El del CRM (English)

Logging for Update Rollup setups

2010-02-20T00:47:29Z

This is just a short post to provide a quick tip that you might find useful when installing Update Rollups, an any Windows Installer based setup. The Update Rollup packages are based on MSI technologies. If you type in a command prompt “msiexec” you will see a screen this one proving information about the different command prompt options to execute MSI based installers. Including the information about how to enable logging of the setup process. Enable logging is really useful when it comes to diagnose...(read more)

Adding LinkedIn to Dynamics CRM

2010-02-12T17:28:11Z

LinkedIn is the most successful professional social network with more than 60 million users worldwide. At the end of the last year LinkedIn opened up their API for developers allowing third parties to integrate the valuable information on their applications. The information contained in this social network is specially relevant when working with CRM applications. For example, it can be very useful to know how you are connected with a sales lead. After having a look to the widgets available on the...(read more)

Creating a Multi Field Search screen in Dynamics CRM

2009-11-24T14:50:00Z

Few months ago I was reading a fantastic post from Adi Katz about how to dynamically compose Fetch XML queries and display them on a native CRM Grid using the Advanced Functionality. The post was great and the JavaScript code provided by Adi works like a charm. After some playing I got inspired and I thought the technique could be really useful to create a multi-field search on Dynamics CRM . Basically what I mean with multi field search is a fairly typical advanced search screen that lots of business...(read more)

Summary of xRM and CRM 5 at PDC09

2009-11-21T12:25:00Z

This week the Microsoft Professional Developer Conference (PDC) was held in Los Angeles. Among tons of announces and cool things around Windows Azure and Silverlight 4 beta, there was three sessions dedicated to Microsoft Dynamics CRM . These 3 sessions were dedicated to highlight the xRM capabilities and to introduce new features coming on CRM version 5. Fortunately, for all of us that couldn’t make it to this great conference all the sessions and videos are available at the Microsoft PDC...(read more)

Collapsable Form Sections – a bit of the future in CRM 4

2009-10-24T12:06:00Z

On the last year PDC demos we saw that Dynamics CRM 5 will come with an improved and less clicky UI to enable an even better User Experience. One of the features on the videos was the change to have collapsable panels instead of tabs, this allows the users to access the information in a more convenient way. In this post I will try to get something of those future enhancements to work in CRM 4 with some JavaScript. Recently one of AlfaPeople customers required to have something similar on their CRM...(read more)

Update Rollup 7 – Amazing Outlook Client improvements

2009-10-22T18:32:00Z

The CRM SE team has just released the Update Rollup 7 for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0, this is a cumulative update including all the previous released ones. However, the most important thing is that this Update Rollup included a ton of fixes for the Outlook client, it actually includes a re-engineered Outlook client that improves the performance of it in many ways. and it will be the baseline for the future Outlook Client downloads. Among the most important improvements for the Outlook client are...(read more)

Code Camp.es 2009 and xRM

2009-09-26T09:52:00Z

Next 17th and 18th of October the Spanish Code Camp 2009 will be taking place at a fantastic location at Tarragona. The Code Camp is an event that is more or less organised once a year by the Spanish .Net communities to gather a bunch of Microsoft techies geeks and spend the whole weekend sharing and learning stuff about the latest things around Microsoft Technologies. It’s definitely an not-to-miss event, where you can get a full weekend packed of knowledge and networking with some of the...(read more)

Creating Master Detail views in Dynamics CRM

2009-09-24T13:27:00Z

One of the most typical “somewhat” unsupported customisations on Dynamics CRM is using IFrames to show associated views. This technique enables a nicer user interface showing more information about related records on the main entity form without having to click through the left hand side navigation panel. I was doing some customisations the other day for a xRM demo we had with a customer, and I thought that it would be nice to have a two IFrames containing associated views but in a different...(read more)

Epicenter 2009 – Dynamics CRM at the Irish Software Show

2009-08-12T15:02:00Z

Next 27th of August I’ll be at the Epicenter 2009 conference delivering a session about Microsoft Dynamics CRM . I want to thanks the guys from IrishDev for offering me this opportunity to spread the word about my favourite product and its capabilities. As you already know Microsoft Dynamics CRM is a complete suite covering sales, marketing and customer service; but it’s also a sounded business application platform that allows rapidly building and deploying a wide range of custom business...(read more)

Hiding the left navigation panel on a CRM entity

2009-08-04T14:22:04Z

This one started as a weird requirement, although it was totally justified from the clients perspective. In one of our customers deployment there was a very simple entity that didn’t require to show the left hand side navigation panel and for User Experience’s sake it was decided that this navigation panel should go. Obviously there is no supported way of doing this, however, we are dealing as usual with HTML and JavaScript and you can always do some unsupported manipulations. Moreover, Microsoft...(read more)

