Webfortis Blog

Closing the gap when developing with MS CRM 2011

blog@webfortis.com — Mon, 21 May 2012 09:05:00 -0700

Many times documentation regarding how to use certain code assumes that you have a the level of knowledge required to jump right into the process. Lets assume for a minute that your new to development or you haven’t attempted to write code for some time, you might need a refresher on how to setup Visual Studio. For the purpose of this blog entry I am going to create a simple console application that confirms the Organization in a on premise deployment of CRM 2011.

This same process could be used to address a IFD or MS CRM Online deployment with some simple adjustments. We do have to make some assumptions regarding the preparation steps that have been taken, first that you have a copy of Visual Studio 2010, an operational MS CRM on premise deployment and a downloaded copy of the MS CRM 2011 SDK.

Start by launching Visual Studio 2010. Then click File > New> Project.

Click “Console Application”. Assign a name to the new console application.

One of those adjustments that will cause you to curse at your monitor and send you in search of a blog for an answer is making sure you set the Target framework. Read more about this setting

To expose the required assemblies for this application ensure that the Target framework is set to .Net Framework 4. Right click the application name and click Properties.

Select the Target framework dropdown, select .NET Framework 4.

Now we need to add two helper class files from the MS CRM 2011 SDK. Click ADD > Existing Item.

Navigate to the location where you installed the SDK. \CRM2011SDK\sdk\samplecode\cs\helpercode Locate crmservicehelper.cs and devicemanager.cs files and click “Add”. Both of these files are provided by Microsoft to assist in communicating with MS CRM 2011 web services.

Notice that helper classes have been added to your project.

These helper classes have a relationship, where the crmserviceclass.cs instantiates deviceidmanager.cs . So I suggest you start with this file. Open the file by clicking on it. You will note that ServiceModel.Description is not instantiated by not being referenced.

To add a reference, right click on References > Add Reference.

Add required assemblies to the solution.

System.ServiceModel – Read more about the namespace

System.Runtime.Serialization – Read more about the namespace

System.Security – Read more about the namespace

Make sure your on the .NET tab, locate each of the assemblies and click “Ok”.

Once added you should notice that the Intellisense in Visual Studio has removed the red underline.

Now open crmservicehelper.cs and you will notice some other assemblies missing. Follow the same procedure to locate the missing assembly. Ensure that System.DirectoryServices.AccountManagement. Read more about the namespace

Select the assembly and click “Ok”.

Microsoft Sdk provides a number of assemblies that are useful. Right click on References > Add Reference. Change to the Browse tab, using the Look in: dropdown find CRM2011SDK\sdk\bin to locate the collection of assemblies made available by Microsoft. Select microsoft.xrm.sdk.dll and click “Ok” .

This blog does not delve into the code required to make the call to the Discovery web service, rather to focus how to setup Visual Studio to correctly execute the method. To obtain additional information related to the structure of the code used, Refer to MS Course 80295A

String discourl = "http://servername:port/XRMServices/2011/Discovery.svc";

Uri dInfo = new Uri(discourl);

ClientCredentials clientcred = new ClientCredentials();

DiscoveryServiceProxy dsp = new DiscoveryServiceProxy(dInfo, null, clientcred, null);

dsp.Authenticate();

RetrieveOrganizationsRequest rosreq = new RetrieveOrganizationsRequest();

RetrieveOrganizationsResponse r = (RetrieveOrganizationsResponse)dsp.Execute(rosreq);

OrganizationDetail orginfo = null;

foreach (OrganizationDetail o in r.Details)

{

Console.WriteLine(o.FriendlyName);

}

Console.ReadLine();

Copy and paste the code above into the program.cs file and provide the name of your server. You will notice that Intellisense is flagging a number of calls that appear not to be working.

Notice that a number of the new reference namespace are not defined. Right click on the first underlined code and right click. Click Resolve, select to add the namespace with a using statement.

Repeat this process until all errors are removed.

Those assemblies have now been instantiated in the program.cs file.

At this point the sample code should run, but first Build the Solution. Make sure it is error free and then press F5.

A list of Organizations on the CRM platform should be returned. See the example below.

If you work at Webfortis, you can take Unlimited Vacation - How great is that, and what exactly does it mean?

blog@webfortis.com — Thu, 17 May 2012 10:10:00 -0700

We recently announced a small change to our vacation policy - Instead of 2 weeks off every year, we said "Take what you want - we'll cover for you!"

By definition, "Unlimited Vacation" means that you are able to take vacation without restrictions, limits or controls. At Webfortis we have a single caveat to the policy that requires an individual to be responsible and maintain a "Work is Done" status. No need for alarm; something this big must have a caveat! Basically, if you are able to be engaged in your work and with your customers from a chair on the beach with your family for a long weekend, more power to you. If you would like to take 10 weeks off to backpack around Europe, that may present some challenges in regards to the "work is done" status, but we are open to having that conversation with our employees.

