As some of you might have noticed, my Company website is at the time of Writing this currently down. Well, it isn't actually down, you just cannot reach it, as Microsoft moved it to Another server and the DNS's don't match any longer. We are working to get it rectified as soon as possible.
This does, however, show an inherent weakness in the online delivery model, as the service provider might choose to move the service and if you are not 100% in sync with how that is delivered and to be integrated with, you risk a stop in the services.
This was also evident, a few week ago when a client of mine who uses CRM Online with an integration to an on-premise integration had a sudden stop in the entire integration between the two systems. After some intense troubleshooting, we found that the source of the error was a timeshift of 9 minutes between the on-premise and online services rendering the SSL links invalid, why all Connections broke. After correcting the timeshift, it all started working.
Keep this in mind when working with online services.
Gustaf Westerlund
MVP, CEO and owner at CRM-konsulterna AB
www.crmkonsulterna.se
Monday, November 25, 2013
Wednesday, November 20, 2013
Bugs and suggestions
What might be unknown to many CRM people is that Microsoft has a tool for managing bugs and suggestions called Connect. This can be found on connect.microsoft.com. So if you have any suggestions on how you think CRM should be enhanced, don't keep it to your self, add it to connect, and tell your friends, blog about it. After you have added a suggestion, other people can vote on an item and the more votes and item gets, the more attention Microsoft will give it.
I added two suggestions today, so feel free to go in and vote!
First, I think it would be a good idea to be able to supportedly change the logo in the left hand corner. This is done by companies today in an unsupported way which of course is bad, so it would be better to do enable a supported way to do it. Not that it is something I generally encourage, but many companies find this important.
I also think that the logic when using multiple forms of the latest form being used, to be the defaulted the next time a record of the entity is opened often is not what is required, why a default form for each role per entity would be very good.
Connect is also the Tools which is used for bugs during the TAP and beta programs if you are part of these.
I am currently in Bellevue close to Seattle on the MVP Summit, meeting the other MVP:s and the CRM Product team which is great! Joel Lindstrom and I held a presentation to the Product team today and they are a great crowd who are really interested in listening to our opinions. We are lucky to have them and they are really working hard to give us an excellent Product so giving them good input on things we feel the Product can be enhanced, is really a just doing our part of the development. It is easy to complain about something not being as you would like it to, but try to be constructive and formulate that into a suggestion instead and register it on connect and you may get it. Do keep in mind that they have a lot of things to try to triage and it might take some time, but if they don't know, you might never get it.
Gustaf Westerlund
MVP, CEO and owner at CRM-konsulterna AB
www.crmkonsulterna.se
Friday, November 15, 2013
CRM User Group in Sweden
When users of CRM from different companies and organizations meet and talk about their CRM systems, it is often very interesting to hear the conversations and they usually end up getting lots of new ideas about what they can do with their CRM system. Their partner might also have suggested some of these Changes but the partner is not perceived to be fully objective from the users perspective why they are often more open to listen to other CRM users.
This is why User Groups are such a good idea. They bring great value to the companies that have invested in CRM, by creating a forum where they can discuss common issues with other users or just get a better understanding of how other users have chosen to implement CRM.
For partners this is also a great idea, to get their customers, the users of their CRM systems to engage in the User Groups will increase their interest in CRM as they will see what else can be done with the system.
As there is a global CRM User Group called CRMUG (www.crmug.com) and all MVP:s are granted a free membership and I also noted that there was no local chapter here in Sweden, I contacted them and a friend of mine, Fredrik Neiderud at TeraCom Group who used to be a CRM Consultant but now has changed sides represents the user side. We decided to start the Swedish chapter of CRMUG and have now also got the support of Microsoft representative Fredrik Wolbe. As I am only part of CRMUG as an MVP, and CRMUG is supposed to be by users for users, Fredrik will be the chairman of the chapter.
We have also booked the first meeting to be on December the 11:th 3 pm at Microsoft in Akalla outside Stockholm. If you would like to join us please sign up as a member on www.crmug.com and then register your attendance on this page: http://www.crmug.com/events/crmugsweden121113?date=2013-12. Do note that the time on the site is in East coast time and not CET why it might be a bit off. I will be having a presentation on CRM 2013 and there will be a round table on upgrading to CRM 2013. We will of course also talk about the future of CRM UG in Sweden.
There are several different membership options, if you are a CRM user, there is a free basic membership that is required for attending the meeting.
I hope we can all help in creating a vibrant user community in Sweden that will boost our Dynamics CRM usage!
Gustaf Westerlund
MVP, CEO and owner at CRM-konsulterna AB
www.crmkonsulterna.se
For partners this is also a great idea, to get their customers, the users of their CRM systems to engage in the User Groups will increase their interest in CRM as they will see what else can be done with the system.
As there is a global CRM User Group called CRMUG (www.crmug.com) and all MVP:s are granted a free membership and I also noted that there was no local chapter here in Sweden, I contacted them and a friend of mine, Fredrik Neiderud at TeraCom Group who used to be a CRM Consultant but now has changed sides represents the user side. We decided to start the Swedish chapter of CRMUG and have now also got the support of Microsoft representative Fredrik Wolbe. As I am only part of CRMUG as an MVP, and CRMUG is supposed to be by users for users, Fredrik will be the chairman of the chapter.We have also booked the first meeting to be on December the 11:th 3 pm at Microsoft in Akalla outside Stockholm. If you would like to join us please sign up as a member on www.crmug.com and then register your attendance on this page: http://www.crmug.com/events/crmugsweden121113?date=2013-12. Do note that the time on the site is in East coast time and not CET why it might be a bit off. I will be having a presentation on CRM 2013 and there will be a round table on upgrading to CRM 2013. We will of course also talk about the future of CRM UG in Sweden.
There are several different membership options, if you are a CRM user, there is a free basic membership that is required for attending the meeting.
I hope we can all help in creating a vibrant user community in Sweden that will boost our Dynamics CRM usage!
Gustaf Westerlund
MVP, CEO and owner at CRM-konsulterna AB
www.crmkonsulterna.se
Monday, November 11, 2013
Mobile Client App (MoCA) on non-english CRM 2013
The Mobile Client App (MoCA) that Microsoft have made as part of the CRM 2013 release is really nice but it is still an early version so to get it up and running on a non-English CRM here is what you need to do. As I Work in Swedish, this is based on my experiences in Swedish and you might have different experiences in other languages.
Install MoCA
First of all, the Store in Windows 8 is by default set to only showing Apps in your local language, as the MoCA hasn't been released in Swedish, in my case, I have to change this.
To do this, open the Marketplace from the Tiles-screens, and swipe from the right or put your mouse on the Lower right hand corner. Select settings (or what ever it is called in your language).
You should now see a screen that looks something like this, but in you language:
There should be two selectors, one with the caption saying something like
After this, click on the back-Arrow in the top left-hand corner.
You should now be back in the Store. Just type the following text (without citation marks):
"Microsoft Dynamics CRM" and press enter.
You should now see a list of Apps and the first one should be the right one, or otherwise it should be in the list any way. It looks like this:
MVP, CEO and owner at CRM-konsulterna AB
www.crmkonsulterna.se
Install MoCA
First of all, the Store in Windows 8 is by default set to only showing Apps in your local language, as the MoCA hasn't been released in Swedish, in my case, I have to change this.
To do this, open the Marketplace from the Tiles-screens, and swipe from the right or put your mouse on the Lower right hand corner. Select settings (or what ever it is called in your language).
You should now see a screen that looks something like this, but in you language:
 |
| Store settings - make sure the one about finding apps in your language is set to "No" |
- Make finding apps in your language easier
- Make it easier to find apps which aid disabilities
After this, click on the back-Arrow in the top left-hand corner.
You should now be back in the Store. Just type the following text (without citation marks):
"Microsoft Dynamics CRM" and press enter.
You should now see a list of Apps and the first one should be the right one, or otherwise it should be in the list any way. It looks like this:
 |
| The Microsoft Dynamics CRM Mobile Client App (MoCA) |
Now, all you have to do is install the app.
Add English Language
What I noted was the that MoCA client will not work if you try to connect it to a Swedish version of CRM Online unless you first enable English in it. Hence this is what we have to do.
If you are running an On-premise, you will have to install the English MUI-pack/language pack and you will also have to configure your CRM to be Internet Facing (IFD) which I will not go into in this article but is described in the implementation guide in great depth.
Before continuing with configuring the MoCA, go back to your CRM and enable English. This is done by going to Settings->Administration->Languages. Select English and then press "Use".
A spinner will show and it will take some time until the language has been provisioned for the organization.
 |
| Adding English to the CRM Organization |
Configure MoCA
When English has been added, the MoCA can be configured. It will be in English but it will at least work. Let's hope Microsoft will probably release MoCA in other languages soon.
Gustaf WesterlundMVP, CEO and owner at CRM-konsulterna AB
www.crmkonsulterna.se
Saturday, October 26, 2013
New features of CRM 2013 Online and now in Swedish!
Just provisioned a CRM Online with Swedish settings and if you had not noticed it before, you will now be getting the new and beautiful CRM 2013 and in Swedish. With the previous releases we had to wait for a month or two, but not this time.
For those of you who have not had the time to look that much into CRM 2013, there are some main areas that you should notice.
1. New navigation. The navigation has moved from the left hand side to the top, and folds out. I Think this is great as it removes a lot of the clutter on the screen an frees a lot of real estate. From a more subjective perspective it also makes the application be perceived as simpler to use which will increase user adoption.
