Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 SDK Update: 4.0.5

An update of the complete software development kit for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0.

Download [Microsoft Download Center]

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Printable User's Guide

A printable version of the Help that ships with Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0, On Premise. The downloadable file is in PDF format. It's a printable version of the Help that ships with Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0, On Premise.

Download [Microsoft Download Center]

Great tool to manage your activities: Follow Up Tracker for Microsoft CRM 4.0

The Follow Up Tracker for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 is a business intelligence management tool allowing you to easily track and manage your activities. Using the tool, Microsoft CRM users will be able to track the logical creation path and manage their activities and easily follow up their occurrence. The product integrates into Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 and maintains its look and feel.

The key features and main benefits of the product are:
- View connection between activities that were created as “Follow Up” in a sequence.
- Easily create additional follow up activities from the Follow Up Tracker screen.
- Attach existing activities to new parent activity creating a logical flow of activities.
- Navigate to the parent activity.
- View ALL hierarchical activities of Case record.

Read more [Castorsoft]

Video demo

More Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 issues

Last week I've posted some installation / upgrade issues we've seen at our customers. But there were more issues and because I can image that some of them will appear at other customers, below part 2 of the list.

Issue 5:

When you try to add a product to an opportunity: "An error occurred during pricing of a detail line item"

For this error a hotfix is available. To resolve this problem, submit a request to Microsoft Online Customer Services to obtain the hotfix:

http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=6294451

Issue 6:

Error message when you import customizations from a server that has been upgraded to Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0: "Failure: bulkoperation: Invalid Argument"

For this error is also a hotfix available. To resolve this problem, submit a request to Microsoft Online Customer Services to obtain the hotfix:

http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=6294451

Furniture Manufacturer Will Build Its Future on Integrated Microsoft Dynamics AX and Microsoft Dynamics CRM Solutions

Microsoft Corp. announced that American of Martinsville, a Virginia-based contract furniture manufacturer, will closely integrate Microsoft Dynamics AX 4.0 and Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 to automate its current manual processes and significantly improve its master-planning capabilities. American of Martinsville designs and produces furniture for the hospitality, healthcare and senior-living markets.

Microsoft Dynamics AX, which will improve the accuracy and speed of the company’s planning, scheduling and purchasing, is an adaptable business-management solution that provides powerful, role-based, industry-specific functionality for midsize and larger organizations. Microsoft Dynamics CRM, which the company will use to automate its quoting process, project management and customer communications, provides powerful, role-based customer relationship management (CRM) capabilities.

American of Martinsville is working with two Microsoft Gold Certified Partners: Sunrise Technologies, of Winston-Salem, N.C., with its deep expertise in Microsoft Dynamics AX, and Customer Effective Inc., of Greenville, S.C., which specializes in Microsoft Dynamics CRM. The two Microsoft Dynamics solutions will be tightly integrated so that workflow for the front-end and back-end operations of American of Martinsville runs seamlessly, from the order-entry phase all the way through design, master planning, production and delivery.

Continue at source [Microsoft PressPass]

Education Consulting Organization Adds Microsoft Dynamics CRM and Microsoft Dynamics GP to Multiply Its Capabilities

Microsoft Corp. announced that Pacific Northwest Publishing and its affiliate company, Safe & Civil Schools, both of Eugene, Ore., have chosen Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 and Microsoft Dynamics GP 10.0 to integrate their accounting, scheduling, customer service and marketing capabilities.

The Microsoft Dynamics solutions will replace the organizations’ Intuit QuickBooks software and a paper-based system that had been augmented by electronic spreadsheets. Safe & Civil Schools provides behavior-management training to improve school safety and climate in school districts nationwide; Pacific Northwest Publishing publishes books and other materials used in the program and sold separately.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM provides powerful, role-based customer relationship management capabilities through models that can be deployed online or on premises, or be partner-hosted. The companies will use it to expand their marketing efforts and to automate their previous paper-based systems for tracking projects with school districts.

Continue at source [Microsoft Presspass]

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Software Development Kit 4.0.4

This update package contains the complete software development kit for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0. (version 4.0.4)

Download [Microsoft Download Center]

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 upgrade / installation issues

Till now we' ve upgraded some of our customers to the new CRM 4.0 version and by doing that some issues appeared. Below some of them.

