ICU MSCRM

Update Rollup 7 - With Major Improvements to Outlook Client

2009-10-22T12:34:00.003-05:00

In a rare feat of cross-organizational synergy, Microsoft is releasing Update Rollup 7 for CRM on the same day as Window 7 is officially released!

UR7 contains support for Windows 7 and recent releases on the server side, but the big news is the major improvements for the Outlook client.

More information about this imminent release is at the CRM team blog.

Dynamics Salary Survey

2009-10-09T11:44:00.002-05:00

A recruiting firm in the UK asked if I would post this on my blog and ask my readers to participate in their annual survey of salaries for people in the Microsoft Dynamics world. I'm posting this because I think it's exciting that Microsoft has been able to build an eco-system around their Dynamics products, and, for those of us who make a living in this ecosystem, this kind of research should help define the value of our contributions to our respective employers and see what standards are emerging for our chosen careers. Please take a moment to consider completing the survey:

Nigel Frank International would like to invite you to complete what is to be our
annual survey of Microsoft Dynamics salaries worldwide.

The survey will only take a couple of minutes to complete and your response and any personal details will be kept strictly confidential. The survey is available in the following languages for your convenience; English, German, French, Dutch, Danish, Spanish, Italian, Norwegian, and Finnish.

As a thank-you for your contribution we will send you a PDF report of the results once they have been compiled. This will give you an insight into the salaries, opinions and demographics of your Microsoft Dynamics counterparts worldwide.

Please find a link to the Microsoft Dynamics Salary Survey 2009 below:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=oyKnQyB3GWcw3xwDjIiSOQ_3d_3d

Your response will be greatly appreciated and will help to give everyone in the
Microsoft Dynamics community a greater understanding of their profession.

Configuring Internet Facing Deployment for Microsoft CRM 4.0

2009-08-31T12:03:00.004-05:00

After running the tool to configure the CRM website for an Internet Facing Deployment (see the articles here and here) we got the old familiar Runtime Error: Server error in / Application. We turned on remote errors and saw the underlying error message was even less helpful: "Object reference not set to an instance of an object."

After some digging, it turns out there was a registry key on the CRM server that incorrectly identified the identifier of the CRM website in IIS.

The 'website' registry key at \HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\MSCRM had a value of '/LM/W3SVC/1' and it should have been '/LM/W3SVC/5'

You can see the identifier for the CRM website in this screen capture from IIS:

All we had to do is navigate to the registry key and change the value to reflect the identifier that we saw in IIS.

Update Rollup 6 for MS CRM 4.0 Released

2009-08-27T14:31:00.001-05:00

Whew! Those guys on the Sustained Engineering team at Microsoft keep cranking them out. Seems like we've just finished deploying UR5 on all our implementations. Now, they've released Update Rollup 6. From the article, it looks to contain just a very small number of fixes. Download it at: https://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=79f90982-c039-41c2-af8e-3119ecf27790#filelist

Change Left Nav Links to Point to Custom Associated Entities

2009-08-26T11:27:00.003-05:00

In an earlier post, I talked about the shortcomings of the out-of-the-box Address entity. In a recent project, we replaced the system Address entity with a custom Address entity. When we added a 1:N relationship for Contacts:New_Addresses, the link to the new address entity showed up on the left hand nav of the Contact form, as expected. However, it was added at the bottom of the left hand nav links under the "Workflow" link.

We wanted to keep the Addresses link where it was, but load the associated view of our custom entity instead. So when a user clicks on the "More Addresses" link, they will see the list of custom address records, rather than the out-of-the-box addresses. Here's the OnLoad code we used:

// load the custom address entity instead of the system addresses
// in the associated view
// I used the IE Developer Toolbar to find the id of the custom entity's loadArea
if (document.getElementById('navAddresses') != null) { document.getElementById('navAddresses').onclick = function() { loadArea('new_contact_new_address') };
}
// Hide the link to the custom address entity that was added under the workflow link
// when we created the 1:N relationship
if (document.getElementById('nav_new_contact_new_address') != null) { document.getElementById('nav_new_contact_new_address').style.display = 'none';
}

Update Rollup 5 for MS CRM 4.0 Released

2009-07-02T11:28:00.002-05:00

Looks like the next rollup update is now available from Microsoft: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=5101d801-976b-4c11-bdfc-000b970ef4a3

Including External JavaScript Files

2009-06-04T08:59:00.002-05:00

There are a number of blogs out there with good information on how to include external javascript files in your CRM OnLoad events. I’m only adding this post to the mix to bring together some of the different information out there for easy reference.

