to account for dropped connections

If you’re using an HttpWebRequest object the process is fairly easy by adding adding headers to the request. You can set “Keep-Alive”,”On” or alternately explicitly force the connection to be closed with “Connection”,”close” which closes the connection completely.
WCF services can manipulate their underlying connection objects via the OperationContextScope() class, through which you can gain access to Http headers the client sends. Unfortunately, though the Connection and Keep-Alive headers cannot not be changed – WCF and only WCF controls those, so there’s no way to override the .NET behavior with these.
Luckily Fiddler is developed by a Microsoft developer who’s aware of this issue and so there’s actually a switch in the Fiddler configuration script that can be set to force Fiddler to automatically force connections closed. To do this open Fiddler’s CustomRules.js file (Rules | Customize Rules or Ctrl-R) and uncomment the following script block:

// Uncomment to reduce incidence of "unexpected socket closure" exceptions in .NET code.  
// Note that you really should also fix your .NET code to gracefully handle unexpected connection closure.
//
 if (!(((oSession.responseCode == 401) && oSession.oResponse["WWW-Authenticate"].Length > 9) || 
  ((oSession.responseCode == 407) && oSession.oResponse["Proxy-Authenticate"].Length > 9))) {
   oSession.oResponse["Connection"] = "close";
}

The above is commented in Fiddler's CustomRules.js in the OnBeforeResponse method. Uncommenting the code above makes the successive Web Service calls work with Fiddler attached. As the comment mentions above this isn't ideal but it works - you may have to resort to a few additional conditions with NTLM Authentication as mentioned in this post:
http://blogs.newsgator.com/inbox/2006/09/fiddler_and_net.html

Monitoring HTTPS/SSL Connections

[added section 09/17/2009]
By default Fiddler doesn’t work with HTTPS/SSL requests which makes most people think that you can’t use it for SSL requests. It seems counterintuitive that an HTTP proxy should be able to decrypt SSL requests – after all it’s supposed to be secure and intractable, right? But this is possible because you’re explicitly installing a trusted certificate that can decrypt SSL traffic on your local machine.
It’s relatively straight forward to configure Fiddler to work with most SSL based sites (but not all of them if strict policy requirements are enabled on the server).
To use SSL you can enable HTTPS functionality in Tool | Options:

and follow the instructions in the Learn more… options. Basically you’ll have to move the Fiddler installed client certificate from the personal store to the trusted certificate store and let Fiddler intercept the SSL requests. I highly recommend reading through the page as well as the Fiddler FAQ that describes the SSL issues and how this works in some detail.
If you want to quickly get going (pulled straight from the Fiddler page:

Visit a HTTPS site with Fiddler2 running, ensure that you see the Certificate Error warning page
START > RUN > CERTMGR.MSC
Drag the DO_NOT_TRUST_FiddlerRoot certificate from the Personal folder to the Trusted Root Certification Authorities folder

Once you’ve done this you should be able to hit most SSL enabled sites.
Note that you probably should remove this certificate from the secure store once you’re done and add it only as needed. For more info see the Fiddler HTTPS page.

If Fiddler won’t work give Charles a Try

Fiddler is very nice when it works, but there are a few situations when I’ve had no luck with Fiddler. Specifically if you can’t explicitly set the Proxy in the client application such in a live server. When Fiddler doesn’t work or if it’s a pain to set up I fall back to Charles, which is Java based Http Proxy Monitor. It has many of the same features that Fiddler has, but it works much more transparently in that you don’t need to configure anything – Charles monitors any HTTP traffic on the wire and monitors it.

The first request above for example is a Cassini request and there’s no configuration of any sort to get Charles to monitor this request – it just works. You can view the request and response in a variety of ways. The view is not as nice as Fiddler’s split view but you can get the same information. One thing that Charles doesn’t do is auto-decode pages that are encoded with Gzip, which is kind of a bummer.
Charles is not free, but it’s worth the $50 registration to have a no-config Http Monitor that works in most environments. It’s saved my butt in a lot of situations…
Bottom line is that I still prefer Fiddler when it works because the UI is cleaner, easier to work with for many requests, easier to look at different kinds of contents and more configurable, but I keep around Charles if Fiddler doesn’t work or doesn’t work without complex configuration. In that respect Charles can be a life safer especially if you need to do some trouble shooting on a client or server machine in a hurry without having to fuck with configuration settings in the browser or configuration files.

Update Rollup 21 for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Available for Download!

2012-02-19T23:40:00.000-08:00

Update Rollup 21 for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Available for Download!

Are you still using the 4.0 version of Microsoft Dynamics CRM? We have good news for you – a new Update Rollup release! Rollup 21 is now available for download.

Want to go to the Download Center to access the downloadable files? Click here. These EXE files are downloaded based upon the bit version of your server (they are available for 64-bit server and 32-bit server versions). A Client download EXE file, based upon your version of MS Office, is also available for the 32-bit version of MS Office ONLY.

Want to go to the KB Article to read a bit more about the fixes included in the Rollup? Click here. The KB article goes in depth about included hotfixes available in the Rollup, as well as installation requirements and reminders. It also contains information about any fixes that need to be applied to the registry manually.

NOTE: A prompt to restart the server may or may not occur after installing Rollup 21. As a reminder, a restart of a Client machine is ALWAYS required after installing the Rollup file for MS Outlook.

Interested in upgrading to the newest and most robust version of Microsoft Dynamics CRM? Click here to contact us in order to learn more about the 2011 version of Dynamics CRM.

Die “Killerapplikation” für Videogenuss auf dem iPad / iPhone

2012-02-19T06:58:00.000-08:00

very nice!!

Das iPad ist ideal für das Abspielen von Videos. Die Applikation Air Video macht aus einem Rechner einen Videoserver, streamt die dort gespeicherten Clips auf’s iPad (und iPhone) und konvertiert Dateien in Echtzeit.

Mein Hauptgrund für den Kauf eines iPads waren visuelle Inhalte. Zwar schaue ich mir aufwendig produzierte Blockbuster lieber im Kino oder auf einem Großbildfernseher an, aber bei Nachrichten, Dokumentationen oder Serien lege ich hingegen primär Wert auf ortliche Flexibilität und möchte nicht an mein Sofa gebunden sein.

Das iPhone oder andere Smartphones besitzen leider zu kleine Bildschirme, um damit über längere Zeit Videos anzuschauen und Spaß dabei zu haben. Das iPad füllt hier zumindest für meinen persönlichen Bedarf eine große Lücke, und macht dies im Praxiseinsatz auch genau so, wie ich es mir in der Theorie vorgestellt habe.
Nun wäre Apple nicht Apple, wenn das iPad ähnlich wie das iPhone nicht sehr wählerisch wäre, was die akzeptierten Dateiformate betrifft. Kurz gesagt: iPad-Videos müssen im MP4-Format vorliegen, sonst lassen sie sich nicht abspielen.
Dank der absolut beeindruckenden iPad-Applikation Air Video muss ich mir über manuelles Konvertieren von Videodateien in das MP4-Format aber ab sofort keine Sorgen mehr machen – ebenso wenig wie über die Frage, wie ich die auf meinem an den Fernseher angeschlossenen Media-PC abgelegten Serien und Dokumentationen bequem auf mein iPad “streame”. Air Video ist die Lösung für beides.

Air Video besteht aus einer Server-Software für Windows und Mac sowie aus einer Applikation für iPhone, iPod Touch und iPad. Nachdem der kostenlose Air Video Client auf einem mit Videoinhalten befüllten Rechner installiert und die zu durchsuchenden Ordner ausgewählt wurden, kann mit der mobilen App über das WLAN-Netz auf sämtliche Videodateien des Server-Rechners zugegriffen werden.
Das Highlight von Air Video ist dabei die Möglichkeit zur Echtzeit-Konvertierung von beliebigen Videoformaten (z.B. avi, mpg oder mkv) in das MP4-Format. Damit werden über das Apple-Gerät anzuschauende Inhalte nicht vorab konvertiert, sondern während man diese auf seinem iPad, iPhone oder iPod Touch betrachtet. Dies ermöglicht das sofortige Anschauen von Videos, selbst wenn diese auf dem Quellrechner in anderen Formaten vorliegen als MP4.
Voraussetzung für die Echtzeit-Konvertierung ist ein leistungsfähiger Prozessor, und bei HD-Inhalten im mkv-Format kann es sich empfehlen, doch lieber vorab von Air Video konvertieren zu lassen, um nicht durch ständige Unterbrechungen des “Streams” den Videogenuss zu zerstören.
Auch optisch hinterlässt Air Video einen sehr positiven Eindruck, und die Einrichtung des Server-Clients könnte einfacher nicht sein und erfordert keinerlei fortgeschrittene Kenntnisse über Netzwerke und Server-Tools. Air Video kann auch über externe Internetverbindungen eingesetzt werden, dann jedoch sind einige “manuelle” Schritte notwendig.
Air Video ist die derzeit für mich beste iPad-Applikation und seine 2,39 Euro mehr als wert. Wer das Tool kostenlos ausprobieren möchte, kann die im Funktionsumfang begrenzte Lite-Version nutzen.

Fixed: "After upgrading to the Insight Unicode product (Insight 7.5), the CRM adapter will throw errors.."

2012-02-17T12:29:00.000-08:00

Topic: "After upgrading to the Insight Unicode product (Insight 7.5), the CRM adapter will throw errors.."

We have seen in a few instances after upgrading to the Insight Unicode product (Insight 7.5), the CRM adapter will throw errors
'Scribe.DynamicsCrm5.Adapter.DynamicsCRMTable - Error opening table or Query 896'
'Object reference not set to an instance of object.'

These are due to corruption of the metadata during upgrade and requires a refresh of the CRM metadata.

Adapter for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 metadata
To import metadata when using the Adapter for Dynamics CRM 2011:

1. Stop the Scribe services.
2. From SQL Server Management Studio, run the following query:

use SCRIBEINTERNAL;
delete from SCRIBE.ADAPTERMETADATA where NAME='DynamicsCrm 2011 Adapter' and IDENTIFIER='DEFAULT';

3. Close SQL Server Management Studio.
4. Restart Scribe services; the next time you reconnect, Insight will automatically update the metadata the next time using a connection is made.

Posted by Josh S on Jan 09, 2012 03:48PM

We have also seen this issue for CRM 4.
Error opening data source Scribe.MSCRMAdapter30.Database
Error details:
System.ArgumentNullException: Value cannot be null.
Parameter name: s
at System.IO.StringReader..ctor(String s)
at System.Xml.XmlDocument.LoadXml(String xml)
at Scribe.DRS.MetadataOverride.FromXml(String xml)
at Scribe.DynamicsCrm.Adapter.Database.DoConnect(Object db, Int16
flags)
The resolution was to perform the following steps:
1. From SQL Server Management Studio, run the following query:
use SCRIBEINTERNAL;
delete from SCRIBE.ADAPTERMETADATA where NAME='DynamicsCrmAdapter' and IDENTIFIER='DEFAULT';
2. Close SQL Server Management Studio.
Then Run
3. Run MetadataConfig.exe (It is located in the Scribe Program folder for exp C:\Program Files (x86)\Scribe)
4. Select the DynamicsCRMAdapter from the adapter dropdown list
5. Click Import Metadata button
6. Select DynamicsCRMAdapterMetadata.xml in the Import Metadata File Browser (also in C:\Program Files (x86)\Scribe

Dynamics CRM 2011 - Getting Dynamics CRM 2011 Data into Outlook

2012-02-16T23:30:00.000-08:00

Dynamics CRM 2011 - Getting Dynamics CRM 2011 Data into Outlook

One of the first questions people ask when they begin using the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Outlook Client is “how can I control what CRM data appears in Outlook”? Syncing too much data can reduce performance, but you also want to have information at your fingertips when you need it.
In Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011, the Outlook Data Filters feature allows users to take control of what CRM data appears in Outlook. In CRM 4, users had the ability to specify what data they wanted to take Offline (i.e. when they weren’t connected to CRM), and in CRM 2011 we’ve expanded this feature to also allow users to specifically control what data syncs to Outlook’s own folders, like the Calendar and the Tasks pane.
This blog post explains what the filters are and how to use them effectively. You should read it if you would like to see additional CRM data in Outlook or Offline mode, or conversely, if sync is taking longer than you’d like.
Warning: With great power comes great responsibility. If you run into any issues, follow the instructions in the “Resetting your Filters” section to reset your filters to your organization’s standard settings.
The Filters Dialog
The filters dialog can be accessed in Outlook 2003 and 2007 by navigating to CRM->Outlook Filters, and in Office 2010 by going to the File backstage menu, then clicking CRM, pressing the ‘Sync’ button dropdown and selecting the ‘Outlook Filters’ option.


Office 2003 & 2007	Office 2010

After you open the filter dialog, you’ll see something like this:

You can see that the dialog contains a list of rows (these are the filters) for different Outlook entity types, such as Contact, Task and Appointment (note that email is synced with CRM differently and is not managed by this feature). There is also a dropdown which lets you change the view to show Offline Synchronization Filters … what are these? Time for some definitions:

Outlook Filters

Outlook filters affect CRM items which have counterparts in Outlook, like Tasks, Contacts and Appointments. They control what data gets synced to Outlook folders, such as the Contacts folder or Calendar.

Offline Filters

Offline filters affect the CRM folders in Outlook, and they specify what data gets stored on your machine when you disconnect from the internet (a.k.a. “Go Offline”). If you’re always on the move and you find that you’re missing CRM data while Offline, you’ll want to modify your Offline filters.
Alternatively, if you’re finding that going Offline is taking a long time, you can remove or deactivate some of your data filters to reduce the amount of data which needs to be synced.

You also might be wondering what that ‘System Filters’ tab is referring to:

User Filters	These filters belong to you, and they dictate what information gets synced down from CRM to Outlook.
System Filters	These filters are set by the system administrator, and they apply to everyone.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 : Using Microsoft Dynamics CRM for Outlook - Configuring Synchronization Filters

2012-02-16T23:00:00.000-08:00

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 : Using Microsoft Dynamics CRM for Outlook - Configuring Synchronization Filters

6/28/2011 4:00:35 PM

As you learned in the previous section, offline synchronization filters define which data Microsoft Dynamics CRM for Outlook with Offline Access will copy from the server to your offline database. During the installation process, Microsoft Dynamics CRM creates more than 35 different offline synchronization filters for the records in your system. If you plan to work offline frequently, you should examine these default offline synchronization filters to make sure you’ll have access to the information you need when offline.

Two common modifications to the default local data groups are:
Including all reports to run offline, because the default local data group downloads only the reports you own to the offline database.
Including custom entities, because the default local data group does not include any custom entities.
Note:
You can only modify your offline synchronization filter settings when you are online.
If your computer uses the online-only version of Microsoft Dynamics CRM for Outlook, your system still contains synchronization filters, but the software uses them for a different purpose. Online-only users of Microsoft Dynamics CRM for Outlook configure their Outlook synchronization filters to specify which types of records the software should copy from the server to your Outlook file. By default, Microsoft Dynamics CRM for Outlook includes Outlook synchronization filters that will copy contacts, phone calls, tasks, and other records that you own from the CRM server into your Outlook file.

You can delete, deactivate, or modify synchronization filters, or add entirely new data groups if you want. Some users like to create synchronization filters so that Microsoft Dynamics CRM copies all of the contacts for the accounts and opportunities that they own.
In this exercise, you will modify the offline synchronization filters for Microsoft Dynamics CRM for Outlook with Offline Access to include contacts you modified in the past 30 days in your offline database.
Note:
When you run reports offline, the reports will include only data from the offline database, which is typically a subset of the entire database. If you need to report on the entire database, make sure you go online first.
Note:
SET UP Start Outlook with Microsoft Dynamics CRM for Outlook with Offline Access installed, if necessary, before beginning this exercise.
On the Outlook ribbon, click the File tab, and then click CRM.
Click the Synchronize button, and then click the Outlook Filters option that appears on the submenu. The Outlook Filter dialog box appears.
In the picklist, select Offline Synchronization Filters.
In the grid toolbar, click the New button. The New Filter dialog box appears.
In the Look For picklist, select Contact.
Click the Select link, and choose Modified By.
Click the Select link again, click Modified On, and then click On. In the new picklist that appears, choose the Last X Days option.
In the text field that appears, enter 30.

In the toolbar, click the Save button. A dialog box will appear, prompting you to name this filter. Type Contacts modified by current user in the last 30 days. Then click the OK button.
Click the Close button in the upper-right corner to close the window.
Click OK to close the Outlook Filter window.
On the ribbon, click the Go Offline button. Microsoft Dynamics CRM will run with offline synchronization with this new filter in place. If you have modified contacts you don’t own in the last 30 days, you will see those contacts downloading in the progress window.

Cloud und mobile Computing schon fast Routine bei Schweizer Grossunternehmen

2012-02-16T05:55:00.000-08:00

Cloud und mobile Computing schon fast Routine bei Schweizer Grossunternehmen

Nur ein Fünftel benützt noch keinerlei Cloud-Services, nur ein Zehntel keine Smartphones oder Tablets.

Laut einer vom IT-Diensleister T-Systems durchgeführten Umfrage unter Schweizer Grossunternehmen mit über 5000 Angestellten sind Cloud-Computing und mobile Computing nicht mehr aus dem IT-Alltag, zumindest dieser Grossunternehmen, wegzudenken.

Schon bei rund 90 Prozent der 50 Umfrageteilnehmer sind beispielsweise Smartphones und/oder Tablet-PCs im Einsatz. Diese werden gegenwärtig hauptsächlich für den Zugriff auf Büroanwendungen (72 Prozent) sowie privat installierten Apps (59 Prozent) benützt. Die mobile Nutzung weiterer Geschäftsanwendungen wie CRM, Lager und Logistik oder Collaboration sei bei den meisten Teilnehmern für die kommenden Jahre "angedacht", so T-Systems. Ebenfalls "angedacht" sei die Einführung von speziellen Sicherheitsmassnahmen für den Zugriff auf Unternehemensanwendungen über das Internet sowie Verschlüsselungstechnologien für die mobilen Geräte. Die aktuell vorherrschenden Security-Massnahmen sind die Eingabe von PINs bzw. Passwörtern beim Abrufen von

Daten (85 Prozent) sowie Aufklärungsarbeit unter Mitarbeitenden (64 Prozent).

Auch die Unternehmen, die keine Cloud-Services nützen, geraten zunehmend in die Minderheit. 2011 nutzen noch 20 Prozent aller befragten Unternehmen keinerlei Cloud-Services. Ein Jahr davor waren es laut T-Systems noch rund ein Drittel. An häufigsten werden bestimmte Geschäftsanwendungen (51 Prozent) aus der Cloud bezogen, gefolgt von E-Mail-Tools (46 Prozent) und der Arbeitsplatzvirtualisierung (46 Prozent).

Gleichzeitig scheint sich das Tempo der Neueinfürhungewn von Cloud-Services zu verringern. 2010 hatte noch 54 Prozent der Befragten konkrete enstrpechende Pläne, bei der aktuellen Befragungen waren es noch 34 Prozent.

CRM 2011 Termine direkt über Exchange Server anstatt Outlook?

2012-02-16T00:20:00.001-08:00

CRM 2011 Termine direkt über Exchange Server anstatt Outlook?

Eine sehr interessante Anforderung für Unternehmen die mit einem stark flexiblen Außendienst arbeiten.

Anforderung:
==========
Beispiel: Unser Innendienst erstellt im CRM die Termine für den Außendienst. Soweit kein Problem.
Jedoch gelangen diese Termine erst in den Outlook-Kalender des Außendienstes wenn er online mit seinem Outlook ist und das CRM-Addin greift.
Da unser Außendienst ständig unterwegs ist, arbeitet er mehr mit IPhone/Blackberry statt mit seinem Laptop.
D.h. dass kurzfrisitige Termine bzw. Terminänderungen erst im Kalender auftauchen wenn er Abends mit seinem Laptop wieder online ist.

Gibt es denn keine Möglichkeit die Termine, Emails und Aufgaben anstatt mit dem Outlook Client, direkt mit em Exchange-Server abzugleichen?
Ich weiß dass es die Möglichkeit des Email-Routers gibt. Aber der verarbeitet meines Wissens nur Emails und keine Termine bzw. Aufgaben.

Lösung:
=========
Nicht im Standart gelöst aber durch einige Addon Hersteller.

http://www.metisc.com/index.php/products/iproducts/misync
http://www.rivacrmintegration.com/crm/sync/

http://www.cwrmobility.com/mobile-crm/dynamics-crm-exchange-sync

iPad 3: Neue Fotos iPads 3 aufgetaucht - iPad 3:

2012-02-13T11:28:00.000-08:00

iPad 3: Neue Fotos iPad 3: aufgetaucht -iPad 3:iPad 3:iPad 3:iPad 3:iPad 3:iPad 3:iPad 3:iPad 3:iPad 3:iPad 3:iPad 3:iPad 3:iPad 3:

Fotos vom iPad 3 sind im Internet aufgetaucht. Die Fotos zeigen die Rückseite sowie das Innenleben der Rückseite eines neuen Apple-Tablets, bei dem es sich um das iPad 3 oder das iPad 2 HD handeln könnte. Diese Bilder lassen Rückschlüsse auf die Ausstattung des iPad 2-Nachfolgers zu. PC Games hat alle Informationen zum iPad 3.

