It has been a year since we first launched the Success Portal, a free resource that provides Microsoft CRM training. The Success Portal currently features more than 150 videos that cover a huge variety of topics in Microsoft Dynamics CRM, including setup, configuration, use, customization, CWR Mobile CRM, and more.

Our Success Portal subscribers have frequently shared three common use cases with us:

1)      New users of Microsoft Dynamics CRM train themselves to learn key functions.

2)      Veteran CRM users watch a single video or series of videos to gain new skills or brush up on a few topics.

3)      Dedicated CRM trainers educate new users, bringing them up to speed quickly thanks to the videos of the Success Portal.

Since the launch of the Success Portal, we have received a tremendous amount of positive feedback from our CRM Online customers who have deployed Microsoft CRM more quickly, trained new employees faster, and increased the efficacy of their CRM deployments.

Selected Testimonials from our Success Portal subscribers:

“I just wanted to take this opportunity to let you know that I am extremely impressed with the Success Portal that you and your team have put together. … Please give my thanks to your team for all of your hard work – it shows in the XRM Success Portal!” - David Stockton, Fit4sale

“The CRM Success Portal offered me a quick way to learn customizations for our company’s CRM system. The step-by-step video guides and phone customer support were essential in getting our needs met quickly and easily. Thanks!” - Becky M., Elite Healthcare Partners

“In the non-profit world we live on small budgets. Innovative stuff like this is such a great tool and valuable tool. Keep them coming!” - Sean St. Heart

“I have learned more from your site in 5 minutes than I have from hours on any Microsoft website. You guys make this process a breeze between your knowledge of Dynamics [CRM] and your [Success] Portal. Thank you.” - Cody Martin

“Thank you for pointing out things to me that I didn’t even know existed but that make my life SO much easier and simpler. You make me look like a rock star to my boss!!!!” - Diane S.

The best part is that the Success Portal is free, even if you didn’t initially purchase Microsoft Dynamics CRM through xRM.com. Simply go to our Join the Success Portal page, and click “Join” to get started.

so office 365 and crm online are in the office 365 platform but how are they integrated together i.e webservices?

Hi,

Is it possible to integrate Microsoft CRM with a CTI application CUCM from Cisco?

If yes what are the options and cost?

Thank you.

Regards,

Maarouf

I'm running into the same issue, were you able to find a solution to this.

Unhandled Exception: System.ServiceModel.FaultException`1[[Microsoft.Xrm.Sdk.OrganizationServiceFault, Microsoft.Xrm.Sdk, Version=5.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35]]: A primary entity column cannot have a dot in its nameDetail:

<OrganizationServiceFault xmlns:i="www.w3.org/.../XMLSchema-instance" xmlns="schemas.microsoft.com/.../Contracts">

 <ErrorCode>-2147220970</ErrorCode>

 <ErrorDetails xmlns:d2p1="schemas.datacontract.org/.../System.Collections.Generic" />

 <Message>A primary entity column cannot have a dot in its name</Message>

 <Timestamp>2012-12-14T18:50:00.0830943Z</Timestamp>

 <InnerFault i:nil="true" />

 <TraceText i:nil="true" />

</OrganizationServiceFault>

If the CRM Outlook client is installed you can simply uninstall the CRM Client.  You can also restrict what is available to users via Security Roles in CRM.  By creating a custom security role you can restrict access to Sync to Outlook, Go Offline, Go Mobile, etc..  

In Outlook, click on the View tab, then click on Reading Pane, and check to make sure the Reading Pane is enabled.

it is fixed, after i disabled few active x controls

The email case is resolved, the from: to: cc: are well filled :)

The last problem I have is with the incidents, which must be "open" to be imported (or I must use a workaround to let all this in "open", store the value of the state in a temporary field, and run a workflow to close the incident after the import).

Good job, just before the end of year :)

Fabrice

SnapShot! version 1.3 has been released.

The update includes a new report as well as some corrections to the Security Role report.

Both the documentation and sample reports have been updated.

Additions:

I added a report that will show the security privileges for each user. This is the combination of all of their security roles. If you’ve ever wondered exactly what security privileges a user has, after applying several security roles, this report will give you that information.

