Arash Ghanaie-Sichanie Blog

Check out my updated profile http://blog.arash.cc/page/About-Me.aspx

Arashs — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 11:00:33 GMT

New profile is here: http://blog.arash.cc/page/About-Me.aspx

Join us for a "Live" Live Framework webcast..

Arashs — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 04:38:00 GMT

http://blog.arash.cc/post/Join-us-for-a-%22Live%22-Live-Framework-webcast.aspx

Why Mesh-Enabled Web Applications

Arashs — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 23:06:00 GMT

http://blog.arash.cc/post/Why-Mesh-Enabled-Web-Applications.aspx

Mesh-Enabled Applications are born.............

Arashs — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 07:15:00 GMT

I have been busy. Extermely busy, and you will know why very soon. I will be presenting a session on Mesh-Enabled Applications at PDC 2008 in LA. But what are Mesh-Enabled Applications? what can you do with them? how do they provide pure goodness and value to developers? and why do I care.... Mary-Jo Foley seems to have some ideas but I am making no comments. The best way to find out is to attend my session at PDC. I promise you will not be disappointed.

Here is the session description on PDC 2008 website.

Live Services: Building Mesh-Enabled Web Applications Using the Live Framework

Presenter: Arash Ghanaie-Sichanie

Come learn how to extend your existing web applications and get them to live and breathe within Live Mesh. Mesh-enabled web applications can be accessed from anywhere through a web browser as well as run locally (and offline) on a user's desktop and can take full advantage of many Mesh value-add services such as a dedicated sandbox, online and offline synchronized storage, auto deployment and update, identity, application catalogue, social computing and more. Learn about the architecture and lifecycle of applications which live in the Mesh and how to Mesh-enable your Silverlight 2 and JavaScript application.

Looking forward to seeing you there.......

Tags:

Advanced, Live Framework, Live Mesh, Live Services

Live Mesh is Live....

Arashs — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 04:26:00 GMT

Live Mesh was launched last night but we have only told part of the story. The platform and developer story is the most interesting part. I will be blogging more about Live Mesh Developer Platform on my blog soon......you can find a list of interesting posts about Live Mesh here.

Extending CRM forms with Managed code using Silverlight 1.1

Arashs — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 17:20:00 GMT

Check this out:

http://blog.arash.cc/post/Adding-client-side-business-logic-to-CRM-forms-using-Silverlight-managed-code.aspx

Make sure you use my new blog

Arashs — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 06:45:00 GMT

I still get messages and comments added to this blog. That is great but I don't check this blog very often so your questions stay unanswered.

If you have any questions or comments about this blog, please use my new blog where I am more responsive to messages and questions.

Merci beaucoup

Arash

Blog move....Come and visit my new blog.....

Arashs — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 12:08:00 GMT

I have decided to move my blog to a different server.

My new blog is located here:

http://www.arash.cc/

http://blog.arash.cc/

I will continue to blog about the same topics that you see here and more new stuff as we get green light to talk about them in public; Microsoft Live Services and developer platform, CRM, Program Management, etc, etc. I also try to answer questions about my posts, in my spare time.

Come and pay a visit......I'll be fun.....

Thanks for all the nice comments

Arashs — Tue, 08 May 2007 04:09:00 GMT

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 those kind of questions...

Using Silverlight as an excuse to get back on blogging....

Arashs — Tue, 08 May 2007 03:45:00 GMT

What a great way to get back on the blogging scene (I hope it lasts, with all the things that are going on:-)), last week Mix conference in Las Vegas had a great announcement. I personally didn't attend but a few colleagues went and did a great job of sending up to the minute update. If you are a developer looking for new toys to play with, look no further... Silverlight,which was the star of the show at Mix, is a new client side technology from Microsoft that enables development of cool browser hosted managed apps and videos. Yes, that means that you can use C# to build your apps and get them streamed into in browsers like IE and Firefox. The Silverlight is very light in size and includes some of the Windows Presentation Foundation (A.k.a Avalon) libraries which allow you can build declarative and cool graphical and animation apps that can be hosted in the browser. Check out this demo which is built with Silverlight.

