CRM Entropy - A Microsoft CRM Blog

XRM Virtual Presentation

2012-01-07T13:21:00.001-07:00

On Jan. 10th, I’ll be making a presentation along such revered Dynamics CRM MVPs as Julie Yack, Scott Sewell, Donna Edwards, Leon Tribe, Shan McArthur, and Mitch Milam. Our topic matter will be specifically those lessons we’ve learned the hard way over our varied experiences with CRM. XRM Virtual is an open-membership user group with a lean toward developers and integrators. If you’d like to

Google+ Page for Dynamics CRM

2012-01-01T16:19:00.001-07:00

Lately, I’ve been trying to coalesce information streamed around various channels to which I’m attuned into a new Google+ page for Dynamics CRM. Personally, I’ve become a heavier G+ user than Facebook, and not just because of its rock-solid performance—but because of many important privacy and intellectual property practices. I’d recommend it for anyone looking to break out of Facebook once and

Using XML-based Plug-in Configuration

2011-12-19T15:05:00.001-07:00

For more complicated and feature-rich Plug-in customizations for CRM, it can be appealing to use highly dynamic configurations. The Plug-in model offers simple string parameters to allow for the open interpretation by Plug-in developers. One of the more efficient and flexible configuration mechanisms is XML. With XML configuration, there are three methods that can be used to varying degrees of

Call for Comments: CRM 2011 Grid Editor

2011-11-03T09:57:00.001-06:00

One of the primary sources of traffic to my blog comes from my CRM 4 Grid Editor utility. Every day, it seems, some new visitor lands on my blog (according to Google Analytics) looking for this project. It seems to me, then, that the sooner I can update the utility to work with CRM 2011, the less disappointed these visitors may be. First and foremost, I’d like to make a solemn announcement: I

Upgrade CRM 4 to 2011: For ITdiots

2011-10-18T01:53:00.001-06:00

Q: Who’s an ITdiot? A: Me. I’ve been involved in the IT world since my early teen years. It started as the family computer expert, and evolved into advanced circuit configuration for ISPs and eventually a fulltime network administrator gig. All the while, I nurtured and evolved my passion for development. Ordinarily, this blog is dedicated to the later talent and my trials and tribulations

Farewell, Jim Glass

2011-10-08T02:28:00.001-06:00

With Jim’s recent announcement of his retirement from Microsoft, I thought I’d make a little space here to immortalize my thoughts of a man I never got to meet in person, but dearly wished to. There’s something to be said about the Dynamics CRM community: chiefly that it is the most vibrant and active product community around any single Microsoft product. Why? Two reasons: As I have long

60k Page Views!

2011-09-27T20:58:00.001-06:00

When I first started this blog, I really didn’t expect it to take me anywhere. I just wanted a neat little place to post my code, a place that would follow me wherever I went and be a sounding board for whatever I thought (about CRM). This evening, while following up on my social activities (forum contributions, blog reading, and that Twitter thing), I discovered that the ticker on my page-view

Review: CRM 2011 Administration Bible

2011-09-17T06:12:00.001-06:00

Publisher: Wiley Authors: Matt Wittemann, Geoff Ables CRM Entropy Rating (in Baked Goods): 3.1415926535897 Matt, a fellow CRM MVP, sent me a copy of this book a long time ago, and I’ve pretty much only used it for reference material here and there until recently. I’ve read a handful of CRM 4 books in my day, and found a great deal of helpful information from them. The Microsoft Dynamics CRM

CRM 2011 and WSDL

2011-09-13T23:06:00.001-06:00

CRM 2011 makes a dramatic change with the WSDL implementation compared to CRM 4.0. The biggest difference? The WSDL file you download is not a full definition of the service (for either Discovery or Organization). Instead it’s a very small and self-conscious (“lightweight”) WSDL that points back to the same service (and host) with an import directive for the full WSDL. What does this

DOM Events and CRM 2011

2011-09-12T15:52:00.001-06:00

Recently, another MVP asked in a private forum how one might connect to the “onclick” event of a CRM field. With the new Xrm.Page namespace object model, it seemed that all references to the actual DOM element of the control were lost (or at least, very well hidden). Well, I did some poking around, and I discovered two things: Xrm.Page lives only within the scope of web-resources and their

Ask the MVP (CRMUG)

2011-09-07T12:26:00.001-06:00

There’s an upcoming roundtable event, hosted by CRMUG, where many CRM MVPs have agreed to come together and address questions submitted to the “Ask the MVP” event site. After the bulk of the event, I understand there will be time afterward for free-form, open floor discussion and Q&A. However, if you want to make sure your question is asked, drop an email to Janet Lampert or Donna Edwards well

Copying Lookup Values

2011-08-25T13:52:00.001-06:00

Very recently a poster in the CRM Development forum asked why she could not copy the value from a Contact Lookup field into the “To” field of a Phone Call entity. On the surface, her code was very simple and would largely be expected to work. What ended up working was basically creating a new value for the PartyList that recreated values from the Contact Lookup. Why was this necessary? I don’t