2. Flat browsing. Almost all pop-up windows have been removed. This is a huge change, and some might be scared now and wonder how am I going to be able to compare to accounts, not to worry, just press the right button and select "Open in new Window" and it will open in a separate window, but in general everything will happen in the same window. This is also a huge plus when using the system on a tablet.
3. Auto save. Previously, in CRM 2011 and earlier versions, users were required to save each form explicitly, the data inputted was not "sticky". This has now changed and the data inputted will now remain as inputted without any need for pressing save buttons from the users. I think this is a great feature as it makes the use of the application faster and easier, however, for users coming from CRM 2011, you do have to be a bit aware as the system does behave a bit different in this perspective. For example, if you open an account, check which values exist in a picklist/dropdown and just happen to pick one and then move to some other part of the system, you selection has been saved. This was not the case in earlier versions.
4. Processes driven UI. This is really a great feature of CRM. It allows you to see where in a processes you are. This can be any process which can span across several different entities. There are two processes included from the beginning, one for Lead-Opportunity and one for Case. The processes are of course customizable and can be put into solutions (solution aware).
There are of course heaps of other new features around, including a mobile client MoCA, that is now included in the CRM license, but I think these features are among the most outstanding additions to the system. We did already see a preview of some of these in Polaris, but they were very limited at that time. And as Always, this is a brand new version of an extremely dynamic product, if Microsoft have missed getting a corner right, report it on Microsoft connect, ask your friends to vote for it and have faith that it will be rectified, after all, Rome was not built in a day, and I do love Dynamics CRM a whole lot more than Rome!
Gustaf Westerlund
MVP, CEO and owner at CRM-konsulterna AB
www.crmkonsulterna.se
 |
| Main dashboard of CRM 2013 - I guess asking for demo data in Swedish would be stretching it |
For those of you who have not had the time to look that much into CRM 2013, there are some main areas that you should notice.
1. New navigation. The navigation has moved from the left hand side to the top, and folds out. I Think this is great as it removes a lot of the clutter on the screen an frees a lot of real estate. From a more subjective perspective it also makes the application be perceived as simpler to use which will increase user adoption.
 |
| The new navigation on Dynamics CRM 2013 - expands from the top |
 |
| Flat browsing in CRM 2013 - Ex. when adding a phone call in an account, this is done in a small inline window. |
4. Processes driven UI. This is really a great feature of CRM. It allows you to see where in a processes you are. This can be any process which can span across several different entities. There are two processes included from the beginning, one for Lead-Opportunity and one for Case. The processes are of course customizable and can be put into solutions (solution aware).
 |
| Processed driven UI as seen in the Lead entity. When qualified, the process will continue in the opportunity entity. |
There are of course heaps of other new features around, including a mobile client MoCA, that is now included in the CRM license, but I think these features are among the most outstanding additions to the system. We did already see a preview of some of these in Polaris, but they were very limited at that time. And as Always, this is a brand new version of an extremely dynamic product, if Microsoft have missed getting a corner right, report it on Microsoft connect, ask your friends to vote for it and have faith that it will be rectified, after all, Rome was not built in a day, and I do love Dynamics CRM a whole lot more than Rome!
Gustaf Westerlund
MVP, CEO and owner at CRM-konsulterna AB
www.crmkonsulterna.se
Friday, September 13, 2013
Interview with Markus Erlandsson
Yesterday I was interviewed by Markus Erlandsson who has just started up a new blog called CRM Rocks which is an audio-blog, which is quite uncommon in the Dynamics CRM Community.
He asked me if I would consent to do an interview, I thought it was an interesting new take and I am also a big fan of anybody trying to bring value to the Dynamics Community. It doesn't have to be bleeding edge or include 5000 lines of C# code to be good, there is good use for blogs and other content of a lighter level as well.
Markus' initiative with his new audio blog brings a personal side to the CRM Community and I hope he gets to interview some of the other interesting personalities around so if he asks you, please try to make time, it's for the good of the Community!
I would also like to wish Markus the best of luck with his new blog. Give it your best, and be persistant!
Gustaf Westerlund
MVP, CEO and owner at CRM-konsulterna AB
www.crmkonsulterna.se
He asked me if I would consent to do an interview, I thought it was an interesting new take and I am also a big fan of anybody trying to bring value to the Dynamics Community. It doesn't have to be bleeding edge or include 5000 lines of C# code to be good, there is good use for blogs and other content of a lighter level as well.
Markus' initiative with his new audio blog brings a personal side to the CRM Community and I hope he gets to interview some of the other interesting personalities around so if he asks you, please try to make time, it's for the good of the Community!
I would also like to wish Markus the best of luck with his new blog. Give it your best, and be persistant!
Gustaf Westerlund
MVP, CEO and owner at CRM-konsulterna AB
www.crmkonsulterna.se
Friday, September 06, 2013
Single most important thing when implementing CRM?
Many people often ask me, "what is the most important thing to think about when implementing CRM?"
Some might think that getting the right features in place or having the coolest colours is the most important thing or maybe to have it integrated with the ERP system. This is not my belief, I think it is all about making a system that your users love to use. This might sound a bit strange coming from a Tech junkie like myself but there is really sound logic behind it.
Many other systems, like ERP-system (Dynamics AX, SAP etc.) require their users to use them. If they don't they cannot do their job. However, when working with CRM systems, this is usually not the case. There are usually other ways of recording customer information for your own purposes, like in Excel, Word, OneNote or in an old fashioned notebook with a pen.
The number of companies that have tried to force users to use the CRM system by pain or gain methods have almost always failed. If you tell your salespeople that if they don't enter their won opportunities into the CRM system, they won't get any bonuses, usually results in a system that has a huge rise in opporunties with really short start-to-end time and no lost opportunities. If you then try to figure out the ratio the the Company has between sent quotes and won quotes, you will get very strange numbers. The data in the CRM system will be very hard to use or unusable as it only represents a small portion of the real world data.
However, if you make the CRM system so good, that all the users, really see their own performance increase by using the system, not decrease their performance, they will want to use the CRM system for their own purposes, and let's face it, people in general are a bit egocentric and salespeople are even more so.
As many people really like using Excel for their own productivity, keeping track of things, I like to put it to the point, the CRM system, has to make each user more productive than Excel, that is what we are combating. If we do not succeed, they will just go back to using Excel again, and the entire investment is lost.
And if you hadn't thought about it, this has been the driving thought behind Microsoft Dynamics CRM since version 1.2 which has now been crystalized into making the users love CRM.
So, let's spread the passion! CRM 2013 is soon here and it will blow your mind! (not to talk about the competition's :))
Gustaf Westerlund
MVP, CEO and owner at CRM-konsulterna AB
www.crmkonsulterna.se
Some might think that getting the right features in place or having the coolest colours is the most important thing or maybe to have it integrated with the ERP system. This is not my belief, I think it is all about making a system that your users love to use. This might sound a bit strange coming from a Tech junkie like myself but there is really sound logic behind it.
Many other systems, like ERP-system (Dynamics AX, SAP etc.) require their users to use them. If they don't they cannot do their job. However, when working with CRM systems, this is usually not the case. There are usually other ways of recording customer information for your own purposes, like in Excel, Word, OneNote or in an old fashioned notebook with a pen.
The number of companies that have tried to force users to use the CRM system by pain or gain methods have almost always failed. If you tell your salespeople that if they don't enter their won opportunities into the CRM system, they won't get any bonuses, usually results in a system that has a huge rise in opporunties with really short start-to-end time and no lost opportunities. If you then try to figure out the ratio the the Company has between sent quotes and won quotes, you will get very strange numbers. The data in the CRM system will be very hard to use or unusable as it only represents a small portion of the real world data.
However, if you make the CRM system so good, that all the users, really see their own performance increase by using the system, not decrease their performance, they will want to use the CRM system for their own purposes, and let's face it, people in general are a bit egocentric and salespeople are even more so.
As many people really like using Excel for their own productivity, keeping track of things, I like to put it to the point, the CRM system, has to make each user more productive than Excel, that is what we are combating. If we do not succeed, they will just go back to using Excel again, and the entire investment is lost.
And if you hadn't thought about it, this has been the driving thought behind Microsoft Dynamics CRM since version 1.2 which has now been crystalized into making the users love CRM.
So, let's spread the passion! CRM 2013 is soon here and it will blow your mind! (not to talk about the competition's :))
Gustaf Westerlund
MVP, CEO and owner at CRM-konsulterna AB
www.crmkonsulterna.se
Monday, July 01, 2013
MVP Renewal
First of July might mean different things to different people. For MVP:s the first Award you get, sets you the phase (beginning of a quarter). As I got mine on the first of July 2012, my nerves we on high today.
When I received my first MVP Award, it arrived in my inbox at about 11 am CET. Hence I naturally was looking very keenly in my inbox at that time, and the following hours.
For those of you not very familiar with the process, if you are awarded, you are sent a letter, however, if you are not renewed, you will be sent nothing. No "you-will-not-be-an-MVP-any-more-email" or similar. You will just not get anything. On top of this, the MVP Award emails are notorious for getting stuck in spam filters, so you had better keep checking there too.
Hence, I was checking my inbox, and my spam-inbox, every 5 minutes, or every 3 minutes, or maybe it was every minute to see if I got any email. But nothing, I got some leads, some new customers, someone wanted to come worked at my Company, someone wanted to send me huge amounts of Money, who cared, no MVP letter.
