TIDBITS on the Microsoft Power Platform

Microsoft Technologies leveraged on projects

One of the reasons I persist with the Microsoft Technology stack is that having a huge box of legos to build business applications with is just hard to beat. 

Microsoft tends to change names, debate branding and overall try to communicate what a consultant can bring to the table, but in most of my projects now we tap into numerous different offerings.

Take for instance my last project. In my last project we delivered an integrated model that included 

• Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement (Model Driven Power App + Microsoft Canvas App)
• Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations (Supply Chain Management focused)
• Power Automate (Flow) (Approvals and Standard)
• Power Portal (now called Power Pages)
• Microsoft Dual Write (connecting DYN365FO + DYN365CE)
• Microsoft Azure Synapse
• Microsoft Azure Function Apps
• Microsoft Azure Logic Apps
• Microsoft Azure Service Bus 
• Microsoft Teams
• Microsoft Azure Blob Storage
• and Microsoft Office 365 

We also coordinated the team and the application lifecycle management using Microsoft Azure DevOps, Microsoft Azure CLI, Microsoft Visual Studio, Microsoft RSAT (Regression Suite Automation Tool) and Microsoft Teams. 

Now you would think that you would need a HUGE team to deliver the above, but we actually delivered using a very reasonably sized team with a mix of resources. 

One of the beauties of the Microsoft stack of applications and offerings is that there is so much that you can do! The ability to use a platform that grows organically (SaaS) and through phased projects aligned to key business needs, keeps companies current with the latest and greatest technology offerings. 

The world moves so fast. It is great to have structures in place that allow teams to move at the same speed. 

 

XRMTOOLBOX - A Microsoft Dynamics 365 resource must have!

I have recently been checking out some of the other tools in the XRMTOOLBOX. 

If you have not discovered these tools and you are a Microsoft Dynamics Consultant or Developer, you definitely want to check them out. They make many of the manually intensive configuration steps much more efficient. Take for instance the need to create a set of views. You can use the XRMTOOLBOX tools to create one view and then replicate it to the others within an entity.

The XRMToolbox also includes a very long list of cool. 

Here is a short list of some favorites:

• Bulk Workflow Execution
• Document Template Export
• FetchXML Record Counter
• Manage N:N Relationships
• View Layout Replicator
• Bulk Default Setting of Personal Options/User Settings
• Duplicate Rules Mover

  

In the world of Dynamics 365, configuration/customization/extension does not equal the old world assumptions of "custom software"

When thinking of the experiences or backgrounds needed for any specific project, don't let assumptions trip you up. These terms can help with your communications. 

 

 

Configuration – knowing of and Answering all the questions related to setting up the system for a specific customer. These include all the options under SETTINGs including but not limited to items such as turning on auditing, configuring number formats, turning on relevance search, setting up duplicate detection, configuring territories, setting fiscal year end and more. This is done on every Dynamics 365 project (hopefully) and there are more than 50 questions.

 

Customization – A functional consultants power to configure the system for specific business models such as renaming entities, adding entities, adding system charts, lists/views, adding workflows, creating business rules, formatting the data entry fields and forms, creating PowerApps, setting up relationships between entities and more. The term customization often waffles between configuration and extensions depending on who is using the term.

 

Extensions – extending the functionality of the system using developer resources and many, many, many different code options (.Net, C++, JavaScript, AngularJS, and about 30 more) and includes items such as creating an integration layer with queuing to manage external data integration (although this is shifting to configuration), adding new advanced features, adding advanced automation, extracting/manipulating and resaving data from numerous entities, onSave/onChange/onLoad have the data jump through hoops and blink, etc. The platform is built to be extended and extensions upgrade as they are built using a predefined best practices Software developer kit (SDK) from Microsoft.

 

The world of technology is deep and wonderful. 

FLIC - The little button that could change your world

At Microsoft Dynamics 365 Saturday in Boston Jerry Weinstock shared with us how he is using FLIC with Microsoft Dynamics 365. 

The idea is that you setup a FLIC button (which is a physical button) and tie it to a Microsoft Flow. The flow queries the Microsoft Dynamics 365 database, puts together a table of current information (say the top 10 opportunities) and sends the table in an e-mail to a manager. Managers who work heavily in e-mail, but who don't have time for applications might find this little configuration a true gift. 

Areas in the World of Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement

Put on the hat "Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Customer Engagement" and the dimensions explode. There are so many different angles to think about such as 

• The Product
• The CRM Industry
• The Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) and their extensions, applications and products
• The Project Methodologies
• The Communities
• The Support Resources
• The Training Options
• Certifications
• Industry Uses
• Usability and Adoption 
• Integrations
• Mobility
• IoT
• CRM -> ERP : Bridging the teams, the products, the features and more
• Failures and the Why behind them 
• Working with the Microsoft teams (product, support, services, executives, sales, etc.)

and the list goes on! 

