Marco has a great post about how to turn on access to LinkedIn within Microsoft Dynamics CRM.

A small little button opening a world of possibilities.

Over the last couple of years this has now all changed. Multi-processors and multi-threaded support built into the operating systems of even the smallest computers increases the requirements for creating code that can take advantage of all that power and performance.

You can now, not only create pieces of applications that run concurrently, but you can also create situations where different pieces of the applications overlap, use asynchronus and synchronus services and even tap into different physical processing power at different times.  

If you consider a former tool to be one instrument (like a violin), then in today's development world, whole orchestras (violins, cellos, trumpets, sax, etc.) are being managed with symphonies of success being deployed.

Needless to say the failures can make quite a racket and the people who can detangle and fix this racket are a special breed.

Tools, Tools, and more Tools.

The Microsoft Research teams have been looking at some of the concurrency problems and are interviewed on Channel 9 about their discoveries.  Microsoft Research: Tools to Help Resolve Concurrency Problems 

Two little applications might be of interest for further analysis and learning. These include Cuzz and Featherlight

Recently Microsoft released a technical article on running Microsoft Dynamics CRM v4.0 in a Windows 2008 64 Bit Server environment.

Some of the Key Items include an

"Error message when you try to open the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Web application"

but the article also includes work arounds to many of the issues discovered in the field.

For those of you who work within a Feature Driven Development model (FDD) there are a number of great resources on the whole subject area on this website.  

Environment-Aware Custom Workflow Configuration

There is a way to get around this.

1) Make your duplicate checking rules a bit more sophisticated.

2) Tap into some of the 3rd party code to "pimp" your duplicate checking rules.

Anyone else have any great solutions? I know we are not the only ones to run into the statement "that is how it is designed" 

Thanks!! 

Why?

The number one reasons is because the option supports the need to move code between different environments and as such is much more Enterprise centric.

A big THANKS to Adi for posting.  

One small note: Just be aware that if you move sections around you might break the code.

Low and Behold - Check out this recent post called "Pimp your Duplicate Detection"

As it turns out any change or change request has a time impact. There is the time to discuss the potential for a change, there is the time to discuss and outline the exact specifics of the change and there is the time to research the impact that a change might have. (Realize this is all before the change is actually made)

Needless to say this is not a problem if you build this type of time into your process and project. The key is that managing requests and responses to requests are just as important as managing the actual change. 

This is also good motivation to take another look at the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Social Media Accelerator. Barry Givens gives a great demonstration in this little video.

For those in the technical arena take a moment to touchbase with your clients marketing departments and connections. Their world is changing and it is changing fast.

It gives me great joy to find answers when I am stuck with a question on Microsoft Dynamics CRM and the fact that I can easily share that joy is something I can't resist.

What I wasn't expecting was some of the other side effects. Today I had a little surprise. I was listed as one of 27 CRM Thought leaders to read and follow. Definitely added a smile to my wintery, yet sunny Saturday morning.

http://www.marketingautomation.org/2010/27-crm-thought-leaders-to-read-and-follow/.

"Running Microsoft CRM Workflows Against Marketing List Members

Here is a great list about capturing or assigning content responsibilities.

7 Principles for Decentralizing Publishing

http://www.xrmvirtual.com/events/uitipsandtricks

"CWR Mobility are proud to present the new release of CWR Mobile version 4.2 of their flagship product, a leading mobile solution for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 which is used by organisations worldwide including Danone, Nestlé, Hitachi and Sanofi Pasteur. One of the most important improvements is that BlackBerry and iPhone is now fully integrated with Microsoft Dynamics CRM. "

Outlook synchronization enables Outlook users to view Dynamics CRM information, including contacts, tasks, phone calls, letters, faxes, appointments, and e-mails, within the Outlook interface. This document describes the client synchronization process that is associated with Update Rollup 7 for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 or later (for on-premise deployments) and with Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online November 2009 Service Update or later (for online deployments).

Update Rollup 9 for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 will be available February 11^th

A list of current Update Rollups for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 

Customer Effectives post titled "Bulk Deleting Waiting Workflow Instances from Microsoft Dynamics CRM"

and

Phil Adam's Blog post titled Performance is slow if the AsyncOperationBase table becomes too large in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0

Both add additional insight on the subject matter that is well worth the read.

Choose SETTINGS

Choose SYSTEM JOBS

Immediately you will see a list of various information regarding various "system jobs" that might have run or might be "waiting".

