DISCLAIMER: This is my opinion.  I get nothing from the makers of this addon for expressing my opinion.  I’m a developer at heart.  I love writing code.  But I also abelieve in the “don’t write code unless you have to” philosophy.  Well, I finally got around to playing around...

As Girish says in his post: “If you didn’t attend Convergence 2013, you can still watch the recording of the keynotes and breakout sessions by registering for the Virtual Convergence. Best part is that it is completely free!” More details here: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/girishr/archive/2013/04/17/watch...

I’ve spent a fair amount of time lately talking to people about the benefits of using SQL Server 2012 AlwaysOn Availability Groups in your CRM infrastructure.  I just came across a great video that’s a great primer on AlwaysOn Availability Groups: Here is a link to the SQL documentation as well...

I’ve blogged previously about why I like the approach CRM Solution Manager uses for authoring web resources in Visual Studio.  While I think CRM Solution Manager is a fantastic tool, there are ways to get some of the benefits of it’s approach to web resource authoring with a couple other free Visual...

UPDATE (14MAR2013): Uploaded a modified sample which addresses storing credentials in secure config and adds comments around how to encrypt those credentials.  While I show a synchronous plugin in the demo for simplicity of the walkthrough, you should always evaluate whether your plugin logic can...

I work with enterprise customers and have been involved in a number of enterprise implementations of Dynamics CRM.  One of the #1 things I get asked all the time is “where is the enterprise CRM training?”  The Microsoft CRM Enterprise Academy is a 5-day instructor-led training which provides...

Two days ago, the Convergence team announced Virtual Convergence 2013: https://twitter.com/MSFTConvergence/status/310740576477782016 If you aren’t familiar with Convergence, it is similar to the likes of past technical conferences like PDC/MIX or current ones like TechEd and //build/, but exclusively...

I’ve been tweaking my tips n tricks deck over the last few months based on new findings, thoughts, etc.  Just wanted to remind people to reference the skydrive version vs. downloading it and saving it locally.  That way you always see the latest version. @devkeydet

Sometimes you need to run ASP.NET code outside of Dynamics CRM to achieve your goals.  This usually manifests itself either as a page embedded in CRMs main content area which is accessible via a link in the sitemap similar to the following:   Another place this is often used is embedding external...

UPDATE (06MAY2013): If you like the idea of implementing more functionality using point and click configuration (like in Part II) without having to write code (like in Part III), then you might want to have a look at North 52 Formula Manager . I have a blog post about it here . Like I say in the post...

Thanks to everyone who attended my presentation on Unit Testing Dynamics CRM Plugin and JavaScript code hosted by http://www.xrmvirtual.com/ .  I’ll update this post when the recording is available.  However, the webcast was basically a shortened walkthrough of these two posts: http://blogs...

If you haven’t heard, CRM Online has completed the Polaris rollout and UR12 is available .  With it comes a new bulk API which makes programmatic data import into Dynamics CRM 2011 faster.  Check out Sonoma Partners blog post on a simple benchmark of the improvements .  As you can see...

I’ve spent many a time having accessibility and 508 compliance discussions with customers and partners over the years working at Microsoft and focusing on various web based technologies.  In fact, it’s hard to believe I recorded this video over seven years ago: http://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/keydet...

I’ve been working with a few CRM Online customers on some advanced scenarios which require using Windows Azure as part of their overall solution.  As a result, I will be publishing series of blog posts and samples which walk you through the following: Configuring Single Sign On (SSO) Improving the...

In this video, I walk you through how to configure Single Sign On (SSO) across CRM Online and Windows Azure using Visual Studio 2010.  My walkthrough is based on the Web Single Sign-On with .NET and Windows Azure Active Directory walkthrough, but adds the nuances of getting this working with Windows...

In general web development, there are useful patterns to improving the perceived performance in a web page.  A great example is this blog post: http://blog.michaelckennedy.net/2012/11/13/improve-perceived-performance-of-asp-net-mvc-websites-with-async-partialviews/ Once you understand the core concepts...

EVEN BETTER UPDATE!!!: Nick incorporated this into an addin for Tanguy’s awesome XrmToolbox .  I’d still recommend you read the post to understand how this all works.  Also, if you are OnPrem, then the last paragraph of this post will save you even more time. UPDATE: I’ve modified the post...

UPDATE (17MAY2013): There’s now a whitepaper on the topic as well: ALM for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011: CRM Solution Lifecycle Management NOTE: I’ve included related links to both Visual Studio 2010 & 2012 content.  Even thought the Developer Toolkit for Microsoft Dynamics CRM now supports Visual...

One of the things I have been getting asked about lately is “When will the Developer Toolkit for Microsoft Dynamics CRM   support Visual Studio 2012?”  It already does!  Just go download the latest version of the SDK .  You’ll find a two installers for the toolkit.  One for Visual...

This is supposed to be one of a series of CRM Online & Windows Azure posts for which I have been building some samples.  While I really wanted to make this the second or third post, someone needed the explanation sooner, so this will be somewhat of a tease to the overall series. Scenario: I...

UPDATE: Yes, I am shamelessly promoting IE10 in this post, but this will work in any browser CRM that supports the spellcheck attribute. Now that Polaris/UR12 is out, CRM works with browsers like IE10 and others that support the spellcheck attribute of the <input/> and <textarea/> tags. ...

Full disclosure, I received a free license from the authors of the tool.  However, I do believe it’s definitely worth the license fee . I’ve blogged previously about reasons for my fondness of the www.crmsolutionmanager.com addin to Visual Studio for Dynamics CRM 2011 development.  Well they...

UPDATE: The Dynamics CRM in the Field blog just published a useful post on Script Errors after Installing UR12 . The next update to CRM 2011 introduces an expanded range of supported browsers. You can learn more about the upcoming release here: http://crm.dynamics.com/en-us/Polaris http://crmpublish...

UPDATE: Now that Polaris/UR12 are out, the new bulk API is available. Check out Sonoma Partners blog post on a simple benchmark of the improvements . Now you can Combine the ne bulk API with client side parallelism to achieve even better performance. I'll put that on my ever growing "to blog" list. However...

I recently discovered that the LINQPad Plugin for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 doesn’t support authenticating using Office 365 credentials.  According to commenter EdWells , you can copy the latest version of crmsvcutil.exe and microsoft.xrm.sdk.dll over the version that ships with the LINQPad plugin...