Ronald Lemmen - CRM, C# and Cme

Error: Microsoft.Crm.Setup.Server.PublishDefaultDataAction

2010-10-19T13:35:00.003+02:00

When you have uninstalled CRM and try to install this again, you might run into the following error message:Microsoft.Crm.Setup.Server.PublishDefaultDataAction failed --->System.MissingMethodException: Method not found: 'Void Microsoft.Crm.CrmCache`1.RemoveEntry(System.String)'.This is being caused by the fact that you have other components of CRM still installed from the previous installation.

The path is not of a legal form

2010-10-17T18:46:00.002+02:00

While installing the Dynamics CRM Data Migration Manager on a Dynamics CRM server, you might get this error message:The path is not of a legal formTo solve this error you should go to the registry and change the InstallLocation of the CRM server. The location is different for x86 and x64, but can easily be found by going to:[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Installer\

Unexpected 401 when using NetworkService in Web Service call

2010-10-12T14:22:00.002+02:00

When you are calling any CRM Web Service and you decide to specify your own credentials by using a new instance of NetworkCredential, then you should make sure that you are not specifying the 'UseDefaultCredentials' after you have specified the Credentials. This will cause IIS to not fully understand how to authenticate. The result is that you will get this 401.2 error message: Unauthorized:

Loveparade drama

2010-07-25T15:34:00.003+02:00

For those of you who do know me a bit, you'll know that I'm a fan of the Love Parade. Every year I'm there. This year was no different in that regards, a friend, my girlfriend and myself have attend this event this years Love Parade as well. As you might have heard, there has been a dramatic incident at the party this year which caused 19 people to die and hunderds of people to get insured. I'm

MVP reawarded

2010-07-02T09:03:00.002+02:00

I’d like to share with you that Microsoft has awarded me for the fifth time in a row the MVP award. This award is given by Microsoft to the people who are considered to be community leaders in a specific technology. This year some of my community activities include- Giving presentations on the Convergence in Frankfurt en Rotterdam to +/- 200 Dynamics CRM customers- Sharing insight about how to

Performance test with 100.000 concurrent users

2010-06-11T00:01:00.000+02:00

Did you know that Microsoft and Dell performed a performance test on Dynamics CRM which included 100.000 concurrent users? They created a whitepaper about this test. If you're worried about the capabilities of the Dynamics CRM / xRM platform, then this is a must read: DownloadHere's the summary of the white paper:Microsoft® Dynamics CRM 4.0 is designed to help enterprise organizations attain a

Special Epicenter price for my blog readers

2010-06-07T11:32:00.002+02:00

The organization of Epicenter have very kindly allocated 10 'concession tickets' for me to offer to people.One Day €129.00 Now €50.00 Save €80.00Two Days* €189.00 Now €100.00 Save €90.00Three Days* €229.00 Now €150.00 Save €80.00Four Days* €239.00 Now €200.00 Save €39.00Be the first to book. More details:http://epicenter.ie/2010_Ronald_Lemmen_Page

Speaking at the Epicenter 2010

2010-06-07T10:33:00.003+02:00

If you don't have plans for this week yet, then you should consider coming over to Dublin for the Epicenter 2010. Matt Wittemann and myself will be doing presentations at this event around Dynamics CRM and xRM on Wednesday the 9th of June. Next to these sessions I'd like to share some of the other highlights of the event:Tuesday - Chris Horn on the Future of Irish Software with the Governments

0x81020030: Invalid file name

2010-05-23T21:23:00.002+02:00

I'm using the approach as described here to create a folder in SharePoint. For some reason I do get the following error message every now and then.0x81020030:Invalid file name.The file name you specified could not be used. It may be the name of an existing file or directory, or you may not have permission to access the file.Apparently this does not have to do anything with an existing file or

CRMAsyncService using 100% CPU v2

2010-05-21T14:53:00.002+02:00

A while ago I wrote an article around how to handle the situation that the CRMAsyncService is consuming 99 to 100% of the CPU of the CRM Server. That solution has been written around the scenario that there are basically no workflows running. Obviously, there is the possibility as well that the amount of workflows is causing such behavior.CRM is tested to be capable of handling thousands of

ExactTarget Error: No results were received from the ExactTarget API

2010-05-18T16:24:00.002+02:00

If you are working on extensive integration with ExactTarget from Dynamics CRM, then you might come accross this error message:"Error during send processing." "ExactTarget.MSCRM4.BusinessLogic.Connector.ExactTargetSendException: No results were received from the ExactTarget API. Send status is unknown. ---> ExactTarget.MSCRM4.BusinessLogic.Connector.ExactTargetSendException: No results were

Plug-in code for SharePoint List creation

2010-04-28T08:30:00.002+02:00

Like most of you know, Microsoft has created a demo VPC which you can download from partnersource. On this demo there are some interesting features. For instance, if you do create an account, then automatically a sharepoint folder is created and linked to the account. This has been done by using a plugin. The plug-in code has been added below. Of course you will need to change some things related

