Microsoft Office Communicator (MOC) Collaboration With Everyone Part 4 – Tag, you’re it. is a post from: Business Technology Blog
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Using Microsoft Office Communicator – Tag for Status Change Alerts

Waiting for someone to come online so you can chat with them and need a notification when they become available?  You can do that!

With Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2, the “Tag” feature is just another tool to help you become more productive in your daily business life.  Here’s how it works.

Scenario:
You are working from the East coast and need to communicate with a co-worker who is on the West coast.  Its early morning and your co-worker might not be online for a few hours.  You could simply watch their status jellybean and note when they become available.

But there is another way.  Tag them.

Steps to Tag someone:
• Select the contact from your main Microsoft Office Communicator window and right click.

• Then select “Tag for Status Change Alerts”.

• Now when your west coast co-worker comes online you will get a notification on your desktop.

Note: By default, no status alerts are sent to your computer when your status is set to Do Not Disturb.  (See the “etiquette” blog post.)

Is Tagging someone a better solution than just monitoring their jellybean status.  Maybe, maybe not.  But this is just another example of the flexibility of Microsoft Communicator.

We would recommend contacting Engage, Inc for any questions on OCS and its possibilities.   Also, please see our events page for upcoming webinars on OCS, CRM, xRM, SharePoint and Business Intelligence.

NEW Microsoft Dynamics CRM Workflow Manipulation Library on CodePlex is a post from: Business Technology Blog
Business Technology Blog - Microsoft Gold Certified ISV Integrator and Cloud Hosting Provider delivering Microsoft Dynamics x/CRM, Unified Communications and a whole lot more.

CRM Workflow Manipulation Library with Date Utilities Provided by Engage

Microsoft Dynamics CRM’s built in workflow engine is pretty powerful, as anyone who’s worked with it for a while is aware. However, in our experience, a good customer quickly comes up with  requirements that go beyond it’s built in capabilities, requiring custom activities.  Engage is used to writing some basic activities to handle common problems, but now thanks the Carlton Coltor of Microsoft, there’s a robust library of basic workflow activities up on codeplex for all CRM customers and partners.

The CRM Workflow Manipulation Library has custom activities for a variety of basic scenarios. It’s broken up into five sections which I’ll talk about separately

Calculation Utilities

By default, CRM workflows can’t do much in the way of basic math. The Manipulation library handles simple arithmetic and min, max calculations. The crown jewel though is a powerful equation solver, which allows CRM developers to set up complex equations involving CRM variables, and use that output in the workflow.

Date Utilities

Engage is really excited about these date utilities.  One of the big limitations of CRM workflows is that they don’t distinguish business days from non business days. The workflow activities here deal with that limitation, giving users the ability to figure out what date is X business days from or before any other day, accounting for weekends, and holidays as defined in the CRM business closures calendar. On top of the date math activities we worked on, Carlton’s added a parse date activity, which will return the different components of a date (year, month, date, day, time, etc.)

String Utilities

CRM also doesn’t allow you to do any string manipulation in native workflow activities. The Manipulation Library has plenty of useful string functions, including capitalization, trim leading or following spaces (great for duplication detection), and string replacement. Most interestingly though are functions that convert any string to it’s SoundEx or Metaphone equivalent. For those not aware, SoundEx and Metaphone are short hand codes for expressing how a string is pronounced, so two homonyms like see and sea end up with the same shorthand (SoundEx: S000, and metaphone: S). By writing a the SoundEx or Metaphone code of a contact’s name out to a separate field, you can actually set up duplicate detection rules based on how the names are pronounced. It’s a neat idea with some novel applications

RegEx Utilties

If you’re one of the people who knows regular expressions you probably feel a lot like this guy. Now you can apply those skills to your CRM problems in extremely efficient fashion. Regular expressions can take some time to master, but once you know them, there’s almost no better way to quickly manipulate strings and text. RegEx functionality in CRM is an excellent idea with tons of applications.

A big thanks to Carlton for putting this library together, and we’re glad we were able to contribute and round out CRM with some solid reusable functionality that partners and customers can use to improve their CRM setup.

Lets have a discussion on how will you use the Manipulation Library.  Does this solve any current needs you or your client has?  Does the library help you think and design out side of the box?

Microsoft CRM Email Router – HTTP Status 401: Unauthorized and Kerberos Resolved is a post from: Business Technology Blog
Business Technology Blog - Microsoft Gold Certified ISV Integrator and Cloud Hosting Provider delivering Microsoft Dynamics x/CRM, Unified Communications and a whole lot more.

