Modifying the Activity Associated View

It is possible to access the Activity Associated View from within the standard customisation tools of CRM.

Use the URL below to edit the view. Replace GUID with the ID of the specific view you wish to edit.Unfortunately, the regarding field is not available for all activity views, and some of the views can't be customized (i.e. homepage, workplace) without major unsupported mods.

You can find the GUID for the Activity Associated View in the SavedQueryBase table.

http://localhost/tools/viewEditor/viewManager.aspx?id={GUID}

Customers And Partners Support Microsoft's CRM Delay

Information Week published an article this week on customers and partners supporting the descision for Microsoft to delay the CRM 2005 release.

Brad Wilson, general manager of Microsoft CRM, says the delay of CRM 2.0 is
because of feedback from customers and partners who prefer to see new
capabilities added now rather than wait for a subsequent release.

Which is good news for the CRM product as there is a lot of press on the delay. Hopefully they will continue to release fixes for some of the major functional issues/bugs in the current version of the system prior to the 2005 release.

Read the full article here.

Great Article on Backing up CRM Databases

There are quite a few Databases to back up for CRM, David McGuire from MSCRM Experts has posted this article on scripting the backup of the Databases.

Every Found yourself at alphanova.co.uk?

Have you ever tried going to your CRM implementation by typing in crm into an iexplore address bar and found yourself being redirected to http://www.alphanova.co.uk/?

It turns out you've discovered a feature of Internet Explorer you may not have known about. You'll probably find that you have a Pop-up Blocker enabled on your browser so you're holding down the Ctrl key whilst you hit Enter to browse to the CRM page.

The Ctrl-Enter combination is a feature that adds a www. and .com to the address you've typed in the browser. For example if you type google into the address bar and then hit Ctrl-Enter it will populate the address bar with www.google.com and navigate to that page.

As a result the same thing happens when you type in CRM and hit Ctrl-Enter, you are then taken to www.crm.com which is registered to http://www.alphanova.co.uk/.

Unable to return to the Microsoft CRM home page via the bottom navigation bar

Using the web version of CRM, when it first opens, it goes to the Home page
just fine, and then allows me to click the big navigation button on the
bottom to go to say, the Sales area. The problem is, when you click the Home
button on the bottom to get back to my home page, it doesn't go, and there is
an error notification that appears on the bottom left of the IE status bar.

Line: 69
Char: 4
Error: Permission denied
Code: 0
URL: http://forfp/bar_bottom.aspx?startPage=Home

The symptoms are related to Windows XP SP2. You need to install the latest hotfix for Microsoft CRM v1.2.http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=95ed89d0-8b99-4458-b798-90ad5400923e&DisplayLang=en

Details about the service pack can be found here

Heat Asset Tracker (HAT) and Dashes in the Unique Identifier

This is a bit of a strange one...
Heat Asset Tracker is a HEAT (as evidenced by the name) module for tracking IT assets. The system works by identifying each PC via a GUID. This GUID is generated when the first scan is run on the PC and stored (usually in the root of C:) in a LDISCAN.CFG file.

In some cases instead of using a GUID generated by the system (which is every time the Machine is rebuilt) the can be generated when the PC is rebuilt (or when a user logs on) with something like the Machine Name.

It turns out that if the value that you are using for your Unique Identifier in the file contains the curly brackets ({} for example {ABC-S-012345}) and the data inside the file it is not a GUID the engine will be unable to match the Unique Identifier correctly with other the data in the database. The result is assets will be overwritten with data from other assets being scanned.

Simply change the value in the file to a value without the brackets (ie change {ABC-S-012345} to ABC-S-012345) and you assets will all start appearing in the database.

Migrating Records from one GM Database to another

If have more than one goldmine databases that you would like to merge in to one (or simply just copy a couple of records) it is possible to use the Copy/Move Records function.

First of all, backup everything.

Secondly, get into the database where the contacts will be moving FROM (this can be done with a FileOpen Database) and goto FileSyncCopy/Move Records and select to copy the records to a target database. This will copy the entire contact record (history, pending activities etc) into the Target Database.

Beyond Gold

While looking for a fix for a Goldmine Issue I stumbled across this great looking utility - Beyond Gold. It comes from DJ Hunt, a long standing Goldmine 'Hacker' and author of The Hacker's Guide to GoldMine.

This freeware utility gives you the ability to :-

• Copy one users Manual E-mail Address book to one or more other GoldMine users Manual E-mail Address book either additively or completely overwriting it
• Copy one users Macros to one or more other GoldMine users either additively or completely overwriting theirs.
• Copy one users Toolbars to one or more other GoldMine users either additively or completely overwriting theirs.
• Provide a graphical interface for maintaining any GoldMine User Variables.
• Give you a graphical interface to copy the entire Lookup List, including the lookup list settings, from one Contact1/Contact2 field to as many other Contact1/Contact2 fields as you desire.

Plus many more the full list can be found here.

Microsoft CRM Delay is Big News

Microsoft CRM tends not to get too much press, however it's big news at the moment. It hasn't hit the limelight because of a new feature set or cementing it's place in the Small to Medium CRM space. It's shot into the news with the announcement that the software is to be delayed (see Microsoft again delays CRM update).