Create Folder in SharePoint using Web Services

2010-04-27T12:17:00.004+02:00

Thanks to some other bloggers on the web, especially David Klein, I've been able to quickly build code which allows me to create and/or ensure that a folder in a particular document library does exist. It took a while to get everything working exactly as it should, but in this post I do paste the code as it works.First you would need to create a web reference to the following webservice:http://

SharePoint error message 0x8107026f

2010-04-27T11:11:00.006+02:00

Interesting. For the first time in quite a while I'm programming agains SharePoint again. I am working on a possibility to upload files to a specific location in WSS, so the steps I need to make sure are:- Check if the destination folder exist- Create the destination folder if necessary- Upload the fileIn the process of creating the destination folder I do encounter a couple of error messages.

Retrieving emails from ExactTarget based on a folder

2010-04-12T11:31:00.004+02:00

There are some interesting documentation issues with regards to ExactTarget. For instance, if you are programming against ExactTarget to retrieve all emails which belong to a specific folder, then you would expect that you can filter on the 'folder' attribute of an email. Apparently that doesn't work, but you will have to use the CategoryID attribute. But then again, filtering against the

Error: End element 'Fault' from namespace '' expected

2010-04-12T11:22:00.003+02:00

When connecting to a WSE 3.0 service, like ExactTarget, you might encounter this exception:"End element 'Fault' from namespace 'http://www.w3.org/2003/05/soap-envelope' expected. Found element 'detail' from namespace ''This does basically mean that the soap version of the client doesn't match the server. You might be able to change this in the web.config. For ExactTarget they require you to add a

Retrieve Marketinglists attached to Campaign Activity

2010-03-22T00:37:00.003+01:00

Today I've been doing some coding again and I've found an interesting situation. For my code I do need to find which marketing lists belong to a specific Campaign Activity. Apparently more people on the internet faced the same issue, but I haven't found anybody who supplied the answer on how to do that. I've managed to find an approach which works for both the fetchXml as well as a

Minimal requirements for configuring Outlook Client (Online version)

2010-01-27T21:36:00.006+01:00

Some customers don't allow end users to install software on their own desktop. This can even go up to completely locked down systems on which the end users doesn't have any rights. Installing the CRM outlook client on such a machine is a quite a hard task to do. Usually this can be scripted and by doing so it will be installed by a user with enough rights. After installing the Outlook client, it

CRM 5 and Windows Azure

2010-01-08T13:13:00.003+01:00

Girish Raja has created a nice video in which he shows a real life example of how Windows Azure can be used in combination with Dynamics CRM. Not only is he using Dynamics CRM, he is using CRM 5. Make sure you watch this video to learn some neat things about:- Dynamics CRM 5.0 (including nested grids, visualizations and dashboards)- Windows Azure (including AppFabric Service Bus)Girish Raja's blog

Exception while trying to execute AsyncOperationId: The request failed with HTTP status 401: Unauthorized.

2009-11-10T13:44:00.003+01:00

This error message appears when you are trying to import a file but something is going wrong. There are multiple reasons for this error message to show up. Some reasons which I found on the web include:- See if the account that your Asynchronous Service runs under can authenticate with your SQL Server Service. - If you're using multiple servers, look at something called a Service Principal Name

This time I request some help from you

2009-10-30T00:43:00.005+01:00

And now, for something completely different. Usually, at least I hope, you can find the answer to your questions on this blog, but this time I would like to ask you guys for a favor. I’m looking for a sponsor.My little sister Iris Lemmen, 20, doesn’t share my passion for Dynamics CRM. Instead her passion is with Judo. She’s awfully good at it as she has become the Dutch champion for three times.

Close Campaign Response window

2009-10-18T16:39:00.002+02:00

Did you ever notice that you will get an warning message when you close a new Campaign Response window? The message you will get is:Are you sure you want to navigate away from this page?Your changes have not been saved. To stay on the page so that you can save your changes, click Cancel.Press OK to continue, or Cancel to stay on the current page.OK CancelYou do get this message because Microsoft

Update owner in Plugin

2009-10-18T15:56:00.002+02:00

Here's a code snippet that will help you to update the owner of a record in a plug-in. This code should run in a POST plug-in:SecurityPrincipal assignee = new SecurityPrincipal();assignee.Type = SecurityPrincipalType.User;// PrincipalId is some known Guid belonging to the user or team that will own this record.assignee.PrincipalId = new Guid("476E234C-5E15-DE11-80BA-000C297AF856");// Create the

Links in e-mail templates

2009-10-18T15:13:00.003+02:00

It is not so hard to get a link in a CRM template, but to hide the link behind your custom text is more difficult. It is possible to do so though. I noticed a small post in the communities by my fellow MVP Adi Katz in which he explains how you can do this. This post does deserve a bit more attention so that's why I am copying the content in this blog post. And now I can find it back as well :)Adi