So soll das iPad 3 (rechts) von innen - Blick auf die Innenseite der Rückseite - aussehen. Links zum Vergleich das iPad 2. Womöglich stammt die Hülle aber auch vom iPad 2 HD. (3) Interessante Fotos zum iPad 3 oder iPad 2 HD zeigen angeblich die Rückseite eines der beiden Geräte. Das iPad 3 ist das neue Tablet von Apple und soll bereits in den kommenden Wochen vorgestellt werden. Das zumindest behauptet die Gerüchteküche. Nun sind angebliche Fotos vom iPad 3 oder vom iPad 2 HD ins Netz geleaked, welche die Rückseite des neuen iPads zeigen sollen. Diese Fotos stammen angeblich von RepairLabs, einer auf die Reparatur von iOS-Geräten spezialisierten Firma. Auch andere Websites, darunter 9to5Mac und Apple.pro haben Fotos von der Rückseite des iPad 3 / iPad 2 HD erhalten.
Repair Labs liegt außerdem das Innere der Rückseite des iPad 3 vor. Unterschiede fallen auf. Und zwar liegen die Befestigungen des Logic Board, das iPad 3-Motherboard, etwas näher zusammen, was auf eine Änderung am Design schließen lässt. Weil das Logic Board dünner geworden ist, bietet das Innenleben mehr Platz für einen Akku. Das würde die These unterstützen, dass das iPad 3 eine längere Laufzeit als das iPad 2 bietet.
Auch die Kamera sieht anders aus. Die Außenansicht lässt aber keinerlei Rückschlüsse auf die Leistung zu. Der Bildschirm wird beim iPad 3 wohl ein anderer Sein, denn die Befestigungen dafür haben sich verändert. Derzeit wird vermutete, dass Apple das iPad 3 am 29. Februar 2012 vorstellt. Der Marktstart in den USA könnte demnach wenig später erfolgen. Noch handelt es sich bei all den Informationen aber um Gerüchte. Quelle der iPad 2 HD-Gerüchte: Repair Labs.
Der japanische Blog Macotakara meldet zudem, dass im März auch iOS 5.1 veröffentlicht werden soll. Es wird angenommen, dass die neueste Version von Apples Mobile-OS parallel zum iPad 3 erhältlich sein wird. Auch zur Ausstattung des iPad 3 gibt es derzeit viele neue Gerüchte: So soll Apple das iPad 3 mit LTE ausstatten. Der Mobilfunkstandard LTE, kurz für Long-Term-Evolution, wird auch als 4G bezeichnet. Er gilt als zukünftiger UMTS-Nachfolger und kann mit bis zu 300 Mbit pro Sekunde downloaden. Dafür muss das Mobilfunknetz allerdings umgerüstet werden. LTE setzt auf die selbe Infrastruktur auf wie UMTS auf. Vorteil daran wäre etwa eine permanente Video-Telefonie von unterwegs. Ständig die neuesten Infos zum iPad 3 von Apple gibt es auf unserer Themenseite.

Bild 1 von 5

So soll das iPad 3 (rechts) von innen - Blick auf die Innenseite der Rückseite - aussehen. Links zum Vergleich das iPad 2. Womöglich stammt die Hülle aber auch vom iPad 2 HD. (1)

Finally arrived - Lenovo ThinkVision LT1421 14" LCD monitor with Plastic Cover

2012-02-13T10:48:00.000-08:00

Finally arrived - Lenovo ThinkVision LT1421 14" LCD monitor with Plastic Cover

very nice. easy install and now mobile working with 3 screens

I like it!!!

Data Integration/Migration using SQL Integration Services (SSIS) 2008

2012-02-12T08:34:00.000-08:00

Today’s guest blogger is CRM MVP Darren Liu who is a CRM specialist at Sonoma Partners in Chicago.
I wrote a blog article last year on how to integrate Microsoft Dynamics CRM using SQL Integration Service (SSIS) 2005 (http://tiny.cc/BQiiR) . I hope that article provided you with an alternative solution for your integration/data migration project with CRM. Due to the limited capabilities in SSIS 2005 with CRM web services, we created a proxy class as a work around to provide easy access to the CRM API.
With the new release of SQL server 2008, there were few improvements that simplify the integration of SSIS and CRM. It does not require you to create the proxy class anymore since SSIS 2008 allows you to add web references within the script component object. It also allows you to code in the language that I like the most, C#.
Here I would like to share how to leverage SSIS 2008 to integrate with CRM without the proxy class so that you can use it on your next CRM data integration/migration project.
Before we get started, here’s the list of requirements:

SQL Server 2008 Standard/Enterprise Edition with SQL Integration Service Installed
Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0
Visual Studio 2008 Professional Edition SP 1 with Business Intelligence Tools Installed
CRM SDK and C# knowledge

In this blog, I will use an example to show you how to send contact data stored in an Excel document to MSCRM 4.0 via CRM Web Services using SSIS.
Source Data
Source data is data from the other system that you would like to send to the CRM system. Your source data can be a text file, a database, etc… Since we often use Excel to collect our information, I will use a simple Excel document as my source data for this blog article.
Source Data: Excel Spread Sheet

Create SSIS Package
Launch Visual Studio 2008 to start a New Integration Services Project
After creating the project, follow the steps below to set up the SSIS package.

- Rename Package.dtsx to Contact.dtsx

Add Control Flow Items
Drag and drop a “Data Flow Task” from the Toolbox to the Control Flow Design Pane.

Add Data Flow Items
Double click on the Data Flow Task item that you just added and it will take you to the Data Flow Design Pane. Here we will specify the source data and also to write script to send data to CRM.
Specify Source Data

- Since our source data is an Excel document, drag and drop the Excel Source from the Toolbox to the design pane.
- Double click Excel Source to open the Excel Source Editor.
- Click New… button to open the Excel Connection Manager to specify the Excel file path, and then click OK.

- Select “Table or View” from Data access mode dropdown box.
- Select “Sheet1$” from Name of the Excel sheet dropdown box.
- Click OK to close the Excel Source Editor window.

Setup Script Component

- Drag and Drop Script Component to the design pane.
- Select Transformation and then click OK.
- Connect the two shapes by dragging the green arrow from Excel Source to Script Component.
- Double click the script component to open up the Script Transformation Editor.
- Select the columns that you would like to send to MSCRM from the Input Column window. In this example, I selected First Name, Last Name, Phone and Email Address.
- Remove Output in the Inputs and Outputs section since we are not going to output anything in this example.
- Click on the Script tab, click on Edit Script button. The Visual Studio window should open.

Add CRM Services
Since SSIS 2008 allows you to add web references in the Script Component, we will add the two web service references in this step. Please be aware that you must save the script component project by clicking the Save button on the toolbar after you added the CRM web references, otherwise the web references will not load next time you reopen the script component.
- Right click on the project in the Project Explorer window.
- Select Add Web Reference… from the menu.

- Repeat the steps above to add the CRM metadata service if necessary.
Coding the Package
In order to use the web reference in our code, we need to include the CrmSdk web reference to the script component project. To get the script component namespace, right click on the project and select Properties… from the menu. The namespace is in the Default namespace textbox. In this example, my script component name space is SC_ad0e4b91cb7e48cdb8fa2d240e3e5c30.csproj.

I added the following statement to my project.

using SC_ad0e4b91cb7e48cdb8fa2d240e3e5c30.csproj.CrmSdk;

Lastly, copy and paste the following code to the ScriptMain section:

private CrmService service = null;

    public override void PreExecute()
    {
        base.PreExecute();

        CrmAuthenticationToken token = new CrmAuthenticationToken();
        token.AuthenticationType = 0;
        token.OrganizationName = "AdventureWorkCycles";

        service = new CrmService();
        service.Url = "http://localhost/mscrmservices/2007/crmservice.asmx";
        service.CrmAuthenticationTokenValue = token;
        service.Credentials = System.Net.CredentialCache.DefaultCredentials;
    }

    public override void PostExecute()
    {
        base.PostExecute();
    }

    public override void ContactInput_ProcessInputRow(ContactInputBuffer Row)
    {
        contact cont = new contact();

        if (!Row.FirstName_IsNull)
        {
            cont.firstname = Row.FirstName;
        }

        if (!Row.LastName_IsNull)
        {
            cont.lastname = Row.LastName;
        }

        if (!Row.Phone_IsNull)
        {
            cont.telephone1 = Row.Phone;
        }

        if (!Row.Email_IsNull)
        {
            cont.emailaddress1 = Row.Email;
        }

        service.Create(cont);
    }

Execute the SSIS package
After coding the SSIS package, right-click on the Contact.dtsx package and then select Execute Package. After the package has executed successfully, you should see the records in CRM.

Deploy the SSIS Package
After successfully testing the package, deploying the package is pretty easy. It requires the same steps as the previous version of SSIS. I have included the steps again below.

- Right-click on the CRM 4.0 SSIS project and then select Properties.
- Click on the Deployment Utility tab and set the Create Deployment Utility property to True.

- Recompile the CRM 4.0 SSIS project. You should see CRM 4.0 SSIS.SSISDeploymentManifest in the bin\Deployment folder.
- Double-click on the manifest file and follow the wizard to deploy the SSIS package to your SQL server.

Summary
That’s all there is to it! Hopefully you have gotten the idea of how to use the latest version of SSIS to send data to CRM. SSIS 2008 has a lot of improvements to make our jobs easier to integrate systems. In this sample, I only demonstrated how to import records in CRM. In an actual data integration or migration implementation, we still have a lot more to consider such as updating, deleting and error handling. This is one of the many approaches that you can use to integrate/migrate data with CRM. I hope this will help you in your next CRM project.

Cheers,
Darren Liu

Network ports used for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0

2012-02-11T07:22:00.000-08:00

Network ports used for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0

Published: 4/11/2008 Updated: 9/15/2009

This article describes the ports that are used for Microsoft Dynamics CRM. This information is useful and helpful as you configure your network when users connect through a firewall.

On This Page

Network ports used for the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Web application

Network ports used by SQL Server running the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Connector for Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services server roles

Network ports used for the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Web application

The following table lists the ports used for a server that is running a full-server installation of Microsoft Dynamics CRM. Moreover, with the exception of the Microsoft SQL Server server role, and the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Connector for Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services server role, all server roles are installed on the same computer.

Protocol	Port Number	Description	Explanation
TCP	80	HTTP	Default Web application port. This port may be different as it can be changed during Microsoft Dynamics CRM Setup. For new Web sites, the default port number is 5555.
TCP	135	MSRPC	RPC endpoint resolution
TCP	139	*NETBIOS-SSN	NETBIOS session service
TCP	443	HTTPS	Default secure HTTP port. The port number may be different from the default port. This secure network transport must be manually configured. Although this port is not required to run Microsoft Dynamics CRM, it is strongly recommended. For information about how to configure HTTPS for Microsoft Dynamics CRM, see the article "Make Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 client-to-server network communications more secure."
TCP	445	Microsoft-DS	Active Directory required for Active Directory access and authentication
UDP	123	*NTP	Network Time Protocol
UDP	137	*NETBIOS-NS	NETBIOS name service
UDP	138	*NETBIOS-dgm	NETBIOS datagram service
UDP	445	Microsoft-DS	Active Directory required for Active Directory access and authentication
UDP	1025	*Blackjack	DCOM, used as an RPC listener

* This port and service are not strictly used by Microsoft Dynamics CRM but may be required for the various underlying platform components, such as Windows or Active Directory.

Top

Network ports used by SQL Server running the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Connector for Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services server roles

The following table lists the ports that are used for a computer that is running SQL Server and has only SQL Server and the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Connector for Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services server roles installed.

Protocol	Port Number	Description	Explanation
TCP	135	MSRPC	RPC endpoint resolution
TCP	139	NETBIOS-SSN	NETBIOS session service
TCP	445	Microsoft-DS	Active Directory required for Active Directory access and authentication
TCP	1433	ms-sql-s	SQL Server sockets service. This port is required for access to SQL Server. Note that, this number may be different if you have configured your SQL Server to use a different port number.
UDP	123	*NTP	Network Time Protocol
UDP	137	*NETBIOS-NS	NETBIOS name service
UDP	138	*NETBIOS-dgm	NETBIOS datagram service
UDP	445	Microsoft-DS	Active Directory required for Active Directory access and authentication
UDP	1025	*Blackjack	DCOM, used as an RPC listener

* This port and service are not strictly used by Microsoft Dynamics CRM but may be required for the various underlying platform components, such as Windows or Active Directory.

Full Uninstall of Microsoft CRM Outlook Client 4.0

2012-02-11T07:18:00.000-08:00

Full Uninstall of Microsoft CRM Outlook Client 4.0

There are times when we need to remove the Microsoft Dynamics CRM for Microsoft Office Outlook “Microsoft CRM Outlook Client” from the computer (Microsoft CRM 4.0 or CRM Online). Here are the proper steps for a full uninstall of the Microsoft CRM Outlook Client, including the setup with Offline Access.

Notes:

Login to the PC as a user with the “Local Administrator” rights
Uninstalling the “Offline Access” setup takes more effort and attention (besure you don’t delete another SQL Server database)
To check if the Microsoft CRM Outlook Client is setup with Offline Access – click on the “CRM” icon on the Microsoft CRM Outlook Tool Bar.

1. Uninstall the following program:

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 for Microsoft Office Outlook

If setup with Offline Access, remove these additional programs:

Microsoft SQL Server 2005

Microsoft SQL Server Native Client

Microsoft SQL Server Setup Support Files

Microsoft SQL Server VSS Writer

Warning: There may be other Microsoft SQL Server instances installed on the computer – select only the “CRM: Database Engine” instance to remove. Always check with your CRM Administrator if you are not sure. The last thing you want is to remove a SQL Server database for another computer application in use.

2. Delete the following program folder from “C:\Program Files” directory path:

Microsoft Dynamics CRM

If setup with Offline Access, delete this program folder:

Microsoft SQL Server

Warning: Similar warning as step 1 – there may be other Microsoft SQL Server databases installed on the computer so you may need to keep the Microsoft SQL Server program folder and its content. Always check with your CRM Administrator if your are unsure

3. Delete the “MSCRM” folder from the Windows Login User’s “C:\Documents and Settings\[CRM login user]\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft” directory path. Besure to select “Show hidden files and folders” under the view folder option in file explorer

4. Delete the “MSCRM” folder from the Windows Login User’s “C:\Documents and Settings\[CRM login user]\Application Data\Microsoft\” directory path. Besure to select “Show hidden files and folders” under the view folder option in file explorer

That should be it. The computer is ready for a re-install of the Microsoft CRM Outlook Client if needed.

CRM 2011 Walkthrough: Reset Selected Users’ Filters

2012-02-07T07:15:00.000-08:00

Introduction

This article describes how to combine the ResetUserFilters tool with the Distribute Workflow Activity tool in order to run the ResetUserFilters task for multiple users. The example shows how to reset views of all users belonging to one business unit, but the method is the same for any other relationship.

Pre-requisites

You need to have the Distribute Workflow Activity and the Views and Filters Toolkit plugins downloaded and registered.
For an introduction about these tools see CRM 2011 Distribute Workflow Activity available in Codeplex and CRM 2011 – Reset User Filters with the Views and Filters Toolkit. You can find the assets referenced in this article in the Codeplex projects (http://crm2011ldgmanager.codeplex.com/ and http://crm2011distributewf.codeplex.com).

Walkthrough

We need to create two workflows, a parent (that runs on Business Unit) and a child (that runs on every User affected). Let’s start by creating the child: a workflow on User that resets the user’s views through the ResetUserFilters utility. I named it Reset User Filters:

Child Workflow

The workflow runs the ResetUserFilters activity for enabled users. Note that one could also specify additional criteria, depending on business rules. Note also that the workflow is marked “Run as a child process”.
Next we need to determine the name of the relationship between Business Unit and User. Looking at the picture below (showing the Business Unit entity), we see that the relationship’s name is “business_unit_system_users”.

Business Unit and User relationship

Next I’m going to create the parent workflow on the Business Unit entity which uses the Distribute Activity workflow one-to-many step to launch the Reset User Filters workflow for all users that have this relationship with the business unit. I named it Reset BU’s Users’ Filter.

Parent Workflow

See the figure below for the step parameters:

Distribute Workflow activity parameters

Now that the workflows are created and activated, let’s test by invoking the Reset BU’s Users’ Filter for a business unit (or for the whole organisation).

Run for the organization

Results

Note that the distribution has been applied to four users that belong to the base organisation, but only two are legitimate. SYSTEM and INTEGRATION are default users that have the Enabled flag unset, so the child workflow will have filtered them out. However, to my knowledge, nothing happens if you run the ResetUserFilters for those users too.

Great New Features in Microsoft CRM 2011’s Next Update!

2012-02-06T23:30:00.000-08:00

Hot off the presses this morning, Microsoft announced the details about the next service update (release) of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011. I have reviewed the details, and I am here to say this is BIG TIME! The next update doesn’t have an official name yet so let’s just call it the H2 2012 update for now. You can get more details in the updated Statement of Direction.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM Mobile Hallelujah! Microsoft will finally offer a proper mobile solution. Sure you have always had Microsoft Dynamics CRM Mobile Express, but that didn’t quite work for all customers. Fortunately, now you have the option to upgrade.

Supports all major mobile platforms - iPhone, iPad, Blackberry, Android and Windows Phone 7. Yes you read that right, support for non-Microsoft devices!
Works with both on-premise and Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online deployments
License allows a user to connect up to three devices (so I can have an iPad and a Windows Phone 7 connected)
Works offline
Cloud subscription – list price of $30/per user per month

Multi-Browser Support for Microsoft Dynamics CRM If the news that Microsoft was going support non-MSFT mobile devices wasn’t enough to knock your socks off, you had better sit down. Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 will support non-Internet Explorer Web browsers! Here are the details:

Firefox (Version 6+) on Windows 7 / Windows Vista / Windows XP / Mac OS-X and iOS 5.x
Chrome (Version 13.x) on Windows 7 / Windows Vista / Windows XP
Safari (Version 5.1.1+) on Windows 7 / Windows Vista / Windows XP / iPad 2 (iOS 5.x)
Internet Explorer (Version 7.x+) on Windows 7 / Windows Vista / Windows XP

The only minor wrinkle to the multi-browser support is that the administration pages (assuming that means system configuration, etc.) will still require Internet Explorer but that’s no big deal.
Activity Feed Enhancements
Microsoft is continuing to invest in the enterprise social networking space by adding new features to the Activity Feeds module they first released in November 2011. These enhancements include:

Like and Dislike (Dislike? Really? Even Facebook doesn’t have that :))
Filter to just show your @ mentions
Filter based on the types of records you follow
Filter on record views
Updated mobile app for Windows Phone 7.5

SQL Server 2012
This one is pretty obvious and you might be tempted to think this is just an infrastructure benefit. However, SQL Server 2012 actually offers the potential for cool new reporting options through the new Power View tools. If you have not seen Power View in SQL Server 2012 yet, check it out right away…it’s impressive! The H2 2012 update will include some pre-built PowerPivot models and PowerView reports to help you get started.
Read Optimized User Interface This is a neat new option that allows users to open CRM records in a light-weight read-only form. By doing so, users will see significant improvements in form loading times because there’s less data to download. If the user then wants to edit a record, they just click the “Edit” button to access all of the fields. Even better, each user can specify their personal preference on whether they want the form to open in Read-Only or Edit mode by default.
Custom Workflow Assemblies in CRM Online
Currently, Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online does not support custom workflow assemblies. HOWEVER, that gap will be fixed soon because the H2 2012 release will support custom workflow assemblies in an Online deployment.
Additional Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online Certifications The Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online datacenter has been going through auditing and certification for many of the industry standard certifications that customers request. The H2 2012 update will be compliant with these certs:

Safe Harbor
ISO 27001, SAS70 Type II, SOX
Data Processing Agreement (DPA)
EU Model Clauses
HIPPAA / BAA
SSAE SOC1 Type II

Industry Templates Last but not least, Microsoft will offer some industry specific templates to help ramp up customers and partners. We would suggest that you use these for evaluation purposes only, they aren’t ready for customers to drop in and get started using immediately in our opinion. The industry templates include: non-profit, wealth management, health plan sales, and relationship management for health.
Overall, it’s great to see the continued investment into Microsoft Dynamics CRM. I am also proud of the Microsoft CRM product team by sticking to continual updates every 6 months (versus the old model of updates once every 3 years).

