Jason Hunt's WebLog

Goodbye and Hello

2004-10-26T03:47:00Z

I know I haven’t posted for a long time, but I’ve been REALLY busy. These last few months, weeks, days have been hectic as I finished up projects at Microsoft preparing for my departure…

That’s right, I have left Microsoft. I’m not going far; I’ll still be working on Microsoft CRM, just on the other side of the fence and with more skin in the game than ever before. Aaron Elder and I (along with my wife Shannon who left a few months ago) have both decided to leave Microsoft to join Invoke Systems. Aaron will be overseeing the development group as Director of Software Development and I will be serving as Chief Technology Officer.

Returning to Invoke Systems feels like a homecoming. Invoke actually funded and spun-off iCommunicate which was purchased by Microsoft in April, 2001. Aaron, Shannon and I all came to work at Microsoft through the acquisition. We actually made up 50% of the development staff at iCommunicate! But then again, we only had 10 employees when Microsoft acquired us. We spent the last 3 ½ years developing features for Microsoft CRM and about a year ago I moved over to product management. It felt like time for a move and working on the outside as an ISV definitely was #1 on our list.

I’ve basically spent the last year and a half of my career at Microsoft traveling the globe, working with ISV’s and speaking at conferences explaining WHY developing products on the Microsoft CRM platform for the application made good business sense. Now it’s time to lead by example…

Jason B Hunt
Invoke Systems
Chief Technology Officer
jason.hunt@invokesystems.com

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

Headed to Tech Ed, Again

2004-07-30T00:33:00Z

I'm sitting on the floor of SeaTac airport (borrowing electricity once again from a outlet in a corner) waiting to head to Los Angeles and then I'll be off to Auckland, New Zealand and Canberra, Australia. I was so excited to get to go until someone reminded me it was wintertime there! I knew I should've paid more attention in science class!

Hopefully I'll have sometime while there to comment on some of the mails I've gotten over the last few days...

- Jason

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

Searching Custom Fields

2004-07-22T14:45:00Z

Late last night, someone posted a question to the microsoft.public.crm newsgroup regarding the fact that a new field they created in the Schema Manager wasn't showing up in the Advanced Find tool.

This is a pretty easy one... The simple answer is that once you add a custom attribute to an entity via the Schema Manager, you need to add that field to the form in the Form Editor and then save and publish it.

Now here's why:

In v1.x the XML generated by the Form Editor is used to publish a Search XML file for each entity that the Advanced Find tool uses to display the list of fields. This file gets built for each entity when you publish your customizations in the Deployment Manager. In this XML file we store the Display Name (set in the properties dialog of the attribute in the Form Editor) of the attribute; if it's a picklist we store all of the picklist values and the attribute's datatype. The Advanced Find tool then uses this information to show the list of fields and the appropriate criteria when you choose an attribute to filter on.

Sounds great, what if I only want the field to be searchable, but not on the form?

In this case you still need to add it to the form via the Form Editor, set the attribute's properties, and then remove it from the form when you're done. This won't modify the layout of the form, but behind the scenes, the properties you set will be added to the Properties XML the Form Editor controls. In v1.x, the only way to set the properties of attributes in Microsoft CRM is via the Form Editor. Once you publish your changes, the field will show up in Advanced Find, even though it is not on the form anymore. At this point, you'll also be able to add that field to Views.

If anyone shows interest, I might write up a description of the entire form publication process next time.

- Jason

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

A Brief Introduction

2004-07-21T18:53:00Z

Here it is, my first entry. Before I get into why I'm starting this, let me tell you a little about myself...

I started out my career in the United States Army. I trained as a UAV pilot on the Hunter UAV and an intelligence analyst. While in the Army I served a six month tour with the UN in Croatia and immediately after the Dayton Peace Accord was signed, I was deployed to Bosnia-Herzegovina for a year with the 1st Armored Division.

After the military I worked as a developer at numerous startups including MicroStrategy and iCommunicate. It was a wild ride at both companies! I was there for the big stock crash at MicroStrategy after we had to restate revenue for years past. Our stock dropped from an all time high of just over $300 on March 10, 2000 to about $70 by the 20th of that same month! Obviously, I didn’t stick around for too long after that.

I left MicroStrategy to join a small startup name iCommunicate. We worked our butts off building a hosted customer service portal and in April of 2001, Microsoft bought us and moved the ten of us out to Redmond. This worked out pretty well because my wife and I made up 33% of the development staff at iCommunicate! Her and I have worked at three companies so far together and she recently decided to leave Microsoft and the CRM development team to spend more time at home with our son, Gavin.

Until recently I was one of the senior developers on the Microsoft Business Solutions CRM application team responsible for features such as the Form Editor, Accounts, Contacts, Quotes, SalesOrders, Invoices and E-mail Templates, among other features. Late last year I decided to move over to the product management team (queue up the Imperial March theme from Star Wars) and I now work with our ISVs, partners and customers as a Technical Product Manager. Why did I decide to do this? While at all the startups I spent a lot of time with customers and partners and I was beginning to miss that interaction. I now get to spend most of my time interacting with ISVs building on top of our CRM product and helping drive feedback from those ISVs into the future releases.

When I’m not here at work I enjoy traveling with my family, skiing, hiking and dining at many of the excellent restaurants in the Seattle area.

So, this brings me to the section where I talk about what I hope to get out of this whole experience. I don’t know? I hope it turns into a place where I can pass on my knowledge to developers out there working with Microsoft CRM as well as a venue for them to ask questions and provide feedback. Even though I’m in the marketing group now, I tend to be pretty straight to the point when talking about the product. I don’t mince words and I’ll tell it like it is...

- Jason

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.