Jonas Deibe - Dynamics CRM, C#, JS : Settings

TIP! VHD to store your CRM samples/code between your WIN7 and VPC images

Jonas Deibe — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 10:37:00 GMT

I recently started to use a VHD image to store my CRM samples/documents/setups in order to have them flexible available anywhere both on my main OS (win7) and Virtual images. The VHD can then be shared to multiple computers by using Mesh (Great service if you dont use it yet please try!) making the image available to colleagues/friends ect. I also enable bit locker on the disc to protect my sensible data. Big-up to Nicklas Håkansson for the orginal tip!

For you who don’t know what a VHD image is please have a look here

1. Start by opening disc management (create and format hard disc partitions)

2. Go to Action -> Create VHD

3. Locate you storage for the VHD and name it “mesh.vhd”

4. Set the size to for example 500mb and Dynamically expanding

5. Right click you newly created disc and “initial disc”

6. Change to GPT if discs are greater than 2TB. Lease default setting MBR for this example

7. Right click you disc and start the wizard “New Simple Volume”

8. Exit and open explorer

9. If you would like to enable bitlocker right click the newly created disc and start the encrypting.

10. Once the Bitlock is enabled add the VHD to your Mesh folder

11. Done!

· My custom setup available both in my main OS and VPC’s

· Enable Bitlocker on disc to protect data

· Shared to multiple computers by using Mesh

Note! you need to attach the VHD if your machine is rebooted, this can be scripted and automatic started on OS boot!

select vdisk file=c:\vhd\mesh.vhd
attach vdisk

Save the script to a file and add a schedule work with arguments C:\Windows\System32\diskpart.exe /s c:\VHD\attachdisc.txt

Cache Tool source code

Jonas Deibe — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 13:00:00 GMT

Console.WriteLine("Cache tool source code as attachment...");

Visual Studio 2005 project

The dynamic Cache Tool for CRM 1.2 - 4.0 versions

Jonas Deibe — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 20:57:00 GMT

Or any other web application... simply change the paths in the configuration file.

When doing demo's in a virtual environment as VPC it's pretty nice to have some sort of tool to pre-hit your application. I have made a simple console app that will do this for you. Run the application before doing a demo/presentation to activate just-in-time compilation and hoppfully everything goes faster since your clicks (requests) will at least be the second one.

The difference with this one compared to other CRM cache tools are:

Recursive lookup for files to hit (you don’t need to maintain your hit list)
therefore working for past and current versions of CRM
Depth control (how deep should we traverse)

Path to webserver including protocol (http or https)

Path to in this example CRM webserver files are located

Filter on extension like *.htm, *.aspx, *.asmx

0 = Traverse as long as possible, 1 = Stay in current (FilePath) folder only, 2 = Two levels ect

Installation

run the attached msi packet to install the cache tool.
Go to folder where tool is installed "c:\Program Files\CRM Sample Application\Trigger CRM"
Open the PrefireCRM4.exe.config file and change to your server settings.
Click the short-cut on your desktop

I will in my next blog post attach the source code for the project.

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

Error while installing language pack in MS CRM 4.0?

Jonas Deibe — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 20:11:00 GMT

If you enable language packs after you have removed some out-of-the-box fields (e.g a tab) a language pack will fail. SE is currently working on a hot fix.

Workarounds until hotfix is released;

1. Enable for example Swedish before applying the customizations if possible.

2. Re-import your vanilla backup (Always export out-of-the-box entitys before you start customizing)

Export current customizations
Import vanilla export
Enabling your languages
Re-import your saved customizations

This worked fine for me and I now have a customized system with many languages.

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

Where did my my virtualPC 2007 console go...

Jonas Deibe — Sun, 25 Nov 2007 18:55:00 GMT

On my personal home laptop I have had a quite annoying problem the last weeks (or months). I can’t see my virtual pc console after I start virtualPC 2007. It’s like the console is always minimized and the only way to start any VPC’s is to use the tray function. If I select the ”Show Virtual PC Console” nothing happens… Luckily for me I found a fix. It’s easy and make sure not to have virtualPC running else you won’t be able to edit the options.xml file.

Close Virtual PC

Go to C:\Documents and Settings\[your account name]\Application Data\Microsoft\Virtual PC\Options.xml (XP) or on Vista C:\Users\[your account name]\Application Data\Microsoft\Virtual PC

Open the file in XML Notepad 2007 (or old notepad) and search for the “console” tag.

For example:

I'm not sure how I managed to "hide" my virtualPC but nevermind it's back now and I'm happy :-)

VirtualPC 2007 could be downloaded here http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=04D26402-3199-48A3-AFA2-2DC0B40A73B6&displaylang=en

Multi-tenancy for your benefit during customer demos or development or...