Document your CRM installation

2009-09-29T10:38:00.005+02:00

Everybody knows the importance of documentation of a project. Thanks to Merijn van Mourik and some other guys there is a tool which can help you documenting your solution. This is a free tool which you can download from Codeplex: CRM 4 documentation.If you want to use this tool on a standalone machine or a machine without internet connection, then you should download and install the following

Action Microsoft.Crm.Config.Client.InstallPstAction failed

2009-09-02T09:24:00.004+02:00

While installing the Outlook Client, there is one error that appears to be popping up more than others:Action Microsoft.Crm.Config.Client.InstallPstAction failed.LaunchOutlookInstallerProcess failed.There are some blog posts which offer solutions to this error message. If you have this message, try the following:- Run %windir%\system32\fixmapi.exe- Reinstall the client-

Remove attributes from form which cannot be removed

2009-06-29T14:32:00.005+02:00

There are some attributes on CRM default forms which you cannot remove. This post will show you how you can do this anyway. While doing so, please keep in mind that Microsoft must have good reasons to fix attributes on the form. Removing this might have implications, as always have a good backup ready.The steps you need to follow to remove are:- Export customizations for the specific entity-

Changing default organisation

2009-06-17T17:10:00.004+02:00

You can change the default organisation by opening the configuration manager. In this tool you can rightclick on the organisation which you want to set as default and click "set as default". You'll see that the name of the organisation has changed to: Orgname (default).After you perform an IISReset you would expect the new default organisation to open up when you browse to your CRM server.

Change the CRMAppPool Identity

2009-04-29T16:45:00.002+02:00

Most likely this is recorded in a thousand places, but I had a hard time finding info about what steps need to be taken to change the identity of the CrmAppPool. All you need to do is:- Create a user in Active Directory- Make sure the user has Domain User rights- Add the user to the PrivUserGroup of CRM- Make sure the user has 'log on as a service' priviledgeThe last step can be executed on two

Automatic provisioning of Organizations

2009-04-29T11:36:00.008+02:00

Microsoft CRM does have a separate webservice for doing deployment related activities. There is a Deployment SDK especially for this webservice. You can download that here. One of the activities you can execute is automatic provisioning of new organizations. In this post I'll dive into the code required for this as well as some of the common issues while doing so.Basically following the next

Walk through all elements on a form

2009-04-23T10:08:00.002+02:00

In some cases it is required to set all attributes on a form to disabled or do some other logic like checking which attribute has been changed. To do this you do need to walk through each attribute of the CRM form. My fellow MVP Mitch Milam has posted the technique to do this more than a year ago:http://blogs.infinite-x.net/2007/11/21/disabling-all-fields-on-a-crm-form/The most important piece of

401 Unauthorized when accessing the webservice

2009-04-17T00:02:00.004+02:00

While there are many situations in which you can retrieve the error message 401: Unauthorized, there are some more difficult to find than others. Of course you have After you have checked the basic settings including:- Are the default credentials used- Does the user have an account in CRM- Does the user have enough priviledges in CRM- Is Windows Authentication enabled for the CRM website- Is

Hiding elements: the next evolution

2009-04-16T23:35:00.004+02:00

One of my colleagues, Richard McCormick, has written a blog post for the Avanade internal employees. He has asked me to make this post publically available since it might be interesting for more people. Read on and get great code samples on how to hide attributes, elements and sections.Hiding Links & Controls in CRM 4 Before I go on, I should point out that this solution is technically

CRMAsyncService using 100% CPU

2009-04-16T22:41:00.002+02:00

With one of my projects I've experienced a situation in which the CRMAsyncService is requiring 99% CPU power. Since this doesn't leave much left for CRM, we needed to get this fixed. One of my colleagues, Maarten Smid, came up with the solution of installing the Service Pack 1 for .NET 3.0. But before this can be installed, some prerequisites needed to be installed.The first step is to install

Plugin registration tools for Visual Studio 2005

2009-04-16T22:34:00.004+02:00

The newest update of the SDK, version 4.0.8, includes updated projects for the plugin registration tool as well as the plugin developer tool. While I usually am pleased with updates, this update could cause some issues for some people. The updated projects are build in Visual Studio 2008 whereas they used to be build in Visual Studio 2005. This means that you will not be able anymore to run the

Displaying inactive records in associated view

2009-04-10T14:46:00.004+02:00

In some situations you do want to show the inactive records in an associated view as well. My fellow MVP George Doubinski wrote an article about how to solve this by using a plugin:http://crm.georged.id.au/post/2008/03/07/Displaying-inactive-records-in-associated-view.aspx.In this post I will show that there are more routes to Rome. I've looked into the option of editing the query which is being

