SHAREPOINTBlogs.com Mirror

Integrating Dynamics CRM with Office OneNote

I was browsing around and found this great article on integrating Dynamics CRM with Office OneNote (MSDN, Jeff Cardon, Rachel Drossman). It's 4 months old but not worth missing out on. Extending Microsoft Dynamics CRM to Office OneNote 2007 And here's a set of open-source tools that achieve it: Microsoft Dynamics Snap for Microsoft Dynamics CRM I'm a BIG fan of OneNote, I use the screen clipping tool every day (Windows Key + S). I also love developing integration addons so I think this is a great resource. I already have great ideas on what could be created to link the two applications and exchange data. Radi A. Posted on SharePoint Blogs Del.icio.us | Digg It | Technorati | Blinklist | Furl | reddit | DotNetKicks

Microsoft Dynamics CRM Client installation odyssey

When you are presenting Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 to customers bear in mind that one of the key selling points is the strong integration with Outlook 2007. Since Microsoft is manufacturer of both programs you are offering your customers a platform value/benefits. If you have a customer that sends a lot of email from Outlook you will be able to close a deal easily. * * * When you start a CRM project, your problems will begin. Although CRM and Outlook are both manufactured by Microsoft, integration is always a problem! In our last CRM project we encountered a number of problems with CRM client installation. Here is the list of problems and possible solutions: Symptoms: While configuring CRM client the following error is displayed: "The Configuration Manager cannot connect to the Microsoft CRM Server". Resolution: Run a following query against your database server. Replace <server>:<port> with your CRM URL and port. To learn more click here . USE MSCRM_CONFIG Update DeploymentProperties SET NVarCharColumn = '<server>:<port>' WHERE ColumnName = 'AsyncSdkRootDomain' Update DeploymentProperties SET NvarCharColumn = '<server>:<port>' WHERE ColumnName = 'ADSdkRootDomain' Update DeploymentProperties SET NvarCharColumn = '<server>:<port>' WHERE ColumnName = 'ADWebApplicationRootDomain' Symptoms: After installation CRM client the following error is displayed in the taskbar: " Unable...

Enhancing duplicate detection in CRM 4.0

In my previous post I mentioned that duplicate detection could be better in CRM 4.0. Few days ago I found a nice article on how to enhance Duplicate detection. It describes how to use the Soundex algorithm for duplicate detection. Soundex will detect 3 duplicates in my “ Coca Cola problem ”. Soundex is a phonetic algorithm for indexing names by sound, as pronounced in English, so its use for other languages is questionable. In my example I decided to use double duplicate detection. I am using Soundex for phonetic detection but also a strip algorithm that will remove all non characters from a crm entity name. Strip algorithm will also remove all company type abbreviations . Algorithm is able to detect duplicates for first 4 names in my “Coca Cola problem”. Coca Cola Beverages company is still undetected. By using the same principle you can create your own duplicate detection algorithms. Posted on SharePoint Blogs Del.icio.us | Digg It | Technorati | Blinklist | Furl | reddit | DotNetKicks

MindJet rocks!

A few years ago a friend of mine recommended me MindManager 1.0. I instantly fall in love with the product. Last year my company purchased MindManager 6.0. I installed it but never found time to test it properly. I liked the concept from day one, but never really had the time to evaluate it properly. Two weeks ago, while I was getting ready to write " What's new in CRM 4.0 - Part 1 " I decided to use the trial version of MindManager 7.0. With it I created a mindmap that contains all the new features of CRM 4.0. Couple of hours after I published the blog post, MindJet customer service contacted me. They told me that my CRM product map is very cool and that they would like to offer me a complimentary upgrade to MindManager 7.0. Yes, I am now the proud owner of MindManager 7.0. Thank you MindJet!!! My next mission is to find out how to integrate it with Outlook/SharePoint/Project Server/Groove. There are some cool tools I have already found, so this will be fun Posted on SharePoint Blogs Del.icio.us | Digg It | Technorati | Blinklist | Furl | reddit | DotNetKicks

