In Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011, entities are used to model and manage business data. For example, entities such as account, campaign, and incident (case) can be used to track and support sales, marketing, and service activities. An entity has a set of attributes and each attribute represents a data item of a particular type. For example, the account entity has Name, Address, and OwnerId attributes.

Conceptually, an entity is like a database table, and the entity attributes correspond to the table columns. Creating an entity record (or, simply a record) in Microsoft Dynamics CRM is like adding a record in a database table. The entities are divided into three categories: system, business, and custom. As a developer working with business data, you will use business and custom entities. System entities are used by Microsoft Dynamics CRM to handle all internal processes, such as workflows and asynchronous jobs. You cannot delete or customize system entities.

Business entities are part of the Microsoft Dynamics CRM default installation and they appear in the customization user interface. An account, contact, and letter are examples of business entities. After installation, you can add custom entities to Microsoft Dynamics CRM to address specific business needs of the organization.

In a solution, you can set business and custom entities and attributes to be either customizable or non-customizable. You can modify a customizable entity by renaming it, adding new attributes, or changing various settings, such as duplicate detection or queue support settings. You cannot modify a non-customizable entity. For more information about customization, unmanaged and managed solutions, and managed properties, see Package and Distribute Extensions with Microsoft Dynamics CRM Solutions.

If you are using the early-bound programming model, an entity is represented by a class, such as the Account class that represents the account entity. Entity attributes are represented by class properties. This class is generated by the CrmSvcUtil tool. For more information, see Use the Early Bound Entity Classes in Code. Alternatively, you can write programs that work with entity data by using a dynamic approach. For more information, see Use the Late Bound Entity Class in Code.

Read more in the Microsoft Dynamics CRM SDK…

Cheers,

JaAG

The Dynamics CRM User Group (CRMUG) is an association of companies sharing the common interest of optimizing their usage of Microsoft Dynamics CRM. This independent community of users gets together (remotely and face-to-face) through a myriad of conferences, virtual tools, and programs to share knowledge and best practices. Membership and active participation in CRMUG can make all the difference in the effective use of your Dynamics CRM software. Learn about membership benefits.

The CRMUG mission is to maximize value to individuals and companies using Microsoft Dynamics CRM.
 
Their vision is to engage every individual and company using Microsoft Dynamics CRM in value-added networking and knowledge sharing and to be the single most important conduit for Microsoft to seek guidance on future development of Dynamics CRM.

Have questions? Start with this article: Top 10 Reasons to Join CRMUG.

Cheers,

JaAG

Exam MB2-866: Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Customization and Configuration has just been released. This certification exam measures your ability to understand and articulate how to customize and configure Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 including configuring a Microsoft Dynamics CRM organizational structure, managing users & teams and security, customizing attributes and entities, customizing relationships and mappings, configuring auditing, managing forms & views and charts, and implementing a Microsoft Dynamics CRM solution.

Exam Topics Covered:

• Configuring a Microsoft Dynamics CRM Organizational Structure
• Managing Users & Teams and Security
• Customizing Attributes and Entities
• Customizing Relationships and Mappings
• Configuring Auditing
• Managing Forms, Views, and Charts
• Implementing a Microsoft Dynamics CRM Solution

Audience Profile:

This exam is intended for Microsoft Dynamics CRM Implementation Consultants and Customizers who will configure the application’s organizational settings and customize the application using built-in customization tools.

Cheers,

JaAG

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 supports creating and managing recurring appointment. It also supports its bi-directional synchronization support with outlook calendar just like normal CRM appointments. In CRM 2011 user can create recurring appointment from web client user interface also.

Recurring appointment look and feel is almost similar to outlook recurring appointment. This is designed to provide user a similar experience. But there are two major differentiators as pointed in this blog also.

1. Outlook Recurring Appointments follow Rule based On-Demand expansion model while in CRM instances get created and persisted in Database as individual Appointment records. This expansion based model allows other components of CRM to work seamlessly on individual appointments records.

2. Unlike Outlook, CRM allows us to update recurrence rule of recurring series and still maintain past history of recurring series. On every update of recurrence information, past appointment instances of recurring series are preserved and they can be viewed from a common grouping link in recurring series records.

In this blog I wanted to share more detail on recurring appointment update series logic. At the end we will walk through an example to get more clarity on this.

How past instances are saved in CRM

In CRM when recurrence information is updated for a series we still keep the past instances of series. Unlike in outlook where all existing instances are deleted and new ones are created based on new recurrence pattern. It helps in preserving valuable information which might be associated with past instances. First let’s understand recurrence update. Update of any recurrence attribute (which can change recurrence definition) like occurrence, start date, end date, pattern end type, pattern type etc. comes under this category. From UI any update on recurrence dialog comes under this category.

An important thing to note here is that in CRM we only save history of past instances. If user updates any future instance the information will not be saved. Before starting on how actually past instances are saved in recurring appointment lets understand what could be various cases of recurring appointment series based on today’s date when user do recurrence update on series. There can be mainly three cases based on today’s date on which we do update series.

Case 1: Whole series lies in past

Case 2: Whole series lies in future

Case 3: Series starts in past and continues in future

Like the image shown below. In case 1 and case 3 only we need to save past history. As mentioned earlier in case 3 we will simply delete all instances and new expansion will happen based on new recurrence information.

Figure 1: Different cases of series based on Today's date

I will like to give a brief introduction on metadata related to recurring appointment. For more detail please refer SDK documentation. We have introduced a new entity RecurringAppointment. For preserving instances of series we use same Appointment entity. Before going into logic of update recurrence we should be aware of two fields which play crucial role in update recurrence.

1. SeriesID – This is a new attribute in appointment entity. All instances are associated with their corresponding recurring appointment through this field. SeriesID of all instances is set to ActivityID of their recurring appointment master.