The User Privileges report is formatted exactly like the Security Roles report so that you can see, at a glance, the privileges a user has to each entity.

Corrections:

I fixed several issues in the Security Role report. Some of the information for a security role was misrepresented or just plain wrong. This is partly my fault and it appears, some differences between the SDK documentation, and what is actually being stored and returned from the database. Those issues are now corrected.

For more information, please visit the SnapShot! product page.

SnapShot! version 1.3 has been released.

The update includes a new report as well as some corrections to the Security Role report.

Both the documentation and sample reports have been updated.

Additions:

I added a report that will show the security privileges for each user. This is the combination of all of their security roles. If you’ve ever wondered exactly what security privileges a user has, after applying several security roles, this report will give you that information.

The User Privileges report is formatted exactly like the Security Roles report so that you can see, at a glance, the privileges a user has to each entity.

Corrections:

I fixed several issues in the Security Role report. Some of the information for a security role was misrepresented or just plain wrong. This is partly my fault and it appears, some differences between the SDK documentation, and what is actually being stored and returned from the database. Those issues are now corrected.

For more information, please visit the SnapShot! product page.

Summary

On December 7th, the Microsoft Dynamics Service Engineering team resolved a CRM Online reporting feature outage, where all CRM Online customers were having issues with creating, editing, deleting, or running custom and out of box reports (oob). Although no escalations were received from the APAC or EMEA regions this issue would have impacted those customers as well.

The issue surfaced during a routine maintenance of a North American report server. These maintenances are transparent to end users because of the redundancy in the infrastructure. The upgrades are also tested in pre-production environments but unfortunately were undetected in this pass.  During the upgrade, the report server database which is shared by multiple report service servers were updated as well which broke the reporting service server’s connection with the backup Report Server database.  In order to resolve the mismatch and to reestablish the connection Service Engineering continued with the upgrade and proactively upgraded the report databases across all GEOs during dark hours.

Customer Impact

All CRM customers may have experienced issues with creating, editing, deleting, or running custom and out of box reports (oob).

Incident Start Date and Time

December 7th, 2012 2:00 PM PST

Date and Time Service was Restored

December 7th, 2012 7:00 PM PST

Root Cause

Database version mismatch which broke the connection with the backup report servers.

Next Steps

Simplify SharePoint administration tasks with 15 free scripts to automate daily tasks.

• IMPORT-SPSITE: Imports a site from a backup file
• ADD-SPUSER: Adds a new user to a group in SharePoint
• REMOVE-SPSITE: Removes a site from the site collection
• SET-SPITEM: Modifies a list item
• DISPLAY-SPLIST: Displays all lists

Simplify SharePoint administration tasks with 15 free scripts to automate daily tasks.

• IMPORT-SPSITE: Imports a site from a backup file
• ADD-SPUSER: Adds a new user to a group in SharePoint
• REMOVE-SPSITE: Removes a site from the site collection
• SET-SPITEM: Modifies a list item
• DISPLAY-SPLIST: Displays all lists

Forms have come a long way in CRM 2011 and here are a couple of tricks I use a fair amount.

Hiding Locked Fields

Some forms have fields which simply cannot be taken off the form. A good example is the Account Name field on the Account entity.

While we can stop the field from being compulsory, by going to the field settings, we cannot remove the padlock indicating it is locked to the form (and any other forms we create from this one).

The solution is we hide the field in a hidden section. If we create a new section on the form, we can set its properties to be not Visible by default:

All we then do is drag our locked field to this hidden section and we no longer see it on the form.

Please note: If you put a compulsory field in a hidden section and try to save the record it will automatically expose the hidden section so you must make the field not compulsory for this to work (or autopopulate it via jscript OnSave). Also, as in my example, if you are hiding the default name attribute, populate it by using either a jscript or workflow because, otherwise, any child record will show a blank lookup reference, which can be confusing for users.

