CRM Sales Order: where is mail merge?

This one just struck me that when creating new mail merge template Sales Order does not appear as entity in the list…

Following article will help you enable mail merge of any CRM entity.

Again note that this is unsupported way to add this sales order entity in to the list as mentioned in steps below…

Step 1: Export Sales Order Entity customization from CRM Environment

Step 2: Open Customization file and then Update (or Add) IsMailMergeEnabled as 1, Save the changes.

Step 3: Import the changed file in to CRM and publish the changes.

If above method does not work then try following unsupported method, connect database and run following query, change entity name as per your requirement..

Hope this helps..

Cheers,
MayankP

Dynamic CRM : Troubleshooting methods for any CRM issue

While working with CRM sometimes we get following exception screen with this message, which means there is some exception or issue on this operation.

An error has occurred
Try this action again. If the problem continues, check the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Community for solution or contact your organisation’s Microsoft Dynamics CRM Administrator. Finally you can contact Microsoft Support.

Following methods will help you crack down the real cause of this exception or error.

Method 1: Check the Event Log

 Log in to CRM and reproduce the error
 Go to CRM Application server -> Run – > Type eventvwr
 And check application event log and find the relevant log and this will have actual exception details regarding this problem.

Method 2: Enable Development Errors on CRM Web site

 On the Microsoft CRM Web server, navigate to \ (typically C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\ or C:\Program Files\Microsoft Dynamics CRM\CRMWeb)
 Open the Web.config file.
 Look for the DevErrors key, and change its value to On.
 Save the Web.config file.
 Login to CRM and reproduce error and you will screen which will give actual error (as shown below)

Method 3: Enable Tracing on CRM Server

 Download CRM diagnostic tool
 Run this tool on CRM Application server and enable the tracing (alternatively you can enable trace as mentioned in this kb article http://support.microsoft.com/kb/907490)
 Login to CRM and reproduce error
 Disabled the tracing
 Go to tracing folder and open log file and locate the exception related to your operation.

Of course after finding actual cause of the exception solution will really different for each exception but above troubleshooting method will help you get in to right direction to fix any dynamic CRM issue.

Hope this helps…

Regards,
MayankP

Dynamics CRM 2011: First look

Apparently Dynamics CRM 2011 beta is release today http://blogs.msdn.com/b/crm/archive/2010/09/09/microsoft-dynamics-crm-2011-global-beta-released.aspx

I had attended XRM Virtual User Group meeting regarding “your first interactive look at CRM 2011” by Eric Boocock (Senior Technical Product manager at Microsoft) earlier this week.

There are lots of existing feature in this new version of CRM, following is few brief highlights regarding the same…

1. Smooth Outlook Integration
 Ribbon UI (similar to office 2007)
 Enhanced CRM preview of any record
 Multitenant nature of outlook client (one outlook can be connect to more then one CRM organization but only one deployment will be synchronization client )
 Condition formatting (for e.g. give red colour to account if annual revenue is greater than 2M£)

2.Tab browsing for view
 This way user to browse through multiple view at the same time
 Inline visualization (create different analytical charts easily)
 Personalization of view, Remove or add any specific fields or set default view from the list of available view for any records

3.Web Client
 Again Ribbon UI (similar to office 2007)
 Filter functionality (similar to excel) on Views
 Flat UI (no longer tab based browsing on CRM Form) and you can collapsed different sections to browser easier to go to relevant data.
 Header and footer section on each CRM form.
 Ability to view recently visited pages (similar to office products)

4.Customization
 Can be done directly from any record (of course need System Admin rights for the same)
 One entity can have multiple form and can be assigned or accessed based on security role
 More formatting option for each field/sections
 Easy to add menu items on navigation pane from form designer
 Easy to add associated views (or records) from related entity to current entity form
 Inbuilt auditing functionality

5.Integration
 Easy way to integrated external applications, websites
 Easy to integrate with SharePoint
 Easy way to build & deployment solutions (i.e. customization) from one deployment to another deployment.

Full recording for our First Interactive Look at CRM 2011 is here:
http://www.screencast.com/users/coloradojules/folders/Default/media/094c821f-c71f-448d-88bf-5b627b586004

I will post more post regarding CRM 2011 in future, keep watching this space…

Regards,
MayankP

CRM Data Generator

Just came across requirement where we needed to generate lots of data in CRM system..

Microsoft Dynamics CRM Demonstration Tools (for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0) provides lots of functionality and one of them is Generate Bulk Data for any CRM entity with just few clicks…see below steps for the same..

Step 1: Connect to your CRM Server

This article provides details on how to connect your CRM server on CRM Demo tools.

Step 2: Click on Data Generator tab and select relevant entity and then add relevant data against relevant attribute

Step 3: Select quantity and hit generate data button and this will generate this button.

Other then Data generator this tool also provides functionality to
• Change the Dates and/or Times for Data
• Create Dependent Picklists
• Generate E-Mail
• Set Icons for Entities
• Change the CRM Navigation Pane
• Replace Strings in CRM

Hope this helps…

Regards,
MayankP:)

Resolving slow performance issue for CRM outlook client

One of our CRM customers who uses CRM outlook client started getting really slow response since last week or so…

This could be due to many reasons but one of reason for slowness is auto tagging incoming emails, CRM 4.0 by default processes 1000 emails in outlook inbox.

These settings can be altered by creating registry key on client side and if you change this value to around 20 and this should improve performance considerably because now CRM tagging engine will look for last 20 emails that came in to outlook rather last 1000.
Following is registry key settings which needs to be altered for the same..

TagMinItemsForCrawl

The value in this registry entry sets the minimum number of items that the auto-tagging feature will process in the crawl mode. When a folder contains fewer items than the value in the registry entry, the auto-tagging feature will process items in the search mode. The default value is 1,000.

TagAllowedItemsForCrawl

The value in this registry entry sets the maximum number of items that the auto-tagging feature will process in the crawl mode in a particular folder. The default value is 1,000.

Change the registry key as mentioned in following steps…

1. On Client System, Click Start, click Run, type regedit, and then click OK.

2. In Registry Editor, locate and then click the following registry subkey:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\MSCRMClient

3. To create a new registry entry, right-click MSCRMClient, point to New, and then click DWORD Value.

4. Change the name of the registry entry to TagMinItemsForCrawl and set value as 0.

5. Similarly create new registry entry TagAllowedItemsForCrawl and set value to 25.

6. Restart Client outlook .

Hope this helps..

Regards,
MayankP:)