Browse by Tags

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, or Lead. These values are not customizable, but there...

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 numbering. These may not be the most efficient techniques...

Advanced transformations used in Microsoft CRM Data Migration Manager is a powerful and efficient technique for managing data when migrating your data. In one of my previous posts, Data Migration Manager: Advanced Transformation Mappings , I discussed the basics of advanced transformation mapping and...

In March 2008, Reuben Krippner presented two breakout sessions at Convergence US on Extensibility with Microsoft Dynamics CRM. During these sessions I covered a number of live demonstrations of how you can extend and integrate Microsoft Dynamics CRM. One of the “big hit” demos involved the creation of...

This topic is about new authentication mechanism for accessing CRM Web Services that was in Dynamics CRM Live – Passport Authentication. This new method requires you to jump a few more hoops before you can make your first web service call (after all we have now stepped out of our friendly AD neighborhood...

Today we welcome CRM MVP Ayaz Ahmad as our guest blogger. Proximity Search allows you to find businesses located around a reference point you provide. For example, hotels or restaurants can provide the nearest location of all automatic teller machines (ATMs). Or a manufacturing company can list all gas...

The purpose of this blog is to investigate in detail a benchmark run conducted with the CRM V4 Performance toolkit (see http://blogs.msdn.com/crm/archive/2008/02/29/microsoft-dynamicstm-crm-4-0-performance-toolkit.aspx or www.codeplex.com/crmperftoolkit ). My intent is to provide you with: a. Results...

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 . Getting Started The instructions for...

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 client provides the most flexibility when it comes...

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 blog, I’ll give a walkthrough’ of how you can use...

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 you may be asking will this engine meet your needs...

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 router includes different e-mail providers, each...

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 Execution – A new topic about how to set the recurrence...

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 have in CRM is both powerful and very flexible—enough...

Can you develop plug-ins and custom workflow activities with .NET Framework 3.5? Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 uses the .NET Framework 3.0, so this is the version that is officially supported. However, the .NET Framework 3.5 uses the same underlying Common Language Runtime (CLR) – version 2.0 - so many...

In Part 1 of this two part blog series, I discussed how to Send E-mail to contacts on annual basis, based on a Custom Attribute that is updated with Client-Side scripting. There is another way to accomplish the same goal using a Custom Workflow Activity and a second Workflow. Option #2: Custom Workflow...

CRM MVP Mitch Milam returns as a guest blogger. You can read more from Mitch at his blog . Occasionally I get a request from a customer to create a custom search screen that will allow them to perform specific queries that they use on a frequent basis. Usually, I point them to the Advanced Find feature...

If you are like me, then you probably enjoy being wished a happy birthday. The birthday congratulations usually take the form of an e-mail or a phone call. If the business tries to does this for every customer, it can become unmanageable. Enter Workflow. Let’s create a Workflow that sends an e-mail to...

The product is shipped and now you may be asking, where is the SDK? Check the Downloads page in the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Developer Center the first week in January. We are working hard to ensure that the SDK contains all the sample code you’ll need to get started with the new features. Thanks for your...

CRM MVP Ronald Lemmen returns as a guest blogger. You can read more from Ronald at his blog . This post will dive deep into the possibilities for Data Import for Microsoft Dynamics CRM. Discussed will be the options which Microsoft gives for importing data in both the versions 3.0 as well as 4.0, which...

This month's guest CRM MVP blogger is David Jennaway . CRM provides a powerful mechanism for controlling what data each user of the Outlook laptop client can take offline. This can be easily defined on a per user basis , however there is no simple way to configure identical settings for multiple users...

The fact that I have moved my focus to other projects at Microsoft does not mean that I have forgotten about the CRM developers. I am watching the CRM team very closely and to prove it here is some sample code that I want to share with you all. I have recently been prototyping some concept applications...

There is a fledgling group of Microsoft Dynamics CRM enthusiasts on facebook now. Those of us who enjoy playing with social software, in its many incarnations, are there trying out the waters. Like LinkedIn , MySpace , and Windows Live Spaces , facebook offers some unique features that differentiate...

CRM stores information about your contacts. Facebook also stores information about contacts. Let’s merge the two entities together so you can view Facebook profiles from within a CRM entity page! When we are done, our contact entity page will be able to do the following: There are 2 main tasks here....

The Intro is here Part I - Configuration is here Part II - Run-time is here So I discussed run-time duplicate detection. However, there is more to duplicate detection in Titan. What if you need to detect duplicates on bulk of records that are already there in the system? This section explains the bulk...