I recently completed a Solution Architecture Assessment engagement and was amazed at all of the categories of discussion and knowledge sharing that bubbled out of a three month, intense, team empowerment project.

So where to start??

 

Extending and Developing with the Microsoft Dynamics 365 Platform - PART II

If you like video

How about Building an xRM (Anything Relationship Management) Solution in a three part video series.

https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/crm/2015/11/25/building-xrm-solutions-a-three-part-video-series/

AND Does your Enterprise have access to http://www.pluralsight.com?

Well there are some awesome Dynamics developer classes via plural sight, put together and released by David Yack.

You can start here

 

Microsoft Visio

Now that Adult Coloring Books have exploded on the marketplace perhaps it is time for you move from the joys of PowerPoint (Admit it, you love it because it is easy creativity) to the joys and the incredible POWER of VISIO or SWAY (but I will save SWAY for another post)!

Do you have processes? Do you want to get these processes to be adopted and consistent across all departments? Why not drop them into a SIMPLE VISUAL DIAGRAM and post them around the office?

Or you can really get into it and use them to "visualize the future state of transformative initiatives" or to "stay on top of operational insights". It is true that a picture can communicate 1000 words and in this noisy world, using a picture to communicate can make a huge difference (even for the most sophisticated).

To learn more about the new features of Microsoft Visio you can read up about it on the Microsoft office team's blog. I even enjoy older posts like this one which is already a year old!    

Microsoft Office Team's Blog

Microsoft Office Blog on VISIO

Microsoft VISIO Test Drive

Smart Clients

In catching up with the communities I saw comments regarding a client who wanted to make sure development and extensions were supported.

Kudos to the client for recognizing that Microsoft Dynamics CRM is flexible, configurable and extendable with supported paths and that developers can sometimes be a little too creative without remembering the long term cost.

Think Dynamics CRM, Think Entities : Thanks Ben!

One of my favorite bloggers, Ben Hosk, has a great post about teaching Senior Developers to think in entities. Why Entities instead of Tables? Well they give you so much more.

Check out Ben's buzz on Entities here

Visual Studio Online

Did you know that if you track all your requirements and backlog iteration items in Visual Studio Online you can easily bridge Business Speak and Developer Speak?

The developers live in Visual Studio, writing code and looking at lines of characters that are often Greek to the non-dev folks, but by using work items in Visual Studio Online you can all work in one world.

Better yet, you can add Microsoft Test Manager test cases and link those to the work items. Just for fun you also get full graphing on burn down and task management.

I like the AGILE TEMPLATE, but also use the SCRUM Template despite my mantra of all CRM projects should be ITERATIVE or a mix of AGILE and WATERFALL.

Check it out: https://www.visualstudio.com/en-us/products/what-is-visual-studio-online-vs 

PS: Online, available from anywhere and it sync's with your local version of Visual Studio and Office AND there are some free try it out options.

xRM Best Practices

Microsoft Dynamics CRM is an incredible out of the box, configurable system AND is also used as a development platform. As users adopt and learn some of the incredible features they quickly realize how many other systems it can replace.

It is like an awesome heart that embraces and wraps all things "need a solution" into it's solution platform, BUT if you have never worked with Microsoft Dynamics CRM then you can make a bit of a mess.

The following are some best practices for working with any technology in today's world.

1) Always ask yourself. If I extend or I get a developer to extend my product how does that align with what the Out of the Box Development team is releasing. They are writing code daily as well., but MANY extensions are 100% supported with all rollup updates and upgrades being easy to install, but some are not and we know how creative developers can be. Make sure your developers think xRM. 

2) Understand and stay current with the product roadmap. Major releases are now coming faster and faster and faster. Two incredible major releases this year and with CRM Online driving an elimination of the world of the "upgrade" staying alert is key.

3) Love the SDK. Yes, you are a .NET Master and a long time senior developer, BUT the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Software Developer's Kit offers you so much more and helps to define the rules of engagement.

4) Embrace the well loved and well used Dynamics xRM Tools, but know who wrote them and their strengths.

5) The Dynamics CRM platform is a set of many different options. Too much choice, but so much choice can also be wonderful. Understand your choices - there are times when adding an ISV solution is so much smarter then building your own, and even within Microsoft the choices are many. Take for instance customer service on the Dynamics platform with and without Parature or Microsoft Social Engagement (also referred to in the past as Microsoft Social Listening) and of course there is the entire Office 365 suite that is forever growing in terms of new cool.

6) Work with a partner who has proven experience building long term supportable xRM projects OR if you work with a partner new to Dynamics CRM understand the risks. Learning curves can be frustrating for teams.

7) IT looks easy, and can be easy, but never under estimate the power of the CRM Architect. It is easy to drive a nail in a piece of wood, but rarely do you build a house without an architect OR add an addition onto an existing house without some review of impact.

