White Paper – CRM Vendor Pricing: A Comparative Analysis

I saw a blog about a white paper today from Accent Gold and the white paper was comparing CRM systems Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Sugar, SalesLogix, Salesforce, ACT and SageCRM.

You can read the whole white paper here
It breaks it down into costs paid in the first three years.

It doesn’t really take into account the functionality offered by each system in comparison to the cost.

It’s interesting to see where Microsoft CRM Dynamics appears in the list, especially when you consider the amount of development and enhancements it has scheduled in for the future.

You can summarise the findings with this graph

CRM 2011 – Free Entity icons solution

If you have ever tried to create icons for a CRM solution then you will know it’s no easy feat.  Trying to get the different types into the different sizes can be very tricky.

So it was with interest I read this blog post about Free Entity icons solution

Basically the blog Christian Espinoza has got some free (royalty free) icons and put them into a solution so you can easily get at them.  Below is a list of the icons.  If you want to use them then download the solution ESCustomIconGallery_1_0_managed.zip and then use them, nice.

below is a screen shot of the icons in the solution

 

 

Video – Reporting Options in CRM 2011

An excellent video from zero2ten about the available reporting options in CRM 2011. This video goes through the available options and shows you an example.  I was impressed with the excel pivot tables and I didn’t know you could upload them into CRM with the other reports

In this video the 4 main ways in which reporting can be done in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 are covered:

1) Advanced Find and Charts
2) Excel Pivot Tables and Worksheets
3) SQL Report Services – Report Wizard
4) CRM Dashboards

CRM 2011 – Videos – Services and scheduling

The service section of CRM 2011 is not something I have done much with.  I have had a few customers who want to use the call logging facilities but I have not seen anyone use the scheduling.  So it was with interest I saw the video below which explained the fucntionality quite well.

I get the feeling that the functionality is ok but for people to use it they would probably need to customize it.

The videos are by the company PythagorasCRM.

 

Service Scenario

CRM 4 – Plugin registration problems – Could not load file or assembly

I tried registering a plugin in CRM 4 and it was hard work.

Firstly I had to build the Plugin Registration Tool, WHY???

I then initially tried to register my plugin, only to find I had not implemented the plugin interface.  I tried to compile the simple walkthrough in the SDK which had compile errors in!!

I signed my plugin (although it was pfx and snk)

but then when I tried to registered the plugin I got this error

Unhandled Exception: System.IO.FileNotFoundException: Could not load file or assembly ‘Microsoft.Crm.Sdk, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35’ or one of its dependencies. The system cannot find the file specified.
at System.Reflection.Assembly._GetExportedTypes()
at System.Reflection.Assembly.GetExportedTypes()
at PluginRegistrationTool.AssemblyReader.RetrievePluginsFromAssembly(String path) in C:\<path>\PluginRegistrationV2\PluginRegistration\AssemblyReader.cs:line 59
at PluginRegistrationTool.AssemblyReader.RetrievePluginsFromAssembly(String path)
at PluginRegistrationTool.RegistrationHelper.RetrievePluginsFromAssembly(String pathToAssembly) in C:\<path>\PluginRegistrationV2\PluginRegistration\RegistrationHelper.cs:line 49
at PluginRegistrationTool.PluginRegistrationForm.btnLoadAssembly_Click(Object sender, EventArgs e) in C:\<path>\PluginRegistrationV2\PluginRegistration\PluginRegistrationForm.cs:line 127

This forum post was very helpful the problem was the microsoft.crm.sdk.dll has to be in the same directory as the Plugin Registration tool.

I put this in the same folder but I was still having problems.

The reason for this was because I had copied in the 32 bit microsoft.crm.sdk.dll and instead I swapped this with the 64 bit microsoft.crm.sdk.dll and then it worked.

I don’t know why Microsoft make this so difficult because there is nothing worse than having to go through these problems when you are just setting up a system.

There must be some reason they don’t add the plugin registration tool as an Exe but I have never figured it out.

New Company Adventures at Metaphorix

I have been in my new job for 3 months and it has been an active time, the company I joined is called Metaphorix and they specialise in Microsoft Dynamics NAV and CRM.

I have moved from being a CRM developer to Mr CRM who now does everything.  It’s quite daunting at first because you start off doing lots of things you haven’t done before.

Over the last 3 months I have

Setup and installed 1 CRM 4 server

Setup and installed CRM 2011 6 times, 3 customer installations.

imported 1 customer organisation

done one upgrade from CRM 4 to CRM 2011.

 

I have done one workshop and requirements gathering exercise.

I have installed setup my laptop from scratch installing windows server 2008.

I have setup three virtual pcs.

I have installed and setup subversion

passed Sure Step 2010 certification.

Written my first FRD and FDD

Setup, installed and used the NAV/CRM connector

started the company blog for metaphorix which you can read here, we have just had 1000 views.

I have also managed to write plenty of blog posts for my CRM blog.

It has been a very interesting 3 months.  I am working on 3 customer projects, two CRM 2011 and one CRM 4.  I have also upgraded the internal CRM system from CRM 4 to CRM 2011.  Finally as Metaphorix specialise in NAV, I have also had a look at Microsoft Dynamics NAV and I have to say I prefer CRM hands down, Nav is very confusing and they don’t have a save button!!!!!

Things are also about to get even more interesting because my lovely wife is about to give birth to my first child at any time.