Gut vernetzt: Microsoft kündigt Dynamics CRM Mobile an

2012-02-06T06:02:00.000-08:00

Gut vernetzt: Microsoft kündigt Dynamics CRM Mobile an
Kommendes Service-Update von Microsoft Dynamics CRM wird mit neuer Cloud-basierten mobilen App ausgeliefert und ist für alle Endgeräte und Plattformen verfügbar.

Unterschleißheim, 06. Februar 2012. Das nächste Service-Update für Microsoft Dynamics CRM erscheint im zweiten Quartal 2012. Anwender können dann erstmals sämtliche Funktionen der CRM-Software auf verschiedenen mobilen Endgeräten nutzen. Verantwortlich ist hierfür ein neuer, Cloud-basierter mobiler Service, der gängige Plattformen wie Windows Phone 7, iPad, iPhone, Android und BlackBerry unterstützt. Abgesehen vom neuen mobilen Dienst optimiert das Service-Update auch das Zusammenspiel mit der Social Media-Welt und bietet neben dem Internet Explorer neue Zugriffsmöglichkeiten über Webbrowser wie Chrome, Firefox oder Safari.

„In der heutigen eng vernetzten Welt müssen unsere Kunden jederzeit auf geschäftskritische Informationen zugreifen können - ganz egal, welches Gerät sie an welchem Ort benutzen”, unterstreicht Jochen Wießler, Direktor Microsoft Business Solutions bei der Microsoft Deutschland GmbH.

CRM auf allen mobilen Geräten

Mit Microsoft Dynamics CRM Mobile haben es Manager, Vertriebs- und Servicemitarbeiter künftig leichter, mit ihren Kunden oder untereinander in Verbindung zu bleiben - und das mit den verschiedensten mobilen Geräten innerhalb einer sicheren Umgebung. So können beispielsweise Vertriebsmitarbeiter rund um die Uhr Verkaufschancen verfolgen oder Marketingspezialisten unterwegs Kampagnen planen.

Die flexible Entwicklungsumgebung von Microsoft Dynamics CRM erlaubt es Unternehmen, ihre erweiterten CRM (xRM)-Anwendungen auf relativ einfache Weise für den mobilen Einsatz vorzubereiten.

Hand in Hand mit Social Media

Ein weiterer Schwerpunkt des Service-Updates betrifft die Integration in die Social Media-Welt. Anwender können sich per Aktivitätsfeeds über Neuigkeiten austauschen, Statusmeldungen aktualisieren sowie Kommentare und „Gefällt mir” Bewertungen abgeben. Verbesserte Statusfilter und konsolidierte Ansichten, sämtlicher Statusmeldungen zu einzelnen Kontakten erleichtern es, relevante Kundeninformationen im Blick zu behalten und produktiver zu arbeiten.

Weitere Informationen zum Microsoft Dynamics CRM Service-Update sind im Release Preview Guide (http://bit.ly/a8xxbx) und im Blogpost von Dennis Michaelis (http://bit.ly/z6xnvd) zu finden. Die Adresse bei Twitter lautet www.twitter.com/msdynamicscrm beziehungsweise #MSDYNCRM und #crm2011.

Die Microsoft Deutschland GmbH ist die 1983 gegründete Tochtergesellschaft der Microsoft Corporation/Redmond, U.S.A., des weltweit führenden Herstellers von Standardsoftware, Services und Lösungen mit 69,94 Mrd. US-Dollar Umsatz (Geschäftsjahr 2011; 30. Juni 2011). Der operative Gewinn im Fiskaljahr 2011 betrug 23,15 Mrd. US-Dollar. Neben der Firmenzentrale in Unterschleißheim bei München ist die Microsoft Deutschland GmbH bundesweit mit sechs Regionalbüros vertreten und beschäftigt rund 2.700 Mitarbeiterinnen und Mitarbeiter. Im Verbund mit rund 37.000 Partnerunternehmen betreut sie Firmen aller Branchen und Größen. Das Advanced Technology Labs Europe (ATLE) in Aachen hat Forschungsschwerpunkte in IT-Sicherheit, Datenschutz, Mobilität, mobile Anwendungen und Web-Services.

Neu in Hamburg Dynamics Consulting.de - Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Experts aus Hamburg

2012-02-05T00:19:00.000-08:00

Neu in Hamburg Dynamics Consulting.de - Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Experts aus Hamburg

Dynamics Consulting Hamburg berät, implementiert und betreibt Dynamics CRM- und xRM-Systeme auf Basis der Softwareplatform Microsoft Dynamics CRM in Deutschland, Europa und international. Das Unternehmen steht Ihnen seit 2002 zur Verfügung und verfügt überstarke Erfahrungen im Infrastruktur Betrieb, Applications Betrieb -& Hosting Bereich.

http://www.dynamicsconsulting.de/

Der Teil-Bereich Microsoft Dynamics CRM Consulting wurde in den letzen 5 Jahren in Hamburg stark ausgebaut , das er mittlerweile unser Hauptgeschäft darstellt.
Als Experte im Bereich Dynamics CRM 4.0 & Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 werden wir von Großunternehmen zu laufenden als auch abgeschlossenen Microsft Dynamics CRM Projekten hinzugezogen. Aus den Projektunterstützung können wir auf folgende besondere Erfarhungen zurückgreifen:

- Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 and Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 deployment and configuration
- Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 and Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 troubleshooting and performance review (over 600 cases successfully solved!)
- Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 and Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 customizing
- CRM Processes and PRM (Partner RM/B2B Business) processes
- 3nd Level Consulting Support for Microsoft Dynamics CRM Projects
- Microsoft Dynamics CRM Project reviews
- Proof of Concept for Dynamics CRM 4.0 and Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011

Wir bieten Ihnen Zusammen mit unserem qualitätsgesicherten Partnernetzwerk, Microsoft Dynamics CRM Beratung, Support, Dynamics CRM Hosting und Microsoft Dynamics CRM Add-ons in Europa, und Nord-Amerika an.

http://www.dynamicsconsulting.de/

=====================================================================

Dynamics Consulting Hamburg provides technology and business process consulting services to enterprise and mid-sized companies throughout europe and usa with a focus on Microsoft Dynamics CRM. We specialize in larger and more complex deployments where customers really want to leverage CRM to transform their businesses.

high experience on:

- Dynamics CRM 4.0 and 2011 deployment and configuration
- Dynamics CRM 4.0 and 2011 troubleshooting and performance review (over 600 cases successfully solved!)
- Dynamics CRM 4.0 and 2011 customizing
- CRM Processes and PRM (Partner RM/B2B Business) processes
- 3nd Level Consulting Support for Microsoft Dynamics CRM Projects
- Dynamics CRM Project reviews
- Proof of Concept for Dynamics CRM 4.0 and Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011

Dynamics Consulting provides an quality-saved Partner-Network with Dynamics CRM Consulting, Support, Dynamics CRM Hosting and Microsoft CRM Add-ons throughout europe and usa with a focus on Microsoft Dynamics CRM.

http://www.dynamicsconsulting.de/

Neu in Bremen Dynamics Consulting.de - Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Experts aus Bremen

2012-02-05T00:16:00.000-08:00

Neu in Bremen Dynamics Consulting.de - Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Experts aus Bremen

Dynamics Consulting Bremen berät, implementiert und betreibt Dynamics CRM- und xRM-Systeme auf Basis der Softwareplatform Microsoft Dynamics CRM in Deutschland, Europa und international. Das Unternehmen steht Ihnen seit 2002 zur Verfügung und verfügt überstarke Erfahrungen im Infrastruktur Betrieb, Applications Betrieb -& Hosting Bereich.

http://www.dynamicsconsulting.de/

Der Teil-Bereich Microsoft Dynamics CRM Consulting wurde in den letzen 5 Jahren in Bremen stark ausgebaut , das er mittlerweile unser Hauptgeschäft darstellt.
Als Experte im Bereich Dynamics CRM 4.0 & Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 werden wir von Großunternehmen zu laufenden als auch abgeschlossenen Microsft Dynamics CRM Projekten hinzugezogen. Aus den Projektunterstützung können wir auf folgende besondere Erfarhungen zurückgreifen:

- Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 and Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 deployment and configuration
- Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 and Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 troubleshooting and performance review (over 600 cases successfully solved!)
- Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 and Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 customizing
- CRM Processes and PRM (Partner RM/B2B Business) processes
- 3nd Level Consulting Support for Microsoft Dynamics CRM Projects
- Microsoft Dynamics CRM Project reviews
- Proof of Concept for Dynamics CRM 4.0 and Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011

Wir bieten Ihnen Zusammen mit unserem qualitätsgesicherten Partnernetzwerk, Microsoft Dynamics CRM Beratung, Support, Dynamics CRM Hosting und Microsoft Dynamics CRM Add-ons in Europa, und Nord-Amerika an.

http://www.dynamicsconsulting.de/

=====================================================================

Dynamics Consulting Bremen provides technology and business process consulting services to enterprise and mid-sized companies throughout europe and usa with a focus on Microsoft Dynamics CRM. We specialize in larger and more complex deployments where customers really want to leverage CRM to transform their businesses.

high experience on:

- Dynamics CRM 4.0 and 2011 deployment and configuration
- Dynamics CRM 4.0 and 2011 troubleshooting and performance review (over 600 cases successfully solved!)
- Dynamics CRM 4.0 and 2011 customizing
- CRM Processes and PRM (Partner RM/B2B Business) processes
- 3nd Level Consulting Support for Microsoft Dynamics CRM Projects
- Dynamics CRM Project reviews
- Proof of Concept for Dynamics CRM 4.0 and Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011

Dynamics Consulting provides an quality-saved Partner-Network with Dynamics CRM Consulting, Support, Dynamics CRM Hosting and Microsoft CRM Add-ons throughout europe and usa with a focus on Microsoft Dynamics CRM.

http://www.dynamicsconsulting.de/

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Unleashed

2012-02-02T06:19:00.001-08:00

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Unleashed

Book Description

Microsoft® Dynamics CRM 2011 Unleashed presents start-to-finish guidance for planning, customizing, deploying, integrating, managing, and securing the newest version of Dynamics CRM. Authored by three leading Microsoft Dynamics implementers, it illuminates new opportunities to deploy CRM as a hosted service (SaaS), integrate with Azure cloud services, and extend CRM through Microsoft’s new online service marketplace. The authors systematically explain how Dynamics CRM 2011 works, illuminating why it works that way, and how to drive maximum business value from it. Drawing on insider knowledge of Microsoft’s new product, they present clear examples, proven best practices, and pitfalls to avoid in using every significant Dynamics CRM capability. Their far-reaching coverage ranges from Dynamics CRM’s sales, marketing, and customer service features to its automated workflows; Outlook and Office integration to reporting and security. This edition’s extensive new coverage includes new chapters on Mobility, the Outlook Client, and Office 2010 integration, as well as greatly expanded coverage of CRM Online. It also contains new or expanded discussions of data visualization, SharePoint Foundation integration, user interface changes, inbuild charts, dashboards, IM and SMS communication support, auditing, no-code workflows, connections, queues, the new WCF-based programming model, UI scripting, and security.Table of Contents Chapter 1. New Features of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Chapter 2. Why Business Needs a CRM System Chapter 3. Requirements for CRM 2011 Chapter 4. Setting Up CRM 2011 Chapter 5. Working with the Ribbon Menu Chapter 6. Working with Customers Chapter 7. Working with the Workplace Chapter 8. Working with Sales Chapter 9. Working with Marketing Chapter 10. Working with Service Chapter 11. Reporting Chapter 12. Settings and Configuration Chapter 13. Client Configuration Options Chapter 14. E-Mail Configuration Chapter 15. Mobility Chapter 16. Solution Concepts Chapter 17. CRM 2011 SharePoint Integration Chapter 18. Azure Extensions Chapter 19. Advanced Views and Connections Chapter 20. Filtered Lookups Chapter 21. Reporting and Dashboards Chapter 22. Forms Authentication Chapter 23. Customizing Entities Chapter 24. Processes Development Chapter 25. Plug-Ins Chapter 26. Web Services Chapter 27. Advanced Solution Management Chapter 28. Interacting with Custom Web Applications Chapter 29. Data Management Chapter 30. CRM 2011 and Scribe Online Services

Book Details

Paperback: 1008 pages
Publisher: Sams (September 2011)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0672335387
ISBN-13: 978-0672335389

File Size: 109.0 MiB

Calculate the Actual Value of an Opportunity in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Using .NET or Jscript

2012-02-02T05:34:00.001-08:00

Calculate the Actual Value of an Opportunity in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Using .NET or Jscript

This illustration shows how to calculate the actual value of an opportunity in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 with CalculateActualValueOpportunityRequest. This example will be given in Jscript (SOAP) and in C# (.NET).

Ok, here is what the code looks like!

First in C#:

 CalculateActualValueOpportunityRequest req = new CalculateActualValueOpportunityRequest(); req.OpportunityId = new Guid("F66A58B1-6847-E111-8D3C-1CC1DEF1353B"); CalculateActualValueOpportunityResponse resp = (CalculateActualValueOpportunityResponse)service.Execute(req);

If you need help instantiating a service object in .NET within a plugin check out this post: http://mileyja.blogspot.com/2011/04/instantiating-service-object-within.html

Now here is the Jscript nicely formatted by the CRM 2011 SOAP formatter. Available at: http://crm2011soap.codeplex.com/Now in JscriptThis example is asynchronous, if you want to learn how to make JScript SOAP calls synchronously please visit this post: http://mileyja.blogspot.com/2011/07/using-jscript-to-access-soap-web.html

 if (typeof (SDK) == "undefined") { SDK = { __namespace: true }; } //This will establish a more unique namespace for functions in this library. This will reduce the // potential for functions to be overwritten due to a duplicate name when the library is loaded. SDK.SAMPLES = { _getServerUrl: function () { ///<summary> /// Returns the URL for the SOAP endpoint using the context information available in the form /// or HTML Web resource. ///</summary> var ServicePath = "/XRMServices/2011/Organization.svc/web"; var serverUrl = ""; if (typeof GetGlobalContext == "function") { var context = GetGlobalContext(); serverUrl = context.getServerUrl(); } else { if (typeof Xrm.Page.context == "object") { serverUrl = Xrm.Page.context.getServerUrl(); } else { throw new Error("Unable to access the server URL"); } } if (serverUrl.match(/\/$/)) { serverUrl = serverUrl.substring(0, serverUrl.length - 1); } return serverUrl + ServicePath; }, CalculateActualValueOpportunityRequest: function () { var requestMain = "" requestMain += "<s:Envelope xmlns:s=\"http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/\">"; requestMain += " <s:Body>"; requestMain += " <Execute xmlns=\"http://schemas.microsoft.com/xrm/2011/Contracts/Services\" xmlns:i=\"http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance\">"; requestMain += " <request i:type=\"b:CalculateActualValueOpportunityRequest\" xmlns:a=\"http://schemas.microsoft.com/xrm/2011/Contracts\" xmlns:b=\"http://schemas.microsoft.com/crm/2011/Contracts\">"; requestMain += " <a:Parameters xmlns:c=\"http://schemas.datacontract.org/2004/07/System.Collections.Generic\">"; requestMain += " <a:KeyValuePairOfstringanyType>"; requestMain += " <c:key>OpportunityId</c:key>"; requestMain += " <c:value i:type=\"d:guid\" xmlns:d=\"http://schemas.microsoft.com/2003/10/Serialization/\">f66a58b1-6847-e111-8d3c-1cc1def1353b</c:value>"; requestMain += " </a:KeyValuePairOfstringanyType>"; requestMain += " </a:Parameters>"; requestMain += " <a:RequestId i:nil=\"true\" />"; requestMain += " <a:RequestName>CalculateActualValueOpportunity</a:RequestName>"; requestMain += " </request>"; requestMain += " </Execute>"; requestMain += " </s:Body>"; requestMain += "</s:Envelope>"; var req = new XMLHttpRequest(); req.open("POST", SDK.SAMPLES._getServerUrl(), true) req.setRequestHeader("Accept", "application/xml, text/xml, */*"); req.setRequestHeader("Content-Type", "text/xml; charset=utf-8"); req.setRequestHeader("SOAPAction", "http://schemas.microsoft.com/xrm/2011/Contracts/Services/IOrganizationService/Execute"); var successCallback = null; var errorCallback = null; req.onreadystatechange = function () { SDK.SAMPLES.CalculateActualValueOpportunityResponse(req, successCallback, errorCallback); }; req.send(requestMain); }, CalculateActualValueOpportunityResponse: function (req, successCallback, errorCallback) { ///<summary> /// Recieves the assign response ///</summary> ///<param name="req" Type="XMLHttpRequest"> /// The XMLHttpRequest response ///</param> ///<param name="successCallback" Type="Function"> /// The function to perform when an successfult response is returned. /// For this message no data is returned so a success callback is not really necessary. ///</param> ///<param name="errorCallback" Type="Function"> /// The function to perform when an error is returned. /// This function accepts a JScript error returned by the _getError function ///</param> if (req.readyState == 4) { if (req.status == 200) { if (successCallback != null) { successCallback(); } } else { errorCallback(SDK.SAMPLES._getError(req.responseXML)); } } }, _getError: function (faultXml) { ///<summary> /// Parses the WCF fault returned in the event of an error. ///</summary> ///<param name="faultXml" Type="XML"> /// The responseXML property of the XMLHttpRequest response. ///</param> var errorMessage = "Unknown Error (Unable to parse the fault)"; if (typeof faultXml == "object") { try { var bodyNode = faultXml.firstChild.firstChild; //Retrieve the fault node for (var i = 0; i < bodyNode.childNodes.length; i++) { var node = bodyNode.childNodes[i]; //NOTE: This comparison does not handle the case where the XML namespace changes if ("s:Fault" == node.nodeName) { for (var j = 0; j < node.childNodes.length; j++) { var faultStringNode = node.childNodes[j]; if ("faultstring" == faultStringNode.nodeName) { errorMessage = faultStringNode.text; break; } } break; } } } catch (e) { }; } return new Error(errorMessage); }, __namespace: true };

To understand how to parse the response please review my post on using the DOM parser.

http://mileyja.blogspot.com/2011/03/microsoft-dynamics-crm-2011-parsing.html

Now you can call the SDK.SAMPLES.CalculateActualValueOpportunityRequest function from your form jscript handler.

Thats all there is to it!

CRM 2011 – Offline and Outlook Filters and Templates: Local Data Groups

2012-02-02T02:28:00.000-08:00

Introduction

The way in which CRM controls what users download to their online and offline Outlook clients has been improved with the 2011 version, as you can read here. However, in my opinion some of this functionality is not immediately clear. This article is meant to provide a complement to the MSDN article cited above by explaining these features in more detail.In the next article we’ll see how the CRM 2011 Views and Filters Toolkit can be used to perform tasks related to Filters and Templates, as well as to access some of the functionality that until now was only available through the CRM API.

Some Terminology

In the context of this article there are four terms that, in various combinations, mean different things. Let’s note down few facts about each to act as reference while looking at the functionality. The terms are Outlook, Offline, Filter and Template.

Outlook

This term refers to synchronization capabilities of the CRM Outlook Client when it’s online. The standard Outlook Client is always online. The Offline Outlook Client is online when the user has pressed the “Go Online” button.

Offline

This term refers to synchronization capabilities of the CRM Outlook Client when it’s offline. The standard Outlook Client can never be offline. The Offline Outlook Client is offline when the user has pressed the “Go Offline” button.

Filter

A filter is a query that CRM uses to determine what data should be synchronized between the CRM server and the Outlook Client. Filters can be of two types: System Filters and User Filters.

Template

This is a template query that can be instantiated as a User Filter for a particular user.

Synchronising Data: Filters

Outlook vs. Offline

Outlook synchronizes only few entities when online, such as contacts, appointments, tasks etc. If the user has installed the Offline CRM Client, Outlook synchronizes much more data than just contacts and activities when going offline. In theory one could choose to have the whole database available offline, which would give an offline user the ability to access the same set of data as if they were working online.To decide what to synchronise in both scenarios, i.e. to determine Local Data Groups, CRM relies on filters, which are called Outlook Filters or Offline Filters depending on whether they apply to when Outlook is online or offline respectively. In addition, each filter can be a System or User filter.

System vs. User Filters

System Filters are stored in the SavedQueryBase table and they are valid for all users. User Filters are stored in the UserQueryBase table and they apply only to their owner. Think of this difference as the difference between a System View and a Personal View.Users are empowered to maintain their User Filters, as described here, but only administrators can maintain System Filters. In addition, administrators can control the deployment of User Filters via the template mechanism discussed later in this article.

Filter Types

To recap, the following table shows all available filter types and their main attributes.

On / Off	S / U	QueryType	Table	Description
Online	System	OutlookFilters (256)	SavedQueryBase	Determines which data to synchronise when online. Applies to all users.
Offline	System	OfflineFilters (16)	SavedQueryBase	Determines which data to synchronise when offline. Applies to all users.
Online	User	OutlookFilters (256)	UserQueryBase	Determines which data to synchronise when online. Applies to one user only.
Offline	User	OfflineFilters (16)	UserQueryBase	Determines which data to synchronise when offline. Applies to one user only.