What's new in CRM 4.0 - Part 2

Microsoft announced CRM4 (Titan) as a very cool product. CRM team has done great improvements, and some of them I listed in Part 1 of this post. The product definitely deserves 4 stars out of 5, but there are some things I would like to change. Here I will list the features I would like to improve: 1. Integration with SharePoint Although developers of CRM belong to Office Servers division it seems they have never heard of SharePoint. The new version does not allow you any kind of document management. It is a pity since that would give CRM4 great advantage against other competitors. What am I missing here? - document libraries per CRM entity - document tagging - document search - edit in datasheet 2. Duplicate detection Yes, it is great that finally CRM4 can detect duplicates. This feature is very cool for marketing materials but it is not so useful for day to day implementations. Since rules are not so flexible, duplicate detection algorithm will not be able to detect that the following accounts are duplicates: - Coca-Cola - Coca Cola - CocaCola - Coca Cola Ltd. - Coca Cola Beverages What am I missing here? - regular expressions support 3. Firefox Yes, I understand that Microsoft develops Internet Explorer but some rudimental Firefox support should be available. What am I missing here? - Support for Firefox/Opera… 4. Interface enhancements Interface has been improved a lot, and that’s great. However, one important feature is missing: client side validators. What am I missing here...

What's new in CRM 4.0 - Part 1

During last few weeks I spent some time with CRM 4.0 which is now in RTM phase. Here are some good blogs that you can use to find out more about CRM4: Microsoft Dynamics CRM Team Blog Philip Richardson Sonoma Partners A Freaky Microsoft Dynamics CRM Blog I am getting ready for upcoming projects with CRM4 so I spent some time investigating what’s new in CRM4. A very good overview document can be found at PartnerSource (available only for partners). From the information provided in the overview document and other sources I composed a mindmap (powered by MindManager ) that lists all the new features. Some of the greatest features are listed here: - Report wizard – create great looking reports from web interface - Activity report added to out-of-box reports - Live CRM – Microsoft hosted CRM4 (available in US/Canada only ) - CRM Workgroup edition license (great for teams of up to 5 users) - Enhanced Advanced find - Workflows (based on Microsoft Workflow foundation) - Data maps for importing data - Duplicate detection - Export/Import customizations - Multi-tenancy - Entity relationships enhanced In part 2 of this post I will describe what I am missing in CRM4. Posted on SharePoint Blogs Del.icio.us | Digg It | Technorati | Blinklist | Furl | reddit | DotNetKicks

CRM4 and Firefox

I am quite surprised to learn that MS CRM4 (to be released in 2008) will not support Firefox but here is a good workaround solution . Posted on SharePoint Blogs Del.icio.us | Digg It | Technorati | Blinklist | Furl | reddit | DotNetKicks

Hosted CRM: Free information breakfast in Sydney and Brisbane

For those who are interested in getting their businesses up and running with Dynamics CRM at low costs, my company is holding information breakfasts in Sydney and Brisbane. I'll be presenting some CRM customisation issues and showing demonstrations of development around CRM that our company has been undertaking, and generally talking about why we do CRM development. Steven Bennett from Microsoft Australia will be joining us to talk about CRM's roadmap. If anyone is interested, more information could be found on www.jaythom.com.au ; There is also a registration form for people wishing to attend. The seminar is free, goes for about 1 hour and there will be free breakfast. Posted on SharePoint Blogs Del.icio.us | Digg It | Technorati | Blinklist | Furl | reddit | DotNetKicks

CRM look and feel web site - My attempt

As CRM is the main focus at my work, I undertook a project to create a Dynamics CRM look and feel website. I had a read through the article on stunnware and came up with a few ideas. I also used the CRM UI style guide for reference. It is available from the CRM SDK . The end result ended up looking like this: www.jaythom.com.au The cool part is that it renders in both IE and Firefox. Well almost (: I used telerik controls for nearly everything, the CRM panel bar, the AJAX functionality. I wish I had more time to clean up the code and CSS, remove all bugs and add more CRM-looking features. We will soon run it in a SharePoint environment. If anyone is interested, I could put together my version of a guide on creating a CRM look and feel website/application. Posted on SharePoint Blogs Del.icio.us | Digg It | Technorati | Blinklist | Furl | reddit | DotNetKicks