What does Silverlight mean to Software+Service: It provides a nice platform to build Software+Service applications that provide rich user interaction and visuals while talking with a heavy weight service in the cloud. It is like Ajax on steroid. ..... I hope more Microsoft Services take advantage of Silverlight and provide rich browser based interactions and I am sure you will start seeing more Live services provide richer experience using this technology.

As for me, I just downloaded Orcas VS to build some managed apps for some of our Software+Service scenarios. Will try to post what my experience was.

Time to shift gears….

Arashs — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 00:55:00 GMT

After spending a few years working on one of the best products and business application platforms around, I have decided to shift my focus on another great-to-be product that is currently in incubation at Microsoft. Within the next few weeks, I will no longer be directly working on the Dynamics CRM product. Having said that, I will still be closly watching the Titan release as I truly believe, as our first commercial Software + Service product, it will open a new chapter in our company and the software industry history.

As for what I will be working on, unfortunately, I can’t tell much at this point, but I can tell this much that as soon as we are ready to tell the world about it, you can’t miss its noise. More on this later…..

I haven’t yet decided what I want to do with this blog, I might consider archiving it somewhere so folks can still access a few articles that have been very popular. Suggestions are welcome…..

It has been awesome to work with CRM customers and partners. Keep partying on Dynamics CRM. It is a groundbreaking product with tons of customer value to offer for years to come.

As for me, on to a new venture………

Convergence preview of Titan: Building Business Applications on CRM Platform

Arashs — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 05:38:00 GMT

Thanks to everyone who has responded directly to me about my previous post. I have now a list of Architects, CTOs, etc from various partners and ISVs who have lined up for the discussions around Titan programmability at Convergence. Looking forward to the discussions…..

Test drive CRM Titan Dev power at Convergence 2007

Arashs — Mon, 05 Feb 2007 12:15:00 GMT

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 experience and tools. I am planning to run a number of one-on-one API, workflow and programmability usability studies, so drop me a line and book your place! Please note that the space is very limited so you need to hurry!

CRM Titan Preview is released to partner community!

Arashs — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 10:50:00 GMT

I have been pretty busy presenting the new extensibility points and scenarios of CRM Titan, and in particularly CRM Live, to our partner community throughout the Christmas and New year. Just before the Christmas, we released the first preview of CRM Titan which comes in different flavors including a fully Microsoft hosted CRM solution and platform and an on-premise version. We had a pretty good start with our “power of choice” message and partners are getting engaged with endless opportunities to build solutions and applications on CRM Live and/or On-premise and/or Partner hosted. In other words you will see the power of choice message getting crystal clear, especially around customization and extensibility, within the next few months and as we march towards our final release. Expect very very exciting and busy days ahead for the new Microsoft Dynamics CRM Live……. Stay tuned….

A platform for building your business application, no matter what it is

Arashs — Fri, 22 Dec 2006 07:18:00 GMT

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, data store/services etc etc. I bet if you ask most of the developers and architects out there about how to do this, they would start from the scratch and use core technologies like .NET and SQL to build their custom business app. Look at the wealth of custom business applications that exist in today's enterprises. But, I believe, there is a valid and superior alternative to that approach that will save you huge sums of money and significant amount of time.

Microsoft CRM has already built majority of the building blocks that you need to build your business application. These blocks are built in a way that they can easily be extended with much less effort compared to building the blocks from the scratch. Your application does not need to be a CRM application in order to benefit from Microsoft CRM platform. Your business application could be of a banking, finance, HR, real estate, health club, educational, legal or etc etc type application. What I am really trying to say here is that you can use our platform as a business application platform and almost forget about the CRM part in the product name. I am increasingly seeing this trend happening where our partners use our platform to build a non-CRM application. Nothing seem to be stopping them from reaping the benefits of such approach.

To better articulate my point, I use a standard application architecture view that I borrowed from Microsoft Patterns and practices web site. This diagram simply depicts typical components that you see in a business application. I have added numbers to each major component so I can add comments about how those components are made available through CRM platform:

1)Targeted users: A business application has a variety of users ranging from business managers and CEOs to administrators who maintain and customize the application to developers who develop rich extensions. CRM platform provides an extensive range of tools, APIs and UIs to satisfy the need of different users who interact with the system. Depending on what persona uses your application most, you can invest in enhancing and customizing the experience of that persona using our tools.

