January 24 Blog Review

The big news this week was the release of Rollup 16. There are 3 places you need to look for all the details: CRM in the Field Blog, KB Article, and of course the Download Page. The list of fixes is huge in this rollup. Many issues that were introduced with Rollup 12 are listed as well as many CRM for Outlook fixes. Unfortunately, there are no particularly funny fixes (like Rollup 13’s “You cannot install Update Rollup 11 for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 on a computer that has a French version of Windows, SQL Server, and Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 installed”). So it looks like it will be a good change, we will have to see what the user community has to say.

Here are what I found to be the top fixes listed in the KB:

• Important Fixes
• Email attachments are not being deleted from the dbo.Attachment table when their parent record is deleted.
• Clicking on report preview throws error on an Updated Organization from Update Rollup 6, "HttpUnhandledException: Microsoft Dynamics CRM has experienced an error. Reference number for administrators or support: #3423D182".
• Appointments and Service appointments are automatically shared with the user that shared the record.
• Reports do not render correctly after applying CRM 2011 Update Rollup 12.
• You can access System Settings no matter the security role assigned.
• Cannot update StateCode and StatusCode of Phone Call entity via plugin code.
• Creation and deletion of business units cannot be done in a timely manner.
• ERMO Fixes
• Deployments with large datasets in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 may suffer performance bottlenecks on default views, lookups, and queries if the EnableRetrieveMultipleOptimization registry setting is set to zero.
• Unable to view Personal E-mail Templates with EnableRetrieveMultipleOptimization is set to 2.
• CRM For Outlook Fixes (many more that are not listed here)
• Changes made to the personal view query is not updating in Outlook client since Update Rollup 12.
• After installing Update Rollup 15 for CRM 2011 the Mail Merge button on the entity record Add tab does not seem to do anything when clicked.
• In some environments, conditions may exist when the registry keys of the Microsoft Dynamics CRM for Outlook Client are being duplicated when being read causing an exception to occur that terminates the Outlook process.
• Conditional formatting breaks page navigation in view within CRM for Outlook client.
• When you select an email that is tracked in CRM, and you have the reading pane viewable for emails, Outlook may hang or become unresponsive. Once Outlook returns controls and becomes responsive you notice that the Track in CRM form region for the tracked in CRM email contains a large number of parties on the TO, CC, or BCC.
• Appointment created and deleted from the web will only be deleted from the organizers Outlook calendar. Occurs when the meeting organizer sends Outlook invitations.
• When you attempt to view html web resources in the CRM web or outlook client application by opening them from the ribbon, the web resources that are shown are old versions. This occurs even after you have published changes to the web resources. If you clear temporary internet files the web resources are shown correctly.
• Outlook saved views are not sorted alphabetically like in the web client.
• You receive error messages when accessing CRM fields in the CRM for Outlook client. "An error has occurred".
• Outlook Filter settings not taken into consideration when performing a quick search.
• Unable to configure CRM outlook client when TurnOffFetchThrottling is enabled.
• Outlook crashes when using CRM client for Outlook UR15 or UR11 CU.
• Odd Fixes
• Export to Excel in Outlook fails with long relationship/entity/field names.
• If the chart pane is enabled on any view for an entity in the Outlook client, and if the user utilizes the "Email a Link" feature and selects the current view, the URL that is generated and then copied to a blank e-mail will contain invalid parameters. Clicking on this link then generates a CRM platform error, which indicates that invalid parameters were passed to the request.
• When an error is raised when submitting the merge dialog form, and upon a second attempt to merge the data you change the selection of fields on the dialog, those changes are not submitted to the platform. The initial set of fields are used instead of updated.
• Filter in view does not work when for Option Set containing entries with '&' character.
• The owner of the child record in a merge inherits invisible rights to the master record.

Leon Tribe posted about Dialog Lookup Values for Common Entities. This explains what the Reference Entity and Reference Field are referring to when you create a new Dialog prompt with a lookup.

The CRM Software Blog reviewed their Top Ten CRM Software Blog Posts for 2013.

Jukka Niiranen discusses how to Expand the “Add Activity” Options on CRM 2013 Forms. This expands upon Develop 1’s blog to Restore Add Activity Buttons in CRM 2013.

That’s all for tonight.

January 17 Blog Review

Seems quiet in the CRM blog world this week after so much to cover last week. Let’s jump right into it.

PowerObjects is always working to instruct and train new users. This week they came out with 13 CRM 2013 How-To Videos. This can be a great way to start learning and spend some time looking around the PowerObjects How-To Portal.