2. GroupID – This is a new attribute in recurring appointment entity. To save history of past instance we create a new recurring appointment master and associate past instances with it. All associated recurring appointments are linked through this field. There can be couple of recurrence update for same series. These all recurring appointment master share same groupid which is set to activityid of first recurring appointment master.

Now let’s start with recurrence update logic. This is what happens when recurrence information is updated for a series.

1. All future instances are deleted

2. If there are any past instances

      a. A new recurring appointment master is created in closed state with GroupID same as activity ID of current recurring appointment.

     b. SeriesID of all past instances is updated to this recurring appointment.

3. Current recurring appointment master recurrence info is updated which does expansion based on new recurrence rule with effective start date as today.

Below diagram explains it in detail.

Figure 2: Recurrence update series logic

As you can see after recurrence update a cloned recurring series is created and past instances refer this cloned master as their SeriesID. New instances created in future based on new recurrence information refer to same recurring series (with updated recurrence information).

A quick walkthrough with an example

Let us walk through this logic with an example. In this example we assume that today’s date is 10^th March 2011.

User creates a series with

Start Date: 7^th March 2011 End date: 12^th March 2011

Pattern time: 10:00 AM – 11:00 AM Pattern Type: Daily

Figure 3: Recurrence definition of an quick example

On calendar it will look like:

Figure 4: On calendar expansion of series before update

A1 to A6 represents six appointments (instance) of series. R1 is the recurring appointment master. All instances have seriesID set as activityid of R1. Now let’s say user update recurrence pattern by changing appointment time to 11:00 AM – 12:00 AM (initially it was 10:00 AM -11:00 AM).

Figure 5: On calendar expansion of series after update

Now after update A1 to A4 are past instances as there pattern date is less than today. New recurring appointment R2 is created and SeriesID of all past instances (A1-A4) is updated to ActivityID of R2. A5’ and A6’ are new appointment created based on new recurrence rule. They still have R1 as its SeriesID. GroupID of R1 and R2 will be set as activity ID of R1. In this way we can group all recurring appointments which are associated.

Hope this example adds more clarity in the logic of update recurrence.

Cheers,

Niraj Yadav

SilverCrmSoap is a library built using the methods in Walkthrough: Use the SOAP Endpoint for Web Resources with Silverlight. The SilverCrmSoap library simplifies SOAP Silverlight development for CRM 2011 by providing a class that does a lot of the heavy lifting right out of the box.

Why use SilverCrmSoap?

If you are using the SOAP End Point, then the library will help simplify your project by removing the complexities of connecting to the SOAP End Point in Silverlight while providing additional tools to assist with your Silverlight project.  In the end, it really boils down to where do you use SOAP instead of REST?  You use SOAP when:

• You need to use late binding to create a dynamic Silverlight application that works with any (or multiple) entities.
• You need to execute a message.
• You need to assign records.
• You need to retrieve metadata.

There are benefits to using the REST endpoint too, and being able to quickly leverage both end points in a project can be extremely helpful.  You should use the REST End Point when:

• You need to early bind to objects.
• You want to leverage LINQ with the early bound objects.
• You want compile time type support and IntelliSense.

You can find more information on the SOAP and REST End Points in the MSDN Article: Use Web Service Data in Web Resources (REST and SOAP Endpoint).

Using SilverCrmSoap

The SilverCrmSoap library is built to be added as a compiled DLL reference in a Silverlight projects.  It facilitates making calls to CRM when used in a Silverlight Web-Resource. 

Inside your Silverlight application solution in Visual Studio, add a reference to the compiled SilverCrmSoap.dll

Once referenced, there are three namespaces that assist with Silverlight development for CRM:

• SilverCrmSoap.CrmSdk
• SilverCrmSoap.FetchXml
• SilverCrmSoap.Helpers

SilverCrmSoap.CrmSdk

Built following the steps in Walkthrough: Use the SOAP Endpoint for Web Resources with Silverlight, this namespace provides access to the SOAP Endpoint.  The SilverCrmSoap.CrmSdk also contains some examples for extending the base Entity class.  In the SilverCrmSoap project a UserOwnedEntitiy class has been added that extends the Entity class and raises the appropriate event when a field is changed.  By default the SOAP Entity object only raises a property changed event if the Attributes object itself is changed.  In addition to the UserOwnedEntity class which specifies the default fields for user owned entities, an Annotation class has been added that inherits from the UserOwnedEntity, adding the specific fields for notes.  This type of extension becomes important when you are attempting to facilitate data-binding.

SilverCrmSoap.FetchXml

The FetchXml namespace provides a set of classes built according to the FetchXml schema to allow deserialization of FetchXml to support the modifying parameters through code, i.e. objectifying FetchXml.  You will want to do this because a query expression does not return column values from another entity, and yet the reason why QueryExpressions are used so widely is because of their ability to easily be modified through code.  By de-serializing the FetchXml query string, you will be able to edit it’s values using objects, then serialize it to use in your queries

SilverCrmSoap.Helpers

The SilverCrmSoap Library contains 3 helpers, the Xrmhelper, the FormHelper, and the SoapHelper.

XrmHelper

The XrmHelper provides on-demand access to the JScript objects that are commonly used such as the Xrm.Page, context, etc.  It is also able to determine if the control was loaded as a web-resource on a form or if it was loaded outside a form.  When using this helper, it is important to either put the web-resource on the form or put it on an html page that provides access to the GlobalContext.

FormHelper

FormHelper takes the XrmHelper and provides a couple of additional quick access methods that utilize the JScript objects XrmHelper provides:

• GetUserPrivilege: Get the privileges for an attribute and determines if the user can read, update, or create.
• GetEntityValue: Gets a value from the form using the Xrm.Page.data.entity.attributes JScript Object.
• SetEntityValue: Sets a value from the form using the Xrm.Page.data.entity.attributes JScript Object.