The time reached 3 pm CET. They say that you can sometimes see the nerves on the outside of someones skin, well, that wasn't the case anymore, my nerves had crept out like Trichinella worms, made a nest in a nearby tree, fallen down, been eaten by a hungry panda and then shot by a crazy Russian on killing Spree. Close enough.
At about 4 CET, I managed to rewire my brain (like T2 in Terminator) and remembered that I could check the MVP website. Which I did and my surprise was palatable, this is what I saw:
So if you are looking for a more exciting July 1:st, I would suggest contributing to the CRM Community and sending me an email describing why I should nominate you for an MVP, then you might very well have just as exiting July 1:sts as I, with Pandas, crazy Russians and Everything!
I am also very happy that Jukka Niiranen got awarded the MVP Award as I got the honor to nominate him. It is a a great honor for me to be able to nominate someone that gets awarded the MVP Award as that is a great confirmation of my judgement which is very gratifying. Jukka has been a great contributor to the Community and very well deserves the Award. The NDA that you are required to sign as an MVP due to the fact that you get to see a lot of classified information, put us under a lot of restriction on what kind of news we are allowed to blog about. Jukka has been very good at drawing out the bleeding edge info from hazy photos from Convergence, eXtremeCRM and similar and I hope he will be able to continue this without too much hindrance from the very strict NDA.
Do read his blog about his MVP Award if you have not done so already!
http://niiranen.eu/crm/2013/07/mvp-award-why-communities-rock/
Gustaf Westerlund
MVP, CEO and owner at CRM-konsulterna AB
www.crmkonsulterna.se
When I received my first MVP Award, it arrived in my inbox at about 11 am CET. Hence I naturally was looking very keenly in my inbox at that time, and the following hours.
For those of you not very familiar with the process, if you are awarded, you are sent a letter, however, if you are not renewed, you will be sent nothing. No "you-will-not-be-an-MVP-any-more-email" or similar. You will just not get anything. On top of this, the MVP Award emails are notorious for getting stuck in spam filters, so you had better keep checking there too.
Hence, I was checking my inbox, and my spam-inbox, every 5 minutes, or every 3 minutes, or maybe it was every minute to see if I got any email. But nothing, I got some leads, some new customers, someone wanted to come worked at my Company, someone wanted to send me huge amounts of Money, who cared, no MVP letter.
The time reached 3 pm CET. They say that you can sometimes see the nerves on the outside of someones skin, well, that wasn't the case anymore, my nerves had crept out like Trichinella worms, made a nest in a nearby tree, fallen down, been eaten by a hungry panda and then shot by a crazy Russian on killing Spree. Close enough.
At about 4 CET, I managed to rewire my brain (like T2 in Terminator) and remembered that I could check the MVP website. Which I did and my surprise was palatable, this is what I saw:
Now most of you might have noticed the really stretched image of me or the fact that I look almost bold (which I am on the front part of my head). But what I noticed was the small "2" just below the Picture where it says "Awards since 2012". Hurray! I had been renewed! But why hadn't I received the email? Which was answered about 5 seconds later when the email arrived.So if you are looking for a more exciting July 1:st, I would suggest contributing to the CRM Community and sending me an email describing why I should nominate you for an MVP, then you might very well have just as exiting July 1:sts as I, with Pandas, crazy Russians and Everything!
I am also very happy that Jukka Niiranen got awarded the MVP Award as I got the honor to nominate him. It is a a great honor for me to be able to nominate someone that gets awarded the MVP Award as that is a great confirmation of my judgement which is very gratifying. Jukka has been a great contributor to the Community and very well deserves the Award. The NDA that you are required to sign as an MVP due to the fact that you get to see a lot of classified information, put us under a lot of restriction on what kind of news we are allowed to blog about. Jukka has been very good at drawing out the bleeding edge info from hazy photos from Convergence, eXtremeCRM and similar and I hope he will be able to continue this without too much hindrance from the very strict NDA.
Do read his blog about his MVP Award if you have not done so already!
http://niiranen.eu/crm/2013/07/mvp-award-why-communities-rock/
Gustaf Westerlund
MVP, CEO and owner at CRM-konsulterna AB
www.crmkonsulterna.se
Monday, June 24, 2013
Snowden, Prism and if there is anything new under the sun
If you have been reading my blogs previously you might have noticed that I several times (More on the insecurity of data, External posting on if your cloud system is safe from the law) have written about the fact that I think that many companies are viewing clouding a bit too lightly, especially from the legal perspective that many countries governments perceive themselves of having the rights to your data if the data either resides in that country, travels through that country or is owned by a company in that country.
From this perspective, I must conclude that the Snowden case is not very surprising. It mearly confirms what I expected to be true all the time and I would say that anybody being surprised is rather showing exceptional naivety towards our governments.
Hence I would just again remind you, that if you have sensitive data, beware of all the threats to the data. There are hackers, lawyers, FBI agents, and XYZ-agents and you have to assess the interest of all potential parties to you data. Then understand and handle the risk in a controlled manner.
Gustaf Westerlund
MVP, CEO and owner at CRM-konsulterna AB
www.crmkonsulterna.se
From this perspective, I must conclude that the Snowden case is not very surprising. It mearly confirms what I expected to be true all the time and I would say that anybody being surprised is rather showing exceptional naivety towards our governments.
Hence I would just again remind you, that if you have sensitive data, beware of all the threats to the data. There are hackers, lawyers, FBI agents, and XYZ-agents and you have to assess the interest of all potential parties to you data. Then understand and handle the risk in a controlled manner.
Gustaf Westerlund
MVP, CEO and owner at CRM-konsulterna AB
www.crmkonsulterna.se
Wednesday, June 19, 2013
Hiding Email Script Warnings
As some of you might be have noticed, when working with emails there are some rather nasty warnings about scripts in the emails. These take up quite a lot of realestate on the screen and many users would just like to hide them. But it is not so simple as there is no simple configuration to remove it.
This is what it looks like in a Swedish version of CRM:
A customer of ours at CRM-Konsulterna had this problem and we solved this for them. However, the solution is not kosher in the meaning that it is unsupported. It is also not very large so we thought we'd share it with the Community to the annoying problem go away until Microsoft fixes it, which they hopefuly will have done in Orion.
If you would like it, just head over to our website and download it: http://www.crmkonsulterna.se/Pages/EmailScriptWarningConcealer.aspx
What does it do? It is a small JavaScript that is executed in the onload of email which checks to see if the yellow Component exists and if so hides it. The problem is that the yellow box is not documented and hence might not work in the future, why we are very careful to check that it exists before
And is there no way of solving this in a supported way? Well, we did try to filter the email data with a plugin to take out all the parts that might cause the problems, but that was just to hard and too many emails were just unreadable.
Last but not least, I would like to give huge kudos to my colleague Konrad who put a great deal of effort into trying to solve this and coming up with this solution. If you havn't alread checked out his blog, do so, you'll find it here: http://konradviltersten.wordpress.com/
Gustaf Westerlund
MVP, CEO and owner at CRM-konsulterna AB
www.crmkonsulterna.se
This is what it looks like in a Swedish version of CRM:
A customer of ours at CRM-Konsulterna had this problem and we solved this for them. However, the solution is not kosher in the meaning that it is unsupported. It is also not very large so we thought we'd share it with the Community to the annoying problem go away until Microsoft fixes it, which they hopefuly will have done in Orion.
If you would like it, just head over to our website and download it: http://www.crmkonsulterna.se/Pages/EmailScriptWarningConcealer.aspx
What does it do? It is a small JavaScript that is executed in the onload of email which checks to see if the yellow Component exists and if so hides it. The problem is that the yellow box is not documented and hence might not work in the future, why we are very careful to check that it exists before
And is there no way of solving this in a supported way? Well, we did try to filter the email data with a plugin to take out all the parts that might cause the problems, but that was just to hard and too many emails were just unreadable.
Last but not least, I would like to give huge kudos to my colleague Konrad who put a great deal of effort into trying to solve this and coming up with this solution. If you havn't alread checked out his blog, do so, you'll find it here: http://konradviltersten.wordpress.com/
Gustaf Westerlund
MVP, CEO and owner at CRM-konsulterna AB
www.crmkonsulterna.se
Thursday, June 13, 2013
Retook an exam today #1
About a year ago I took the CRM 2011 application exam (MB2-868) and passed it, but somehow it never got registered properly and I did not save the score report so I could not prove this, so today I retook it.
It is a very interesting certification. One of the hardest things is to Think about which update rollup (UR) it is written towards. I have Heard that many people have said that all certifications (for CRM anyway) should be written based on the RTM (Release to Market) version (=UR 0) but that also seems a bit strange as there have been some significant Changes made in UR6 (like multi series charts) and especially in UR12.
The sad thing is that there is no clear indication in the certification which version it is based on, so you do not know. I also do not know which questions I did not answer correctly, I only know that I got 90% correct which is rather funny considering I have held all the four application courses and also written my own MB2-868 Certification prep course of which more than 60% of all the attendees passed.
My recommendations to you are the following:
- Study explicitly for the application exam. Just working in the application is not enough.
- Try to learn the language used, find key Word like "all", "should", "never". There are practice exam questions in the course material.
- Base the answers on RTM. I know how irrational this might be for you as you are not used to seeing CRM this way, but focus on passing the exam.
