the null factory

Dynamics CRM 2011 Developer Training Kit

2011-02-10T10:34:00.001-08:00

Developer Training Kit has just been released. Get it here

Dynamics CRM 2011 Books

2011-02-01T22:14:00.000-08:00

https://community.dynamics.com/roletailored/customerservice/b/cscrmblog/archive/2011/02/01/microsoft-dynamics-crm-2011-book-club.aspx

Pretty impressive line up of Dynamics CRM 2011 books to be released during this year. Its going to be an interesting year ahead.

Whitepaper for ISV and Developers

2011-01-16T21:52:00.000-08:00

The November release of the Whitepaper for ISVs and Developers can be found here. Its a nice presentation of the available customization options without diving too deep into the technical details.

http://community.dynamics.com/product/crm/crmtechnical/b/crmteamblog/archive/2010/11/10/new-microsoft-dynamics-crm-2011-whitepaper-for-isvs-and-developers.aspx

CRM 4.0 Update Rollup 15 released

2011-01-14T06:17:00.000-08:00

I really appreciate the frequency in which the updates are released. Find more information about the update here:

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/crm/archive/2011/01/13/update-rollup-15-for-microsoft-dynamics-crm-4-0.aspx

Count Down to Dynamics CRM 2011

2011-01-13T00:37:00.000-08:00

CRM 2011 Beta SDK Sept/Oct Refresh

2010-10-06T23:25:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure how I missed this, but there was a new update to the 2011 SDK a few days back.

Most notably they've added hands-on-labs and tons sample code. Sweet!

Go get the latest version here.

Disable Aero Peek

2010-10-06T02:39:00.000-07:00

Am I the only one that get easily annoyed by the Aero Peek feature in Windows 7? It gets pretty bad when you're working with multiple monitors and accidentally hover over a taskbar window icon. Its almost like a miniature light show. :/

Here's how to disable all that craziness:

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/5473/make-aero-peek-display-instantly-or-disable-it-in-windows-7/

</rant>

CRM 2011 Beta Released

2010-09-09T12:37:00.000-07:00

CRM 2011 beta is out now. Go grab you copy now!
http://crm2011beta.com

Download Links:

CRM 2011 Beta forum:
http://social.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/crm2011beta/threads

Source:
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/girishr/archive/2010/09/08/microsoft-dynamics-crm-2011-beta-is-here.aspx

Debugging Tips with Visual Studio 2010

2010-08-30T08:14:00.001-07:00

Some useful debugging techniques for Visual Studio:

http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2010/08/18/debugging-tips-with-visual-studio-2010.aspx

Webservice Testing Tool - WcfTestClient

2010-08-30T08:09:00.000-07:00

Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) Test Client (WcfTestClient.exe) is a GUI tool that enables users to input test parameters, submit that input to the service, and view the response that the service sends back. It provides a seamless service testing experience when combined with WCF Service Host.

I didn't know this tool existed until a few weeks ago. Apparently its a part of Visual Studio. I've started digging deep into WCF the last few days and its been an indispensable tool to say the least.

More Info on the tool here:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb552364.aspx

Also on a side note, I used to be a big fan of storm and they seem to have a paid version here which adds support to WCF. I don't know how it compares to WcfTestClient though.

Could not establish trust relationship for the SSL/TLS secure channel with authority

2010-08-27T08:11:00.001-07:00

I've working on interfacing with a 3rd party web service recently. The development version of the service had an SSL certificate that was issued to different host than the one deployed on. This, as expected, was throwing out "Could not establish trust relationship for the SSL/TLS secure channel with authority" exceptions at run time.

I did some research on how to overcome certificate issues and this link covers most of the techniques available.

More instructions on creating a temporary certificate for development:
Create and Install Temporary Certificates

Please understand there's a reason why the webservice call fails. These techniques should only be used for testing in a dev environment against a trusted service.