Dodging Compulsory Fields

Let us say you have a two-step process for handling cases. The call center team receive the emails, quickly reply to the simple queries and convert the trickier ones to Cases for the resolution team. The resolution team then get into the details of the Case and resolve it. It is conceivable that the call center team will not need to know as much detail as the resolution team and, being a team which is dealing with high volumes of queries, simply do not have the time to get bogged down into finding out the important information. It makes more sense for the resolution team to find this information out as part of their investigation.

In version 4, this meant we had a problem. If there are key fields on a Case form needed for things like business reporting, assuming they are compulsory, they must be filled out when the Case is created. Even today, many consultants will tell you to get around the problem we either relax the compulsory nature of the fields or write some tricky jscript to check the role of the user and tweak the fields dynamically.

With 2011 there is a little known alternative approach using forms. As you may know we can create multiple forms for a given entity and assign them to different security roles. We can even create roles with no actual security rights but use them as a way of giving forms to users.

In our case, let us create two forms: one for the call center users and one for the resolution team. We will take the detailed form with all our compulsory fields on it and ‘Save As’ to act as a template for our call center version. The problem comes when we try to remove the compulsory fields; the computer says ‘no’.

To get around this, we do a bit of a supported hack/workaround. We go to the field in question, make it non-compulsory, come back to the form, remove it and then make the field compulsory again (you will probably need to publish the changes between these steps as well).

The net result is we have a form with a bunch of compulsory fields missing from it. What is great is the form does not complain when the call center staff use it and hit the save button; it seems saving only checks the fields on the form in visible and hidden sections but not the fields off the form. This means the call center can create the seedling of a Case, assign it to the resolution team and, because the resolution team only have access to their detailed version of the form, they are forced to fill in the rest of the compulsory fields. No code needed and no compromise to what the business needs to capture.

Conclusions

If you are looking at form design and working with forms for entities like Cases or Products, you may have come across the kinds of problems mentioned above. With any luck these tips might save you some angst and code writing, enjoy

Forms have come a long way in CRM 2011 and here are a couple of tricks I use a fair amount.

Hiding Locked Fields

Some forms have fields which simply cannot be taken off the form. A good example is the Account Name field on the Account entity.

While we can stop the field from being compulsory, by going to the field settings, we cannot remove the padlock indicating it is locked to the form (and any other forms we create from this one).

The solution is we hide the field in a hidden section. If we create a new section on the form, we can set its properties to be not Visible by default:

All we then do is drag our locked field to this hidden section and we no longer see it on the form.

Please note: If you put a compulsory field in a hidden section and try to save the record it will automatically expose the hidden section so you must make the field not compulsory for this to work (or autopopulate it via jscript OnSave). Also, as in my example, if you are hiding the default name attribute, populate it by using either a jscript or workflow because, otherwise, any child record will show a blank lookup reference, which can be confusing for users.

Dodging Compulsory Fields

Let us say you have a two-step process for handling cases. The call center team receive the emails, quickly reply to the simple queries and convert the trickier ones to Cases for the resolution team. The resolution team then get into the details of the Case and resolve it. It is conceivable that the call center team will not need to know as much detail as the resolution team and, being a team which is dealing with high volumes of queries, simply do not have the time to get bogged down into finding out the important information. It makes more sense for the resolution team to find this information out as part of their investigation.

In version 4, this meant we had a problem. If there are key fields on a Case form needed for things like business reporting, assuming they are compulsory, they must be filled out when the Case is created. Even today, many consultants will tell you to get around the problem we either relax the compulsory nature of the fields or write some tricky jscript to check the role of the user and tweak the fields dynamically.

With 2011 there is a little known alternative approach using forms. As you may know we can create multiple forms for a given entity and assign them to different security roles. We can even create roles with no actual security rights but use them as a way of giving forms to users.

In our case, let us create two forms: one for the call center users and one for the resolution team. We will take the detailed form with all our compulsory fields on it and ‘Save As’ to act as a template for our call center version. The problem comes when we try to remove the compulsory fields; the computer says ‘no’.

To get around this, we do a bit of a supported hack/workaround. We go to the field in question, make it non-compulsory, come back to the form, remove it and then make the field compulsory again (you will probably need to publish the changes between these steps as well).

