Topic: ‘Dynamics CRM’

A recent post on the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Team Blog has some great links to information regarding the May 2010 Service Update for Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online, as well as the expected international availability of CRM Online to 32 markets around the world. Click here to go to the post.

Want to download the most recent rollup for Dynamics CRM 4.0? Click here to access the files on the Microsoft Download Center. Want to read some more about what’s being offered in the rollup? Click here to view the related knowledgebase article.

Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 has recently been released. For more information, click here to go to the Microsoft Partner Network site.

Nothing good, that’s for sure. You probably won’t know until you encounter a similar problem, but there is actually hidden javascript code on the form that invokes actions when this field is selected. When you remove the field from the form, so goes the code. If you decide to put it back on the form, the code doesn’t come back with it. The main result of this is that when you try to select a Default Price List using this lookup, nothing is returned in the lookup list, even if you have values. Therefore, you cannot add Products to Opportunities.

To get the code back on the form, perform the following:

1)      Export the customization xml of the entity in question after you have added the Default Price List back to the form.

2)      Open the xml in a text editor.

3)      Search for the text “Price List”.

4)      Between the </labels> and <control tags for this field, paste the following text:

<events>
<event application=”true” active=”true”>
<script>
<![CDATA[
var oLookup = event.srcElement;
AddTransactionCurrencyParam(oLookup);]]>
</script>
<dependencies>
<dependency />
</dependencies>
</event>
</events>

5)      Save the xml and import back into CRM.

Everyone loves customization – especially CRM clients. Having the ability to view and use a record customized to your day-to-day business process flows is extremely valuable. Donna Edwards has posted a great blog example on the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Team Blog regarding the creation of a custom Quote, Order, or Invoice record by utilizing Visual Studios 2005 (she has mentioned in the blog post that the same principles apply when using 2008). Click here to view the post.

I recently deployed an SRS Dashboard into an environment that had some interesting restrictions. Users inside the network could access through the usual http://crmserver:5555/ URL. However, users outside of the DMZ had to access CRM through a special URL, such as http://crm.companyname.com:5555. The problem with this is that the URL that you place in the sitemap to point to the dashboard report is static. To get around this and account for the different access methods we did the following.

Note: This post is contingent upon already knowing how to display a Dashboard as an option on the Navigation Bar or as your home page.

1)      Get the URL of the Dashboard report you are referencing. To do this, run the dashboard report from the reports area of CRM. Once rendered, hit CTRL-N to open the address bar. Copy the contents of the address bar. It will look something like this:

http://CRMORGNAME:5555/crmreports/viewer/viewer.aspx?id={4821DECB-EDA9-DE11-A944-000C291643D3}&helpID=SALES%20DASHBOARD.rdl&action=filter

2)      Open Notepad and paste the following text into it. What this does is examine what URL is being invoked and uses that specific URL. Be sure to note the following:

1. In the strReport variable the port is stripped out and only the organization name is used. The rest is exactly what you copied in step 1.
2. Replace any text that is in all caps with your deployment specific information.

<%@ Page AutoEventWireup=”true”  %>

 <%

            string strReport = “/CRMORGNAME/crmreports/viewer/viewer.aspx?id={4821DECB-EDA9-DE11-A944-000C291643D3}&helpID=SALES%20DASHBOARD.rdl&action=filter”;

            string strHost = Request.Url.Host;

            string strUrl = “”;

            if (strHost.ToLower() == “CRM.COMPANYNAME.COM”)

            {

                //Response.Redirect(strUrl + strReport);

                strUrl = “http:// CRM.COMPANYNAME.COM ” + strReport;

            }

            else

            {

                //Response.Redirect(“http://crmserver:5555″ + strUrl);

                strUrl = ” http://crmserver:5555″ + strReport;

            }

            Response.Redirect(strUrl);

        %>

3)      Save this file as DashboardRedirect.aspx in the \ISV folder underneath the installation folder of your CRM deployment.