A consideration related to the table above is that the QueryType attribute is technically not the same for all filters, since filters can be either savedquery or userquery CRM entities, depending on whether they are System or User Filters respectively.Therefore, the QueryType attribute can be of type SavedQueryQueryType or UserQueryQueryType. The two are not equivalent: you can find the definition of the two types here and here.

Filter Templates

As explained above, users are empowered to maintain their User Filters, but administrators can control the deployment of User Filters via Filter Templates.Filter Templates are queries that can be instantiated as User Filters. Templates reside in the SavedQueryBase table (the instantiated User Filters are of course in the UserQueryBase table). Each User Filter record contains a reference back to the filter in the UserQueryId.ParentQueryId attribute.Like Filters, Templates can be for offline or online synchronisation, as shown in the table below.

On / Off	QueryType	Table	Description
Online	OutlookTemplate (131072)	SavedQueryBase	Instantiates a corresponding User Filter of type OutlookFilters.
Offline	OfflineTemplate (8192)	SavedQueryBase	Instantiates a corresponding User Filter of type OfflineFilters.

A Filter Template can be manually instantiated as a User Filter through a call to the InstantiateFiltersRequest request.

Default Filter Templates

A template can be marked as default by setting its SavedQuery.IsDefault attribute.Each entity can have only one filter template that is marked as default. If you create a custom entity, and set the IsAvailableOffline property, a default filter template is created automatically.When new users are added to the system, all templates marked with the IsDefault attribute will cause User Filters to be instantiated to those users automatically.In addition, all User Filters can be manually reset (which includes re-instantiating all the applicable templates) through the ResetUserFiltersRequest request.

Example

To see how the considerations above translate into reality, get your hands on a CRM 2011 instance and run the following query:

view source

print ?

1 SELECT

`2`	`SavedQueryId,` `Name, Description, QueryType, IsDefault`

3 FROM

`4`	`SavedQuery`

5 WHERE

`6`	`QueryType` `IN` `(131072, 8192)` `AND` `ReturnedTypeCode = 2`

If the default configuration has not been modified extensively, the query should return the following results:

SavedQueryId	Name	Description	QueryType	IsDefault
65D2CBA8-EEDA-4419-B03B-D9C2D8272E51	My Contacts	Contacts owned by me	8192	1
58DC4BEE-60B7-4A84-987F-800296B71404	My Outlook Contacts	Contacts Syncing to Outlook	131072	1

You can see that there are two Filter Templates for contacts in the SavedQueryBase table: one for Online and one for Offline filters.If you look in the UserQueryBase table for a particular user:

view source

print ?

`1`	`SELECT` `TOP` `2`

`2`	`Name, Description, QueryType, ParentQueryId`

3 FROM

`4`	`UserQuery`

5 WHERE

`6`	`QueryType` `IN` `(256, 16)` `AND` `ReturnedTypeCode = 2`

`7`	`ORDER` `BY` `OwnerIdName`

You should get the following results:

Name	Description	QueryType	ParentQueryId
My Outlook Contacts	Contacts Syncing to Outlook	256	58DC4BEE-60B7-4A84-987F-800296B71404
My Contacts	Contacts owned by me	16	65D2CBA8-EEDA-4419-B03B-D9C2D8272E51

Each filter in the table above is an instance of its corresponding template, as confirmed by the fact that the ParentQueryId attribute points back to the template.

Conclusions

Hopefully this article sheds some light into Filters, Templates and how they are related to Local Data Groups.The next article will show how the CRM 2011 Views and Filters Toolkit can be used to perform complex tasks related to Filters and Templates, as well as to access some of the functionality that until now was only available through the API.http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg328205.aspx

Replicate Local Data Group (Offline Client / Outlook)

If you are using offline client application in CRM implementation, you will notice that configuring local data group is a very painful task for all developers. For me, most of our customers are using offline client applications in their daily operations. We have to configure local data group for all laptops based on their user roles and configuration. It took more than one and half hour to finish the whole configuration setup for each laptop.

Last year, one of our customers suggested a console application called MSCRM: Automate Local Data Group Creation. It is very helpful application for us. We need to setup configuration for only one laptop (one user role) and copy it to the rest of users' laptops. Amazingly, it took only a few minutes to finish the whole process. But, there still has some draw backs. It required a few configuration steps to finished very carefully. Here is the list of steps for configuration:

Go to SQL server and delete some records
Create one text file which contains the list of views that you want to copy, and
Run batch program with pre-defined parameters/commands, etc.

In short, it is not possible to ask users to help configuration on themselves. They still need supervision of professionals. One mistake can screw up the whole database and operations.

So, I decided to do re-engineer works based on existing application. I changed existing web service calles to CRM 4.0, take out the first step (SQL delete process) and add user interface to automate the whole process. Thanks to David Jennaway for contributing his knowledge, idea and source code to community.

Below is the screen shot of my "Replicate Local Data Group" application:

You can run this application from any location/computer if you have access to their CRM application.

Caution: Please backup your CRM user database first before running this application. Application will delete all Local Data Groups of destination users to prevent duplication.

System Requirement:

.NET Framework 2.0

Access Matrix:

The login user who is connecting to CRM must be a member of PrivUserGroup. If you done more thant one installation for CRM, you will fine multiple PrivUserGroup in AD. Please make sure you are using correct one for login user.
All replicate users must have CREATE, READ, WRITE and DELETE access to their own records (User) in "Saved View" entity. You can find "Saved View" entity under Core Record tab of your user role.

Download Link:

xRM Replicate Local Data Group (Application)

xRM Replicate Local Data Group (Source Code)

Reference:

Adding Users to an Active Directory Group

Jeffry van de Vuurst : 0x80040204 Invalid user auth. Platform MSCRM: Automate Local Data Group Creation

Impersonate CrmService Web Service calls by using CallerId

http://www.dynamicsconsulting.de/2012/02/02/crm-2011-offline-and-outlook-filters-and-templates-local-data-groups/

www.biztom.de

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011: What's New

2012-02-01T23:34:00.000-08:00

Learn what is new in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011, including the changes to support business process and the capturing and matching of business processes to the technology application.

In this hour, we will explore some of what is new in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011, including the changes to support business process and the capturing and matching of business processes to the technology application. Understanding which features were released with which upgrade and what is new in Dynamics CRM 2011 vs. Dynamics CRM v4 allows a CRM administrator and partners to better determine which features they want to push to their maximum potential and which features might need a bit more watching and maturing. Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 has more than 500 new features, and we cover as many of them as possible throughout this book.

The New User Interface, Dashboards, and Charts

If you are familiar with Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0, the first thing you will notice when you access Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 is that the user interface (UI) has changed. The grumblings from the field about tabs and too many clicks created change from the extremely responsive development team. The appearance of the UI has flattened. In addition, user-definable charts and dashboards have been added. Now although it has been flattened and looks a bit different, the concept of sections within a form still applies. It is not that different from the old version, just different enough to streamline data entry.
Now to get started we are going to look at the new Get Started pane that has been added to every display. This pane is optional but by default is turned on. Take a look at Figure 3.1.

Figure 3.1. The Get Started with Accounts pane.

Entity Views, Forms, and Displays

The new look and feel of the Account entity gives you a good idea of how things have changed for all entities in Dynamics CRM 2011. The top of the Accounts screen now has the Get Started pane, which we discussed previously and which is populated with user resources such as quick tips on how to import, use, modify, and manage your account information.
Another new visual enhancement is the consistent use of the Microsoft Office ribbon. You might love the ribbon or hate it, but it is the Microsoft Office standard, and Microsoft Dynamics CRM embraces it fully in the 2011 release. Figure 3.2 shows the Office ribbon as it appears with Dynamics CRM Workplace, Accounts selected.

Figure 3.2. The Office ribbon.

Dashboards

Dashboards allow you to construct multiple sets of charts and grids that make the most sense for your business or for your individual requirements at work. Several dashboards are shipped out of the box, but the ability to pick and choose different charts to put into your dashboard is limited only by your imagination.

Charts

Charts now apply to every entity. Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 has views associated with every entity, and a similar architecture has been applied to charts in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011. For each entity, you can establish a set of charts. Charts and views go hand in hand; you can take a view of data and show it graphically using a chart. Figure 3.3 shows the chart on the Activity entity called Activities by Type.

Figure 3.3. An Activities by Type chart.

Department- or Group-Specific Forms

When getting started with Dynamics CRM, you might want to continue to stick with one form for each entity. However, you now have the option to configure your data entry forms based on different user security roles. This significantly reduces the amount of scripting used to hide fields that might exist in your Dynamics CRM 4.0 system. Figure 3.4 shows the forms that come with the product: main and mobile. You can add more forms if you like and then apply forms to different groups of users.

Figure 3.4. A List of forms on the Account entity.

http://www.dynamicsconsulting.de/dynamics_crm_2011_beratung/dynamics-crm-einfuehrung/

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Summary: How to change the maximum number of records that you can export from Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011/4.0/3.0 to a Microsoft Office Excel worksheet

2012-02-01T10:44:00.000-08:00

Change Excel Export Limit for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011

In Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 ist die Anzahl der Datensätze, die man nach Excel exportieren kann, auf 10.000 begrenzt. Es gibt keine Möglichkeit diese Grenze zu erhöhen – kein supportete Möglichkeit.Unsupportet sieht das ganze schon anders aus. Mit folgendem SQL-Statement kann man die Grenze auf z.B. 2 Millionen erhöhen:UPDATE [OrganizationDatabaseName].[dbo].[OrganizationBase] SET [MaxRecordsForExportToExcel] = 2000000Folgende Parameter muß man ersetzen: - OrganizationDatabaseName: Name der Datenbank der Organisation - 2000000: Neue Grenze der maximal zu exportierenden Datensätze

Natürlich sollte man immer damit rechnen, dass das Ganze in einem Timeout endet, wenn man es übertreibt.===================================================================See the same change for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 and Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0Increase the Maximum Records exported to ExcelWhen exporting a large amount of records from CRM to Excel you will find that the maximum number of records that can be exported are limited to 10,000.By default, you can export a maximum of 10,000 records from Microsoft Dynamics CRM to an Excel worksheet by using the “Static worksheet with records from all pages in the current view” feature.If you export more than 10,000 records, only the first 10,000 records are exported. You do not receive a warning message that lets you know that only the first 10,000 records were exported.In Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0, the change is to edit a registry key, which is noted in the following KB article.How to change the maximum number of records that you can export from Microsoft Dynamics CRM to a Microsoft Office Excel worksheethttp://support.microsoft.com/kb/911395/In Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0, you can change the maximum number of records by changing a database value.Follow the steps below to make the change at the database level in CRM 4.0

Open SQL Mangement Studio
Use the <organization>_MSCRM database
Open the OrganizationBase table
Locate the column – MaxRecordsForExportToExcel
Change the value to the new value

http://www.dynamicsconsulting.de/2012/02/01/summary-how-to-change-the-maximum-number-of-records-that-you-can-export-from-microsoft-dynamics-crm-20114-03-0-to-a-microsoft-office-excel-worksheet/

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XRM - Modernes Beziehungsmanagement mit Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011

2012-01-28T03:52:00.000-08:00

XRM - Modernes Beziehungsmanagement

Globales Beziehungsmanagement (xRM) jenseits des Kunden

Für viele spezielle Geschäftslösungen lohnt es sich, auf der Grundfunktionalität flexibler CRM-Software aufzusetzen, statt mit Individualsoftware bei Null anzufangen. Die Vielfalt der möglichen Anwendungen drückt x Relationship Management oder kurz xRM aus.

Oft starten diese Lösungen mit einfachem Kontaktmanagement. Schnell aber werden Strukturen komplexer und funktionale Anforderungen größer, beispielsweise bei einer xRM-Anwendung für einen Einkaufsverband mit gewachsenen Mitglieder- und Lieferantenstrukturen. Hier hilft anwenderfreundliche, konfigurierbare und funktionale CRM-Grundsoftware. Dies ist in unserem Fall die in Deutschland marktführende Software Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011.

Werthaltige Basisfunktionalität hilft bei xRM
Anstatt bei Null anzufangen sind unsere xRM-Lösungen bereits mit einer reichhaltigen Basisfunktionalität ausgestattet.

Zentrale Datenhaltung an einer Stelle im Unternehmen
Fertige Informationsobjekte für Firmen, Personen, Projekte, ...
E-Mail und Kalender (voll integriert mit Exchange und Lotus Notes, GroupWise)
Weitere konfigurierbare Informationsobjekte und deren relationale Beziehungen
Anpassbare Navigation (auch unterschiedlich für verschiedene Rollen)
Definierbare Workflows
Integriertes Reporting, Excel-Schnittstelle
Brieferstellung mit Microsoft Office und OpenOffice Vorlagen
Serienaussendungsfunktionalität (E-Mail oder Word)
Bewährtes, pflegbares Zugriffs- und Sicherheitskonzept
Vorbereitet auf Integration mit ERP-Systemen

Branchenbeispiele für erfolgreiches X-Beziehungsmanagement

Lieferanten-Management

Lösungen stellen hier die kommunikative (Korrespondenz, Berichte, Dokumente) und koordinative (Termine, Aufgaben) Komponente von Einkauf und Logistik in den Vordergrund und ergänzen die vorhandenen zahlenorientierten ERP- oder SCM-Komponenten.

Mitglieder-Management

Sei es bei Verbänden oder bei Einkaufsgemeinschaften: die gute, aber auch effiziente Betreuung der Mitglieder essentiell. Dabei ergeben sich oft komplexe Informationsnetze rund um die Mitglieder: Arbeitsgruppen, genutzte Produkte und Services, Katalogbezüge, ...

Gesellschafter-Management

Geht es um Gesellschafter statt um Mitglieder liegt die Latte beim Betreuungsanspruch oft noch höher. Dazu kommen wachsend komplexe Strukturen, da Gesellschafter oft für mehrere Gesellschaften tätig sind und so ein erweitertes Beziehungsnetz abzubilden ist.

Presse- und Medienmanagement

Aussendungen an Verteiler, aber auch flexible Beziehungsstrukturen zwischen Verlagen, Medien und oft freiberuflichen Journalisten sind hier bedeutsam.

Investoren –Management

Börsennotierte Unternehmen unterliegen mittlerweile strengen Regeln bezüglich der Investorenkommunikation. Hier können Lösungen zur Beziehungspflege u.a. für eine einheitliche, regelkonforme und dokumentierte Kommunikation sorgen.

Behörden-Management

Insbesondere "Lobbyarbeit" zu regulierenden Instanzen und deren Umfeld aus Gutachtern, Beratern etc. braucht spezielle Systeme, bei denen Datensicherheit eine wichtige Rolle spielt.

Partner-Management

Bei Absatzpartnern (Händlern, Distributoren, ...) erfolgt die Beziehungspflege meist innerhalb von CRM, aber andere Partner wie Franchisenehmer, Banken oder Berater können besondere Anforderungen stellen.

Event- und Teilnahmemanagement

Die Planung von Events und Veranstaltungen und die zielgerichtete Verwaltung der Teilnehmer, Sprecher, VIPs, Referenten, Themen, Fachvorträgen, Verzeichnisse und Onlinebewerbung stellt eine klare Anforderung an eine XRM Lösung in diesem Bereich dar.

Subskriptionsmanagement

Abonnements, Mitgliedschaften, Clubteilnahmen, Dauerschuldverhältnisse sind zentrale Bestandteile dieser Lösung. Oft bedarf es der Anbindung an Logistiksysteme und E-Publishing Plattformen (z.B. bei Medienunternehmen und Verlagen), um auf allen Vertriebskanälen die Zielgruppen optimal zu versorgen.

Plagiats-Management

Zu diesem Thema können wir Ihnen keine XRM-Lösung anbieten, aber einen Doktor- und Professortitel wird unsere Lösung in diesem Bereich nicht prüfen und verifizieren. Wir wünschen viel Erfolg und Spaß beim Weiterlesen.

Call-Center Management

Die nahtlose Integration verschiedener Dialer-Technologien (Progressive Dialer und Predictive Dialer), sowie Call-Blending und gezieltes Outbound- und Inbound-Management in Kombination mit der richtigen Adressdatenbank und einem effektiven Kampagnenmanagement sind zentrale Bestandteile dieser XRM-Lösung.

XRM mit ERP geht auch….

Für viele der oben genannten XRM-Zielgruppen hat com:con bereits fertige Lösungen gestaltet. Diese weichen teilweise deutlich von klassischen CRM-Lösungen ab. Oft umfassen die xRM-Lösungen die Integration mit Warenwirtschafts-, Auftrags-, Buchhaltungs- oder ERP-Systemen wie beispielsweise SAP. Com:con verfügt über Integrationswerkzeuge und Softwaretechnologien von der Schnittstelle, über den technischen Konnektor bis zum kompletten Integrationsbaukastensystem. Profitieren Sie von unseren Erfahrungen in der noch jungen Disziplin xRM.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011: How to use Visual Ribbon Editor Tool?

2012-01-28T03:32:00.001-08:00

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011: How to use Visual Ribbon Editor Tool?

Recently, I was assigned a task of ribbon customization in Dynamics CRM. The requirement was like configure a custom ribbon button on custom entity to call some JavaScript methods. I’ve used the Visual Ribbon Editor Tool. This tool is quite handy and intuitive for ribbon customization. I would like to share my experience here in below post.Before to start with a Ribbon Editor Tool, let’s first configure the web resources (Images and JavaScript file). The images will be used as an icon on a button. Below are 3 different types that CRM supports. Image formats can be PNG, JPG, GIF or ICO.

Small: 16 x 16 pixels
Medium: 32 x 32 pixels
Large: 66 x 48 pixels

Following are the steps to add image to web resource 1. Click Web Resources on left navigation pane in your solution. 2. Click New to add web resource record. 3. Specify the name and the display name. 4. Select Format of the image. 5. Click browse to select an image path to upload image. 6. Save and publish the newly created web resource record. Follow the same process to add 32x32 Image. Let’s add a JavaScript function which will be called on custom button click These are the steps to add new Library as web resource 1. Repeat steps 1-3 as above 2. Select Script(JScript) as Type of web resource. 3. Click on Text Editor. 4. Insert below function in Text editor window

   1: function TestRibbon()

   2: {

   3:    alert("Test Ribbon Customization using Visual Ribbon Editor.");

   4: }

5. Click ok. 6. Save and publish a web resource Now it’s time to play with Visual Ribbon Editor Tool. Use below link to download it. http://crmvisualribbonedit.codeplex.com/releases/view/75530 Extract the files and Run “VisualRibbonEditor.exe” 1. Click on top – left of the screen named as “Connection Info..” , 2. Specify the connection details 3. Once connected, click on button. 4. Select the required entity for ribbon customization. 5. By default, It Loads the ribbon type as Form 6. If you want to create a new Group then click on “New Group” button. 7. Specify the ID Instead of creating new group, you could also add the button on existing group.For that you just need to select any existing group. In this example I have created a new group. It will be added at the last position on ribbon toolbar. 8. Click on New Button to insert a button on above group. 9. Specify the button name. 10. Specify the following details for the newly created button on Details tab.

a. Id: Defines button id. b. Label: Defines caption or display text for button. c. Tooltip: Defines tooltip text for the button. d. Template Alias: Defines how button will be displayed on ribbon with Large, medium, small icon and it also vary depending on the selected Template of group.(step-7)

01(Large) : Defines large image (32x32).
02(Medium): Defines small image (16x16).
isv(Medium): Defines small image (16x16).

e. Sequence: Use arrow buttons to setup a sequence of custom button. f. 16x16 Image: Name of button image from web resource (16x16).(Created as a web resource earlier) g. 32x32 Image: Name of button image from web resource (32x32). (Created as a web resource earlier)

11. Now, click on Action tab shown as below. 12. Click on Add link for specifying the “Function name” and “Library” You can also use “Display Rules” and “Enable Rules” via this tool which will allow us to configure many criteria for enabling/disabling a custom button. 13. Click on Save button that will import the solution in CRM 14. Now you can verify the button on your entity’s form ribbon. 15. On click of this button you’ll get the JavaScript alert Message.

http://www.dynamicsconsulting.de/2012/01/28/microsoft-dynamics-crm-2011-how-to-use-visual-ribbon-editor-tool/

http://www.biztom.de

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011: How to launch a Dialog on click of custom ribbon button?

2012-01-28T02:54:00.000-08:00

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011: How to launch a Dialog on click of custom ribbon button?

