Aggregated Intelligence

IIS–migrating site settings from one server to another

2012-05-30T17:03:00.001-06:00

Here is a simple way to migrate your sites and app-pools from one server to another (I was setting up a new dev machine for myself)

Export app-pools and sites from source machine:

%windir%\system32\inetsrv\appcmd list apppool /config /xml > c:\apppools.xml

%windir%\system32\inetsrv\appcmd list site /config /xml > c:\sites.xml

Import app-pools and sites onto destination machine:

%windir%\system32\inetsrv\appcmd add apppool /in < c:\apppools.xml

%windir%\system32\inetsrv\appcmd add site /in < c:\sites.xml

Note:

When you import the app-pool, you will need to edit the apppools.xml file to remove all those app-pools that have already been defined on your destination computer (eg: DefaultAppPool)

When you import the sites, you may get errors, just delete the sites that cause the errors and reimport the sites.xml file.

Note 2:

If you need to export only a single site use the following command:

appcmd list SITE /site.name:SITENAME /config /xml > c:\SITENAME.xml

Biztalk–pipeline.exe error: System cannot find the file specified

2012-05-16T21:45:00.001-06:00

If the error is being thrown from mscorlib, then check the path to the pipeline (btp) file. Also check the path to the input file. (I normally provide the full path to the files).

If the error is being thrown from your custom dll, then make sure that any libraries that you are referencing are installed in the GAC.

Error message:

Message: The system cannot find the file specified.
HRESULT: 80070002

BTSScnSSOApplicationConfig–Storing application configuration in BizTalk SSO

2012-05-07T17:48:00.001-06:00

There are 2 tools that you use to manage your application data: SsoManage.exe and BTSScnSSOApplicationConfig.exe.

SsoManage.exe can be found at “C:\Program Files\Common Files\Enterprise Single Sign-On”

But for testProperty, you need to actually build it. Do this by browsing to “BT Server\MSI\Program Files\SDK\Scenarios\Common\SSOApplicationConfig\bin” folder (the folder is extracted when you unzip the Developer edition of BizTalk).

Once in the SSOApplicationConfig folder, run “Setup.Bat”, which will build “BTSScnSSOApplicationConfig.exe” for you.

Commands:

SsoManage:

SsoManage uses an xml file to define an application and a list of config properties. Here is an example:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<sso>
    <application name="MyTestApp">
        <description>My first app</description>
        <appUserAccount>BizTalk Application Users</appUserAccount>
        <appAdminAccount>BizTalk Server Administrators</appAdminAccount>
        <field ordinal="0" label="dummyDoNotUseOrDelete" masked="no" />
        <field ordinal="1" label="testProperty" masked="no" />
        <flags configStoreApp="yes" allowLocalAccounts="yes" enableApp="yes" />
    </application>
</sso>

You import the XML using the SsoManage –CreateApp “xmlfile” command.

BTSScnSSOApplicationConfig:

And you set property values using:

btsscnssoapplicationconfig -set MyTestApp "ConfigProperties" "testProperty" "testConnectionString"

And you get property values using:

btsscnssoapplicationconfig -get MyTestApp "ConfigProperties" "testProperty"

Using DebugView with BizTalk for debugging

2012-05-07T14:34:00.001-06:00

DebugView is used to view trace messages output by an application on Windows. (get it from:http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896647).

Once you have downloaded and have DebugView running, you need to instrument your BizTalk process to perform tracing. The easiest way to do this, is to insert an Expression shape onto your orchestration and add the following code into the expression:

System.Diagnostics.Trace.WriteLine("Hello World");

In DebugView, make sure that you have capturing enabled for Global Win32 (“Capture” ==> “Capture Global Win32”). When you start the capture, you should see trace information.

Setting up GacUtil as part of your post build step

2012-05-07T12:11:00.001-06:00

Here is a simple set of commands to get GacUtil to run as part of the post-build step (via the project properties dialog)

set var="C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v7.0A\Bin\NETFX 4.0 Tools\x64\gacutil.exe" /i "$(TargetPath)" /f
echo running gacutil
echo %var%

Entity type codes in CRM Dynamics

2012-04-27T09:50:00.001-06:00

You can get the entity type codes on MSDN. (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb887791.aspx, note this is from CRM 4.0 documentation, but valid for CRM 2011 too)

Another way you can get them is through the CRM database using the following query:

SELECT ObjectTypeCode,Name
FROM
ENTITYVIEW
order BY ObjectTypeCode

The above is the only way to get entity type-codes for custom entities.

