From The End Of The World…

It has been a busy time here in world of Microsoft Dynamics CRM, with the Beta release of both the online and on-premises versions of our product last week, and all the associated “razzmatazz” of launch road shows, client briefings etc. Although it’s very early days, we have already identified a couple of issues that are cropping up occasionally.

1. Unable to connect to CRM Online beta using the Outlook client. You might get an error message saying “There is a problem communicating with the Microsoft Dynamics CRM server. The server might be unavailable…” It turns out that the recent release of Windows Live Essentials Beta installs a new version of msidcrl40.dll (v7.250.4204.0), which provides Windows Live ID authentication capabilities for various client applications such as Windows Live Messenger and Windows Live Mail. Unfortunately this version is currently incompatible with CRM Online beta, so you will need to uninstall Windows Live Essentials Beta if you wish to fix the problem.
2. Various issues with when accessing CRM 2011 (both online and on-premises) functionality (such as save, save as, lookups and dashboards) when using Internet Explorer 9 Beta. Again, just like the previous solution, you can fix this by reverting to an earlier version of IE. Don’t forget, that we no longer support IE6 (you can download the implementation guide for more details), so you should be using IE7 or IE8 for the time being.

Both these issue are being tracked by the CRM, Windows Live and IE product teams, so I would expect them to be fixed in the final releases of each product. On a personal note, I have always avoided testing multiple beta products as the same time since 20-years IT experience has taught me that “Murphy’s Law” (anything that can go wrong, will go wrong) will always apply.

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