- Don't be discouraged if you fail the first time. Most people fail the first time, especially the CRM 2011 Application exam as that is quite weird.
- Try to work a bit with all the parts of CRM. Try to use also the parts that often are never or seldom used like service contracts, facility management, complex service scheduling, Product catalog. Most people are quite used to the account, Contact, opportunity, lead, case part of CRM but there are surprisingly few questions about that. You will get a better understanding of what the parts are and how they are connected.
My recommendations to Microsoft:
- Make it clear which version the exam is for. RTM or URx. Just to be clear.
- Remove questions from the exam that are incorrect due to new features. It is extremely confusing.
- If someone leaves comments that are constructive after an exam, as I have done, also leaving my email address, I have not felt that there has been any response to that at all. If you have the ability to leave comments, do make sure that these are responded to, otherwise the function should be switched off.
- Peripherial features are a bit important, but the main processes are essential and these should be more prominent in the exam.
For all of those Writing the exam, I wish you the best of luck!
Today I also noticed that on Rockstar 365, I got the badge "#1 in the World". That was a great honor!
http://rockstar365.com/crmgustaf
If you work with CRM, register and I bet you'll beat me soon. Game on!
Gustaf Westerlund
MVP, CEO and owner at CRM-konsulterna AB
www.crmkonsulterna.se
It is a very interesting certification. One of the hardest things is to Think about which update rollup (UR) it is written towards. I have Heard that many people have said that all certifications (for CRM anyway) should be written based on the RTM (Release to Market) version (=UR 0) but that also seems a bit strange as there have been some significant Changes made in UR6 (like multi series charts) and especially in UR12.
The sad thing is that there is no clear indication in the certification which version it is based on, so you do not know. I also do not know which questions I did not answer correctly, I only know that I got 90% correct which is rather funny considering I have held all the four application courses and also written my own MB2-868 Certification prep course of which more than 60% of all the attendees passed.
My recommendations to you are the following:
- Study explicitly for the application exam. Just working in the application is not enough.
- Try to learn the language used, find key Word like "all", "should", "never". There are practice exam questions in the course material.
- Base the answers on RTM. I know how irrational this might be for you as you are not used to seeing CRM this way, but focus on passing the exam.
- Don't be discouraged if you fail the first time. Most people fail the first time, especially the CRM 2011 Application exam as that is quite weird.
- Try to work a bit with all the parts of CRM. Try to use also the parts that often are never or seldom used like service contracts, facility management, complex service scheduling, Product catalog. Most people are quite used to the account, Contact, opportunity, lead, case part of CRM but there are surprisingly few questions about that. You will get a better understanding of what the parts are and how they are connected.
My recommendations to Microsoft:
- Make it clear which version the exam is for. RTM or URx. Just to be clear.
- Remove questions from the exam that are incorrect due to new features. It is extremely confusing.
- If someone leaves comments that are constructive after an exam, as I have done, also leaving my email address, I have not felt that there has been any response to that at all. If you have the ability to leave comments, do make sure that these are responded to, otherwise the function should be switched off.
- Peripherial features are a bit important, but the main processes are essential and these should be more prominent in the exam.
For all of those Writing the exam, I wish you the best of luck!
Today I also noticed that on Rockstar 365, I got the badge "#1 in the World". That was a great honor!
http://rockstar365.com/crmgustaf
If you work with CRM, register and I bet you'll beat me soon. Game on!
Gustaf Westerlund
MVP, CEO and owner at CRM-konsulterna AB
www.crmkonsulterna.se
Wednesday, June 05, 2013
Organization Language field when provisioning CRM Online
In one of my recent postings I discussed the implicit settings that were set when choosing country, in a recent update, one of these implicit settings was converted to an explicit setting, namely the Organization Language.
An interesting thing about this field is that it cannot be selected to any language, but only to specific language. In Sweden, only to Swedish and English. In Switzerland, English, French, German or Italian. I think this is a good move forward but I don't see any reason to why they are limiting the available languages. If a Chinese company wants to have chinese for an org in Sweden, why should that be a problem?
An interesting note is also that there seems to be a language hickup, "Organization Language" has not been properly translated to Swedish...
I have also not checked if the collation is connected to the language or the country, but I would expect it to be connected to the language. If anyone reading this has any input, please feel free to leave a comment.
Gustaf Westerlund
MVP, CEO and owner at CRM-konsulterna AB
www.crmkonsulterna.se
 |
| The new field when provisioning CRM Orgs in CRM Online - Organization language |
An interesting note is also that there seems to be a language hickup, "Organization Language" has not been properly translated to Swedish...
I have also not checked if the collation is connected to the language or the country, but I would expect it to be connected to the language. If anyone reading this has any input, please feel free to leave a comment.
Gustaf Westerlund
MVP, CEO and owner at CRM-konsulterna AB
www.crmkonsulterna.se
CRM Test Drive... and BCM
There have been some large and small stuff changing in the last few days in the way that new customers are being handled when the want to register for a trial.
If you go to the global site, http://www.microsoft.com/crm you will notice that there is a new "Get Started" orange rectangle on the right hand side. In this box, there is no "Start 30-day trial" but instead "TestDrive CRM". This is rather interesting. If you choose this, the next screen will start asking you some questions, on what role you have, what size you company is, and where you work.
If you in this selection, choose 1-10, you will, and this might very well be changed, be show a page that welcomes you to download Business Contact Manager for Outlook. End of story. The logic being that no companies in the size of 1-10 could possibly be interested in Dynamics CRM. I find this a bit strange as I know for a fact that this is not true as I have many customers that have less than 10 users and still are very happy with their system.
The other interesting thing in the questions, is the role selector. The available roles are the following:
- Sale Representative
- Sales Manager
- Customer Care Representative
- Customer Care Manager
I find this list rather short, for instance lacking in roles such as CEO, CFO and CIO/IT-Manger or IT-Adminstrator.
But this is also only the first version so we might very well see updates to this very soon.
It seems a bit hard to find the original form for regisitering a trial org from the american site, but from the Swedish Microsoft CRM site it still works and this link should work: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=252780
Gustaf Westerlund
MVP, CEO and owner at CRM-konsulterna AB
www.crmkonsulterna.se
If you go to the global site, http://www.microsoft.com/crm you will notice that there is a new "Get Started" orange rectangle on the right hand side. In this box, there is no "Start 30-day trial" but instead "TestDrive CRM". This is rather interesting. If you choose this, the next screen will start asking you some questions, on what role you have, what size you company is, and where you work.
If you in this selection, choose 1-10, you will, and this might very well be changed, be show a page that welcomes you to download Business Contact Manager for Outlook. End of story. The logic being that no companies in the size of 1-10 could possibly be interested in Dynamics CRM. I find this a bit strange as I know for a fact that this is not true as I have many customers that have less than 10 users and still are very happy with their system.
The other interesting thing in the questions, is the role selector. The available roles are the following:
- Sale Representative
- Sales Manager
- Customer Care Representative
- Customer Care Manager
I find this list rather short, for instance lacking in roles such as CEO, CFO and CIO/IT-Manger or IT-Adminstrator.
But this is also only the first version so we might very well see updates to this very soon.
It seems a bit hard to find the original form for regisitering a trial org from the american site, but from the Swedish Microsoft CRM site it still works and this link should work: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=252780
Gustaf Westerlund
MVP, CEO and owner at CRM-konsulterna AB
www.crmkonsulterna.se
Sunday, May 12, 2013
Implicit selections when choosing country in CRM Online
My last posting was regarding some important aspects of the email address that is entered when setting up a new CRM Online organization, you can read it here. In this posting I will be discussing some of the issues regarding the country field.
When registering for a new CRM Online Organization, you are shown a form and the top most field is a drop down allowing you to select which country you want. This might seem innocent enough, but do note the small text saying that this cannot be changed later and let me describe what you are actually setting in you future CRM and you might think a bit harder about this. The Picture below shows you the form in Swedish.
So what does this selection actually imply?
1. Which data center will be used (as indicated)
2. Which base language will be used
3. Which collation/sort order will be used
4. Which services can be used (as indicated)
5. Which tax regulations that are to be applied. (as indicated)
Let me describe each of these if further detail.
Data center
There are several data centers for Dynamics CRM around the World. Two in EMEA, two in North America, and two in South East Asia. If you select a country in EMEA, your organization will be hosted in one of the two data centers in EMEA. Exactly how this allocation is done is for me unclear and I do not think that Microsoft want to reveal this. What I have heard is that there is one data center in on the US east coast and one the the west coast and that there is no easy way to control which of these you will be getting, less than just setting up a couple of different trials until you happen to get one in the datacenter that you would like. I have also heard rumours that there might be some logic in Place that moves orgs from one data center to another to optimize usage. But I have not had any confirmation, denials or comments from Microsoft on this, so I do not think it is true until it is confirmed. I do know that orgs might temporarily be move between the data centers within a region for maintenance reasons or due to fail-overs. Ex. Choosing Swedish will make the org be hosted in EMEA, choosing USA will make the org be hosted in North America.
Language
Which base language will be used, is based on the country selected. For most countries this is simple as there is one dominant main language. If Sweden is chosen, Swedish is the base language. However, there are some other countries where this is a bit more complex, for Switzerland, it will simply be English, and I have not check other countries like Belgium.