SoapHelper

The SoapHelper was built to leverage the walkthrough for interfacing the SOAP End Point and provide a set of methods to launch the proper asynchronous call, simplifying access.  One of the great things about these helpers is that you don’t need to specify the URL to use them.  They leverage the context to correctly set the service URL.  The SoapHelper provides a way to quickly connect to the SOAP End Point and a set of methods to jumpstart the begin statements of asynchronous SOAP calls:

• BeginAssociate
• BeginCreate
• BeginUpdate
• BeginDelete
• BeginDisassociate
• BeginExecute
• BeginExecuteFetch
• BeginExecuteRetrieveAllEntities
• BeginExecuteRetrieveEntity

Cheers,

Carlton Colter

The recurring appointment is new enhancement in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 and I will show you how to customize it with respect to your organization’s need. After reading this post, you can able to create fields in recurring appointment entity and link it to a field in appointment entity. After creating the link, the expansion of recurring appointment will correctly copy the data in the created field to respective recurring instances.

Recurring appointment is a template which has some recurrence rule for series expansion and data to create recurring instances. For example, consider a weekly series which has 10 occurrences, starts on 23-Nov-2010, occurs from 11:00 AM to 11:30 AM, has subject “Weekly Performance Meeting” and Location “Meeting Room 123 at Second Floor”. When the series is expanded, it will have 10 recurring instances (actually appointments) with subject “Weekly Performance Meeting”, location “Meeting Room 123 at Second Floor” and occurring from 11:00 AM to 11:30 AM.

It’s very easy to move data from recurring appointment to their instances for system fields, like recurring appointment’s subject data will copied to their instances’ subject field. But how will customization work for them? Microsoft Dynamics CRM 5 has solved this issue with “linked field” property. Now user can create a custom field (say F1) in appointment, another custom field (say F2) in recurring appointment and link them, so that while expansion, data will move from recurring appointment’s field to instance’s field (F1 to F2).

There are three scenarios possible for any recurring appointment custom field:

1. This field is not applicable for appointment entity. You can select mapping status as “ignore mapping”.
2. Corresponding destination field is already created in appointment entity. You want to link with recurring appointment’s field.
3. Corresponding destination field is not in appointment. While creating link, you want that field to be created in appointment entity.

How to create linked field in recurring appointment:

Here is an example how you can create linked filed. Let assume your appointment entity has custom fields “City”, “Product” and “Flavor”. All of these are string fields and city has field length 100 while Product and Flavor has field length 50.

Now when you open the field form for recurring, you will see 3 values in “select field” list: Ignore mapping, City and Create New.

“City” field is listed here because maximum length is set to 100 and appointment has only one custom field which has maximum length 100 which is “City”. As you change the maximum length to 50, list changes and now it has 4 values: “Ignore mapping”, “Flavor”, “Product” and “Create new”

For linking of fields, all of their attributes must be same (e.g. Type, Format etc.).

As you select the field, saves the form and publishes the changes, link gets created and starts working.

What’s “Create new”?

This is a time-to-value feature for linked field, where at the time of linking, you can create appointment’s field at the same time (if it not already exists). It will reduce one step for you to create appointment’s field first.

This feature is not available for “lookup” data type, because on create of “lookup” data type field a new relationship also gets created. Here you need to first create “lookup” field in appointment entity and then link with recurring appointment entity’s field.

What happen when the linked field gets updated or deleted?

This is again a fantastic feature of linked fields, where if you update Recurring appointment or Appointment field, respective linked field also gets updated.

If recurring appointment’s field gets deleted, then there is no impact on appointment field, because it’s one directional linking. On the other hand, deletion of appointment’s field will trigger an update on recurring appointment’s field remove the link.

Field Level Security and Linked fields

Field Level Security (FLS) and Linked fields are mutually exclusives feature because user may have different FLS profiles for recurring appointment‘s field and appointment’s field, which will cause issues in data flow while expansion.

That’s why you cannot link the custom attributes that have FLS enabled. Similarly, you cannot enable field-level security for linked custom attributes.

Cheers,

Abhishek Gupta

We learned how to create a simple sample data for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 in the blog post titled Creating Custom Sample Data for CRM 2011. In this post, we will take a look at some of the more advanced sample data building techniques.

Building a Sample Data Set with Multiple Entities and Related Records

You may want to create multiple related sample data files and then import them into CRM 2011 together. For example, let’s say you create sample data for Account and Contact. You can then create a compressed folder (.zip), drop these sample data files into this folder, and then import the .zip file into CRM from Workplace > Imports. To do so, click on Import Data on the ribbon, and select the .zip file in this dialog below:

Then go through the Import Data Wizard flow. At the end of this process, you would have installed multiple sample data files into your CRM system in one go.

You can create very rich and complex data sets using this method since it allows you to create sample data records that are related to each other. For example, you can set the parent customer field of your sample contacts to sample accounts. The import infrastructure will make multiple passes through your data set and ensure that the records are related properly. The account and contact sample data I created contain the following records:

Contact.xml:

First Name: Yvonne

Last Name: McKay (sample)

Parent Customer: Variety Store (sample)

Account.xml:

Account Name: Variety Store (sample)

Primary Contact: Yvonne McKay

Upon importing the Account.xml and the Contact.xml sample data files, the system makes sure that the contact Yvonne McKay (sample) and the account Variety Store (sample) are linked.

Please keep in mind that for the linking to work, the contacts First Name concatenated to its Last Name must be the exact same string as the account’s Primary Contact field. Similarly, the Account Name needs to be the exact same string as the contact’s Parent Customer.

Relative Dates:

If you create sample data with date fields (such as Actual Close Date for Opportunities), your sample data will look stale if you install it much later compared to when it was created. To make sure your data always looks fresh, no matter when it is installed, you can use dates relative to the time of install. For example, if you want the Actual Close Date of your sample emails to be relative to time of install, you need to do the following:

1. Download the opportunity.xml template as described in the Creating Custom Sample Data for CRM 2011 blog post (follow steps 1 through 4). Then add the following 6 columns to the end of the opportunity.xml file (I prefer using Microsoft Excel for editing sample data files):

2. Now you need to create data that has relative start dates. For each opportunity record, enter appropriate values in the Delta Actual Close columns so that the records are relative. For example, the following opportunity’s close date will always be one year in future from the time when the sample data is installed.

