Dynamics CRM and NAV Integration

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 Microsoft Dynamics CRM such an adapter is developed. So from next month on, you can easily integrate NAV with Microsoft CRM by using Scribe Insight!

For more info look at: http://www.scribesoftware.com/microsoft-dynamics-nav.asp

Or join any of the following webinars:

Announcing the Scribe Adapter for Microsoft Dynamics NAV
Tuesday, February 19, 2008 11:00a.m. US ET/4p.m. GBT
https://scribesoft.ilinc.com/register/szvfbk

Announcing the Scribe Adapter for Microsoft Dynamics NAV
Tuesday, February 26, 2008 11:00a.m. US ET/4p.m. GBT
https://scribesoft.ilinc.com/register/mcpsst

There are more companies who have created an integration between Microsoft Dynamics CRM and NAV. I haven't performed research on which exist, but I've seen some in the comments section already *smile*

Unable to browse for Active directory objects

While installing CRM (both CRM 3.0 as well as 4.0), you might run into the error message

Unable to browse for Active directory objects

This 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 the local machine
- Is the server member of the domain
- Are you logged as a user with sufficient rights in CRM? If possible, try to use a domain admin.

There has been posted a possible solution to the public newsgroups as well by Merlin:
I was installing on a fresh domain within the same network, and got this error. I set up the new domain's DNS and still got the error. However, since I was on the same network subnet, my servers were getting their DNS from the primary domain's DNS server, which had no knowledge of my test domain's domain controller. So I turned on zone transfers between the 2 domains. Now my servers can find their domain controller via DNS and I can browse that domain's AD.

Hope this helps you further!

Overriddencreatedon

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, the evil red devil shouts "Do it, your customer wants the correct data" and you go into the database.

Well these kind of situations are now history. The CRM development team has silently introduced a new feature. While performing an insert, you can set the attribute overriddencreatedon field. The value of this field will be used to set the record's created on attribute. So now you can import records in the history! A small feature which will make many people happy.

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

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 of an attribute is the type displayed in the right side of the != statement. In the example above float. The type in the import file is the type displayed on the left side of the != statement. This is int in the example above. In order to get rid of this error message and to import the entity, you will need to remove the attribute from the destination system.

In the list of attributes, search for a custom attribute which has the same type as displayed on the right side of the equation. Determine if there is any of these which has been changed. Delete this attribute and import the entity again. Keep in mind that the attribute must be removed from the form first (also the published form) before it can be removed from the attribute list. Another thing to keep in mind, is that when you perform this action on a production system, that the data in the attribute will be removed. Since this is not recoverable, you should first perform the removal of the attribute by following the next steps:
- create a new custom temporary attribute
- copy the data from the old attribute to the temporary attribute for each record
- remove the attribute
- import the entity (and with that the new attribute)
- copy the data from the temporary attribute to the new attribute for each record
- remove the temporary attribute

If there are many custom attributes, it might be hard to locate which of these is causing the error to appear. Unfortunately the name is not in the error description and also the event viewer and tracing does not mention the exact attribute name. To find out which of the attributes is causing the error, you should start the database profiler. Start a new trace and run the import. As soon as the error shows up, stop the tracing. In the trace search for the last occurence of:

exec sp_executesql N'SELECT T1.AttributeId AS attributeid

When you have found this record, copy the whe query. When you run this query in the SQL Server Management Studio, then only a single record should be returned. One of the attributes in the result is the name attribute. This is the attribute which is changed and will need to be removed.

Disclaimer: Only perform actions on the database if you are comfortable with the technologies. Incorrect SQL statements can corrupt your database and cause mayor dataloss. Always make a backup before performing database queries against your CRM database.

Dynamics CRM 4.0 Test Data

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

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 I had once learned from a German guy. He said "Ein reboot macht immer gut". So after a restart of the server I have tried to install again and now it works like a charm.

Another thing to try, is to manually start the Async service for CRM and then retry the action.

If this doesn't work for you, make sure to check the log file regarding this service. You can find it on this location:
C:\Documents and Settings\{username}\Application Data\Microsoft\MSCRM\Logs\CrmAsyncService.log

Good luck installing CRM!

Happy new year!

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 much work related stuff.

Okay, maybe I did do a bit much CRM related stuff in my holidays, but I have spend time the correct way as well. I've visited Hannover (Germany) for Christmas shopping, went to Austria on Holidays and moved houses. Unfortunatly the month is of free time is over and I need to get back to work.

In fact, I'm in the Munich office for the coming 3 weeks. Here I'll be working on a nice data migration from Salesforce to MS CRM 4.0 by using Scribe Insight. If you happen to be in Munich, please let me know and we can have a beer!

I hope that everybody has enjoyed the christmas time as much as I have done so and I wish everybody a great new year!

Ronald