8) Don't change software products because you picked the wrong vendor. Hundreds of CRM failures across all vendors have occurred going back 40 or 30 years. People, Technology, Process all have places that need continual current review. Many times it is not the software that is the issue.

 

 

 

Dynamics CRM 2015 SDK Hidden Treasure

One of the great things about the release of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2015 is all the great new that is packed in between all the great that already existed.  Sometimes there is so much great that a feature, tool or wow slips between the lines in the documentation or the noise of the BUZZ.

One of these great little features is a feature of the plugin registration tool that was part of the CRM 2015 release of the SDK! Mark has a short video and blog about it here.

Back in the CRM v2011 Days

Back in the Microsoft CRM v2011 days there was an issue with the “Send an error report to Microsoft” configuration where the OOB features of Dynamics would cause generic errors to appear when in reality there were no errors or perhaps just a slight delay. The timing was over sensitive so although there was some debate about it is designed to do that, it was doing it way too often.

In the field we turned off the alert.  The message was not helpful and also would block an occasional real error. Needless to say for a year or two we would need to turn off this feature both under Settings, Administration, PRIVACY settings and under a user’s personal options.  

Does anyone remember these times?

Does anyone still have a blog post on the issue?

 

 

Fine Tuning MS CRM for Enterprise Level Performance

Microsoft Dynamics CRM has now been running in some of the largest enterprise accounts across the countries, but with millions and millions of transactions comes a need to fine tune so here are a few tricks of the trade from the Enterprise Technical Developers, Database gurus and Consultants!

1) Although perhaps obvious, it is worth adding Indexes to your  SQL Server Database if you are dealing with millions of transactions

2) Enable the Quick Find Limit and encourage users to use Advanced Find when doing more sophisticated searching

3) Kerberos authentic can cause performance issues if it is not turned on AND if it is hitting various incompatibility with different server versions, particularly really old versions so check your server versions and your Kerberos.

4) Go back to the basics at the front end CRM Server, Do you have "Enable HTML Compression?" Set to  Yes?  Turn it off

5) You can also "Turn off the Page Counter" for the Grid  1 of 250, 5000+

6) Review the columns that you have enabled on Quick Find, for each column added the query is increased and overhead is increased.

7) Review the following SQL Server Flags with your CRM SQL Server guru

•  MAXDOP =
• IDSCountForUsingGUIDString =
• IDSCountBeforeCausingJoinsForSecurity =
• Optimize for Adhoc =
• ERMO =

 

Microsoft PFE Team (Premeire Field Engineering) releases awesome ticklers as well

AND the PFE Team (Premeire Field Engineering)  releases awesome ticklers as well. Take a peek at this little tidbit enhancement to Quick Find !

and you can follow the CRM PFE Team Blog !

MICROSOFT Dynamics CRM and the huge CRM Community!

The Microsoft Dynamics CRM Community has an incredible history of leveraging the Dynamics xRM platform to meet some really tough business challenges. If you work with a proven Microsoft Dynamics CRM partner or with Microsoft Consulting Services (the MCS CRM Team), they bring to the table their own incredible library of experiences, but also their own depth and reach of resources and tools.

Knowledge in "CRM" is critical.

There are also great open source resources such as CODEPLEX where partners and clients can download and take ownership of kick starters and CODEPLEX is not Dynamics specific so you can tap into the entire Microsoft stack.

To follow the team at CODEPLEX, read and follow their blog.

Search on CRM on CODEPLEX

AND CODEPLEX is really just a small taste of the greater community resources. Take for instance following a few Dynamics CRM Specific blogs such as some of the ones listed on this blog. You start and the list just grows and grows and grows.  The number of shared resources, code snippets, tools, configuration best practices and more is so unlimited. OK, so you are now tapped into the blogs ...

Have you looked into the ISVs? The Independent Software Vendors writing solutions to compliment the Dynamics CRM platform? Take a peek at ADXStudio for instance who has a huge library of PORTAL options and ALM! or perhaps empowering SALES Teams with complex ordering proposals and integration? Look at Experlogix or maybe you just want some nice address verification and compliance, you can talk with Dun & Bradstreet.  The list really is endless!

Keeping up with Dynamics CRM Versions

Keeping up with the incredible Microsoft Dynamics CRM versions in the old days was hard enough, but now the team is  updating and releasing at an even faster pace. 

Benefits:

• If you don't like something, enter a CONNECT request and you might be surprised sooner than you think or VOTE on one already submitted.

 

• Competition: There information is probably outdated, ask multiple sources. Also make sure you include an experienced servcies provider in your conversations. The Field Service teams at Microsoft and at Partners configure and extend past most all objections.

Negatives:

• You need to make sure to plan on staying current.
• You need to interrupt the versioning.