Invalid or Non-Existent SPNs Can Cause CRM Outgoing Mail to Stop Working

The other week we got a call from a client saying that their inbound email was working as usual and was being routed to the proper CRM queue, however, outgoing email was not working.   Sending and receiving email outside of CRM was working as it should.

A quick check of the Application event log on the CRM Email Router server revealed the following event with a frequency of about every 30 minutes:

Event Type:        Error
Event Source:        MSCRMEmail
Event Category:        None
Event ID:        0
Date:                8/16/2010
Time:                4:38:16 PM
User:                N/A
Computer:        CRMEmailRtr
Description: #23379 – Could not verify the version of Microsoft Dynamics CRM at http://crmappserver/orgname. The request failed with HTTP status 401: Unauthorized.

A quick check of versions between the CRM application server and the CRM email router verified they were the same. Additionally, the service accounts were checked for expired passwords are login failures – no issues found there.

More scrutiny on the System event log of the CRM Email Router server revealed the following event occurring about every 64 minutes:

Event Type:        Error
Event Source:        Kerberos
Event Category:        None
Event ID:        4
Date:                8/16/2010
Time:                4:06:15 PM
User:                N/A
Computer:        CRMEmailRtr
Description: The kerberos client received a KRB_AP_ERR_MODIFIED error from the server host/crmappserver.

The target name used was HTTP/crmappserver.

This indicates that the password used to encrypt the kerberos service ticket is different than that on the target server. Commonly, this is due to identically named  machine accounts in the target realm (domainname), and the client realm.   Please contact your system administrator.

Cross checking the event logs on the CRM Application server did not reveal any additional information so we focused on the SPNs noted in the event log error above.

Since the CRM website application pool identity is set to a domain user account we checked the existence of SPNs on the computer account and the service account (domain user account).

We found the HOST/crmappserver SPN* did exist and was correct but the service account had an old SPN that was no longer valid. The old SPN was removed and the proper HTTP/crmappserver and HTTP/crmappserverFQDN was added.

The CRM Email Router service was restarted and outgoing email started flowing immediately.

The interesting thing to note is that outgoing mail was working before the SPNs were corrected until recently.

To recap the steps we took:

1. Identified the issue – CRM email was partially working
2. looked at the CRM server’s event log to look for clues
3. looked at the CRM Email Router and found additional information
4. moved on to Active Directory with the information we found and corrected the issue

Hopefully, with these events listed in this article and the resolution provided you will save yourself a lot of time in troubleshooting similar issues.

*SPN – Reference the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Implementation Guide

CRM Customizations Webinar – JavaScript Tips and Tricks is a post from: Business Technology Blog
Business Technology Blog - Microsoft Gold Certified ISV Integrator and Cloud Hosting Provider delivering Microsoft Dynamics x/CRM, Unified Communications and a whole lot more.

CRM Customizations Webinar on Steamlining Forms and Thinking Outside the Box

Engage Inc will be hosting it’s final installment of the summer webinar series on Thursday August 19th.

The webinar will review a variety of topics to streamline forms customization development in CRM 4.0 with a heavy focus on how to set up an efficient JavaScript development environment while using standard JavaScript libraries like jQuery, and making your forms behave more dynamically, without post backs or user interaction.

It will also encourage developers to think outside the standard box of CRM form changes and to recognize the CRM form in terms of its HTML DOM for more powerful customizations. The webinar will include approximately 45 minutes of presentation with 15 minutes for a question and answer session.

Agenda Outline:

• •Setting up the environment
• •Jquery and CRM
• •Quick overview of jquery
• •Getting jquery into CRM
• •Applications
• •Thinking beyond the basics
• •Using ISVconfig in tandem with onload events
• •Dynamic refresh

Download the calendar event for a reminder HERE –  Webinar CRM JavaScript Tips and Tricks with Andrew Swerlick The Live meeting information is included in the calendar event.

Code examples will be available to participants after the webinar on Engage’s FaceBook site.  The session will be recorded and available on Engage’s YouTube channel – DynamicsOnDemand - about a week after the presentation.

Please look for Andrew’s next article on a new CRM Manipulation Library by Carlton Colter now on CodePlex with Date Utilities by Engage2day.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Rollup 12 Now Available is a post from: Business Technology Blog
Business Technology Blog - Microsoft Gold Certified ISV Integrator and Cloud Hosting Provider delivering Microsoft Dynamics x/CRM, Unified Communications and a whole lot more.

