You already can develop web services applications for CRM V3.0 using Visual Studio(VS) 2003 or 2005 (or any IDE that supports web service standards for that matter). This is because our web services uses WSDL standard that is platform and tool independent...

I have been very busy planning for our next release and I have to say, I am very excited about what we are doing next! More on that later........... I am still getting mail from folks asking how to access a web service from CRM forms. I thought I share...

Since I wrote the post about calling "any" web service from CRM forms (BTW, that is my most viewed post to date!), folks have written to me and asked "what the heck, what about calling “CRM” web services, hello"? Calling CRM web services from JScript...

Lately, I have been asked a number of times about how to programmatically work with Lookup controls on CRM forms. Basically, you can read values from and set new values to almost all of the CRM form controls, including Lookups. You can write Jscript code...

As i mentioned in earlier blogs, Business Entities in Microsoft Dynamics CRM V3.0 can be represented using two different classes. For example an Account Business Entity can be represented using a DynamicEntity class instance or an account class instance...

When you use the VS 2005 callout template that I posted earlier you can take advantage of most of the new VS 2005 IDE features such as auto complete, IntelliSense, code snippets, etc to build your callout. However, if you need to generate a proxy to call...

Earlier this year, we announced a new program to enable service providers offer hosted version of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 . The partner hosted version of CRM which is based on a Service Provider Licensing Agreement (SPLA) model delivers the same rich...

If you want to build a business application, let's say a real estate application, you typically will need a number of building blocks to construct your application architecture. You need UI components, service interfaces, security support, communications...

Visual Studio 2005 IntelliSense Code Snippets feature enables pre-authored pieces of code to be created that can later be shared and inserted into your application. Code snippets increase productivity by reducing the amount of time spent typing repetitive...

Just had a chance to go through many comments that have been posted to my blog. Thank you for all the nice comments. As for CRM questions, sorry I am not going to spend much time replying to those. There are now other folks who are more qualified to answer...

Building an extremely developer friendly programming experience is a challenge, when you are working within the constraints of WSDL programming model. Basically, a WSDL programming model does not allow you to describe code/functions (e.g. user friendly...

CRM customization tools are pretty cool in a sense that they allow you to customize the CRM schema with just a few clicks. If you are a developer building CRM Applications, you typically do this: go to CRM application UI in IE à add your data customizations...

I am not a big fan of waterfall software development model for many obvious (and not very obvious) reasons. At the risk of revealing my age, long before I joined Microsoft, I taught software development methodologies at European universities and I must...

We have some sample code on this topic being released in the next rev of the SDK samples (coming very soon!). In the meantime, since I have been asked about this a few times, here is a simple piece of code that shows how to download CRM attachments using...

I have been asked this question many many times. Mostly when I interview new candidates for Microsoft but also when I am having a frank chat with partners or customers at conferences etc. Steven Sinofsky, who has many years of experince at Microsoft,...

There are a number of very cool Microsoft CRM add-ons and plugins out there (A list of which can be found on solution finder ) so I have decided to mention the name of any cool add-on that I have recently saw a demo of, on my blog. No preference is given...

We are just about to finish the 5 th sprint. I blogged earlier about agile development at CRM team , but at the time I had little clue on how Program Managers(PMs) can add value to the new process. 5 sprints later, I think we know more about the role...

When we were designing the Microsoft Dynamics CRM V3.0 web services, we had a lot of discussions around how strongly typed our Object Model should be. Some developers including myself (although I am a “Program Manager” at Microsoft) would strongly prefer...

I have been very busy lately so haven't had a chance to update my blogs for a while but I am back! We just finished a very exciting three day software design review event for Titan in Redmond. The event was packed with ISVs participating from all over...

Couldn't resist the temptation to share this animation on the new roadable plane from Terrafugia .

Today we made a great announcement which will significantly encourage and promote interoperability between applications and platforms. We simply pledged that any third party can create their own implementation of the web services standards that we have...

Yes, Absolutely! Let me tell you how we use it in the CRM product team in particular. Everyone across the product team, from program mangers to developers, testers, project managers, planners, designers, etc u se CRM on a daily basis and for our critical...

CRM V3.0 comes with a brand new web service that provides information about the CRM metadata (e.g. what business entities are in the system, their attribute list, picklist values, etc). When we designed this web service, we had a specific goal to make...

Just got back from a week of holiday and while scrambling through hundreds of email found out that we finally released the Biztalk 2006 adaptor for CRM V3.0. Very Cool! The adaptor can be used inside Visual Studio and allows easier integration with ERP...

It is very likely that I (or/and another collegue from CRM programmability) will be at Convergence 2007 this year. If you are a CRM customer or partner with an active NDA with Microsoft, there will be a chance to test drive the all new CRM Titan developer...