CRM provides three primary places to add client-side code: OnLoad and the OnSave for the form, and OnChange for individual fields. In the form editor for an entity, OnLoad and OnSave scripts can be added to the form properties. Each field has its own properties area where OnChange scripts can be added.

For easier management of client-side code, we often use just the OnLoad area to store all the javascript we add for a particular form. We’ll define the functions we want to use throughout the form, and call them from field or form events. You can use attachEvent to hook into events on individual fields so you don’t need to add javascript behind every single field. An attachEvent works like this (notice my function is calling the FireOnChange method as well):

/* define your function */
function MyFunction(){
crmForm.all.myfieldname.FireOnChange();}

/* attach your function to the onclick event
crmForm.all.myfieldname.attachEvent('onclick', MyFunction, false);

Check out Mitch Milam’s blog at http://blogs.infinite-x.net/2009/04/20/changing-a-checkbox-field/ for a look at how he used attachEvent.

Taking this approach a step further, it sometimes makes sense to store the javascript in an external .js file. In that case, the form’s OnLoad properties will just contain a reference to an external file, sort of like an ‘include’ statement that appends our external .js file as the form loads in the browser. Here’s an example from http://www.henrycordes.nl/post/2008/05/External-js-file-and-CRM.aspx:

/* Place in the OnLoad area of a form */
function IncludeExternalScript(scriptFile)
{
  var netRequest = new ActiveXObject("Msxml2.XMLHTTP"); 
  netRequest.open("GET", scriptFile, false); 
  netRequest.send(null); 
  eval(netRequest.responseText); 
}
/* There is an ISV folder in the CRM webroot */
/* that your filepath should point to */
IncludeExternalScript('/ISV/_customscript/customscript.js');
CallFunctionInCustomScriptjs();

One thing to be aware of with this approach is that if you set up any users with the full Outlook client that allows them to work with CRM offline, all your calls to external script files will fail when they are offline since the file is on the CRM server. You can include a check before you add the external script and then do something like disable all the form’s fields if they are offline, but this starts to defeat the purpose of using the external file to start with.

Also, there are various methods of attaching external scripts. This method seems to work well, but you should be aware that the file will be cached in the browser, so if they make a change, users may not get the changes right away. One way around this is to go into IIS and navigate to the ISV folder and add a custom header to the external file to control caching. More info on this is at http://ronaldlemmen.blogspot.com/2008/07/javascript-files-and-caching.html.

The CRM Address Entity: There’s more to it than you think!

2009-05-18T11:51:00.002-05:00

I’ve been working with Microsoft CRM in production environments since 1.2 was released, but apart from some minor tweaks to the form I haven’t had to work with the Address entity in too much depth. Until now. I was surprised to find that there are a lot of, er, “undocumented features” that make this built-in entity behave quite differently than I expected. The SDK has a few remarks about the Address entity, but it took me a while to put all the pieces together, and I thought I’d share what I’ve found:

1. Two blank address records are created for each Account and Contact. Out of the box, CRM Accounts and Contacts have built-in fields to capture two addresses. These fields are address1_street1, address1_city, address1_stateorprovince, etc., as well as another whole set for address2 fields.

Whenever an Account or Contact is created, the CRM platform creates two blank address records related to that parent Account or Contact.

The purpose of these two blank address records is to store synchronized data that is entered in the address fields on the Account or Contact itself. The platform handles keeping these two entities in synch. If you change the values stored in the Contact’s address fields, the associated Address record is updated automatically.

2. The first two Address records that the platform creates are hidden in the “More Addresses” associated view on the Account or Contact. I guess this is because these addresses should be maintained on the Account or Contact, not in the Address entity itself. The purpose seems to be so that addresses added on the Account or Contact form are available when you do an address lookup on a quote or order. (Note that you’ll need to enter data in the “Address Name” field on the Account or Contact if you want it to show up in the Address Lookup view as well.)

3. You cannot update the Address record via workflow. You can create workflows based on the Address entity, but it’s not available to update itself. Not sure why, though…

4. You can’t modify the relationship mappings between the Account entity or the Contact entity and the Address entity. And you can’t add custom relationships to the Address entity.