2)User Interface components: You need a rich and flexible presentation layer for your app. CRM UI, including the main application and forms are customizable. You can use simple tools to customize the navigation structure and form layouts as well as the ability to include client side business logic(e.g. validation) through scripting languages and client events. Look under client side programmability and customization sections of CRM SDK docs to see the full extent to which you can save yourself a bunch of time by using what is provided by the CRM platform as part of the presentation layer of your application. BTW, I am not saying that you don't need any custom controls of you own but i am saying that our UI extensiblity take you more than half way towards your fanciest UI dream. Alternatively, if you want to create attractive smart client or composite apps, nothing will stop you from using other technologies (e.g Windows Presentation Foundation) to build those richer UIs on top of our platform.

3)Security: CRM provides a rich security model based on roles and privileges that allows you to easily customize and control the access to your data and process assets, based on your need. The security controls access to various types of the business entity data as well as instances of that data. Customization of security roles and privileges are accessible through UI tools or APIs.

4)Operation Management: administration tools and APIs allows you fully maintain and manage the lifecycle of your business application that is built on top of CRM platform

5)Communication: CRM platform is designed based on a message oriented communication architecture(see my earlier blogs). Any custom application built on top of our platform will use this approach to communicate with the platform and your custom business logic that you may have embeded in the platform. All the additional components that are added to the platform are responsible to manage their communications between themselves but can easily follow the same pattern as what is used inside of the platform.

6)Service Interfaces and business components: this is where you get the most value. CRM platform has a set of customizable and dynamic web services APIs that allows your application to easily work with the platform operations and business entity data. The services are fully plug-able and extendable through code. The Workflow engine provides the ability to easily define custom business processes and hook them into various platform events. The Business Entity model is flexible and fully customizable through web service APIs or the UI components and tools. The saving you get as a result of using our business entity and process model vs creating your own is going to be significant.

7 & 8) Data storage and access: The data access provides multiple choices to access and manage data ranging from UI based query building and execution model for non-technical users to direct read from SQL format to strongly typed query building using IntelliSense in Visual Studio. The range of data access options means that depending on what query model you are more comfortable with, you can use the appropriate query approach. All these means that you don't need to worry about managing your query access and focus on making your application smarter and richer.

CRM update rollup to address a number of minor programmability issues

Arashs — Thu, 21 Dec 2006 05:06:00 GMT

As part of our continued commitment to respond to customer asks and issues, we have just released an Update rollup for CRM V3.0. Among others, this rollup also includes a number of specific fixes for some minor issues related to the programmability and SDK. This includes fixes to callouts and form events. You only need to install the update if you have experienced the specific issues described in the update description. You can download the update from here.

Titan Software Design Review, what an event!

Arashs — Fri, 17 Nov 2006 12:20:36 GMT

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 the world as well as internal product and operation groups who are actively adopting Microsoft CRM. We ended up having about 20% more participation that we have originally planned for which was great while challenged us to schedule more 1:1 solution review sessions on the fly! This was a great opportunity for us to get feedback from ISVs about our thinking and designs for Titan and help them think through their application designs and architecture. The feedback about technologies and scenarios that we are delivering in Titan was overwhelming positive and I managed to get our development and Quality Assurance teams involved to learn more about our ISVs and share the credit for their good work. The most buzz was around our new extensibility model for building rich custom business logic on both CRM on-promise and Live. Of course we were lucky and super happy to hear about some feature asks that are not in the current plan. The whole point of having the design review was to make sure we have fully understood what ISVs need to build great apps on top of our platform and refine the plans as we get closer to the release.

Biztalk 2006 adaptor for CRM V3.0

Arashs — Fri, 06 Oct 2006 06:52:00 GMT

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 applications that have a much longer standing with Biztalk. I have certainly been asked a lot about this adaptor, specifically from our larger partners and customers who eat and breath Biztalk. You can get it from here.