4)      Export the Sitemap.xml from CRM.

5)      Open the file in a text editor.

6)      Find where you want to have the Dashboard link displayed on the navigation bar and paste the following text:

          <SubArea Url=”/ISV/DashboardRedirect.aspx” Icon=”/_imgs/ico_16_9102.gif” Title=”Sales Dashboard” />

7)      Save the Sitemap.xml and import back into CRM.

Now, when clicking on the Sales Dashboard link from the navigation pane, the redirect page will be called and the correct URL for the dashboard report will be invoked.

Dynamics CRM has some extremely valuable functions that work in conjunction with Microsoft Office, Excel 2007 in particular. The Excel 2007 Help and How-to Home Page of the Microsoft Office website contains a fabulous array of tutorials for end users to study and learn, including Charts, Macros, and my favorite – PivotTables. Learning how to export your information out of CRM into an Excel spreadsheet is one thing, but learning how to manipulate the data after exporting is a whole other story.

Click here to go to the tutorial portion of Microsoft Office for Excel.

One of the biggest complaints I hear about MS CRM is the is JavaScript editor, or the real lack thereof.  For small easy JavaScripts I do write the JavaScripts in there, however, for bigger complex scripts I don’t.  I always use Visual Studio.  I create a Web Application project for the project I am on and then add new Jscript items to the application, one for each form and event.  The reason I do this is because Visual Studio will alert my of any syntax errors.  Plus if your Visual Studio is connected to a source control, now you have versioning of your scripts.  When I am done writing the script I then copy and paste over to the MS CRM editor.

 After I copy the script then I test it out.  If it is not working and I need to debug I set up debugging in my browser and code.  The following are the steps to do this.

1. In my JavaScript I put “debugger;” in the line before I want the debugging to start.
2. Go to Internet Explorer
3. Click on Tools > Internet Options
4. Go to the Advance Tab and uncheck the Disable Script Debugging.  It is under the Browsing heading

 Now run the application and when it gets to the debugger; line it should ask if you want to debug using Visual Studio.  If you have multiple versions it will ask you which version.  You can then step through the JavaScript and use the Immediate Window to look at variables.

Once I am done I always disable the debugging because you would be amazed at how many sights have JavaScript errors and the browser will ask you if you want to debug them.

We have a client that uses the On Premise Microsoft CRM 4.0 in both internal and IFD mode.  The client also used SQL Reporting Services (SRS) to display a dashboard and the link to it is contained in the Site Map.  The SRS was also exposed through the IFD.  The issue was the Site Map link would either provide a link to internal or external URL, and since the authentication is different between internal and IFD mode, if a user wasn’t already using that mode they would be prompted to login or not have access at all.  While a real easy fix could have been providing two different links, try explaining to the average user which link they should for which mode they are using.

The solution we came up with was to have the site map pointing to a custom .NET web page that would do the appropriate redirecting.  The web page gets the Request.Url.Host and compares it against the IFD host string.  If it is a match you redirect to the IFD URL and if not you redirect to the internal URL.  This way we only had one Site Map entry and the solution is seamless to the end user.

Most applications that I have put in the ISV folder of the CRM website has used the WebService SDK and if you don’t have the Microsoft.CRM.Webservices.dll in the GAC(C:\Windows\Assembly folder) you will get an invalid token error.  The other day I build a web application that did not use the CRM SDK but displayed data from an ERP system related to the account.  When I deployed the application to the CRM server I still got the same error.  I put the Microsoft.CRM.Webservices.dll in the GAC, reset IIS and everything worked fine.  So for now on before I deploy an application to ISV folder I always check to make sure the following dlls are in the GAC:

  1. Microsoft.CRM.Webservices.dll

  2. Microsoft.CRM.Sdk.dll

  3. Microsoft.CRM.SdkTypeProxy.dll

Remember you must do an IISREST or stop and start the services.