Collation/Sort order
Related to the language is also the sort order or in more technical terms, collation. This is important as in many countries with special characters, the sort order is different than in normal English (iso-latin). For instance, in Swedish we have the characters "ÅÄÖ" at the end of the alphabet, these are not just accented A and O but fully qualified characters. The problem is that in the collation iso-latin, these are sorted as A and O (with accents) so a separate collation is used called Finnish-Swedish. There are lots of different collations for many different languages. When choosing the country "Sweden" the collation "Finnish-Swedish AS-CI" is also selected (AS-IS stands for Accent Sensitive, Case Insensitive).
Services
In some countries there are some additional services available to CRM that are not available in other countries. For instance, there are or have been some portal available for CRM Online available in North America that have not been made available in the rest of the World.
Tax and legal
Tax regulations are as many of you know, who have been around, very different between countries. Hence Microsoft need to know how billing is to be handled. There might also be other legal aspects of cloud systems. Some countries might require the cloud system supplier to inform the government of all the customers they have, hence the country selector might be very important from this aspect.
Conclusion
As you can see this one drop down has some quite wide implications. We have to be careful in this case. If a Swedish Company which has US-English as corporate language and hence want this as base language, but all users are based in Sweden and the sort order must be able to handle Swedish names correctly, how is this to be handled? Today, it can't the solution would probably be to choose the Country "Great Britain", but that would not give the right collation/sort order still. In that case, only partner hosted on on-premise solutions can currently handle this or this CRM Online organization has to be provisioned manually behind the doors by Microsoft Technicians some how. Let's hope that Microsoft will soon add a function that will allow for advanced settings for the country selector, allowing for manual selection of each of these five parameters. Until then I hope this posting will guide you a bit and help you make and informed decision on which country to choose.
Gustaf Westerlund
MVP, CEO and owner at CRM-konsulterna AB
www.crmkonsulterna.se
When registering for a new CRM Online Organization, you are shown a form and the top most field is a drop down allowing you to select which country you want. This might seem innocent enough, but do note the small text saying that this cannot be changed later and let me describe what you are actually setting in you future CRM and you might think a bit harder about this. The Picture below shows you the form in Swedish.
 |
| Swedish form for setting up a 30 day trial for CRM Online - the Country/Region field highlighted |
1. Which data center will be used (as indicated)
2. Which base language will be used
3. Which collation/sort order will be used
4. Which services can be used (as indicated)
5. Which tax regulations that are to be applied. (as indicated)
Let me describe each of these if further detail.
Data center
There are several data centers for Dynamics CRM around the World. Two in EMEA, two in North America, and two in South East Asia. If you select a country in EMEA, your organization will be hosted in one of the two data centers in EMEA. Exactly how this allocation is done is for me unclear and I do not think that Microsoft want to reveal this. What I have heard is that there is one data center in on the US east coast and one the the west coast and that there is no easy way to control which of these you will be getting, less than just setting up a couple of different trials until you happen to get one in the datacenter that you would like. I have also heard rumours that there might be some logic in Place that moves orgs from one data center to another to optimize usage. But I have not had any confirmation, denials or comments from Microsoft on this, so I do not think it is true until it is confirmed. I do know that orgs might temporarily be move between the data centers within a region for maintenance reasons or due to fail-overs. Ex. Choosing Swedish will make the org be hosted in EMEA, choosing USA will make the org be hosted in North America.
Language
Which base language will be used, is based on the country selected. For most countries this is simple as there is one dominant main language. If Sweden is chosen, Swedish is the base language. However, there are some other countries where this is a bit more complex, for Switzerland, it will simply be English, and I have not check other countries like Belgium.
Collation/Sort order
Related to the language is also the sort order or in more technical terms, collation. This is important as in many countries with special characters, the sort order is different than in normal English (iso-latin). For instance, in Swedish we have the characters "ÅÄÖ" at the end of the alphabet, these are not just accented A and O but fully qualified characters. The problem is that in the collation iso-latin, these are sorted as A and O (with accents) so a separate collation is used called Finnish-Swedish. There are lots of different collations for many different languages. When choosing the country "Sweden" the collation "Finnish-Swedish AS-CI" is also selected (AS-IS stands for Accent Sensitive, Case Insensitive).
Services
In some countries there are some additional services available to CRM that are not available in other countries. For instance, there are or have been some portal available for CRM Online available in North America that have not been made available in the rest of the World.
Tax and legal
Tax regulations are as many of you know, who have been around, very different between countries. Hence Microsoft need to know how billing is to be handled. There might also be other legal aspects of cloud systems. Some countries might require the cloud system supplier to inform the government of all the customers they have, hence the country selector might be very important from this aspect.
Conclusion
As you can see this one drop down has some quite wide implications. We have to be careful in this case. If a Swedish Company which has US-English as corporate language and hence want this as base language, but all users are based in Sweden and the sort order must be able to handle Swedish names correctly, how is this to be handled? Today, it can't the solution would probably be to choose the Country "Great Britain", but that would not give the right collation/sort order still. In that case, only partner hosted on on-premise solutions can currently handle this or this CRM Online organization has to be provisioned manually behind the doors by Microsoft Technicians some how. Let's hope that Microsoft will soon add a function that will allow for advanced settings for the country selector, allowing for manual selection of each of these five parameters. Until then I hope this posting will guide you a bit and help you make and informed decision on which country to choose.
Gustaf Westerlund
MVP, CEO and owner at CRM-konsulterna AB
www.crmkonsulterna.se
Saturday, May 11, 2013
Considerations of email address in registering CRM Online
When setting up CRM Online, especially when doing it on an already existing Office 365 Environment, there are some things that you need to know that might not be that evident, so I thought I might elaborate a bit on it.
First of all, the email address that is entered when setting up the Office 365 organization or the Trial organisation for CRM Online is very important as emails regarding the CRM service (and other services provisioned through the Office 365 portal) will be notified via this email address.
Other users set up as administrators will also be receiving notifications on the email addresses set up as Alternate email address under Settings.
So is this a problem? If you are just using CRM Online, and the alternate email address you input is you main work email, no, this is probably not a problem. There are however other scenarios where this might be a problem;
- The Company is using Office 365 as their main work email address and the alternate email addresses are gmail/Yahoo/Hotmail addresses that are seldom checked. For some reason, the CRM service is not payed properly and warnings about the fact that it is to be shut down are sent out to these seldom check email address. Then the CRM system is deactivated for all users and nobody understand why until the users flagged as administrators in O365 (usually very few) finally check their alternate email inboxes and find the warning. Until this is fixed, several Days or weeks may pass with the system down severely damaging user acceptance and profits.
- The original admins setting up the system are no longer with the Company and their alternate email addresses were not directed to "impersonal" email addresses but to their own. When the billing is missed, the effects are similar to the case above.
So, my general recommendations in this case is to make sure that the alternate email addresses used are set with great care and to impersonal email aliases that will remain independent of people leaving the Company. They are to be aliases that are monitored at least once every second day. If using Office 365, the general recommendation is to not use Office 365 email boxes to monitor itself, but perhaps looping it to a Group alias outside which also include addresses within the O365 might be an idea as long as there are people outside the O365 in the alias as well.
Gustaf Westerlund
MVP, CEO and owner at CRM-konsulterna AB
www.crmkonsulterna.se
First of all, the email address that is entered when setting up the Office 365 organization or the Trial organisation for CRM Online is very important as emails regarding the CRM service (and other services provisioned through the Office 365 portal) will be notified via this email address.
 |
| Swedish version of the Trial registration - Email field marked. It says "We will be sending important information to this email address" |
Other users set up as administrators will also be receiving notifications on the email addresses set up as Alternate email address under Settings.
So is this a problem? If you are just using CRM Online, and the alternate email address you input is you main work email, no, this is probably not a problem. There are however other scenarios where this might be a problem;
- The Company is using Office 365 as their main work email address and the alternate email addresses are gmail/Yahoo/Hotmail addresses that are seldom checked. For some reason, the CRM service is not payed properly and warnings about the fact that it is to be shut down are sent out to these seldom check email address. Then the CRM system is deactivated for all users and nobody understand why until the users flagged as administrators in O365 (usually very few) finally check their alternate email inboxes and find the warning. Until this is fixed, several Days or weeks may pass with the system down severely damaging user acceptance and profits.
- The original admins setting up the system are no longer with the Company and their alternate email addresses were not directed to "impersonal" email addresses but to their own. When the billing is missed, the effects are similar to the case above.
So, my general recommendations in this case is to make sure that the alternate email addresses used are set with great care and to impersonal email aliases that will remain independent of people leaving the Company. They are to be aliases that are monitored at least once every second day. If using Office 365, the general recommendation is to not use Office 365 email boxes to monitor itself, but perhaps looping it to a Group alias outside which also include addresses within the O365 might be an idea as long as there are people outside the O365 in the alias as well.
Gustaf Westerlund
MVP, CEO and owner at CRM-konsulterna AB
www.crmkonsulterna.se
Friday, April 26, 2013
As some of you might have noticed, that have been with this blog for a while, I am somewhat verbose, or in other words, I am not always very concise. This one of the reasons I have not joined Twitter as I have thought it a bit unfitting for my way of communication but I guess there comes a day when all sinners must confess to their sins and just adapt. So when my MVP colleague Jamie Miley sent me a Twitter invite, I finally subimitted to the inevitable fact that I just had to learn to Twitter, verbosity or not.