1    Account
2    Contact
3    Opportunity
4    Lead
5    Annotation
6    BusinessUnitMap
7    Owner
8    SystemUser
9    Team
10    BusinessUnit
11    PrincipalObjectAccess
12    RolePrivileges
13    SystemUserLicenses
14    SystemUserPrincipals
15    SystemUserRoles
16    AccountLeads
17    ContactInvoices
18    ContactQuotes
19    ContactOrders
20    ServiceContractContacts
21    ProductSalesLiterature
22    ContactLeads
23    TeamMembership
24    LeadCompetitors
25    OpportunityCompetitors
26    CompetitorSalesLiterature
27    LeadProduct
28    RoleTemplatePrivileges
29    Subscription
30    FilterTemplate
31    PrivilegeObjectTypeCodes
32    SalesProcessInstance
33    SubscriptionSyncInfo
35    SubscriptionTrackingDeletedObject
36    ClientUpdate
37    SubscriptionManuallyTrackedObject
40    TeamRoles
41    PrincipalEntityMap
42    SystemUserBusinessUnitEntityMap
43    PrincipalAttributeAccessMap
44    PrincipalObjectAttributeAccess
112    Incident
123    Competitor
126    DocumentIndex
127    KbArticle
129    Subject
132    BusinessUnitNewsArticle
135    ActivityParty
150    UserSettings
1001    ActivityMimeAttachment
1002    Attachment
1003    InternalAddress
1004    CompetitorAddress
1006    CompetitorProduct
1010    Contract
1011    ContractDetail
1013    Discount
1016    KbArticleTemplate
1017    LeadAddress
1019    Organization
1021    OrganizationUI
1022    PriceLevel
1023    Privilege
1024    Product
1025    ProductAssociation
1026    ProductPriceLevel
1028    ProductSubstitute
1030    SystemForm
1031    UserForm
1036    Role
1037    RoleTemplate
1038    SalesLiterature
1039    SavedQuery
1043    StringMap
1055    UoM
1056    UoMSchedule
1070    SalesLiteratureItem
1071    CustomerAddress
1072    SubscriptionClients
1075    StatusMap
1080    DiscountType
1082    KbArticleComment
1083    OpportunityProduct
1084    Quote
1085    QuoteDetail
1086    UserFiscalCalendar
1088    SalesOrder
1089    SalesOrderDetail
1090    Invoice
1091    InvoiceDetail
1111    SavedQueryVisualization
1112    UserQueryVisualization
1113    RibbonTabToCommandMap
1115    RibbonContextGroup
1116    RibbonCommand
1117    RibbonRule
1120    RibbonCustomization
1130    RibbonDiff
1140    ReplicationBacklog
1200    FieldSecurityProfile
1201    FieldPermission
1202    SystemUserProfiles
1203    TeamProfiles
2000    AnnualFiscalCalendar
2001    SemiAnnualFiscalCalendar
2002    QuarterlyFiscalCalendar
2003    MonthlyFiscalCalendar
2004    FixedMonthlyFiscalCalendar
2010    Template
2011    ContractTemplate
2012    UnresolvedAddress
2013    Territory
2020    Queue
2027    License
2029    QueueItem
2500    UserEntityUISettings
2501    UserEntityInstanceData
3000    IntegrationStatus
3231    ConnectionRole
3232    ConnectionRoleAssociation
3233    ConnectionRoleObjectTypeCode
3234    Connection
4000    Equipment
4001    Service
4002    Resource
4003    Calendar
4004    CalendarRule
4005    ResourceGroup
4006    ResourceSpec
4007    ConstraintBasedGroup
4009    Site
4010    ResourceGroupExpansion
4011    InterProcessLock
4023    EmailHash
4101    DisplayStringMap
4102    DisplayString
4110    Notification
4200    ActivityPointer
4201    Appointment
4202    Email
4204    Fax
4206    IncidentResolution
4207    Letter
4208    OpportunityClose
4209    OrderClose
4210    PhoneCall
4211    QuoteClose
4212    Task
4214    ServiceAppointment
4215    Commitment
4230    UserQuery
4250    RecurrenceRule
4251    RecurringAppointmentMaster
4299    EmailSearch
4300    List
4301    ListMember
4400    Campaign
4401    CampaignResponse
4402    CampaignActivity
4403    CampaignItem
4404    CampaignActivityItem
4405    BulkOperationLog
4406    BulkOperation
4410    Import
4411    ImportMap
4412    ImportFile
4413    ImportData
4414    DuplicateRule
4415    DuplicateRecord
4416    DuplicateRuleCondition
4417    ColumnMapping
4418    PickListMapping
4419    LookUpMapping
4420    OwnerMapping
4423    ImportLog
4424    BulkDeleteOperation
4425    BulkDeleteFailure
4426    TransformationMapping
4427    TransformationParameterMapping
4428    ImportEntityMapping
4500    RelationshipRole
4501    RelationshipRoleMap
4502    CustomerRelationship
4503    CustomerOpportunityRole
4567    Audit
4600    EntityMap
4601    AttributeMap
4602    PluginType
4603    PluginTypeStatistic
4605    PluginAssembly
4606    SdkMessage
4607    SdkMessageFilter
4608    SdkMessageProcessingStep
4609    SdkMessageRequest
4610    SdkMessageResponse
4611    SdkMessageResponseField
4613    SdkMessagePair
4614    SdkMessageRequestField
4615    SdkMessageProcessingStepImage
4616    SdkMessageProcessingStepSecureConfig
4618    ServiceEndpoint
4700    AsyncOperation
4702    WorkflowWaitSubscription
4703    Workflow
4704    WorkflowDependency
4705    IsvConfig
4706    WorkflowLog
4707    ApplicationFile
4708    OrganizationStatistic
4709    SiteMap
4710    ProcessSession
4800    WebWizard
4802    WizardPage
4803    WizardAccessPrivilege
4810    TimeZoneDefinition
4811    TimeZoneRule
4812    TimeZoneLocalizedName
7100    Solution
7101    Publisher
7102    PublisherAddress
7103    SolutionComponent
7105    Dependency
7106    DependencyNode
7107    InvalidDependency
8000    Post
8001    PostRole
8002    PostRegarding
8003    PostFollow
8005    PostComment
8006    PostLike
9100    Report
9101    ReportEntity
9102    ReportCategory
9103    ReportVisibility
9104    ReportLink
9105    TransactionCurrency
9106    MailMergeTemplate
9107    ImportJob
9333    WebResource
9502    SharePointSite
9508    SharePointDocumentLocation
9600    Goal
9602    GoalRollupQuery
9603    Metric
9604    RollupField