3. You now need to create a map that will allow you to use these columns to make the actual close date of your opportunities relative. To do so, import the opportunity.xml file into your CRM system - navigate to Workplace > Imports and click on Import Data on the ribbon, select the opportunity.xml file and click Next. You will see the following screen, in which, change the CRM Fields dropdown to Show Unmapped:

4. Change each field’s drop down to Ignore and click Next:

5. Click Next on this screen:

6. Type in the Data Map Name. In this example, I will call my map RelativeOpportunityMap, and click Submit:

You have just created a basic map for importing opportunities that you will now modify to take relative actual close dates into account.

7. Download the RelativeOpportunityMap by clicking Settings > Data Management > Data Maps, selecting it, and clicking Export (after exporting, delete it from CRM):

8. Save the RelativeOpportunityMap on your desktop. You now need to modify this map so that it adds the values from the 6 Delta Actual Close Date columns to the system time to calculate actual close dates for your sample opportunities. The import infrastructure allows you to add the delta values to the system date by using the Microsoft.Crm.Transformations.AddToCurrentDate transformation in your map. When given the 6 Delta Actual Close Date columns as inputs, and actualclosedate (the actual close date field of an opportunity) as the output, this transformation will add the delta values to the current system date and set that as the actualclosedate for the sample opportunity. To add this transformation to the RelativeOpportunityMap, open it using an XML editor (even though I use Microsoft Excel for editing the sample data files, I prefer using Microsoft Visual Studio for editing the map files). Add the following node as a child node of the EntityMap node:

<TransformationMaps>
               <TransformationMap>
                  <TransformationTypeName>Microsoft.Crm.Transformations.AddToCurrentDate</TransformationTypeName>
                  <ProcessCode>Process</ProcessCode>
                  <InputParameterMaps>
                     <SingletonInputParameterMaps>
                        <SingletonInputParameterMap>
                           <ParameterSequence>1</ParameterSequence>
                           <DataTypeCode>Reference</DataTypeCode>
                           <Data>Actual Close Year</Data>
                        </SingletonInputParameterMap>
                        <SingletonInputParameterMap>
                           <ParameterSequence>2</ParameterSequence>
                           <DataTypeCode>Reference</DataTypeCode>
                           <Data>Actual Close Month</Data>
                        </SingletonInputParameterMap>
                        <SingletonInputParameterMap>
                           <ParameterSequence>3</ParameterSequence>
                           <DataTypeCode>Reference</DataTypeCode>
                           <Data>Actual Close Day</Data>
                        </SingletonInputParameterMap>
                        <SingletonInputParameterMap>
                           <ParameterSequence>4</ParameterSequence>
                           <DataTypeCode>Reference</DataTypeCode>
                           <Data>Actual Close Hour</Data>
                        </SingletonInputParameterMap>
                        <SingletonInputParameterMap>
                           <ParameterSequence>5</ParameterSequence>
                           <DataTypeCode>Reference</DataTypeCode>
                           <Data>Actual Close Minute</Data>
                        </SingletonInputParameterMap>
                        <SingletonInputParameterMap>
                           <ParameterSequence>6</ParameterSequence>
                           <DataTypeCode>Reference</DataTypeCode>
                           <Data>Actual Close Second</Data>
                        </SingletonInputParameterMap>
                     </SingletonInputParameterMaps>
                     <ArrayInputParameterMaps />
                  </InputParameterMaps>
                  <OutputParameterMaps>
                     <OutputParameterMap>
                        <ParameterSequence>1</ParameterSequence>
                        <Data>actualclosedate</Data>
                     </OutputParameterMap>
                  </OutputParameterMaps>
               </TransformationMap>            
</TransformationMaps>

9. Now that you have modified the map to calculate actualclosedate by using a transformation, you need to remove the original mapping for it. Find the following node in the RelativeOpportunityMap and change its ProcessCode from Process to Ignore and delete actualclosedate from its TargetAttributeName:

Before:

<AttributeMap>

    <SourceAttributeName>Actual Close Date</SourceAttributeName>

    <TargetAttributeName> actualclosedate </TargetAttributeName>

    <ProcessCode>Process</ProcessCode>

</AttributeMap>

After:

<AttributeMap>

    <SourceAttributeName> Actual Close Date</SourceAttributeName>

    <TargetAttributeName></TargetAttributeName>

    <ProcessCode>Ignore</ProcessCode>

</AttributeMap>

10. Save and Close the RelativeOpportunityMap file

11. Import the RelativeOpportunityMap file into CRM from Settings > Data Management > Data Map

12. Select the RelativeOpportunityMap file and click ok:

13. Congratulations! You have successfully created and imported the map that will allow you to install opportunities with relative actual close dates.

14. You are now ready to import the opportunity.xml file to your CRM system. To do this, go to Workplace > Imports > Import Data. Select opportunity.xml as the data file name and click Next until you see the following screen:

Click OK

15. Click Back on three screens in a row, starting with this screen:

16. You will see the following screen. Select RelativeOpportunityMap and click Next:

Keep on clicking Next until you see Submit

17. Navigate to Sales > Opportunities to check that opportunities with relative dates have been imported into the system.

Things to keep in mind:

There are a few things you need to keep in mind as you are creating sample data. The following list is not exhaustive, but contains some of the issues you may face as you create and import sample data for your system:

• You cannot import the lookup field for a N:N (Many to Many) relationship.
• If records in a source file contain multiple values in a field that contains relationship data, edit the data so it contains one value, otherwise data import will fail.
• Verify that required data in your source files exists. For example, Account Name is a required field for Account, and therefore must be included in Account sample data.
• If your source file contains columns that do not map to existing fields, create a custom field as part of the import process using the Import Data Wizard.
• To avoid import errors, verify that all date values are in the correct format before starting the Import Data Wizard. Each date must use the format YYYY-MM-DD.
• Verify that data in the status and status reason columns matches valid values in Microsoft Dynamics CRM.