So, I have done this and you can now find me on @gustafcrm or https://twitter.com/crmgustaf if you would like to follow me. As usual, I will keep it strictly professional and CRMy so you won't have to read any tweets about my kids and their soccer matches.
Gustaf Westerlund
MVP, CEO and owner at CRM-konsulterna AB
www.crmkonsulterna.se
So, I have done this and you can now find me on @gustafcrm or https://twitter.com/crmgustaf if you would like to follow me. As usual, I will keep it strictly professional and CRMy so you won't have to read any tweets about my kids and their soccer matches.
Gustaf Westerlund
MVP, CEO and owner at CRM-konsulterna AB
www.crmkonsulterna.se
Thursday, April 25, 2013
Privileges for price list
Privileges regarding the price list entity has some interesting quirks to it as I found out working with it recently.
Yesterday I was working together with Christian Högman at Midpoint trying to help out a common customer of ours who it turned out had an interesting issue. Their typical users had a role that did not allow them to set a price list on an opportunity. So, just add "Read" privilege to the Price list entity, you might think, well, not so easy, as this entity does not exist in the security role matrix.
Well, after some trial and error we found that what was actually required was "Read" and "Append To" privilege Product.
So if you facing the same or similar issues, with price lists, try working with privileges on the product entity as this seems to be the entity that also controls price list.
If you havn't read my colleague Rickards latest blog posting on some really interesting bugs we (mostly he) have found in how queues work and in some cases don't work, at least as expected. http://rickardnorstrom.blogspot.se/2013/04/the-crm-email-router-routing-emails.html
Gustaf Westerlund
MVP, CEO and owner at CRM-konsulterna AB
www.crmkonsulterna.se
Yesterday I was working together with Christian Högman at Midpoint trying to help out a common customer of ours who it turned out had an interesting issue. Their typical users had a role that did not allow them to set a price list on an opportunity. So, just add "Read" privilege to the Price list entity, you might think, well, not so easy, as this entity does not exist in the security role matrix.
Well, after some trial and error we found that what was actually required was "Read" and "Append To" privilege Product.
So if you facing the same or similar issues, with price lists, try working with privileges on the product entity as this seems to be the entity that also controls price list.
If you havn't read my colleague Rickards latest blog posting on some really interesting bugs we (mostly he) have found in how queues work and in some cases don't work, at least as expected. http://rickardnorstrom.blogspot.se/2013/04/the-crm-email-router-routing-emails.html
Gustaf Westerlund
MVP, CEO and owner at CRM-konsulterna AB
www.crmkonsulterna.se
Tuesday, April 09, 2013
Switching on and off appointment synchronization in CRM for Outlook
When using
the mobile solutions, it is quite common to use a server-based CRM-Exchange
synchronization software. There are several different products out there and
the one I have the best experiences from is Riva Exchange integrator (http://www.rivacrmintegration.com) although a bit more expensive than other on the
market, a very stable and high quality product.
If the
Outlook addon for CRM is used at the same time, there is a substantial risk
that appointments created in CRM are integrated twice to the Exchange server,
once through the server based integration and once using the Outlook
integration. As the server based integration is to be the main method of
integration the Outlook integration needs to be modified to stop appointments
from being integrated from CRM to Outlook.
 |
| Setting which entities are to be synchronized from CRM to Outlook |
This is a
bit problematic however, as there is no way of doing this for a group of users,
but is done in the personal settings once the outlook addon has been installed.
This means doing it manually is practically impossible.
The data is
actually stored in CRM in the UserQuery entity. This is a rather special entity
however, for instance, you need to impersonate each user to be able to edit
each users UserQuery’s. This will take some extra consideration in coding.
Thanks to David Jennaway for pointing out some of the details regarding this.
If you are
running a CRM On-Premise, writing to the SQL database in not supported, but in
certain cases, and I would generally advise against it as it can damage you CRM
system, it might be ok. In this case, what is needed is to change the statecode
and status code of some UserQuery:s. As this is unsupported I give no
guarantees but I have used it myself, so I thought I’d share it with you if you’d
like to use it.
The
following SQL Update script, will deactivate all appointment synchronization in
the CRM Outlook addon for all users. Run it in the context of the CRM database.
Again, USE AT OWN RISK, it is unsupported!
UPDATE
[UserQueryBase] SET [StatusCode] = 2 ,[StateCode] = 1 WHERE QueryType = 256 AND (ReturnedTypeCode =
4201 OR ReturnedTypeCode = 4214 OR ReturnedTypeCode = 4251)
The following
script will reactivate them.
UPDATE
[UserQueryBase] SET [StatusCode] = null ,[StateCode] = 0 WHERE QueryType = 256 AND (ReturnedTypeCode =
4201 OR ReturnedTypeCode = 4214 OR ReturnedTypeCode = 4251)
Another interesting fact that you might not be aware of is that if you switch off the synchronization of appointments between CRM and Outlook, the next time you run the synchronization, the CRM Outlook Addon will remove all the corresponding appointments from Outlook, and hence from Exchange (if Outlook is connected to Exchange).Gustaf Westerlund
MVP, CEO and owner at CRM-konsulterna AB
www.crmkonsulterna.se
Monday, April 08, 2013
Errors in Swedish translation
As many of you have been aware, working with the Swedish translation of Dynamics CRM, there are some annoying bugs. One of these has been around for quite some time, I think at least since CRM 3.0 and maybe as long as 1.2, a cannot remember, even though I worked with that version.
The bug I am referring to is the translation of both Subject and Regarding to "Ämne" in Activities. This looks really strange in CRM as this is one of the most common entities. An annoyance for many partners has also been that both these fields are system fields which makes their labels quite hard to change. You cannot just go into the normal field settings and change the display name. There are some workarounds out there, of which I think the best one is to use the translation file to change the display name (which I think has worked for me a couple of times any how).
The other one faced in CRM 2011 and is the translation of the two buttons "Delete" and "Remove" in a solution. These have both been named "Ta bort". Again this is not very thoughtful and has obviously not been done by anyone who works with CRM.
In this case the effects can be rather drastic, as the difference is huge. If you plan to remove a custom entity from you solution containing 3 million rows of data, and press the wrong "Ta bort"-button, you will accidentally remove all 3 million rows of data. With CRM Online currently lacking any manual backup functionality, this means that you have lost these 3 million rows. Thankfully there is a confirm dialog, and the users working inside solutions are usually rather savvy so they know what they are doing.
Still, the fixes are simple, just fix the labels in the default translations. I hereby volunteer to Review the translation for the Swedish MUI if asked at no cost, just to make sure we can remove these kinds of errors.
I have submitted these as feedback to Microsoft Connect, if you agree with me that Microsoft should fix this, do sign up and vote for them.
This is the link for the Ämne-issue:
https://connect.microsoft.com/dynamicssuggestions/feedback/details/783135/error-in-swedish-translation-same-word-used-twice-mne
And this is the link for "Ta Bort":
https://connect.microsoft.com/dynamicssuggestions/feedback/details/783226/delete-and-remove-in-solutions-translated-to-same-word-in-swedish
Gustaf Westerlund
MVP, CEO and owner at CRM-konsulterna AB
www.crmkonsulterna.se
The bug I am referring to is the translation of both Subject and Regarding to "Ämne" in Activities. This looks really strange in CRM as this is one of the most common entities. An annoyance for many partners has also been that both these fields are system fields which makes their labels quite hard to change. You cannot just go into the normal field settings and change the display name. There are some workarounds out there, of which I think the best one is to use the translation file to change the display name (which I think has worked for me a couple of times any how).
The other one faced in CRM 2011 and is the translation of the two buttons "Delete" and "Remove" in a solution. These have both been named "Ta bort". Again this is not very thoughtful and has obviously not been done by anyone who works with CRM.
In this case the effects can be rather drastic, as the difference is huge. If you plan to remove a custom entity from you solution containing 3 million rows of data, and press the wrong "Ta bort"-button, you will accidentally remove all 3 million rows of data. With CRM Online currently lacking any manual backup functionality, this means that you have lost these 3 million rows. Thankfully there is a confirm dialog, and the users working inside solutions are usually rather savvy so they know what they are doing.
Still, the fixes are simple, just fix the labels in the default translations. I hereby volunteer to Review the translation for the Swedish MUI if asked at no cost, just to make sure we can remove these kinds of errors.
I have submitted these as feedback to Microsoft Connect, if you agree with me that Microsoft should fix this, do sign up and vote for them.
This is the link for the Ämne-issue:
https://connect.microsoft.com/dynamicssuggestions/feedback/details/783135/error-in-swedish-translation-same-word-used-twice-mne
And this is the link for "Ta Bort":
https://connect.microsoft.com/dynamicssuggestions/feedback/details/783226/delete-and-remove-in-solutions-translated-to-same-word-in-swedish
Gustaf Westerlund
MVP, CEO and owner at CRM-konsulterna AB
www.crmkonsulterna.se
Wednesday, March 20, 2013
Email Router WebDAV problems
A couple of days ago I was setting up the email router for a customer running CRM Online. I must say that I really look forward to the day when Microsoft retire this very strange product that in no way fits the cloud story of CRM Online and Office 365. On what server is it to be deployed?
However, this customer is running CRM Online (at the time of this article, Polaris) and Exchange 2007 On-premise. They had been trying to get the email router to work for several days and had been advised by Microsoft Support to use the WebDAV protocol to connect to the Exchange server. This has worked fine at the beginning but after a while, one of the two queues stopped receiving emails for no apparent reason.