Dynamics CRM–Add new from sub grid causes Insufficient Permissions error

2012-04-19T16:26:00.001-06:00

If you get the “Insufficient Permissions” error when clicking on “Add New” from within a sub-grid of an entity (eg: you are in the form for an Account entity, and you click on Opportunity node and try and create a new opportunity), then you probably are missing read permissions on the “Attribute Map”.
Note: If you turn on tracing, you will see the error: “Error Details: Principal user (Id=GUID, type=8) is missing prvReadAttributeMap privilege”.

To get around this issue, you need to check the “Security Role” that that person is in and make sure that under the “Customization” tab, the “Attribute Map” entity has at least “Read” access.

CRM tracing

2012-04-18T11:56:00.001-06:00

CRM tracing can be enabled via the registry. Here is the script:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\MSCRM]
"TraceEnabled"=dword:00000001
"TraceRefresh"=dword:00000001

Copy the above code into a text file and rename the file to “.reg”. Run the file and tracing will be enabled.

The trace files are written to the folder: “C:\Program Files\Microsoft Dynamics CRM\Trace”.

To disable tracing use the following code:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\MSCRM]
"TraceEnabled"=dword:00000000
"TraceRefresh"=dword:00000000

You should be able to enable disable tracing through the use of Powershell scripts, but I could never get it working. Here is the code I wrote (that doesn’t seem to work):

Add-PSSnapin Microsoft.Crm.PowerShell

$input = Read-Host "Enable/Disable tracing (e/d)";

Write-Host "Running....";

if ($input.ToUpper() -eq "E")
{
    $setting = Get-CrmSetting TraceSettings
    $setting.Enabled="True";
    $setting.Categories="*:Verbose";
    Set-CrmSetting $setting;
    Write-Host "Trace folder: c:\Program Files\Microsoft Dynamics CRM\Trace"
}
elseif ($input.ToUpper() -eq "D")
{
    $setting = Get-CrmSetting TraceSettings
    $setting.Enabled="False";
    Set-CrmSetting $setting;
}
Write-Host "Tracesettings: ";
Get-CrmSetting TraceSettings;

Read-Host "Press any key to continue....";

DPM 2012–Powershell scripts

2012-04-17T15:59:00.001-06:00

To run DPM 2012 powershell scripts from machines other than the DPM server, you need to install the DPM Remote Administration component:

And for the scripts to run, you need to import the DPM powershell module using the following script:

$installPath = (Get-ItemProperty "HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Microsoft Data Protection Manager\Setup" "UIInstallPath").UIInstallPath
$dpmModuleFullPath = $installPath + "Modules\DataProtectionManager\DataProtectionManager.psd1"
Import-Module $dpmModuleFullPath