Jonas Deibe — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 03:11:00 GMT

This only applies to the enterprise version. My current setup is still based on my base discs http://blogs.msdn.com/jonasd/archive/2006/10/31/config-och-installation-av-demo-utvecklings-milj.aspx but the major difference now is that I don’t need to reproduce each CRM server. This saves me from the before "boring" installation and configuration work. Even if I had a copy of my VPC's I still had to wait for the copy process. I now have the possibility to very simply do a customer named system with their specific customizations.

For large enterprise development where you have dedicated dev, test, uat and production systems you could import each organization directly from the database. Very smooth! This remindes me from back in the days when I was a Pivotal consultant and we moved BM's and ED's around different systems.

Open deployment manager on the CRM 4.0 server and follow screen shoots below

Depending your hardware the whole process takes about 5-10minutes in my virtual system

My current top 10 dev tools

Jonas Deibe — Wed, 25 Apr 2007 01:00:00 GMT

Visual Studio 2003 – 2005
FxCop (hey I’m doing Q/A and anything that helps me reviewing other developers code is great)
Virtual PC/server 2007
Reflector
Proc Explorer
Dev Toolbar
Fiddler / Wireshark
Kerbtray
Communicator 2005
Visio, Word, Excel

Is this just a poor attempt to reach more than 5 posts for a month?

Timezone uppdatering

Jonas Deibe — Sun, 04 Mar 2007 13:24:00 GMT

Tänk på att synka alla offline klienter innan man patchar upp servern

Microsoft Download Center:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?amp;displaylang=en&familyid=8A7319E6-5B86-4E7A-9BE1-763F2072BE21&displaylang=en

Knowledge Base:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/933453 (Overview)

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/925874 (CRM 3.0 Update to Time Zone information for client and server)

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/932984 (CRM 3.0 Update Time Zones Wizard)

Titan info + Optimizing the Performance

Jonas Deibe — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 00:13:00 GMT

Optimizing Performance nu även för MSCRM 3.0 http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=6B32E0B3-5520-48A7-B3CD-D8477D084821&displaylang=en.

Samt lite publik info om nästa version av MSCRM som går under kodnamnet Titan http://www.infoworld.com/article/07/01/10/HNmicrosoftnextcrm_1.html

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2007/jan07/01-10CRMTAPPR.mspx

Microsoft Dynamics CRM Solution Accelerator for Siebel

Jonas Deibe — Thu, 02 Nov 2006 00:09:00 GMT

Finns nu att ladda ner Microsoft Dynamics CRM Solution Accelerator for Siebel

Min konfiguration och installation av demo/utvecklings miljö

Jonas Deibe — Tue, 31 Oct 2006 11:46:00 GMT

Min rekommendation här är att använda sig av någon virtual server programvara. Jag använder mig av Microsoft's egna Virtual PC och har följande setup på extern hårddisk (USB2,7200rpm med egen ström):

Local only 192.168.*.* (eget virtuellt nätverk utan inverkan på existerande nätverk. Kan jobba offline dock lite jobbigt att kopiera filer till och från source kontrolen)

Base foldern
1 Base w2003ADEx (instance av Domän kontroller + Exchange)
1 Base w2003web (instance av Webb server (WSS/SPS + CRM + VS)
1 Base w2003SQL (instance av SQL server)
1 Base xpOffice (instance av Office klient (VS))

Nedan exempel är 3 olika installationer av CRM 3.0 på fiktiva företag.

Alfa Test AB
- diff diskar + vpc pekar till ovan base folder
Marknads AB
- diff diskar + vpc pekar till ovan base folder
Demo System Sälj AB
- diff diskar + vpc pekar till ovan base folder

mm.

Base instanserna är satta som readonly när de väl är konfigurerade (görs en gång och återanvänds till alla nya installationer av CRM 3.0) Jag skapar nya hårddiskar som är diff. diskar dvs. de innehåller endast den nya programvara som jag installerar t.ex. CRM 3.0 + konfig. Genom att använda mig av mina färdiga base diskar kan jag enkelt sätta upp ett nytt CRM system på ca 1timme och sparar väldigt mycket diskutrymme (ifall man har flera system för olika kunder/tester mm.) eftersom dessa endast innehåller diffen mellan basen och den nya hårddisken. Jag slipper också installera/konfig SQL, Exchange, Domän ect varje gång jag ska skapa en ny CRM installation.

Man bör dock ha 2gb minne på sin PC för att köra detta.

Jag får också ett säkert test resultat vid utveckling eftersom koden körs som en vanlig användare på office klienten (Outlook klienten eller webbklienten) eller en demo'n av CRM 3.0

Vill man tex ha flera klienter genom att använda xpOffice base'n får man ändra SID'en för att den smidigt ska komma in min virtuella domän. Finns verktyg på www.sysinternals.com

Personligen tycker jag det går snabbare när man delar upp installation av CRM för demo/test/utveckling än att kör allt på en VPC + att det blir så som mina kunder har sina setups fast på riktiga servrar.

Det tar dock sin tid att skapa base's instancerna men när de väl är på plats vinner man mycket tid + slipper göra tråkiga konfig/installationer.