After a lot of trying and look at logs, I removed all settings and recreated everything based on the Exchange protocol from WebDAV to Exchange Webservices, which after some finetuning of the URL:s actually started to work. During this time I discussed this issue with some of my MVP friends, especially Joel Lindstrom, David Jennaway and Donna Edwards who were very helpful and they pointed me in the right direction of what was probably the root cause of the error, not that I have actually have had it confirmed but it seems very plausible.
What seems to be the error, that they mentioned, is that some of the emails contain some “special” characters which caused the WebDAV to crash for one of the two queues, while the other one did not contain any emails with any “special” characters. When I changed to the Exchange webservices protocol, which does not have this bug, the mail got imported to CRM as it should.
This is a very tricky error as it is very hard to find and also rather hard to confirm. I still do not not if this is a fact, it is just a hunch, but it fits the symptoms.
My general recommendation based on this is hence the following:
1. Do not use WebDAV when connecting the CRM Email router to Exchange. It is buggy and does not support special characters, some searching the net show these to be characters like !#$%^&. It might work at first but after a while, you might receive an email that contains a special character and it will break down without saying why.
2. Microsoft Support are very good to have when things to not work but do not put your life completely in their hands, sometimes you need to trust your own judgment and try stuff yourself.
3. Isolate errors as far as you can. It helps when trying to find the root cause.
4. Listen to your friends, they are the best!
And let’s all together ask Microsoft to can the email router and build it into the CRM application, especially CRM Online.
Gustaf Westerlund
MVP, CEO and owner at CRM-konsulterna AB
www.crmkonsulterna.se
However, this customer is running CRM Online (at the time of this article, Polaris) and Exchange 2007 On-premise. They had been trying to get the email router to work for several days and had been advised by Microsoft Support to use the WebDAV protocol to connect to the Exchange server. This has worked fine at the beginning but after a while, one of the two queues stopped receiving emails for no apparent reason.
After a lot of trying and look at logs, I removed all settings and recreated everything based on the Exchange protocol from WebDAV to Exchange Webservices, which after some finetuning of the URL:s actually started to work. During this time I discussed this issue with some of my MVP friends, especially Joel Lindstrom, David Jennaway and Donna Edwards who were very helpful and they pointed me in the right direction of what was probably the root cause of the error, not that I have actually have had it confirmed but it seems very plausible.
What seems to be the error, that they mentioned, is that some of the emails contain some “special” characters which caused the WebDAV to crash for one of the two queues, while the other one did not contain any emails with any “special” characters. When I changed to the Exchange webservices protocol, which does not have this bug, the mail got imported to CRM as it should.
This is a very tricky error as it is very hard to find and also rather hard to confirm. I still do not not if this is a fact, it is just a hunch, but it fits the symptoms.
My general recommendation based on this is hence the following:
1. Do not use WebDAV when connecting the CRM Email router to Exchange. It is buggy and does not support special characters, some searching the net show these to be characters like !#$%^&. It might work at first but after a while, you might receive an email that contains a special character and it will break down without saying why.
2. Microsoft Support are very good to have when things to not work but do not put your life completely in their hands, sometimes you need to trust your own judgment and try stuff yourself.
3. Isolate errors as far as you can. It helps when trying to find the root cause.
4. Listen to your friends, they are the best!
And let’s all together ask Microsoft to can the email router and build it into the CRM application, especially CRM Online.
Gustaf Westerlund
MVP, CEO and owner at CRM-konsulterna AB
www.crmkonsulterna.se
Monday, March 18, 2013
Techie AW Again!
Yet again we are holding Techie After Work here in Stockholm!
I am afraid I am blogging about it a bit late this time as it is already this wednesday, the 20:th of march at Hotel Anglais in Stockholm (close to Stureplan).
This time we will be trying out a different setup with round table discussions in the subjects of:
- Information modelling
- Security
- Performance
All from a CRM perspective of course. The goal is to get more of a dialog than the previous presentation type of event that we have been.
As usual, Allan Varcoe, Peter Björkmarker and myself will be hosting the event together with Microsoft.
If you are or want to be a real CRM geek, this is the place to be, so try to buy a Kinect for your Kids and wife or buy a gift card to H&M for you girlfrind so that you can get a endulge yourself in the wonderful discussions we are going to have about our favorite product!
Please note your attendance on this facebook site: http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/events/351100611667866/?fref=ts
Gustaf Westerlund
MVP, CEO and owner at CRM-konsulterna AB
www.crmkonsulterna.se
I am afraid I am blogging about it a bit late this time as it is already this wednesday, the 20:th of march at Hotel Anglais in Stockholm (close to Stureplan).
This time we will be trying out a different setup with round table discussions in the subjects of:
- Information modelling
- Security
- Performance
All from a CRM perspective of course. The goal is to get more of a dialog than the previous presentation type of event that we have been.
As usual, Allan Varcoe, Peter Björkmarker and myself will be hosting the event together with Microsoft.
If you are or want to be a real CRM geek, this is the place to be, so try to buy a Kinect for your Kids and wife or buy a gift card to H&M for you girlfrind so that you can get a endulge yourself in the wonderful discussions we are going to have about our favorite product!
Please note your attendance on this facebook site: http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/events/351100611667866/?fref=ts
Gustaf Westerlund
MVP, CEO and owner at CRM-konsulterna AB
www.crmkonsulterna.se
Tuesday, March 05, 2013
Nice licensing overview
Licensing issues are often complex when designing CRM solutions and I have strange attempted workarounds with proxy users and simlar and often the issue has been that the sales people have not had the technical insights enough to know the inplications of the licensing setup.
I recently saw I nice blog entry with a summary of CRM licensing. Do check it out. http://markmargolis.wordpress.com/2013/03/04/microsoft-dynamics-crm-licencing-simplified/
Gustaf Westerlund
MVP, CEO and owner at CRM-konsulterna AB
www.crmkonsulterna.se
I recently saw I nice blog entry with a summary of CRM licensing. Do check it out. http://markmargolis.wordpress.com/2013/03/04/microsoft-dynamics-crm-licencing-simplified/
Gustaf Westerlund
MVP, CEO and owner at CRM-konsulterna AB
www.crmkonsulterna.se
Monday, March 04, 2013
Nice book about CRM Customization and Configuration
There are quite a lot of books out there about customizing and configuring Dynamics CRM, a quite recent one is written by a MVP colleague of mine Neil Benson, a nice British guy now days living in California.
The book's title, Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Customization & Configuration (MB2-866) Certification Guide, really tells what it is all about, trying to get you ready for the certification, which is a something of task as these are not at all easy. A good book is a good guide, so running questions is if it is a good book or not, and in general it is a very good book. Benson is, and I know this personally, very skilled, and this shows, and the book is concise and to the point. There are just a two things I would like to see fixed in future editions of the book and that is that the final two chapters (charts and solutions) are made to the same level of excellence as the rest of the book. I recommend this book to all people trying to nail the certificate!
Gustaf Westerlund
MVP, CEO and owner at CRM-konsulterna AB
www.crmkonsulterna.se
The book's title, Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Customization & Configuration (MB2-866) Certification Guide, really tells what it is all about, trying to get you ready for the certification, which is a something of task as these are not at all easy. A good book is a good guide, so running questions is if it is a good book or not, and in general it is a very good book. Benson is, and I know this personally, very skilled, and this shows, and the book is concise and to the point. There are just a two things I would like to see fixed in future editions of the book and that is that the final two chapters (charts and solutions) are made to the same level of excellence as the rest of the book. I recommend this book to all people trying to nail the certificate!
Gustaf Westerlund
MVP, CEO and owner at CRM-konsulterna AB
www.crmkonsulterna.se
Thursday, February 21, 2013
Sending emails from a Queue with the email router
Using
queues to receive emails is rather common and can be great for receiving emails
from generic address like support@contoso.com.
However, queues in Dynamics CRM can also be used for sending emails, allowing
you to send emails from generic addresses like support@contoso.com. This is, however,
not as known so I thought I’d write about it a bit to let you know how it is
done.
First of all, go into the Settings, and create a new Queue.
An important aspect here is that the “Queue Name” is important as this is the name that the recipients of the emails will see in as the sender. Like “Westerlund Support
You do not
need to check the “Allow credentials for the E-mail Router” as this is only used
for incoming emails.
The email
address must be an email address to which the email credentials have access to
send as. If this is virgin ground for you, there is a lot that you need to know
about how email servers work in the area of relaying emails. In short, they
usually are quite grumpy in order to block any spammers from using the email
server to send their spam. The typical limitation is that you need to
authenticate with a user to be allowed to send email, however, there are also
other ways that are sometimes used, like allowing emails to be sent from user
registered on the mailservers. For example, emails that have a from address support@contoso.com are allowed to be
sent from the contoso mailserver but it will not allow mails from support@microsoft.com or sup@contoso.com (a non-existant email
address). There are also setups that limit relaying based on the originating IP
address. In essence, allowing email from any sender to be uploaded to the email
server, as long as they are sent from a server with a registered specific
IP-address. You need to know how this works for the email server and address
that you are using. I would also suggest trying to send emails using a simple
SMTP sender or simple mail program to make sure the credentials etc. are set up
correctly as handling these kinds of errors in the email router is not optimal.
Press save
After
pressing save, you will get a warning that the email address has not been
approved, so press the button in the action bar to approve it.
