CRM 2011 – Video’s focusing on personalising CRM 2011 and Outlook

I found this blog post at ISV Labs today and it had a good list of CRM 2011 videos.  After the release of the CRM 2011 Developer videos I am now more interesting in videos featuring the front end, This list has a few good ones

Video: CRM that works in Microsoft Outlook: :32
Is your CRM as easy as email?

Demo: Personalizing Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011: 5:07
This demo shows and many ways that Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 can be personalized to suit individual roles and workstyles.

Document Management with Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 and SharePoint: 4:23
This demo shows how documents can be easily stored, accessed, updated, and included in workflow using Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 and SharePoint Server.

Demo: Flexible Goal Management in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011: 4:28
See how a businesses can define key performance and business indicators to track and measure progress against any organizational goal or metric.

Demo: Process control in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011: 3:18
This demo shows the different ways in which managers can gain greater control of their business processes using Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011.

Demo: Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 and Outlook: 8:52
This demo shows how Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 works inside Microsoft Outlook, making it easier than ever to keep track of customer information.

Demo: Solutions Management in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011: 7:50
This demo shows how developers and ISVs can manage thier solutions in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011.

Video: How to make Dialogs: 9:07
This video will demonstrate how to create a dialog, a type of process, in CRM 2011

Video: Conditional Formatting in the Outlook CRM Client: 3:16
This video will demonstrate how to create conditional formating in CRM 2011.

Video: Record Auditing in CRM 2011: 4:37
Want to know how to track changes to records in CRM? This video on auditing shows you how to manage audit tracking and history.

Video: Dynamic Marketing Lists: 4:37
Create marketing lists and add members automatically using dynamic marketing lists.

Video: Dynamic Marketing Lists: 3:50
Watch this video to get a better understanding of the changes in the new version of Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online to help you prepare for your upgrade.

 

CRM 2011 – Importing a CRM 4 organisation into CRM 2011

I wanted to convert some code I had in a CRM 4 organisation into CRM 2011.  I initially tried copying the customizations.xml and moving the entity and entityRelationship and form into CRM 2011 customizations.xml in the solution but I couldn’t get this to work.  It makes sense because CRM 2011 has the ribbon and the forms are different so i wasn’t very hopeful.

I didn’t want to have to type in all the fields and relationships for the entity I wanted so I thought I would import the organisation into CRM 2011 and then export it from there.

I found a couple of great articles to run through the process.

First there are a couple of videos.  The first one is a real whizz through the process and it’s less than 3 minutes

Importing a Dynamics 4 organisation into CRM 2011

This is the channel 9 video and is 17 minutes long and explains in detail what you need to do and the logic behind it

http://channel9.msdn.com/Series/DynamicsCRM2011/Upgrading-from-CRM-40-to-CRM-2011

You probably want to watch the video above if some of your plugins, custom code isn’t working.

The video’s are good but the best I also found this blog post very useful Larry Lentz

Importing CRM 4.0 Organization into CRM 2011

The other day I blogged about Installing CRM 2011 RC On-Premise. Last night I decided to add some data to my initial test installation by importing my production CRM 4.0 data into my test CRM 2011 deployment. I was also curious as to how easy it would be to add version 4.0 data to 2011. In version 4.0 one is able to Import Organization and add a CRM organization from another deployment to an existing deployment (best to be running the Enterprise edition to do this). This is done using the Deployment Manager on the CRM server. CRM 2011 also has the Deployment Manager.

The Deployment Manager is installed on the CRM server when CRM is installed. The Active Directory user who installs CRM is automatically made a Deployment Administrator. There must be at least one Deployment Administrator and you can add others as you require. Deployment Administrators typically do not need to be users in the CRM. They can be any network user in your Active Directory. I’ve highlighted typically for a reason as you’ll see as we progress. If you are running the Enterprise version of CRM 4.0 you can have multiple organizations. In CRM 2011 this is available in the standard server version, but not the Workgroup Edition. New organizations can be created using the Deployment Manager, or existing organization databases can be imported. My goal was to see if I could import my CRM 4.0 data into a new organization in CRM 2011.

The first step was to make a backup of my CRM 4.0 SQL data using the SQL Server Management Studio. I won’t go into details of that process here but leave that up to you. Then I copied the backup file (only theOrganizationName_MSCRM database is needed) over to my CRM 2011 server and used Restore Database add the database to the new server.

