January 24, 2012 – Hosk's Dynamic Blog

The Microsoft Field engineering blog has added the update to the new version of Rollup 6 for CRM 2011. It also has a list of all the releases so far which is very useful

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/crminthefield/archive/2012/01/23/microsoft-dynamics-crm-4-0-and-2011-update-rollup-release-dates-build-numbers-and-collateral.aspx

CRM 2011 UR #	Release date and Download Center URL	Release date – Microsoft Update	Build number	Knowledge Base article	PFE Blog	PFE Podcast
1	4/4/2011	4/26/2011	5.0.9688.1045	2466084	Blog	Podcast
2	6/6/2011	6/28/2011	5.0.9688.1155, 5.0.9688.1157 (server)	2466086	Blog	Podcast
3	7/26/2011	8/23/2011	5.0.9688.1244	2547347	Blog	Podcast
4	9/22/2011	Will not be released to Microsoft Update	5.0.9688.1450	2556167	Blog	Podcast
5	10/25/2011	11/8/2011	5.0.9688.1533	2567454	Blog	Podcast
6	1/12/2012	1/24/2012	5.0.9690.1992	2600640	Blog	Podcast
7	3/8/2012(PROJECTED)	3/27/2012(PROJECTED)	5.0.9688.TBD	2600643	Blog	Podcast

The blog also has instructions for people who had installed Rollup 6, If I understand the paragraph correctly it says you have to uninstall CRM 2011 and then install it again because you cannot patch Rollup 6.

If you did new installs with the Update Rollup 6 “slipstream” packages that were released (these would be the packages that include the full install bits as well as Update Rollup 6) you will get an error trying to patch those components to the new Update Rollup 6 build. This Knowledge Base article describes the issue:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2668504 . This Knowledge Base article is live, as well as the updated Update Rollup 6 KB article: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2600640.

The only workaround is to reinstall if you happened to use the Update Rollup 6 slipstream builds. For server you can connect to existing databases on the reinstall. The reinstall goes for any of the components that you installed with the Update Rollup 6 slipstream builds, (Client, Router, etc.). If you do not reinstall you will not be able to patch to the re-released Update Rollup 6 packages or future Update Rollups, as Update Rollup 6 represents a new baseline.

Adxstudio who have a portal product you can use with CRM 2011 are kind generous souls who are giving away a free solution to help developers with the productivity.

To find out more head on over to their webpage but the solution does have a free autonumber, bing maps and a place to store general settings in CRM. So thanks to guys at Adxstudio.

http://community.adxstudio.com/downloads/productivitypack

Rich Text Editor (TinyMCE)
It is often required to format and validate HTML contents in CRM. The Productivity Pack includes a rich text editor that can be used to replace standard textarea fields to provide the ability to edit HTML content.

Auto Numbering
The Auto Numbering solution consists of a custom definition entity ‘adx_autonumberingdefinition’, a custom command pattern entity ‘adx_autonumberingrequest’ and a plugin combined to produce an auto number. This can be used in your own workflows or custom development using the SDK to implement an auto-numbering mechanism on any of your entities.

Bing Maps Geolocation Lookup
The Bing Maps Geolocation Lookup solution consists of a custom command pattern entity ‘adx_binglookup’, several setting ‘adx_setting’ records and a plugin combined to query the Bing Maps REST API and return geolocation information and coordinates. This can be used in your own workflows or custom development using the SDK to implement a mechanism to provide geolocation coordinates on any of your entities.

Date/Time Parsing
Date/Time Parsing solution consists of a command pattern entity ‘adx_dateparserequest’ and a plugin that parses a DateTime value or a DateTime string into its parts; year, month, day, hour, minute, second, millisecond, day of week. This is very useful for working with dates in CRM Workflows where you need to write conditional expressions or filtering based on parts of Date/Time values.

Boolean Parsing
Boolean Parsing solution consists of a command pattern entity ‘adx_boolparserequest’ and a plugin that parses a boolean string into a Two Option attribute value and corresponding integer values. i.e 1 = True, 0 = False | True or true = 1, False or false = 0. Working with CRM Process Dialogs, it is not possible to update an entity’s Two Option attribute value with a value from a Prompt and Response question. This provides a solution to this particular problem.

General Application Settings
Settings are records that provide the generic storage of name/value pairs in the CRM. These generic settings can be used within your customizations to retrieve managed setting values. Storing settings in the CRM will enable you to design customizations that can change behavior based on data from the CRM without having to redesign or redeploy a modification to your customizations.

For complete details on the configuration and usage of these solutions, please refer to the configuration page in the CRM Solution package or download the pdf document listed below.