Microsoft Dynamics CRM - Tips, Tricks & Add-ons - Inogic

Active Directory integration for Users in Dynamics CRM

2010-03-15T06:17:00Z

It is common knowledge that Dynamics CRM is based on Windows authentication. This means that for the users to be able to access Dynamics CRM, they should exist in Active Directory (AD) before they can be added as Users in Dynamics CRM. At the time of adding a System User in CRM, it asks you to enter the windows logon id, with that entered, it automatically auto populates the other information for the user like user name, email address etc. This information is picked from the AD User account that...(read more)

How to check the actual error reported for a Workflow failure

2010-03-08T06:42:00Z

When a workflow fails, all it shows in CRM is a window similar to the following. in any way to identify the cause of the failure, especially if you were using a workflow assembly in the workflow. To check the actual error reported during the execution workflow, you can search for the error code and message column of the System Job. You can create an advanced find view as described below to get the error message. - Go to advance find select “system job” entity with “all system job”. - Change the condition...(read more)

How to add scroll bar to CRM Dashboard accelerator

2010-03-02T13:04:00Z

The CRM Dashboard accelerator released displays Dashboards in its Workplace. However there is one issue with it, that being that it does not provide scrollbars to scroll through the page to view all the available charts on the screen. In this blog we have describe how to add the scrollbar for this report page. For this we need to do some changes in the “sitemap” file and add one custom page with iframe control. Steps are: 1) Create the custom page (DBpage.aspx) with following code. <html> <head>...(read more)

How to Sort CRM views by more than one attribute

2010-02-25T14:22:00Z

Quite often there stems a need to have the CRM views sorted by more than one column being displayed. Say you would first like to sort accounts by Type followed by City and then by the account name. Using the CRM view designer, we can only provide the sorting for one column. You can however achieve this by using CRM shortcut key combination of Ctrl+Shift+Mouse Click on the selected columns of the view. By default this view is sorted by Account Type. The Sorting works in the sequence in which the columns...(read more)

Experiences with recovering a CRM database marked as SUSPECT

2010-02-12T11:58:00Z

Unfortunately we had our CRM down because the CRM database was marked suspect in SQL. Had a tough time getting it back. Here we share our experience and the steps/commands that helped us get our system back up and running. These may not be the only way of fixing it and perhaps not everyone’s problem would be solved by following these but I hope some of the points below would perhaps get you closer to retrieving your data back. - Stop the SQL server service. - Go to Physical location of the suspected...(read more)

InoLink: QuickBooks - Dynamics CRM Integration Version 2.0 Released

2010-02-09T12:52:00Z

We have come up with the next version of InoLink: QuickBooks - Dynamics CRM Integration InoLink: QuickBooks is an integration link developed to integrate QuickBooks with Dynamics CRM. After detailed evaluation of the feedback received over a period of time we have come up with this version. What’s new in this version? 1. The general look and feel has been vastly improved for seamless integration with Dynamics CRM. 2. Better user experience in terms of use of Ajax for user feedback to processes. 3...(read more)

Sharing access in Dynamics CRM

2010-02-05T06:34:00Z

Dynamics CRM has the concept of record ownership. A record can only be owned by single user and not by a team or more than one users. Depending on the security roles defined it is possible to restrict a user to have access to only records owned by them. However in most practical situation where people work in teams it would be required to allow a group of persons to have access to certain records in addition to the records owned by them. In such case you can use the concept of “Sharing” that is available...(read more)

CRM Relationship Behavior (contd) - Cascading rule for Relationship Behavior

2010-02-02T06:07:00Z

We had written on CRM Entity Relationships in one of our earlier post on this blog. To take this further today we would like to discuss the way the settings for the Cascading Rules affect the related entities when an action is performed on the main entity. Cascading Rules: Following action can be taken on the parent entity - Assign - Delete - Merge - Reparent - Share - Unshare The cascading rules let you decide the action to be taken on the child entities when any of the above action is taken on...(read more)