Make particular note of the items in the waiting state. Do you know what they are waiting for? Should they really be waiting? Do they need to be cancelled?

Next Question: Are you managing your system job log? Has it been purged lately?

Did you know that Duplicate Detection is a System Job?

Microsoft Dynamics CRM for Developers

via crm.dynamics.com

Have you visited the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Developer website lately?

Once you create a new account you can use this information to making adding new contacts more efficient.

From the Account Left Navigation Pane

Select Contacts

Select New

Make Note: The address from the Account and the Parent Account are copied into the new contact record automatically.

The teams are on a worldwind release schedule!

Let's hope the documentation teams can keep up!!

It has been a few weeks since the "Teach Yourself Microsoft Dynamics CRM in 24 Hours" book was released and perhaps some of you have had a chance to read or glance at it.

If it was of value it would be helpful if you would write a few lines or post a comment on Amazon's review page.

Search on Amazon.Com for either Anne Stanton or the book title Teach Yourself Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4 in 24 Hours and then scroll down and select post a comment.

Can you find errors? Let me know so we make sure to fix them in future releases.

Keeping Data organized and duplicate free with Microsoft Dynamics CRM by Anne Stanton

In a collaborative environment sometimes it is hard to keep up with the speed of new accounts, contacts, and leads that an empowered sales team and company can produce. One of the negative symptoms of such a great collaborative environment is data quality issues from duplicated effort. Consider for instance a team of people working on the same accounts and meeting the same contacts. If they are really busy they might easily assume that an account or contact has not been entered, or perhaps they just don't have time to use the available advanced search to even look to see if a contact exists before creating it. Accounts, contacts, and leads are also not the only item that can be duplicated. It is not unusual for a person to mistakenly enter a duplicate invoice or opportunity or even for a person or different people to create a duplicate quote or order. Duplicates can be a real problem for many systems.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM offers a number of different ways to both protect against duplicates and to find duplicates that may have been created. This not only includes a proactive review of accounts and contacts on create or update, but it also offers you the ability to build in simple or complex rules to check for duplicates in other entities such as leads, activities, orders, opportunities or invoices. Additionally you have the option to check for duplicates during a data import or if you use the Microsoft Outlook client when you go from offline to online.

To simplify getting started using Microsoft Dynamics CRM duplicate checking, the system ships with three standard rules which you can modify, utilize, build onto, or expand. These include a rule to check for duplicate leads which have the same e-mail address, a rule to check for duplicate accounts which have the same e-mail address, and a rule to check for duplicate contacts which have the same e-mail address. These default duplicate rules can be used in a new duplicate job, changed, or deleted.

There are three parts to duplicate checking in Microsoft Dynamics CRM. The first part is found under Settings, Data Management, Duplicate Detection Setting. This option controls when duplicate detection rules run, including the following optional options:

• when a record is updated or created
• when Microsoft Dynamics CRM Outlook client goes from offline to online
• during data import

The second part of duplicate detection is the defining of the duplicate detection rule or rules. It is also found under Settings, Data Management and is listed as Duplicate Detection Rules. Rules can be very simple, such as asking the system to check for all accounts with an exact match between account names, or the duplicate detection rules can be extremely complex and composed of many different variables. An example of a complex duplicate rule might include only marking an account as a duplicate if the first three characters of the account name match, the city and state are an exact match, and the area code and first 2 digits of the main telephone number also match. The more complex duplicate checking rules allow for the system to check for duplicates where the account name might have significant variations. For instance "Watches International," "Watches Ltd.", and "Watches Incorporated" might really all be the same account, but an exact match on the account name would not flag them as duplicates. A more sophisticated rule that looks at the first 6 letters of the account name and a secondary check on another variable in the account record would flag the item and allow the user to review.

Once the duplicate detection rules are defined and published, there is a third part to the functionality: the creation, review and management of the duplicate detection job or jobs. You have the option to run a duplicate detection job on demand or to set a duplicate detection job to run at regular intervals. The duplicate detection job runs one or more of the duplicate detection rules that you defined. A new duplicate detection job is setup using a specific wizard from either, Settings, Data Management, Duplicate Detection Jobs or from My Work, Duplicate Detection. When you create a duplicate detection job you can limit the data that is checked using features that mimic the advanced find functionality. For instance, you can limit a duplicate detection job to all accounts within a specific zip code or all accounts owned by a specific person. Once you limit the data you want to check, you then specify how often you want the duplicate detection job to run, when the job should start, and who should be notified when the job is completed. The system can send an e-mail to a specific email address when the duplicate detection job is finished.