These Resources can help

 The Dynamics CRM in the Field Blog

The Microsoft Dynamics CRM Team Blog

 

What is an Entity? #msdyncrm

What is a Microsoft Dynamics CRM Entity?

Think first about a table within a database and then add more. A entity in CRM is one focal point of data including a set of fields, a set of views, a set of forms, a set of relationships and more.

An  entity includes an unlimited number of system views that display the data in a spreadsheet like format. Views can also include related data.

An entity includes an unlimited number of data entry forms, although many rollouts have one form per entity. A form is a set of fields laid out in a manner that allows easy data entry. Forms can be tied to security roles.

An entity  includes relationships to other entities. For instance you have an Account entity that has a relationship to a contact entity and this relationship is one account to many contacts. You can also have different types of relationships including One to Many, Many to One, and Many to Many.

An entity includes Charts. A chart is a graphical representation of the data that is contained in the entity and it's related entities. Charts can also be filtered and displayed based on the views.

An entity includes system messages that can be configured.

An entity can be named or renamed to represent the specific needs of a business. Take for instance Account, the Account entity can be renamed to be Company, Corporation, Building, Farm, Sign, Hospital, Department, Office and more.

New entities can be created to meet the demands of many different types of businesses and data tracking.  

For the new to CRM 2013 Developers

A little bit of scripting love!

http://community.dynamics.com/crm/b/develop1/archive/2013/11/02/crm-2013-script-loading-deep-dive.aspx

Dynamics CRM 2013 - Just a little weekend reading!

OneStop Shopping!

This little Wiki will have you reading about Dynamics CRM 2013 All weekend!

The word of the day is: Composite Control

Within the world of millions of pieces of data, relating certain data to other data can create a new piece of data. Take for instance a Full Name.  

A full name can be considered one piece of data or it can be broken down into two, three, four or more pieces of data. Take the full name : Mr. John Jay Smith III and broken down we see the following:

• Salute: Mr.
• First Name: John
• Middle Name: Jay
• Last Name: Smith
• Prefix: III

and these pieces can be data or can be combined to create a number of different data names. John, John Smtih, John Jay Smith, John Jay Smith III, Mr. John Jay Smith III

Why does this even concern anyone? Well these are details that are important within the world of development and coding.

So welcome to Composite Control! A development choice for grouping the need to enter like data through a smooth user friendly interface.

In Dynamics CRM v2013 Composite Control is offered on Name and Address and via the SDK even more can be done.

To read more on Composite Control in the world of Dynamics CRM, CLICK HERE.

It might be available as an Add-On? #msdyncrm

Clients want to purchase a software package that has absolutely everything they need all nicely bundle in a shiny box, but the reality is that each client's business process has many unique variables.

In order to meet all the unique needs of clients Microsoft has built not only a product with a ton of features (#msdyncrm), but also with a framework for development (stick within the framework and upgrades and updates go fairly smoothly). So what have the great partners in the field done?

They have built additional modules, utilites, full products and even feature sets for purchase that click into Dynamics CRM.

 

Within the world of the CRM Industry there is a cutting edge ...

Within the world of the CRM Industry there is a cutting edge ...

AND when it comes to the cutting edge pushing the design of data consumption is right up there with tying the use of CRM to employee motivation. As in they get more motived the more they use the internal CRM application. (yes, really, but I will save that for a future post)

Thanks to Mark for sharing this great post and a free solution on data display design - Perhaps take a few minutes to check it out and comment.

 http://markmargolis.wordpress.com/2013/05/13/crm-timeline/#comment-500

 

http://markmargolis.wordpress.com/2013/05/13/crm-timeline/#comment-500

 

Reporting Flair

It is a rainy day here in the Northeast so what better way to spend an evening. Yes, Enhancing the Dynamics CRM Charts!

Take a look at this little post on a few quick XML edits that you can do to leverage even more visualization.

 

The beautiful world of CRM Multi-Tenant

Rather than dive into writing something again that was so well written by another member of the community I am sharing a post about Multi-Tenant and why this powerful option is now available for Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online users.

Read Here

What's in Your Toolkit?

Anyone who develops within the world of Microsoft Dynamics CRM has a secret stash of favorite tools.

Want to know what some of those tools are?

Check it out

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/11290.microsoft-dynamics-crm-2011-list-of-tools-and-software.aspx

Related articles

MSCRM-ADDONS.COM to Exhibit at the Convergence 2013 in New Orleans, LA, USA

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 hassles: asynchronous processing service stopped

Four Little Words: Do you know the difference?

The exact same words, but extremely different concepts. Do you know the difference?

 

• Bundling ERP with CRM 

 

• Bundling CRM with ERP 

Dynamics CRM Testing: UI Tools

Are you diving into the world of automation testing for extended Microsoft Dynamics CRM projects?

 

Take a look at Visual Studio 2012!

 

There is a whole set of UI Automation testing just waiting to be found!