In an industry where there is an abundance of work to be completed, it may seem that an unlimited vacation policy would be counter-productive, however we have not found that to be the case at Webfortis. Our team is made up of exceptional, hard-working resources that are evaluated on their individual performances and achievements, not on how much face time they have with their customers or supervisors.

There are many articles regarding the intrinsic value of initiating an unlimited vacation policy. Many of those discussions question whether or not it is a viable solution for all organizations or whether or not it is appropriate for all types of employees (hourly, salary, exempt, non-exempt etc.). Our executive team made a conscious decision to take a leap of faith in our employees and business processes and rolled out the policy to all full-time employees across the board.

Do we think people will take advantage of the policy? Well, we have refined recruiting techniques and specific practices around interviewing, hiring, and onboarding resources that harvest strong employee/employer relationships and determine culture compatibility fairly early on. Our Unlimited Vacation policy has been well received and is quickly becoming one of our most popular benefits (all the usual stuff is there of course - 401k, health, etc. - that stuff is really critical in this day and age!). Subsequently, we have found that there is quite a bit of peer-policing of anyone who might potentially abuse the policy as each employee has a vested interest in the success of the program and keeping it intact.

We have already begun to see a positive change in the drive and focus of our employees. Specifically, among our team members, there has been a mind-shift that they are not only expected to take ownership and create their own work/life balance, but they are also supported by management and the organization to achieve it. Choosing to extend unlimited vacation to all of our team members has also resulted in greater collaboration and more cross-training among the administrative staff.

Our resources are adults and deserve to be treated as such. Webfortis understands and promotes work/life balance and wants to make sure that our employees have the necessary tools to help them get there. They are now empowered to manage their day to day priorities and define what that balance looks like for themselves.

As Webfortis continues to grow, this policy is the perfect vehicle to allow us to retain the entrepreneurial spirit that Webfortis was founded on while preserving our high expectations in regards to the services we deliver to our customers.

If you are thinking of implementing a policy like this in your organization, I encourage you to do your homework on the front end; we belive the payoff is well worth the time invested. I have to end my post now - I'm booking a trip to Paris for 10 days later this year!

Train-The-Trainer Training

blog@webfortis.com — Wed, 09 May 2012 16:53:00 -0700

One of the many training services we offer at Webfortis is to teach CRM users to train their team. Successful companies will grow and add more users to their CRM, once key users understand the system they will need to train these new employees how the system works. Although at this point these key users may understand the system, there are basic tips and tricks they need to know to be successful in passing on the knowledge.

Verify the Learners Can See and Hear – This is a basic concept that many amateur trainers will skip, however it is important to know if learners are able to obtain the information you are giving them. Confirm that your trainers can see the screen and hear you clearly. In addition, be sure to set time aside to set up. Murphy’s Law, everything that can go wrong will go wrong, seems to happen during nearly every training. Work your best to minimize this.

Gain as Much Information Ahead of Time – Your time can be better managed if you know the competency of your audience. It is a waste of both of your time to train them on a topic not at their level, both above and below. Be sure to ask the appropriate person what the learners need/ want to learn and what their previous experience is with CRM, even if you think you already know.

Use Props and Visuals - CRM is an extensive program that is capable of assisting a company in organization, sales and marketing automation, forecasting, reporting and so much more. To a new user it can often become one big blur. The best way to get a learner to retain the information is to use visual examples. For example, when I talk about leads I use a business card as an example and will show them an actual business card to illustrate that leads are used to hold information of people with minimal information to track.

Ask Questions – By asking questions the trainer is able to validate how much information the learners are retaining. Prompting questions such as “I want to record this email in CRM. How do I do this?” enable you to receive information from the learners if they are capable of tracking emails on their own. Ask both open and closed ended questions periodically. If the learners have questions this will encourage them to speak up if they do not fully understand the material.

Take Breaks – No matter how great the trainer is or how exciting the information, no one wants to sit through hours upon hours of training especially when they have other necessary tasks to attend to. Schedule time for bathroom breaks, getting water and lunch. Never underestimate the power of food. Be sure to verbalize to the learners when these breaks will be and their duration to avoid unnecessary interruptions.

This is basic train-the-trainer material. As you can imagine, there is a world of more tips and tricks to make for a successful training session. Even when you know all the tips and tricks in the book nothing beats practice and experience. For more information on CRM Training and Train-the-Trainer CRM Training contact me at mgoepp@webfortis.com.

Redirect IFrame Content

blog@webfortis.com — Mon, 07 May 2012 08:59:00 -0700

One of the advantages of MS CRM 2011 is the introduction of Web Resources, which allows you to reuse JavaScript across mulitple Entities. By centralizing code that can be reused you reduce the amount of custom code that needs to be maintained and in this example you can create a function that completes the same procedure but allows for flexibility. In this example we want to centrally control the URL use by IFRAME located in different Entities. First step is to build a function that would allow for changing the URL based on variables being passed into the function.