SQL & CRM performance – GROUP BY and COUNT with CASE statements

This post is really about performance. I had a situation where I started off using subqueries: SELECT DISTINCT Account.Name AS BusinessName, Test.New_name AS TestName, (SELECT COUNT(*) FROM New_Test T2 WHERE T2.New_AccountId = Account.AccountId AND T2.new_testtypeid = Test.new_testtypeid AND new_result LIKE '%PASS%') AS PassedItems, (SELECT COUNT(*) FROM New_Test T2 WHERE T2.New_AccountId = Account.AccountId AND T2.new_testtypeid = Test.new_testtypeid AND new_result LIKE '%FAIL%') AS FailedItems FROM Account INNER JOIN New_Test Test ON Account.AccountId = Test.new_accountid Looking at the above SQL select query, for each row of the returned records two additional select statements must be executed. Well the problem is that CRM views involve a few tables, and the particular company I was doing this for had LOTS of records. While the above example is significantly simplified, reduced in size, shortened etc. etc. the query I had to use was way too much of a performance hit on a quality server. I roughly estimated it will take around 6 days to execute. And I had to use the LIKE keyword. I even tried without using the views. So after a lot of good old google searching, reading articles and blogs I came up with the following: I grouped the results and used CASE statements within the COUNT function to provide me with the sums of data that I require. SELECT DISTINCT Account.Name AS BusinessName, Test.New_name AS TestName, COUNT(CASE WHEN New_Test.new_result = 'FAIL'...

WSS Custom Field Type linked to Microsoft CRM entities (Part 1)

Here is how I created custom columns within Document Libraries and Lists which display data from Dynamics CRM. It allows you to assign an entity record from CRM to an item in a List or DL in Sharepoint. In part 1 I’ll be showing a static approach using the CRM web service. I’ll be using the Account entity’s Name as an example. Once the account name is assigned to a document, the text string (Account Name) is stored by SharePoint. It won’t link dynamically to the entity, i.e. if you delete the account in CRM or rename it, changes won’t propagate to your document library. Part 2 will go through a different approach which will reference the entity and update records dynamically. I will also go through how you can relate many entities to 1 document or list item. To develop the solution I will create a SharePoint custom field type and a custom field control to render the field. Open Visual Studio and create a new project. Select an “Empty” type from the templates that come from the Windows SharePoint Services extentions for Visual Studio Rename your class to something meaningful Add a new item to the project – a “Field Control” form the SharePoint category You will end up with references to the Microsoft.SharePoint DLL, a Field class inheriting from SPFieldText and a Field Control class Rename your classes and filenames to your preference Now we have to create the field control. We will be using the CRM Web Service do interact with CRM entities. Add a Web Reference to the CRM web service...

Introducing Radi

OK it’s about time and here it is - my first blog post. I work as a developer focusing on CRM, SharePoint and general .NET web applications for a Melbourne based company called Jaythom www.jaythom.com.au . I am a big fan of community-based knowledge sharing and I’ve gained a lot, so now it’s time I gave something back. Here’s my contribution. I plan to share experiences on the following technologies and issues: · CRM development · SharePoint development...

Updating name format in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0

A client of mine approached me with the following request: We would like to change name format in our CRM. Currently name format is „firstname lastname", and we would like to change it to „lastname, firstname". Microsoft CRM 3.0 allows you to change the name format. However when you change this setting, CRM will inform you that this change will be applied only to newly created objects. L So in order to update old entities you will need to...

Warming Up your Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 on Virtual Machine

When presenting Microsoft products to potential customers I use my laptop and virtual machines stored on an external hard drive. Currently I am using Western Digital MyBook 500 GB . It's a good hard disk and I'm very satisfied with it. Every time you arrive at your customer's location you need to power up your virtual machine and VMs. VM tends to be much slower in the first minutes of system operation. It can be a problem when you are...