Car seat inspection stations

2012-04-15T08:44:00.001-06:00

I was looking for baby car seat inspection stations in Douglas County in Colorado and came across the NHTSA’s Inspection Station Location web-page, which is a very useful resource to find inspection stations across the country.

http://www.nhtsa.gov/cps/cpsfitting/index.cfm

Also, here is the list of the currently rated car-seats by the NHTSA. If you use the link, you can sort/manipulate/duplicate the worksheet directly: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AjvtUeIvT94wdDFlWThFV3c3RUZsVENtcFVaNkhRenc

CRM 2011 plugin - Attribute ‘xxxx’ cannot be NULL

2012-04-13T13:39:00.001-06:00

I was getting the “Attribute ‘xxxx’ cannot be NULL” error while attempting to update a CRM entity. What I was trying to do was to use the Entity object to perform an update and I think that was causing an error as the attribute ‘xxxx’ which was a required attribute did not have a value. But in my case, all I was trying to do was to update one of the attributes of that entity.

The original code that did not work:

Incident incident = new Incident();
incident.IncidentId = incidentGuid;
contact.new_Contact_Incident_Id = incident;

I was able to get my code working by using the EntityReference object. Here is the working code:

EntityReference incidentRef = new EntityReference(Incident.EntityLogicalName, incidentGuid);
contactEntity[“new_contact_incident_id”] = incidentRef;
PluginContext.OrganizationService.Update(contactEntity);

Tools list 2012

2012-04-13T11:10:00.001-06:00

I got a new computer at work and had to reinstall a bunch of software. Here is the list I made along the way.

General tools

Chrome: http://www.google.com/chrome/
GreenShot (Screen capture tool): http://www.getgreenshot.org/
NotePad++ (replacement for notepad): http://notepad-plus-plus.org/
Windows Live Writer: http://writer.live/com/
Paint.Net (replacement for Paint): http://www.dotpdn.com/downloads/pdn.html
Fences (Desktop management software): http://www.stardock.com/products/fences/
Spotify (music!): http://www.spotify.com
DisplayFusion (multiple monitor enhancements): http://www.displayfusion.com/
TeraCopy (enhanced file copy): http://codesector.com/teracopy
7-Zip (archive file tool): http://www.7-zip.org/

Developer tools

Visual Studio 2012 (msdn)
NuGet: http://www.nuget.org/
LinqPad: http://www.linqpad.net/
Fiddler: http://www.fiddler2.com/
WinMerge: http://winmerge.org/
SoapUI: http://soapui.org/
WCFStorm: http://www.wcfstorm.com/
PowerGui: http://powergui.org/
Sql Server (msdn)
SqlComplete Express/Free: http://devart.com/dbforge/sql/sqlcomplete
SSMS Tools: http://www.ssmstoolspack.com/download
Balsamiq (Screen mock-ups): http://www.balsamiq.com/
Hypermodel (UML modeling tool – great to visualize XSDs): http://www.xmlmodeling.com/hypermodel
Oracle DataModeler: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/developer-tools/datamodeler/overview/index.html
Team Foundation Kicks: http://www.attrice.info/cm/tfs/
Team Foundation Power Tools 2011: http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/c255a1e4-04ba-4f68-8f4e-cd473d6b971f
XML Notepad: http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=7973
Expresso Regular Expression development tool: http://www.ultrapico.com/Expresso.htm

SDKs and such:

Microsoft SDK for Windows 7 and .Net 4: http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=8279
Silverlight SDK: (4.0): http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=7335
Enterprise Library (5.0): http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff632023.aspx
Prism: http://compositewpf.codeplex.com/

System tools:

SysInternals Suite (awesome set of sys tools): http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb842062
Oracle VirtualBox (Virtual PC): https://www.virtualbox.org/
Remote Desktop Connection Manager (manage multiple remote desktop connections): http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=21101
Virtual Clone Drive (mount ISO files): http://www.slysoft.com/en/virtual-clonedrive.html
FileZilla FTP Client: http://filezilla-project.org/
WinDirStat (graphically view disk space usage): http://windirstat.info/

CRM 2011–Access is denied error–Javascript

2012-04-10T16:14:00.001-06:00

I was using the “MSXML2.XMLHTTP.3.0” activeX object to create connections to the CRM service and the code that I had previously written and tested as working was suddenly failing. The error was occurring on the open method and the exception was “[object Error]”. Looking at the exception.message property, the error was “Access is denied”

After some digging and some providence, I found out that the error would happen only when I hit the URL as “http://www.company.com/…..” but not if I hit the url with “http://company/…..”