I hope that this blog helps you create a pretty rich set of sample data using the techniques described above to meet all your needs.

Cheers,

Rubaiyat Khan

Hello readers, this post is in continuation of my ”Getting to Know Charts” blog series, where we discuss useful features of charts. In the introductory post of this series we learned how to create a 3D chart and a multi series chart. Let’s answer some questions that I raised in the previous post.

1. Using large differences in data ranges can make the chart looks ugly – do charts support a scale break?

Absolutely!! Let’s say you have a chart with a huge gap between the low and high data values .You would prefer showing the two distinct ranges on the chart. The chart looks like the one to the right.

To add scale break export the chart xml and add ScaleBreakStyle under AxisY node:

<AxisY LabelAutoFitMinFontSize="8" TitleForeColor="59, 59, 59" TitleFont="{0}, 10.5px" LineColor="165, 172, 181" IntervalAutoMode="VariableCount">
            <MajorGrid LineColor="239, 242, 246" />
            <MajorTickMark LineColor="165, 172, 181" />
            <LabelStyle Font="{0}, 10.5px" ForeColor="59, 59, 59" />
        <ScaleBreakStyle Enabled="True" BreakLineStyle="Straight" Spacing="2" />
    </AxisY>

Import the modified xml and your chart now appears as:

Simple! Isn’t it?

Please note that there are few conditions where scale break is not supported. You can find the details documented here.

2. I want to customize the series name and legends to something more meaningful than Sum (Estimated Revenue)

The chart in Crm 2011 are based upon the attributes of the entity and hence they reflect the attribute’s name and aggregation (Sum, Avg) if any, in the series names. For e.g. Sum (Actual Revenue) or Count (Name) etc.

However you can customize the series names using the Option Sets (Pick list, Status, State attribute types) in CRM. Take the following example.

Series name “Won” in this Chart is actually derived from the “Opportunity Status”

To modify the series name add the Name attribute to the Series node in the exported xml of the chart. For e.g.:

This will display the Series name as Won:

<Series Name="o:opportunity_statecode,1" Color="149, 189, 66" IsValueShownAsLabel="False" BackGradientStyle="TopBottom" BackSecondaryColor="112, 142, 50" Font="{0}, 9.5px" LabelForeColor="59, 59, 59">

This will display the Series name as Lost:

<Series Name="o:opportunity_statecode,2" Color="255,124,31" IsValueShownAsLabel="False" BackGradientStyle="TopBottom" BackSecondaryColor="235,98,0" Font="{0}, 9.5px" LabelForeColor="59, 59, 59">

You can instruct the chart to pick the series name from the display names of some option set values using the following format:

Name = “o:optionsetLogicalName,optionSetValue”

You can use the existing option sets or create your own to reflect the series names. I hope you find this blog post helpful and informative. I have some more charting tips and tricks to share with you soon.

Cheers,

Sonal Sawhney

Ever pondered how it will be to learn a product or demonstrate a feature if there isn’t any sample data available? Sample data is an effective tool that helps you show demonstrations with virtually real data, test the functionality of the product, or even try customizations.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 provides out-of-the-box sample data for some basic entities like Account, Contact, Lead, Opportunity, Activity.

But, what do you do if you want to demonstrate or learn the functionality of other entities, say, an appointment? Simple… You can easily create your own sample data by using the data import templates and Import feature of Microsoft Dynamics CRM.

We’ve recently published an article on the CRM Resource Center that describes how you can use data import templates in CRM to develop your custom sample data, and then import this data in CRM to start using it. Here are the links to the article:

• For CRM On-Premises: http://rc.crm.dynamics.com/rc/2011/en-us/on-prem/5.0/createcustomsampledata.aspx
• For CRM Online: http://rc.crm.dynamics.com/rc/2011/en-us/online/5.0/createcustomsampledata.aspx

Cheers,

Shubhada Joshi

The Microsoft Dynamics CRM Sustained Engineering (SE) team released Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Update Rollup 17 on Thursday, May 5, 2011.

The links below will take you to the necessary information about Update Rollup 17:

• Microsoft Download Center: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=94fa9f74-f574-4c24-a42f-915f1a843f44
• Microsoft Knowledge Base Article: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2477746

General details about Update Rollup 17

Update Rollup 17 is cumulative. However, the Update Rollup 17 CRM Client and Data Migration Client packages require Update Rollup 7 to be installed. For all other CRM components, you do not need to install any previous Update Rollups prior to Update Rollup 17.

The Update Rollup 17 download contains updates for the 40 supported Language Packs. Prior to installing the Update Rollup 17 Language Pack, you must install the original Language Pack.

If you have Language Packs installed, you should

1. Download the Update Rollup 17 Language Pack

2. Install the Update Rollup 17 Language Pack

3. De-provision the Language Pack

4. Re-provision the Language Pack

• Information about how to avoid reboots when installing the CRM Outlook Client can be found in the Update Rollup 4 blog posting.
• The Update Rollup 17 Client can be deployed before the server is upgraded to Update Rollup 17.
• Steps to make the Update Rollup 17 Client available via AutoUpdate can be found in the Update Rollup 4 blog posting. The Link and Patch IDs can be found in KB article 2477746.
• Each update rollup could have fixes that require manual configuration. Please see the “Hotfixes and updates that you have to enable or configure manually” section in KB article 2477746.

How to get support for Update Rollup 17

For support, please contact Microsoft Product Support. For a complete list of Microsoft Product Support Services telephone numbers and information about support costs, visit the following Microsoft Web site: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=fh;[LN];CNTACTMS.