In this post I will explain how to launch a Dialog from Ribbon Button in Dynamics CRM. The requirement is like configure a custom ribbon button on custom entity which will launch a dialog (Process).In this Example, I’ve used custom entity “Flight Route” contains a button called “Test Button” which will launch a dialog. Dialog will select a flight name from the option set and insert new note record on the selected flight route record.Following are steps that demonstrate launch dialog from ribbon button.Before to start with a launch dialog, we need to create1. Create a dialog for “Flight Route” entity· Select Solution.· Select Processes.· Create new process. · Specify the Process name.· Select Entity.· Select “Activate as” as “Process” and “Category” as “Dialog”.· Configure it as an on-demand process. · For this dialog make sure that it should contain at least one“Prompt and Response”2. Javascript Library as a web resource· Create new Web resource” /javascripts/LaunchModalDialog.js”· Click on Text Editor.Insert below function in Text editor window.

   1: function LaunchModalDialog(dialogId,typeName,recordId)

   2: {

   3: var serverUrl = Xrm.Page.context.getServerUrl();

   4: recordId=recordId.replace("{", "");

   5: recordId=recordId.replace("}", "");

6:

   7: dialogId=dialogId.replace("{", "");

   8: dialogId=dialogId.replace("}", "");

9:

  10: // Load modal

  11: var serverUri = serverUrl +'/cs/dialog/rundialog.aspx';

12:

  13: var mypath =  serverUri +'?DialogId=%7b' +dialogId.toUpperCase()  +'%7d&EntityName=' + typeName+'&ObjectId=%7b' +recordId+'%7d';

14:

  15: // First item from selected contacts only

  16: window.showModalDialog(mypath);

17:

  18: // Reload form.

  19: window.location.reload(true);

  20: }

In above JavaScript method I have used 3 different parameters.dialogId is id of the dialog we need to open from button (String Parameter)typeName is entity’s logical name (String Parameter)recordId is entity’s current record id form where the dialog will be launched.3. Get the Dialog Id Value · Once you have created new dialog.· Click Start Dialog.· That will open new dialog window.· Get the dialog id value from the URL(Ctrl+N) and note it down somewhere,to use the same in coming steps.4. Insert custom button on entity’s form using Visual Ribbon editor. ( To create a new button on ribbon, you can refer below link---)http://ankit.inkeysolutions.com/2012/01/crm-2011-how-to-use-visual-ribbon.html5. After inserting a new custom button, follow the below steps to add JavaScript function with parameters · Click on Add link for specifying the “Function name” and “Library”a. Specify function name and library name.b. Click on “Add” link as shown below. It will open a list ofparameter types which you can pass with the function.As discussed earlier (refer step 2) we need 3 different parameters to call JavaScript method. Pass those values as described below. The first parameter will be the value which we have noted in step 3. The second one is entity name. And the last one is the record GUID.· Clicks on save. It will save and publish the changes on CRM server.6. Now you can verify the button on your entity’s form ribbon.7. On click of this button your dialog will be launched.8. Select Flight Name from the list and click next and then Finish on the last screen.9. At the end, a note will be generated on Flight Route entity

http://www.dynamicsconsulting.de/2012/01/28/microsoft-dynamics-crm-2011-how-to-launch-a-dialog-on-click-of-custom-ribbon-button/

http://www.biztom.de

Dynamics CRM 2011- Setting Multi-Level Categories Against a Record Codelessly

2012-01-27T01:23:00.000-08:00

Nice summary from Leon:

This is a bit of a variation on a theme I did a while ago when I talked about using filtered views for address population. In this case I wanted to explore if we could set up a subject-like hierarchy and then use filtered lookups to enter category levels easily against an account. It turns out it works quite nicely.

Essentially, you set the first category from you list of top level categories. Then, you set level 2 which will automatically adjust to only the valid values, based on the category 1 value. Finally, you set the category 3 value, based on the value in category 2.

So How Do I Set This Up?

First of all, we create a new Category entity.In this case I have stripped everything out; there are no notes, activities etc. and the record is organization owned.Next I set up a recursive 1:N relationship so that for a given category I can set an infinite number of category levels, each with an infinite number of categories.The main points of interest here are the changing of the display name to ‘Parent Category’ and the changing of the display option to ‘Use Custom Label’ so I can refer to the next level down as ‘Sub Categories’.On the category form I also add the parent category lookup, created as a result of this relationship.Finally, I add three lookups to the account form so I can add three levels of category to my account record.Finally, I populate my category hierarchy. Unfortunately, there is no nice tree view to employ so I fill it up in pretty much the same way I would if I was populating, for example, an account hierarchy. My advice would be to do it via a data import.

Where’s The Magic?

So far this will just let us pick three category values from all category values and add them to an account; not exactly exciting.The trick comes in adjusting the filters on the lookups.For category 1, we set up a new system view called Level 1 Categories. This just shows those categories with no parent category i.e. they are at the top of the tree.We then go to our first lookup and force it to only use this view for its values.The result is when we click the lookup only the values in the top level appear.For the other two lookups, we use the Related Records Filtering properties of the lookup. For the category 2 lookup, we set it as follows:The setup for the category 3 lookup is identical, except we replace ‘Category 1 (Accounts)’ with ‘Category 2 (Accounts)’.This means, clicking on, say, the category 2 lookup shows only the valid values, based on the selection for category 1.And that is it. With all that set up, all the user has to do is pick the category 1 value and the category 2 values will be auto-filtered. Once the category 2 value is selected, the category 3 values will filter.

Why Not Use Subjects?

Subjects are nice in that they can be linked to an account with a 1:N relationship and they have a tree view lookup. However, they do not, at this time, play nicely with lookup filters. If you add a subject lookup to an account form and try to filter its values, based on the selection in another subject lookup, CRM throws an error. This has been reported and, I am sure, will be addressed in a future roll-up.

Conclusions

If you have a multi-level hierarchy you wish to apply to a record, such as an account, and you are looking for a reasonably user-friendly way to capture the information this is not such a bad solution and does not require code or Silverlight web resources. While my first choice would be the subject entity, because of its friendly tree view, if this is not practical, this solution provides an alternative approach which supports any number of category levels.

http://www.dynamicsconsulting.de/2012/01/27/dynamics-crm-2011-setting-multi-level-categories-against-a-record-codelessly/

http://www.biztom.de

Neues Social Collaboration-Tool – Microsoft Dynamics CRM-Aktivitätsfeeds

2012-01-25T07:33:00.001-08:00

Ihr Unternehmen hat vor kurzem ein Upgrade auf die neueste Version vonMicrosoft Dynamics CRM Online erhalten. In dieser Version wurden mehrerevorhandene Features durch Bereitstellung von zusätzlichen Business IntelligenceFunktionen, erweiterten Dialogfunktionen und einer flexiblen Erkennung vonDuplikaten aktualisiert.

Darüber hinaus wurde ein attraktives neues Social Collaboration Featureeingeführt, um Unternehmen und Einzelpersonen neue Formen der Kommunikation zuermöglichen: Microsoft Dynamics CRM Activity Feeds.

Activity Feeds ermöglichen Benachrichtigungen in Echtzeit und die schnelleWeitergabe von Informationen über kurze Nachrichten. Auf diese Weise sind Siestets auf dem Laufenden über wichtige Aktivitäten in Zusammenhang mit Personen,Firmen, Kontakten, Leads und weiteren für Sie wichtigen Dingen. Um sich mitdieser neuen Funktionalität vertraut zu machen, sehen Sie sich bitte dasfolgende Kurzvideo an.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM Activity Feeds müssen heruntergeladen und in IhrerMicrosoft Dynamics CRM Online-Anwendung installiert werden. Bitte wenden Sie sich an Ihren CRM-Administrator, um dieses kostenlose neue Feature zu nutzen.

Lessons Learned Migrating Data to Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011

2012-01-22T04:48:00.000-08:00

Lessons Learned Migrating Data to Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011

When companies using Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 or 4.0 move to Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011, there are some decisions to be made around how to move your current environment and data to CRM 2011. If you have an on premises installation, you can install CRM 2011 on premises and upgrade your MSCRM database to CRM 2011. This will bring in all of your customizations and data from CRM 4.0.
Upgrade or Migrate?
In some cases, a direct upgrade may not be practical, and you may want to selectively migrate data:

If your existing data is not clean, you may want to start clean with 2011 and selectively migrate just the good data. As an example, consider if at one time you used contracts in CRM 4.0, but you changed your configuration to manage contracts in a different way—you may not want to bring in the legacy contract data if it no longer fits your current approach.
If your environment is older than CRM 4.0, you may want to do a migration. if you are on CRM 3.0 or CRM 1.2, you cannot directly upgrade to CRM 2011—you have to do incremental upgrades. Say you have CRM 1.2, to upgrade you would need to upgrade to 3.0 on your 1.2 server, then install crm 3.0 on a Windows 2003 server with SQL 2005 and upgrade to CRM 4.0, then install CRM 2011 on a 64 Bit CRM Windows 2008/SQL 2008 environment and import and upgrade your 4.0 environment to 2011. The further away you are from 4.0, migration of the data becomes more practical then upgrading, given that there is potential risk of the process failing at each point of the upgrade.
If you are moving from CRM on premises to CRM Online, you will need to migrate your data. There is currently no automatic upgrade process for Dynamics CRM on premises to CRM Online. You can import customizations from CRM on premises to CRM Online; however, moving data still requires a migration.

Migration Options
If you decide to do a data migration to CRM 2011, there are a couple of options to consider
1. Data import utility: CRM 2011 includes a data import utility, and it can take data exported from flat files and import them into CRM 2011. This tool is much improved from CRM 4.0, and it now handles larger data files and improved validation for data types, so you can more reliably import data. Using the tool you can easily import your accounts, contacts, opportunities, and other standard or custom entities.

There are some areas that are not accessible via the import utility. Some of these areas include:
Activity attachments
Certain parts of the product catalog
Activity parties for e-mails with more than one recipient
Notes with attachments
Contracts
If your data is mainly core entities like accounts and contacts, you should be able to use the import utility; however, if you have many activity parties or attachments, the import utility may not be able to completely migrate your legacy data.
User mapping for ownerid and other user lookups can be problematic, especially if names are different in the new version, or if old users no longer exist.
In some cases, you will want to update records after they are imported. For example, Accounts and Contacts can present a classic “chicken and egg” scenario. Contacts reference accounts, and accounts reference primary contacts. If you insert companies first, you won’t be able to populate the primary contact on the company record before the contact is created. You will need to insert the companies, insert the contacts, and then come back and update the company to set the primary contact. The import utility can update records if the GUID is in the first column of your csv file; however, this can require a bit of manual work to update the existing records.
2. Scribe Insight: Scribe is the leading vendor for CRM data migrations and integrations. Scribe provides an adapter to connect to CRM 2011 as well as earlier versions of Microsoft Dynamics CRM, and can easily load data into entities that cannot be loaded with the standard import utility.
We have migrated several of our clients as well as our internal environment from CRM 4.0 to CRM 2011 online. As part of these migrations, each had data in entities that could not be migrated using the standard import utility. For these migrations, we chose to use Scribe.
As referenced in my earlier post, Scribe includes an auto-map feature that can simplify the mapping of the data for your import. Just specify the legacy environment as your source, select the new environment as your target, and auto link by name.
There are a few things you won’t want to auto map:
userid—chances are that your user id’s will be different in the target than they are in the source. I did a dblookup formula in Scribe to translate the fullname of the user in the legacy system to the userid of the user in the new system.
Transactioncurrency—unless you have more than one currency, you can leave this field blank.
AddressID—you will see for each address on accounts and contacts a field called addressid (Address1addressid and address2addressid). Do not auto map these.
Statecode and statuscode—when I brought in my accounts, contacts, e-mails, appointments, etc, I did not map the statecode and statuscode fields. The reason is that if you set a record to be inactive, you cannot relate other records to it. There is a good chance that you will have activities, notes, contacts, or other records that are linked to inactive records. By leaving them active you can establish all relationships, then run a simple update dts at the end of the process to close out the inactive records
By doing this, I was able to quickly import the records from my on premises CRM environment to CRM Online.
Limitations
There are a handful of limitations that I found through this process that Scribe and the import utility cannot import. These are mainly some deeper areas of CRM that are not exposed through the API.
Quick campaigns are entity bulkoperation, and they cannot be imported by Scribe or the import utility. This also means that activities like email where the regardingobjectid is set to a bulkoperation record will also not be able to be imported
Contracts have limitations around how they can be imported—they can only be imported in draft status, and you cannot associate other records, such as cases with them if they are not Active status and have an expiration date in the future. Manual intervention will be required to import cases and set them to a state that can be updated.
When importing opportunities, the actualclosedate will be set to today’s date, even if you try to load another date to that field. The recommendation is after you update the status of the closed opportunities to Closed, run an update dts against opportunities updating the actualclosedate to the correct date.
If you are reading from your legacy CRM database as a SQL or ODBC connection, be aware that if there are any ntext or long varchar fields, they must come last in your source query. If they don’t, the field will appear null and data will not come across for these fields. This is especially applicable for things like activity description fields. If your entity has more than one long varchar field, you may need to run subsequent update dts with the other long field listed last in the source query. An alternative approach is to install the new CRM 2011 adapter and point the old adapter to your legacy CRM system as your source, and point the 2011 adapter to the new CRM environment as your target. The crm adapter does not have the long varchar limitation.

Lessons Learned
In an effort to help others learn from my mistakes, here are some of my lessons learned after a couple of migration upgrades:
1. Determine which entities are being used. The easiest way to do this is to look at your SQL MSCRM database. View tables by number of records—this will help you determine where data is, and where it is not.
2. Determine the order—It is crucial that you import your data in the right order, so that data referenced in lookup fields is present when the record is imported. For example, you need to have your accounts in before you load your opportunities. As a general rule, have any accounts, contacts, opportunities, quotes, orders in before you load cases, and load activities last.
3. Don’t close cases or other records until all activities have been loaded, and don’t close activities until all activityparties and attachments have been loaded.
4. Activityparties are probably the most difficult thing to import. If you don’t know, activity parties are the people and companies associated with activities like e-mails in the to: field or the appointment in the requiredattendee field.
If you have deleted any activities from your crm system, there is a good chance that some activityparties will be left behind.
When you create an e-mail and track it in CRM, if one of the recipients is not in CRM as a contact, account, or user, it will create an activity party not linked to any partyid in CRM. These records cannot be imported.
When you create an activity in CRM, activity parties are created for the sender, the recipient, but also the owner and the regarding of the activity. When you import the activities, these activityparties will automatically be created. If you then import the activity parties including these parties, some rows will fail telling you that they already exist.
Activityparties cannot be easily deleted.
To avoid these headaches, set up your activityparty dts source query to inner join activityparty to activitypointer to filter out any activityparties linked to an activity that was deleted from the system. Also, filter out where activitypartyid is null and activitypartytypecodemaskname = “Regarding” or “owner.” This will cut the list down to just the legitimate activityparties, and save much time.
Remembering that activityparties can’t be deleted, if you have several hundred thousand activityparties in your database, you will want to break this process up into smaller chunks, maybe by year. That way you minimize the chance of the job failing, and having to re-load any data. You can also run them simultaneously and load the data faster.
Once the activityparty load was complete, I then ran a cleanup dts that joined the activityparties where partyid is null to contacts on addressused = emailaddress1. This successfully matched most of the unmatched activityparties, and I loaded setting partyid to contactid.
5. Users: If you have been using CRM for several years, there is a good chance that there are users in your system who have been deactivated, and that those users own records, such as activities. Keep in mind that to assign a record to a user, the user must be active. So if you have a former employee named Bob Smith, if you want to import activities and assign them to Bob, you will need to temporarily have his user record active in the new system. This means creating records for users who are no longer at the company.
For our migration, we created users for former employees. Given that CRM Online uses Windows Live ID for authentication, you might think this means that you have to set up legitimate Windows Live ID’s for each old user; however, this is not the case. You can create users using any made-up address, and save the user without sending an invitation to that address. You can then assign records to the user, and then disable the user record.
An alternative approach is to create a generic user called “former employee” and have Scribe assign any records owned by a former employee to this user. While this approach is faster, it may detract from visibility to who created the record.
6. Do not load directly to the activity entity. You have to load to the individual activity type entities—email, appointment, phonecall, or task.

Keeping these best practices in mind, you can quickly migrate your data from CRM 4.0 to CRM 2011 Online.

Handling Rejected Record Rows from Scribe

2012-01-22T04:46:00.001-08:00

Handling Rejected Record Rows from Scribe

So you have a recently installed Scribe Version 7.0.1.15701 on a server. You’ve built some DTS jobs and everything looks to be importing and translating smoothly. THEN – one of your jobs throws up a report like this:

12,555 successful records loaded! 6 record rows failed. “Hmm? I wonder why those records failed?”, you ask yourself. - and so starts your exploration.
Enabling Rejected Rows in Scribe:
Before you can review the rejected rows, you must first tell Scribe that you want it to put the rejected records into a table. This is done by going to Run –> Edit Settings –> Rejected Source Rows (tab) –> Output Rejected Source Rows (checkbox). You can then tell Scribe where you want this “Reject Rows” table. Additionally, you can specify whether Scribe should create a new table for each job that generates “Reject Rows” – or if you want a new table generated. Generally speaking, you don't want a bunch of extra rejected rows tables for the same job, so I would recommend selecting the option to re-use the same table. I’ve defined it this way in the following screen shot from Scribe:

Querying Rejected Rows:
There can be any one of a 1,000 reasons why a particular row in a table fails to import. In my particular situation, the pick-list value that I had on my SELECTCASE statement turned out to be incorrectly numbered, which was throwing out the select 6 rows. But before I made that conclusion definitively, I wanted to see the data. For users of MS SQL Server 2005 or 2008, reviewing these rows is a fairly straight-forward process. Executing a query against a table in MS SQL Server is done through the Query Editor Window. One option is to Right-Click on the table and select Script Table As –>SELECT To –> New Query Editor Window, as depicted in the following:

Once you have the query set up appropriately in the Query Editor Window, simply select “Execute”. The rows of data can then be seen in the results tab below the Query Editor Window.
No Microsoft SQL Server Tools?:
My particular server where Scribe was located did not have MSSQL Server 2005 or 2008 tools installed – so I couldn’t run a simple SQL query against the REJECT_CONTACTMIGRATION table. Frustration set in. I didn’t have a free copy of Microsoft SQL Server 2005/2008 lying around. What can I do? Luckily, there was a solution.
As it turns out, Microsoft has a free product for just such a situation: Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio Express (MSSMSE). From the website (link): (Note, this link is for MSSMSE 2005. The 2008 version can be found here: link)
“Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio Express (SSMSE) is a free, easy-to-use graphical management tool for managing SQL Server 2005 Express Edition and SQL Server 2005 Express Edition with Advanced Services.”
Download the file appropriate for your install and MSSMSE will connect to the Scribe Internal DB automatically. You should see the following once you have installed the application and launch it:

In this case, it is connecting directly to the Scribe Internal database. Once connected, you can browse directly to the table you want to review:

Once you find the table you want to query, simply right-click on the table and select “New Query Editor Window”. This will populate the SQL Query Editor window with the appropriate SQL SELECT statement for the table you want. Execute the query and then you can view the rows in the table.
Once I identified the problem, I simply modified the DTS to include a filter for records with my reject record condition; re-ran the DTS; and my 6 lost records were loaded successfully! Victory!
Other Scribe topics can be viewed on Customer Effective’s Scribe Blog, located here.
Lastly, another topic on our forums enables you to create a workflow to surface Scribe errors and monitor them directly into CRM, which can be very helpful. This is located here.
Good luck with your CRM projects!

Scibe -How To Migrate Millions of Records to CRM in Hours (Rather Than Days) Using Scribe

2012-01-22T04:45:00.000-08:00

How To Migrate Millions of Records to CRM in Hours (Rather Than Days) Using Scribe

One of the criticisms that Scribe Insight sometimes gets is that it’s slow. While it is true that Scribe is not the speediest ETL tool out there, much of the blame for sluggishness can be attributed to DTS design.
One rule of thumb is that every trip to the source or target slows down the process. That means that dblookups and seek steps, while useful tools, cause the process to go slower. Also, updates and update/inserts hit the target 2-3 times, so updates are slower than inserts.
Here’s an example of what I’m talking about: I integrated a prospect database with Microsoft Dynamics CRM. This is going to be a couple of hundred records inserted or updated per day, but to get started, we first had to load the existing prospect data, roughly 2.5 million records.
I wrote the DTS for the on-going integration, in which I used an update/insert step, as they will be getting updated information for existing prospects, and we want the process to update if it exists, and insert if it doesn’t. This DTS also contained a seek step and two dblookups to populate lookup fields in CRM from other CRM entities.
When I tested the DTS, it imported 10 records every 3 seconds. While this performance would be satisfactory for the on-going integration volume, it would be too slow for the initial migration of legacy data. At that rate, it would take 8 days to load the legacy data.
Here’s what I did to cut the migration of the legacy data down to a reasonable amount of time:
1. I copied the legacy data to a table in the ScribeInternal database, and made ScribeInternal the source for my migration DTS. This made it a shorter trip to get the data.
2. I moved the lookups and seeks to the source query. Instead of doing a lookup to the account table in the DTS, I joined the filteredaccount view from CRM in to my source query, and removed the dblookup and seek steps from my DTS. Now instead of having to seek for the id of a related record, I have the GUID in my source data, and write that directly to the accountid field.
3. Given that the legacy data contains unique records that do not yet exist in CRM, I made my migration DTS an insert step.
The result is that the DTS now only hits the source and the target one time. The difference in performance is pretty astounding. The migration DTS now moves 50 records per second, taking what would have otherwise taken days to hours.
The final thing you can do is to thread your job. As you may know, jobs run through XML message queues are threaded, meaning multiple operations happen simultaneously, but jobs run through the workbench are not threaded. If your on-going integration is going to be a high data volume, using message queues is a good way to go.
However, setting up xml based DTS for a one time migration can add a level of complexity. Another option to thread your jobs is to break your migration DTS into multiple DTS’s and run multiple instances of the workbench simultaneously. In this case, I made a copy of my migration DTS. In the first DTS I filtered the source query to just records created prior to 1/1/2008. In the second DTS, I filtered the source query to just records created on or after 1/1/2008. I then ran them at the same time.
You are still constrained by the resource limitations on your server and the CRM web services, but by following these steps you can optimize your migration processes to run in a reasonable amount of time, without having to resort to unsupported methods, like direct table updates.

