Today we welcome our guest blogger CRM MVP Darren Liu from the Crowe company. Many Microsoft Dynamics CRM (MSCRM) implementations involved integration with other systems. When I think of integrations between systems, the common approaches pop up immediately...

A new feature in CRM 4.0 is for administrative ability to prompt clients to install patches on their CRM client. This feature is called AutoUpdate and it applies to any client where the user has administrative rights on his/her machine. I’ll document...

I have several customers looking to complete their upgrade from CRM 3.0 to 4.0, and they’re looking for advice on the steps they should follow both before and during the actual upgrade process. First, I suggest running two or more successful test upgrades...

We often use scenarios such as this to test the individual components and entities of CRM in an integrated fashion. This is one example of a very simple sales scenario describing the flow of user actions in the Sales module of CRM. The flow chart below...

Today we welcome our guest blogger and CRM MVP Ayaz Ahmad . Last week I looked for the best approach to use auto numbers in Microsoft Dynamics CRM. After discussion with my peers I have come to the following possible options that can be used for auto...

A CRM MVP, we welcome our guest blogger David Jennaway who is the technical director at Excitation . In Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0, plugins offer a very powerful mechanism to attach code to a wide range of platform events. Each event is identified by...

The new feature in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4 and CRM Online that I use every day is instant messaging. Yep, I can IM from inside CRM! If your company has Microsoft Office Communicator enabled and you are using Microsoft Dynamics CRM for Outlook, you can...

During the development of CRM plug-ins, a developer will test his/her plug-in before putting in production server to make sure it works as designed. One way to do it is to have a development environment to test plug-in. However, the turnaround time between...

In every version of CRM I have had a favorite feature that I tend to obsess slightly over. :-) In Version 3.0, it was Client Side Scripting. In 4.0, it is Workflow. The Workflow engine in CRM has so much possibility to help transform businesses and is...

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 shipped with Data Migration Manager (referred as DMM from here on) to provide customers a solution to migrate data from their current solutions to Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0. DMM has made people happy with its unique set of...

The Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Sample Database is provided for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0. Sample Data gives a Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 application convincing, real life business data with the necessary breadth and depth to allow end users to explore...

Check out the latest SDK update, version 4.0.5! If you’ve been waiting for sample code in VB .NET, then download the SDK . We’ve converted over 100 samples to VB .NET. Here’s a list of changes: Added 64-bit versions of the DLLs needed for plug-in and...

What’s New Time zone implementation has undergone a redesign for Dynamics CRM 4.0. Time zone definitions are now stored in the database. All known rules are maintained, and allow users a “Dynamic TZ/DST” experience. Terminology Time Zone - A geographic...

Network diagrams have always been interesting to me. Charting and analyzing the flow of dialogue based on social roles gives us a bit more insight into the phenomenon of social networking. I've been making my way through some work that a community guru...

When creating a new Marketing List from the detail form you will notice that the Member Type field has no default value, you must select what the member type should be. The Member Types allowed on a Marketing Lists are restricted to Account, Contact,...

Finally, a one-stop Internet venue to make suggestions to Microsoft about any of our products. I have been waiting for the Dynamics implementation of Microsoft Connect to become a solid resource before I'd recommend it. It does require an Windows Live...

You can now get the latest from the Resource Center, whether you’re in the Navigation Pane or out on the Internet. Get tips from peers and answers from experts, learn from real-world scenarios, and get step-by-step guidance where you need it, when you...

I’m excited to be the new writer on the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Product Documentation Team and I’m happy to contribute to this team blog. When I first arrived I became very interested in the Service Scheduling feature and have written three articles about...