Note: In special cases, charges ordinarily incurred for support calls may be canceled if a Microsoft Support Professional determines that a specific update will resolve your problem. The usual support costs will apply to additional support questions and issues that do not qualify for the specific update in question.

Cheers,

Matt Brown

The CRM Engineering for Enterprise team is pleased to announce the release of the white paper, Optimizing and Maintaining the Performance of Microsoft Dynamics CRM Clients, which is currently available for download from the Microsoft Download Center at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=37c5488f-e09d-4adf-8033-eae6137c1c89.

Successfully optimizing and maintaining the performance of Microsoft Dynamics CRM clients accessing and interacting with a business solution based on Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 or Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online requires:

Familiarity with:

o A general approach to optimization and maintenance

o Factors that can adversely affect the performance of Microsoft Dynamics CRM clients

A solid understanding of:

o Options available for configuring Microsoft Dynamics CRM clients to overcome potential performance issues

o Best practices for customizing Microsoft Dynamics CRM clients for optimal performance

The white paper provides readers with the information necessary for optimizing and maintaining the performance of Microsoft Dynamics CRM clients.

We would love to hear your feedback,

Jim Toland

Today’s guest blogger is CRM MVP Jerry Weinstock who is the Business Development Manager at CRM Innovation. CRM Innovation builds Email, Marketing and Event Management solutions for Microsoft Dynamics CRM.

In March a fellow MVP – George Doubinski reached out to the CRM MVP Community to inquire about our interests in supporting a Microsoft Dynamics CRM TechNet Wiki. Julie Yack introduced the Wiki last month on this blog post.

Here is why I decided to become a contributor and why you should consider supporting it also:

1. The Wiki environment has the capability of becoming an excellent community resource for CRM knowledge. The ability for the content to be updated, extended and corrected is really powerful (not just commented on). It is easy for articles be living, current, and better based on group participation rather than a single view point.

2. I see a connection between CRM Team Blog and the Wiki where the blog posting can launch a topic but the Wiki can keep it alive.

3. There is a tremendous amount of tribal knowledge spread across the personal blog posting hinterlands. However, the CRM Wiki could be a ‘companion’ piece to CodePlex in the sense that it is more of a public resource than the individual postings by CRM practitioners. Kind of an open source article home.

4. There are no barriers to becoming a contributor that are known to me. Anyone that is interested in contributing can join in. Posting on the Wiki using the editor is easy.

I have put two articles out there so far and I have one in the works now that is designed to embody points 2 & 3 above. Stay Tuned. Neither of the articles had purely original content but they gave me a chance to promote the basic concept while inserting my perspective from the field.

• Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online Implementation Guide – Simplified Overview
• CRM 2011 Client Configuration Tune-Up

The CRM Wiki is a work in progress. Content is a little thin right now but it is building. That just means that there are a lot of topics to post on and there is a lot of ‘low hanging fruit’ to work with if you want to become a contributor.

Jerry Weinstock

I had it on my plate to review this document but the good folks at Sonoma beat me to it… again. So I pinged my good friend and CRM MVP Mike Snyder and got permission to repost it here for those of you who aren’t reading the Sonoma Partners blog regularly.

We just got our hands on the updated Microsoft Dynamics CRM Statement of Direction from Microsoft, and we wanted to share our thoughts on the document. The Statement of Direction (SoD) outlines the future direction of Microsoft Dynamics CRM over the short and longer term. If you remember, Microsoft last updated this document back in April 2010…so this May 2011 SoD release is a pretty big milestone. While the May 2011 SoD is just 7 pages long (short compared to the 20 page April 2010 update), it does contain some goodies.

Here’s our highlights from the document:

• Microsoft will remain committed to the “power of choice” allowing customers to deploy EITHER cloud-based and on-premise versions of Microsoft Dynamics CRM.
• SOCIAL CRM! Yes of course social will be part of the future CRM roadmap. Some of the social and collaboration subpoints called out in the SoD include: micro-blogging, business activity feeds, and social intelligence.
• Microsoft Dynamics CRM will continue to “harness and surface” the collaboration capabilities from Microsoft SharePoint, Microsoft Lync, and Microsoft Office. This is great to see the continued investment in making the Microsoft products work better together. While Microsoft’s Skype acquisition was too late breaking for this document, it wouldn’t surprise me to see some Skype-to-CRM integration in the future.
• Improved provisioning and evaluation of Microsoft Dynamics Marketplace solutions, nice!
• Improved reporting: additional charting, visualization and dashboarding capabilities. Who can argue with better, easier and sexier reporting?
• Cross-device support: while the SoD does not provide details about specific devices CRM will support (iPad and iPhone?!?), it does call out different form factors such as desktop, PC, laptop, tablet and phone.
• Multi-browser support: Microsoft Dynamics CRM will work on different web browsers by utilizing HTML5 (again no specifics about Chrome, Safari,etc.).
• Better support for enterprise organizations to run Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online (as part of their IT infrastructure plus better on-boarding, admin and integration capabilities).

Of course this all sounds like GREAT new stuff and we can’t wait to get it! So we’re guessing the next question on your mind is when can customers expect to see new versions of Microsoft Dynamics CRM? The SoD covers future release timing too:

• Instead of the traditional 3 years between major releases, Microsoft Dynamics CRM will change to a semi-annual release cycle (spring and fall).
• Microsoft will release an “automatic update” to Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online in Q4 of calendar 2011. There will be a “scheduled update” to Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online in Q2 of calendar 2012.
• As you would expect, automatic updates happen all at once while scheduled updates allow Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online customers to schedule their update within one year. I think it’s pretty safe to assume that scheduled updates will be larger in scope and complexity compared to automatic updates.
• Microsoft will release an “update” for the on-premise version of Microsoft Dynamics CRM in Q4 of calendar 2011. An “upgrade” of the on-premise version of Microsoft Dynamics CRM will be available in Q2 of calendar 2012.
• On-premise upgrades may incorporate significant Microsoft platform innovations (e.g. the next releases of Windows Server and desktop, .NET Framework, SQL Server, Office), while updates offer smaller scale new capabilities.