Migrating from CRM 4.0 to Dynamics CRM 2011

2012-01-22T04:43:00.001-08:00

Migrating from CRM 4.0 to Dynamics CRM 2011

Scenario: You’ve installed Dynamics CRM 2011 on a fresh set of Windows Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008 64-bit servers, and successfully performed a test migration on your CRM 4.0 production organization .
Microsoft refers to this as the “migration” upgrade path, and while it’s not the only approach you can take, it’s probably the best one. Some of the advantages:

Can test an upgrade from CRM 4 to CRM 2011 with no impact on your current 4.0 production environment.
If upgrade fails no impact on production.
Minimal downtime for upgrade (just the time it takes to actually import the CRM 4.0 database into the CRM 2011 format in the deployment manager)

Anyway, you test away for a few weeks, implementing some customizations and maybe even configuring IFD. Your users have been happily updating the CRM 4.0 production database, and now you’re ready to upgrade, so you make a backup (to a BAK file) of the 4.0 SQL Server database, create what will become your production database on the 64-bit SQL Server 2008 in your CRM 2011 deployment, and restore the database to it.
You then go into the much improved CRM 2011 Deployment Manager and run the Import Organization wizard, and when you get to the point to import the organization into CRM 2011 format…you get this message:
“you have already imported and upgraded this organization and cannot perform the operation again…”
And see something like the following screen shot:

There are lots of questions about it, as you can see if you search Google or Bing for the error message. Not a lot of answers, however. So if you can’t import a 4.0 organization more than once, how can you test?
I’m not quite sure why this would be “by design”, as most of the threads you’ll find say, and it doesn’t seem very elegant, but here’s a workaround:
In CRM 2011

Create a solution package and import any customizations you want to preserve
Export the solution package to the solution XML file

In the CRM 2011 Deployment Manager

Disable the organization.
Then delete it.

In the CRM 2011 SQL Server

Delete the database from SQL Server

In the CRM 4.0 SQL Server

Back up the 4.0 organization database (the one with the _MSCRM after it), to a BAK file on disk.

In the CRM 2011 SQL Server

Create a new database, and restore the .BAK file to it, overwriting everything in the process.

In the CRM 2011 Deployment Manager

Run the Import Organization wizard
Import the SQL database you restored in the previous step
Import the Solution Package with your customizations you saved out to the XML file in the first step.

I know this is a pretty rough writeup. But I’ve run into this twice now, and the first time I made the mistake of not writing everything down! Hopefully this will never make it into Bridget’s List of Things to Know, but it’s definitely in Richard’s List of Things to Know about Upgrading to Dynamics CRM 2011.

Wie CRM-Systeme den Datenschutz unterstützen können

2012-01-21T14:28:00.000-08:00

Mit der Änderung des Listenprivilegs (§ 28 BDSG) gibt es bei Marketingmaßnahmen mit personenbezogenen Daten einige neue Punkte zu beachten. Da kommt eine entsprechende Unterstützung durch ein CRM-System gerade recht. Doch in der Praxis findet man noch keine umfassende Hilfe bei der datenschutzgerechten Umsetzung von Werbemaßnahmen. Was bereits heute angeboten wird, zeigt zum Beispiel Microsoft Dynamics CRM.

Datenschutzkonforme CRM-Systeme müssen eine differenzierte Einstufung von Kundendaten bieten.

Die BDSG-Novelle war und ist nicht ohne Grund immer wieder ein Thema in der Werbewirtschaft.Vorsicht mit den ListendatenGerade die Auswirkungen des geänderten § 28 BDSG (siehe Datenschutz PRAXIS März 2010) werden dabei diskutiert. Denn sie beeinflussen das so bedeutende Listenprivileg.Allerdings sollte es nicht bei den Diskussionen auf Verbandsebene bleiben. Der einzelne Mitarbeiter in der Vertriebsabteilung und im Marketing muss die Änderungen für sein Tagesgeschäft kennen.Hier sind Sie als Datenschutzbeauftragter mit einer entsprechenden Datenschutz-Schulung gefragt. Wichtige Hinweise dafür finden Sie hier unter dem Stichwort Listenprivileg.Listenprivileg kennen und anwendenBei der täglichen Umsetzung der geänderten Rahmenbedingungen zur Nutzung des Listenprivilegs spielen die Kundendatenbanken und CRM-Systeme eine entscheidende Rolle. Sie liefern auf Knopfdruck die Adresslisten der Interessenten und Kunden, die in der nächsten Marketingaktion bedacht werden sollen.Die Frage allerdings ist, ob diese Kontaktlisten auch richtig gewählt wurden. Dabei steht für Sie als Datenschutzbeauftragten weniger im Vordergrund, dass auch das richtige Produkt für den richtigen Kunden gefunden wird. Ihnen geht es vielmehr darum, dass der Erlaubnisvorbehalt für die Nutzung personenbezogener Daten für die Werbung und die verschiedenen Ausnahmen richtig berücksichtigt wurden.

Ist xRM + CRM das neue ERP?

2012-01-21T14:24:00.000-08:00

Auf den Bildschirmen hunderter Berater, Analysten, Microsoftpartner und -kunden aus aller Welt spielte sich vom 14. bis 17. Juni dieses Jahres etwas ab, das noch immer nicht so ganz alltäglich ist: eine Online-Konferenz, genauer gesagt die “Decisions Spring 2011“. Eine virtuelle Messe zu Themen wie Microsoft Dynamics AX, CRM, GP und NAV. Im letzten Jahr zog diese Messe etwa 3500 Interessierte vor die Computerbildschirme. Einer der zahlreichen Sprecher in diesem Jahr war der amerikanische Programmierer, Systemanalyst, Autor, Berater und Branchenkenner Josh Greenbaum. Seinen Online-Vortrag mit der Fragestellung “Is xRM + CRM the new ERP?” wollen wir im Folgenden zusammenfassen. Anforderungen an xRM als Managementkonzept der ZukunftxRM als das Nachfolgekonzept von CRM soll vor allem eine große Bandbreite unterschiedlicher Stakeholder und Assets (dt.: Unternehmensgegenstände) bedienen und miteinander verbinden können, so Greenbaum. Während Greenbaum in Bezug auf die Stakeholder gängige Parteien wie Lieferanten, Mitarbeiter, Kunden und Geschäftspartner nennt, macht er bei den Assets eine interessante Unterscheidung. So zählt er nicht nur Physisches, wie ein Produkt, zu den möglichen Assets eines Unternehmens, sondern auch immaterielle Gegenstände wie einen Vertrag, den es zu bearbeiten gilt (virtuelles Asset), oder Reperatur-Dienstleistungen (Service-Assets).Damit die Interaktion zwischen Stakeholdern und Assets funktioniert, bedarf es neuen unterstützenden Geschäftsprozessen. Diese basieren auf Beziehungen. Sie managen diese Beziehungen und nutzen sie zum unternehmerischen Vorteil. Dabei existieren Beziehungen sowohl von Mensch zu Mensch, als auch von Mensch zu Asset. Sie werden innerhalb und außerhalb der Organisationsgrenzen realisiert und interagieren mit dem Backoffice, mit ERP und anderen Funktionen. Darüber hinaus müssen vorhandene Fähigkeiten und Assets wirksam eingesetzt werden. Dies geschieht mittels bekannter Tools aus CRM und ERP, die für den xRM-Gedanken entsprechend erweitert werden. So geht es im Relationship Management nicht mehr nur um Kunden, sondern auch um andere Stakeholder. xRM sollte sozial und kollaborativ sein, dabei aber von expliziten Prozessen und Methoden begleitet werden.Ein BeispielxRM findet Anwendung in ganz unterschiedlichen Unternehmungen und in Zusammenhang mit ganz unterschiedlichen Assets. Ein Beispiel dafür ist die Stadt London, die über längere Zeit hinweg Probleme mit ihren Parkautomaten verzeichnete. Täglich erreichten unzählige Anrufe ratloser Autofahrer das Call-Center der Stadt, mit der Frage was zu tun sei, wenn der Parkautomat nicht funktioniert. Lange wusste niemand so recht warum bestimmte Automaten immer wieder ausfielen. Erst mit Hilfe einer xRM-Software konnten die störanfälligen Geräte ausfindig gemacht und Zusammenhänge mit dem Wetter hergestellt werden. Es stellte sich heraus, dass die Geräte nach kalten Wochenenden mit starkem Regen besonders oft versagten, weil sich das Wasser bei geringem Gebrauch der Automaten im Parkzettel-Drucker festsetzte. Man erkannte das Problem und baute eine neue Verkleidung um die betroffenen Automaten. Seitdem sind die Störmeldungen deutlich zurückgegangen.xRM vs. CRM – was ist neu?Der wesentliche Unterschied zwischen xRM und CRM liegt in der Struktur der Beziehungen zwischen Stakeholdern und Assets. Während im CRM überwiegend unidirektionale, einseitige Beziehungen bestehen, fokussiert xRM die Interaktion zwischen den Parteien und somit den gegenseitigen Austausch. Greenbaum nennt xRM auch ein “high-level development environment”, eine “5-GL” (fifth-generation programming language). Für die Implementierung von xRM führt Greenbaum folgende Schritte an:

Start with the basics of (Dynamics) CRM
Change the data model
Change the entities
Deliver a new app
Extend the data model
Create new relationships
Build new business processes
Integrate with existing (Microsoft) assets
Deploy on-premise or in the cloud

ROI Parameter – die Vorteile von xRMDie Vorteile von xRM gegenüber CRM liegen für Greenbaum klar auf der Hand. Durch die Berücksichtigung vieler und vielfältiger Beziehungen, ergibt sich mit xRM eine bessere Anpassung an die individuelle Geschäftsproblematik eines Unternehmens und seine speziellen Bedürfnisse. Passt das Konzept besser zum Unternehmen, wird es außerdem leichter Schwachstellen oder Probleme aufzuspüren und zu analysieren (s. obiges Beispiel London). Ein weiterer entscheidender Faktor sind die geringeren Entwicklungs- und Weiterentwicklungskosten für xRM. Greenbaum sieht hier ein Kosteneinsparpotenzial von 60-75 %. Dadurch, dass für verschiedene xRM-Apps einheitliche User Interfaces verwendet werden, fallen außerdem die Kosten für die Mitarbeiterweiterbildung geringer aus. Letztlich ist auch eine Zeitersparnis und eine Steigerung der Benutzerzufriedenheit zu erwarten.xRM als “das neue ERP”Mithilfe von xRM erfährt das “herkömmliche” ERP eine Transformation – das Enterprise Resource Planning wird zum Asset- und Beziehungsmanagement. Im alten ERP liegt der Fokus auf dem Backoffice und es herrscht eine begrenzte Entwicklerbasis: spezialisierte Informatiker bilden Abläufe ab. Im neuen ERP/xRM hingegen liegt der Schwerpunkt auf dem Frontoffice, der dem Benutzer zugewandten Seite. Durch die Interaktion mit den Stakeholdern sollen Veränderungen auch von “normalen Benutzern” direkt in die Programme einfließen können. Insgesamt, so Greenberg abschließend, werden im neuen ERP/xRM das Management, die Anwendung und (Weiter-)entwicklung einfacher und die Time to Value deutlich kürzer.

Vivien Nikolic studiert Kultur & Wirtschaft an der Universität Mannheim. Neben dem Studium arbeitet die angehende Wirtschaftsjournalistin als freie Redakteurin und engagiert sich in der Studenteninitiative "Market Team" als Projektmanagements-Vorstand. Ihr Interesse gilt managementbezogenen Fragestellungen jeglicher Art.

http://www.dynamicsconsulting.de/2011/12/24/ist-xrm-crm-das-neue-erp/
http://www.biztom.de

MS Dynamics CRM 2011 Outlook Client Installation - Common Exception Scenarios

2012-01-21T04:02:00.000-08:00

Following are some common exception scenarios encountered while configuring MS Dynamics CRM 2011 Outlook Client…

Error while configuring a new organization using the MSCRM 2011 Outlook Configuration Wizard

Symptom: You already have all organizations of an instance configured on your Outlook client, and you try to add the same server URL again.
You are prompted with the error: Cannot find any organzation on the server. Try entering the URL again. If the problem persists, contact your system administrator.

Resolution: Expected behavior.

Unable to configure an organization in Outlook despite site being accessible via browser

Symptom: You are able to access an organization via the browser but get an error while trying to configure it in Outlook. The following error logged in the client trace:
Exception:
System.InvalidOperationException: Metadata contains a reference that cannot be resolved: 'http://<servername>/<orgname>/XRMServices/2011/Discovery.svc?wsdl'. --->
System.Net.WebException: The remote server returned an error: (502) Bad Gateway.
Resolution: Check proxy settings in IE under Internet Options -> Connections -> LAN Settings.

Creating a redistributable for the Outlook client setup

Symptom: You are trying to install the Outlook client for MS CRM, but don’t have access to the internet. The installation fails as it is unable to download the pre-requisites. Your requirement is to be able to install the Outlook client without an active internet connection.
Resolution: In order to install the Outlook client without an internet connection, you must have all the pre-requisite installers downloaded and placed in a particular folder structure. Detailed instructions of the pre-requisites and the folder structure are in this blog.
The pre-requisites along with the Outlook client setup must be placed in a folder structure as below:

Client

i386

<Client setup files>

Redist

<All the pre-requisites as per the blog above>

Lync presence indicator

Symptom: You are signed into Communicator, OCS 2007, and are able to view the contact presence indicator in the web client, but not in Outlook.
Resolution: This is by design. In the Outlook client, only Lync presence is supported, not OCS 2007. Since Lync was the successor of OCS all users would be expected to be on Lync!

Unable to configure CRM 2011 Outlook Client for CRM online

Symptom: When trying to configure the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Client for Microsoft Office Outlook pointing to Dynamics CRM Online you may get the following error:
"There is a problem communicating with the Microsoft CRM server.
The server might be unavailable. Try again later. If the problem persists, contact your system administrator."
If you enable the client traces, you may observe different exception logs such as :

Cannot connect to Microsoft Dynamics CRM server because we cannot authenticate your credentials. Check your connection or contact your administrator for more help

Couldn't find IdentityCRL key under HKLM

Resolution: Repair Windows Live Essentials installation. For more details refer
http://support.microsoft.com/KB/2498892

http://www.dynamicsconsulting.de/2012/01/21/following-are-some-common-exception-scenarios-encountered-while-configuring-ms-dynamics-crm-2011-outlook-client/

www.biztom.de

Dynamics CRM 2011 On-premise Outlook Performance and Network Traffic

2012-01-19T13:02:00.000-08:00

Issue:
======
We are using CRM 2011 On-Premise and have an issue specific to the Outlook Client. We have been noticing significant delays in the Outlook Client primarily when we navigate to the Accounts and Contacts on the side bar which can take from 5 seconds (on the LAN) to 5 minutes (cell modem and VPN). I recently noticed that clicking on one of those larger queries uses a good deal of network bandwidth (hence the speed difference based on connection). I had tested running the same processes in the browser version (using IE9) and they are quite fast even over a cellular modem (5 seconds to load tops). I finally got annoyed with it enough to run Wire Shark to compare the network traffic created running the same steps in Outlook and browser versions of CRM 2011.

Here are my results:

Outlook CRM Client - Test opening Accounts, Performing Search, and Opening Account
System A	System B	Packets	Bytes	Packets A→B	Bytes A→B	Packets A←B	Bytes A←B	Rel Start	Duration	bps A→B	bps A←B
CRM Server	Laptop with Outlook CRM	53078	49,788,909	33456	48,209,788	19622	1579121	0	96.0336	4016075.03	131547.32

IE9 Browser CRM Client - Test opening Accounts, Performing Search, and Opening Account
System A	System B	Packets	Bytes	Packets A→B	Bytes A→B	Packets A←B	Bytes A←B	Rel Start	Duration	bps A→B	bps A←B
CRM Server	Laptop with IE9 CRM	3523	3,318,590	2232	3,206,123	1291	112467	0	26.5998	964256.15	33824.96

As you can see, running very similar processes on the Dynamics CRM 2011 for Outlook take 15x the packets/bandwidth and 96 seconds vs 26 for the browser. We have been updating the Rollups as they are released and are currently on Rollup 5 for the CRM server and clients. I have read through all of the online forums I can find with suggestions on how to speed up this performance and followed the MS CRM 2011 best practice guides and Outlook performance tuning guide to the letter.

Solution:
==========
You can greatly reduce the traffic wtih Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Outlook clients by implementing the WCF Compression on your Microsoft CRM Server. This is documented here -http://blogs.msdn.com/b/crminthefield/archive/2011/12/29/enable-wcf-compression-to-improve-crm-2011-network-performance.aspx and is also included in the Whitepaper, Optimizing and Maintaining the Performance of a Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Server Infrastructure, at http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=27139 .

To set this http compression, you can run the command as listed below (note that the whitepaper has two percent symbols in the command which will only work if you put the command in a batch file as the extra percent symbol is for batch file character encoding): In addition to this, if you are able to enable https encryption on the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 server, it will result in another reduction in the data needed to be sent since there is a larger portion of data that needs to go into the body of the WCF messages that will not be needed if using https.
After doing this, you should see a significant reduction in the traffic when using either Wireshark, Network Monitor 3.4, and/or the Fiddler Trace tool to monitor the traffic to and from the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Outlook clients.

Enable compression using a command line.

a. Open the Command Prompt on the CRM Server.
b. Run the following command:
%SYSTEMROOT%\system32\inetsrv\appcmd.exe set config -section:system.webServer/httpCompression /+"dynamicTypes.[mimeType='application/soap%u002bxml; charset=utf-8',enabled='true']" /commit:apphost
c. Reset IIS for the setting to take effect.

Source: http://social.microsoft.com/Forums/en/crm/thread/c156c693-4150-41b4-a9cf-7e143ca274df

TMG 2010 or ISA or ans Kind of Reverse Proxy and Dynamics CRM 2011 - Client Side Caching Issue caused by Vary: *

2012-01-19T12:10:00.000-08:00

TMG 2010 or ISA or ans Kind of Reverse Proxy and Dynamics CRM 2011 - Client Side Caching Issue caused by Vary: *
I read a lot of stuff regarding bad performance an TMG or ISA Server.
And if we have the same issue at customer site at the moment, I like to add an summary of our finding here.

The Vary: * is clearly the problem as Internet Explorer (using IE 9) will not cache or use the local cache for a response with that in the header. This results in the large JS files being sent over and over (sometimes for a single action in the User Interface) and instead of 6KB we see 170KB coming across the wire. And the count if request is also much more. For example when you open an contact which is already cached it should take 3 http request. Including the Very * Issue we need 60-70 http request to open an contact!!

But this issue isn´t TMG or ISA related as written in many internet blogs.
We have taken some networktraces an found out the following!
It is an BUG in Dynamics CRM 2011. Everytime when the CRM Webserver
receives an request including an "reverse proxy header" it answers with

Cache-Control: public
Vary: *
to the response header. This “Vary: *” is causing the behavior that some CRM Page elements are not used out of the Internet Explorer Cache.
We fixed this for one customer with creating a new ISA/TMG rule “Server publishing on Port 443” instead of using an Web publishing rule. But this can´t be the real solution due to security reasons!

The passthrough on the Proxy Server (ISA / TMG or any other Server acting as an kind of reverse proxy) brings an work around but at the end this one needs to be fixed by the Dynamics CRM 2011 Produkt Group.