Turns out the “Access is Denied” is being thrown because of cross-site scripting restrictions that are imposed on the XmlHttp object.

Here is the original way I was creating the URL:

oDataEndpointUrl = Xrm.Page.context.getServerUrl() + "/XRMServices/2011/OrganizationData.svc

So getServerUrl() was not returning the url correctly formatted based on how users were navigating to the page.

To overcome the issue I used the following code:

oDataEndpointUrl = "/" + Xrm.Page.context.getOrgUniqueName() + "/XRMServices/2011/OrganizationData.svc";

This makes the URL relative and hence I was able to get around the cross-site scripting issue.

Note: another way to get around this issue is if you add the URLS to the same zone in Internet Explorer.

References:

About Native XMLHTTP: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms537505(v=VS.85).aspx

Smtp4dev–SMTP server for development

2012-04-07T18:39:00.001-06:00

Came across “Smtp4dev” a CodePlex project that runs a local service that acts as an SMTP server. Extremely useful for testing sending of email messages (especially when you don’t have an SMTP server available for such testing).

Check it out at: http://smtp4dev.codeplex.com/

Sql Server, Transaction Isolation and Entity Framework

2012-04-04T21:19:00.000-06:00

Recently I had to work through some deadlock issues that I was getting while using EF.

Here are some things that I found out and is useful information for you to know:

EF by default uses SQL-Server’s default isolation mode, which is Read Committed. Something to know about read-committed reads is that by default it performs the reads using shared locks which will block reads of modified data.(Unless you use the setting READ_COMMITTED_SNAPSHOT and set it to on).
When EF performs a SaveChanges, it implicitly uses a transaction. This by default will be Read Committed.
But, if EF finds an ambient transaction, it will use that transaction.
So you can override the isolation level by using a transaction.
But, remember, by default transactions in .Net use “Serializable” isolation level, which is the MOST restrictive transaction isolation level.
So, its important to use a transaction, that uses an isolation level that makes sense for your operation. Here is an example:

using (var transactionScope = new TransactionScope(TransactionScopeOption.Required, new TransactionOptions { IsolationLevel= IsolationLevel.Snapshot }))
{
        // update some tables using entity framework
        context.SaveChanges();
        transactionScope.Complete();
}

I am using IsolationLevel.Snapshot in the above transaction to reduce the possibility of deadlocks. The reason for this can be seen in this paragraph from MSDN’s documentation:

SNAPSHOT isolation specifies that data read within a transaction will never reflect changes made by other simultaneous transactions. The transaction uses the data row versions that exist when the transaction begins. No locks are placed on the data when it is read, so SNAPSHOT transactions do not block other transactions from writing data. Transactions that write data do not block snapshot transactions from reading data. You need to enable snapshot isolation by setting the ALLOW_SNAPSHOT_ISOLATION database option in order to use it.

MSDN:

Deadlocking: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms177433.aspx
Making it real: Connections, Transactions, Performance and More: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/orm-9780596520281-01-16.aspx
Minimizing deadlocks: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms191242.aspx
Set Transaction Isolation:http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms173763.aspx
IsolationLevel enumeration:http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.data.isolationlevel.aspx
Using Snapshot Isolation: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/tcbchxcb(v=VS.80).aspx

ThrowIfMaxHttpCollectionKeysExceeded exception being thrown by an Asp.Net website

2012-04-04T15:11:00.001-06:00

One of our Asp.Net websites started throwing an “ThrowIfMaxHttpCollectionKeysExceeded” exception with message that looked like this:

“Operation is not valid due to the current state of the object”

It turns out that in late december (2011), Microsoft put out a patch for a DOS vulnerability. This patch limits many different collections to a value of 1000. (One of them being the number of keys allowed in the HttpCollection).

To fix it, you need to up the limit to a number that’s reasonable for your application, using the following configuration setting:

<configuration>
  <appSettings>
    <add key="aspnet:MaxHttpCollectionKeys" value="1000" />
  </appSettings>
</configuration>

Notes:

Microsoft Security Bulletin MS 11-100: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/security/bulletin/ms11-100

An ASP.Net request that has lots of form keys… fails with an exception: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2661403

Unable to reassign some CRM records after upgrade to 2011

2012-03-19T16:11:00.001-06:00

I started having a weird issue where records for some CRM entities could not be reassigned to other users (behavior in CRM 4.0), I was able to only reassign the records to users (shown in the screen shot below – notice “Look for” is defaulted to “Team” and its value cannot be changed.)