Read-only URL Addressable Form

2009-03-20T14:10:00.002+01:00

The SDK does describe URL Addressable Forms, but one thing which I do miss on this page, is details around how to link to a form in readonly format. This is done by using the following URL:http://server/orgname/_forms/readonly/readonly.aspx?objTypeCode=objectTypeCode.Of course you need to change the server to servername, orgname to organization name and the objectTypeCode to the entity object

New Statement of Direction paper

2009-03-12T23:26:00.002+01:00

Microsoft has just release a new Statement of Direction document. Due to NDA restrictions I cannot share contents of this document (yet), but assuming that you are a partner or a customer, you can download this paper yourself from either of the following locations.Partnersource: https://mbs.microsoft.com/partnersource/marketing/statementofdirection/MD_CRM_SOD.htmCustomersource: https://

Using Advanced Find for FetchXML builder v4.0

2009-02-16T16:50:00.004+01:00

Some time ago I have written an article about how to use the Advanced Find as FetchXML builder. Today I tried using the javascript:prompt() method on a CRM 4.0 deployment and found out that the code doesn't work anymore. This alert script does still work though.javascript:alert(resultRender.FetchXml.value);A slightly different code which might be easier to remember is:javascript:alert(

Setting the focus to a tab

2009-02-10T13:28:00.003+01:00

Today me and a colleague worked on setting the focus of a crmForm automatically to a specific tab. After a bit of research we found that this code works:crmForm.all.tab1Tab.click();With this code in mind I looked on the internet and found that my fellow MVP Jim Wang posted that more than a year ago as well :)Anyway, it works!

CRM 4.0 Build Versions

2009-01-28T14:56:00.004+01:00

Update: Added Rollup 3For quite a long time Aaron Elder has posted the build numbers for Dynamics CRM. Unfortunately the rollups had not been included in his list yet, though I needed to check on a system which rollup had been installed. You can check that by using the SQL Management Studio and execute the query:select * from BuildVersion"This will return the current version of CRM. When you have

Error messages in CRM

2009-01-23T14:31:00.005+01:00

CRM does give you error messages every now and then. The message is usally in the format of "0x12345678". The numbers do not tell much, but the corresponding error message do help you definitely. These error messages are given in the SDK and on a lot of places on the internet, but there the "0x" has been removed from the error message. Here is the same list as which is listed in the SDK, but now

Microsoft Surface

2009-01-20T15:58:00.002+01:00

Until now I've had a hard time in getting my mind around a real business case where you would be able to use the Microsoft Surface table. Today I got an email message of one of my colleagues who pointed me at a YouTube movie which does show a good business example for the Financial Market. What ideas do you have for using Surface in conjunction with CRM?

Duplicate process check

2009-01-20T11:46:00.002+01:00

If you are creating your own integration module for CRM, then it is very wise to make sure that the process is running only once. For performance reasons you can decide to split the process in multiple threads, but running a single process multiple times can cause quite some unforseen issues.The following code snippet will allow you to check if an application with the same name is running

Use PreFiltering in Reports downloaded through Webservice

2009-01-16T14:45:00.003+01:00

In my previous post I discussed a Mail-merge alternative: Reports exporting to Word files. The reports downloaded in that approach do not support any pre filtering as CRM reports would allow you to set. It would be great if that can be set as well. This post describes how to do that.The reports created in CRM or for CRM do support the prefiltering. In custom created reports this is added by

Mail-merge alternative: Reports exporting to Word files

2009-01-16T14:11:00.002+01:00

CRM 4.0 does offer a lot of new features regarding mail merge, but not all situations are supported by the new features. You can look into 3rd party tools like C360 / MSCRM-Addons or Temptus Wordconnect, but a totally different approach is to use the Reporting Services. This post will dive into how to use Reporting Services to generate word documents.You can create any report in CRM by using the

Log In Name and Password required by Report Server

2009-01-16T13:44:00.004+01:00

You can view the CRM reports in Reporting Services by browsing to http://YourReportingServer/ReportServer/. There you should select your organization, select 4.0 and select a report. At that moment you might be asked for a Log In Name and a Password as seen in the image.This behavior appears when you have installed the SRS Data Connector because your deployment contains a separate server for SQL.

Books regarding Dynamics CRM 4.0

2008-12-23T23:17:00.002+01:00

Today an article of mine has been posted to the Dynamics CRM Team blog as a guest post. This article discusses all the books which are currently available for Dynamics CRM 4.0. Next to these books you can of course get a lot of information in trainings, MOC's, the SDK and from the internet. Drop by at the team blog to look at which books are available and which matches your needs.

Dynamics CRM Report Modification Walkthrough

2008-12-18T10:11:00.000+01:00

There are quite some reports in the out of the box installation of Dynamics CRM 4.0, but these sometimes do not match the exact business requirements. Also the reports which can be created by using the Dynamics CRM Report Builder Wizard cannot contain complex calculations or information of more than two entities. When you do export one of these reports and try to edit this in Visual Studio, then

More Convergence!