To get you started you can read about testing for continuous development.

You can also read about What's new in Test Manager 2012.

and then there is the Visual Studio Magazine article on Automating UI Testing and

the list goes on ...

 

 

 

To the SQL Guru Audience - Can I write directly to the Microsoft Dynamics CRM SQL Database?

If I had a dollar for every time the following question was asked in the field I could.. ! Well here is a much better response then a flat No and my thanks to Steven Vlaanderen Oldenzeel from Microsoft PFE for sharing!

Can I write directly to the Microsoft Dynamics CRM SQL Database? 

1. We will support everything you would do when you are using the CRM application layer.
2. For CRM users we do NOT allow direct SQL Server connections, except for excel touching filtered views (but the user might not even know how this technically works).
3. For a DBA, CRM Consultants and other technicians, we will allow anything you do on the SQL Server directly (maintenance, indexes, select statements), but we cannot support it, but your SQL team can support it. This means, test it first and document it properly!
4.  We will NOT allow direct data inserts or updates at all. Do this via the CRM application layer and do not bypass the CRM Security model. This also counts for writing SP’s, Triggers, Functions directly on SQL. Please use Workflows and Plugins.

 

Keep Learning

I am amazed at how I continue to learn more  and more about Dynamics CRM despite focusing on the platform for over eight years. The product team continues to release small and large updates and are amazing in how fast they manage to keep up with the pace of technology change.

Additionally the current product (even before any updates) has a ton of depth and a number of under utilized functionality. When was the last time you decided to add something new to your business processes? What about learning one small area of the software in full?

Consider Goals, or Connections - take a peek at subjects or perhaps you want to become a FetchXML guru

Did you know you can tie web sense into charts?

There is so much that can be done.

Given this I offer this link and suggestions: Go review the Microsoft Dynamics CRM v2011 IMPLEMENTATION GUIDE. You might not have looked at it for a few years, a few months or even ever and it is packed with great information. So take an hour for study, each day this week - shoot make it a team effort and start up a Dynamics CRM brown bag lunch or book group. You will be pleasantly surprised.

 

Unit Testing CRM v2011 and Enterprise Development BP

1)      Unit testing CRM – Some interesting food for thought  

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/devkeydet/archive/2012/10/31/how-i-develop-and-unit-test-crm-2011-plugins.aspx

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/devkeydet/archive/2012/11/27/unit-testing-crm-2011-javascript-web-resources.aspx

 

2)      Enterprise CRM team development – Feedback from the field from Shan (CEO of ADX) and more good food for thought –

A special 2 hour XrmVirtual presentation on Enterprise CRM team development focusing on change management and application lifecycle management (ALM) tools.  Here is the event page:  http://www.xrmvirtual.com/events/team_dev_ShanMc_CRM2011

To the Dynamics xRM Developers in the World

SureStep has a little file that is not always that easy to find, BUT it is a very powerful document for any developer ramping up on or learning Microsoft Dynamics CRM.

The specific file name within SureStep is 1.5.1 Development Standards XRM

Additonally any new and old xRM developer should know about the following resources

Microsoft Dynamics CRM Development Best Practices (available in PartnerSource and MSDN)

Microsoft Dynamics CRM SDK Documentation (available in PartnerSource and in MSDN)

MSDN: Design Guidelines for Class Library Developers, Microsoft Corporation, 2004 (MSDN Library)

 

 

Extending CRM - Organization Messages

I just stumbled upon a nice xRM/CRM developer resources blog: Jamie Miley's Life and Technology - Take for instance this post

http://mileyja.blogspot.com/p/microsoft-dynamics-crm-2011-sdk-index.html 

Fun with Dates

In this incredible world of both technology offering calculated date and people capturing data from all over the world the two concepts can sometimes collide!

Take for instance the world of dates.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM offers UTC adjustments, personal settings and Date and Time fields. What this means is that depending on how you have your computer configured and your Dynamics CRM Personal Options the dates that you enter are adjusted.

Microsoft Outlook does this as well. If  I was to setup a meeting with an associate in California for instance on my calendar for today the meeting would display as Eastern Time (2pm for instance), but for my associate (CRM Guru Marc Wolenik)  the date and time would display as (11am) and if we then added in another person such as a cool CRM Guru in Australia (Leon Tribe) the time would not only be different, the DAY would be different.   

So what happens when you start capturing these types of dates inside of Dynamics CRM for analysis or reporting?

If all the dates are entered by "humans" correctly configured for their local time zones then the software correctly handles all the adjustments. The only trick with regards to this set of considerations is that DATE Only fields are well not really date only so watch that!

If all the dates however are entered by other "Systems" then a bit more thought needs to go into the architecture. Take for instance a system that resides on a server in a data center that is capturing date information based on that servers date. If you then take that date and enter it via an integration, how would you expect Dynamics CRM to react?