5. Addresses are not available on Security Roles. You want to restrict users from editing or deleting Addresses? Can’t do it, at least not with Security Roles. Go figure…

6. There’s no built-in way to add the parent Account or Contact to the Address form. Adding the “Parent” field to the Address’s Advanced Find or Lookup views only returns a blank column as well. This seems to be a shortcoming or a bug of some sort. For all other entities with a N:1 relationship, you can add the ‘1’ part of that equation to the ‘N’ form. For example, if you create an entity called “Projects” with a N:1 relationship to Accounts, you can add the Account lookup field to the Project form. The lookup field actually consists of an array that contains a GUID, a string for the record’s name, and the object type code (OTC). In the case of Addresses, the only thing stored in the Address table is a field for the GUID. Without the name of the related object and the OTC, the interface can’t present a normal, functioning lookup field.

WORKAROUNDS:

With all of these limitations, organizations that need to manage multiple addresses for their Accounts or Contacts, and that need to perform logic against these addresses regularly, may need to do some workarounds. Among the options to consider: create a plug-in that “un-hides” the first two address records so they’re visible in the “More Addresses” associated views. Another option would be to create a custom entity with a N:1 relationship to the Account or Contact. This option has the benefit of allowing you to do the full range of mappings and workflow that you can do with just about any other entity. The downside is that if you want the address fields on the Account or Contact to be used and available for mail merges and Outlook synchs, the custom entity option will require some more create workflow solutions.

New Updates and Rollups

2009-05-18T11:06:00.002-05:00

I haven’t had a chance to blog in a couple of weeks, and there have been a number of new releases from the CRM team at Microsoft:

1. Update Rollup 4 has been released.

2. The Implementation Guide has been updated.

3. The SDK has been updated, and

4. The CRM On-Premise Help files have been updated. (Remember to backup your Help files if you’ve customized them!)

New Article on the Microsoft CRM Team Blog

2009-05-04T16:02:00.003-05:00

I have a new article on the Microsoft CRM Team Blog today with some tips on building a virtual development server for CRM using Windows Server 2008 and SQL 2008. Check it out!

US States Picklists Values

2009-04-30T10:20:00.008-05:00

How many times have you had to make a picklist for the US states on a CRM 4.0 form? Well, rather than having to manually add each of the 50 states (52 if you count DC and Puerto Rico), I've got an XML file pre-made with the values of the US States that I copy into the customizations.xml for the particular picklist attribute I'm editing. I thought I'd share it here to save you some time as well.

Download it here.

To use it, export the XML for the entity you are working with, and open it in Visual Studio or your favorite XML editor (Notepad will work). Do a find to locate the picklist attribute you want to edit, and look for the node under it. It should look something like this:

Copy the contents of the downloaded file and then select everything from the starting
tag to the ending tag in the customizations.xml and paste the contents of your clipboard into it. Verify that the XML looks correct, save your customizations.xml and import it back into CRM. Publish the entity and, voila, you have all 50 states available from your picklist.

UPDATE: Due to popular demand, I've also posted a similar text file that includes the countries of the world (265 of them). Note that this list has the United States and Canada listed first and second, with the rest of the world's countries in alphabetical order.

New Demonstration VPC for CRM 4.0

2009-04-19T17:59:00.002-05:00

Microsoft has released a new demonstration VPC image for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0. The image is built using SQL Server 2008 and Visual Studio 2008, and is available on PartnerSource. It is set to expire in August 2010. Happy demo'ing!

Agent Communications Panel for CRM - Call Center Functionality Using OCS

2009-04-17T11:44:00.004-05:00

Microsoft recently released the "Agent Communications Panel for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0" which provides an out-of-the-box integration with Office Communications Server for call center functionality within CRM.

"The Agent Communications Panel for Microsoft Dynamics
CRM 4.0 is an application add-in to Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0. It works with
Microsoft Dynamics CRM and Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2, and
enables agents to manage their communications (make calls, receive calls,
conference, and chat) from their Microsoft Dynamics CRM system. The Agent
Communications Panel is an XAML browser application (XBAP). It is published to a
Web server and opened from a Web browser."

I haven't had a chance to set it up and play with it yet, but it looks like it's a logical extension to CRM that should be well-received. You can download it here.

Error Importing Customizations

2009-04-03T09:35:00.005-05:00

On a development environment where I had imported a new organization, the developer was getting an error when trying to import customizations from another system (both on Update Rollup 3), and was unable to publish any customizations either. On importing, he got the following error:
“Failure: customeraddress: A SQL Server error occurred. Try this action again. If the problem continues, check the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Community for solutions or contact your organization's Microsoft Dynamics CRM Administrator. Finally, you can contact Microsoft Support.”