2008-11-11T14:06:00.000+01:00

The Convergence EMEA is just one week away. I do now have more information available about my planning for that week. You'll find me at the following times at the following locations:Tuesday 18: 17:30-19:00 MS Pavillion CRM Booth Kiosks 33-36Wednesday 19: 17:00-18:30 MS Pavillion CRM Booth Kiosks 33-36Thursday 20: 9:30-11:30 MS Pavillion CRM Booth Kiosks 33-36Thursday 20: 12:00-13:00 Hall B5.2 -

Convergence - Ask the expert

2008-10-30T12:04:00.000+01:00

In just a couple of weeks there is the Convergence EMEA in Denmark. I'll attend this convergence again and I am looking forward to meeting many of the readers of my blog. On this convergence you can find me at the CRM Booth many times, but there is one place for sure where you can find me. That will be the session IDCRM05: "Microsoft Dynamics CRM: Ask the Community Experts".That session is going

CRM 5.0 Features

2008-10-29T23:11:00.001+01:00

Now that CRM 4.0 is available for almost a year, it is good to start thinking about what investmenst you will make in the coming period and which functionality can wait until the v.next has been released. In this topic I'll list some of the most interesting features that Microsoft has said to be working on:- Adding auditing capabilities out of the box- Deeply integrate SharePoint with CRM for

Social Media and CRM

2008-10-15T15:05:00.001+02:00

Although we're in the middle of web 2.0, most companies do not integrate social media in their organizations, including CRM. Avanade has concluded this based on a research which has been conducted under more than 500 global executives.There are a lot of interesting facts published in the press release which can be downloaded from the CRM Social Media website of Avanade.

Get rid of "Do you want to close this window?"

2008-09-29T10:54:00.000+02:00

You might get a question when opening CRM in Internet Explorer. The question is:The webpage you are viewing is trying to close the window.Do you want to close this window?yes noThis message does appear in CRM 4.0 only when you are using Internet Explorer 7.0 and you have enabled the application mode setting. Nevertheless, it is an anoying message which you can get away!To get rid of this message

Overview of CRM 4.0 Training & development collateral

2008-09-29T08:52:00.001+02:00

Microsoft employee Jon Butler is sending me updates on CRM regularly. This time he has sent an overview of the available training material. Since this is such a usefull list, I thought it would be worth sharing this with you guys!Official Courseware available now These training courses are the Microsoft Dynamics Official Curriculum currently available for CRM 4.0 now, either as soft-copy

Get the latest hotfixes for the CRM 4.0 outlook client

2008-09-26T09:15:00.000+02:00

The product team has posted a blog article about the known issues with their hotfixes on the team blog. I'd strongly recommend everybody to look at this list and to install all applicable hotfixes for your system.The following issues are discussed:1. Outlook hangs during initialization (progress toolbar displays “Loading…” and never finishes)2. With E-mail Auto Promotion Enabled, Outlook may not

Custom entities and attributes in a plug-in

2008-09-24T10:37:00.000+02:00

You cannot create a webservice in Visual Studio when you're writing a plugin. Instead you need to use the method context.CreateCrmService(true);. There is only one single issue when using this approach. You cannot leverage the power of IntelliSense in Visual Studio. Visual Studio will not recognize your custom entities and attributes. How to work with this? The only correct answer is "Dynamic

Unauthorized error after deploying your custom application

2008-09-18T13:49:00.002+02:00

I've been working on deploying an application today. I received the error "Unauthorized" all the time and did not know why. The website was deployed as a new virtual directory within the ISV folder, authentication was set to integrated windows authentication and the password which was supplied was correct. Still I was able to get this error message:Server Error in '/ISV/CustomApplication'

Convert lead to contact, account and/or opportunity programmatically

2008-09-03T16:18:00.001+02:00

Update: The codeproject missed a line of code. After you have executed the InitializeFromRequest, then you'll get a InitializeFromResponse. This response has got a entity in it. This entity you will need to create. The entity does not yet get created by executing the InitializeFromRequest! The line to add is:Guid entityId = service.Create(rps.Entity);Today I needed some code which does convert a

Plug-in not working

2008-09-03T13:21:00.007+02:00

One of the most read pages on my blog is the list of reasons why a callout won't work. Since the release of CRM 4.0 we do not have callouts anymore, but we're using plug-ins for extending CRM. This article will contain all the reasons that I find on why a plug-in is not working.Error:"Unable to load the plug-in assembly"There are multiple reasons why this error can occur. These reasons include:-

Javascript Files and Caching

2008-07-29T09:44:00.005+02:00

You will notice that the performance of Dynamics CRM can be negatively affected when you have loads of Javascript codes embedded into the form of an entity. It is recommended that you take out the Javascript codes from the form and place them in a separate script file which can then be loaded in the form. This will cause the script to be downloaded only once and therefore improve performance when