Styles of Programming

2010-08-26T06:08:00.000-07:00

I came accross this link while cleaning up my bookmarks:

http://www.codeinstructions.com/2008/10/styles-of-programming.html

I think I fall somewhere between a Surgical and Butcher Programmer.

CRM 2011 New Features And The Wait or Build Decision

2010-08-13T08:43:00.000-07:00

Some interesting thoughts on whats new in CRM 2011 and how it affects applications we build today.
http://www.dynamicscrmtrickbag.com/2010/08/06/crm2011-waitorbuild/
http://www.dynamicscrmtrickbag.com/2010/07/25/taking-the-covers-off-crm-2011/

In my opinion, if time permits, I would always try opt for the wait; at least until the beta releases of the product come out.
From my past experiences early adoption has worked out pretty good for us. It gives us the opportunity to offer the customer so much more value in their solution.

The development cycle may not be the smoothest, but at the end of the day the rewards are worth it.

URL Addressable Forms and Views

2010-08-12T07:52:00.000-07:00

The list of addressable Forms and Views in CRM. This came pretty handy recently when setting up a customized navigation for a client.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc150850.aspx

CRM 4.0 Sitemap Group with id has an empty title Warning

2010-08-10T07:16:00.000-07:00

I've been doing some extensive changes to the SiteMap.xml recently. Everything went well and the site loads except that CRM started throwing warnings in the trace log everytime I visited the site.

...
at CallHandlerExecutionStep.System.Web.HttpApplication.IExecutionStep.Execute()
at HttpApplication.ExecuteStep(IExecutionStep step, Boolean& completedSynchronously)
at ApplicationStepManager.ResumeSteps(Exception error)
at HttpApplication.System.Web.IHttpAsyncHandler.BeginProcessRequest(HttpContext context, AsyncCallback cb, Object extraData)
at HttpRuntime.ProcessRequestInternal(HttpWorkerRequest wr)
at HttpRuntime.ProcessRequestNoDemand(HttpWorkerRequest wr)
at ISAPIRuntime.ProcessRequest(IntPtr ecb, Int32 iWRType)
>Sitemap Group with id "grp_Programs" has an empty title (groups have to have titles if their parent area has ShowGroups attribute set to true).
# CRM Tracing Version 2.0
# LocalTime: 2010-08-10 09:21:40.8
# Categories:
# CallStackOn: Yes
...

I did validate the sitemap against the schema while editing the xml, so I'm sure that its well formed and valid. Also, the import process did not complain during the upload either.
(more info on the schema I used at the end of the post)

A little investigating and trial and error I found that the problem lay with the deprecated "Title" attribute in the Group node. (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc150880.aspx)

Even though the documentation states that attribute is deprecated, it appears that CRM uses it internally. So adding this attribute produces the following site map:

<group id="grp_Programs" title="Programs">
<titles>
<title lcid="1033" title="Programs">
<title lcid="1036" title="[Fr]Programs[/Fr]">
</titles>
...
</group>

I tested this with Rollup update 10 and I'm not sure if that has been fixed with a newer rollup. I might try this again with the latest rollup to see if its still reproducible.

References:
The schema I used to validate contains the customizations.xsd, the SiteMapType.xsd and the Isv.config.xsd files into one file. Download it here:

http://rc.crm.dynamics.com/rc/regcont/en_us/op/articles/sitemap.aspx
http://rc.crm.dynamics.com/rc/downloads/ISVConfigAndSiteMap.zip

CRM Update Rollup 12

2010-08-04T05:57:00.000-07:00

The CRM team releases a new Update Rollup:

Build number and file names for this update rollup
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 4.0.7333.2935.

You can download it here. And find the Associated KB article here.

Assigning Roles to a deactivated Users in CRM

2010-08-01T07:26:00.000-07:00

This cannot be done. I found out the hard way when trying to write a user syncing service. It makes sense if you really think about it; why would you want to assign a role to a deactivated user anyway?

If you still want to do this the work around is to temporarily activate the user, assign the roles and deactivate him again.

