Search: Microsoft+CRM+Live

CRMUG ~ the power of Networking

by C.R. Matín on June 29, 2011

The Dynamics CRM User Group (CRMUG®) provides users a wealth of opportunities to learn, network, and share expertise about Microsoft Dynamics CRM. Powered by Dynamic Communities, Inc., CRMUG is an independent community and the only one recognized by Microsoft as the official user group for Dynamics CRM. CRMUG is designed to connect you with others who rely on CRM to help their organization thrive by allowing you to engage through a variety of channels, including live and virtual events, a vibrant online community and discussion forums, regional networking opportunities, and valuable training courses.

Top 5 Reasons to participate:

  1. Information
    An intimate learning environment filled with detailed conversations and deep dives into functional and technical areas.
  2. Skills
    How2, presentation, and roundtable sessions offer multiple opportunities where you will learn valuable skills from subject matter experts.
  3. Energy
    Network with other Dynamics users, partners and key Dynamics personnel from Microsoft.
  4. Knowledge
    You will learn better ways to innovate, collaborate and report more effectively on a daily basis.
  5. Savings
    This FOCUS event brings you thousands of dollars worth of education and consulting resources all in one compact two-day format, at a fraction of the cost. Plus register by July 24th and you'll get our Early Bird Rate saving you $50!

Upcoming Events

CRMUG 10@10 of 10
6/29 - 12:50PM ET
Register Now

CRMUG: The Power of Choice: On-Premise or Cloud Implementaton?
6/30 - 1:00PM ET
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CRMUG 10@10 of 10
7/6 - 12:50PM ET
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CRMUG: Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Migration Planning
7/7 - 1:00PM ET
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CRMUG: Insights from the Influencers
7/12 - 11:00AM ET
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CRMUG: Dynamics CRM and Tenrox Cloud-based Project Management
7/12 - 2:00PM ET
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CRMUG 10@10 of 10
7/13 - 12:50PM ET
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CRMUG: Hands-On Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Migration
7/13 - 1:00PM ET
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CRMUG SIG: Manufacturing
7/14 - 11:30AM ET
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CRMUG Workshop - Planning for CRM Success!
7/14 - 1:30PM ET
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CRMUG SIG: Financial Services
7/14 - 3:00PM ET
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Regional Chapter Meetings

CRMUG New England Regional Chapter Meeting
7/13 - 6:00PM EST
Register Now

CRMUG PacNW Regional Chapter
7/19 - 10:00AM PST
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CRMUG Denver Regional Chapter
7/20 - 4:00PM MST
Register Now

Cheers,

JaAG

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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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Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online Demonstration Kit

June 14, 2011

The Microsoft Dynamics CRM Product Management team is happy to announce the availability of the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online Demonstration Kit.  This Kit was optimized to facilitate a stand-alone Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online environment.

Scenarios
Included in this Kit is more comprehensive data, Dashboards, Workflows and Dialogs illustrating core CRM capabilities in expanded scenarios.  Read on below to find detailed instructions on how to download and setup these assets.

What’s covered in this kit:

  • Extensive Sample Data
  • 13 Dashboards
  • 17 Workflows
  • 2 Dialogs
  • 1 Web Resource (phone number auto-formatting jscript)
  • 1 Option Set (Timeframe drop-down list to use across entities)
  • 2 E-mail Templates

CRM Online Scenarios

Cheers,

Eric Boocock, Senior Technical Product Manager

 

The following files are included in the Kit and can be downloaded here:

  • CRM Solution (managed, unmanaged)
  • Sample Data
  • Demonstration Script
  • Demonstration Kit Overview

* For more details on managed vs. unmanaged solutions click here.
* Download the Sample Data and unzip the folder before starting the setup process.

Note: This data is based on US Dollar currency. If your currency is not US Dollar you must add the USD currency with the proper conversion rate to your base currency before proceeding.

image

Setup Process

Note: If you encounter any errors during the data import process address them before continuing to import additional entities as future dependencies may be compromised.