Not all emails are sent from MailMerge

2008-07-17T11:14:00.000+02:00

Yesterday I looked at an issue with a colleague of mine (Nico Verhagen). The problem was that a mailmerge quick campaign has been created which should send out approximately 1500 emails. When the quickcampaign had finished, there were only 43 emails sent and nothing failed. How could that be true?Apparently only 800 contacts had an email address specified, so that already is causing half of the

Creating an activity report which includes the related people

2008-07-04T12:06:00.000+02:00

In an activity CRM grid, it is not possible to add attributes from the activity type (letter, phonecall etc) itself. The fields to and from on the entities phonecall, letter, fax are therefore not eligable for addition on the CRM grid. It would be very useful to see those though. The same is valid for the to, cc and bcc in email and required and optional attendees in appointments. In this post I

Transform a table column into a CSV field in SQL Server

2008-07-04T11:52:00.000+02:00

Imagine that you want to use a related table in your SQL query. You then must return only a single column or otherwise you'll get this SQL error:Msg 512, Level 16, State 1, Line 2Subquery returned more than 1 value. This is not permitted when the subquery follows =, !=, <, <= , >, >= or when the subquery is used as an expression.What I like to do, is to transform the result table column into a

Determine the logged in user

2008-07-03T17:14:00.000+02:00

Some time ago I wrote a post around how to show and hide fields based on the logged in user. Apparently this doesn't work for Dynamics CRM 4.0 anymore for two reasons. This post will help you to get it working again.The first one is that you are not allowed to use the <%= approach anymore. You do now have to use the function: Page.Response.Write(string strText);The second reason is that the

MVP for the 3rd consecutive year

2008-07-03T17:00:00.001+02:00

Hi Guys,As a reward for community work last year, Microsoft has again reawarded me the Microsoft CRM MVP! I am very much pleased with this award because as one of my colleagues said: Getting to the top is hard, but staying there is even harder!Last year I have spend a lot of time on doing community work again. I have spend a lot of time preparing for presentations like deepdive sessions and CRM

UPDATE: Have a drink with your fellow CRM consultants

2008-06-23T16:25:00.001+02:00

For quite some time I've been thinking about organizing a drink for all the Microsoft Dynamics CRM consultants in the Netherlands. Mostly I've been thinking about the format. Who should be invited, should Microsoft be a sponsor etc. From one day to another, these questions were answered by Johan van Dijk. He started the "Dynamics Netwerk Borrel". He organizes drinks for consultants who are

Windows Home Server

2008-05-21T10:31:00.000+02:00

Who of you guys is working with Windows Home Server (WHS)? Last weeks I've been working with this in my spare time. I've grabbed an old pc, added some harddisk space and memory and installed this product. Now I'm figuring out all of the possibilities. Of course there's the most important feature: Backup. Every night the WHS server wakes up all of my pc's and laptops and makes a backup. Once my

Resizing windows

2008-03-19T14:40:00.000+01:00

If you have a lot of data on an entity form, then you sometimes do want to force the page to open in full screen mode. There's a small javascript which will allow you to do this. Just add these two lines of code to the form onload of your entity form:window.moveTo(0,0);window.resizeTo(screen.availWidth, screen.availHeight);Also, when you open a custom page you can also set the window size by

Stopping and continuing a save event

2008-03-10T13:02:00.000+01:00

For some customizations you do need to stop the form onsave event, perform some business logic and continue the save event. An example would be that in specific conditions are met when a record is saved, then a popup will need to be shown. After filling in data in the popup and pressing a continue button on the popup, then the save operation would need to continue. The SDK helps in this situation

Import CSV file to DataTable

2008-03-09T23:07:00.000+01:00

I'm preparing a demo right now and for this I'm importing a CSV file to CRM. Especially the piece around the import of data from a CSV file to a DataTable is very generic. I'm sharing it with you guys for if it does make sense for you to use this as well.class CSVReader{ public System.Data.DataTable GetDataTable(string strFileName) { System.Data.OleDb.OleDbConnection conn = new

ForceSubmit in ASP.Net

2008-03-03T15:28:00.002+01:00

Today I've been working on a simple IFrame. This IFrame shows 3 dynamic picklists and the data in these picklists is coming from crm. Since some clients are a bit slow, I would like the picklists to be disabled while the postback is being performed. This is easily done with this script:function disableFields(field1, field2){ field1.disabled = true; field2.disabled = true;}

VPC CRM 4.0

2008-02-14T09:53:00.000+01:00

Just like Microsoft has developed a VPC for CRM 3.0, they have created one for CRM 4.0 as well. Here's the link to the VPC: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=dd939ed9-87a5-4c13-b212-a922cc02b469&DisplayLang=en

CrmDateTime conversion to DateTime

2008-02-11T16:32:00.000+01:00

When working with CrmDateTime, you'll notice that this type does have a .value attribute, but the type of this attribute is string. There is no attribute to get the .net class DateTime out of your CrmDateTime. If you do want to use a DateTime anyway, you'd easily need to convert it. You could use any of these:Convert.ToDateTime(crmdatetime.Value)DateTime.Parse(crmdatetime.Value)For more

Logo Dynamics

2008-02-08T09:59:00.000+01:00

For a presentation I needed a logo of Microsoft Dynamics. At that point I realized that I have never used an official logo for Microsoft Dynamics. Searching on the internet resulted in this page:http://www.microsoft.com/Presspass/gallery/ms-logos.mspx?FINISH=YESIt includes logo's for most Microsoft products including Visual Studio, Office, Windows and of course Dynamics.

