Microsoft CRM Cisco IPCC Enterprise Connector

Take a look at this! Vladimir Lichman just emailed me about a new product for MS CRM 1.2: Microsoft CRM Cisco IPCC Enterprise Connector. This application enables small and medium-sized businesses or empowered branch offices to fully tap the potential of both Microsoft and Cisco to provide a complete CRM solution. Its advanced feature set includes:
- Legacy interface
- Screen pop on incoming call
- Screen pop from click to dial calls
- Click to dial
- Tracking time duration
- Easily create a new CRM record
- Automatically call record and atach it to the MS CRM contact record

Unfortunately I do not have an Cisco IPCC Enterprise here, but it definately is usefull for the lucky ones who do!

More info: http://www.ithit.com/eng/crm

"Please verify that you have enough Crystal licenses"

The error message "Please verify that you have enough Crystal licenses" is really awfull. This is some kind of general crystal error and probably does not have anything to do with licenses!

I've had this myself and with me a lot of other people on the newsgroups. If you are experiencing the same, then you should take a look at the following kb articles. There are 12 possible resolutions for this error which are described in these KB articles:
- 875086
- 862678.

You can access them via https://mbs.microsoft.com/knowledgebase/search.aspx or https://premier.microsoft.com

In case you cannot access these, they are also available via newsgroup postings:

875086
862678

Time for Crystal to be replaced by SQL Reporting Services :)

Update:
For researching purposes, you should try to open this file in IE: http://crmserver/Reports/crystallogon.csp.
You should see something like:


If there is a message regarding the MSCRMuser which cannot be found, then try to rebuild the Crystal APS database (kb 862678, see above).

Incompatible database version

It happened to me several times by now that I get error messages related to an incompatible database version. Examples of error messages are:

Error: Incorrect or incompatible database version. If you have applied any patches or hotfixes for Microsoft CRM, please apply them to this server as well.-2147467259 (0x80004005) Description: Unspecified Error.

and

The version of cdf database you are attempting to use does not match the version of your microsoft crm database.

These errors might prevent you from installing hotfixes, running the Data Migration Framework tools or even prevent the security service to start up. In this case there is something wrong with the version number of the database. This number is stored on several locations. All of these should be the same. The locations this number is stored are:

- CRM Database: "[clientname]_METABASE" Table "BuildVersion"
- CRM Database: "[clientname]_MSCRM" Table "BuildVersion"
- CRM Database: "cdf_mscrm" Table "cdf_BuildVersion"
- Registery key: HKLM SOFTWARE Microsoft MSCRM CRM_Server_Version
- Registery key: HKLM SOFTWARE Microsoft MSCRM Database Version
- Version of file c:\program files\microsoft crm\server\bin\crmsecurityservice.exe.

The error should be gone when you modify these to reflect all the same number. Before making any modifications to any of these settings, you should ofcourse make sure that you do have backups.

Microsoft seems to have started Start.com

Microsoft seems to have started Start.com. This site is a fully functional webbased rss reader. There is still the sign 'preview', but the links to start.com/1, start.com/2 and start.com/3 have disappeared. Start.com definately has the best look and feel compared to the competition of Google and Yahoo. Login to this website works with a .NET Passport. Take a look there and start reading the rss-feeds there :)

CRM 3.0 early adopter program

Microsoft CRM 3.0 will soon be released. Before this release there are some early adopter projects. Microsoft has selected 20 partners for this program and Avanade is one of them! Avanade Netherlands will do this early adopter project together with Bouwfonds. I'm looking forward doing this project a lot.

Too bad we are not allowed to say much, but I will post some interesting discoveries regarding 3.0 soon.

Stay tuned!

Advanced UI Customization

Joris Kalz wrote a truly amazing article on high quality CRM UI Customization, without breaking the supports contract with Microsoft.

I couldn't believe that modifications like hiding tabs could be done on a supported way, but here is the proof:


I have been checking how this is done and definately this is going to be my new standard for making modifications! Check the article here: Part II of Advanced UI Customization

Enjoy the summer

Time for some Cme! Last week I've been doing some kind of a euro trip together with one of my friends Ed. Within 8 days we have visited:
- Germany
- Austria
- Slovenia
- Croatia
- Italy
- Swiss
- France
- Belgium
- And ofcourse The Netherlands...

The main goal of the holidays was to visit another friend, Walter. He's a travelguide in Croatia this summerholiday. Let's show you some picture we have made. You can click them to view them a bit better. Not too good though, because I don't want to scare you off :)

This is our fellowship of the holidays. Left is Walter, Ed is in the middle and that makes me on the right side:


And our tent:


Believe it or not, we even have made food ourselves on this camping!


During our stay there we have visited some of the ATP tournament matches. One of the players we have spotted is Moya:


After Croatia we have been searching for Mickey. And where can you do that better then in Euro Disney Paris:


Last but not least, watch this one:


As you can see, I have been doing a lot. I hope you have had a wonderful time as well!