  1. Import the basic CRM Administrative data (Users, Sites, Queues, Subjects, Products, etc.) accepting all the Import Wizard default settings.
    • Workplace > Imports, click imagein the Ribbon
      • Import 1-Admin, once successful proceed,
      • Import 2-Admin, once successful proceed,
      • Import 3-Admin, once successful proceed,
  2. Import the CRM Solution
    • Settings > Solutions, click imagein the toolbar
      • Select Solution Package: Browse to the Solution CRM2011Scenarios_1_0_0_0, click Next,
      • Solution Information: click Next,
      • Import Options: Do NOT check the box to activate processes, click Next,
        (The data is properly formatted and if you activate the processes workflows will alter the data.) 
      • Importing Solution: click Publish All Customizations, click Close.
  3. Enable All Users
    • Settings > Administration > Users, change view to Disabled Users, Multi-select all Users and click image in the ribbon.
    • Confirm Users Activation: click OK
  4. Activate the following Sales Processes
    image
    • Settings > Processes, multi-select the processes and click image in the toolbar.
  5. Import Sales, Marketing & Service data (repeating step # 1 above)
    • Import 4-Marketing, once successful proceed,
    • Import 5-Sales, once successful proceed,
    • Import 6-Sales, once successful proceed,
    • Import 7-Service, once successful proceed,
  6. Import custom Data Map for Activities
    • Settings > Data Management > Data Maps, click image in the toolbar
    • Browse and select Activities_customized_PhoneCall (in Sample Data folder), click OK
  7. Import final data set – Activities (repeating step # 1 above except selecting the imported custom data map from previous step)
    • Upload Data File: Browse to and select Import 8-Activities, click Next
    • Review File Upload Summary: click Next
    • Select Data Map: Select the Customized Data Map Activities_customized_PhoneCall, click Next
      image
    • Accept remaining Import Wizard defaults to complete the import.
  8. Recalculate Goals
    • Sales > Goals, select Central Region Revenue and click image in the Ribbon. This will recalculate all the Goals.
  9. Activate all Processes
    • Settings > Processes, multi-select all workflows and click image in the toolbar
  10. Change Product Default Price Lists to Retail
    • Settings > Product Catalog > Products
      • Open Kit of Product A & B, Set Default Price List = Retail, click Save & Close
      • Open Product A (SKU JJ202), Set Default Price List = Retail, click Save & Close
      • Open Product B (SKU AX305), Set Default Price List = Retail, click Save & Close
  11. Run workflow to set Account Products Owned
      • Sales > Opportunities > Won Opportunities, multi-select all records, click  in the Ribbon, select Set Account Relationship Type…, click OK
  12. OPTIONAL:There are 10 Users included within the Sample Data. To login as one of these Users you must assign them a valid Windows Live ID and accept the invitation
    • Settings > Administration > Users, open User record
      • Click image in the Ribbon
      • Enter the new Windows Live ID, click Submit
      • Send new Invitation

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Announcing Microsoft Dynamics CRM SDK Update V5.0.4

June 6, 2011

imageMicrosoft Dynamics CRM SDK Version 5.0.4 is now live on MSDN downloads and MSDN library. This update includes the following:

The next SDK update is scheduled for the end of July. Help us set priorities for future updates:  Send Feedback

Amy Langlois

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Integrating Mapping with Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011

May 27, 2011

Today latitude and longitude can be important in your daily use of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 if you take the time to understand the impact and what it means for your CRM data but before we get to the CRM aspect it’s time for a quick update on GPS a…

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Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Online – Go Live Checklist

May 24, 2011

We’ve designed the Go Live Checklist to improve your overall experience with Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online, even before your business begins using the solution.

This document is a compilation of common configuration settings and tasks to help keep your CRM Online organization optimized so you can focus on what’s most important. This document also includes important online resources your entire business can leverage over and over again.

Who is this document for?

The Go Live Checklist is tailor made for every Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online Admin and user. It was created by the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Technical Support Team in hopes that it would improve your experience with our product.

Cheers,

Rich Choi

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Recover your deleted CRM data and recreate them using CRM API

May 23, 2011

Have you ever lost some your business records in Microsoft Dynamics CRM by accidently deleting them? Are you wondering how to recover them re-create them in CRM, without having to go through much of the tedious manual efforts.

Prior to Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011, we used the “soft-delete” method, where when someone deleted a record, the record will not be actually deleted from the database immediately. Instead the record would be internally marked with IsDeleted = true, and there will be a CRM Deletion Service which will run an Asynchronous System Job once a day, which would actually pick up the records marked with IsDeleted = true and actually delete them from the database. So you could have used workarounds to recover the recently deleted data if it had not yet been deleted by the Deletion Service.