Changing Product Unit Groups

2011-08-22T13:19:00.001-06:00

I ran into a situation where a large list of Products had been imported into CRM 2011, but the Unit Groups for many of them needed to be changed after the fact. As many have discovered, even though the form customization options for the Product entity professes that the field is not flagged as “read only”, the field is in fact “read only” when Products are opened. The workaround is fairly

Unexpected Benefits of an MVP Award

2011-08-01T21:37:00.001-06:00

So, today I started work for my new employer, JourneyTEAM, a Microsoft Gold Partner and Microsoft Dynamics shop. They’re a smaller outfit with a close-knit group of gurus, code-monkeys, and sales experts with whom I’m excited to now be allied. I was contacted 3 weeks ago by a 3rd-party talent-sourcing firm looking for CRM Developers in the Salt Lake City area. Because I’m not one to turn down

Silverlight and CRM 4 (continued, again)

2011-07-08T18:38:00.001-06:00

When I delivered the code example in my last post on the subject, I knew that it would probably be worthwhile to pick apart the individual code elements in order to provide a better understanding of what’s going on underneath it all. This marks the final chapter of the saga which started as a 10-minute presentation, and culminates about 40-hours of work. Again, this subject matter all stems from

New Twitter Feed

2011-07-07T12:02:00.001-06:00

As you may notice, on the right-side of this blog is now a small reproduction of a twitter feed I setup for this blog, and for other CRM related goodness. Many MVPs engage in Twitter, and a few have asked me to use it to broadcast blog updates. Apparently RSS and Atom up and died since last I checked. Anyway, new posts will be dropped in that space as well, if you’re keen to follow that kind of

Silverlight and CRM 4 (continued)

2011-07-06T03:22:00.001-06:00

[UPDATE: The conclusion of this series is up, and in it I discuss the code and break-down how I developed it and why it works the way it does.] I promised in my last post on the subject that I would include an example of the code I presented during my CRMUG 10@10of10 segment. Then, I went to delay that example for a couple of weeks while I was looking for a good time to produce it. Well, today

I’m a Microsoft MVP! (Still)

2011-07-01T13:26:00.001-06:00

It’s surprising to me to think that a year ago, I was welcomed graciously into the arms of the MVP program. Mostly, because this year seems to have just flown by. Awaiting news of my renewal status caused even more anxiety than I had last year, because my daughter’s illness dropped my activity level in the community quite a bit. I tried desperately to find time to contribute as often as I could

Silverlight and CRM 4

2011-06-22T15:43:00.001-06:00

[UPDATE: A demonstration of this code can be found in a follow-up post.] My presentation this morning at CRMUG’s 10@10of10 went pretty well, I thought. There weren’t too many attendees, though. I can’t say I blame anyone for that. In my experience, very few jump with glee for a chance to look at code. Since the format was limited to 10 minutes, I obviously had to truncate a great deal of the

Slowly Getting Back

2011-06-15T17:15:00.001-06:00

For those who have been concerned about the well-being of my daughter, please know that things are doing tremendously well. Her treatment is far from over, but the chemotherapy portion is nearly complete and a recent surgery was successful at removing 90-99% of her existing mass. Other treatments remain, but we remain very hopeful due to her resilience thus far. I’ve been working at night on

A Call-To-Arms For CRM Experts!

2011-03-21T15:34:00.001-06:00

The CRM Community needs your help! A new wiki has been established at TechNet Wiki for CRM. While the principal pages have been setup, Neil Benson, George Doubinski, and I need your help in filling it in with content. To that end, I’ve created a CRM Article Recommendations page with a list of topics I’d personally like to see deployed to the wiki. Even if you’re not an author, or contributor,

CRM Wiki Moves to TechNet!

2011-03-17T12:04:00.001-06:00

Several months ago, I was encouraged by George Doubinski to contribute to his blossoming CRM Wiki project, crmwiki.net. At the time, the only thing I had to contribute was a list of CRM Development Resources which I had compiled into Microsoft’s public CRM forums. The content was moved rapidly, and in the spirit of encouraging more utilization of the Wiki by the community, I removed my listings

Patrick Smacchia on Code Partitioning

2011-03-08T13:50:00.001-07:00

While I’m still trying to find time to contribute to the CRM community with the often overwhelming personal time requirements, I found a lot of helpful information in an article by Patrick Smacchia, whom I know from the NDepend project. He has written a very thorough and enlightening article on the principles and practices of segmenting code through the use of solutions, projects, and assemblies

Brad Wilson on Partners in CRM Online

2011-02-28T17:49:00.001-07:00

Again, Software Advice continues their series of interview videos with Dynamics CRM GM, Brad Wilson: Brad Wilson talks about the change in Microsoft Partner involvement with the advent of Cloud-based CRM. Source: http://www.softwareadvice.com/articles/crm/can-dynamics-crm-partners-survive-in-the-cloud-era-microsoft-executive-interview-1022411/ Touching on the complaints I made in my last post

Brad Wilson on Cloud-Driven CRM

2011-02-23T10:03:00.001-07:00

Software Advice follows up with their series of video-interview clips of Brad Wison, GM of Dynamics CRM at Microsoft, with their latest offering: Brad Wilson talks about CRM in the cloud and how Microsoft leverages customer choice, between this and On-Premise, with Microsoft CRM. Source: http://www.softwareadvice.com/articles/crm/