Microsoft Dynamics CRM : The Social Curve – Getting More Social with Yammer, MarketingPilot and Netbreeze

Astute CRM - Francis Edwin's Dynamic(s) thoughts

 

With all said and done, we will have to wait to see those features live in action, until then let’s keep our engines ON. Thank you!

Cheers,

Edwin

View original post

Advertisement

Dynamics CRM 2013 Online Roll out started

Much to my surprise today when i was setting up a CRM Online trial for my testing purposes, i was excited to see that my CRM was the new CRM 2013.

There was no official information yet but i learned that the roll out has just started for the APAC region from the CRM community blog,

https://community.dynamics.com/crm/b/edwardsdnadynamicscrm/archive/2013/09/30/dynamics-crm-2013-has-arrived.aspx#.Ukp-KIbI3iM

Now it is more evident that the update will follow for the rest of the regions in the coming days. I appreciate Microsoft’s commitment in making it available to the general public.

Thanks,

Edwin

CRM 2013 RC1 – Release Candidate 1 is RELEASED

We all know that CRM 2013 BETA was made available for the partners on the Microsoft Connect website. But now that the CRM 2013 RC1 – Release Candidate 1 is also released on the same Microsoft Connect website, this means that the product has evolved from beta version to a even more finished product (Just miles away from the official release)

Partners & Customers are invited to sign the licence agreement before getting access to the download files for CRM 2013.

Hoping that this will bring us a great experience with CRM 2013 before its fully official release.

Cheers,

Edwin

Dynamics CRM 2013 Orion Airlift Presentation Slides (.pptx)

For those who may have missed the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Training Blitz Day on CRM 2013 Orion, Microsoft has made available the presentation slides for both technical and non-technical users for our anytime reference and review.

This should really come-in handy for us to start our preparations for CRM 2013.

The presentation slides can be downloaded from here,

http://connect.microsoft.com/site687/Downloads/DownloadDetails.aspx?DownloadID=50755

Lots of new features and changes to the existing process.

Please Note: Partner source login credentials needs to be supplied to access the same.

Thanks,

Edwin

Dynamics CRM 2013 Beta Bits Released

Maybe i was a little late to notice the release of CRM 2013 beta bits which was made public on 28th of July 2013 on the Microsoft Connect Site.

For those who want to give it a try, you can download from here,

Updated on 21st August 2013:              

Download URL changed to reflect the new beta refresh (After several bug fixes)                                                                                  https://connect.microsoft.com/site687/Downloads/DownloadDetails.aspx?DownloadID=50508

Refreshed URL:

http://connect.microsoft.com/site687/Downloads/DownloadDetails.aspx?DownloadID=50816

Refreshed on 20th August 2013.

Couldn’t wait to try it !

Thanks,

Edwin

Dynamics CRM 2013 Pricing and Licencing Info

While there is a lot of excitement/concerns going around in Dynamics CRM space about the new release of CRM 2013, code named “Orion”. Individuals and companies like us have a need to get updated with the latest information on the pricing and licencing options in order for us to self-plan and start advising our customer group.

I’ve managed to gather the following information from various sources on the web and presenting here,

Very Important Note: The pricing is subject to change and may get refreshed when we come closer to the product launch. But for now, this is what have been planned.

CRM 2013 Online Editions and Pricing:

Professional ($65*) For the core CRM users, who need the full capabilities of Microsoft Dynamics CRM including sales force automation as well as marketing and customer care.  We believe most users will find this license best fits their needs.

Basic ($30*) For sales, service and marketing users who need to manage accounts, contacts, leads, cases and access custom applications as well as for business analysts who require reporting capabilities.

Essential ($15*) For light-weight users who need to access custom applications developed in house or by our vast network of partners.

(*) CRM Online list price shown per user per month in USD, actual pricing might vary by geography. Other fees may apply for add-on services such as additional storage, testing and production instances. Prices are exclusive of any fees you may incur to procure Internet connectivity.

CRM 2013 On Premises Editions and Pricing:

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 Server License: $ 3938

CAL Licenses:

Professional: $984 per user/ $787 per device – For the core CRM users who need the full capabilities of Microsoft Dynamics CRM including sales force automation, marketing and customer care.

Basic: $342 per user/ $236 per device – For sales, service and marketing users who need to manage accounts, contacts, leads, cases and access custom applications as well for business analysts who require reporting capabilities.

Essential: $79 per user or device – For light weight users who need to access custom applications.

Mobile Access:

Planned for both Online & On Premise customers with no additional charges.

The information presented above may not give you the in-depth details about the pros and cons about each licensing type, but can give you a heads-up!

Thanks,

Edwin

Dynamics CRM 2011 Polaris Update: Changes to the Lead Qualification Process

One of the things i recently noticed in the “Polaris” release of Dynamics CRM 2011 is the change that was made to the “Qualify Lead” process.

The way it should typically work,

When you hit “qualify” from the lead form or from the lead home page grid, it should bring up the below screen

But it does not pop up the above modal dialog after the “Polaris” update and instead, it just creates new Account/Contact and Opportunity records (without an option to choose & based on the data available in the lead). And this is quite unacceptable when you need to associate that lead to an existing Account/Contact record and create the Opportunity.

Updated on 31/07/2013: Related Microsoft KB Article Update:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2808201

I see this as a major limitation (hopefully only until “CRM 2013 Orion” release). The primary reason for this could be the inclusion of the new flow UI forms. So while the Dynamics CRM product team addresses this known issue, do we need to live with this?

