We held our first webinar on CRM Best Practices. Follow this link to sign up to be notified for the next events and to download the webinar and handouts.

Here is a quote from one of the attendees

“I attended today’s webinar and found it really useful.  It was clear, well organized and presented a lot of important information. Most webinars disappoint.  Yours delivered.”

Affiliated will be hosting a series of free CRM 2011 webinars just for you. The CRM Best Practices webinar series topics will include:
• Workflows
• Dialogs
• Advanced Find
• Reporting (online)
• Dashboards
• Goals

the webinar above was the 50,000 overview of these topics and best practices.

Great COMPLIMENTARY Training Opportunity: Webinar Series - Best Practices for CRM 2011

We like to invite you to join renowned CRM expert, Bill Owens, on August 31, as he presents an overview to the upcoming webinar series, Best Practices and Tips/Techniques for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011.
Over the next several weeks, Affiliated will be hosting a series of free CRM 2011 webinars just for you. The CRM Best Practices webinar series topics will include:
• Workflows
• Dialogs
• Advanced Find
• Reporting (online)
• Dashboards
• Goals
Join us as we kick-off of this exciting webinar-based training series designed specifically for CRM super-users like you.
Attendees will receive a CRM Workflow Best Practices Guide for joining us on August 31.
Register now to reserve your spot at this highly anticipated webinar kick-off event.
We look forward to seeing you on August 31!
For more information, call Jim Manning at (614) 889-6555, ext. 206, or jim.manning@aresgrp.com for additional details.

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There will be pdf handouts on all 6 areas

This is an example of one of the handouts

I have just stumbled upon a great new hidden feature that Dialogs inherited from workflows. You can look up records, and have the user select a record, then execute other workflows/dialogs against that record.

So here is an example of this. I want to create a Dialog that helps me verify that a lead should be qualified or if there are more than 1 leads with the same company name I want to choose if we want to qualify one of the other leads. If we do then the other lead will be qualified and the current lead will be lost. Otherwise, we will qualify the current lead.

A . Create a dialog called Lead-Qualify Lead

1. Under steps add query CRM data call the step “Query-All Leads with This leads Company Name”

2. Paste in the fetchXML

<fetch version="1.0" output-format="xml-platform" mapping="logical" distinct="false">
  <entity name="lead">
    <attribute name="fullname" />
    <attribute name="createdon" />
    <attribute name="statuscode" />
    <attribute name="subject" />
    <attribute name="ownerid" />
    <attribute name="leadid" />
    <order attribute="createdon" descending="true" />
    <filter type="and">
      <condition attribute="statecode" operator="eq" value="Variable1" />
      <condition attribute="companyname" operator="eq" value="Variable2" />
      <condition attribute="leadid" operator="ne" uiname="Robert Ahlering (sample)" uitype="lead" value="Variable3" />
    </filter>
  </entity>
</fetch>

3. Add the Company Name from current lead

4. Add the Lead

This query will return all active leads with the same Company Name.

B. Add a condition to check if the Query has more than 0 rows

C. Add a Page called “P01-Do you want to use one of these instead”

D. Add a field called “P01-Show all of  the leads found”. this will show the other leads that we can select from.

E. Add Field called “P01-Do you want to close the above lead instead” . We need to know if they want to use the selected lead.

F. Add the check condition to see if we should use the selected lead

G. Under this we can now execute a workflow that we have already created called Lead-Qualify that copies the Account, Opportunity, and Contact information from the lead and creates the entities described. We could also put logic in there to check for existing Accounts and Contacts so we do not get duplicates.

But NOTICE how you select the P01- Show All of the Leads field that was chosen from the Page displayed.

In workflows in the past we could create entities and act upon them later in the Workflow but I never found a way to lookup and execute against a different entity with the workflows because you had to CREATE them within the workflow. No the Page Prompts are considered created within the workflow and we can act upon them. Outstanding…

H. Add the Workflow execution to mark the current lead as lost. Again this workflow was already created.

I. Now add in the Stop

J. Finish off by Qualifying the current lead since if we made it this far it should be closed.

Now activate the Dialog and test it.