Create a Web Resoucre JavaScript using the below code

var url1 = "http://sharepoint/sites/site1/Shared%20Documents/ ";

var url2 = “http://sharepoint/sites/site2/Shared%20Documents/";

function setIFrameSrc(IFrameName, ChangeContentURL)

{

if (!isNullOrEmptyString(IFrameName) && !isNullOrEmptyString(url) && !isNullOrEmptyString(value)) {

var iFrame = Xrm.Page.getControl(IFrameName);

if (iFrame != null && iFrame.getVisible()) {

if (typeof (ChangeContentURL) !== "undefined" && ChangeContentURL && !isNullOrEmptyString(url2)) {

url1 = url2

}

iFrame.setSrc(url 1);

}

Once you have the Script created with the function that was outlined above ensure that you load it above the Script in which you are going to invoke it.

From the OnLoad event of a entity you can invoke function with a simple call. To load url1 do not add in a ChangeContentURL value as part of invoking the function.

setIFrameSrc("IFRAME_Documents");

Changing the URL you simply have to add a value as part of invoking the function. By passing a true into the ChangeContentURL variable in the function it will step into the if statement and change to url2.

setIFrameSrc("IFRAME_Documents", true);

Invoking Plugins from Workflows

blog@webfortis.com — Thu, 03 May 2012 10:15:00 -0700

Hello, World

My name is Dan and this is my first blog post, and also an exciting first week for me at Webfortis. Today I am going to cover an issue which initially vexed me. It's my sincere hope that in this and subsequent blog posts I can provide if not novel information, useful information, to enable you to utilize Microsoft Dynamics CRM to its fullest.

The Issue

To implement complex business logic beyond what is possible in dialogs and workflows, it is sometimes necessary to write Plugins. It is common to require these more complex actions to be performed in the middle of a rather simple workflow. Due to the overhead of developing and maintaining them, it is typically not desirable to implement all business logic in plugins. This leaves the problem of how to invoke a plugin in the middle of execution of a workflow.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 has a concept of Workflow Activities which are plugins which can be called directly from a workflow the same as any other workflow activity such as sending an email or updating a record. After properly registering your assembly you can use the workflow designer to insert your workflow activity wherever you require. This is an excellent feature, however it is not available in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Online. (NOTE: this limitation does not affect on-premise installations)

Due to limitations of the Workflow Framework in .NET at present, you cannot utilize Workflow Plugins in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Online. Without going deep into details the issue essentially boils down to the restricted and secure environment in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Online. Microsoft erred on the side of safety here, and it's hard to fault them for that. With that said, it's not an inherent limitation, and after sufficient security testing, a fix allowing Workflow Activity Plugins on CRM Online should be possible and is planned.

So this is the issue, how do we work around it?

Plugins 101

It wouldn't make much sense to discuss a limitation for plugins without first discussing what plugins are. A plugin in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 is a .NET executable which implements the Microsoft.Xrm.Sdk.IPlugin interface. The interface requires one method to be implemented: Execute(IServiceProvider). You register your assembly with your CRM system using a tool provided in the SDK. An instance of your class implementing IPlugin will be constructed, and its Execute() method called under certain conditions. Typically this is when a record is created or updated. These events are called Messages. Of particular interest are the Update and Create messages. As one would expect, the Create message is sent upon creation of a record of a specific entity which you specify when you register your plugin to a step. Similarly the Update message is sent when a record is updated. Note that you can specify a subset of record fields to listen to. If you only care when the name of an record changes, you can specify this when you register your step. Please note that when you receive an Update message, only the updated fields will be populated in the target passed to your plugin.

The Solution

The solution I recently used to overcome this, is to trigger the execution of a plugin through clever use of the Update message. First I created a trigger field on the entity in question as a whole number. I registered my plugin to execution on the Update message, and only listen to the trigger field I defined. To invoke the plugin from a workflow I simply update the trigger field.

I mentioned that one may wish to invoke a plugin in the middle of a workflow, which implies there is more business logic to be run following the execution of the plugin. In my case the remaining business logic needed to be executed on records created in my plugin, and so I created a trigger to execute a workflow on the created records which contained the remaining logic. This could have been simplified somewhat by using the Create message, but other requirements prevented this.

I'll close by mentioning that in other situations, it may be appropriate to use a Wait Condition in your workflow to suspend it until the Plugin is done executing, which allows you to keep only one workflow and one plugin. This wasn't applicable in my particular case, but it is worth mentioning.

Goodbye, (not so) Cruel World

I'd like to thank you for reading my first blog post, I hope you've enjoyed it at the very least, and I would be delighted if I added another useful tool to your toolbox enabling you to customize Microsoft Dynamics CRM even more effectively.