Issue 1:

Installation of CRM Outlook cliënts not possible in a Citrix / Terminal Server environment.

During installation the message appears, that there's an incompatible Exchange Server installed on the server but none of the servers we 've tried were Exchange Servers.....

This issue can easily be solved by editing the registry:

1. Open the registry editor
2. Export the whole key  HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Exchange
3. Delete this key
4. Install the CRM cliënts
5. Reïmport the key

Issue 2:

After an upgrade to CRM 4.0 we ran into a problem on decimal / money fields. By entering a value on a money / decimal field and saving it, the value changes with a factor 1000 and then will be multiplied  everytime with 100 when saving the record again.

To correct this issue you've to run a query via SQL Server Management Studio:

UPDATE UserSettingsBase SET DecimalSymbol = ','

Issue 3:

One of the error's i've seen during the installation of the Data Migration Manager is this one:

"The Data Migration Manager encountered an error while setting up the temporary migration database. Restart the Data Migration Manager, and then try migrating the data again."

You can resolve this issue by deleting the registry key, restarting Data Migration Manager, and signing in again.

You can find this registry key in the following path (depending on your system type):

• 32-bit systems: HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Data Migration Wizard

• 64-bit systems: HKLM\Software\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Data Migration Wizard

Issue 4:

The language pack(s) can't be activated

How to resolve this issue:

1. Export the current customizations file
2. Import the default customizations file (publish)
3. Activate the language packs
4. Import the customizations file of step 1 (publish)

Microsoft Announces Customer Service, Government-Style

Governments at all levels are increasingly asked to respond to demands for improved service and efficiency. Microsoft and its partners are meeting this challenge through the availability of an applications platform, the Citizen Service Platform (CSP), which will make it easier for governments to interact with citizens, streamline processes and, as a result, save time and taxpayer dollars.

Together with its partners, Microsoft's CSP offerings will help governments of all sizes more responsively deliver services to citizens via the Internet. Today's announcement was made at the Public Technology Institute 2008 Technology Leadership Conference and Expo being held this week in Miami.

The CSP application framework, announced originally by Microsoft in January 2008, is now available to customers along with free templates to help customers implement technological solutions to some of the most common issues governments face.

Read more [CRM Daily]

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Performance and Scalability White Papers

This white paper provides an overview of the results and benefits of performance and scalability enhancements in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0.
Performance and Scalability – User Scalability for the Enterprise
These benchmark results demonstrate that Microsoft Dynamics CRM can scale to meet the needs of an enterprise-level, mission-critical workload of 24,000 concurrent users while maintaining performance at sub-second response times. Test results were achieved without customizations to simulate an out-of-the-box Microsoft Dynamics CRM deployment. This white paper describes the goals, methodology and detailed results of this performance benchmark.

Performance and Scalability – Database Scalability for the Enterprise
These benchmark results demonstrate that Microsoft Dynamics CRM can scale to data volumes of over 1 billion database records while maintaining performance at sub-second response times. Test results were achieved without customizations, and minimal optimization to simulate an out-of-the-box Microsoft Dynamics CRM deployment. This white paper describes the goals, methodology and detailed results of this performance benchmark.

Performance and Scalability – Bandwidth Utilization Improvements
Microsoft Dynamics CRM showed network utilization improvements of up to 94% in version 4.0. This white paper details the test results comparing version 3.0 to 4.0.

Download [Microsoft Download Center]

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Data Migration Manager Readme

This document provides important late-breaking information about Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Data Migration Manager that supplements the Microsoft Dynamics CRM documentation.

One of the error's i've seen during data migrations is this one:

"The Data Migration Manager encountered an error while setting up the temporary migration database. Restart the Data Migration Manager, and then try migrating the data again."

One possible source of this error message may be the UserReplicationID registry key. You can resolve this issue by deleting the registry key, restarting Data Migration Manager, and signing in again.

You can find this registry key in the following path (depending on your system type):

• 32-bit systems: HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Data Migration Wizard

• 64-bit systems: HKLM\Software\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Data Migration Wizard

More solutions in this document [Microsoft Download Center]