From a customer and partner perspective, I am really jazzed up about the semi-annual release cycles. It will be outstanding to get new features and capabilities more quickly. However from a book author perspective, I am slightly terrified! :)

Of course, you can download and read the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Statement of Direction from our website.

Enjoy,

Mike Snyder

The Customer Care Accelerator for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 officially went out the door for folks today and it is now available publicly. You can head over to Microsoft Pinpoint and pick it up here or you can find it on the Dynamics Marketplace here.

As a bit of a teaser… here are two screen shots of the new interface provided as part of the Reference Implementation for CCA.

And a bit of a rehash from my previous post on this:

Here are a few highlights to help you be prepared and knowledgeable on CCA for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011.

• First, The Customer Care Accelerator R1 will continue to fully Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0.

• The Customer Care Accelerator R2 and User Interface Integration (UII) for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 is scheduled to be released on April 15, 2011.

• The Customer Care Accelerator R2 and UII will fully support Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Online and Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 On-Premises.

• The UII framework will support all of the authentication models supported by Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011, including Active Directory, IFD (Internet Facing Deployment), Live (for Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online) and partial support for Claims (Security Assertion Markup Language -- please see the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 SDK and Installation documentation for more information on Claims/SAML support).

• The Customer Care Accelerator R2 and UII for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 have been updated to .net 4.

• The Customer Care Accelerator R2 will include updated and restructured reference implementation, providing several prebuilt scenarios to help partners and customers get a jumpstart on learning how to work with the building blocks within the UII. As an example, one of the scenarios will include creating user sessions from various activity types in CRM, and using UII tasks to create cases.

• The Hosted Application Toolkit (HAT) will be updated for .net 4.0 using the .net 4.0 workflow engine and HAT will fully support Visual Studio 2010

Let me know what you think.

Matthew Barbour

A number of our CRM MVPs were recognized as Microsoft Dynamics Most Influential People Top 100. This annual list consists of influential people for all of the Microsoft Dynamics products, not just Microsoft Dynamics CRM. Microsoft Dynamics is a suite of integrated business management solutions for financial, supply chain and customer relationship management.

The Most Influential People in Microsoft Dynamics for 2011 is based on a number of criteria, and with more than 25,000 unique voters and more than 500,000 votes in total the annual list is now firmly established in the Microsoft Dynamics consciousness. More criteria information is available here.

The following CRM MVPs were recognized:

44 – Jürgen Beck (second award)

Jurgen works as an independent consultant, programmer, trainer and author since 1995. Jurgen is a holder of a diploma in commerce with specialization in Business Information Systems. He graduated in 2002 with excellence from the University of Osnabrück in Germany. In the world of Microsoft technologies he is certified as a MCP, MCAD, MCSD.NET, MCDBA, MCITP, MCSE and MCT. He is also certified as MBS Certified Master and CRM Developer for Microsoft CRM.For his activity on the Microsoft .NET and Microsoft Dynamics CRM Community in Germany he was first awarded with the Microsoft MVP – Most Valuable Professional for Microsoft Visual C# followed by Microsoft Dynamics CRM. He is the first MVP for a Microsoft Business Solutions product in Europe. A consultant, trainer, author and programmer. He was the first MVP for a Microsoft Business Solutions product in Europe, also a MBS Certified Master. His books have created a following of over 3000 for his website and blog. Website: http://www.ComBeck.de

57 – Frank Lee (second award)

Frank is the President of Workopia Inc a premier Microsoft Dynamics CRM certified specialist for small and medium size businesses across America, Workopia began in 2003 and has grown to be the preeminent Dynamics CRM practice. Frank has been actively involved with Microsoft CRM implementations since v1.0 beta (2002). He has consistently achieved the MVP for Microsoft Dynamics, and his ability to customise not only small CRM solutions but the larger implementations comes from his previous Siebel experience. He is widely renowned in the channel as a speaker and his convergence talks are the most blogged in the CRM space.

97 – Leon Tribe

Dynamics CRM consultant and business thought leader based in Sydney, Australia. Leon regularly applies his skills to improve businesses through applying a strategic focus, implementing transparent processes and using technology to bring everything together. Initially working as a trainer/lecturer, Leon transitioned into technology and started working with CRM systems in the late 1990s. Consulting at Interact Commerce (now part of Sage) on the ACT! and Saleslogix products, Leon moved to Deloittes in 2001 to hone his consulting skills. Leon moved on to work with numerous customers across multiple industries and was part of the first group of consultants in Australia trained on the beta edition of Microsoft CRM 1.0 (now Dynamics CRM). Seeing the future of the product, Leon transitioned to Dynamics CRM and has worked almost exclusively with the product ever since. A prolific business writer, Leon has been writing on consulting and the CRM industry for almost ten years. These days Leon writes and contributes to industry books, writes his humorous syndicated blog, “Leon’s CRM Musings” (http://leontribe.blogspot.com), and regularly tweets.

Kudos!

JaAG

Until Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 there were only a bunch of OOB activities like appointment, task, phone call etc. There was no way for user to create new entities like IM, voice chat, SMS etc. which represents new communication channel and need activity party. Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 solves this problem by providing capability to create custom activity. Custom activity allows user to have several type of OOB activity party within custom entity itself.

In this post we will cover how to control surfacing of custom activity. By default custom activity appears in UI along with other OOB activities. To enable/disable surfacing of custom activity user simply need to check/uncheck “Display in Activity Menus” checkbox while creating custom activity.

Please note that once this checkbox is checked/ unchecked it can’t be changed later. So user need take a conscious decision while creating custom activity. Once this custom activity is unchecked you will see that this custom activity doesn’t appear in all places where OOB activity and other custom activity appear. This setting is applicable for both web client and Outlook client.