Cheers,
Dan

How to Predict CRM User Adoption

blog@webfortis.com — Tue, 01 May 2012 09:12:00 -0700

I just love all the time and attention that our clients and consultants are giving to user adoption these days. Ten years ago, we consultants used to have to describe user adoption to our clients, explain that it was their single greatest risk for project failure, and try to convince them that the efforts built into our budget and project plan to facilitate adoption were indeed vitally important to the success of their project.

But it seems we've turned a corner in the last few years, and I'm finding more openness to that conversation on recent projects. While this new openness is real progress - and it's comforting to find in our industry - the practical steps of assessing and addressing threats to solid user adoption remain obscure to many project teams.

Here are five data points that I think are worth evaluation for every CRM user audience. If we can assess and address each of these five issues early and often, building user adoption into our project lifecycle as a separate and distinct discipline, the total risk of CRM project failure will drop significantly.

1. Digital Natives vs. Digital Immigrants

A guy named Marc Prensky coined these terms back in 2001. Kudos to him! The "digital divide" is of primary concern to a CRM project team. If our users are totally comfortable with technology, our job in designing software that is easy to use, and training users to perform specific tasks, is that much easier. But let's not think in terms of black and white; it is useful to consider both the median, and the lowest reasonable or acceptable, techno-savvy represented among our intended CRM user audience. Next, let's allow that assessment to constrain and inform our design and training efforts throughout the project. (For more information on educating across the digital divide, see Marc's website at http://marcprensky.com.)

2. Collaborative and Virtual Workspaces

Has your user audience been working with data silos, or are they accustomed to the "pile on" nature of shared content and data? Facebook is a great example of a very pedestrian collaborative virtual environment. If your soon-to-be CRM users have lived their entire corporate careers working one user at a time on data stored in Excel spreadsheets, you may need to help them along the capability maturity model to realize that when CRM is introduced, they will be sharing data with many other users. How do they perceive that change? It may scare them, and it is your task to calm, soothe, and reassure them that a collaborative workspace is a positive change.

3. Relational Databases

Many of us take for granted the ability to watch as another colleague diagrams boxes and lines on a whiteboard, labelling the connections with one-to-many, many-to-one, and many-to-many tags that are in fact meaningless and complex to non-tecnical users. Your user audience may understand parent/child relationships within data sets when they are presented in the form of a report or print out, but may need your help translating that logical heirarchy onto the screen of a living, breathing, feature-rich CRM application. Don't take your own intelligence for granted. As CRM implementation consultants, it is our responsibility to close the gap between our soon-to-be CRM users and the nuances of the new software. Don't blame them if the relationship of a Contact to an Account is not second nature to them - they're new to the system. Look in the mirror - you built the thing.

4. Points of Pain

Moving away from the technical abilities of users, let's consider their expectations vs. what you are actually going to deliver. CRM users assume that you have made a promise to them - whether or not you have explicitly verbalized that commitment. They assume that if their company is investing time and money in this new system, that that same new system should make their lives substantially easier. It should provide a net gain in productivity for them. This is an entirely distinct user adoption risk that deserves serious consideration. For each user that will log into CRM, specifically which of their daily points of pain do you intend to eliminate in exchange for their daily use of the system? They assume there will be a quid pro quo. "I will use this system, keep the records up to date, track my stuff, and do my job using this tool. But, what's in it for me?" Can you answer that question, for each role you intend to support? The time to ask this question is before you begin to design the solution, while you are setting the overall direction for the project effort. A caution: Never bite off more than you are sure you can chew; ask for points of pain and priorities for them, and shoot for the low hanging fruit first. And another caution: Never assume that you know what the user would say without asking them; your arrogance would soon eclipse your ignorance.

5. Insight vs. Oversight

You know the Golden Rule, right? No, I mean this one, "The one with the gold makes the rules." Nothing could be truer in a CRM project. How often do we walk into design workshops for CRM, and the managers and executives in the room (the folks with the gold) begin driving our requirements towards improved reporting and data capture ("Those all should be required fields!") rather than focusing on removing bottlenecks and breakdowns for regular staff? When working with new CRM clients or delivering best practices seminars, I often point out that there are four types of stakeholders on any CRM project, and that their needs are often different, and sometimes conflict. Managers expect better data for reporting and forecasting; that makes sense, since a manager's job is to monitor and measure things. But end users expect real productivity gains from CRM, and they are far too often disappointed. In the heart of every sales rep I have ever trained to use CRM, they are begging, "Please... just help me sell more in less time." And for a support rep, "Help me resolve cases faster, with better customer satisfaction." Every CRM stakeholder could use better data, but we have to understand that data insight results in higher productivity, and data oversight results in more fields on every page in the software. There is an art to designing for productivity while still delivering data for measurement.