VPC Expiration How To

2009-08-03T07:48:46Z

These days we all work with loads of VPCs for different purposes: development, demoing, testing... One of the main concerns when using downloaded demo VPCs is that they will expire at some point. This obviously doesn’t happen when you use your own licenses for it, but it is normal if you use Microsoft provided demo VPCs. I’m writing this post just to put together the information about what happens when the VPC expire, how we can know when a VPC expires and how we can extend the expiration. What happens...(read more)

What is xRM? Watch the video

2009-07-16T07:42:00Z

Microsoft has published a really nice video that summarises the concept of xRM in one minute and a half. Definitely worth watching. During the last year I’ve been working around the xRM concept in several customers from an incredible variety of sectors ranging from Police to Car dealers, including education, financial, media… I’ve also participated in lots of events, trainings and delivered many workshops with Microsoft EMEA to spread the word around Dynamics CRM as a business...(read more)

Show custom warning messages on Microsoft Dynamics CRM

2009-06-09T13:36:00Z

Using JavaScript is a quite common approach for client side validation and interaction on the Microsoft Dynamics CRM forms. In many occasions we need to notify or warn the user about a condition or situation depending on certain values of some fields in the form. Normally you would use a JavaScript alert to show a dialog with the warning notification, this can be quite annoying for the users if they keep continuously facing this warnings. Microsoft Dynamics CRM has a internal nice way of doing it...(read more)

Cannot create a connection to data source 'CRM'.

2009-06-09T11:10:24Z

The title of this post is a funny error message that you can get when trying to run a report. Initially you might see “Reporting Error, the report cannot be displayed”, but if you activate the show developer errors option you would see an ASP.Net error screen with some Exception traces containing the message “Cannot create a connection to data source ‘CRM’”. Server Error in '/' Application. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Object reference...(read more)

CRM Discovery Days - Athens

2009-01-31T16:54:32Z

Two days deep technical training to discover the capacities that Microsoft Dynamics CRM brings for ISVs to build solutions and products on top of it. During this two day we cover all the topics about customisation and extension of the Microsoft Dynamics CRM platform, and also, the solution packaging which is the most interesting part for ISVs. Dynamics CRM Discovery Days...(read more)

CRM Discovery Days - Zurich

2009-01-31T16:53:00Z

CRM Discovery Days - Amsterdam

2009-01-31T16:51:00Z

CRM Discovery Days - Bucharest

2009-01-31T16:49:50Z

Starting 2009 as a renewed MVP & Microsoft Dynamics CRM Discovery Days

2009-01-19T23:51:00Z

The new year has started with lots of exciting projects here at AlfaPeople , and many many ideas for cool stuff that we want to do during this year around Microsoft Dynamics CRM. I’ve had also the honour of being renewed as a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional on Dynamics CRM again, making this the third year in a row. Which for me is pretty exciting and challenging at the same time. I just hope to make me deserve it again. Last Months I’ve been quite busy working with Microsoft EMEA...(read more)

CRM Discovery Days - Prague

2009-01-17T16:34:02Z

The Microsoft Dynamics CRM Discovery Days are a 2 (two) day free training class that teaches you how to use Microsoft Dynamics CRM as a development platform....(read more)

Convergence EMEA 2008 - I'll be there

2008-10-31T02:23:59Z

Only 3 weeks left for the Convergence EMEA 2008! This year I have the pleasure of attending again, and the honor of having the opportunity to be a speaker on a couple of sessions. Convergence is the most important event of the year for partners and customers of the Microsoft Dynamics products family. Like the previous year, the event is hold on the Bella Center in Copenhagen. It’s a really nice city, and it may even snow during this time of the year :o) On the event web site you can find much more...(read more)

Convergence EMEA 2008 - I'll be there

2008-10-31T02:23:59Z

Bulk edit for Dynamics CRM Entities

2008-09-10T22:50:00Z

You probably already know about a feature called bulk edit on Microsoft Dynamics CRM that lets you modify several records at once, this is definitely a great feature that enables end users to change in bulk some values for several records. The problem is that this feature is not available for all the records in Microsoft Dynamics CRM, but as usual with some dirty and UNSUPPORTED tricks this can be done. Recently, I was playing with this feature trying to find how it works and see if it could be possible...(read more)

The CRM Book

2008-09-09T22:27:00Z

I'm probably the last one to comment about this book, but I guess that is better to do it late than never. As you may already know, a fellow Dynamics CRM MVP David Yack has recently published a book called " CRM as a Rapid Development Platform " which is a very comprehensive work about development for Microsoft Dynamics CRM . My first contact with this book was on June this year when David asked for help on reviewing the book to all the Dynamics CRM MVPs . The answer from the MVPs was...(read more)

Convergence EMEA 2008

2008-09-07T13:03:00Z

Convergence is the main event for the Microsoft Dynamics Family. This year Convergence EMEA will be held again in Copenhaguen during the 19-20 of November. It´s nice location, a little bit cold though. You can register for the convergence and start to look for the session of your interest on the Session Catalog....(read more)