Note that the On-Premise build numbers I list below may be different than what you will find in CRM 2011 Online.  Microsoft continuously adds new updates behind the scenes, thus the likelihood of having a greater build number in comparison to the latest Update Rollup version.

To determine your current build number from the IE web client, simply:

1. Browse to your CRM 2011 website
2. Click on the File tab
3. Navigate to Help
4. Click on “About Microsoft Dynamics CRM”

Earlier in the year, this company had restructured their staff.  During this process they had disabled the user account of a key former employee that was the owner of all the workflows.

What was the lesson learned?  Disabling the Owner user account of a workflow will disable the workflow jobs as well. Workflows require an active user account to process the jobs. When developing workflows for an organization, make sure all of the published workflows are owned by an administrative account, and not an employee.

Dynamics CRM 4.0 does warn you of this fact while disabling a user (see screenshot below).

Disabling a User in Dynamics CRM 4.0

Unfortunately for my client, all of their workflow activity during the downtime could not be recovered, despite having finally re-enabled the workflows.  Again, as a Dynamics CRM Consultant, be sure to educate your clients of this fact.

Link : Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Beta installation files  (microsoft.com)

Here you can find the CRM 2011 Beta installation files pertaining to the On-Premise Server, Outlook Client, SharePoint, Exchange, BIDS for customizing SSRS reports, and language packages.

Below are the packages, with links to the direct download.

"Data, looks like resistance to the Borg is futile to maximizing our sales pipeline."

Arguably, the most noticeable feature in the Dynamics CRM 2011 Beta is the new Dashboard functionality.  It brings to the table such a new level of easy and powerful customization that one could say Microsoft has truly “brought BI to the masses.”

What makes the Dynamics CRM 2011 Dashboards so special?  Let me count the ways:

• Easily create a custom Dashboard on the fly by clicking the New button on the Outlook ribbon or from the web client.
• Keep your custom dashboard for yourself, or share your creation with other colleagues on your team (similar in functionality to Views).
• Easily add CRM Views to the Dashboard.
• Drag in your own bar charts and line charts, add a sales funnel, or add a connected Bing Map so you can see the locations of the customers you’re visiting today.
• Drill-down capability, so you can view individual records.
• Use iFrames to provide a window to other Portals or internal/external websites.
• Use the advanced tools in Dashboard customization to incorporate custom SSRS reports that display data from other systems.

These tools provide all the fodder that the imaginative user and developer will need to design useful Dashboards on-the-fly.

Dashboard Help Section

For those new to managing Dashboards, Microsoft provided a help section that is available upon your first login to Dynamics CRM 2011.  This section can be hidden permanently as soon as you feel you’re familiar with the tools.

Dynamics CRM 2011: Dashboards Help section

Creating a New Dashboard in CRM 2011

Upon creation of a new Dashboard, CRM asks for your preferred layout format.  So far so good…

Dynamics CRM 2011: Dashboards Layout

In the next Dashboard customization screen, we can add the following resource types:

• Chart
• List
• Web Resource, which can consist of:
  • Web Page (HTML)
  • Style Sheet (CSS)
  • Script (JScript)
  • Data (XML)
  • Images (JPG, PNG, GIF, ICO)
  • Silverlight (XAP)
  • Style Sheet (XSL)
• iFrame

Dynamics CRM 2011: Dashboards Toolbar

In less than five minutes, I instantly built my sample Dashboard by:

• Adding a bar graph of Activities by Priority
• Adding a Grid View of My Accounts
• Adding a JPG image
• Adding the mobile website of Twitter Search for #MSDYNCRM

See the screenshot of my creative (albeit questionably productive) Dashboard below.

Dynamics CRM 2011: My Sample Dashboard

While my sample Dashboard won’t win any productivity awards, it’s my own Dashboard to view, tweak and share with my colleagues.  My next step would be to try and incorporate Bing Maps imaginatively.

As always, the most important step is to take that initial dive, and imagine the possibilities!

]]> http://crmdynamo.com/2010/09/in-dynamics-crm-2011-dashboards-bring-eye-candy-bi-to-the-masses/feed/ 4 http://crmdynamo.com/2010/09/microsoft-dynamics-crms-next-generation-is-here-crm-2011-beta-online-and-on-premise-available-worldwide-today/ http://crmdynamo.com/2010/09/microsoft-dynamics-crms-next-generation-is-here-crm-2011-beta-online-and-on-premise-available-worldwide-today/#comments Thu, 09 Sep 2010 16:45:35 +0000 Christian http://crmdynamo.com/?p=579

It’s a wonderful day in the #MSDYNCRM world. 

Microsoft promised and delivered today the Dynamics CRM 2011 Beta version, available Online and On-Premise!  Check out http://www.crm2011beta.com for videos and highlights, as well as the official announcement to see for yourself.  If you didn’t attend the “First Look at CRM 2011″ webcast on September 7th, I’d highly recommend you view it.

• If you want to sign up for the CRM 2011 Beta Online, make sure to fill out this form.
• If you want to download the On-Premise bits yourself and install them in house, download the installation files here.
• Be sure to download the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Beta Implementation Guide.
• Make sure you post your questions on the official CRM 2011 Beta Forum.
• At this link you can download the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Software Development Kit (SDK).
• The following product keys are available for this release (found in the readme file).
  • Microsoft Dynamics CRM Workgroup (5 CAL limit): FF2JM-QX9PG-HXT8M-MMHXG-4MF32
  • Microsoft Dynamics CRM Server (no CAL limit): 4FDTK-3HYV2-D9CCJ-4MF9Q-QJ32X
  • Although the application may display a 90-day trial period, these trial product keys will expire after 270 days.
  • Microsoft Dynamics CRM Professional edition is no longer available with Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011.