Here the link to build the workaround, note that this workaround opens the door and also bypass the security features from the TMG Webpublishing rule you was looking for when you buyed an TMG!

http://www.isaserver.org/tutorials/tmg-back-basics-part1.html

“Slow Performance” accessing CRM IFD published with ISA/TMG

2012-01-19T11:40:00.000-08:00

In this article I want to provide a detailed view on a possible performance issue you might face, when you’re publishing CRM 2011 IFD using ISA Server or TMG.

Please note that the screenshots provided in this article are based on TMG, however the configuration in ISA is very similar to the configuration described in this article.

This article won’t cover the details on how to publish the CRM IFD (Internet Facing Deployment) in detail. In this article I assume, that you published your CRM IFD to the Internet using a standard Web Publishing rule on ISA/TMG and that the access to the CRM IFD is working from the Internet.

Scenario:

Consider the scenario, where your CRM IFD is up and running. You setup the publishing rule in TMG and everything appears to work as expected. Now you start sending the information about the published CRM to your users in their home office. A few minutes later you receive the first calls from users complaining that accessing the CRM IFD is terribly slow from their home office.

Troubleshooting:

To verify if something is going wrong with the server, you connect to the CRM IFD site, and cannot see any issues. Next you connect to the CRM Server and to the TMG to verify if you can see any obvious performance issues with the server, but everything appears to be “green”. In order to understand why the user experience is different to your experience you should start tracing the issue from the client which reported the issue.

One good way to perform this tracing is to collect a network trace on the client in order to verify if there’s anything like network delays which might be causing the issue.

I assume that your clients access the published site using HTTPS, therefore the relevant traffic in the network trace will be encrypted. If you don’t see any obvious delays you need to use tools to inspect the HTTPS traffic.

One of many tools which can help in this scenario is Fiddler (Download www.fiddler2.com) Please make sure to configure Fiddler to decrypt the SSL traffic as described here:

http://www.fiddler2.com/Fiddler/help/httpsdecryption.asp

Once you setup fiddler on the client, please ask the user to reproduce the access while tracing the traffic with Fiddler.

Note: Please let the user know, to use a test account to reproduce the issue, as you will be able to see the user password in the fiddler trace.

Once the user collected the data, please ask the customer to save & send the fiddler trace to you. You can open it using Fiddler.

As the Fiddler trace will most likely not only include the traffic to the CRM host, but also some “noise”, you should first sort the tracing by host name and save only the relevant traffic between the client and the CRM server in a separate file.

With all the noise filtered it’s a good start to select all packets and have a look at the statistic section provided by Fiddler (screenshot below)

When you have a look at the ACTUAL Performance in this case, you can see that the client spends around 1:47min to load everything:

Requests started at: 10:23:13.759

Responses completed at: 10:35:04.469

Aggregate Session time: 00:01:47.804

The most interesting part is that the client did load about 10MB!

Request Count: 269

Bytes Sent: 141,293 (headers:127342; body:13951)

Bytes Received: 10,347,456 (headers:96136; body:10251320)

Given the fact that the client most is most likely connected with a slower bandwidth, compared to your company connection this explains why you didn’t face the issue when accessing the site!

The question you have to answer now is:

WHY DOES THE CLIENT HAS TO DOWNLOAD 10MB TO VIEW THE PAGE?

The first thing you should verify is if you can see some big files being transferred or some interesting content types in the request.

When you look at the response bytes, you can see which content-types are the “TOP TALKERS”:

RESPONSE BYTES (by Content-Type)

--------------

text/javascript: 6,260,298

application/x-javascript: 2,545,850

image/png: 854,138

text/x-component: 202,974

text/xml: 153,527

[…]

Thinking about this, this appears to be a quite lot of text/javascript and application/x-javascript which is send to the client. To get a better feeling, if there’s a specific pattern behind this, you should sort the Fiddler trace by Body

By looking at the biggest Reponses you can see the following, when you look at the headers:

The client Accepts compression, but for some reason TMG didn’t return the traffic compressed. When you have a look at the payload, you can see that it’s pure text, perfect to be compressed. You can have a look at some different packets, and you’ll see the same behavior. The client accepts encoding, but TMG just return uncompressed packets in most cases.

Time to look at the TMG now, to answer the question: WHY ISN’T TMG COMPRESSING THE TRAFFIC?

First of all you have to verify if compression is enabled. This can be verified when you open the Web Access Policy and open the HTTP Compression settings:

Next you should select the “Return Compressed Data” tab, to verify if the Listener you use in your CRM web publishing rule is listed there. It should be listed by default, the listener is called CRM Test in this case:

The next thing you should verify is which Content Types will be compressed at all, by clicking the Content Types … button.

This will show the following list of content types:

As you can see TMG doesn’t compress all content types by default, only those which are configured in HTML Documents and Text.

To verify what’s configured in those two content types, you have to open the properties of the content types using the Toolbox:

As you can see neither in HTML Documents nor in Text you can find an extension or content type which matches the “TOP TALKERS” from the Fiddler trace. That’s why TMG isn’t returning the traffic compressed.

You may ask yourself now, why isn’t TMG compressing everything by default to save bandwidth?

Here’s a good answer from TechNet:

In general, some Web servers, when responding to a request, do not accurately provide the content type in the response header. For example, a response may include a Microsoft Office PowerPoint® 2007 (.pptx) file, but the response header may indicate that the content is plain text. When an Internet Explorer client receives this type of response in compressed format, it cannot interpret the response, and the user sees meaningless characters on the monitor. If the response is received uncompressed, Internet Explorer can interpret it, and the user can open and view the content.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc995227.aspx

Button Line: It’s all about user experience. The scenarios where compression can break a website are more common than the scenarios where it helps to improve the user experience.

Note: By default TMG won’t ask for compression, when you use it in as forward proxy configuration, to provide the best user experience.

Of course there can always be scenarios, where you might need to add specific content types to the compression List, in order to provide a better user experience. Publishing CRM 2011 IFD is one of these scenarios.

In order to enable the compression for the “TOP TALKERS”, please do the following:

1. Configure a new Content Type set, including the content types which are listed in the TOP 3 of the TOP Talkers:

application/x-javascript

text/javascript

text/xml

2. Open the Compression settings -> Return compressed settings -> Content Types… and select the CRM content type you just created.

3. To verify if the changes had been applied correctly, you can start another fiddler trace from your client. When you use the Inspectors again, you can see that the RAW content is compressed / non-human readable.

Access to the CRM should be much faster now for users with slow bandwidth.

I hope you can find this article useful.

Update:

We found that some customers experienced some performance issues, even after applying the changes as described in this blog article.
When investigating in this performance issues, we found that you can add another performance boost to the client access when you enable the compression between ISA/TMG and the CRM server.
By default ISA/TMG won’t ask for compression for the traffic between ISA/TMG and the published web server. This is because compression always causes some CPU overhead (compression / decompression) on the Web Server and on TMG, and compression to save bandwidth usually isn’t needed in current LAN infrastructures.
In order to enable the compression between ISA/TMG and the CRM Server, you have to open the HTTP Compression preferences, and select the “Request compressed data” Tab this time.
Add a new Computer Object, which describes your CRM Server, and add it to the list:

Requesting compressed data, changes the way the CRM server generates the responses. With these changes we could observe a much better caching behavior on the client. Which results in a much smaller number of requests the client has to send to the published CRM IFD Web site.

We’re currently investigating in the details of this behavior. We will provide more detailed information once we’ve completed our internal investigations for this behavior.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 | Outlook Sync Troubleshooting

2012-01-19T08:40:00.000-08:00

Sehr schicke Aufbereitung zu dem Thema Outlook Sync / CRM 2011 Problemlösung von Carsten Groth:
Ihr habt den Outlook-Client neu konfigurieren müssen oder Ihr habt die Organisation mit der Outlook synchronisiert wird zwischendurch gewechselt und wieder zurückgestellt? Bei einem anschließenden Blick auf die Kontakte stellt Ihr fest, dass Ihr nach Synchronisation mit CRM diverse Dubletten im Outlook habt. Einige davon haben das CRM Kontakt Symbol, andere das CRM Symbol. Leider eignet sich dieses Symbol kaum zur Entscheidung, ob ein Kontakt gefahrenfrei gelöscht werden kann oder nicht, denn eigene Kontakte haben selbstverständlich auch das normale Outlook Kontaktsymbol.
Glücklicherweise stellt uns Microsoft eine einfache Möglichkeit zur Verfügung in einem solchen Fall in den Outlook Kontakten aufräumen zu können. Ihr fügt der Ansicht die neue Ansichtsspalte crmLinkState hinzu. Der Datentyp ist Nummer.
In dieser Spalte seht Ihr jetzt entweder

keinen Eintrag	Der Kontakt wird nicht mit CRM synchronisiert
0	Der Kontakt wurde schon einmal mit CRM synchronisiert
2	Der Kontakt wird aktuell mit CRM synchronisiert

Aus der Praxis habe ich auch noch einen weiteren Tipp für Euch. Dieser bezieht sich auf eine Fehlkonfiguration der Outlook Synchronisationsfilter. Dies hängt damit zusammen, dass oftmals dem Nutzer die Kontrolle über die Synchronisation überlassen wird, was sicherlich nichts schlimmes an sich darstellt, jedoch das Verständnis auf Seiten der Nutzer für die unterschiedlichen Filterdefinitionen fehlt. Doch hierzu ein Beispiel:Aus dieser Konstellation ergibt sich, dass Ihr jene Kontakte mit einer “0” gefahrenlos als Dublette löschen könnt.

Ein Nutzer Fossi, Bär hat einen neuen Kontakt angelegt, der eine E-Mail Adresse endend auf @example.com enthält.

Für den Nutzer Vorname, Nachname existieren Outlooksynchronisierungsfilter. Einer davon sammelt alle Kontakte, deren E-Mail Adresse auf @example.com endet. Dieser Filter ist aktiv.

Doch für den User oftmals verwirrend, gibt es auch in den Offlinesynchronisierungsfiltern einen solchen Eintrag, dieser ist in meinem Beispiel deaktiviert worden.
Viele sind sich der Bedeutung und dem Unterschied dieser beider Filtergruppen nicht bewusst und kennen die Auswirkungen nicht.

In meinem Beispiel synchronisiert Vorname, Nachname seine Daten mit dem CRM und findet in seiner Kontaktliste fortan den neuen Kontakt Dennis Michalis.
E-Mails nachverfolgen und versenden funktionieren einwandfrei und es kommt der Tag, da Vorname, Nachname offline geht.

In den Outlook Kontakten bleibt der Kontakt dabei weiterhin erhalten, jedoch bei einem Klick auf In CRM anzeigen wird eine Fehlermeldung angezeigt.
Viele vermuten jetzt irgendwelche Rechterollenprobleme. In Wahrheit aber, ist der deaktivierte Offlinesynchronisierungsfilter hierfür verantwortlich.
Denn kaum haben wir diesen wieder aktiviert, sind erneut offline gegangen und betätigen erneut die Schaltfläche In CRM anzeigen, zeigt sich der Datensatz auch im Offline-Modus.
Des Weiteren unterschätzen viele, dass die Regeln jeweils kumulativ arbeiten.
Wenn also eine Regel nur aktive Kontakte anzeigt, ich in einem anderen Kontaktfilter jedoch auf die Statusabfrage verzichtet habe, dann können deaktivierte Kontaktdatensätze weiterhin in den Outlook Kontakten angezeigt und synchronisiert werden.
Daher ist es ratsam, die einzelnen Filter genau zu definieren, damit auch nur diejenigen Datensätze rückgeliefert werden, die auch tatsächlich synchronisiert oder angezeigt werden sollen.

Weitere Informationen zum Thema:
================================

Getting CRM Data into Outlook


Office 2003 & 2007	Office 2010

Outlook Filters

Offline Filters

You also might be wondering what that ‘System Filters’ tab is referring to:

User Filters	These filters belong to you, and they dictate what information gets synced down from CRM to Outlook.
System Filters	These filters are set by the system administrator, and they apply to everyone.

Modifying a Filter
Filters work cumulatively – each filter defines a set of data which will sync to Outlook. For example, click on the ‘My Outlook Contacts’ filter and a new dialog will come up showing the filtering conditions for this filter. You can see that we’ve specified that any Contact which is owned by us and which is set to be Active will be synced to our Contacts folder.

Now, let’s say that we didn’t want all of our CRM contacts to appear in Outlook, but only the Contacts from our hypothetical partner firm, Contoso. We’d add another clause to the filter condition as follows:

After adding this condition, we can Save and then close the dialogs – next time you sync with CRM, all CRM Contacts (including Outlook contacts which you’ve tracked) will disappear from your Contacts folder unless they belong to Contoso.
Creating a new Filter
So modifying filters is easy enough, but what about adding new ones? As we said, filters are cumulative, so if you create multiple filters for a single entity type, then entities which match any of the filters will be synced.
By default, Outlook will only take the accounts you own Offline, even if you have access to other accounts. Let’s run through creating a simple filter that will make sure that all accounts which were modified in the last week are synced Offline. We’ll leave the existing filter in place as well so that you’ll still get all of your personal accounts, even if they haven’t been changed recently.
To start with, choose “Offline Synchronization Filters” from the dropdown and then click “New”.

You’ll see a new filter dialog come up. Account should be selected as the default entity, but you can pick another entity type from the dropdown if you wish:

Then we can go on to define some conditions for our filter, namely that the “Modified On” date should be within the “Last 7 Days”.

We can then save the filter, which prompts us to choose a name.

Once you’re done, hit “OK” and close the filter dialog and you should see your new filter in the list!
Resetting your Filters
What if you’ve blundered somehow, and messed up your filter settings? You can go back to the way things were by opening the filters dialog again and clicking More Actions -> Reset Data Filters. This will restore your filters to the default filter set for the organization.
The downside of this is that you’ll lose all of your new filters and modifications, but that’s the point of reset, right?
But wait… there’s more
We’ve covered some basic scenarios which leverage the Outlook Data Filters feature, but there’s plenty of extended functionality. Most of the latter is targeted more towards ‘power users’, so in general, we recommend keeping things simple.
If you have any questions, feel free to post a comment or create a thread on the forums. Technical details about filters can be found in this MSDN article.

Update Rollup 5 Issue with SystemSettings - 'Organization' entity doesn't contain attribute with Name = 'isuseraccessauditenabled'.

2012-01-18T07:08:00.000-08:00

Get an Issue after running UR5 on an multi Server environment at customer site.
As I´ve seen in the web that many people have this issue, I will share our findings here in an summary.
Issue:
========
We tried a couple of things on our CRM 2011 Servers instance and found 2 problems:
•when importing a Solution with the System Settings embedded, the import fails saying the system settings fields are missing - very strange, since these fields are part of the system organization entity
•when trying to activate Auditing (the global setting) I get the error "Query Builder Error" & the following error in the in the errordetails.txt: 'Organization' entity doesn't contain attribute with Name = 'isuseraccessauditenabled'. So I cannot enable auditing. Use Access auditing is a feature of UR5. I get the error regardless of enabling/disabling this new option.

Cause:
=======
It appears that Rollup 5 (build 1533) has been applied to CRM 2011, but not the databases, i.e. the CRM schemas have not been updated? I say this because
So it seems they have updated the CRM dll's but not the metadata!
Unhandled Exception: System.ServiceModel.FaultException`1[[Microsoft.Xrm.Sdk.OrganizationServiceFault, Microsoft.Xrm.Sdk, Version=5.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35]]: System.Web.HttpUnhandledException: Microsoft Dynamics CRM has experienced an error. Reference number for administrators or support: #96B4876FDetail:
<OrganizationServiceFault xmlns:i="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/xrm/2011/Contracts">
<ErrorCode>-2147220970</ErrorCode>
<ErrorDetails xmlns:d2p1="http://schemas.datacontract.org/2004/07/System.Collections.Generic" />
<Message>System.Web.HttpUnhandledException: Microsoft Dynamics CRM has experienced an error. Reference number for administrators or support: #96B4876F</Message>
<Timestamp>2012-01-17T22:06:33.6688209Z</Timestamp>
<InnerFault>
    <ErrorCode>-2147217149</ErrorCode>
    <ErrorDetails xmlns:d3p1="http://schemas.datacontract.org/2004/07/System.Collections.Generic" />
    <Message>'Organization' entity doesn't contain attribute with Name = 'isuseraccessauditenabled'.</Message>
    <Timestamp>2012-01-17T22:06:33.6688209Z</Timestamp>
    <InnerFault i:nil="true" />
    <TraceText i:nil="true" />
</InnerFault>
<TraceText i:nil="true" />
</OrganizationServiceFault>
Solution:
===========
Installed UR5 on the Deployment Server Role as well which wasn´t the case (was missed).
This run of UR5 Installation updated the Database and the CRM schemas correctly.
Webforms and Database is matching again and we are able to update SystemSettings again.
http://www.dynamicsconsulting.de/2012/01/18/update-rollup-5-issue-with-systemsettings-organization-entity-doesnt-contain-attribute-with-name-isuseraccessauditenabled/

Update Rollup 6 for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 is available. This article describes the hotfixes and the updates that are included in this update rollup. This update rollup is available for all languages that are supported by Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011.

2012-01-13T08:07:00.001-08:00

Update Rollup 6 for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 is available. This article describes the hotfixes and the updates that are included in this update rollup. This update rollup is available for all languages that are supported by Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011.
Build number and file names for this update rollup
The build number of the update packages for the following components is 5.0.9689.1985. •Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Server

Update Rollup 6 for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 is available Update Rollup 6 for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 is availableUpdate Rollup 6 for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 is availableUpdate Rollup 6 for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 is available
•Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 for Microsoft Office Outlook
•Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 E-mail Router
•Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Report Authoring Extension
•Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Language Pack
•Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Reporting Extensions
The file names for the 32-bit versions of the update rollup packages are as follows:•CRM2011-Client-KB2600640-LangID-i386.exe
•CRM2011-Router-KB2600640-LangID-i386.exe
•CRM2011-Bids-KB2600640-LangID-i386.exe
•CRM2011-Mui-KB2600640-LangID-i386.exe
The file names for the 64-bit versions of the update rollup packages are as follows:•CRM2011-Server-KB2600640-LangID-amd64.exe
•CRM2011-Client-KB2600640-LangID-amd64.exe
•CRM2011-Mui-KB2600640-LangID-amd64.exe
•CRM2011-Router-KB2600640-LangID-amd64.exe
•CRM2011-Srs-KB2600640-LangID-amd64.3exe

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2600640/en-us

Microsoft CRM Outlook Client and Update Rollup 11 (UR11)

2012-01-13T07:59:00.000-08:00

Microsoft CRM Outlook Client and Update Rollup 11 (UR11)

Last week Microsoft released Update Rollup 11, which I had been patiently waiting for to see how it works with Outlook 2010. I am happy to report that it delivers the goods!
I have had Microsoft Outlook 2010 installed on my laptop for a while but I was not happy with how the CRM Outlook client worked on UR10. Instead of adding the “Track in CRM” and other related CRM buttons on the home tab in the ribbon, it added a new tab called “Add-Ins” and put all the CRM functionality there. As a heavy Outlook client user, this simply didn’t work for me because every time I wanted to do something with CRM I had to click on the Add-Ins tab first. Very annoying.

Outlook Client UR10 – Uses Add-Ins Tab

When Microsoft released UR11, the first thing I tested was to see if they fixed this problem. Great news, the all of the CRM functionality including the critical “Track in CRM” button is now front and center on the home tab!

Outlook Client UR11 – CRM Functionality on Home Tab

Even better, you can play around with the Ribbon to customize the location of the CRM section and move it further to the left in the ribbon if you want (clicking the up arrow moves the ribbon section closer to the left side of the screen). You can access this menu by right-clicking on the ribbon and selecting “Customize the Ribbon”.

(Side note: What the heck does the Chinese Conversion section do? I don’t see it on the ribbon at all, weird.)

Installation vom Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Client mit Outlook 2010 64-bit schlägt fehl

2012-01-13T07:57:00.000-08:00

No. KBA-01032-YBRYDB
Keywords: Outlook 2010 64-bit, Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0
Last Modified: 03.06.2010

Problem
Installation vom Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Client mit Outlook 2010 64-bit schlägt fehl.

Lösung
Der Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Client für Outlook supported nur den 32-bit Outlook Client.
In der Version 5.0 wird auch der 64-bit Outlook Client unterstützt.
Es gibt allerdings einen Workaround:
öffnen Sie den Registry Pfad:
HKEY Current User\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\MSCRMClient

Erstellen Sie ein DWord (32 bit) Wert mit dem
Titel: IgnoreChecks Wert: 1
Der Installations Assistent für den CRM Client wird einen Fehler anzeigen, Sie haben aber die Möglichkeit die
Installation mit 'Weiter'fortzusetzen.