CRM 4 – How to get the Fetch xml from an advanced find

I was wondering what the fetch xml was from an advanced find today and to get this is suprisingly easy.

All you have to do is run an advanced find.

Press F12

go to the Script tab

type in

resultRender.FetchXml.value

and you shall be rewarded with the FetchXml used to return the results in the advanced find

e.g

"<fetch version="1.0" output-format="xml-platform" mapping="logical" distinct="false"><entity name="customeraddress"><attribute name="name"/><attribute name="postalcode"/><attribute name="telephone1"/><attribute name="customeraddressid"/><order attribute="name" descending="false"/><link-entity name="account" from="accountid" to="parentid" alias="aa"><filter type="and"><condition attribute="accountid" operator="eq" uiname="Hosk Account" uitype="account" value="{F3D4F7ED-74EE-E011-A607-00155D6A3702}"/></filter></link-entity></entity></fetch>"

CRM 2011 – Tool – Role Updater for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011

I do love a good CRM 2011 tool, they can sometimes really make your life a lot easier.  The master of CRM 2011 tools is the great Tanguy and his fantastic blog Dynamic CRM Tools, if you visit his blog  I can guarantee you won’t leave without downloading one of his tools.

He is an MVP and rightly so.

He has been busy and has created a new tool, a Role updater for CRM 2011.  This is a great tool, it makes it easier for CRM 2011 administrators and developers to add or remove privileges to multiple security roles in one operation. You’ll no longer have to open each security role and apply privileges one by one.

http://roleupdater.codeplex.com/

 

Although setting security in CRM 2011 is easy to use it can be slow going especially if you have to add privileges for a new custom entity to lots of security roles.  This tool can  help make it quick to administer the security roles.

Here are some links to all of Tanguys tools

View Layout Replicator

Searchable Property Updater

Ribbon Browser

Ribbon Editor (alpha)

JavaScript Web Resource Manager

SiteMap Editor

Role Updater

Passed Sure Step 2010 Certification – MB5-858 – Managing Microsoft Dynamics Implementations

I have spent the last month or two studying for the Sure Step 2010 certification and passed yesterday.  It’s a great feeling passing a certification and you know you can now relax in the evenings rather than reading technical books (made worse by knowing the rest of the world is out enjoying themselves)

I will add some of the test questions don’t seem to be testing you on the Sure Step methodology and are a bit dubious.

I’m sure there are a lot of employees from Microsoft partners who have been doing the same thing, with companies having to have more Sure Step 2010 certified people in their ranks.

Sure Step 2010 is quite a funny beast, when you first load Sure Step onto your machine and then look at all the documents, you suddenly get struck by fear that your employees are suddenly going to make you fill out 50 documents for every project (and that’s before you start).

It’s a difficult product to get to grips with and there isn’t an easy way to start with it.  Going through the eLearning was interesting and the scenario based learning was tiring.

The statistics back up Sure Step, I think it’s something like it increases project sanctification and success deployment by 20 percent.

There were some interesting things in Sure Step, a lot of work should be done by the sales team!!!  if you can get them to fill out these documents then that would be very impressive.

The more I read about Sure Step and I have started using it the more I like it.  It basically covers a lot of the things you would normally do anyway but it does it more professionally and makes sure you don’t miss things out.

The most important feature of Sure Step is it makes sure all the requirements and things which are in scope are documentation and things which are out of scope.  It then gives you a standard process for the customer to request changes.

It gets the customers to agree the scope and project before you start developing and gets them involved with the project, so they fully understand what is being delivered.

This is why I think it leads to more successful projects because it stops scope creep.

A lot of people who look at Sure Step think it seems like “lots of documents” and “too American” but I bet these same people are the ones who are then scrabbling around at the late stages of the project trying to squeeze in unpaid changes to the project, which the customer assumed would be included.

It’s also useful to have the documents to consider doing things even if you think it’s not worth it, at least you can say I don’t need to bother to do that document.

Hopefully it will make my own projects run smoother and hopefully make my projects run smoother.

 

 

 

Importing an organization from crm 4.0 to crm 2011

I have recently done this so I thought I would note down the process.

If you want to see a video on the process view this blog post I wrote earlier

The first question you have to answer is how are you going to upgrade the environment, are you going to have a new CRM server.  You will need to specify a different database instance from the CRM 4 instance because you cannot have CRM 2011 and CRM 4 running on the same database instance because you can only have one MSCRM_CONFIG database.

You will of course need to think about your customizations, I won’t go into that with the instructions below but you will need to check any .NET code, javascript and other extensions

I will assume you have sorted out your environment.  One important point is you will need to know the url of reports server because you will be asked to paste this in, so you probably want to get this from one of the current organisations already setup on the server.

1. Apply the latest rollup to the CRM 4 organisation
2. make a backup of the database (you will use the bak file to restore into the new database)
3. restore the CRM 4 organisation database (name_MSCRM) to the database instance you are storing the CRM 2011 databases.
4. Open the Deployment Manager and choose import organisation.
5. select the database instance you restored the CRM 4 database
6. The restored CRM 4 database should appear in the list of potential organisations to restore.
7. You will be asked how you want to convert the users from the old database, unless you are on the same active directory domain then you probably want to do this manually and assign yourself as an Administrator user
8. it will then take quite a long time converting the database from CRM 4 to CRM 2011

hopefully you should now have an imported organisation