InoDashboard – Dynamics CRM Business Intelligence Dashboard released

2010-01-25T11:58:00Z

Dynamics CRM requires a comprehensive tool for monitoring the KPI in a visual/dashboard format. Inogic labs has come up with InoDashboard, a Business Intelligence Dashboard designed for Microsoft Dynamics CRM to fill in this gap. This tool will allow the CRM users at each level to design a dashboard specific to them and include the reports and monitor areas specific to their interest. It comes along with a pre-packaged bundle of about 40+ reports that provide you with the most commonly requested...(read more)

Increasing the length of address1_line1 attribute does not work - FIX

2010-01-13T12:14:00Z

We once happened to increase the length of the adress1_line1 attribute of account to 200. We had done this before with other attributes and it had worked just fine. So we were surprised when even after publishing the account entity after make the above change, we still received an error. To Fix this Error we had to instead increase the length of line1 attribute of the “customeraddress” entity and publish this entity. Once the above change was published we did not receive any more errors related to...(read more)

Change left navigation lable ,display order on custom entity

2010-01-11T06:11:00Z

This blog will help you to customize your left navigation pane settings found on entity record. Like shown in below screen shot. You can change the order as well as label shown over here but note that this functionality will only apply on custom entity and not on system entity. This is CRM functionality where you can change the display label and order of the list on the left navigation. Following below steps for this: - Go to Settings --> Customization --> Customize entities and open the entity...(read more)

Debugging Script with CRM events

2010-01-07T05:43:00Z

Writing JavaScript in CRM is a tedious job and finding the error in your script is even more difficult. The best way to find the error cause is to debug it. The blog will give you the steps to debug the scripts added on form events in CRM. Steps to enable debugging script: - Go to Internet Explorer settings. - Click on Tools and select Internet Options. You will we see following screen. - On the Advanced Tab, under Browsing find the Disable script debugging (Internet Explorer) option and uncheck...(read more)

How to change the properties of the Primary Attribute of an Entity

2010-01-05T05:30:00Z

The blog will help you change the properties of primary attribute of an entity. Modifying properties of primary attribute is disabled when you try to do it from “Primary Attribute” tab. However you can change the properties if you opened the attribute from Attributes left navigation instead. Follow the steps below to change the requirement level for account entities primary attribute “name”. (Note the Ownership of entity does not matter here i.e. as “User” or “Organization”) 1. Go to Attributes and...(read more)

CRM Relationship Behavior

2009-12-28T12:08:00Z

The blog will help you in the scenarios when you requires to move records from one user to another user with some conditions. Like in scenario one of your sales rep leave the organization and you need to assign his records to the newly joined rep but you also need to keep the history of this old rep (completed work like activities etc) in such scenario you need to check what type relationship behavior is applied in your entity relationship. The relationship behavior feature of CRM handles action...(read more)

Send bulk mails from campaign and quick campaign using Mail Merge feature

2009-12-18T13:01:00Z

The blog will cover the process on how to send bulk emails using Quick Campaign as well as Campaigns with the help of Mail merge document. The Mail merge document allows ability to create your own word document in which you can format the mail content as per your requirement easily. The most useful feature of using mail merge is you can add images in the mail which you can not directly add in CRM mail. Send mail merge email using quick campaign You can create quick campaign from marketing list/CRM...(read more)

CRM data dictionary

2009-12-09T00:00:00Z

To check the CRM data dictionary you can browse to http://<ServerName:port>/OrganizationName/sdk/list.aspx where ServerName: Name of the server with port number. OrganizationName: Name of the organization. The data dictionary lists out both system and custom entities and attributes defined for the organization. If you click on the icon in the Definition column, you can view all the attributes in the selected entity. At the top you can view ownership type of the entity, its type code, whether...(read more)