In the last two days alone I've received 15 news updates on the matter, more than I normally get in a month on MS CRM. Just goes to show maybe no news is good news.

Replies to Microsoft CRM-originated e-mail messages are seen as unsolicited e-mail

There has also been a hotfix released to address the issue with special characters (The following are examples of special characters that cause this behavior: å, æ, é, ñ, ö, á, and å) in the subject line causing e-mail messages to be seen as unsolicited e-mail.

This is in relation to knowledge base article 890486.

The hotfix is now available by contacting microsoft.

Can't (advanced) find your records after you start daylight savings?

Microsoft have just released a new hotfix to address some date/time based knowledgebase issues.

832869 After daylight-saving time starts, Advanced Find may not return records that were created before that date in Microsoft CRM and in Microsoft CRM Sales for Outlook
835307 The Created On Last 7 Days column in the Advanced Find dialog box returns all records instead of the records that were created during the last seven days in Microsoft CRM

The hotfix is available by contacting microsoft.

Hazards of Multiple CRM Servers

Having recently implemented a CRM system where the enviroment has Multiple CRM servers pointing at the same database there are quite a few things to be aware of.

1. The CRM Exchange Router will only support the receiving of Email to one environment. The service allows you to add an unlimited number of servers at install however it will only support the routing of incoming emails to the first server in the list. Other servers in the list will be supported for out going emails. This is only poses an issue if your CRM servers point to more than one database. In the case of multiple CRM servers on one production SQL implementation the primary CRM server should be added to the list for incoming emails and the remaining servers added for outbound. There will be no impact of functionality for end users but this will allow email to function on all CRM instances.

2. The Crystal Reporting service returns errors "Unable to find file ... in file repository". When reports are published to the Crystal Enterprise system that is installed with Microsoft CRM, two things happen, first an entry is made in the APS database on the SQL Server that you chose during setup. Secondly the actual .rpt file is placed in a location on the server so that services can access and run the report for delivery to the client. By default, report files are located at C:\Program Files\Microsoft CRM\Crystal Decisions\Enterprise 9\FileStore.

When you install a secondary Microsoft CRM server is installed, reports are not republished. As a result, when the folder on the second Microsoft CRM server at C:\Program Files\Microsoft CRM\Crystal Decisions\Enterprise 9\FileStore is created, it is empty. At this point, if you tried to run any reports on the second Microsoft CRM server, you would see a list of reports, but you would not be able to open any of the reports.

There are two methods that will ensure that reports accessed from both Microsoft CRM servers are available, contain the same data, and carry forward any customizations that you may have applied to the reports that are shipped out of the box with Microsoft CRM.

1.Manually copy the files from server A to server B.The easiest and quickest way to make reports available from both Microsoft CRM servers is to copy the file location C:\Program Files\Microsoft CRM\Crystal Decisions\Enterprise 9\FileStore from server A to server B.
2. Use File Replication. Deploy a third-party file replication service to maintain synchronization for both server's file directories. The limitation of this method is that changes to reports will be synchronized between servers based on the intervals that you set for the replication service. You may need to tweak this setting to find out which interval is right for you.

I'm sure I will discover more but at the moment they are some of the big ones.

The Irony of Microsoft

To top off the news of the MS CRM 2005 slippage I received an update from Partnersource about an hour after the news that the latest version was to be moved to the 4th quarter of 2005. The opening line of the update was...

2005 is off to a fast start for the Microsoft® Business Solutions CRM team

Microsoft again delays CRM update

Although the latest version of CRM was tagged to be released in the first half of this year, Microsoft have recently announced that the product will be delayed until the last quarter of this year.

Microsoft's famously slippery ship dates are sliding once again when it comes to the
company's long-delayed Microsoft CRM 2.0 update. Microsoft said Thursday it is
expanding the software's feature set and delaying its release-to-manufacturing
until the fourth quarter of 2005.

Read the full article here. (or Angus' spin on things here)

As quite a few CRM 1.2 Customers are eagerly awaiting the new release it will be interesting to see the reaction to the delay.

Ports and MS CRM

If using MS CRM through a firewall there are a certain number of ports that are required. If all required ports are opened you may experience problems such as "Unable to find server" when trying to run reports.

This is a list of all the ports that are used to access the Crystal APS uses.

TCP Ports
1080 CrystalAPS
1084 CrystalAPS
1092 CrystalAPS
1118 CrystalAPS
1137 CrystalAPS
6400 CrystalAPS

Unable to reinstall the CRM Exchange Router

"Insufficent Rights on the WWWRoot Director"
I came across this issue whilst trying to reinstall the CRM exchange router.
1. The uninstall seemed to go fine no error's were reported.
2. No user (including domain admins) had access to modfy the WWWRoot Directory
3. When attempting to view the properties of the Directory the only tab that was available was the Sharing Tab.

As a result no permissions on the directory could be changed and therfore it wasn't possible to reinstall the router.

Turns out that during the uninstall of the CRM Exchange Router it had deleted the wwwroot directory under IIS. However as the IIS services were still running some residual aspects of the folder remained. When IIS was stopped the directory disappeared.

The only way to fix the problem is to recreate the wwwroot directory (or reinstall IIS) then reinstall the exchange router