It is a mistake to consider user adoption as a late phase or effort in the overall project. No, user adoption is a thread that runs throughout the entire course of the implementation, influencing everything from hardware selection for users to cosmetic names of fields on forms.

This new and recent openness to proactively address user adoption during our CRM projects is comforting. But it is incumbent on us, as folks responsible for executing successful CRM projects, to leverage that openess and lead our teams to deliver substantial improvements on prior efforts. I'd love to hear your thoughts. Contact me here, at Webfortis, or online via LinkedIn at http://www.linkedin.com/in/crmconsulting.

Here's to your success!

Christopher Bates

MS CRM 2011 Field Formatting and Regular Expression Objects with JavaScript

blog@webfortis.com — Sat, 07 Apr 2012 16:02:00 -0700

One area that Microsoft CRM 2011 needs assistance in is establishing data input standards and validation. Simple data entry points can quickly start to lose shape if a system administrator doesn’t apply framework to ensure that the application users input data matches the desired requirements. Things like formatting a Phone Number or checking a Zipcode can go a long way to ensuring the data in a system is reliable and presented in a user friendly format, as well as making the data present correctly when used in views and reports.

Because MS CRM 2011 uses JavaScript as its client side scripting language you can rely on Regular Expression Objects (RegExp) to perform these sorts of tasks. I prefer not to restrict a user from entering data, but rather collect the data and if it matches an expression, ensure it is stored in a predetermined format. There are also many things to consider, when determining how to produce the data in the predetermined format. Consider a phone number, in some cases an application user might enter a seven digit number without the area code which would be less then desirable.

Following the North American Numbering Plan (NANP), long distance United States number would start with a 1 as the Country Code followed by the area code, then the prefix and then finally the last 4 digit of the number. So in this example we will assume that the Contacts in the application are primarily from the United States and it is the desire to format the number in the following format. +1 (XXX) XXX-XXXX, this format presents nicely for views and reports.

Phone Number entered into a field without formatting assigned:

The first step to setting up a feature to review a Phone Number that has been entered is to provide a function. The function will test what was entered by the application user, and if it matches the desired expression it will return it formatted. When adding these sorts of functions, it is best to design them to be used universally and not tied to a specific data attribute. In the example below a string variable is passed into the function to be tested against the expression. The method which you store these sorts of scripts in MS CRM 2011 are outside the scope of this Blog discussion, but will ensure we include that topic in a future blog.

function formatPhone(phonenum)

{

var regexObj = /^(?:\+?1[-. ]?)?(?:$?([0-9]{3})$?[-. ]?)?([0-9]{3})[-. ]?([0-9]{4})$/;

if (regexObj.test(phonenum))

{

var parts = phonenum.match(regexObj);

var phone = "";

if (parts[1]) { phone += "+1 (" + parts[1] + ") "; }

phone += parts[2] + "-" + parts[3];

return phone;

}

else

{

return phonenum;

}

Once you have establish the function you would simply call it from the onChange event of the data attribute you wish to test and format.

function phone_OnChange()

{

if (Xrm.Page.getAttribute("new_phonenumber").getValue() != null)

{

var startphnnum = Xrm.Page.getAttribute("new_phonenumber").getValue();

var finishphnnum = formatPhone(startphnnum);

Xrm.Page.getAttribute("new_phonenumber").setValue(finishphnnum);

}

Phone Number that has been passed to the formatting function:

You can enforce the entry of data in a certain format by clearing the value and triggering an alert that warns the application user that the data they entered matched the requirement. Caution should be used if enforcement is deployed. Ensure that you conduct comprehensive testing of your expressions as not to block valid data.

Sample Regular Expression Object string:

Zipcode var regexObj = /(^\d{5}$)|(^\d{5}-\d{4}$)/;

Email var regexObj = /^([a-zA-Z0-9_\.\-])+\@(([a-zA-Z0-9\-])+\.)+([a-zA-Z0-9]{2,4})+$/;

Note that the Email Regular Expression above determines if the string appears to look like an email, there is a standard that outlines exactly what a constitutes a valid email. That standard is outlined in RFC2822 and to achieve that standard additional development would need to occur on the provided expression.

WHAT IS CRM ANYWHERE?

blog@webfortis.com — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 12:08:00 -0700

If you or members of your organization are asking questions such as……

Can I use my iPad, Droid or tablet to access Dynamics CRM?
Can I have meaningful conversations with clients and prospects within my CRM while viewing their latest social media updates and status?
Can activity feeds flow through Dynamics CRM and store at client and prospect records?
Can I use cubes to design “What If” style forecasting and analysis in Dynamics CRM?

Then check out the latest and greatest updates for Mobility, Cross-Browser Support, Social Tools, Business Intelligence Tools in Dynamics CRM in this recently released Microsoft Dynamics CRM Q2 2012 Service Update "What's New Video". This is the video version of our Release Preview Guide. Includes great demos of mobility, BI and Analytics.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HVqc5MthbI

For more information, please feel free to contact me at sbeals@webfortis.com.