The net result is we have a form with a bunch of compulsory fields missing from it. What is great is the form does not complain when the call center staff use it and hit the save button; it seems saving only checks the fields on the form in visible and hidden sections but not the fields off the form. This means the call center can create the seedling of a Case, assign it to the resolution team and, because the resolution team only have access to their detailed version of the form, they are forced to fill in the rest of the compulsory fields. No code needed and no compromise to what the business needs to capture.

Conclusions

If you are looking at form design and working with forms for entities like Cases or Products, you may have come across the kinds of problems mentioned above. With any luck these tips might save you some angst and code writing, enjoy

We are finally back up and running after a run-in with Windows Azure subscription cancellations. If you notice issues with the website please let us know.

As an early Xmas gift I’m releasing the Navigation UI Record Counter add-on for free on CodePlex.

This is a fully supported solution, there are no tricks involved in displaying the record count. We’ve used the out of the box Xrm.Page.navigation methods to set the label. This record counter will show you the number of active records of the desired related entity.

If you’re interested in learning how this works under the covers read on, otherwise download it from http://uirecordcounter.codeplex.com. There are couple of steps you need to take in order to get it up and running, please see the documentation tab for more detail, otherwise contact us and we’ll be happy to help.

Under the Covers

Once you import the solution you can call a function that’s part of uirecordcounter.js web resource called “UIRecordCounter.Counter.displayCount”, this takes in a single parameter that allows you to specify which navigation items to display the record count in. Syntax of the parameter is:

[‘navItemName:entitySchemaName:foreignKeySchemaName’, ‘navActivities:activitypointer:regardingobjectid’]

Navigation item names can be found via IE Developer Tools (F12). Entity schema name is the related entity schema name, eg: if you want to display the activity count for an account record the entity schema name is “activitypointer”. The foreign key schema name field is where the current record (contact) primary key is stored, in the example of activities this can be “regardingobjectid”.

Enjoy!

Hi

Not sure if you have solved this, but i have used automation software to solve the most complex of email problems within our department.

We use software called Automate, this can be set to watch your email folders, then based on the content per mail, the system can run a host of actions, run sql commands, generate a report, create documents, attach these back to the email and then send.

Not trying to sell the product, but is an amazing tool that has saved us some time alone just in this area, other software like automation anywhere,automate, winautomation all allow these actions to place

Hope this helps

Grant

I have not found a way yet. Hoping Microsoft rolls out an update... Still showing TBD here: support.microsoft.com/.../2669061 Most companies will not want or can't upgrade to CRM 2011 at the moment and with PC manufacturers shipping systems with Windows 8, this is becoming a problem. Also, this prevents purchases of tablets, etc. because of the lack of support for CRM 4.0. Please post back if you find a fix and I will do the same.

This is indeed a problem, especially with PC manufacturers now only shipping Windows 8 and tablets. Most companies can't upgrade from CRM 4.0 to CRM 2011 at the moment, as that alone is a huge undertaking. Let's just hope IE10 isn't rolled out via Windows Update for Windows 7 and is left as an optional download. Thank you Cory for the temporary fix, even if it is very annoying to have to do this.

We would like to share one of our experiences with SSRS reports. One of the reports we were building required displaying of notes that could hold more than 2000 characters.

Including a text box worked fine for most of the records but we observed that the ones that had more than 2000 characters reported error. To show the entire content of the notes in SSRS reports you can try the following workaround:

Add a textbox with the following expression

=IIF(Len(Fields!description.Value) >= 2000,Left(Fields!description.Value,2000) ,Left(Fields!description.Value,2000))

This will show the first 2000 characters.

For the next 2000 add a blank row and include a textbox with the following expression

=IIF(Len(Fields!description.Value) >= 2000, cstr(Fields!description.Value).Substring(2000), "")

If the content included is less than 2000 characters in the first place itself, then to hide the blank row add the following expression to the visible property

=IIF(Len(ReportItems!txtDescription.Value) >= 2000,false,true)

Note ReportItems!txtDescription refers to the same textbox that we are hiding

This way we were able to increase the display limit to 4000 characters to increase it further add another text by using the same logic as above.

Hope this helps!

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