What was odd was that this behavior was not consistent across all entities. It was occurring on the Account, Contact, Opportunity entities. But it was not happening on Lead and some other entities.

When I exported the Lead entity and compared it with the Account entity (compared the customizations.xml file), one thing that jumped out at me was that there was an additional LookupType that was set for the Lead entity:


Lead customization.xml file	Account customization.xml

So I copied the LookupTypes from the lead file to the account customization file and voila! it worked.

Some other things that you need to do to complete the fix:

1. as shown above add the LookupType 8 to the LookUpTypes collection under “EntityInfo\Entity\Attributes\Attribute” node.
As I was working with the Account entity, in your XML look for EntityInfo with Name = “Account” and the nested Attribute with PhysicalName = “ownerid”.

2. Next under “EntityRelationships” for an “EntityRelationship” node that references AttributeName “OwnerId” (this will be “owner_accounts” for the owner entity). You need to update the “Lookuptypes” attribute to support both 8 and 9 values, as shown below:

<field name="ownerid" requiredlevel="systemrequired" imemode="auto" lookupstyle="single" lookupbrowse="0" lookuptypes="8, 9">

Import the customization file and you should now be able to select Team or Users.

Note:

If you want to restrict the lookup to only users (and not users and teams), just replace the value of “9” to a value of “8” at both the “Attribute” level and the "EntityRelationship” level.

CRM 2011 Ribbon: Disabling/Enabling elements based on form fields

2012-03-17T12:00:00.001-06:00

If you need to enable disable a ribbon control based on the value within a form field, you need to use the “ValueRule”

Gotcha: Don’t use the default value element of the “ValueRule” as that seems to interfere with the null value check.

Here is a very simple example:

1. First create the enable rule:

2. Next reference the enable rule via its ID in your command definition:

3. And in your button, you reference the command definition, by its ID

4. Finally, add the LocLabels for your button and you are done:

Here is the complete example:

The demo also shows you how to create a custom group and add it to the “Main Tab” of the “Opportunity” entity. The button that I add “MyDemoButton” is added to the custom group “Demo Group”.

Editing CRM 2011 “Customizations.Xml” in VisualStudio

2012-03-16T13:20:00.001-06:00

AKA “Enabling intellisense in Visual Studio for editing the Customizations.xml file”

Download the CRM 2011 SDK. In the SDK you will find a folder called “Schemas”.

Open the “customizations.xml” from the solutions package that you exported out of CRM in Visual Studio. Press the “F4” button (or go to the “Properties” window). Click in Schemas:

Add the “customizationssolution.xsd” schema, and after that you should have intellisense!

Note: in case schema intellisense does not work for you, try adding the following schemas in addition to “customizationsSolution.xsd” file:

fetch.xsd
formxml.xsd
isv.config.xsd
ribboncore.xsd
ribbontypes.xsd
ribbonwss.xsd
sitemaptype.xsd

CRM 2011 Ribbon Customization

2012-03-14T18:12:00.001-06:00

Siva has written almost 12 different posts on different aspects of CRM 2011 ribbon customization. As I could not find all the links in one place, here is the list:

Ribbon Customization Part 1

Ribbon customization Part 1 – add a custom tab

Ribbon customization Part 2 – understanding the ribbon customization

Ribbon customization Part 3 – Add a custom tab to a specific entity

Ribbon customization Part 4 – Add a custom tab, custom group and custom group and custom buttons to a grid ribbon for a specific entity

Ribbon customization Part 5 – Add a custom tab, custom group and custom buttons to a form ribbon, grid ribbon for a specific entity

Ribbon customization Part 6 – Add a custom group and custom buttons to existing tab for a specific entity

Ribbon customization Part 7 – Hiding a Ribbon button

Ribbon customization Part 8 – Hiding a group of ribbon buttons

Ribbon customization Part 9 – Adding a button to existing group for custom entity’s ribbon

Ribbon customization Part 10 – Hide “Add Existing” button

Ribbon customization Part 11 – Enable, Disable ribbon button based on security role

Ribbon customization Part 12: Custom ribbon tab in CRM is always selected

Siva’s index for Ribbon customization is available here, but its not upto date: http://dynamicscrm2011.wordpress.com/2011/05/05/dynamics-crm-2011-ribbon-customization-index/

Unable to run website that uses Microsoft.Crm.Sdk.dll after CRM 2011 upgrade

2012-03-13T16:20:00.001-06:00

I was getting the following error when loading a website that used the Microsoft.Crm.Sdk dll (CRM 2011). The error started occurring right after I installed CRM 2011.