How would that date be managed?

Do you want it to be fixed? or adjusted?

If you want it to be adjusted, how are you going to tell the system to adjust it?

What if you want it to be a date field BUT you want to lock it to a certain time zone?

These are the joys of the world of global!  

The Development Team

Oh Right - the team is in Bellevue, WA

Living in a Virtual World I sometimes totally loose track of where someone is physically located. Sometimes it really doesn't matter and then other days - Oh the Joys of Face to Face!

Is their a VIDEO Phone call app for Windows Phone 7?

Adding Soundex

Soundex is not necessarily the ultimate solution to expanding the power of Duplicate Detection, but it is definitely one option.

Check out this post for one approach (comments from the development crowd welcome)

Pimp your Duplicate Detection with Soundex

 

CodePlex and Dynamics CRM

Wow - CodePlex grew while I wasn't paying attention. There are now almost one hundread different free solutions available, all with interesting hints of cool stuff.

Searching on Dynamics CRM: Check it Out

Word of the Day: OData

The word of the day is OData 

"The Open Data Protocol (OData) is a Web protocol for querying and updating data that provides a way to unlock your data and free it from silos that exist in applications today. OData does this by applying and building upon Web technologies such as HTTP, Atom Publishing Protocol (AtomPub) and JSON to provide access to information from a variety of applications, services, and stores. The protocol emerged from experiences implementing AtomPub clients and servers in a variety of products over the past several years.  OData is being used to expose and access information from a variety of sources including, but not limited to, relational databases, file systems, content management systems and traditional Web sites" retrieved from www.odata.org 

Now apply that to your Silverlight learning as you introduce or mix Silverlight in with Dynamics CRM v4.0 or 2011!

"Silverlight 4 includes rich support for accessing web data either on the Internet or intranet via WCF Data Services. Formerly known as ADO.NET Data Services in Silverlight 3, WCF Data Services provides support for REST-based data access as well as support for the new Open Data Protocol (OData) format" retrieved from http://programming4.us/multimedia/2478.aspx 

Fun Stuff!!

Dialogs and Business Process in CRM 2011

Complex Business Process Management in Dynamics CRM 2011

300 level - music to my ears after a day of a bit to much pitch ( yes, I can be over sensitive to this)

Processes (workflows), Dialogs, Plugins

The ability to honor business rules with technology designed to honor and optionally automate business rules.

Tie this to "take action" and you can walk right into branches of logic

Code? You don't necessarily need to write code (re-defining the term developer in CRM 2011) to get eXtended functionality

Custom XAML Workflows with visual studio workflow designer

Workflows or Dialogs? A nice little decision checklist. Including decisions like asynchronous or synchronous, started by user or automated - understood standardized process or quick result?

Special Handling: such as a gold customer status that alerts user on access to step it up

Dialogs: Queries, Assigns, child dialogs, tracking, using a wizard to populate data as opposed to depending on a User's memory to fill in fields

CRM Online

Looks like developers have options with MS CRM 2011 as code can be used to extend - a little peek at CRM and the cloud and then there is Azure ;)

Swimming in the MS CRM 2011 Ocean

I was going to say lake, or pond but it is way too big for that. I spent the weekend working hard on adding to all of the great Dynamics CRM 1.2, 3.0 and 4.0 knowledge.

First and foremost it is such a joy that there is almost nothing that I have to painfully have to throw away. All the great features within CRM v4.0 are enhanced and expanded and then they added more functionality and more power. All while simplifying the concepts so that the developers have easy tools to bundly (Solutions) and the users have power to personalize (Charts and Forms)

What more can a passionate CRMLady ask for!

Key areas that I have been working with, you ask?

The new Service module has been injected with more TEAM power. You can now share cases using key techniques like "working on" and team ownership.

The Knowledge Base has a number of new enhancements which PowerObjects has done a nice job of quickly summarizing here.

The Relationships functionality has matured and a new concept, "Connections" is introduced.

and lastly as much as an entity is an entity is an entity, the entity concept now has a long list of sister components organized in a nice list for mastery such as Option sets, Connection Roles, Templates, Security Profiles, web resources and more.

Rollup Sweet Sixteen (CRM v4)

The Microsoft Dynamics CRM development team has released CRM v4.0 Rollup 16 and not only have they managed to resolve some of the issues reported from the field, they have also fine tuned some of the existing features. (it is amazing what a team of programmers writing code every day can create in 8 weeks) Particularly given there are change control processes, testing processes, QC, Builds, Deploys and more to pull together.

Key Areas

1. The Deployment Manager and Importing an Org
2. Performance (around deployment manager)
3. IE 9 Support
4. Appointments and Synchronization

Do you have feedback?

• Have you installed the latest rollup?   
• Did it fix an issue you reported?
• Did it cause other issues?
• Did it add some new bling? or a feature you discovered?

