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FAQ for Customer and Partner Portals

by C.R. Matín on June 27, 2011

This post addresses the most common issues that occur with the Customer and Partner Relationship Management Portals. If the problem you’re running into is not in the list below, please post a message to the CRM Labs Solutions Forum here: http://social.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/crmlabs/threads?filter=alltypes.

1. Solution Import

1.1 Getting started with the portals

Portal installation instructions are as follows:

  1. Download the cab file from the marketplace and save it to disk
  2. Unpack the cab using instructions above
  3. Navigate to the “Documentation” folder
  4. Follow instructions for On Premise or Azure Deployment

1.2 Unpack the cab file downloaded from the marketplace

The cab file can be unpacked in two ways:

  1. If you have a third party unzipping program, you can right click on the cab file and use the unpacking tool.
  2. If you don’t have a third party tool, follow these steps:
    1. Open a command prompt. Start->run-> “cmd”
    2. Navigate to the location you stored the cab file
    3. “md CustomerPortal”
    4. “expand CustomerPortal.exe.cab –f:* CustomerPortal”

1.3 Solution Import: Error about cab files not being signed

“The cab file is not signed or digital signature cannot be verified”.

This error occurs for one of two reasons:

  • The incorrect cab file is being imported
    MicrosoftXrmCustomerPortal.cab     and MicrosoftXrmPartnerPortal.cab are the solution cab files. Please make sure you’re importing one of these. They are in the root directory once you’ve unpacked CustomerPortal.exe.cab or PartnerPortal.exe.cab.
  • The root cab file was not unpacked correctly
    Please follow instructions above for unpacking the cab file

1.4 Solution Import: Schema validation error when importing the correct cab file

"The selected file is corrupted or it does not use the correct schema. Either select another file or modify the file to use the Microsoft Dynamics CRM migration template schema"

This error occurs when you are running on pre-RTM version of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011. The portals were developed against version 5.0.9688.583, so please make sure you’re running on a build greater than that.

Note: You can check the build you are running by going to your CRM client and navigating to File -> Help -> About Microsoft Dynamics CRM.

1.5 Installing both Customer and Partner portals in the same CRM instance

The steps are as follows:

  1. Install Partner Relationship Management Portal following the Partner Portal Deployment Guide. The PRM solution contains all the necessary components that are required for both portals to work.
  2. Install the Customer Portal website. Note – don’t install the CRM solution, just host the website on Azure. Skip to step #3 in the Deployment Steps section of the Customer Portal Deployment Guide.

You can install both solutions in step 1 as well if you’d like.

2. Live ID/Azure Setup

2.1 Getting the device id and password

Device ID and password are strings 12-22 characters long and are related to the live id so you can come up with any strings that meet the criteria. Please make sure note them down as you will need these values every time you connect to CRM Online with that particular Live ID.

2.2 Live-ID changes

Live ID no longer requires domain verification, so we don’t need to download the txt file and add it to the azure project. Additionally, the UI is different. Please refer to the updated Step 8 of the documentation here:

Customer Portal

Partner Relationship Management Portal

3. Partner Portal Access Issues

"You do not have sufficient permissions to view this page." in the Partner Portal

  1. Set the Parent Customer of the Contact (customer accessing the portal) to a Partner
  2. Set Account Relationship Type to "Partner"
  3. Invalidate the Cache
  4. Set access permissions for that contact following instructions in the documentation

4. Changing Membership Provider

If you’d like to use AD or IFD instead of Live ID for authentication, you can follow the steps in this blog:

http://www.shanmcarthur.net/crm/developers-corner/customer-portal-modifications-for-demo-vpc-without-internet-connectivity

While it is written for CRM 4, the process is identical for the CRM 2011 Portals as well.

The portals are designed to follow ASP.NET conventions. They should work with any legacy SSO solution that uses the IPrincipal mechanism of ASP.NET, or any membership provider that you plug into your site including the Active Directory or SQL membership providers distributed with ASP.NET.

5. WebsiteCopy.exe Utility fails when using Claims/IFD authentication
          OR
cannot connect to datacenters outside the US

WebsiteCopy.exe UI that was released with the portals on the Microsoft Dynamics Marketplace does not support Claims or IFD authentication. The UI will not allow providing only a username and password in the scenario where you have CRM installations with Claims/IFD auth. It also doesn’t connect to non-US organizations.

You can use one of two solutions for this:

  • Use the command line interface
  • Download CRM SDK version 5.0.3 or greater. The issue has been fixed in WebsiteCopy.exe released in the SDK

6. Language problems

The portals are English-only. We have not tested them in other languages.

If you are successfully able to import the Portal solution into your system and cannot activate workflows, you can try installing the English Language pack to your system. Alternatively, you can write your own workflows since the logic is pretty trivial.