Hope this helps someone out there.

CRM 2011 Demo at Worldwide Partner Conference

2010-07-14T06:11:00.000-07:00

Microsoft Demonstrates Next-Generation CRM Release at Worldwide Partner Conference

I can't wait to get my hands on the beta in September!
Sign up to receive notification when the beta is available.

Sorting Dynamics CRM Left Navigation

2010-07-11T15:40:00.000-07:00

In CRM 4, when you enable a custom entity to be displayed in a navigation area, they are displayed in the order they were added. We had a requirement to sort the entities so that they can be found easily. The way to achieve this is to edit the SiteMap.xml and re-upload back into the site. This can be very tedious if you have a considerable amount of custom entities.

I wrote an XSLT file which automates the sorting process. Hey, if you gotta do something more than two times, might as well automate it.

A few things to note when using this approach:

The sort can only be performed against the internal names of the entities as the SiteMap.xml does not contain the display names.
As new entities are added to areas, this script will have to be re-run.
This solution does not sort the left navigation within the Forms.

Please let me know your thoughts in the comments.

Sources
Configure the Site Map to Customize Application Navigation in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd393294.aspx

SiteMap XML Reference
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc150883.aspx

Clear SQL Server Cache and Stored Procedure Cache

2010-07-09T02:53:00.000-07:00

To clear SQL Server’s cache, run DBCC DROPCLEANBUFFERS, which clears all data from the cache. Then run DBCC FREEPROCCACHE, which clears the stored procedure cache.

I never seem to have this info handy when I actually need to use it. Posting here for easy reference.

Source:
http://www.devx.com/tips/Tip/14401

Visually Differentiate Your CRM Environments

2010-06-14T21:37:00.000-07:00

Found this nice tip a few weeks back, been using it ever since. I think its a great idea and one that can be adopted to other framework solutions as well.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/typepad/sonoma/~3/z7jsCUcqn_0/visually-differentiate-your-crm-environments.html

Virtual Box Inverted Mouse Scroll

2010-06-14T10:45:00.000-07:00

I've experienced this annoying bug in virtual box a few times now. VB randomly (?) decides to invert your mouse scroll direction. Its not really a big deal, just that it zaps your concentration. Hitting the LCtrl, LShift, LAlt, Win, RCtrl, RShift, RAlt in an random order seems to fix it. That seems to be the best solution out there at the moment.

Source:
http://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=29957

Update Rollup 11 Released

2010-06-06T10:47:00.001-07:00

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/crm/archive/2010/06/04/update-rollup-11-for-microsoft-dynamics-crm-4-0.aspx

Update Rollup 11 is cumulative. However, the Update Rollup 11 CRM Client and Data Migration Client packages require Update Rollup 7 to be installed. For all other CRM components you do not need to install any previous Update Rollups prior to Update Rollup 11

Get it here:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/981328

New Home For The CRM Diagnostic Tool (CrmDiagTool4)

2010-05-24T13:13:00.000-07:00

I was looking to download the CrmDiagTool4 recently and was unable to find it at the original location.

This is appears to be the new home of the CRM Tool:
http://blogs.msdn.com/emeadcrmsupport/archive/2010/03/04/crmdiagtool4-for-microsoft-crm-4-0-available-now-on-the-emea-dynamics-crm-support-blog.aspx

Download it from the attachment section of the post.

CRM 4.0 Customizations Comparison Tool

2010-05-12T01:00:00.000-07:00

The Customization Comparison Tool

"...tools that help you analyze the impact of customizations on the system and maintain consistent configuration data across multiple Microsoft Dynamics CRM systems."

The Data Migration Tool

...lets you export custom configuration data from a source Microsoft Dynamics CRM system and import it to a target Microsoft Dynamics CRM system.

http://blogs.msdn.com/crm/archive/2010/01/14/isv-utilities-for-comparing-customizations-and-transferring-configuration-data.aspx

Another tool to go into my tool belt.