The latest Update for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Rollup 12 Now Available

The quickly evolving Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 has a new update.  Microsoft CRM 4.0, quickly becoming well known for its xRM capabilities has some new hotfixes to resolve open issues. 

The latest MSCRM update is now available. The build number of the update rollup packages for the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 server, for the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 client for Microsoft Office Outlook, and for the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 E-mail Router is 4.0.7333.2861.

Please see the Microsoft Knowledge Base article 2028381 for more detailed information

To download the updates please go here  Update Rollup 12 for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 (KB 2028381)  

For instructions on installing the MSCRM Client and the latest update, you can view the video below or check out Engage’s  YouTube  channel

www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMc3fySCl8I

Update Rollup 12 for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 resolves the following issues that were not previously documented in a Knowledge Base article:

• •The Rule Deployment Wizard now supports Microsoft Exchange 2010
• •When you try to use Set Regarding feature in an email message to set a campaign to link to the email message, you receive the following error message: “An error has occurred”.
• •Assume that you create an appointment in Microsoft Dynamics CRM. When you update the appointment in the Microsoft Dynamics CRM client for Outlook, a duplicate appointment is created unexpectedly in the Outlook calendar of the recipients of your appointment.
  When you edit entity attributes in Microsoft Dynamics CRM on a computer that is running Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 together with Windows Internet Explorer 8, the CPU usage is high.
• •When you change column properties in the report Wizard in Microsoft Dynamics CRM, you receive a “script exception” error message in the Report Wizard. This problem occurs after you install Update Rollup 8 that contains the fix 10413 for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0.
• •Email messages are not removed from the queue after the status of the email messages are programmatically set to Completed.
• •When you import customizations, you receive an error message that indicates that a SQL exception has occurred. The error message resembles the following: “Exception: System.Data.SqlClient.SqlException: ‘FilteredCampaignResponse’ has fewer columns than were specified in the column list.”
• •By default, the Record a closed campaign response check box is selected in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0. After you apply update rollup 12, this check box will not be selected by default.
• •The Quick Find feature is slow to perform searches because the query runs two times.
• •When you view related data in Microsoft CRM Mobile, the data is not displayed if the data contains more than 30 characters.

For more information on Microsoft Dynamics CRM / xRM and how it can help your business, please visit our main web site at www.Engage2day.com

Have you had a good experience updating your CRM to Rollup 12?  Were you waiting on a certain HotFix or resolution?  We would love to hear about it.

Introduction to Microsoft Office Communications Server Webinar is a post from: Business Technology Blog
Business Technology Blog - Microsoft Gold Certified ISV Integrator and Cloud Hosting Provider delivering Microsoft Dynamics x/CRM, Unified Communications and a whole lot more.

Microsoft Office Communications Server Client in everyday use with Scott Barr

Engage, Inc hosted a Microsoft Office Communications Server client in everyday use webinar on June 24th, 2010.  The turn out was great and the information was valuable.  Scott, who has over 15 years of experience in the IT field and over 5 years of working with, hosting and integrating Microsoft Live Communications Server, Microsoft Exchange and Microsoft Office Communications Server, gave the audience a nice overview of what Microsoft Office Communications Server can do for your business and how it can improve your business processes.  Instant messaging, IM conferencing, VOIP calls, VOIP conferencing, video calls, video conferencing and screen sharing were just some of the topics covered.

Please stay tuned for future webinars and webcasts on this subject as it is becoming one of the most popular requests Engage is receiving.  You can view all of our recorded webcasts and webinars at our YouTube channel.

The Introduction to Microsoft Office Communications Server Webinar can be seen below.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=596FBF28AB9763D8

Please  subscribe to our YouTube channel  if you like the content and leave us some feedback on what you would like to see in the next webinar

Microsoft Office Communicator (MOC) Collaboration With Everyone Part 3 – Presence Etiquette is a post from: Business Technology Blog
Business Technology Blog - Microsoft Gold Certified ISV Integrator and Cloud Hosting Provider delivering Microsoft Dynamics x/CRM, Unified Communications and a whole lot more.

Microsoft Office Communicator Presence Etiquette

With Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2, you have the power and flexibility to become more productive in your daily business life.  Use of Microsoft Office Communicator can greatly increase collaboration between co-workers and clients. But, just like anything, too much of a good thing can become overwhelming.  How can this be overcome?  Etiquette is one simple answer.

A simple BING search on “Microsoft Communicator Etiquette” will give you thousands of hits with tips and tricks to help you use and get the most out of  Microsoft Office Communicator (MOC).