This Beta release is also getting some media attention!  Check out a few interesting articles below.

• “Microsoft aims to sharpen its CRM pitch”, CNET News
• “Microsoft to deliver public betas of CRM 2011 and app store in mid-September”, ZDNet
• “Microsoft begins testing new CRM program”, CNET News

In the next coming months, my pledge to you will be to start highlighting all the new Beta features and tips here at this CRM blog.  Feel free to contact me if you have a special request or question regarding the new Beta, and I’ll be sure to cover it for you. 

You down with VPC? (Yeah you know me)

Microsoft just released an updated version of the April 2009 VPC release, mostly because it’s due to expire very soon.  You’ll probably need PartnerSource or CustomerSource access to download it at the link below.

VPC Re-Release for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0

Why should you download this version?  First of all, it’s not set to expire until August 2011 which will give you plently of time to play around until CRM 2011 is released.   It’s also a leaner download at about 7 GB.  Last but not least, it includes some new technologies such as Office 2010 and portal accelerators.

Per the download page, this new release (or re-release) has some new updated software:

• Update Rollup 11
• Microsoft Office 2010
• New Portal Accelerators
• New Partner and Customer portal installed using AD so no external network is required
• New Profile Manager Tool which has two profiles for services and URL caching

It also looks like this VPC has the same credentials as in the past releases.  Log in with the following:

ID=contoso\administrator
PW=pass@word1

Enjoy!

Drogba, Ivory Coast's number 11, gets a kick out of regular updates to his CRM. (UPDATE: he's injured and will miss the World Cup. Bummer)

Microsoft released the latest Update Rollup 11 for Dynamics CRM today, just in time before the World Cup 2010 tournament.  It’s so obvious now; they did this to make some room in their schedule for watching the live matches.  Indeed, they had already announced that there would be regular updates every 8 weeks… but I see through your game!   ಠ_ಠ

This release shows better Ribbon integration with Outlook 2010.  The CRM buttons don’t appear in the Add-Ins tab anymore.

Make sure you download and review the KB article from the links below.

• Download Update Rollup 11 for Dynamics CRM (Microsoft)
• KB 981328: Release Notes for Update Rollup 11 (Microsoft)

The usual considerations apply regarding backing up and restoring customization XML files.  Make sure to carefully read the release notes before upgrading.

Some notable updates:

• Windows Internet Explorer crashes or stops responding when you use the Advanced Find view on a computer that is running Windows 7.
• After you apply Update Rollup 7 for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0, you experience slow performance when you open Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Web client.
• When you create a Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services (SSRS 2008) report by using the new SSRS 2008 features, you cannot display the report in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0.
• You experience slow performance when you add many members, such as 10,000 members, into a marketing list. Additionally, you may receive a time-out error message.
• Assume that you create a report in the Report Wizard. When you run the report, you receive the following error message: An error has occurred during report processing. Query execution failed for data set ‘DSMain’.

A special cheers to all my fellow Dynamics CRM colleagues who will be following the tournament as closely as I will. 

EDIT: Update Rollup 10 is now available!  Download the bits at this link (KB 979347).

From some #MSCRM Twitter buzz, it looks like the latest compilation of hotfixes for Microsoft Dynamics CRM will be released tomorrow, April 8th.  Not to worry; I’ll update this post with the links as soon as it’s available.

'C' is for CRM!

I confirmed with Microsoft Support that this latest Update Rollup will include a hotfix that resolves one particular Outlook sync issue.  A user may get following error when going Offline or Online:

Only items in the default Microsoft Outlook store can be promoted to Microsoft CRM.

Until this hotfix, the workaround for this problem was to disable the Exchange Cached Mode setting to cache shared folder. 

While you’re waiting for the download, check out this ZDNet article on the latest news regarding CRM ’5′.

NOTE: The build list below was updated as of May 2011.

I recently had to check my CRM enviroments to make sure they’re updated to the latest Update Rollup version (currently #9, on Feb 2010). From experience, all I needed to do was:

• Browse to the CRM website.
• Click on the “Help” button on the top right side of the window.
• Click on “About Microsoft Dynamics CRM”
• Get the build number displayed.

Now that I have the build number, I can compare it to the latest list of Update Rollup build numbers. The nice thing about this screen is that it’ll post your CRM Outlook Client build version as well.  See the screenshot below for an example.  I have Update Rollup 9 on the CRM Server, but I have Update Rollup 7 on the Outlook Client.

CRM Help - Build Version

Thanks to David Vidmar at Bite my Bytes blog, I can repost a section of his very useful build version chart below.

For more technical details on the version numbers of the various Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 components, please see the Microsoft KB #946594 Article.

EDIT: Update Rollup 9 is now available at this download link.

I <3 CRM

There’s some buzz lately about Update Rollup 9 being available soon this Thursday, February the 11th.  No details yet on what it may bring, though, so I’ll be patient!  My bet is more bug fixes, nothing too monumental.  Time to plan for it nonetheless. 

As you may already know, Update Rollup 7 was the last major update for Microsoft Dynamics CRM. It brought significant changes to Dynamics CRM 4.0 and the CRM Outlook Client. In addition, it can be considered the “gold standard” for a new CRM deployment going forward.

Make sure all your CRM deployments are at the very least up to speed with Update Rollup 7 for two very good reasons: better performance, and compatibility with future updates.

For a full list of current Update Rollups for Microsoft Dynamics CRM click here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/949256