In the event log on the server was an error that said:

EventID: 19457
Source: MSCRMWebService
Customization Import failed. Error: Could not find stored procedure 'p_PublishMetadata'.

In digging into the database in SQL Server Management Studio, I saw that this sproc and another called 'p_PublishLabelsByObjectId' were listed not as dbo owned like the rest of the stored procedures, but user owned (DOMAIN\Username.p_PublishMetadata, for example).

I changed the ownership using the following query and publishing and importing started to work:

sp_changeobjectowner 'p_PublishLabelsByObjectId', 'dbo'

and then the same for the other stored procedure:

sp_changeobjectowner 'p_PublishMetadata', 'dbo'

(You'll get a caution about changing ownership that you can ignore.) Close SQL Management Studio and re-open it to verify that the ownership has changed (refreshing didn't work for me for some reason).

Somehow, when this organization was imported, the ownership didn't get set correctly on these two stored procedures. Tip of the hat to Luke Rogers for the tip on changing ownership of stored procedures one at a time.

Environment: SQL Server 2008 Standard, Microsoft CRM 4.0 UR3 Professional with the original organization disabled, and a new organization imported.

Re-Awarded MVP for CRM

2009-04-01T09:24:00.003-05:00

Got the email today notifying me that I was re-awarded MVP status for CRM! This makes it 4 years running. I'm extremely grateful to Microsoft and the CRM community - it's been an incredible experience working with CRM and getting to know a lot of the folks on the product team. The MVP program has been tremendously helpful in growing my knowledge and professional development. The CRM team and the other CRM MVPs have been a great group of people to work with and get to know.

Role-Tailored Dashboard Links

2009-03-30T17:19:00.003-05:00

Most organizations with CRM will eventually want to have some kind of dashboards to help their employees focus on the KPIs and CRM lists that are important to them. Creating the dashboards themselves is outside the scope of this article, but there are a variety of ways to build them, from the popular SharePoint dashboards with PerformancePoint analytics, to custom webpages with embedded gauges and reports.

But once you build a dashboard for one set of users, others are sure to follow. Usually it's the sales managers who first push to have dashboards so they can monitor their team's pipeline and close ratio. But then the salespeople themselves will want a custom dashboard, and then the service folks, and soon after that, every group of users and department in your organization is pushing for a dashboard.

So how do you keep from cluttering up your sitemap navigation with 15 links to dashboards that are irrelevant to the majority of your users? Here's one approach: use a combination of security roles and custom entities to display dashboard links to the right group of users. Follow the steps below:

1) Build your dashboards. In this example, we'll pretend we have a dashboard for sales managers, and a separate one for salespeople. The sales managers don't actually sell anything, so they don't want to see info about their specific pipeline and alerts about the accounts they own. And the salespeople shouldn't be distracted by looking at the aggregrate numbers and new opportunities from across the organization. So we've built different dashboards for each of them. (This example has screenshots from CRM 3.0, but the same principles and techniques apply to CRM 4.0 as well).

2) Add the dashboards to your sitemap navigation by editing the XML. Add a "SubArea" tag with a unique ID and the Url of the dashboards' location:

The result should look like this:

3) Now add two custom entities. I've added one called SalesDash (schema name is "new_salesdash") and one called SalesMgrDash (schema name is "new_salesmgrdash"). I've made them Organization-owned (rather than User-owned) and I've selected to not show them in any area of CRM. I've also made sure not to allow Activities or Note to be attached to them. These entities are only there so I can reference them in the security roles, I don't want anyone actually using them.

4) Next, edit the Salesperson and Sales Manager security roles so they have Read privileges on the respective new custom entities you've just created. The Salesperson security role should be able to read instances of the SalesDash entity, but not have any privileges on the SalesMgrDash entity. The Sales Manager security role can read the SalesMgrDash entity, but not the SalesDash entity.

5) Lastly, go back to your Sitemap XML and set privileges on the dashboard links to display them only to users whose security roles grant them read access to the appropriate entity:

Now your dashboards will only show up in the Sitemap for the right individuals, and your sitemap won't look cluttered with a bunch of irrelevant links for all the wonderful dashboards you'll be creating!

