A frequently asked question is about converting an incoming email into a case (or a lead). If you open an email activity, it has actions to convert it into a case or a lead or opportunity. More commonly, there is a need to automate this process. In this...

A few days ago, David West posted about the new e-mail features in CRM 4.0 . For many of you, this list of new features is probably music to your ears, but if you’re a newcomer to CRM you might be a little overwhelmed. The e-mail integration story we...

Relationships in CRM 4.0 are quite powerful but hard to understand at first. There are so many moving parts tied to so many places that it is sometimes difficult to predict what the actual outcome is. So here is my attempt to explain a bit further what...

PluginRegistration tool v 2.0 Are you facing problems in registering plug-ins? Are you wondering if you could get a tool to generate the Xml and deploy plug-ins via Import/Export just like the way customizations are deployed? Are you confused with the...

This document explains the techniques that I have been using to deploy Microsoft Dynamics CRM Client through SMS. It is a series of steps that worked for us, and not necessarily is the best and for sure is not the only way to do this. For those already...

On behalf of the Microsoft CRM Product Performance team I would like to take this opportunity to announce the release of Microsoft Dynamics TM CRM 4.0 Performance Toolkit. Download Location The toolkit is available for download at www.codeplex.com/crmperftoolkit...

A download containing the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Logical Database Diagram s is now live on MSDN downloads. This download contains the following diagrams in Visio 2003 format: crm4answers.vsd – Shows relationship for the knowledge base and sales literature...

CRM MVP Mitch Milam returns as a guest blogger. You can read more from Mitch at his blog . One of the things that I’ve always wanted to do with CRM is to automatically generate a welcome message when a new user is added to CRM. With the enhanced workflow...

When considering the needs of an enterprise-class deployment of MSCRM, there are a number of things to take into account which were not necessarily factors in previous versions. In this post I will try to cover the primary factors that should be considered...

The following information acts as a continuation to the brief introduction and demo of Data Migration Manager (DMM) available at: http://blogs.msdn.com/crm/archive/2008/01/04/microsoft-dynamics-crm-4-0-data-migration-manager-with-john-o-donnell.aspx ...

I’ve received some questions around changing a Windows Live ID that’s associated with a user’s CRM Live login. So I thought I’d share the instructions here with everyone. Microsoft Dynamics CRM Live uses Windows Live ID service credentials to control...

One of the top questions I’ve been getting about upgrade from 3.0 to 4.0 (both internally and externally) is: Why do I have duplicate reports after upgrade? This is actually a “feature” we came up with to work around two problems: 1. Determining which...

To migrate record owner information, the DMM expects each entity records file to have a column, the data in which can be used to uniquely identify the owner for the records. DMM also expects the details of all users in the source system to be available...

Pick list Value Mappings and Pick list Migration: DMM has the potential to efficiently handle your pick list values. DMM uses the concept of Pick list mapping in its Data Map for migrating the pick list values. So what are these pick list mappings? Let...

I’ve been looking at multiple ways to create dashboards for Microsoft Dynamics CRM Live. There are a couple of options to consider: 1. Build a web site 2. Use a tool like Microsoft Excel 3. Build a smart client I've tried all 3 and think that a smart...

This is one of coolest features which I like in CRM Titan 4.0. It gives us the ability to add attributes from Many-to-1 (Lookup) related entities to a grid. So, let’s briefly talk about this feature. Adding a related Attribute to the Grid. Let’s say you...

The new version of the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Client has some great features which bring a lot of value and more ease to the deployment experience. I’ll try to highlight a few of the key points in this blog post. Install Once, Configure as Needed In V3...

In the previous blog, Introducing MSCRM Client Diagnostics, http://blogs.msdn.com/crm/archive/2008/01/22/introducing-mscrm-client-diagnostics.aspx , one of the items we discussed was the Xml file that can be generated from the End User Mode after the...

The CRM 4.0 e-mail router provides an extensible framework based on the concept of e-mail providers and XML files. This article explains how you can extend the model to build your own highly specialized e-mail provider. Out-of-the-box, the CRM 4.0 e-mail...

Guest blogger and CRM MVP Aaron Elder provides a (in his words) 'worthy' blog today. Our technical reviewers give this post high marks and kudos. The Microsoft Dynamics CRM Service Scheduling Engine is a powerful and mysterious system. As a CRM developer...

Check out this month’s update of the Microsoft Dynamics CRM SDK – version 4.0.2 ! New or updated topics in the help file (CHM): ISV Extensibility Best Practices - New information about where to deploy custom code. Recurrence Pattern in Asynchronous Job...

The CRM Engineering for Enterprise (E 2 ) team is pleased to announce the release of the white paper Optimizing and Maintaining Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 . This document provides techniques, considerations, and best practices for optimizing and maintaining...

If you are using a web application that uses Windows Live, such as Microsoft Dynamics CRM Live, you might be wondering, how does authentication work. The first step in the process is that the web application registers with the Windows Live ID service...

Convergence 2008 will be held this March in Orlando, Florida, and this year will mark Microsoft Dynamics CRM’s largest presence ever at this event. In additional to the great networking and community building opportunities at the event, we’ll have over...

I have released one screen-cast showing integration of Office Communication Server 2007 with Dynamics CRM 4.0. It seems like our Dynamics video library is growing by leaps and bounds. I plan to compile these screen-casts/video-casts in a live blog for...