Now, open
the email router. If you can’t find it, it is either on the installation DVD:s
for Dyn On-Premise or can be downloaded from here: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=27818
Do note
that it is language specific and that it has special Update Rollup bit so you
will need to upgrade it to match you installation. On a CRM-Online your system
will be continually updated and the router needs to be installed on a server or
other permanently connected machine, which needs to be updated manually, so
make sure to put that on your todo-list.
Set up your
organization in the next tab (omitted in this article) test it and publish your
settings.
Now, go
back to CRM. Create a new Email and set the queue as the From address (it is
defaulted to your user).
And then
write the rest of the email.
And press
send.
Do note
that the email created will have the status “Sending” until it the router picks
it up and sends it. This logic is based on the fact that the router will
periodically check in CRM for emails to send. This is defaulted to 60 seconds.
After a while,
the mail should be sent and received. This is how it looked for me:
It is in
Swedish, but note the field “Från” (meaning From) which says: “Westerlund
Support ", being the name of the Queue.
That’s it!
Hope you get it working and do drop me a note if you have some issues.
Gustaf Westerlund
MVP, CEO and owner at CRM-konsulterna AB
www.crmkonsulterna.se
Friday, February 15, 2013
Syncronizing with address books
One of our customers migrated from a custom made CRM system and their users were used to be able to select entire lists of user directly in Outlook and send emails to. As there is no good way of doing this in Dynamics CRM we thought about it a bit and have now released the solution to the problem as a product.
As you may have noticed, when installing the CRM Outlook client, you get several new address books. The address books are what you see when you press the "To" button in an email and then select Address books in the top righthand drop down.
These new address books are mainly based on entities and are for instance "Account", "Lead" and a few others. Exactly which filters are to be used for these address books can be partly configured in CRM.
However, the most obvious lists that you would like as address books are your marketing lists. However these are not available. This can for instance be useful if you have a list for all your contacts in Stockholm and you just want to send them a quick email about an event you are having or similar. Then you would like to just press the "Bcc" button, select the address book that corresponds to the marketing list for contacts in Stockholm and press Ctrl-A and then press the "Bcc" button.
To enable this, we have developed a product that is now available, that does this. It also adds a check box to the marketing lists so that you can decide if you want the marketing list to be available as an address book.
We like this product, as it really puts you closer to your marketing lists or customer segments, if this is what you are using it for. We hope you do to. I have a special blog-reader-discount, so if you just mention that you read this on my blog, we will give you a 20% discount. http://www.crmkonsulterna.se/Pages/Addressbooksync.aspx
Gustaf Westerlund
MVP, CEO and owner at CRM-konsulterna AB
www.crmkonsulterna.se
As you may have noticed, when installing the CRM Outlook client, you get several new address books. The address books are what you see when you press the "To" button in an email and then select Address books in the top righthand drop down.
 |
| Outlook 2013 without the CRM Outlook Client installed |
These new address books are mainly based on entities and are for instance "Account", "Lead" and a few others. Exactly which filters are to be used for these address books can be partly configured in CRM.
However, the most obvious lists that you would like as address books are your marketing lists. However these are not available. This can for instance be useful if you have a list for all your contacts in Stockholm and you just want to send them a quick email about an event you are having or similar. Then you would like to just press the "Bcc" button, select the address book that corresponds to the marketing list for contacts in Stockholm and press Ctrl-A and then press the "Bcc" button.
To enable this, we have developed a product that is now available, that does this. It also adds a check box to the marketing lists so that you can decide if you want the marketing list to be available as an address book.
We like this product, as it really puts you closer to your marketing lists or customer segments, if this is what you are using it for. We hope you do to. I have a special blog-reader-discount, so if you just mention that you read this on my blog, we will give you a 20% discount. http://www.crmkonsulterna.se/Pages/Addressbooksync.aspx
Gustaf Westerlund
MVP, CEO and owner at CRM-konsulterna AB
www.crmkonsulterna.se
Tuesday, January 29, 2013
Polaris/UR12 fully out
The new Microsoft CRM semiversion, called Polaris has now been released and has for online been in the processo of upgrades during the last couple of weeks.
Today the server bits for UR12 which is the corresponding upgrades for CRM On-premise has also been released. You can download them here: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=36229. Do note that not all features of CRM-Online are available yet in on-premise, for example, the new UI called process driven UI.
There are lots of nice things, the most notable the cross-browser support that we have all been waiting for so long.
And if you hadn't noticed, the CRM-Online upgrade was done without any downtime. The only thing that was noticed was that the system was a little bit slower than normal.
Next major release is called Orion so far and is planned to be released this summer.
Gustaf Westerlund
MVP, CEO and owner at CRM-konsulterna AB
www.crmkonsulterna.se
Today the server bits for UR12 which is the corresponding upgrades for CRM On-premise has also been released. You can download them here: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=36229. Do note that not all features of CRM-Online are available yet in on-premise, for example, the new UI called process driven UI.
There are lots of nice things, the most notable the cross-browser support that we have all been waiting for so long.
And if you hadn't noticed, the CRM-Online upgrade was done without any downtime. The only thing that was noticed was that the system was a little bit slower than normal.
Next major release is called Orion so far and is planned to be released this summer.
Gustaf Westerlund
MVP, CEO and owner at CRM-konsulterna AB
www.crmkonsulterna.se
More on the insecurity of cloud data
As I previously discussed in a guest posting at Software Advice, the legal aspects of cloud computing are interesting and an article recently in "Computer Sweden" (Swedish) again raised this issue with references to the law at hand in the US.
The article references the law Foreign Intelligence Amendments Act, FISAAA, and describes how it can be used without any court order or by-case permits required. According to the interpretation of the law it has some limitations but can rather freely be used to gather non-american data. It does not have to be political data, but can just be data from a forign region affecting US foreign affairs.
As it does not require case-by-case permissions, the interpretation of the law is probably handled quite far down the ranks were this is deemed necessary. The interpretation could hence also be quite wide and I would not be surprised if data such as defence industry business opportunities fall within this area and probably other related areas. Foreign affairs is a wide definition, automobile export, telecomunication equipment and software export is defintley within the boundaries.
I would hence, strongly advice against putting data in countries with legislation similar to this (USA is definetly not the only country). When using the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online service in Europe, the case is a bit better as the data is stored in countries within the EU:s juristiction. The US law is, however, interesting in this part as it focuses on the companies being american and not where the data is actually stored. Hence, the fact might be that the US government might be able to push Microsoft/SalesForce/Google or any other american cloud systems supplier into handing over data backed up by this law even if the data is stored in other countries.
To be on the safe side, from the legal aspect, storing the data in your own servers run by your own people, is always the safest. Their loyalty lies with your company and you have control over the physical storage of the data. Do not that this, however, is no safeguard agains hackers.
Gustaf Westerlund
MVP, CEO and owner at CRM-konsulterna AB
www.crmkonsulterna.se
The article references the law Foreign Intelligence Amendments Act, FISAAA, and describes how it can be used without any court order or by-case permits required. According to the interpretation of the law it has some limitations but can rather freely be used to gather non-american data. It does not have to be political data, but can just be data from a forign region affecting US foreign affairs.
As it does not require case-by-case permissions, the interpretation of the law is probably handled quite far down the ranks were this is deemed necessary. The interpretation could hence also be quite wide and I would not be surprised if data such as defence industry business opportunities fall within this area and probably other related areas. Foreign affairs is a wide definition, automobile export, telecomunication equipment and software export is defintley within the boundaries.
I would hence, strongly advice against putting data in countries with legislation similar to this (USA is definetly not the only country). When using the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online service in Europe, the case is a bit better as the data is stored in countries within the EU:s juristiction. The US law is, however, interesting in this part as it focuses on the companies being american and not where the data is actually stored. Hence, the fact might be that the US government might be able to push Microsoft/SalesForce/Google or any other american cloud systems supplier into handing over data backed up by this law even if the data is stored in other countries.
To be on the safe side, from the legal aspect, storing the data in your own servers run by your own people, is always the safest. Their loyalty lies with your company and you have control over the physical storage of the data. Do not that this, however, is no safeguard agains hackers.
Gustaf Westerlund
MVP, CEO and owner at CRM-konsulterna AB
www.crmkonsulterna.se
Wednesday, January 09, 2013
How to become a Dynamics CRM Professional
Being an MVP for Dynamics CRM has many perks, one of the perks I appreciate the most is the very close relationsship that the Dynamics CRM MVP:s have with daily conversations on our favorite subject, Dynamics CRM.
Gus Gonzalez is one of these MVP:s and took the initiative to ask 19 of these MVP:s 20 questions on how they started working professionally with Dynamics CRM and he has now assembled this into a very interesting blog post. I had the opportunity to be one of the participants of this survey.
An interesting note is the difference of background for all of these people, so if you have your sights set on being a CRM professional, there is nothing stopping you!
Read the blog post
Gustaf Westerlund
MVP, CEO and owner at CRM-konsulterna AB
www.crmkonsulterna.se
Gus Gonzalez is one of these MVP:s and took the initiative to ask 19 of these MVP:s 20 questions on how they started working professionally with Dynamics CRM and he has now assembled this into a very interesting blog post. I had the opportunity to be one of the participants of this survey.
An interesting note is the difference of background for all of these people, so if you have your sights set on being a CRM professional, there is nothing stopping you!
Read the blog post
Gustaf Westerlund
MVP, CEO and owner at CRM-konsulterna AB
www.crmkonsulterna.se
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