6.1 System.NullReferenceException when trying to create/view a case

This issue occurs only in CRM orgs that do not have English as the base language. The *WEB* keyword needs to be in the service description and the case default subject and priority needs to be translated to the target language.

Palak Kadakia



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Ruby Gem for SugarCRM: Advanced use

by C.R. Matín on May 27, 2011

Editor's Note: This is the third part in a series of articles by David Sulc, co-author of the Ruby gem for SugarCRM. In this article, he goes over advanced usage of the gem.

This is an article about “advanced” use of the SugarCRM Ruby gem. We’ve previously covered using basic gem functionality, and building a simple rails app using the gem to make a CRM portal, so you might want to take a look at those first.

Using a config file

The SugarCRM gem can use a configuration file to save you from tediously re-entering your CRM credentials each time you use it (note: this is already the case it you’re using the gem with Rails). To use a configuration file, you can add your credentials to one (or more) of
  • ‘/etc/sugarcrm.yaml’
  • ‘~/.sugarcrm.yaml’ (i.e. your home directory on Linux and Mac OSX)
  • a ‘sugarcrm.yaml’ file at the root of you Windows home directory (execute ‘ENV[‘USERPROFILE’]‘ in Ruby to see which directory should contain the file)
  • ‘config/sugarcrm.yaml’ (will need to be copied each time you upgrade or reinstall the gem)
  • a YAML file and call ‘SugarCRM.load_config’ followed by the absolute path to your configuration file
If there are several configuration files, they are loaded sequentially in the order above and will overwrite previous values (if present). This allows you to (e.g.) have a config file in ‘/etc/sugarcrm.yaml’ with system-wide configuration information (such as the url where SugarCRM is located) and/or defaults. Each developer/user can then have his personal configuration file in ‘~/.sugarcrm.yaml’ with his own username and password. A developer could also specify a different location for the SugarCRM instance (e.g. a local testing instance) in his configuration file, which will take precedence over the value in ‘/etc/sugarcrm.yaml’. Your configuration should be in YAML format: 
config:
base_url: http://127.0.0.1/sugarcrm
username: admin
password: letmein
(Note: the blog isn’t formatting this correctly: the lines afer ‘config’ should be indented. See examples mentioned below…) An example, accompanied by instructions, can be found in the ‘config/sugarcrm.yaml’ file. In addition, a working example used for testing can be found in ‘test/config_test.yaml’

Extending the gem

If you want to extend the gem’s capabilities (e.g. to add methods specific to your environment), you can either
  • drop your ‘*.rb’ files in ‘lib/sugarcrm/extensions/’ in the gem’s files (see the README in that folder)
  • drop your ‘*.rb’ files in any other folder and call ‘SugarCRM.extensions_folder = ‘ followed by the absolute path to the folder containing your extensions
Let’s say we want to add a ‘SugarCRM::Account#recent_partner?’ method that will tell us if we’ve added this partner in SugarCRM in the last year. We’ll simply create a new file at ‘lib/sugarcrm/extensions/extend_account.rb’ containing: 
SugarCRM::Account.class_eval do
def recent_partner?
Time.now - self.date_entered < 1.year
end
end
(Note: if you want to extend the gem in Rails 3, simply add that same file somewhere in Rails.root/config/initializers.) Now, to find out if the first account in SugarCRM was entered less than a year ago, we can simply call 
SugarCRM::Account.first.recent_partner?

Using direct access to the SugarCRM API

As previously shown, basic SugarCRM queries can be handled with the convenience methods the gem provides. For more specific and advanced use, the gem provides direct access to the SugarCRM API through the ‘connection’ attribute. Here’s how you can search for accounts with a shipping or billing address in Los Angeles (because by default the convenience method uses AND on all conditions): 
SugarCRM.connection.get_entry_list("Accounts", "accounts.billing_address_city = 'Los Angeles' OR accounts.shipping_address_city = 'Los Angeles'")

Using simultaneous sessions

This gem allows you to work with several SugarCRM sessions simultaneously, which can be quite useful when reproducing limited (potentially obfuscated) datasets for testing purposes, moving records to a restructured SugarCRM instance, etc. How do multiple sessions work? On each ‘SugarCRM.connect’ call, a namespace is returned. This namespace can then be used just like you would use the ‘SugarCRM’ module. Make sure you do NOT store this namespace in a reserved name (such as SugarCRM). For example: 
ServerOne = SugarCRM.connect(URL1, username1, password1)
ServerOne::User.first
ServerTwo = SugarCRM.connect(URL2, username2, password2)
ServerTwo::User.first
If you have only one active session, calls to SugarCRM are delegated to the active session’s namespace, like so 
ServerOne = SugarCRM.connect(URL, username, password)
ServerOne::User.first # this call does
SugarCRM::User.first # the exact same thing as this one
To replace your session to connect with different credentials, use 
ServerOne.reconnect(new_URL, new_username, new_password)
Then your session will be reused (SugarCRM modules will be reloaded). To disconnect an active session: 
ServerOne.disconnect!
As mentioned in the introduction, there are also articles on basic gem use and using the gem with Rails that you might want to check out. Gem documentation can be found at https://github.com/chicks/sugarcrm, and questions/problems regarding the gem should be reported there also for quicker resolution.