System.IO.FileLoadException: Could not load file or assembly 'Microsoft.Crm.Sdk, Version=5.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35' or one of its dependencies. The located assembly's manifest definition does not match the assembly reference. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80131040)
File name: 'Microsoft.Crm.Sdk, Version=5.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35' ---> System.IO.FileLoadException: Could not load file or assembly 'Microsoft.Crm.Sdk, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35' or one of its dependencies. The located assembly's manifest definition does not match the assembly reference. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80131040)
File name: 'Microsoft.Crm.Sdk, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35'

Luckily for me, CRM 2011 Update Rollup 6 was available. Installing this rollup and then restarting the CRM server fixed the issue for me.

If you need a manual fix, please check David Jennaway’s post: http://mscrmuk.blogspot.com/2011/02/using-crm-40-assemblies-on-crm-2011.html

Could not load type “System.ServiceModel.Activation.HttpModule”

2012-03-12T21:30:00.001-06:00

After my IIS server got some updates, it looked like I started getting the “Could not load type “System.ServiceModel.Activation.HttpModule” from assembly “System.ServiceModel, Version=3.0.0.0, Culture=neutral,PublickKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089”

It looked to me as though I needed to reregister Asp.Net 4.0 dlls. And AspNet_RegIIs is the answer.

Run : aspnet_regiis –iru

Aspnet_Regiis can be found in one of the following locations (based on your OS type)

%windir%\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319
%windir%\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v4.0.30319 (64-bit machine)

PowerShell and EventLog creation

2012-03-12T16:00:00.001-06:00

Powershell provides easy cmdlets that allow you to query event logs, as well as create and delete event log sources. But I could not find a simple cmdLet that allows you to check for the existence of an event log source.

Here is what I came up with:

if ( -not [System.Diagnostics.EventLog]::SourceExists($eventSourceName, $computerName))
{
        Write-Host "Creating event source $eventSourceName on computer $computerName..."
        New-EventLog -ComputerName $computerName -LogName Application -Source $eventSourceName
        Write-Host "Event source $eventSourceName successfully created on computer $computerName"
}

MSMQ–Security descriptor cannot be set on private queue error

2012-03-12T13:49:00.001-06:00

If you get the “Security descriptor cannot be set” error on a private queue, then it may have to do with permissions.

Here is how I solved it:

First thing to try:

By changing the ownership of the queue:

Right click on the queue and bring up the properties dialog.

On the “Security” tab, click on “Advanced”

Go to the “Owners” tab, select your account and click “Ok”. This should set you up as the owner. Now try and change the settings. If this works, you are done. If not read on:

Manually update security (this is hacky and do so at your own risk):

Private queue information is stored on the server where MSMQ is running in the folder “C:\Windows\System32\msmq\storage\lqs”

You will have to open all the files to find the one that stores the information for your queue. The name of the queue is stored in Label field:

The next thing you will have to do is create a dummy queue with the security setup such that you can edit that queue. After creating that queue, open up the configuration file from the “lqs” folder for that new queue and look for the “security” field. Copy that value from the newly created queue to the old queue which you could not edit. Save that file and restart MSMQ service.

You should be good to go!

Notes:

MSDN: Interpretting the file names in the storage directory of MSMQ

OptiRoute for Windows Phone 7

2012-03-11T11:38:00.001-06:00

Last week my latest Windows Phone 7 app got certified and became available for download on the Windows Phone App Store.

OptiRoute is a route optimization application, that “attempts” to come up with the shortest route around a set of locations that you enter. The reason that I say “attempts” is that OptiRoute uses a heuristic that allows it run very fast, but in doing so, there are cases where it may not find the most optimal route (more on that later – Check the technical background section). (The way I deal with the cases, is that I provide you with functionality that allows you to customize the route after it has been optimized)

Background:

When I was searching for a home to buy, I always found it hard to come up with an optimal route to visit all the homes in my list. I knew about computer algorithms like the travelling sales man problem, but could not find any implementations for use on a mobile platform (at that time I had an iPhone). One of the biggest problems with finding an optimal route around a set of locations is that its computationally intensive. And when you take into account that you are working on a mobile platform, every resource becomes that much more expensive to use.

When Microsoft launched its “30 to launch” initiative, I decided to port some early work I had done as a web-app with routing to the Windows Phone platform – OptiRoute is the result of that initiative.

The OptiRoute UI:

Welcome screen:

The first time you load up OptiRoute you will be presented with a welcome screen, that gives you a brief overview of the functions available within OptiRoute.

