Microsoft CRM Accelerators Released

Just announced Thursday during the CRMUG Workshop: Using the CRM Platform for Building Complex Business Applications - three new Accelerators have been released for users of Microsoft Dynamics CRM.
According to Reuben Krippner, Senior Product Manager - Microsoft Dynamics CRM, the "CRM Accelerators are a range of add-on solutions developed for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 customers and partners. Each accelerator is available at no cost and will showcase how the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 platform can be configured and extended to broaden marketing, sales and service capabilities."
Available now are accelerators for:• Notifications• Event Management• Enterprise Search
Five other accelerators are scheduled to be released prior to year-end.
Each accelerator available for download may consist of the following:• Customizations (entities, forms, views)• Workflow definitions• Business Intelligence elements such as custom reports (.RDL's)• Functional code samples (strictly adhering to SDK guidelines)• Documentation for installing, operating, localizing and extending the solution• An automated installerEach accelerator will be fully supported as per any other customization for Microsoft Dynamics CRM that follows SDK guidelines. Additionally, all samples are supplied with full source-code so they can be extended further to meet specific customer requirements. You can download the accelerators and supporting resources now here. Also available are discussion threads and feedback channels.

David Fronk
Dynamic Methods Inc.

CRM Accelerators Update

Events Management is now available for download. For those of you without a PartnerSource log in try the following link:

http://www.codeplex.com/crmaccelerators

I don't have any more dates for you, so we'll all just have to keep our eyes open to see when the rest get posted.

David Fronk
Dynamic Methods Inc.

Max size of an NTEXT field?

I actually have a client who wanted to test the limits of CRM NTEXT fields this week. Typically at about 5,000 characters most people think that's enough. However, this client had the need for more. All documentation from Microsoft states that 5,000 characters is the limit but my client wanted to see what would happen if he went over it. So, he attempted 100,000 and the system took it. We then tested putting in 100,000 characters of text and the field took them all and saved them to the database. We didn't feel like we needed to go higher than 100,000 characters, so I haven't found the "actual" limit of NTEXT fields, just know that they will take a lot.

Now, the downside to doing this is that your database now has to store a column that can handle 100,000 characters so it eats up the space in that table really fast. So, I don't recommend doing this on more than one field per CRM entity. Not that people really do duplicate checking on NTEXT fields, but there would be no way for you to duplicate check against this large NTEXT field. But since most NTEXT fields start at 1,000 characters you can't use out of the box duplicate checker on those fields anyway.

Anyway the point is that Microsoft built something that can handle some really big stuff, it's not recommended but still, pretty sweet if you really need it.

David Fronk
Dynamic Methods Inc.

MSCRM Accelerators Released!

Here it is straight from Microsoft:

The CRM 4.0 Accelerators have been released!
The following link will be used as the main Partner Accessible Index for all of the Accelerators for Microsoft Dynamics CRM content. It will contain links that direct Partners to the appropriate MSDN and CodePlex URLs for the Accelerator technical information as well as provide links to the Sales and Marketing collateral associated with the Accelerators for Microsoft Dynamics CRM. The page will be active starting October 29, 2008 and will be updated as new material is released.

https://mbs.microsoft.com/partnersource/newsevents/news/MD_CRM_Accelerators

The downloads for CRM Notifications and Extended Sales Forecasting are available on the site, and we expect the following will be available by the end of the week:

- eService
- Event Management
- Analytics

I'm excited to see how they turn out.

David Fronk
Dynamic Methods Inc.

CRM Accelerators

For anyone who is unaware of the CRM Accelerators for MSCRM 4.0 you may want to take a look into some of the things that the Microsoft CRM team has put together for partners to be able to access. There were a number of webinars on them last week and the Accelerators are supposed to be out very soon. I received word today that two are to be available today or tomorrow (10/27/08 or 10/28/08) and 3 others by the end of the week. As far as coding, everything is done, from what I understand, they just have to get everything through the PR and legal type stuff.

These are to be fully supported since they are built using the SDK. And source code will be available to partners as well so we can modify custom code to fit our clients needs if necessary. However, if you modify Microsoft's code and don't follow the SDK then you're on your own and not supported. If you stay within the SDK, it may not be as easy for Microsoft support to assist you but they will still support you.

The modules to be released this week are:

Today/Tomorrow:
Extended Sales Forecasting
CRM Notifications (RSS Feeds from CRM views)

Later this week:
eService (an external service portal)
Event Management
Analytics

Keep your eyes open inside of PartnerSource as that is where they will be posting the downloads. If you are not a Microsoft Partner then you will either need to become one, talk to your MSCRM partner, or wait until someone you know has gotten these from a Microsoft Partner and have him/her send them to you.

These are free but if you buy the external Accelerators (like eService) then you will need to purchase the external connector license, so be aware of that.

I'll keep you posted as I hear more.

David Fronk
Dynamic Methods Inc.

Hide Annoying Script Error Popups

While working on a server recently I noticed that any time I closed an Account form I would get prompted to send error data back to Microsoft. I couldn't figure out what was causing the script error and the annoying window to pop up at first but I wanted to get rid of the pop up. The one that looks like this:

Most people just get fed up with seeing this and either constently click Send or Don't Send. Well, there's an easier way around this. The last hyperlink on the message says "Change error notification settings."

By clicking on this a new window will open up to your CRM Personal Options page and take you right to your Privacy tab.

And your options here are to either always be prompted (default), always send automatically, or to never send error messages. If you choose to either always send or never send you will not see the annoying script error pop up box again. You will be free to go about using CRM without being interrupted by these windows again.

Evidently my script errors were related to the Presence Control. There is a Microsoft KB article on how to turn off the Presence Controls throughout the system, click here (you will need a PartnerSource log in to view the KB article) to see how to turn it off.

Happy script error window free CRM using!

David Fronk
Dynamic Methods Inc.

SQL 2008 and MSCRM 4.0

We successfully completed our internal upgrade to SQL 2008 and it is awesome. We did a complete revamp of our system and moved our CRM server and SQL server to a virtualized 64bit server then upgraded SQL to 2008 and it is great. The speed is fantastic and the move and upgrade were easy. The SQL 2008 upgrade was very easy and we're reaping the benefits. The enhancements to reports alone are worth it from a CRM perspective.

Check out some of the screenshots but if you are familiar with the slick looking reports that Excel 2007 has then you will be familiar with what SQL 2008 now has. There are gauges that Excel doesn't have (to my knowledge) that SQL 2008 has so that's one welcomed addtion.

Also, you can check out the Customer Effective Blog about this as Joel Lindstrom posted on this before SQL 2008 came out. My guess is that Joel has upgraded his system as well but you never know. We did and we're fans.

Here are some screenshots:

David Fronk

Dynamic Methods Inc.