CustomerEffective has a great blog about CRM 2013 Access Teams. This explains some of the surprising features of Access teams such as:

• You can control who has access to add members to Access Teams
• You need to use a different SDK call to programmatically add the first member to an access team than the regular add member because this also creates the team
• There can be a maximum of 2 Access Teams per entity
• Also Access Team Templates cannot be moved between environments but the subgrid on the form needs to be related to a specific Access Team Template. So you will need to use a tool to move these between environments

Jukka Niiranen posted about the Microsoft Acquisition of Parature. This is a Customer Service product that already had an integration with Dynamics CRM. Since this was just announced, it is likely that any major new functionality from this will be a year or so out.

The Affiliated CRM Blog posted a good tip for upgrading to CRM 2013 – Avoiding Disappearing Lookups and Data Loss. This describes that in CRM 2013 lookup fields cannot be linked to a record with no name filled in. In CRM 2011 this would just show up with the icon and no text, now it is just blank. To avoid losing this data in the upgrade process, make sure you use an import or some kind of workflow to clean these up.

That’s all the CRM news I have for this week. Have a great weekend (long weekend for some)!

January 10 Blog Review

I have been a horrible blogger. The holiday seasons got the best of me. My last recap was November 21, so I guess we are talking about all the news from the last 7 weeks.

PowerObjects has been busy blogging away. Here is a recap of the top articles:

• Creating Dialogs in CRM 2013 – walkthroughs creating a sample dialog in CRM 2013. This is very similar to CRM 2011.
• Control Access to Business Processes by Security Roles in CRM 2013 – One of the features of Business Processes in CRM 2013 is role-based processes. That means you can determine which processes are available for which security roles. This is similar to role-based forms (understandably since the process appears as part of the form).
• How to user CRM Workflow Templates – workflow templates can be very powerful as they all a round-about way to “save as” a workflow. Basically you can turn your existing workflow into a template then create a copy from that template. Workflows can be changed from Process to Process Template and back at any time.
• Table Merge Error with Upgrading 2011 Organization Database to 2013 – When upgrading from 2011 to 2013 there is a change that will require you to merge the tables within the database (no more extension base tables). When you go to make this change you may encounter an error, this blog explains how to resolve it.
• Adding Custom Rules for Ribbon Buttons Using JavaScript in CRM 2011 – How you can define a custom rule on the ribbon using JavaScript within a web resource.
• Removing the Guided Process Bar in CRM 2013 – To remove the Guided process bar, simply deactivate the running process.
• Formatting a Phone Fields in CRM 2013 – Presents the JavaScript code necessary to automatically format phone number fields when they are modified
• Best Practices Analyzer for CRM 2013 – The Best Practices Analyzer is a new tool for CRM 2013. It allows administrators to test the server’s configuration and receive recommendations based on best practices. Check out the end of the blog for other helpful links to prepare for CRM 2013.
• Retrieving Data from a Related Entity with Real-Time Workflows in CRM 2013 – Relationship mappings can be very helpful if the child record is created from in the parent and if the parent never changes. However, if the child is created in different circumstances you need a way to get this data. Real-time workflows allow you to fill in those fields as soon as the parent field is set.
• Actions in CRM 2013 – Actions are a new type of process in CRM 2013. Default actions are things like Create, update, and delete. Custom Actions allow us to build functionality that is then called by a plugin. Then this functionality can be updated as necessary without the help of a developer.

PowerObjects also announced The CRM Book. This is an online resource that is free for everyone. Check it out the next time you are researching.

 CustomerEffective was getting into the spirit of New Years with a recap of the best blogs – 2013: The Year In Microsoft Dynamics CRM from the Customer Effective Blog. This highlights their top blogs in different categories such as solutions, technical or general news. They also celebrated Christmas with 12 Days of CRMas, this features 12 blogs on their favorite CRM features.

For those of you that have upgraded to CRM 2013 the Microsoft Premier Field Engineering team posted some helpful information:

• Overview of CRM 2013 Update Rollup 1
• CRM 2013 White Papers and Technical Documentation List

Richard Knudson discussed Conditional Field Requirements with Business Rules and Real-Time Workflows. Previously requirements such as these needed to be coded in JavaScript on the form. Now anyone can create these rules in CRM 2013.

Jukka Niiranen posted several interesting blogs over the last few weeks:

• Similar Opportunity Analytics with CRM 2013 Quick View Forms – interesting scenario where a customer wants CRM to tell it which products to recommend to a customer. This solution uses the Quick View forms to do it.
• Auto-Numbering with CRM Workflows – The basic concept of this solution is to create a “Counter” entity to hold the current counter value, this is linked to the entity you want to count and then you use a workflow to set the value on the record and increment the counter. This can be done with a regular asynchronous workflow but your values will not be unique. Instead use a Real-time workflow so that the processing happens right away.

 Chris S posted a good two part blog on how to handle E-mail bounces: Part 1: Creating the entity to capture the bounce and Part 2: Importing the bounce record.

That is all the news I have time for today. Hopefully we will be able to continue this new year on a more consistent schedule.