Those folks on the product team have been doing a great job of releasing regular updates ever since we launched Dynamics CRM 4.0.  And for the past year or so they’ve been packaging updates, hot fixes and the like into convenient and more easily consumed “roll-ups” (no relation to the delicious...

I’ve been meaning to post about the oft-asked questions surrounding audit trail capabilities using CRM 4.0.  Low and behold, once again Menno has beat me to it.  As is so often the case with the powerful development platform that is Dynamics CRM, there are several options available to address...

Update Roll-up #4 is now available for your testing and deployment pleasure! http://support.microsoft.com/kb/968176 Update Roll-up 4 is a cumulative update roll-up that includes all the fixes for the issues that are documented in Update Roll-up 1, in Update Roll-up 2, and in Update Roll-up 3. ...

The Microsoft BizTalk® Server 2006 adapter for Microsoft Dynamics® CRM 4.0 is now available. This adapter has the same functionality as the previously released 3.0 adapter, with the following updates: • Supports both 32-bit and 64-bit deployments of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 • Supports form...

Most of the IT world has at least heard of Section 508, an amendment to the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, but many are a bit sketchy on what's involved in actual 508 compliance. Here's an excerpt from the www.section508.gov website explaining the purpose of Section 508: "In 1998, Congress amended...

There is a new CRM Partner blog with some great data on it around Dashboards. Thanks to the team over at I.B.I.S. for publishing some of their consulting knowledge for the rest of us.  Enjoy this quick read. Creating a Dashboard using MOSS, Excel Web Services, Excel 2007 and Microsoft CRM | I.B...

So I spent most of the weekend working on my TechEd Session. The Plug-in registration tool included as part of the SDK killed me with the XML file and I not getting along. Shawn and Melissa for support called me about some survey partners with CRM and I managed to rope them into helping me.  And...

Jim Glass was nice enough to post a Workflow Post on the CRM Team Blog. Thanks Jim!   In case you haven't figured it out, I am crazy about the Workflow in CRM 4.0.... I am pretty sure that we have just scratched the surface of what can be done with it by customers and partners.  If you are...

This is an alternative method of doing the same thing we talked about with this post.   Jon G from Microsoft Consulting was the first guy to poke a whole in the Pesky Name Field posted last week. He has a point, Client Side Scripts do not work in Bulk Edits or on Imports, etc. So based upon another...

Stayed tuned on Monday for a blog on the CRM Team's Blog. I am amazed by the workflow in CRM 4.0 and been playing with it heavily for the past month. And Jim Glass was nice enough to take a post and publish it there vs. here for you to enjoy! So visit http://blogs.msdn.com/CRM for the post. :-)

When you create a new custom entity by default, it creates a field called Name that is used on lookups, etc. If you don't use the field, it can cause some headaches.  I have been using this as an area to store some information that would make searching on it much easier and automatically fill in...

Almost two years ago, there was a tip published here about auto saving forms from a JScript OnChange event . While poking around the SDK tonight looking for something, I found a cool nugget. You can force the OnChange event to occur for a field from the Microsoft Dynamics CRM form OnLoad event or from...

So I know that this way overdue. Way. After Convergence, I came back and went on vacation and then Beth was in the hospital for an unexpected week. There is a decent summation of the event from Brian Willson of the Microsoft Chemicals Team. http://blogs.msdn.com/chemicals/archive/2008/03/13/a-good-dynamics...

One of the most often complaints I have heard is that CRM is sometimes too "Window" happy. In 4.0 the product team made some huge strides to make it less clicky. And they gave us some REALLY cool tools to do some of it ourselves. The new Workflow as a part of 4.0 is pretty cool. One of my partners, IBIS...

My basic rule of thumb is that if I get emailed twice about an issue, I blog about it. :-) So here is the blog post. :-) The basic scenario is this. The customer or partner downloads Microsoft CRM 90 Day Trail Keys from here . And then they select the Enterprise Keys, because it is a trial.  The...

One of the coolest parts around CRM's setup is the ability for the setup program to automatically update CRM to the latest edition with all of the HotFixes that have been published. When you install Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0, or when you upgrade to Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0, you can check for setup...

So often, all I ever hear about from Partners is horror stories about dealing with other partner. I never seem to hear about the good things that happen. This is a story about something VERY good a partner did for another partner and Microsoft. I was recently on a customer call with a partner in North...

Sean from the support group just let me know that there is a new tool to help customers out. In 3.0, I used to just stop the Deletion Service. With this tool, you can change the DeletionService and Re-Indexing service jobs in CRM 4.0. You can set the next run date/time of a job as well as change the...

If you're anything like me, you fight an issue for about four hours, throw your keyboard across the server room and finally give in and call Tech Support. And in about three min utes, the tech, says, ohh, yeah, that is a known issue. Have you applied HotFix XXXXX? And then at that point, I generally...

Thanks Amy for sharing... Introduction to Plug-in Development for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Discover how you can customize and extend Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 through the integration of custom business logic. Read this article to get an overview of the new plug-in capability, see a comparison of plug...

Joel over on the Customer Effective Blog has some great tips on editing the SiteMap. Having cut my teeth on it in 3.0, it is nice to have some of these little tricks.  Of course using the demonstration tool has made much of this easier for me now. ;-) (You can download the tool here. )   ...

About once a week I get a question about if there is a Web Service that does x or y. (Usually something like Exchange Rates, or Maps) Here is a cool site I was shown that has a great list of Web Service Interfaces, some example mashups and what is required to use these services. :-) This is a pretty...

I swear I have fielded about a dozen questions about this in email in the past couple of days. :-) Well, the good news that the VPC is now available. This VPC is set to expire in April 2009. The partner tat built this also worked on some Demo Tools. Here is a quick list of the tools... I will post...

We had an awesome turn out today. As promised, here is the slide deck from the LiveMeeting. You can view the LiveMeeting by registering here for it. It will email you a recording of the LiveMeeting. Enjoy!

I am doing a Live Meeting for partners on Wednesday. Come on and join in if you really are that bored. :-) The good news is that it is recorded and you can watch it to cure your insomnia. :-) Some of the features of 4.0 we have been talking about for about a year or so have been Multi Currency, Multi...