Share your comments !

xRM Developers, CRM v4.0 and SDK 4.0.13

For those of you who are cruising along on your last years knowledge of xRM development habit you might make a note to add a task to your to do list!

SDK v4.0.13 (and SDK v4.0.12) offers NEW options and CHANGES old accepted xRM development practices

This release includes the new Advanced Developer Extensions for Microsoft Dynamics CRM, also referred to as Microsoft xRM. This is a new set of tools included in the Microsoft Dynamics CRM SDK that simplifies the development of Internet-enabled applications that interact with Microsoft Dynamics CRM.

In addition to the documentation, this download package includes the projects for all sample code found in the documentation, and full featured samples that are not included in the documentation. The package includes a visual style guide you can use to make your customizations fit in smoothly, and a style sheet you can use as a basis for your work. There are also tools and helper code provided in this package. Look for regular updates to this SDK!

So now that you have completed all your New Years Resolutions (or abandoned them) take a bit of time and do a bit of deep diving into the new v4.0 SDK

and for those guru, gurus who are developing on the v2011 platform. The same applies :) as many of the new concepts within the sdk world made it into the v2011 SDK world as well.

Bit by the Dynamics CRM 2011 Marketing Bug? Read this First

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 has been released now both as an Online offering and as an OnPremise offering.

The buzz from the field is that the product is packed with 500+ new features and a ton of new options with regards to customization and after working with the product I have to agree. The team is offering some incredible power and flexibility while still maintaining all that is great in v4.0.

Power however comes with a price. As partners and customers across the world learned in Dynamics CRM v3.0 and v4.0 if you don't take the time to understand then it is easy to dig your own hole of frustration.

So how can this be avoided by those just getting interested? Particularly given that 2011 offers even more!!

Here are five key steps to getting off on the right foot!

1) Take baby steps and small bites, grow with the product 

2) At a minimum READ the installation guide twice (OnPremise)

3) Remember, just because it is easy to configure and customize doesn't mean you know the best way to configure and customize. Tap into experience.

4) Good "CRM" partners have already invested in the basics and offer those as part of every project (why pay to rebuild these, just for the learning exercise? There are better ways)

5) Senior .NET developers who don't know XRM/CRM still have a lot to learn when it comes to thinking XRM. Junior XRM/CRM developers still have a lot to learn when it comes to thinking .NET

           and as a little bit of extra - Item 6

6) Many of the features within Dynamics CRM are version 4.0! but some are v1.0 - set proper expectations when utilizing a specific feature set.

Tap into MS Dynamics World

The popular online magazine and resource MSDynamicsWorld has a new Microsoft Dynamics CRM Resource Page.

Kicking off the New Year, this new page is packed with all things Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011!  If you are planning, prepping or in general curious about the next version of CRM you might want to take a peek.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM and Excel 2007

Caution: You might want to think twice about this one, but it does take care of a user annoyance when exporting from Microsoft Dynamics CRM into Microsoft Excel 2007..

Thanks to Joel over at Customer Effective for summarizing!!

Click To Read - Getting Rid of the CRM Export to Excel WARNING message

Caring for ASYNC

David Jennaway has a great post on the Asynchronous Service as well. You can read some of it here and link to the rest over on Dave's great CRM blog at http://mscrmuk.blogspot.com/  ================================================================= CRM 4.0 UR 3 brought in a useful feature, the ability to configure the CRM Asynchronous Service to automatically delete records from completed asynchronous operations, and hence keep the size of the asyncoperationbase SQL table down to a reasonable size. This behaviour is configured by the registry values AsyncRemoveCompletedJobs and AsyncRemoveCompletedWorkflows However, I recently met an issue with this behaviour, where the CRM Asynchronous Service appears to get in a state where all it is doing is deleting completed jobs, to the exclusion of all other activity. This can leave the CRM Asynchronous Service to have effectively hung (not responding to service control requests, nor polling for new jobs to process) and not to process any new jobs for a considerable period of time (in one environment, this could be several hours). The main symptoms are: No jobs being processed for a considerable period of time The Crm Asynchronous Service not responding to service control requests (i.e. you cannot stop it through the Services console, so you have to kill the process) No values reported for most performance counters (e.g. 'Total Operations Outstanding', 'Threads in use') If you do restart the service, you see a burst of activity (including performance counters) whilst outstanding jobs are processed, then it reverts to the same behaviour as above If you look at the SQL requests submitted by the Crm Asynchronous Service (I use the SQL dynamic management views sys.dm_exec_requests and sys.dm_exec_sessions) you see just one DELETE request and no other SQL activity At the moment, the only workaround I have is to remove the registry values, and to use a scheduled SQL job to periodically clear out the asyncoperationbase table. Here is an example of such a script.