Let’s walk through a scenario to understand this in more detail. A company “XYZ” has following requirements. It needs a new activity “Feedback”. Feedback is only given to a particular user regarding a customer (Account/ contact). So it should be associated with user and customer. It should not appear in all other places. Company also needs another custom activity “SMS” which is like any other activity.

Simon creates a new custom activity “Feedback”. The system customizer Simon unchecks the checkbox of “Display in Activity Menus” while creating this custom activity. He creates a 1: N relationship between “Feedback” and user entity. As this feedback will be about some customer so he adds OOB activity party lookup of “customers” on the main form of Feedback entity.

Simon creates another custom activity “SMS”. While creating this custom activity he checks both checkboxes as he wants to show it in all places along with OOB activities. Along with this he also adds “To” and “From” activity party on main form of custom activity.

Now publishes all customizations. He also creates one record of both entities to test. Now let’s see how these custom activities appear in various places. Let’s check on default places where mainly activities appear:

Ribbons

o Activities Main grid ( Workplace --> Activities)

o Activities associated grid ( From Accounts form)

o Activities advance find

o New Activity on Jewel

Views

o Activities view

o Activities associated view

o Type selector

As you can see, only SMS entity and its records appear. The “Feedback” entity appears only on associated grid of user.

I hope this post will help you to harness the power of controlling the surfacing of custom activity and its implications.

Cheers,

Niraj Yadav

The users in your organization don’t need to wait for the administrator to customize Microsoft Dynamics CRM in a way that might or might not benefit them. Point them to the article “Personal Customizations” (On-Premise, Online), which has details for how to personalize CRM. Users can change the personal options such as the following:

• Create custom record list views
• Create personal e-mail templates
• A default start page and tab to help you get started faster.
• How many records to show per page in any list of records. This is a performance optimization. A smaller set of records displays slightly faster.
• Whether you want the Advanced Find view to open in Simple or Detailed mode by default.
• Your time zone.
• The default currency used for your data.
• Workplace options to control which groups appear within the Workplace area.
• Your default calendar view.
• Your default work hours.
• Whether you want to track your e-mail messages in Microsoft Dynamics CRM.

Cheers,

Carola Klass

In case you aren't aware, Silverlight and JavaScript Web Resources support the SOAP service(Organization.svc) of CRM 2011 in addition to the REST service(OrganizationData.svc). For more details, see here.

SOAP service provides additional capabilities that are currently not present in the REST service. Few of these that I personally like are:

• Execute Fetch XML based requests for RetrieveMultiple. Users can create Fetch XMLs using Advanced Find UI.
• Use dynamic entity objects(Entity class).
• Execute messages.

To understand which service to use for your requirement, see here. Here is an excerpt from the article:

I've created few applications using SOAP endpoint:

BING MAP BROWSER FOR MULTIPLE ENTITIES

This is a Silverlight application that shows multiple entity records on the Bing map. The idea is to show records from any number of entities and provide user some additional capabilities(explained below). Also, the content displayed on the map is configurable.

SOAP endpoint is used in Silverlight control to get the data from CRM. Silverlight Bing map control is used to display records in Silverlight type Web Resource.

You can download the solution from here.

Here are some features of this solution:

• All the settings, starting from entities to be displayed to the fields and filters applicable, are configurable and are defined in XML file (Web Resource).
• Clicking the pushpin shows a display pane that contains links and list of fields of the record clicked. Again, links and fields are configurable.
• You can find nearby records. Click on the map from where you want to find the nearby records. Then fill the distance (in KMs) and click Load. You will get a list of nearby records. To open a record, first click on the row and then right click.
• Contains HTML Web Resource to locate the latitude and longitude on Entity form. You need to provide address fields in the XML file.

Detailed information is available in codeplex.

RELATED RECORDS TREE EXPLORER

The Silverlight tree control can be used to see the related records (up to any level) of the current opened record in CRM form.

The entities and the relationships to display are configurable. Click on the item to open its form.

You can download the solution from here.

Detailed information is available in codeplex.

Cheers,

Atul Goyal

Today’s guest blogger is CRM MVP and CRM Forum admin Donna Edwards. She blogs regularly at http://edwardsdna.wordpress.com.

Today, I was researching CRM E-mail router implementation in reference to Microsoft Exchange and CRM 2011 Online.  As I was clicking through links and reviewing the available information, I quickly realized that this was great stuff and I wanted to keep it for future reference.

One of the best methods I have for keeping resource information front and center is to create a blog article for reference.  This is a win/win as I can reference it whenever needed while sharing it with the community.

Here’s my list of helpful CRM Online E-mail Router links.  I hope they help you.  Feel free to share any additional links you’ve found helpful in the Comments section below.

Thanks to everyone who contributed to these great resources! <Click on Links below>

• Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online E-mail Router Installation Guide
• How to configure the Microsoft Dynamics CRM on-premises and Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online E-mail Router in different deployment scenarios
• Microsoft Online Services Team Blog
  • Webinar – Configuring Microsoft CRM Online and Exchange Online to Work Together
• The Microsoft Dynamics CRM Blog
  • Configure Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online E-mail Router with Exchange Online
• CRM Forum
  • What is Auto-Discovery, Difference between User Types, Delegate Access vs. Send as Permission
  • Deployment Tab Configuration
  • Dynamics CRM Online and Exchange for queues

Cheers,

CRM MVP Donna Edwards

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Implementation Guide update 5.1.0 is now available

Yes, it’s that time of year again where flowers are blooming, trees are burgeoning, and there’s a brand-spanking new update to the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Implementation Guide! Please note that this update will only be published to the TechNet and MSDN libraries.

Summary of changes

We strive to keep the information in this documentation as current and accurate as we can. The below table lists the changes that have been made as part of this documentation update.

Cheers!

Matt Peart