Etiquette bullets:

• * Be aware of your contacts’ presence setting and respect it
• * Make the most of your own presence setting
• * Instant messages are best when kept short and to the point
• * Be mindful that responses to your messages may not be immediate

Below are just a few of the presence etiquette features we use at Engage, Inc to improve communications between co-workers and clients.

Presence:

Presence in Microsoft Office Communicator (MOC) is displayed by the “Availability Jellybean.”  This Jellybean is a signal to others which tells them how “willing and able” you are to communicate.

Do Not Disturb:

When you are busy with a task, or important project you can set your jellybean to reflect Do Not Disturb by clicking on the drop down arrow on the presence menu.

Setting your status to Do Not Disturb (DnD) is a way to inform others that you are extremely busy.  But please note, while in DnD phone calls automatically go to voicemail and IM conversations are rejected.

Away:

Yellow or Away State indicates that you are not able to communicate because you are no longer present at your computer.  You are “away.”

This state is set either manually through the presence menu, or automatically when Microsoft Office Communicator (MOC) detects you are away due to lack of activity on your PC.  By default, Microsoft Office Communicator (MOC) sets Away after 20 minutes or if you lock your machine.

The default can be changed by selecting Options from the Presence Menu and adjusting your settings.

Other presence settings are “Be right back” and “busy”.

This blog posting is intended to show you a few small examples of Microsoft Office Communicator (MOC) etiquette.

We would recommend contacting Engage, Inc for any questions on OCS and its possibilities.  Also, please see our events page for upcoming webinars on OCS, CRM, xRM, SharePoint and Business Intelligence.

Please go to our YouTube Channelto see the recorded version of our webinar Microsoft Office Communications – An Introduction with Scott Barr

4th of July – The Birth of the Greatest Nation on Earth is a post from: Business Technology Blog
Business Technology Blog - Microsoft Gold Certified ISV Integrator and Cloud Hosting Provider delivering Microsoft Dynamics x/CRM, Unified Communications and a whole lot more.

The 4th of July brings back fond memories of going to the beach or the lake or someone’s back yard for fun and good food.  As we grow older we are told of the significance of the date and what happened many years ago on that special day.  While doing some research for this article, I found a letter Ronald Reagan had written in 1981 that really brought out some emotions on what the day meant to those that signed their names to the Declaration of Independance.  The full letter can be found here

There is a legend about the day of our nation’s birth in the little hall in Philadelphia, a day on which debate had raged for hours. The men gathered there were honorable men hard-pressed by a king who had flouted the very laws they were willing to obey. Even so, to sign the Declaration of Independence was such an irretrievable act that the walls resounded with the words “treason, the gallows, the headsman’s axe,” and the issue remained in doubt.

The legend says that at that point a man rose and spoke. He is described as not a young man, but one who had to summon all his energy for an impassioned plea. He cited the grievances that had brought them to this moment and finally, his voice falling, he said, “They may turn every tree into a gallows, every hole into a grave, and yet the words of that parchment can never die. To the mechanic in the workshop, they will speak hope; to the slave in the mines, freedom. Sign that parchment. Sign if the next moment the noose is around your neck, for that parchment will be the textbook of freedom, the Bible of the rights of man forever.”

He fell back exhausted. The 56 delegates, swept up by his eloquence, rushed forward and signed that document destined to be as immortal as a work of man can be. When they turned to thank him for his timely oratory, he was not to be found, nor could any be found who knew who he was or how he had come in or gone out through the locked and guarded doors.

The letter goes on to remind you that the people who signed their name that day were successful already.  They had good lives already.  They had much to lose by being there.  What they all had in common was the belief that we were all created in the image and likeness of God.  Because of that, they knew we all had the freedom to live our lives as we wish and to be able to pursue Life, Liberty and Happiness and no man can take that from us.  The 4th of July is an excellent day to remember those inspired men and what they started that day.  Its an excellent day to remember where we live and the limitless possibilities that are in our grasp because of what was started over 200 hundred years ago. 

To close, I would like to close with another quote from the same letter:

Let the Fourth of July always be a reminder that here in this land, for the first time, it was decided that man is born with certain God-given rights; that government is only a convenience created and managed by the people, with no powers of its own except those voluntarily granted to it by the people.

We sometimes forget that great truth, and we never should.

Happy 4th of July.  Be SAFE and pursue your DREAMS

Microsoft Office Communicator (MOC) Collaboration With Everyone? Part 2 – Call Forwarding is a post from: Business Technology Blog
Business Technology Blog - Microsoft Gold Certified ISV Integrator and Cloud Hosting Provider delivering Microsoft Dynamics x/CRM, Unified Communications and a whole lot more.