On the CRM server I started Deployment Manager, selected Organizations from the navigation pane, and selectedImport Organization. I was prompted for the SQL server and the CRM database to import. Actually my deployment was smart enough to default to the SQL server for my CRM 2011 test deployment and the CRM database I’d just restored. I’ll not detail the steps necessary to run the import. The wizard walks you through everything. I did get a few warnings from the Environment Diagnostic Wizard though, mainly having to do with, I believe, the differences between my v4.0 and 2011 environments. One had to do with the language packs. Perhaps it would be best to disable or even uninstall any language packs before making your CRM 4.0 SQL backup.

Part of the import process links users in the imported database with users in your Active Directory. This allows one to import an organization from a completely foreign domain. I kept receiving an error that at least one user had to be assigned the System Administrator role (“You must map your Active Directory user account to at least one enabled Microsoft Dynamics CRM user who has the System Administrator role before the organization can be imported”). Long story made short, the Administrator account in my CRM 4.0 deployment was a System Administrator but was assigned the Restricted Access Mode. I changed this to remove the Restricted Access Mode (actually a hold over from v3.0) and made sure the license Access Mode was set to Full. I then backed up my CRM 4.0 SQL data and restored it again on my CRM 2011 server. This time the import process sailed through the user phase.

After getting my users to match, I figured it would be a quick process to complete the importation. Not so! The process took an amazing amount of time preparing the database for import and appeared to hang on the ‘Delete completed old asyncoperation records’ stage. This alone took almost 3 hours! I received a tip via Twitter from @ccellarsuggesting I clean up the asyncoperationbase table before doing an import and supplied a link to a KB on the process. Thanks, Christoph. I’ll blog about that when I do my next test import.

Once the asyncoperation phase was completed, the import went along much quicker, though it did still take a while and I went to bed way before it finished.  But it did complete and now I have my CRM 4.0 database nicely restored and running in my test CRM 2011 deployment. I’ll go though this again for practice, removing the language packs (well at least disabling), and taking care of the asyncoperationbase table. I’ll let you know how it goes.

 

CRM 2011 – SharePoint 2010 Setup Instructions

I was trying to get the CRM and SharePoint 2010 intergration working.  It had created the folders in SharePoint for the entities and I could see the SharePoint site in the document management settings.

But (and there is usually a but) I was getting an error when trying to view the SharePoint folders in CRM 2011.

I wasn’t sure what was going on because we had three different people who might have installed something or might not of.

The error message was

The action buttons are disabled because the SharePoint server that you are using does not allow HTC component files.  to enable the buttons, contact your system administrator.

 

now I had been reading about this so I had a good idea what is was, there is a component that needs to be installed in SharePoint that lets CRM browse the folders and you have download the extension and then put in the CRM url to allow it through the filter/security.

I copied the instructions below  from here

Setup and Deployment Known Issues

Prerequisites for Microsoft SharePoint and Windows SharePoint Services

1. Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 must be installed before installing the Microsoft Dynamics CRM List component.
2. The Microsoft Dynamics CRM List component must be installed on the server that is running Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 by a Microsoft Dynamics CRM administrator who has permissions for site collection administration on the SharePoint server. The administrator must uninstall the old version of the Microsoft Dynamics CRM List component and install the new component because component upgrade is not supported.To install the Microsoft Dynamics CRM List component:
   1. Go to the Microsoft Dynamics CRM List Component for SharePoint Download page.
   2. Click Download, and save the file to the desired location.
   3. Open your browser.
   4. In the address bar, type the URL of the site collection on which you want to install the Microsoft Dynamics CRM List component.
   5. Click Site Actions, and then click Site Settings.
   6. Under Galleries, click Solutions.
   7. On the Solutions tab, in the New group, click Upload Solution.
   8. Click Browse, locate the crmlistcomponent.wsp file, and then click OK.
   9. On the Solutions tab, in the Commands group, click Activate.

   If you are using Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 (On-Premises), you must add .htc extensions to the list of allowed file types:

   1. Copy the AllowHtcExtn.ps1 script file to the server that is running Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010.
   2. In the Windows PowerShell window or in the SharePoint Management Console, run the command: AllowHtcExtn.ps1 <Web Application URL>.Example: AllowHtcExtn.ps1 http://servername

      For more information, see the Microsoft Dynamics CRM List Component for Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 Download page.