How to purge Log file of CRM database

2009-12-07T09:02:00Z

Over a period of time, you will notice that the size of the transaction log file has grown exponentially and it has now used up most of the free disk space available on the drive. Transaction log keep a track of all updates being made to the database tables and is required for recovery or restore of the database. So it is important that we do not lose the transaction logs. However we can safely purge the logs for the transactions have been completed successfully. To free up the disk space used by...(read more)

How to Create "My views" for custom entities

2009-12-03T09:07:00Z

The Account entity in CRM comes along with pre-defined views for My Active Accounts. However, when you create a custom entity you will notice that by default only two views are created “Active” and “Inactive”. If you would like to add “My Active” and “My Inactive” views for custom entities, you would need to create them yourself by customizing the entity. To create a “My Active” view in custom entity just follow the below steps: Here we take an example of “Test” entity. Step 1: Navigate to Settings...(read more)

Fix - Unable to connect to the remote server Error

2009-11-30T12:45:00Z

“Unable to connect to the remote server Error”, this error occurs because the connection is lost with the server. When you make authenticated calls, the client opens the connection and then closes it as well. The connection is not re-used. If you make such calls repeatedly to the server, all available connections get exhausted. This can be fixed by modifying one of the TCP/IP parameters to increase the # of connections available. You would also need to insert a delay in your code using the Sleep...(read more)

How to Track the Next Action and Last Touch dates on Account

2009-11-30T05:59:00Z

Quite often you need to monitor and have workflows designed based on the "Last Touch Date" or the "Next Action" date. While the former should reflect the last interaction made with the customer, the later is to keep track of the next upcoming interaction with the customer. End users often believe the Modified date reflected on the Account form, is the "Last Touch Date". Well, that is not true. The Modified date on the Account Form is only updated when any changes are...(read more)

You receive an Sql Error when Importing Customizations

2009-11-30T04:38:00Z

You may come across the following error when you try to import the customizations for an entity that already exists in the system. This error is often a result of data type mismatch between the attributes in the new customization file being imported and the entity attributes already defined in CRM. Say for example an entity has an attirbute of the type picklist in CRM. However the same attribute is now defined to be of the data type int in the new customization file that needs to be imported. CRM...(read more)

Tips on using Mail Merge Functionality in Dynamics CRM

2009-11-18T08:53:00Z

Like most Contact Managers, Dynamics CRM too provides the Mail Merge ability. Recently we spent quite some time trying this out and we would like to share some of the findings that I am sure would assist other beginners in this area 1. Mail Merge functionality has been added as a privilege and so only users with the necessary privileges would be allowed to perform a mail merge. Mail merge is also available through the Web interface. 2. When the Mail merge process opens the Microsoft Word window to...(read more)

Issues with deleting a picklist option from a Picklist attribute

2009-11-11T10:42:00Z

CRM allows you to add/update/delete the picklist options of a picklist attribute. However, like most other contact managers that store the text/reference of the deleted picklist option in the records where it had been used, CRM does not store the reference. It differs in this regard. Once a picklist option has been deleted, all existing records that had used this value would be reset to “Default Value”. While checking out the picklist option sequencing in detail to explain it to our customer we found...(read more)

How to Increase the Tab limit in CRM Forms

2009-10-26T13:04:00Z

By default the max number of tabs allowed in CRM Form is 8. The max tab limit is defined in JavaScript of formeditor.aspx. This page can be found at the following location “\Microsoft Dynamics CRM\CRMWeb\Tools\FormEditor”. You can change the count specified in the _iMaxTabs to increase the count as shown in the below screenshot. Note: This is an unsupported change and it could be overwritten if you install Rollups for CRM. ------------------------------------------------------- Posted by: Inogic...(read more)

Global Functions/Variables available in Dynamics CRM

2009-10-19T07:03:00Z

Global Functions: There are various global functions which provide information about the client system. IsOnline: This will return if the form has been opened from an Online or Offline system. This could be helpful if you would want a particular feature to be made available in a specific mode only. Example: if (IsOnline()) { alert("You are working online"); } These above are available through scripting. If you would like to check this in your server side app, you need to add reference to...(read more)