With CRM 2011, there are no more soft deletes in CRM, the record is actually deleted from the database right away. So, this becomes important than ever before. But CRM has the very powerful “Auditing” capability. Provided, you had Auditing turned on for those records, you can look at the Audit logs and find out all the changes that happened on your record including the deletion.

In this blog, I am going to walk you through a simple way with which you can use Audit logs to recover your lost data and recreate them in CRM. Of course, there will be minimal manual effort involved, but since we are using the CRM API for most of the recovery/re-creation work, this will definitely save you a lot of time, especially if you have a heavy volume of records you want to recover.

How do I find the Audit record I need to recover

In the web application, go to Settings->Auditing->Audit Summary View.

You can use the various filters and find the atleast one audit record for the entity you want to recover. Right click the audit record, and say copy a link. This copies the url to Audit Record including the Id. Paste the contents into clipboard, and you can find out the Id of Audit record.

How do I use the sdk to re-create the entity from the Audit record:

Once you have the Audit record’s Id, you can use the following code that uses the CRM API

// _service is the OrganizationService.
// Please refer to the samplecodes in crm 2011 SDK on how to create this _service.
// Guid of the Audit Record
// E1CFF208-277B-E011-BB2B-001F29E1FC88 is the Id of the Audit Record in this example
Guid auditId = new Guid("E1CFF208-277B-E011-BB2B-001F29E1FC88");  

RetrieveAuditDetailsRequest request =new RetrieveAuditDetailsRequest();
request.AuditId = auditId;

RetrieveAuditDetailsResponse response = (RetrieveAuditDetailsResponse) _service.Execute(request);

AuditDetail auditDetail= response.AuditDetail;
Audit audit = (Audit) auditDetail.AuditRecord;
EntityReference entityAudited = audit.ObjectId;

Guid entityId = entityAudited.Id;
string entityLogicalName = entityAudited.LogicalName; 

// Retrieve the audit records for entity.
RetrieveRecordChangeHistoryRequest changeRequest = new RetrieveRecordChangeHistoryRequest();
changeRequest.Target = new EntityReference(entityLogicalName, entityId);

RetrieveRecordChangeHistoryResponse changeResponse =
   (RetrieveRecordChangeHistoryResponse)_service.Execute(changeRequest);

AuditDetailCollection details = changeResponse.AuditDetailCollection;

for (int count = 0; count < details.Count; count++)
{
   if(typeof(AttributeAuditDetail).Name == details[count].GetType().Name)
   {
      AttributeAuditDetail detail = details[count] as AttributeAuditDetail;
      // This is a safety check to verify
// if the audit record is for the delete operation
      if(detail.NewValue == null && detail.OldValue != null)
      {
         Entity entity = detail.OldValue;
         _service.Create(entity);
// The audit records are recorded in the order
// from latest to older. So, it's ok to break since you've recreated // from the latest snapshot of the entity, just before deletion
         break;
      }
   }
}

Instead, if you’re able to find exact audit record for the delete operation you want to recover, you can simply use the following code to recreate the record, instead of the code described above:

// AACFF208-277B-E011-BB2B-001F29E1FC88 is the Id of the Deletion Audit Record Guid auditId = new Guid("AACFF208-277B-E011-BB2B-001F29E1FC88");  

RetrieveAuditDetailsRequest request =new RetrieveAuditDetailsRequest();
request.AuditId = auditId;

RetrieveAuditDetailsResponse response = (RetrieveAuditDetailsResponse) _service.Execute(request);
_service.Create(response.AuditDetail.OldValue);

You can use the sdk calls to retrieve the id of the audit record itself without going through the web UI, but to keep this simple, in this example, I’ve used the web UI method to filter out the Audit records to find the one I need to recover. Also if you have a huge volume of data, this becomes handy and you can just find the AuditIds and add to a list and loop through them.

Hope this helps and makes your recovery of data a smooth experience!

Uma Anbazhagan

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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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The CRM TechNet Wiki – one person’s perspective

May 11, 2011

Today’s guest blogger is CRM MVP Jerry Weinstock who is the Business Development Manager at CRM Innovation. CRM Innovation builds Email, Marketing and Event Management solutions for Microsoft Dynamics CRM. In March a fellow MVP – George Doubinski …

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CRM 2011 Charts – Know the Real Potential ~ Part Deux

May 2, 2011

Hello readers, this post is in continuation of my ”Getting to Know Charts” blog series, where we discuss useful features of charts. In the introductory post of this series we learned how to create a 3D chart and a multi series chart. Let’s answer…

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