Perhaps Not!

There is a Work around and here it is from the Zero2Ten blog very neatly written by Guz Gonzalez.

I will make sure to bring some more interesting topics in my next post.

Thanks,

Edwin

CRM 2011 IFD : Add new organization and required changes

Just thought of sharing when i did those. You may have a need to add a new organization to an existing CRM 2011 IFD deployment. From a plain sight, adding an organization is super simple from deployment manager but remember you now have IFD configured. Once you created the organization you may try to browse that – It will give a 404 page not found error.

That is just because,  there are just couple of inclusions/changes need to be done due to the fact that our deployment is now IFD.

Create a new A host record in your DNS for the corresponding newly created organization name.

Update Relying Party Metadata federation metadata

This picks up the new entries from the DNS and does the required changes appropriately.

Clear your browser history and cookies

(No reference image required). – This is not required typically but your IE may still get information from the cache when the page is requested again. Clearing the browsing history and cookies makes it all simple.

Cheers,

Edwin

ADFS 2.0 Federation Server Configuration: “Existing Website Detected. Therefore, the website was not reinstalled”

In my case, i encountered this warning when i was in the process of setting up CRM 2011 IFD but it applies for all ADFS 2.0 related developments.

I’m sure most of us do some experiments and research before a complex setting to be made. In a similar manner, i was installing and uninstalling ADFS 2.0. Got this warning when i tried to reconfigure ADFS 2.0 Federation server.

And then the below screen,

The configuration still completes but when you wanted to be sure of why this is happening. It is imperative to find the root cause. The first thing you do is: you will have to make sure that the website directory still exists. You can check that by navigating to typically c:/inetpub to see if you have a folder exist even after uninstalling ADFS 2.0. If it is there, you can manually delete it.

And you may feel that’s all it to make it smooth the next time you install and configure ADFS 2.0 federation server. But in few circumstances it is not. There will be trails of ADFS left in our system, typically in IIS. To ensure a smooth installation next time, you may need to follow the below steps,

Open IIS – > Navigate to the website- > Select “View Applications”

Which will bring up the following screen and we need to select ADFS – > Right click and select “Remove”

Once that is done, in your IIS – > Navigate to Application pools – > Right click on “ADFSAppPool” and select “Remove”.

That’s it – Add done – Perform an “IISRESET” just to ensure the changes gets reflected and start re-installing ADFS 2.0 and configure ADFS 2.0 Federation Server. This time, you will not get the warning and the configuration will have no issues.

Hope this benefits someone who may run into similar issues.

Cheers,

Edwin

CRM 2011 JavaScript Error : object doesn’t support property or method ‘Form load’–on most entity forms with a Non Customized CRM

Recently i installed and setup a fresh copy of our CRM 2011 system, the installation went fine and there were no errors or warnings during the installation.

But,

We had one problem – When you open almost any entity form, you get a JavaScript On load Error

There was an error with this field’s customized event

Field: window

Event: onload

Error: object doesn’t support property or method ‘Form load’

That was strange when there are no customizations made and it’s just freshly installed or not even upgraded from CRM 4.0.

After much digging, i learned that it was just because of a corrupt or missing component (ReWrite Module) for the CRM website in IIS.

Before proceeding with the steps to resolve, we can confirm that by opening up IIS Manager from your CRM server – navigate to CRM website – open Modules under IIS Tab,

If you notice the above image, there is none named Rewrite Module listed under modules.

So, the Resolution was to install/repair the Microsoft URL ReWrite module from your CRM installation media under a folder named URLReWriteModule and the file name is “rewrite_1.1_amd64_rtw”

Alternatively, you can also download that from here,

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=16784

Once you install/repair the URL Rewrite Module – The Errors doesn’t occur any more and everything works fine.

You can also confirm the changes by going back to Modules under IIS and check for ReWrite Module entry and also open the CRM web.config and find the new entry like this,

<rewrite>
      <rules>
        <rule name="ClientGlobalContextRule" stopProcessing="true">
          <match url="/?([0-9a-zA-Z][^/]*)?/?((?:%7b|\{)[^/]*(?:%7d|\}))?/?(WebResources|Handlers)/ClientGlobalContext.js.aspx" />
          <action type="Rewrite" url="/{R:1}/_Common/ClientGlobalContext.js.aspx" />
        </rule>
        <rule name="WebResourcesRule" stopProcessing="true">
          <match url="/?([0-9a-zA-Z][^/]*)?/?((?:%7b|\{)[^/]*(?:%7d|\}))?/?webresources/([^\\?]+)" />
          <action type="Rewrite" url="/{R:1}/Handlers/WebResource.ashx?name={R:3}" />
        </rule>
        <rule name="FederationMetadataRule" stopProcessing="true">
          <match url="FederationMetadata/2007-06/FederationMetadata.xml" />
          <action type="Rewrite" url="/Handlers/FederationMetadata.ashx" />
        </rule>
      </rules>
    </rewrite>

URL ReWrite – What it does and how does it work in conjunction with CRM?

When a webresource Ex. An entity form is requested from the CRM server, the URL is built dynamically using URL ReWrite component. More information on URL Rewriting in Asp.net is found here.

Hope this helps someone and was a good learning for me as well.

Thanks,

Francis Edwin