Dynamics CRM and NAV Integration

2008-01-29T10:29:00.000+01:00

Many newsletters get into my mailbox and there are just a few which I read. One of them is the newsletter from my friends at Scribe. Especially in this newsletter, great news is made public. They will be releasing the NAV Adapter for Scribe Insight next month! This means that you will be able to integrate NAV with any other database or product where they do have an adapter for. Of course for

Unable to browse for Active directory objects

2008-01-28T14:24:00.000+01:00

While installing CRM (both CRM 3.0 as well as 4.0), you might run into the error messageUnable to browse for Active directory objectsThis error message can appear when you press "Browse" after selecting the Organizational Unit in Active Directory. There are some possible solutions which could cause this issue. Think about the following:- Are you logged in with an account to the domain instead of

Overriddencreatedon

2008-01-23T10:11:00.000+01:00

Everybody who's performing data imports knows the problem. When you create a record in CRM, the created on field always points at the date the record is created. Ofcourse you could go into the database and update the date by using a SQL script. But then again, there is this good white angel hanging above your shoulder whispering "Don't do it, it's not supported". No matter what this angel says,

AttributeInfo.TypeName(int) != AttributeMetadata.Type.Name(float)

2008-01-21T10:05:00.000+01:00

You might bump into an error message while importing an entity from a customizations file. The error show could be:Error: lead: AttributeInfo.TypeName(int) != AttributeMetadata.Type.Name(float)The cause of this error is a mismatch in attribute type. Usually a field has been removed in the other environment and has been recreated with another attribute type. The type in your destination CRM system

Dynamics CRM 4.0 Test Data

2008-01-17T13:45:00.000+01:00

The test data to be used in demo's etcetera is available on the Microsoft download site. Here you can find the exe and details: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=D5F77EE7-3D01-4944-B5DC-C8CDC8123DF4&displaylang=en

Failure at Microsoft.crm.setup.common.registerasyncserviceAction

2008-01-07T18:36:00.000+01:00

Some people are experiencing troubles while installing CRM 4.0. Right now I’m having the same problems as some others. In the end of the installation, the setup throws the error message "Failure at Microsoft.crm.setup.common.registerasyncserviceAction". The reason why I got this error message was because I had just uninstalled CRM and tried to install it again. I did not think about a wise lesson

Happy new year!

2008-01-07T18:23:00.000+01:00

Happy new year to everybody!After a nice holiday of more than a month, I'm back in the office. Whole december I've been free and doing as least work related stuff as possible. And I have succeeded in that quite good. Except for answering some questions, helping some colleagues out, writing an article for the CRM Team Blog, giving a presentation on CRM 4.0 for my Dutch colleagues, I have not done

Improve performance of Microsoft Dynamics CRM

2007-11-27T09:53:00.000+01:00

The performance of your CRM implementation is one of the key factors for customer acceptance. There are multiple options available for optimizing your system. Here's a list to get started:Microsoft - Optimize Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0Microsoft - Optimize Microsoft Dynamics CRM 1.2Aaron Elder - Optimize the CRM Webservice CallsBrein Reid - Reduce the amount of useless calls to IIS 6.0

Welcome to the blog world David!

2007-11-09T20:07:00.000+01:00

One of my fellow CRM MVP's has just decided to start blogging as well. Please welcome David Jennaway in this world by paying a visit to his already valueable blog:http://mscrmuk.blogspot.com/

Convergence 2007 Copenhagen

2007-10-22T12:51:00.000+02:00

It was a last minute call, but I'm attending the Convergence as well. Please leave a message or send an email if you wish to drink a beer :)If there's something interesting to share, then I'll make sure it's online as soon as possible.Also I'll be standing at the Microsoft Product Groups Booth for the MVP Program at the following times:- Monday 22nd 18:00 - 19:00- Tuesday 23rd 12:00 - 13:00-

Importing Customizations: Invalid Attribute

2007-10-18T10:28:00.000+02:00

Here's an approach for finding a solution to a new error which I haven't discussed before. The error that I will discuss is the message "Invalid Attribute" while importing the customizations. This only appears when there are already customizations imported and you try to import a new version of the customizations file.I wasn't able to find out information on Google or Partner Source, but managed

