There are times where it is helpful to test your CRM changes logged in as a different user.   This will allow you to see everything that this user would experience.

Of course you can physically log on to the users machine, but a better way is to run a simple batch script that will start the CRM web client and prompt you for the users password.

The contents of the .bat script would look like:

runas /user:LITWAREINC\PaulW "C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\iexplore  http://moss:5555/loader.aspx"

You would supply your own CRM instance and user information.  You do need to know the users password to test this way.

If you need to test specifically how something looks iwith the Outlook ... Read More »

When working with Contact records in Microsoft Dynamics CRM, you might find it frustrating if someone asks you to send them the address of a particular contact. You either have to re-type it or copy it line by line. To save yourself the headache, use the ISVConfig customizations in CRM 3.0 or CRM 4.0 to add a button to the Contact form that lets you copy the address to the clipboard. The example below illustrates how to do this for the Contact.

1. In the CRM Customizations area, go to "Export Customizations"

2. Export the ISVConfig.xml file and save this file. Make a copy for backup.

3. Edit the XML in Notepad or Visual Studio. Place the following code between the <Entities></Entities> tags:

---

<Entity name="contact">
   <MenuBar>
    &a ... Read More »

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 has built-in duplicate detection which is great, but in 3.0, which many businesses are still using, the only options for duplicate detection were some third-party applications or a a custom-developed one like the minimally functional example in the 3.0 SDK.

[BEST PRACTICES NOTE: Duplicate detection should be only one of the tools in you data quality arsenal. The best approach is  to have some solid practices that govern data entry, and to train users well on things like searching for a record before entering new data.]

Because of the shortcomings of duplicate detection in version 3.0, a lot of these systems have ended up with some data quality issues. If you're running CRM 3.0 and you'd like a quick way to check your duplicates, here's a simple SQL query you can run to find them.

1. Open SQL Server Management Stu ... Read More »
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   CRM MVP Connection

We seem to regulary run into clients who like the idea of converting a Lead into an Account, Contact and Opportunity - but they would also like to be able to convert backwards into a Lead again. 

Why?  Well, maybe someone in the Lead Management group qualified the lead, but when they passed it along to Sales, they could not longer get in touch with the lead.  The options are: (1) make Sales work it until they can get back in touch, (2) train Lead Management to work with Accounts, Contacts and Opportunties, (3) forget about it (which most of them do), or (4) re-create the entire record as a Lead again.

 But now there is another alternative (read the full story for the rest)...

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I was testing the new Duplicate Detection feature in MS CRM 4.0

 

I wanted to be warned about duplicates that might be entered as a Contact with the same name and phone number of ... Read More »

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Regarding MS CRM

Traditional CRM needs to evolve to keep pace with customers who are accustomed to two-sided relationships, a la Web 2.0 social media/communities.

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Security Roles is one of the trickiest parts of the configuration of Microsoft CRM to understand.  We've run into several situations where a very non-intuitive security role setting was resulting in users saying "I cannot reassign an activity to another user" (or a case).  Fixing the problem takes 15 seconds if you know where to look - or hours of frustration if you don't.

[NOTE: This is a summary only.  View the full BLOG to read the remainder of this entry.]

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Here's a good starting point if you're troubleshooting problems with CRM 4.0. Bookmark this link and check it regularly as Microsoft updates the article whenever they have a new fix available.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/949256/en-us

I posted previously about my experiences upgrading CRM 3.0 SBE (the Small Business Server edition) to CRM 4.0 Professional. One major area I wanted to address also was the upgrade of the Outlook client. We've dealt with a lot of upgrades of the laptop, or offline, client, and run into some issues.

Basically, you want to uninstall the 3.0 client and then do a clean install of the 4.0 client. Of course, you need to be logged in as the user who will be using Outlook/CRM, and have local admin rights.

The problem is that the uninstall of the 3.0 client is not very clean, especially with the laptop client, because it leaves behind the SQL Express databases, and there's no easy way to see them. Simply deleting the files after the uninstall is not enough. You actually have to delete the databases from SQL using Management Studio. Since most people don't have management studio installed on their machines, and due to networking differences, many computers w ... Read More »

Microsoft has released the much-anticipated CRM Online (formerly called CRM Live), the Microsoft-hosted, SaaS version of Dynamics CRM 4.0. To sign up, go to the website or contact your Dynamics partner.