Debug Information

blog@webfortis.com — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 13:33:00 -0700

In Crm 2011 if you want to view more debug information than (Help à About) go to this page

Crm Online: https://<YourOrg>.crm.dynamics.com/home/home_debug.aspx

For On-Premise Crm: http://<SereverName>:<Port>/<YourOrg>/home/home_debug.aspx

This information change based on user security role.

CRM 2011: JavaScript Tutorial 01 - Basic Field Calculation

blog@webfortis.com — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 01:13:00 -0700

When customizing CRM for your business, you will undoubtedly run into the need for form-level customizations and business logic. In this tutorial we will be covering basic "Attribute" & "Control". Interactions in this tutorial which will help with implementing basic calculated fields. In order to understand this post, please read "A Brief Introduction to CRM 2011 JavaScript". This will cover creating and loading web resources into a solution as well as some other useful scripting resources.

Tutorial Scenario:

You need to trigger a calculation on a form when a field is updated
The user cannot edit the calculated field

Identified Needs:

Destination field needs to be disabled
Trigger field needs a trigger event
A web resource is needed to store the JavaScript

Each field has events associated with its control, you can see which triggers are associated with any control by opening the form customizations for any given entity and “Double Clicking” on a field.

NOTE: An attribute refers to the actual JavaScript object that contains data about the field, the control contains information about the base DOM element, visibility and whether or not a field is disabled.

Step 1: Disable field

Step 2: JavaScript Needed

I've named my fields new_triggerfield & new_calculatedfield. This function will update the calculated field when called. NOTE: I've created a web resource for this, and added it to the form.

function UpdateField() {

// Trigger Field

var trig = Xrm.Page.getAttribute("new_triggerfield");

// Destination Field

var dest = Xrm.Page.getAttribute("new_calculatedfield");

// Test to make sure the trigger field has a value, this will return null if blank.

if(trig.getValue() != null)

{

// Perform the calculation

var newValue = trig.getValue() * 3.14;

// Set the destination field's value to the new value (NOTE: To clear - dest.setValue(null);

dest.setValue(newValue);

}

Step 3: Add the event and test the changes

Now we can test the calculations, we should see results when the field loses focus.

Unfortunately, when we save the form and open it again we discover that the changes did not save! To fix this we must add an additional statement in order to save the changes back to the server. This happens because the field is disabled.

Step 4: Update Script To Save Changes

function UpdateField() {

var trig = Xrm.Page.getAttribute("new_triggerfield");

var dest = Xrm.Page.getAttribute("new_calculatedfield");

if(trig.getValue() != null)

{

var newValue = trig.getValue() * 3.14;

dest.setValue(newValue);

// Make sure the changes are saved back to the server - in CRM 4.0, this was crmForm.new_fieldname.ForceSubmit = true;

Xrm.Page.getAttribute("new_calculatedfield").setSubmitMode("always");

}

Finished: - Key Points

Updating field data by schema name
Retrieving field data by schema name
Disabling fields through UI
Force submit disabled field data

Introducing: Microsoft Dynamics CRM Anywhere!!!

blog@webfortis.com — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 17:45:00 -0700

Hi All!

I have Exciting news in the world of Dynamics CRM!

Yesterday at eXtremeCRM 2012 in Berlin, Microsoft announced the upcoming release of “Service Release 8” (aka R8) for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 slated for availability in Q2 2012 [which is right around the corner!!].

They’ve labeled this Service Release with the Tagline:

“Microsoft Dynamics CRM Anywhere” ... and it lives up to this mantra too!

The R8 service update is expected to promote 6 areas of interest:

1. Mobility

2. Multi Browser Support

3. Social Improvements

4. Industry Templates

5. SQL Server 2012

6. Industry Certifications

1.) Mobility

The launch of a new product named “Microsoft Dynamics CRM Mobile” will enable CRM Online, partner-hosted and on-premise customers with IFD to use CRM on up to three devices per user. These will be native clients, which means full offline support, on all the main mobile platforms including:

-Windows Phone 7.5

-iPhone & iPad

-Android

-BlackBerry

*This is a subscription service for $30 per user per month.

2.) Multi Browser Support

This feature has finally arrived! With R8 applied to your CRM 2011 server, Dynamics CRM will be fully supported on the following browsers:

-Internet Explorer 7 or above on Windows 7, Vista and XP

-Safari 5.1.1 or above on Mac OS-X or iOS5

-Firefox 6 or above on Windows 7, Vista and XP or Mac OS-X or iOS5

-Chrome 13 or above on Windows 7, Vista and XP.