MS CRM Role Utility

2007-10-11T20:52:00.000+02:00

Ever since the Sandbox went down, I've received quite some questions around the Role Utility. Luckily I still had a copy available. For the ease of use I've uploaded this one and here's the link: link.Have fun

Speaker at Dutch Dynamics CRM User Group

2007-10-11T17:09:00.000+02:00

Last week at the 4th of October, there was the first session for the Dutch Dynamics CRM User Group. This session was organized by the Dynamics User Group (http://www.dynug.nl) and hosted by Generali. The goal of this User Group is to get customers together and learn from eachother and have a voice within Microsoft.The agenda for this meeting was:- Welcome and Introductions- User Group and

Fetch the ObjectTypeCode based on EntityName

2007-10-11T17:01:00.001+02:00

Not a very rocket science, but just something again that I don't want to type over and over again. So here's a piece of code that helps you to fetch the ObjectTypeCode based on the EntityName for CRM 3.0:private int GetObjectTypeCode (string entityName){ CrmMetaDataService.MetadataService metadataService = new CrmMetaDataService.MetadataService(); metadataService.Credentials =

Creating Environment independent solutions

2007-08-21T03:33:00.000+02:00

When developing a solution for CRM, make sure that it runs on all different crm environments. Many implementations have their CRM installation on another port compared to the development environments. A way to handle this, is to look at the location of MS CRM as it is stored in the registery.// Set default valuesprivate const string CRM_REG_DIRECTORY = @"software\Microsoft\mscrm\";private const

Change requirement level at runtime

2007-07-18T11:28:00.000+02:00

I've made quite some posts around how to dynamically modify the form by using JavaScript. One thing I haven't posted around yet, but what I do use quite often, is to modify the requirement level of attributes on the form at runtime. Based on a selection in the system, another field could become required. Also if the selection changes again, then the field should not be required anymore. Here is

Expert on Avanade.com

2007-07-17T10:28:00.000+02:00

Avanade has create a profile for me on their public website in the experts section. It's quite a honer to be listed within the same list as Matt Joe, Dennis Mulder and Matt Parks. http://www.avanade.com/people/expert_detail.aspx?expertid=98If you want to become an Avanade expert as well, feel free to contact me (ronaldl at avanade dot com) and I'll make sure that you get in contact with the

Reawarded MVP

2007-07-01T20:11:00.000+02:00

Hi Guys,As a reward for community work last year, Microsoft has reawarded me the Microsoft CRM MVP!My community work includes:- Around 1000 newsgroup and forum posts.- Around 75 blog posts, of which 35 self written articles. The blog had more than 75k visitors.- Writing the article "Many to many relationships" for the CRM Team blog and the article "The power of choice" for CRN.- Working as 'Ask

New reasons added for why your callout won't work

2007-06-30T16:39:00.000+02:00

The last weeks I've been adding multiple possible reasons with possible solutions to the checklist as published earlier. If your callout is not working, then make sure you view this list.Happy coding!

Change username of user in CRM

2007-06-22T22:07:00.000+02:00

Microsoft has released KB article #935220 some time ago. This article describes how to change the username of a user in Dynamics CRM. See the article here:How to change the user name and the logon name for a user record in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 This worked for me, I hope this also might help one of you!

Add New Button on Lookup

2007-06-22T22:03:00.000+02:00

Hi Guys,I’ve been looking into how to enable the ‘new’ button on custom entities. Here is what I have found. O yeah, For the direct solution scroll to the end of the mail.- You can set test some things when using this url:http://localhost:5555/_controls/lookup/lookupsingle.aspx?class=null&objecttypes=10001&browse=0&DefaultType=0&ShowNewButton=1&ShowPropButton=1Ofcourse modify the servername and

My current project

2007-06-22T20:54:00.000+02:00

Hi Guys,Last weeks I've been working very hard for my current customer. Together with a team in the Londen, UK and a team in Hyderabad, India I'm working on a very interesting project. We're creating a CRM system for the London office of my client which will connect to a global CRM implementation and which will also have a self service web interface. This project does take a lot of time and

Fetching the selected records in a grid

2007-06-11T18:50:00.000+02:00

Make sure that you read this page if you want to use the selected values in a grid:http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb267367.aspxUntil some time ago I was using one of the functions that CRM uses, but since that is unsupported and the method as described in the article as stated above is supported, I am using the new approach.In short it comes down to this:// window.dialogArguments

CRM Blog search

2007-06-06T17:50:00.000+02:00

My fellow MVP Matt Wittemann has created a custom search which searches through all of the blogs listed on the blog list. You can search through all of these blogs by going to this page:http://google.com/coop/cse?cx=007820608918962702080%3Ao4ydxw03wpaor go to Matt's blog and perform a search from there.Thanks Matt!Update:Not only Matt has created such a list, also Mitch Milam has created such a