This screen show this running against a lead and it is the only lead with that Company Name. No Prompts were given

The Following Screens are when I run the dialog against a lead where there are multiple leads with the same Company Name.

As you can see the workflow executed against the other lead chosen.

I hope that this provides you some value and fun times with Dialogs.

CRM 2011 on premise versions now have a new tool to help with configuration and deployments.

I know that in my company we have many pages of documentation that shows step by step clicks and adding into CRM Deployment manager on creating Organizations, adding Administrative users, how to get license information, setting up IFD, etc.  Now with PowerShell intergration with CRM 2011 we can script these functions.

So what is PowerShell?

Wikipedia defines it as:

Windows PowerShell is Microsoft's task automation framework, consisting of a command-line shell and associated scripting language built on top of, and integrated with the .NET Framework. PowerShell provides full access to COM and WMI, enabling administrators to perform administrative tasks on both local and remote Windows systems.
In PowerShell, administrative tasks are generally performed by cmdlets (pronounced command-lets), specialized .NET classes implementing a particular operation. Sets of cmdlets may be combined together in scripts, executable (which are standalone applications), or by instantiating regular .NET classes (or WMI/COM Objects).[3][4] These work by accessing data in different data stores, like the filesystem or registry, which are made available to the PowerShell runtime via Windows PowerShell providers

I define it more like Windows Batch files on steroids. Many of us have created batch files in Windows and found it very limiting. With PowerShell you have programming logic capabilities that can access system functions as well as operations against system functions. Way too cool.

How do I get it?
First PowerShell comes with Windows Server 2008 which is advantageous because that is where we install the CRM

Server.

As part of the CRM Server install you can install the Deployment Tools role. After this role is installed you are able to add the Dynamics CRM PowerShell-Snap-In to your PowerShell session.
To use the cmdlets you have to enter following command into a PowerShell console, which adds the PowerShell-Snap-In to your active session.

Add-PSSnapin Microsoft.Crm.PowerShell

If you want to see all of the commands available you can type in

Get-Command -Module Microsoft.Crm.PowerShell 

As of 7/7/2011 here is the current lis

t

If you search within the SDK you will find this list:

Supported PowerShell cmdlets

The following table lists the cmdlets available for use with Windows PowerShell.

So what can you do?

How about getting the licensed users on the CRM server

Get-CrmAccessLicense -LicenseName "Dynamics CRM 2011 Full CAL" -Period 0

You can deploy settings, configure IFD, claims forms, add administrative users, you pick.

the SDK offers this example

Example

The following shows how to use Windows PowerShell to enable tracing. This pattern can be used for all settings. For a list of the settings objects, see Use Deployment Entities and Deployment Configuration Settings.

CallStack     : True
Categories    : *:Error
Directory     : c:\crmdrop\logs
Enabled       : False
FileSize      : 10
ExtensionData : System.Runtime.Serialization.ExtensionDataObject

CallStack     : True
Categories    : *:Error
Directory     : c:\crmdrop\logs
Enabled       : True
FileSize      : 10
ExtensionData : System.Runtime.Serialization.ExtensionDataObject

Within the SDK examples are PowerShell examples as well. Look under SDK\SampleCode\ps

How do I find out how to use these commands

You can ask for a descriptive help on each command within PowerShell. Example. I want to find out what I can do with the get-CRMSetting cmdlet.

get-help Get-CrmSetting -detailed

You can also search within the SDK for PowerShell to find out more information. BTW the page “Use Deployment Entities and Deployment Configuration Settings” is a good page for the above command as well.

One Last Item

I recommend if you are using PowerShell to download PowerGUI from powergui.org

This has a nice editor as well as way to issue PowerShell commands as you want to see them.

Here is an Example where I added to the PowerGui the CRM PowerShell commands to show me the CRM license and All users

and here is a snapshot of the Script Editor in action

I hope that this is useful to you, I know that I have learned a lot just putting this together.