Download
Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 für Microsoft Office Outlook (lokale und gehostete Editionen)
Kurzbeschreibung: Installieren Sie Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 für Outlook und Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 für Outlook mit Offlinezugriff. Nur für lokale und gehostete Editionen von Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0.
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=de&FamilyID=60c4a6cc-59d7-416e-9f44-0ae8ff249768
Download von Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2010 Testversion.
http://www.microsoft.com/office/2010/de/download-office-professional-plus/default.aspx

http://www.dynamicsconsulting.de/2012/01/13/installation-vom-microsoft-dynamics-crm-4-0-client-mit-outlook-2010-64-bit-schlaegt-fehl/

Solve ‘pending reboot’ setup show stopper for CRM 4 Client (with Update Rollup 7)

2012-01-13T07:43:00.000-08:00

I’ve been extremely busy over the past week creating demo systems and updating our own internal Black Marble systems. Part of that long list of tasks was to get around to testing the CRM 4 Outlook client with Outlook 2010.
For those who don’t know, you need the Update Rollup7 client if you want to use Outlook 2010 (and x86 Office only need apply). You can download a slipstreamed client installer from Microsoft.
However, you may find that the client steadfastly refuse to install, telling you that it is unable to proceed due to a pending restart.
The solution to the problem can be found on the Microsoft forums:
Look in the registry, in the Current User hive (HKEY_Current_User) for the user you’re trying to run setupclient.exe as. You will find a key in HKCU\Software\Microsoft named MSCRMClient. Create a new Dword value (32-bit if you’re on Windows 7 x64) called IgnoreChecks and set the value to 1.
This fixed it for me. Hopefully it will fix it for you too.

Cheers
Christian

http://www.dynamicsconsulting.de/2012/01/13/solve-pending-reboot-setup-show-stopper-for-crm-4-client-with-update-rollup-7/

Cloud-Einsatz im Mittelstand steigt

2012-01-13T05:03:00.001-08:00

Im 'HP Cloud Index' untersuchen der Marktforscher techconsult und HP Deutschland den Einsatz von Cloud Computing in mittelständischen Anwenderunternehmen. Nach Angaben von techconsult werden 200 Anwenderunternehmen in insgesamt 800 Interviews quartalsweise zu ihrem derzeitigen und künftigen Nutzungsverhalten befragt.

Mit der Befragung vom November/Dezember ist die dritte Erhebungswelle des HP Cloud Index Mittelstand abgeschlossen und erlaubt einerseits den direkten Vergleich mit den im Jahresverlauf 2011 erhobenen Daten, andererseits eine Prognose der zukünftigen Entwicklung von Cloud Computing im deutschen Mittelstand.

Zum Jahresende deutliche Steigerung des Cloud-Einsatzes

Nicht nur gegenüber dem vierten Quartal 2010 ist eine deutliche Steigerung der Cloud-Nutzung unter den 200 befragten Unternehmen zu verzeichnen, auch im Vergleich mit dem Vorquartal konnte eine Steigerung um nahezu 4 Prozentpunkte festgestellt werden.

Grafik: techconsult

Insbesondere Software-as-a-Service-Angebote (SaaS) wurden im vergangenen Quartal stärker genutzt und kommen bei über 12 Prozent der Unternehmen zum Einsatz. Dabei werden bevorzugt Standardanwendungen wie Groupware-, Office- oder CRM-Lösungen genutzt. Die Teilnehmer des Index gaben jedoch an, dass die Lösungen häufig ergänzend zu traditionell betriebenen IT-Systemen zum Einsatz kommen. Dies biete den Unternehmen mehrfache Vorteile: Sie können die Lösungen im laufenden Betrieb dauerhaft und belastbaren Tests unterziehen und somit den tatsächlichen Mehrwert besser einschätzen.

Gleichzeitig baut die IT Cloud-Know-how auf und kann die Akzeptanz der Lösung unter den Endanwendern prüfen. Die Gewährleistung des laufenden Betriebes und die bestmögliche Unterstützung der Geschäftsprozesse steht bei der Nutzung oft im Vordergrund. In einzelnen Fällen berichteten Teilnehmer der Studie aber auch von grundlegenden Umstrukturierungen der Geschäftsabläufe im Zuge des Cloud-Einstiegs, mit dem Ziel, agiler und reaktionsschneller auf Veränderungen reagieren zu können. Hier wurde die Initiative zur Cloud-Einführung zu wesentlichen Teilen von der obersten Führungsebene getragen.

Der Bereich der Plattform-Services differenziert sich immer stärker aus und deckt verschiedene Anforderungen der Anwender ab. Häufig ist es für die IT-Entscheider schwierig, aus den verschiedenen Angeboten die richtige Wahl zu treffen. In den vergangenen Monaten war für viele Ansprechpartner gerade die fehlende Überschaubarkeit des PaaS-Marktes ein Ausschlusskriterium – noch verstärkt durch das Gefühl, die Lösungsangebote seien noch nicht ausgereift und die Investitionssicherheit zweifelhaft. So vertrauten viele Mittelständler eher darauf, eigene Anwendungen auf selbst-administrierten Infrastruktur-Umgebungen in einer Public Cloud laufen zu lassen, als auf eine originäre PaaS-Lösung aufzusetzen. Teilweise befürchten die Unternehmen hierbei auch, die Kontrolle über die IT zu verlieren. Die PaaS-Infrastruktur wird dem Kunden abstrahiert und automatisiert bereitgestellt – dagegen kann der Anwender auf seine IaaS-Kapazitäten in (nahezu) gewohnter Manier zugreifen und diese administrieren.

Konkrete Cloud-Planungen bei nahezu einem Drittel der Teilnehmer

Nahezu ein Drittel der befragten Unternehmen haben für 2012 konkrete Cloud-Planungen bzw. werden die derzeit eingesetzte Nutzung fortführen. Auffällig ist die Konstanz im Cloud-Nutzungsverhalten. Während im Frühjahr noch einige Befragte nur Lastspitzen mit Cloud-Lösungen abfederten, sind Cloud-Services bei den meisten Teilnehmern nunmehr fest in der IT-Infrastruktur verankert und werden dem tatsächlichen Bedarf angepasst. Einerseits ist dies durch den Aufbau von Private Clouds bedingt, aber auch die Nutzung eines externen Services ist längerfristig angelegt. Die feste Inkorporierung der Angebote in die IT-Abläufe ist aber auch weiteren Punkten geschuldet: Einerseits bieten viele Cloud-Anbieter Vergünstigungen bei Mindestvertragslaufzeiten, andererseits bevorzugen viele Teilnehmer der Befragung eine sichere Planbarkeit des Bezuges und verbinden mit kontinuierlichen und langfristigen Vereinbarungen ein gewisses Sicherheitsgefühl. Des Weiteren ist der Druck einer vollständigen Skalierbarkeit häufig nicht gegeben. Nutzerzahlen und Einsatz der Cloud-Services sei in der Regel auch über einen längeren Zeitraum planbar. Außerdem fehlten häufig die Ressourcen, den tatsächlichen Bedarf auch zeitnah zu ermitteln. Aus diesen Gründen könnten diese Vorteile des Cloud Computing gar nicht ausgeschöpft werden und stehen bei der Evaluation von Angeboten nicht im Vordergrund.

Public Cloud mit deutlicher Zunahme Ende 2011

Eine deutliche Zunahme konnte die Bereitstellungsform der Public Cloud im letzten Quartal 2011 verzeichnen. Zwar war ein leichtes Wachstum bereits im dritten Quartal prognostiziert worden, dieses fiel aber intensiver aus als vorausgesagt. Hier sind weiter Angebote aus den Bereichen SaaS besonders stark nachgefragt, gleichzeitig treibt an diesem Punkt auch der gestiegene PaaS-Einsatz das Public-Cloud-Modell voran. Wichtigstes Modell ist nach wie vor die Private Cloud, die in der Regel als Einstiegsmodell präferiert wird. Neben dem tatsächlichen Betrieb innerhalb der Unternehmen, spielt dabei auch immer wieder die Bereitstellung durch einen externen Dienstleister eine wichtige Rolle. Hinsichtlich der Prüfung von Letzteren betonten die Teilnehmer der Befragung jedoch, Public-Cloud-Angebote als Vergleichswerte heranzuziehen.

Grafik: techconsult

Im vierten Quartal 2011 konnte auch die Hybrid Cloud ein deutliches Wachstum verzeichnen – in der Regel auf Kosten eines dedizierten Private-Cloud-Einsatzes. Wie in den vorangehenden Wellen betrachten die Ansprechpartner dieses Modell als das leistungsfähigste. Eine vollständige Umstellung auf den Bezug von IT-Leistungen über ein Public-Cloud-Modell scheidet in der Regel für die Teilnehmer aus. Individualisierte und an die Geschäftsprozesse angepasste IT-Systeme werden von den Ansprechpartnern als erfolgskritisch eingeschätzt und gleichzeitig angenommen, dies sei mit standardisierten Public-Cloud-Lösungen nicht möglich. Der Einstieg in die Cloud-Welt über den Aufbau einer Private Cloud erlaube vielmehr, die Individualität aufrechtzuerhalten und trotzdem von den Vorteilen des Cloud Computings zu profitieren. Den entscheidenden Beitrag zur Flexibilisierung bietet die Weiterentwicklung in eine Hybrid Cloud, in der das Unternehmen sich auf seine Kernkompetenzen konzentrieren kann und von Routineaufgaben in standardisierten Bereichen entlastet wird.

Viele Mittelständler beschäftigen sich indes bereits intensiv mit den Grundbedingungen für einen Cloud-Aufbau im eigenen Unternehmen. So konnte im Jahresverlauf 2011 eine deutliche Zunahme der Virtualisierung- als auch der Standardisierungs- und Automatisierungsanstrengungen festgestellt werden. In einer Selbsteinschätzung gaben die Teilnehmer Ende 2011 an, ihre IT sei zu über 50 Prozent standardisiert – ein Wert der angesichts der häufig historisch gewachsenen Heterogenität der Systeme überrascht. Virtualisierung gehört auch im Mittelstand zum grundlegenden Werkzeug der IT-Abteilungen, allerdings wird sie von vielen Unternehmen nur eingeschränkt im Unternehmen eingesetzt. Unternehmenskritische Systeme werden zur Garantie der Verfügbarkeit von der Virtualisierung ausgeklammert oder der siloartige Betrieb von Anwendungen auf virtualisierter Grundlage fortgeführt - ohne dass sich die Auslastung der zugrundeliegenden Infrastruktur signifikant steigert.

Mittelständler beschäftigen sich intensiver mit Cloud Computing

Grafik: techconsult

Während sich im Vorquartal nahezu drei Viertel der befragten Unternehmen nur oberflächlich oder gar nicht mit Cloud-Computing-Modellen auseinandergesetzt hatten, ist in den aktuellen Ergebnissen ein deutlich positives Wachstum des Beschäftigungsgrads mit Cloud-Angeboten und –Technologien zu verzeichnen. Mehr als ein Drittel der Unternehmen hatte sich im vierten Quartal 2011 intensiv mit der Cloud beschäftigt. Maßgeblich findet diese Auseinandersetzung innerhalb der IT-Abteilungen statt. Auch von den teilnehmenden Geschäftsführern wird die Cloud als ein Thema angesehen, das von der IT-Abteilung betreut und getrieben werden muss.

"Die Cloud wird immer mehr zum strategischen Element in den Planungen der IT und ist ein festes Angebot im Portfolio von Anbietern und lokalen IT-Dienstleistern. Der bisherige Erfolg des Modells im Mittelstand wird die cloud-ablehnende Haltung vieler Entscheider ins Wanken bringen", so Ulrich Seibold von HP. Darüber hinaus würde die Cloud auch innerhalb der Geschäftsführung bzw. den Fachabteilungen eine zunehmend wichtigere Rolle spielen und als Mittel gesehen, die Anforderungen der Geschäftsprozesse ideal und flexibel durch IT-Ressourcen unterstützen zu können. Bislang kommt der Anstoß zur Einführung gelegentlich auch aus den Fachabteilungen oder der Geschäftsführung selber. Im Vergleich zu anderen innovativen IT-Lösungen steht die Beschäftigung mit Cloud Computing in den IT-Abteilungen derzeit häufig noch hinten an.

Hosted xRM= Anything Relationship Management aud Knopfdruck! Auf der Basis von Microsoft Dynamics 2011

2012-01-13T04:57:00.000-08:00

Demo Video: Microsoft Dynamics Xrm (Erweitertes CRM) Häufig müssen Unternehmen weitere Beziehungen verwalten, die für den Erfolg von wesentlicher Bedeutung sind – mit Mitarbeitern, Partnern, Lieferanten, Distributoren, Auftragnehmern und zahlreichen weiteren Stakeholdern, denen eine entscheidende Bedeutung zukommt. Microsoft Dynamics CRM kann auf einfache Weise an diese „Erweiterten CRM-Szenarien“ angepasst werden und den Wert aller Beziehungen steigern, deren Bedeutung und Eignung für das Unternehmen verbessern, die Qualität der betrieblichen Abläufe optimieren und bessere Einblicke in das Unternehmen bieten.

Eine einheitliche Entwicklungsumgebung für beliebige Applikationen ist ein großer Wunsch vieler Unternehmen. Auf der Basis von Microsoft Dynamics CRM können alle vorstellbaren Anwenungen umgesetzt werden.

xRM= Anything Relationship Management

Partner Relationship Management
Patienten Relationship Management
Lieferanten Relationship Management
Zuschauer Relationship Management
Projekt Relationship Management
Händler Relationship Management
Personal Relationship Management
Medikamenten Relationship Management
Produkt Relationship Management
Abteilungs Relationship Management
Sendungs Relationship Management
Und das nun alles auf Knopfdruck!

Ihr Anything Relationship Management in 7 Minuten einsatzbereit!

http://www.dynamicsconsulting.de/microsoft-dynamics-crm-2011/microsoft-dynamics-2011-free-demos/

Testen Sie uns - in 7 Minuten einsatzbereit!

Dynamics CRM 2011 Einführung Beratung - Consulting München

2012-01-13T04:49:00.000-08:00

Damit Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 in Ihrem Unternehmen schnell Früchte trägt, muss es mit System eingeführt werden. Hier setzt die Dynamics Consulting Projekt-Erahrung & Methodik an: In klar definierten Schritten führt diese sicher zu spürbaren Erfolgen. Die Kombination aus eigens entwickelten Prozessen, Tools und der Microsoft Methodik SureStep integriert dafür folgende Erfolgsfaktoren in das CRM-Projektmanagement:

Die Führungsriege steht geschlossen hinter CRM, und komminiziert klar den Benifit der Einführung

Durch aktive Kommunikation über das CRM Vorhaben werden die Mitarbeiter frühzeitig informiert und eingebunden

Beteiligte CRM-Poweruser aus allen relevanten Unternehmensbereichen sind früh integriert

Verantwortlichkeiten werden klar an Abschnittsverantwortliche verteilt

Die Prozesse im Unternehmen sind definiert und visalisiert.

Schrittweise Einführung von Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 – bereichsweise oder nach Funktionen

Beteiligte zukünftige Poweruser ins Projekt Team integrierenAlle Beteiligten, die bisher relevante Dynamics CRM-Prozesse genutzt haben, nehmen möglichst am Projekt Geschehen teil. So wird vorhandenes Praxiswissen genutzt und in das Dynamics CRM-Vorhaben effizient in deren Teams kommuniziert. Neben dem Dynamics CRM-Projektleiter werden insbesondere IT-Verantwortliche, wichtige Anwender, die so genannten Poweruser aus verschiedenen Bereichen, wie Vertriebsmitarbeiter aus dem Innen- und Außendienst sowie Kollegen aus dem Marketing und dem Service eingebunden.Dynamics CRM Projekt Management mit SystemDamit Ihr Dynamics CRM-Projekt reibungslos starten kann, werden im Vorfeld Ihre Unternehmensbereiche analysiert (Business Prozess Mangement). Dynamics CRM Projektziele werden anhand dieser definierte Prozesse definiert und kommuniziert. Mit der von Dynamics Consulting speziell entwickelten Dynamics CRM Einführungs Strategie, werden einzelne Bereiche im Rahmen eines Prozess Analyse Workshops analysiert. Hier wird neben organisatorischen und prozessrelevanten Abläufen auch die bestehende IT-Umgebung genau betrachtet. Alle grundlegenden CRM relevanten Prozesse fließen von Anfang an in die Dynamics CRM Projektumsetzung ein. So ist eine gelungene, schrittweise Dynamics CRM-Einführung von Begin an gewährleistet. Die Mitarbeiter erkennen den Wert von Microsoft Dynamics CRM, leben die Strategie und nutzen die Prozesse gerne.

http://www.dynamicsconsulting.de/dynamics_crm_2011_beratung/dynamics-crm-einfuehrung/

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Dynamics CRM 2011 - Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011

Neuer Pricing and Licensing Guide Dynamics CRM 2011, Feb 2012

Neuer Pricing and Licensing Guide Dynamics CRM 2011, Feb 2012

Unterstützung weiterer TK-Systeme und Handy-Integration mit Dynamics CRM 2011

C4B erweitert Funktionen der UC-Reihe

Virtuelle Telefonanlage - OpenScape Secure Cloud - Virtuelle Telefonanlage -

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Cloud Telefonie Lösung von Siemens Enterprise Communications

Videos von Siemens Enterprise Communications zur OpenScape Secure Cloud

Since installing rollup 6 we have been getting intermittent ‘Access Denied’ messages as per the forum entry below.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 & 4.0 Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 & 4.0 München

Monitoring HTTP Output with Fiddler in .NET HTTP Clients and WCF Proxies

Running Fiddler against local Addresses

Using Fiddler with other Browsers

Getting Fiddler to work with .NET Client Requests

Make sure you enable All Processes in Fiddler

The Underlying Connection was Closed

Monitoring HTTPS/SSL Connections

If Fiddler won’t work give Charles a Try

Update Rollup 21 for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Available for Download!

Update Rollup 21 for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Available for Download!

Die “Killerapplikation” für Videogenuss auf dem iPad / iPhone

very nice!!

Das iPad ist ideal für das Abspielen von Videos. Die Applikation Air Video macht aus einem Rechner einen Videoserver, streamt die dort gespeicherten Clips auf’s iPad (und iPhone) und konvertiert Dateien in Echtzeit.

Fixed: "After upgrading to the Insight Unicode product (Insight 7.5), the CRM adapter will throw errors.."

Dynamics CRM 2011 - Getting Dynamics CRM 2011 Data into Outlook

Dynamics CRM 2011 - Getting Dynamics CRM 2011 Data into Outlook

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 : Using Microsoft Dynamics CRM for Outlook - Configuring Synchronization Filters

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 : Using Microsoft Dynamics CRM for Outlook - Configuring Synchronization Filters

Cloud und mobile Computing schon fast Routine bei Schweizer Grossunternehmen

CRM 2011 Termine direkt über Exchange Server anstatt Outlook?

iPad 3: Neue Fotos iPads 3 aufgetaucht - iPad 3:

iPad 3: Neue Fotos iPad 3: aufgetaucht -iPad 3:iPad 3:iPad 3:iPad 3:iPad 3:iPad 3:iPad 3:iPad 3:iPad 3:iPad 3:iPad 3:iPad 3:iPad 3:

Finally arrived - Lenovo ThinkVision LT1421 14" LCD monitor with Plastic Cover

Data Integration/Migration using SQL Integration Services (SSIS) 2008

Network ports used for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0

Network ports used for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0

Network ports used for the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Web application

Network ports used by SQL Server running the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Connector for Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services server roles

Full Uninstall of Microsoft CRM Outlook Client 4.0

Full Uninstall of Microsoft CRM Outlook Client 4.0

CRM 2011 Walkthrough: Reset Selected Users’ Filters

Introduction

Pre-requisites

Walkthrough

Great New Features in Microsoft CRM 2011’s Next Update!

Gut vernetzt: Microsoft kündigt Dynamics CRM Mobile an

Neu in Hamburg Dynamics Consulting.de - Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Experts aus Hamburg

Neu in Hamburg Dynamics Consulting.de - Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Experts aus Hamburg

Neu in Bremen Dynamics Consulting.de - Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Experts aus Bremen

Neu in Bremen Dynamics Consulting.de - Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Experts aus Bremen

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Unleashed

Book Description

Book Details

Calculate the Actual Value of an Opportunity in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Using .NET or Jscript

Calculate the Actual Value of an Opportunity in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Using .NET or Jscript

CRM 2011 – Offline and Outlook Filters and Templates: Local Data Groups

Introduction

Some Terminology

Outlook

Offline

Filter

Template

Synchronising Data: Filters

Outlook vs. Offline

System vs. User Filters

Filter Types

Filter Templates

Default Filter Templates

Example

Conclusions

Replicate Local Data Group (Offline Client / Outlook)

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011: What's New

The New User Interface, Dashboards, and Charts

Entity Views, Forms, and Displays

Dashboards

Charts

Department- or Group-Specific Forms

Summary: How to change the maximum number of records that you can export from Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011/4.0/3.0 to a Microsoft Office Excel worksheet

Change Excel Export Limit for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011

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