What happens when a new account is entered and a duplicate account exists? If a duplicate detection rule exists and a duplicate detection job is enabled on create or update, then the system will warn the user that a duplicate exists and it will list all the potential duplicates in a review window. The user then has the option to either ignore the warning or to choose the duplicate from the review window and update it with the information that they are trying to enter. When they choose the duplicate it would discard the data that has been entered up until the duplicate check indicated a problem.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM offers a wide variety of options for managing the potential impact of duplicates on data quality. In addition to a powerful search to check for a set of duplicates prior to entering a duplicate record, the software also offers automatic checking on create and update based on user defined rules and user defined duplicate checking jobs. If these features are correctly configured and surrounded by good business process, firms have the ability to significantly increase the quality of their existing data. They also have the ability to not only prevent duplicates, but to check for them if they are imported from other systems.

Here is a post that touches on this great Enterprise Level consideration.

To Quote "Eg: SQL 2005 & 2008 is 1024. Which means you can have 1024 attibute[s] per entity creation."

My goal with the book was to help people get started and, for the more experienced CRM users, to push them to another level. I also wanted to open up a few doors of potential and to clear up a few misunderstandings. Writing a book is like being in a deep forest. It is amazing how much you can see once it is published.

Items missed for instance or topics that could use a whole additional chapter, but despite that I am glad that we all have another resource.

Word, Excel, A Database, ... which database ...

Thoughts? 

When on a specific form Cntl N gives you the internal URL for any Dynamics CRM displayed form. You can then use this with variables in an iFrame to do some interesting things.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM gives you the option to merge two accounts or two contacts. On Merge a person can select which fields in each record are accurate and using the data from the selected fields the primary record is updated and the secondary record is flagged as deactivated.

This ability to merge is fairly powerful because of the human interaction. A human can easily tell which of the data from individual fields is most accurate when data gets really messy, whereas a system would have to have more rules and black and white requirements.

Good for review of a few duplications, but not as good for mass cleanup.

A couple of things to watch out for. If you merge two contacts and those contacts are uniquely tracked in two different peoples Outlook. The deactivited or secondary contact would be unlinked. This means that one person might not be too happy.

If you have a lot of cleanup to do you will want to consider how that data is being used "offline" or in other applications before your cleanup efforts.

Once the data is cleaned up you might want to review your deactivated data for further cleanup via the delete functionality.

I am curious as to if anyone out in the community has run across any favorite Microsoft SQL Server database tools and Dynamics CRM database maintanence best practices.

The solution turned out to be that we were using ID as a filter. So instead of using ID (protected and used) AccountID or ContactID is preferred and solved the problem.

What you don't know about Stunnware's toolkit?

It is well worth checking out.

But in the meantime my current book is being published this week!!! So keep an eye out!! In fact I just received this today if you want to do some previewing.

Hello. 

This is a system generated email sent to inform you that Rough Cuts version 8.3 of Sams Teach Yourself Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4 in 24 Hours has been successfully uploaded to Safari Books Online. There is no action needed at this time.  You are receiving this note because you are associated to this title in the Safari Books Online back office.  You can review the Rough Cuts book at http://my.safaribooksonline.com/9780768689754

Your editorial and production teams have been trained to notify interested users when substantial changes are made. For your information, there are currently 4 members of the Safari community who have subscribed to receive such notifications for Sams Teach Yourself Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4 in 24 Hours.

Thank you for supporting the Safari Books Online community and the Rough Cuts interactive publishing service.  Please don't hesitate to contact me with any questions or feedback.

John Chodacki

Rough Cuts Program Manager

Safari Books Online

chodacki@safarijv.com

Pierre Hulsebus over at EHTC has a great use case post today regarding how licensing is managed when the two products are married and yet seperate.

http://blog.solomon2crm.com/2009/10/05/rtg--dynamics-crm-and-multiplexing.aspx?ref=rss

Here are various blog posts and links to pick from in no particular order

1) http://marioraunig.blogspot.com/2007/03/save-time-and-energy-creating-large.html and

http://www.beatnik.at/picklist_for_mscrm.php

2) http://kjellsj.blogspot.com/2006/08/using-excel-to-generate-picklist-xml.html

which was updated here 3) http://dynamicscrmbyalfredo.blogspot.com/2006/09/recently-i-found-this-useful-blog.html

4) and back in the 3.0 Days http://blogs.infinite-x.net/2006/08/26/release-utility-to-generate-picklist-options-for-dynamics-crm-30/ 

Have you found an easier way? Feel free to share!