CRM recognition by CRM Magazine and Gartner status report

Arashs — Thu, 21 Sep 2006 21:33:00 GMT

Check out: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2006/sep06/09-20CRMIndustryInfluencersPR.mspx

Meet Isaac and Mort

Arashs — Mon, 18 Sep 2006 12:13:00 GMT

If you participate in any of developer focused presentations or review meetings at Microsoft, the chances are that you will hear numerous references to Isaac and Mort. We use “personas” to better understand the customers of different needs and focuses and model our product features for them. In case of developers, Isaac and Mort are the two personas who represent a large portion of our partner developer community. You can read more about role-based software and customer model here.

Web services standards, free for all...

Arashs — Thu, 14 Sep 2006 02:39:00 GMT

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 been developing in the company, with the help of other platforms, for some time. Considering the Service Oriented nature of CRM extensibility architecture, this couldn’t means anything but good news for our ISVs who can now free'er than ever, develop their own SOA architecture that interfaces well with CRM using the standards. Read more about it here.

CRM in Enterprise and data integration

Arashs — Mon, 11 Sep 2006 12:48:00 GMT

I had the privilege to visit one of our large enterprise customers a few weeks back. The visit was tremendously informative and valuable and we spent two days talking with employees of all levels from sales people and consultants to general managers and senior directors, which gave us a 360 degree view of the organization, how they work, what problems they are facing and how we can improve CRM to make them even more productive, increase their ROI and reduce their TCO. The visit reminded me of the two of the critical factors for a successful CRM implementation (I am sure one can list many other ones) 1) Ease and flexibility of data and process integration with legacy systems 2) End user adoption. On the former topic, If you are interested in or are working on a CRM implementation in an enterprise size organization, Microsoft already has published a good wealth of best practices and patterns for architects. Check out the Integration Patterns topics on MSDN, especially Entity Aggregation which would be a useful resource when designing a CRM on-premise integration with other data stores and applications that you will typically find in an enterprise. Also, the 8^th edition of Architecture Journal is dedicated to data integration and pervasiveness of data in architectures, which I highly recommend.

Role of PMs in scrum process

Arashs — Mon, 11 Sep 2006 11:52:00 GMT

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 of PMs. Let’s just say that the postmortem of the first few sprints (you must do a postmortem after each sprint) weren’t very rosy for PMs, whereas the postmortem of the last sprint was much more positive on effectiveness of the PM role. So I learned a few lessons, some of which are: 1) writing PM specs on-the-fly is a myth! especially if the spec is deeply technical and has rather complex scenarios. I don’t mind thinking on my feet and writing a small spec for a small feature but I will not write a spec on a fundamental and critical feature set without sitting back and taking as much time as it is reasonably needed to do the proper customer/technology research and design a software that is built to last for at least for 2-3 versions. Write the specs, develop the designs and close on critical issues before the sprint start. It is fine to enter the sprint with a few non-critical unresolved details. In such case, ensure adequate work items and time is allocated for closing out and resolving those details 2) Think customer scenarios all the time especially when putting together the sprint product backlog or cutting items from it. Your product backlog should be an absolute ordered list of customers scenarios and not features. This will reduce the risk of cutting a feature that directly or indirectly break a customer scenario. In our team PMs are product owners and dev and test leads are scrum masters so what I am writing here is just from the product owner perspective.

A plane that can also be driven as a car, only 148K on sale now!

Arashs — Thu, 07 Sep 2006 06:32:00 GMT

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

Generating a web service proxy manually

Arashs — Wed, 06 Sep 2006 11:33:00 GMT

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 any web service, you need to ensure that the generated proxy class can be compiled with .NET 1.1. The VS 2005 "Add Web reference" generates proxies that use the new .NET 2.0 concepts (e.g. partial classes) so to call web services (including CRM web services) you need to generate your proxy using WSDL.exe instead (BTW there might be other workarounds, let me know if you found other ones). Here is how:

1) Run this from command line:

C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003\SDK\v1.1\Bin>wsdl /out:myCRMProxyClass.cs http://[YOUR_SERVER_ NAME_HERE]/mscrmservices/2006/crmservice.asmx?wsdl

This will generate a myCRMProxyClass.cs.

2) Add the generated .cs file to the project that was created by Callout template targetign .NET 1.1, compile and call web services.