Read More:

http://mscrmuk.blogspot.com/2010/12/stability-issues-with.html

 

A Little Bit More on ASYNC

Thanks to Matt Wittemann over at ICU MSCRM  

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

Posted by Matt Wittemann

There have been several KB articles and updates published to help control the size of the AsyncOperationBase table, which can cause your CRM database to grow very large, very quickly. (See here and here.) But just what are all those records anyway?

I pulled the following lists together from the SDK and technet in order to put this info in one place, where it’s a little more user-friendly (at least for me!).

First, the list of AsyncOperationTypes:

READ MORE at

http://icu-mscrm.blogspot.com/2009/12/asyncoperationbase-table-what-are-all.html

Value	Field	Description
1	Event	Specifies a system event.
2	BulkEmail	Specifies a bulk e-mail operation.
3	Parse	Specifies an import file parse operation.
4	Transform	Specifies an operation to transform parse data.
5	Import	Specifies an import operation.
6	ActivityPropagation	Specifies a campaign activity propagation operation.
7	PublishDuplicateRule	Specifies an operation to publish a duplicate detection rule.
8	BulkDetectDuplicates	Specifies a bulk duplicate detection operation.
9	CollectSqmData	Specifies an operation to collect SQM data.
10	Workflow	Specifies a workflow operation.
11	QuickCampaign	Specifies a quick campaign operation.
12	PersistMatchCode	Specifies an operation to update the matchcode.
13	BulkDelete	Specifies a bulk delete operation.
14	DeletionService	Specifies a Deletion Service operation.
15	IndexManagement	Specifies an index management operation.
16	CollectOrgStats	Specifies an operation to collect an organization's statistics.
17	ImportingFile	Specifies an import subprocess operation.
18	CalculateOrgStorageSize	Specifies an operation to calculate an organization's storage size.
19	CollectOrgDBStats	Specifies an operation to collect an organization's database statistics.
20	CollectOrgSizeStats	Specifies an operation to collection an organization's size statistics.
21	DatabaseTuning	Specifies an operation for database tuning.
22	CalculateOrgMaxStorageSize	Specifies an operation to calculate an organization's maximum storage size.
23	BulkDeleteChild	Specifies a bulk delete subprocess operation.
24	UpdateStatisticIntervals	Specifies an operation to update statistic intervals.
25	FullTextCatalogIndex	Specifies an operation to generate an organization full text catalog index.
26	DatabaseLogBackup
27	UpdateContractStates	Specifies an operation to update contract states.
28	ShrinkDatabase
29	ShrinkLogFile
30	ReindexAll	Specifies an index management operation.
31	StorageLimitNotification
32	CleanupInactiveWorkflowAssemblies
38	ImportSampleData

Next, here’s a list of the different state/statuscodes that each of these operation types can be in:

State	Status	Numeric status value
Ready	WaitingForResources	0
Suspended	Waiting	10
Locked	InProgress	20
Locked	Pausing	21
Locked	Canceling	22
Completed	Succeeded	30
Completed	Failed	31
Completed	Canceled	32

Hope this is useful to you! Have fun with it.

http://icu-mscrm.blogspot.com/2009/12/asyncoperationbase-table-what-are-all.html

Blogosphere - Performance, SQL and DLL Registration

A couple of great posts today that just spurred me to get back on the blogging band wagon.

OK, there was another reason. Over the last couple of weeks I have found that both in Twitter (follow me @CRMLady) and on Facebook and Yammer I have been having a hard time sticking with 140 characters and I am not about to change my entire language to one letter words soo blogging is a better tool for deeper (or perhaps just more wordy) thoughts.

Credit for the posts that caught my eye goes to Sean Shilling from Customer Effective. (Sean you are going to need to get your name added to the list of authors ;)  These posts motivated me to first start sharing via e-mail and then kicked me back into blogging gear (Thanks Sean!)

CRM and SQL : for those with slightly bigger Microsoft Dynamics CRM databases, performance is something you want to think about. This includes standard performance items like indexing the database. To get started take a look at this post to learn more about the CRM SQL Tables.

CRM Plugin Registration and Un-registration Utility: for those who manage a number of different teams, different developers and different environments. You might want a more graphical interface for plugin registration. You can read more about that here.

 

Why no HTML Editor in Dynamics CRM

ExactTarget offers some great insight about HTML e-mails and the challenges they can cause! Variables such as which e-mail client, which browser and which software your clients are using can have an impact.

As such this area of technology gets to be a lot thicker and more complicated than one would first suspect.

If you then mix that with all the cool new tricks for tracking opens, subscribes, unsubscribes and marketing statistics as well as the international and national SPAM laws you are stepping into an area that requires its own experts.  The experts exist and they are working with Microsoft! Companies like CoreMotives and ExactTarget for instance.

So if advanced marketing is a focus of yours then start at the top of the trees, in the right forest, with the right tools and the right partners and then get into the nitty gritty.