IE8 Released - and CRM 4.0 is officially supported on it

2009-03-19T15:18:00.004-05:00

Microsoft this afternoon released Internet Explorer 8, and word from the CRM team is that CRM 4.0 is officially supported on this new browser. The CRM team worked closely with the IE team to test the browser against CRM, and, except for one minor outstanding issue (I don't know yet what that issue is) the IE8 team has knocked out all the issues that the CRM team identified.

Click the title of this post to visit the IE8 download site.

UPDATE: Some folks are reporting problems with CRM in Outlook once they've loaded IE8. Here are a couple of things to try if you're running into this problem:
1) In Internet Explorer's options on the security tab, click the button “reset zones to default level” and make sure IE is running in “Protected Mode”
2) Disable the pop-up blocker for your CRM address

Tag: You're It!

2009-03-17T14:22:00.006-05:00

At Convergence, one of the keynote speakers demoed a new beta technology called "Tag." Similar to a barcode, tags are colorful little unique labels that, when photographed with a properly-equipped mobile device, can act as hyperlinks from physical objects to websites or contact cards out in the ether.

The idea is that people can download the little mobile app onto their phones, and if they see a "tag" on a product, or billboard, or business card, etc., they can snap a picture and their phone will automatically link to the website URL encoded in the image. There's been a similar app for the iPhone that lets users upload a barcode and get product information from the web, but in the case of tags, Microsoft is currently allowing anyone to create a tag (just go to microsoft.com/tag and sign up), and the algorithm behind the tags allows for more data to be stored in it than a typical black and white QR or datamatrix code.

What I haven't learned yet is whether there's an API so you can submit URL strings through a webservice and get back tags in a binary format that you could stuff into a database. I'm thinking about applications for CRM: For example, let's say you have field service reps who have to do service on machinery. They might have a mobile device with access to CRM data. Tags could be used to store a link to the machinery's record in CRM, and the field service rep could pull up service history and related customer information just by snapping a pic of the tag on the piece of machinery. That's just one possibility. But for this to work, you'd want to have a custom app in CRM that generates tags every time a new "machinery" record was created. Hmmm... lots of possibilities.

Update Rollup 3 for MS CRM 4.0 Released

2009-03-16T07:42:00.003-05:00

As promised, Microsoft's Sustained Engineering team has stuck to a more rigorous schedule of releasing update rollups for CRM. Update Rollup 3 has been released. For a comprehensive description of the rollup and related information, read the article on the Microsoft CRM Team Blog.

What If

2009-02-24T21:20:00.002-05:00

The following may be off-topic, but there's no more relevant topic that any of us must be concerned with right now than the rapid evaporation of liberty amidst the doublespeak coming from our "leaders."

What if we wake up one day and realize that the terrorist threat is a predictable consequence of our meddling in the affairs of others?

What if propping up repressive regimes in the Middle East endangers both the United States and Israel?

What if occupying countries like Iraq and Afghanistan – and bombing Pakistan – is directly related to the hatred directed toward us and has nothing to do with being free and prosperous?

What if someday it dawns on us that losing over 5,000 American military personnel in the Middle East since 9/11 is not a fair trade-off for the loss of nearly 3,000 American citizens, no matter how many Iraqi, Pakistani, and Afghan people are killed or displaced?

What if we finally decide that torture, even if called “enhanced interrogation techniques,” is self-destructive and produces no useful information – and that contracting it out to a third world nation is just as evil?

What if it is finally realized that war and military spending is always destructive to the economy?

What if all wartime spending is paid for through the deceitful and evil process of inflating and borrowing?

What if we finally see that wartime conditions always undermine personal liberty?

What if conservatives, who preach small government, wake up and realize that our interventionist foreign policy provides the greatest incentive to expand the government?

What if conservatives understood once again that their only logical position is to reject military intervention and managing an empire throughout the world?

What if the American people woke up and understood that the official reasons for going to war are almost always based on lies and promoted by war propaganda in order to serve special interests?

What if we as a nation came to realize that the quest for empire eventually destroys all great nations?

What if Obama has no intention of leaving Iraq?

What if a military draft is being planned for the wars that will spread if our foreign policy is not changed?

What if the American people learn the truth: that our foreign policy has nothing to do with national security and that it never changes from one administration to the next?

What if war and preparation for war is a racket serving the special interests?

What if President Obama is completely wrong about Afghanistan and it turns out worse than Iraq and Vietnam put together?

What if Christianity actually teaches peace and not preventive wars of aggression?