The other day I had a request from a client to create a customer ASPX webpage that sends emails through CRM along with the attached Excel file. Here is an example of how this can be completed. Start with the Send Email sample code from Microsoft website located here and added the functionality of attaching files to the email.

Adding an attached file to the Email

Step 1) First you need to attach a file to the ActivityMimeAttachment as base64

Code:

public ActivityMimeAttachment AttachFileToEmail(String fileName)

{

// Open a file and read its contents into a byte array.

var fileLocation    = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["ExcelPath"] + fileName;

var stream          = File.OpenRead(fileLocation);

var byteData        = new byte[stream.Length];

stream.Read(byteData, 0, byteData.Length);

// Encode the data using base64.

var encodedData = Convert.ToBase64String(byteData);

var extension = Path.GetExtension(fileLocation).ToLower();

String mimeType = null;

switch (extension)

{

case ".xls":

mimeType = "application/vnd.ms-excel";

break;

case ".xlsx":

mimeType = "application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet";

break;

}

var sampleAttachment = new ActivityMimeAttachment

{

ObjectId        = new EntityReference(Email.EntityLogicalName, _emailId),

ObjectTypeCode  = Email.EntityLogicalName,

FileName        = fileName,

MimeType        = mimeType,

Body            = encodedData,

};

return sampleAttachment;

}

Step 2) Add the EncodedDate to the Create an e-mail message in the Sample Code

Code:

// Create an e-mail message.

Email email = new Email

{

To = new ActivityParty[] { toParty },

From = new ActivityParty[] { fromParty },

Subject = "SDK Sample e-mail",

Description = "CRM SDK Sample Body

DirectionCode = true,

email_activity_mime_attachment = new[] { AttachFileToEmail("FileName") }

};

The Sample of the Closed Activity Record in CRM

You can download my SendEmail sample code here.

If you have any questions or need help please contact me @ steven.jennings[at]aresgrp.com

One of new features added in Microsoft CRM 2011 was the record count and line selected. This was a feature requested by the users and partners of CRM version 4.0. This new feature will allow the users to see how many total records each Entity’s contacts.

Old Way in CRM version 4.0

New way in CRM 2011

There is a limitation to this new feature. You can only see a MAX count of 5000 records.

You might be asking yourself WHY??? This is because Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 is using FetchXML to return the total count and by default FetchXML returns a maximum of 5000 records.

There is an easy work around on getting the total record count for an Entity and that is to create a personal Chart to see the total count of the records.

· In the Active Accounts view, create a new chart from the Chart tab. In the Chart Designer, select appropriate Series (Example: Status) and Category values (Example: Status). Then save the chart.

Some people deserve accolades and Tanguy is one of those people. He has had many freely public tools that have helped implementers and CRM super users customize their systems. He has updated his tools for CRM 2011 and they now work for both Online and Onpremise. These are must have tools.

First about Tangy

View his complete profile

Technical consultant on Microsoft Dynamics CRM since version 1.2.
He works for ALSY (Orange Business Service subsidiary), one of the French leader in Microsoft Dynamics CRM integration.

His blog can be found here 

------------------------------------

His tools

SiteMap Editor for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011

Features

• Connections to OnPremise, Online and Claim based deployments
• TreeView display of SiteMap
• Add SiteMap component with mouse usage
• Add default SiteMap component if you removed one
• Cut/Copy/Paste of SiteMap component
• Display Xml of SiteMap component
• Add SiteMap component from Xml
• Reset SiteMap to default system one
• Import back the SiteMap to CRM server

Screenshot

Download

As usual the application is available on codeplex

JavaScript Web Resource Manager for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011

this new tool allows you to update JavaScript web resources with the following features:

• Export scripts web resources from CRM server
• Save scripts web resources to disk
• Load scripts files from disk
• Edit scripts with default text editor or Visual Studio
• Edit web resource properties
• Save scripts to CRM server
• Publish scripts to CRM server

Screenshot

Download

it is published on codeplex

Ribbon Browser

You will be able to:

• Display system entity ribbon definition
• Display custom entity ribbon definition
• Display Ribbon control attributes
• Display Ribbon control XML
• Save ribbon in XML file

The tool is released on codeplex

Screenshot

CrmDiagTool 2011

The features are the following:

• Enable/Disable tracing
• Zip content of Trace directory
• Open Trace directory
• Generate diagnostic file in text or html format with components selection
• Enable/Disable DevErrors

Some screenshots:

Regarding source code: As the previous version had not its source code released, this version does not too.

