Workflows and the user they run as

I would just like to make you aware of the following fact:
- Workflows run manually, are run as the current user.
- Workflows triggered by "Create", are run as the user who created the workflow.

This is true for the normal workflow methods and mostly concerns "Modified by". Ex. Modified by will be wrong if a Workflow updates an entitity after it has been created. (unless the same person created the workflow and the entity).

I havn't checked if this is true when using impersonation in custom workflow assemblies aswell, but I would imagine it is. The way to handle it is to set the service.CalledIdValue to the user you want to be the modifier.

Gustaf Westerlund
CRM and SharePoint Consultant

Humandata AB
www.humandata.se

Offline client difficulties concerning customizations - be aware...

Hi,

I just wanted to discuss the problems concerning customizations and extensions concerning the outlook client in general and the offline client specifically.

When customizing CRM there are many different customization points, among the most important, callouts, or Business Logic Extension. These will work well on the desktop version of the Outlook client since it comunicates directly with the CRM server, in more or less the same way that the web client does. Please note my previous postings concerning how to handle the problem of the "Settings" menu, disapearing from the web-menu. In short, install the Outlook client to one URL and use the webclient on another, and your problem will be solved. It is due to caching problems in IE.

However, when using the laptop client in offline mode, all logic is handled in the client and the callouts are not run, as far as I know, not even when syncronization is done.

Concerning custom aspx-pages on a separate website, it might be possible to create a new site locally on the offline computer and let Casini handle that aswell, and the have special tags in sitemap and isv.config to handle the offline functionality. The webservice won't be available, so I don't know how much functionality you can really create. Perhaps, you can temporarily store some information and connect to the webservice when syncronization is done when the CRM-client goes online. How to connect to this and trigger it, I don't know.

In conclusion, I would like to suggest that you thouroghly revise each customization from the offline perspective and decide how to implement, block or leave out some funtionality on the offline client. To avoid problems with the customer, I would also suggest dealing with this at an early stage in the project.

Gustaf Westerlund
CRM and SharePoint Consultant

Humandata AB
www.humandata.se

CRM Exchange Router - facts and fiction

What does the CRM Exchange Router really do? There are many missconceptions on the subject and a recent posting on the CRM-Team Blog tries to rectify this. Very interesting reading, esspecially for installation of the Router in very controlled environments.

(Click the heading!)

Gustaf Westerlund
CRM and SharePoint Consultant

Humandata AB
www.humandata.se

Tectura Nav - CRM connector is now Celenia

The Tectura CRM-Nav connector that I have blogged about earlier has been developed by the company Celenia in Denmark. Due to all the problems with the company Tectura, it has now been decided that Celenia will market, sell and support their product by them selves and not via Tectura. This is good news since Tectura has been very problematic to work with.

Click the heading to go to Celenia.


Gustaf Westerlund
CRM and SharePoint Consultant

Humandata AB
www.humandata.se

Using webservices from callouts developed in VS 2005

Arash Ghanaie previously published an excellent article on how to develop callouts using VS2005. A problem when doing this was however, that if you were using the common way of accessing the crm webservice, by adding a web reference, the program wouldn't compile since the web reference used .NET 2.0. The solution is to create a file containing all the references to the web service using the program wsdl.exe, and using the .NET 1.1 version of it.

Please check the link for further info on how it is done! (click the heading!)

Gustaf Westerlund
CRM and SharePoint Consultant

Humandata AB
www.humandata.se