Using Microsoft Office Communicator – Call Forwarding Settings.   

With Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2, you have the ability to forward and route incoming calls a variety of ways.  These options will allow you to be more efficient and productive during you busy work day.  

Below are some simple instructions for Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 R2 (MOC) to get you going:

From your main MOC window select “Tools” and then “Call-Forwarding Settings…” from the drop down menu.  From this main screen you can configure any number of call-forwarding options.  As you can see this window is broken up into several easy to understand sections.

Section – “Do the following when I get calls” lets you to define how incoming calls are handled.  The options will allow you to customize MOC to meet your business needs.

Section – “Choose an additional number to ring:” lets you define other phone numbers to be contacted.   Adding an additional number to ring can be done by clicking the Add button, then Phone number.  From the My Phone Numbers screen simply add the desired number.

Your newly added phone numbers can then be configured to also ring when incoming calls are received.  Providing you the flexibility needed in today’s business climate.

Now with your call forwarding configured, you have the ability to forward your calls to another device when you know you will be away from your desk.  You will be able to take a call on another device while at your desk and even transfer a call to another device while in the middle of a phone conversation.

This blog posting is intended to start you down the road of using Microsoft Office COmmunicator to route and forward your calls. 

We recommend contacting Engage, Inc. for any questions on Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2 and its possibilities.  Also, please see our events  page for upcoming webinars on Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2, Microsoft Dynamics CRM/xRM, Microsoft SharePoint and Business Intelligence.

For more articles on how to use Microsoft Office Communicator, please click HERE

Microsoft Dynamics CRM is the right choice for your organization at any size is a post from: Business Technology Blog
Business Technology Blog - Microsoft Gold Certified ISV Integrator and Cloud Hosting Provider delivering Microsoft Dynamics x/CRM, Unified Communications and a whole lot more.

With the recent reports out from Forrester Wave and Gartner, Microsoft Dynamics CRM is positioned as a strong market leader of CRM suites for the ability to execute, completeness of vision, current offering and market presence.  This is the case for the SMB to the mid-size and on to the large organizations.

The Forrester Wave research examined 516 different criteria segmented by customer size and Microsoft CRM was found to be head and shoulders above the rest of the field which included Salesforce.com, Oracle Siebel and SAP.  Some of the positive points highlighted from the study are:

• •Through the “Power of Choice”, companies are able to choose how they would like to deploy and license Microsoft CRM.  Choosing between on-premises, partner hosted – multi-tenant or private “cloud”, CRM Online and BPOS, gives the organization a lot of choices for infrastructure, staffing and capital expenditures.  The “Right Choice” is what’s right for the customer.
• •Integration with other Microsoft products like Microsoft Outlook 2010, SharePoint 2010 and Office Communication Server 2007 R2 also make the adaptation and user acceptance a much easier and welcome process. 
• •The quick-time-to-value compared to other customer relationship management systems is a welcomed plus. 

The Gartner report showed that Microsoft CRM is in the Magic Quadrant specifically for Customer Service Contact Centers.  When you think of CRM software contact and support centers come to mind immediately.  So to see that Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 is at the front of the class is a real validation to what most of us have known for a while.  Microsoft Dynamics CRM and xRM is a platform that helps your organization win with your internal and external customers.  Some of the positive points from the study are:

•  •The list of industries and its geographic reach continue to expand and deepen.
• •Microsoft has successfully described its vision of xRM, or application development that allows customers to extend the CRM platform for the needs of the enterprise.
• •Customers can choose from a strong set of Microsoft products with which to integrate — such as BizTalk, Office Communications Server and Microsoft Office SharePoint — to foster tight integration and internal collaboration around the customer, and later to support  customer communities.
• •Microsoft Customer Care Framework  is now an integral part of Microsoft Dynamics CRM, and is better integrated into the product portfolio.
• •The user interface is intuitive and appeals to broad audiences familiar with the look and feel of Microsoft’s applications.

More information on each of the reports can be found here:
The Forrester Wave™: CRM Suites For Midsized Organizations,Q2 2010

The Forrester Wave™: CRM Suites For Large Organizations,Q2 2010

Magic Quadrant for CRM Customer Service Contact Centers

Engage, Inc has deployed Microsoft Dynamics CRM, SharePoint and Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2 to organizations ranging from under 10 users to over 1000.  We are convinced that they are a winning 1,2,3 combination for a total solution.  Engage’s deployments have been in the Health Care, Manufacturing / Distribution and Government sectors.