3.) Social Improvements

Microsoft released the new Activity Feeds feature in November 2011 which provided Social features into CRM 2011. R8 introduces a series of enhancements to the Activity Feeds feature including:

-like/dislike

-enhanced filtering (e.g. @me, types of records I follow, record views)

-an updated mobile activity feeds client for Windows Phone 7.5.

4.) Industry Templates

Building on the work of Microsoft partners and its own consulting team, the Dynamics Labs will be releasing several industry templates into the Dynamics Marketplace. The first few templates will include:

-Wealth Management

-Non-Profit

-Health

The templates will include data model customizations, dashboards, workflows and sample data. They’re designed to help customers in these specific industries visualize how Dynamics CRM can help their business, and speed up an implementation without necessarily being a fully-packaged vertical industry product.

5.) SQL Server 2012

Microsoft’s have already been upgraded their data centers to SQL Server 2012 and the R8 service update will bring official support for partners and customers wanting to upgrade their own deployments to SQL Server 2012. Additionally, there will be some new CRM features that make use of SQL Server 2012 new capabilities including:

-Performance improvements

-Enhanced database recovery

-Next generation Business Intelligence providing pre-defined Power Pivot models, Power View reports, and real time-animated reports.

6.) Industry Certifications

Certifications are critical to enterprise adoption and Microsoft has been working hard over the last year to ensure that its data centers and CRM Online service meets several important certification standards including:

-ISO 27001

-SAS 70 Type II

-SOX

-SSAE 16 SOC1

-Safe Harbor

-Data Processing Agreement

-EU Model Clauses

-HIPAA compliance (supported through Business Partner Agreements).

Microsoft’s official announcement can be found at the Dynamics CRM 2011 Roadmap site here: http://crm.dynamics.com/en-us/roadmap

…And for even greater detail, as well as some nice screenshots, feel free to download the “Q2 2012 Service Update Release Preview Guide” here: http://crmpublish.blob.core.windows.net/docs/ReleasePreviewGuide.pdf

The future looks pretty exciting for Dynamics CRM… We’re a long ways away from our humble beginnings with CRM 1.2… And it just keeps getting better! :-)

Cheers,
Rob

Cloudy with a 99% Chance of Sales

blog@webfortis.com — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 16:22:00 -0700

“Sunny days, sweeping the clouds away…” Has your company seen sunnier days? Well, with cloud based CRM, the chance of sun and sales has just increased. So go find some shade, because you sure are going to need it!

The key to any strong business is using technology in a way that allows for increased interactions with customers. The goal is to create a three-dimensional view of the customer. For example, customers who know their sales representative’s name are more likely to return, and the retention of existing customers is key to sales goals. However, managing all information needed is a challenge for most companies. Dynamics CRM is a cloud-based solution to this problem. Imagine having all information needed about your customers in a centralized location. Well, with Dynamics CRM, that imagination becomes reality.

CRM:

In order for you to know the latest history and status of a contact, it is important to be able to access data at a moment’s notice. CRM, Customer Relationship Management, offers Web-based contact management applications that maintain data over the Web. Whether you need to store upcoming meetings, check pending tasks, or view opportunities for leads, the contact data you need is available by accessing the Internet. CRM systems also have tools that enable users to assign and dedicate tasks to employees with due dates. Your sales representatives have access to updated information on the Web relative to what they should be doing and when. This is especially useful when leading a group of sales representatives assigned to a single task. Communication has never been easier with the tools offered through Dynamics CRM.

Automation:

Sales Force Automation is crucial to successful sales. Businesses who spend too much time determining prospects of buyers often limit the amount of time actually spent with customers. Since customer service interactions better sales opportunities, programs that promote customer interactions are key to success in sales. Sales Force Automation allows for pipeline management when forecasting sales and managing relationships with customers. Sales representatives devote time to leads rather than prospects, which allows more deals to be closed. Sales Force Automation is beneficial to both management and sales people.

Reporting:

Having a way to quickly access contact numbers and addresses is only one struggle for businesses. Completing reports that are easily shared with an entire company is another. Luckily, Dynamics CRM offers vital reporting features. With these features, users automate to-do lists with creative templates. Sales reports are then available for editing. Some companies have unique methods for generating sales reports. Dynamics CRM 2011 has custom reports tools that enable users to produce high-quality, personalized reports more efficiently. Some companies require access to summary reports that list all contact data on a single sheet. Dynamics CRM software uses services online, which means that data is always updated in real-time, and information is never lost. More importantly, data is easily exported to the most popular applications used in the office.

Dynamics CRM Performance - International Data Center Anecdotal Evaluation

blog@webfortis.com — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 20:56:00 -0700

What's in a name? Well, depending on the selected region you enter when you sign up for Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online, your URL will have several different options in the URL. These options are as follows:

<<organization name>>.crm.dynamics.com
<<organization name>>.crm4.dynamics.com
<<organization name>>.crm5.dynamics.com

What does it mean?