Download link

Searchable Property Updater for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011

I posted the tool, the source code and the documentation on codeplex. Use the link below to access to these files:

http://searchpropupdater.codeplex.com

I have a client with 20+ organizations on their CRM server and I just ran into an issue where we really needed to issue un update SQL command against all of the CRM’s currently installed on the server. In this case we needed to update the Case’s subjectid if it was not filled in and there is a kb article attached to the case. The KB Article has the subjectid we need to update into the case entity. I must also add this is CRM 4.0 On-Premise. I playing around I created the following script that reads the MSCRM_CONFIG DB for the organization databases and then dynamically executes an update to the databases

-- =============================================
-- Author:        Bill Owens    
-- Create date: 6/29/2011
-- Description:    Update all of the Case Subjects with the KB Article's Subject
-- =============================================
SET NOCOUNT ON;
DECLARE @DB as Varchar(100)
DECLARE @SQL AS nVarChar(4000)
DECLARE Org_Cursor CURSOR FOR
    SELECT     DatabaseName
    FROM         mscrm_config.dbo.Organization
    WHERE     (IsDeleted = 0)
OPEN Org_Cursor;
FETCH NEXT FROM Org_Cursor into @DB;
WHILE @@FETCH_STATUS = 0
   BEGIN
        SET @SQL = 'Select count(*) as cnt from ' + @DB +'.dbo.AccountBase'
        set @SQL = 'UPDATE IncidentBase SET SubjectId = KbArticleBase.SubjectId FROM '+@DB +'.dbo.IncidentBase INNER JOIN '+@DB +'.dbo.KbArticleBase ON IncidentBase.KbArticleId = KbArticleBase.KbArticleId WHERE('+@DB +'.dbo.IncidentBase.SubjectId IS NULL) AND (NOT ('+@DB +'.dbo.IncidentBase.KbArticleId IS NULL))'
        EXEC sp_executesql @SQL
      FETCH NEXT FROM Org_Cursor into @DB;
   END;
CLOSE Org_Cursor;
DEALLOCATE Org_Cursor;

. FYI, cross scripting needs to be turned on on the SQL server for this to work.

I’m at a client at the moment and I was teaching them how to add JavaScript to the forms within CRM 2011 and long and behold they stumbled across an odd issue. It appears that if you add the ()’s to the function name on the formload event the ribbonbar will disappear.

Here is what I’m talking about.

The Lead Page before the customization

Now I add the simple JavaScript code.

1. Click on Form Properties

2. Add/create a JavaScript web resource

3. Simple JavaScript function

Now for the piece that messes it all up. Add the page onload event and put the ()’s on the function name. Example enter test() instead of what you should be entering test.

you should now see this

Save and Publish. now open a lead and you will see this:

Ahhh! Another slightly hidden pain relief valve in the new CRM 2011. If you are like me, you found that in CRM 4.0 the Workflow logs were wonderful, they showed you everything that happen and gave you links to items updated or created. It was wonderful…….UNTIL……. The database filled up. I still remember one of my clients that used a lot of workflows and they called me in a panic because they had 2.5 million workflow logs and it was taking up 70GB of space in their SQL database. OUCH! Needless to say that was fun. Then Microsoft came out with the roll up that allow you to delete all completed workflows (You needed to manually enable this and we did for all of our clients). This left another issue; sometimes you need those logs, especially when you are testing workflows. Now we had to stop the workflows in error to keep the logs..

Well, now in CRM 2011, when you create a workflow or dialog on the administration tab way down at the bottom of the page is a new check box that will purge the completed workflow logs automatically. YIPPIE!