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Announcing: Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Implementation Guide update 5.1.0

May 19, 2011

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Implementation Guide update 5.1.0 is now available

Yes, it’s that time of year again where flowers are blooming, trees are burgeoning, and there’s a brand-spanking new update to the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Implementation Guide! Please note that this update will only be published to the TechNet and MSDN libraries.

Summary of changes

We strive to keep the information in this documentation as current and accurate as we can. The below table lists the changes that have been made as part of this documentation update.

Guide

Topic

Type

Explanation

Planning

Business Manager’s Role in a Microsoft Dynamics CRM Implementation

Revision

Moved the entire section out of the Planning Guide and moved it as a separate document that is not included with the Planning Tools download package.

Planning

Upgrading from Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0

Addition

Added a note that only the default organization is upgraded and additional organizations must be upgraded by using Deployment Manager.

Planning

SQL Server deployment considerations

Addition

Added bullet item about limited support when running Microsoft Dynamics CRM with a SQL Server that uses RCSI.

Planning

Active Directory and network requirements for Microsoft Dynamics CRM

Addition

Added a short sub-topic for IPv6 support.

Planning

Network ports for Microsoft Dynamics CRM

Addition

Added new subtopic for server role network port requirements.
       

Installing

Install Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Server on a server without Microsoft Dynamics CRM installed

Revision

Revised Setup Wizard step on Specify E-mail Router Settings page to include that if you use a domain account for the Email Router service you must add that account to the PrivUserGroup.

Installing

Installing Microsoft Dynamics CRM for Outlook with Roaming User Profiles, Windows Server Remote Desktop Services, or Citrix Presentation Server

Addition

Added new topic for installing Microsoft Dynamics CRM for use with Citrix and Terminal Server.

Installing

Microsoft Dynamics CRM Reporting Extensions XML configuration file

Revision

Replaced "true/false" with "0/1" accepted values for autogroupmanagementoff element.

Installing

Sample Microsoft Dynamics CRM Reporting Extensions XML configuration file

Revision

Replaced "true/false" with "0/1" accepted values for autogroupmanagementoff and autoupdateconfigdb elements.

Cheers!

Matt Peart

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Released! Customer Care Accelerator for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011

May 13, 2011

imageThe Customer Care Accelerator for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 officially went out the door for folks today and it is now available publicly. You can head over to Microsoft Pinpoint and pick it up here or you can find it on the Dynamics Marketplace here.

As a bit of a teaser… here are two screen shots of the new interface provided as part of the Reference Implementation for CCA.

imageimage

And a bit of a rehash from my previous post on this:

Here are a few highlights to help you be prepared and knowledgeable on CCA for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011.

  • First, The Customer Care Accelerator R1 will continue to fully Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0.
  • The Customer Care Accelerator R2 and User Interface Integration (UII) for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 is scheduled to be released on April 15, 2011.
  • The Customer Care Accelerator R2 and UII will fully support Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Online and Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 On-Premises.
  • The UII framework will support all of the authentication models supported by Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011, including Active Directory, IFD (Internet Facing Deployment), Live (for Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online) and partial support for Claims (Security Assertion Markup Language — please see the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 SDK and Installation documentation for more information on Claims/SAML support).
  • The Customer Care Accelerator R2 and UII for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 have been updated to .net 4.
  • The Customer Care Accelerator R2 will include updated and restructured reference implementation, providing several prebuilt scenarios to help partners and customers get a jumpstart on learning how to work with the building blocks within the UII. As an example, one of the scenarios will include creating user sessions from various activity types in CRM, and using UII tasks to create cases.
  • The Hosted Application Toolkit (HAT) will be updated for .net 4.0 using the .net 4.0 workflow engine and HAT will fully support Visual Studio 2010

Let me know what you think.

Matthew Barbour

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Aspin Interactive's Franchise Management & eCRM System goes online …

January 9, 2011

The solution is a combination of small business management, telesales order processing with customer relationship management facilities (eCRM). The system also integrates with Sage Line 100 through another one of Aspin Interactive's …littlearticl…

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SugarCRM planea más integración con aplicaciones MS

August 17, 2006

SugarCRM es uno de los paquetes de CRM más avanzados y fáciles de usar que existe. Si usted lo ha utilizado alguna vez en su lugar de trabajo, usted sabe que es mucho más fácil que tener millones de correos electrónicos y notitas pegadas a su monitor. Casi siempre, Sugar siempre ha ofrecido una versión [...]

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