Well - the URL that you are assigned is your Microsoft Dynamics data center location. Here is the mapping:

CRM = United States
CRM4 = Europe
CRM5 = Asia

Where is crm2 and crm3, and when do we see crm6 and crm7? Perhaps we'll learn more about that in another blog post. This blog is dedicated to the fact that it IS POSSIBLE to be provisioned in whatever datacenter you like - however that does not mean that you will receive any better performance, and in fact, will probably receive worse just due to the number of hops it takes to get from the data center to you.

The Country/Region setting is the second step when signing up for an organization and is shown below:

When you select the Country/Region, you are presented with options for your Country or Region:

If you select a country in Asia, you'll get the Asian datacenter, in Europe the European datacenter, etc.

On a whim we decided to run a test and provisioned out an organization in EACH of the datacenters to test the performance from our San Francisco headquarters. To run the test, we debated running a series of web traffic capture tools (such as fiddler, etc.), as well a network analyzer (to evaluate hops) and while each of these does have their place, we instead went with the NATIVE diagnostics that are available with Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online.

For those that don't know of these diagnostics, simply go to your URL and add the following to the end of the URL:

tools/diagnostics/diag.aspx

So if your URL is: http://<<organization name>>.crm.dynamics.com

Change it to http://<organization name>>.crm.dynamics.com/tools/diagnostics/diag.aspx

The tool looks like this:

Pretty cool, eh? It checks the following:

Latency Test
Bandwidth Test
Browser Info
IP Address
JavaScript Array Benchmark
JavaScript Morph Benchmark
JavaScript Base64 Benchmark
JavaScript Dom Benchmark

So there are a couple of options with the Tool (at the bottom), but the big button in the center that says 'Run' pretty much is key component to the tool.

In our case, we ran it on 3 sample Orgs, recently provisioned on each of the data centers from San Francisco, CA, USA with the following results:

Additionally, we ran (non-scientific) searchs and basic lookups and noticed SIGNIFICANT lag when working with anything other than the US data center.

Finally, you can review the log files/results that are run within the diagnostic tools to confirm and further validate the diagnostics.

Hopefully this is helpful when you are troublshooting client performance - but REMEMBER - this is only PART of the equation when evaluating performance with CRM Online - there are other factors such as Office/IE versions, Number of Records, etc. It is my recommendation to use this diagnostics IN COMBINATION with the following:

Finally- We would all love lightening fast speed for our CRM data, however the reality is that we are in a hosted model and there just sometimes things that we can't control - like when it's 5:30 in the evening, you're home and the entire neighborhood decides to jump their Cable modems and start downloading their Netflix episodes of "Breaking Bad"....Netflix now accounts for 25% of North American Internet traffic

Meet the Experts Live: Achieving High CRM User Adoption

blog@webfortis.com — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 17:33:00 -0700

What is coming next for CRM? Microsoft Dynamics CRM Statement of Direction

blog@webfortis.com — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 10:07:00 -0700

Have you wondered when and what is coming next for Dynamics CRM? (Perhaps even Dynamics CRM 6.0 or Dynamics CRM 2013/2014?)

Check out the Statement of Direction for CRM.

The following is from the introduction:

With upcoming releases of Microsoft Dynamics CRM, we will continue to put our philosophy into action with enhanced experiences that promote end-user productivity and demonstrate the rich, "better together" value of Microsoft technologies. We also expect to provide new experiences and capabilities that help customers and partners get the most value from key emerging trends such as cloud computing, mobility, and social technologies.

We will continue to focus on rapid, but substantive, innovation that leverages Microsoft Dynamics CRM as the easiest and fastest way to experience the full benefits of Microsoft technology for your organization. Additionally, we remain committed to sustaining the „Power of Choice‟ and the ability to transition between cloud-based and on-premises delivery of CRM as a key point of customer value and flexibility.

We encourage you to read the whitepaper for additional details, and believe you‟ll agree that Microsoft Dynamics CRM is well-positioned to provide tremendous value to organizations of all sizes and industries going forward.

The following addressed the particulars related to the latest features around Activity Feeds:

Microsoft has significant collaboration assets and is continuing to extend those capabilities across a number of products including Microsoft SharePoint, Microsoft Lync, and Microsoft Office. Microsoft Dynamics CRM will harness and surface these broader Microsoft investments as part of specific new experiences that facilitate direct customer engagement and clear business value. We will deliver an innovative new experience in this area, while supporting some common capabilities such as:

Micro-blogging: encompassing important status updates and notifications regarding business events and actions.

Business activity feeds: delivering configurable real-time notifications regarding important relationships and significant business events.

Social intelligence: identification of data patterns and streams to enhance customer service and marketing decision-making.

Download the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Statement of Direction (SOD) here:

http://www.webfortis.com/downloads/crm2011/CRM_StatementOfDirection_May2011.pdf