What if diplomacy is found to be superior to bombs and bribes in protecting America?

What happens if my concerns are completely unfounded – nothing!

What happens if my concerns are justified and ignored – nothing good!

-
Statement of Congressman Ron Paul
United States House of Representatives
February 12, 2009

Expand A Virtual Hard Disk

2009-02-24T18:06:00.004-05:00

I recently created a new virtual server for development purposes, and made the newbie mistake of leaving the maximum hard drive size set to 16GB. Even though I set it up to be a dynamically expanding hard disk, it was only after I installed Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008, CRM, SharePoint, Office, Visual Studio and 25 other tools, that I realized I was about to run out of space on my system drive. As a Microsoft fan, I use Virtual PC 2007, which in this case meant that my toolset was a little limited in managing my VPC images.

After doing a bit of searching, I came across numerous posts that had a lot of cumbersome ways to expand the system partition on a virtual machine. Laziness being the mother of invention, I was determined to find a simpler way. And I am glad to report that not only did I find an easy way, but it was also totally free. Here's what I did:

1) Download and install VMWare's VCenter Converter.

2) Convert my VHD to a VMWare hard drive. VMWare Converter lets you specify a new size for the new hard drive. I set it to 40GB. The conversion took about 15 minutes, and the result was a 14GB vmdk hard drive file. (No need to boot it up in VMWare).

3) Downloaded and install the VMDK2VHD utility - also free - from http://vmtoolkit.com/files/folders/converters/entry8.aspx.

4) Launched the VMDK2VHD and pointed it at the file I had just created with VM's Converter.

About 40 minutes later I had a new VHD file. I pointed my original VMC file to use this new VHD file, started it up, kept my fingers crossed, and...voila! I now have a bunch of free space on my image!

CRM Mobile Express Preview Now Available

2009-02-18T15:56:00.000-05:00

Microsoft has finally released a "preview" of Mobile Express for CRM, a free mobile app for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0. Read more about it here. Download it here (registration required).

How To Uninstall SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services

2009-02-01T10:45:00.002-05:00

I was setting up a CRM development server with SQL 2008 and made the quick, uninformed, and ultimately time-consuming decision to install Reporting Services in SharePoint integrated mode. I was also going to install WSS 3.0, so I thought I'd try this out.

Unfortunately, I found out later that CRM 4.0 does not support reporting services in SharePoint integrated mode. So, if I had been thinking clearly, this would have been a not too difficult problem: just uninstall reporting services and reinstall it in the right mode.

My problem: I couldn't figure out for the life of me how to uninstall Reporting Services for SQL 2008. I tried everything I could think of to remove it. It wasn't listed separately under the Programs and Features list, and I couldn't find any other way despite hours (ugh!) of searching.

I finally figured out that if I went to the Add/Remove Programs area (Programs and Features in Server 2008), and started an uninstall of SQL Server 2008, I would get the option to select which feature of SQL I wanted to remove. Duh. I feel like an idiot.

Update Rollup 2 for MS CRM 4.0 Released

2009-01-15T16:58:00.000-05:00

Microsoft has released Update Rollup 2 for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0. Microsoft's Sustained Engineering team for CRM is planning to release rollups every other month from here on out in order to respond to issues, bugs and improvements more quickly. Update Rollup 2 includes all the previous updates and hotfixes (including UR1). Downloads are available for the CRM server, clients, the email router, SQL reporting services and Data Migration Manager.

It can be downloaded at: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=aa671769-61e9-45c4-919f-c88199aa4241&displaylang=en&tm

Will Your Business Survive or Thrive in '09?

2008-12-29T12:21:00.002-05:00

This is a bit of an open-ended article - I'm really looking to spark a discussion and hear feedback from you: In thinking about the "current situation" that we've all heard so much about, and the apprehension that many people have for what 2009 might bring, it occurred to me that both of these things - the turbulence of the last quarter and the uncertainty for the future - have implications for businesses that make use of CRM systems.

It's an axiom of recessionary times that businesses that excel at keeping their existing customers and who increase their profile in the marketplace will have a better chance at survival, whereas companies that fail on either of these two fronts will have a much harder time staying afloat. Companies that make effective use of CRM - and who are improving their use of CRM with tools like social media - should have a competitive advantage in this environment.

So my questions for discussion are: Does your company see CRM as a competitive advantage? And what are your plans for improving your use of CRM in 2009 to maintain or improve your competitive standing?