In addition to giving you a quick introduction to the main UI, this screen also allows you to load sample locations to check out the route optimization software (you need to scroll to the bottom of the page to view the load button):

Once you tap the “Load Sample Data” button, you can close out of the “welcome screen” and you will be presented the list of locations. (Tip: the welcome screen is only shown the first time you open OptiRoute. If you want to see it again, you can do so via the help screen). The screen showing you the list of locations is your “Home Screen”. You manage your route via this page.

Home Page (location list) and viewing your route:

Lets take a look at the route, without performing optimization. Click on the “Map Route” button . This will take you to the “Route Viewer” screen with a map of the route as well as detailed information on the route that you need to take.

By tapping “”, you can change the map type from “road” to “aerial”, as well as hide or show the detailed route information. Rotating your phone will show the map in full-screen:

Click the “back button” to return to the home screen.

Optimizing your route:

Lets optimize the route by clicking the “Optimize Route” button . Now when you click on the “Map Route” button, you will find that the route has been optimized:


Route before optimization	Route after optimization!

Customizing your Route:

Now what if you want to change the starting location? Go back to the home-screen and tap and hold the location you wish to make the start of your route until a context menu is displayed:

Tapping on the “Set as Start” button will make that location the starting point in your route. As you can see from the image above, this same context menu also provides you a way to delete locations from your route.

What if you want to manually change the route? You can do this using the “Reorder handles” that appear to the right of the location (highlighted in red in the image below):

Simply tap, hold and drag that location to the correct place in the route list.

Tip: “Map Route” button displays the route and performs the route based on the order of the locations on the home screen. So if you don’t “optimize” your route, you will be presented the route that reflects the order of the locations shown on the home page. This makes OptiRoute a handy tool for viewing your routes without even using the route optimizer.

Searching for locations:

You can add locations to your route via the “Search” screen. Version 1.0 of Optiroute only supports searching for addresses and points of interest (I plan on adding POIs in a later release).

Tap the “Add” button to visit the “Search” page.

Type in an address and tap the go button to find that location:

To add the location to your route, tap on the pushpin that represents the address you wish to visit and then tap the “Select” button. This will add the selected location to your route and take you back to the “home” screen.

Tip: If you wish to add your current location, tap the “Current Location” button .

Screen shots:

Here are some screenshots taken of the different screens within the application:

Technical background:

Route optimization has many different names (eg: Travelling Sales Man problem, etc.). If you have studied computer algorithms then you may know that the travelling sales man problem (TSP) is NP-Complete. OptiRoute uses a heuristic where it lays out all the locations on a grid, divides the grid into 4 quadrants and attempts to visit all the locations within a quadrant before moving on to the next quadrant. At the same time that its trying to visit each location, it attempts to not criss-cross the lines. The algorithm that I use is based on Sierpinski’s space filling curve (check out the video below to see how it fills 4 separate sections of the rectangle, filling each section before moving on to the next)

Sierpinski Space Filling Curve Animation (I created this video many years back and the routing algorithm is based off of this fractal)

Why is the heuristic important?

Determining the actual travelling route (the driving directions) between any 2 locations is an expensive operation. This is especially true on a phone, where bandwidth is limited (and you typically need to use a web-service to determine the driving directions between any pair of locations). In addition, if you had 10 locations to visit and you attempted to brute force find the optimal route, you would need to find out the distance between all 10 locations (which amounts to 45 separate route calculations: n(n-1)/2 ).

It is generally better to come up with a general idea of your route and then determine the driving directions between each pair of locations in that route (in which case you would need only 10 route calculations – a far cry from the 45 separate routes needed by the brute force implementation). Using the Sierpinski curve, I am able to determine the general route to visit the different locations (this is done on the phone itself) and then I use Bing’s mapping service to find out the actual route between each pair of locations as determined by my algorithm.

The idea of using a space filling curve to determine routing is not something that I invented and I have read about it in papers earlier. Mine is probably the first implementation of such a routing algorithm on the Windows phone platform and maybe any mobile platform.

Note: I had created a silverlight based app a long time ago based on a similar idea. That site has been down for a long time. But if you are interested in reading about it, check out: http://blog.aggregatedintelligence.com/2009/06/optiroute.html

When you may not get the optimal route:

The reason that you may not always get an optimal route is that while performing route optimization the algorithm is not looking at the “travelling distance”, but just the straight line distance between the different locations. This results in sometimes less than optimal routes when one-way streets are involved, or any other impediments are added to the actual route. In addition, the algorithm does not take into account traffic conditions and hence may not be able to find the route with the shortest travel time. But these problems typically occur only when all the locations to visit are concentrated in a small area (eg: downtown city center) and normally do not affect the route when routing on a larger scale.