Jeff Reiser, Premier Field Engineer who continues to be an incredible resource as I watch people ramp up and Microsoft in general who despite their size still manage to digest the huge amount of field feedback that travels the back channels.

What you don't feel heard? Next time you are reading a knowledge base article that doesn't meet your needs use the comment box at the bottom of the screen. In the world of Dynamics CRM I am often surprised by the responses to my comments posted in what sometimes we assume is the infinite black hole.  

How to Hide System Views

http://www.dynamicsworld.co.uk/Dynamics-CRM-Timeline.php 

Validation that if you are going to add any form, custom screen, Silverlight gadget or other types of style sheets you really should aim to make those look like CRM. The User interface and interaction should be consistent. (the word on the wind is that in the next release of the SDK you will have some available to work from)

When synchronizing Outlook Contacts to CRM the system uses the default Address 1 so if you replace it don't forget to build in the Outlook mapping. Why would you ever want to replace address 1? Perhaps you have more than 7 address fields.

Microsoft took out the ability to delete pre-configured system views on entities. Why? and when did this happen and can you hide the ones you do not want to use?

Attachments are all over the place.

The resource center is a great example of how you can add a custom Information Center of business oriented "help".

Developers should always spend a tiny bit of time reviewing some of the test cases. It is eye opening for both parties.

Well let's think about this. Is this really the case? Certainly when programming on a team every line of code is not controlled by a single developer so that "concept" is often broken almost immediately.

So what other barriers arise?

Well the biggest is that without training, focus, reading and experiencing a slightly new "XRM" mindset, there is risk that you really can screw it up. I have seen more than one developer have to eat crow and other developers who just start getting negative and "anti-CRM" when they really just don't get it.

So what to do, what to do, what to do?

If you are new to XRM and you are a developer make every effort to spend a good amount of time with senior experienced Dynamics CRM or Dynamics XRM developers. You know the folks. The ones whose blogs you read, the ones who offer deep dive boot camps and the ones who have rolled out hundreds of successful custom Dynamics CRM projects. Believe me it makes a BIG difference.

IF you don't have the option to surround yourself by these gurus (or perhaps the ego) then you will need to really start diving in and reading, reading, reading and learning. Once you do this master a very small project.  Realize that you can ramp up a project in 24 hours so it is not like this is a totally wasted energy thing.

Learn the difference between how Dynamics CRM uses SQL, tables (entities), database structure and relationships between things. Learn to think CRM. It really is a different way of thinking to a certain extent.

Now this might seem easy, but you would be surprised at how challenging this can be. I am not talking about a side thought. I am talking about really understanding the depth so you can use the depth. The advantages are incredible.

So ask myself how did I get started? One of the best things I did in my first year or two working with Dynamics CRM is to spend three - four hours every Saturday teaching a Dynamics CRM class with Larry Lentz. We tag team taught and we deep dove into a ton of manuals a page or chapter a week for a good six months. We also used the software as we read, trying everything that was explained. This effort established a great base for me to continually learn and believe me I am still learning.

Just consider the tip I posted earlier today. Hey I just didn't know that trick, but I sure as well wanted to share it once I learned it.

So here is a last thought. You never stop learning and Dynamics CRM is so deep that even after years there is more to learn. It also continually changes, so for those of you who have never been to a class or never read a Dynamics CRM book. Well you might be able to "just figure it out", but I can guarentee that there is a lot more for you to experience. So don't be shy - come to the party and jump right in but be ready for being pushed outside your comfort zone and for change!

Select a Column so that the system is sorting on that column

Now move to another column and using the SHIFT, CNTL, MOUSE CLICK you can setup a secondary sort

Now move to another column and do it again..

Guess what: You now have three columns set to sort

So the question of the day then becomes. Which is the primary ;)

1) If you do not want to have an attribute show in Advanced Find then you want to set the SEARCH flag on that attribute to NO. By default the search flag is set to YES.

2) You can use the comment field to help organize your work in addition to the display field and the internal attribute schema names. For instance you might want to map your internal schema names to the system you are integrating with, the display names to something that makes sense to users who are using advanced find and the labels on the form to something that works well for data entry. The comment field can also be used by placing a flag at the start of the comment so you can sort by comment during your reviews.

3) Don't have time to enter comments? A few extra seconds per attribute and you can go so much further with documentation and communication. Makes someone elses life easier, include comments.