September 2007 - Posts
Tonight I was attempting to create a workflow rule to send an e-mail to a specific contact (our Microsoft Tele Partner Account Manager - TPAM) when a new Opportunity is created. In the Send E-mail action, when I attempted to set the To field to the Contact record of our TPAM, or anything else, I got an error that said "The root element is missing". Bummer! I tried Googling it but didn't come up with anything helpful. So I decided to use the Universal Fix - a reboot!
Nope, that didn't help. So I decided to try Google again. But this time I included CRM and Workflow in my search. This time I got a useful hit at Jen O Bryan's blog suggesting the problem might be with the user creating the workflow rule. I was using the Administrator account which actually is a Restricted Access account which does not have access to the core data records. Thus the problem with accessing Contacts. I logged back on to the server using my own (God privilege) account and I had no problem.
The moral of this story is; when working with Workflow, be aware of the user account you are using to set up workflow rules. They DO make a difference.
Had a major problem today with our old friend, the server with the mraid35x issue. But today it was something different. Last night I remotely applied Windows Updates to the server which required a reboot. Reboot I did, but come back up the server did not. No problem thinks I, it happens.
The customer calls at 0 dark 30 this morning. Our server is down! Yes, I know. Just turn it back on, wait, and then turn it back on. Nope. Try again. Nope, nope, nope. So over there (a 45 minute drive) goes I. For 45 minutes I try everything I can think of to get it to boot. I’ll give it one last chance (I’ve seen this before) and then I’ll take it to the vendor’s hospital. But in preparation for transport, I turn OFF the USB backup drive. Reboot AND IT COMES UP! My suspicion is that it has been somehow trying to boot off the attached USB backup drive. USB is not in the boot sequence as far as I know. I can only assume that the presence of the USB drive somehow prevented the normal boot. Don't know the answer to this yet so I'll keep you posted as I learn more.
When I was using CRM 1.2, I found the CRM Mobile application invaluable. It allowed me to have my CRM database on my Pocket PC. That was handy! Unfortunately it was quite difficult to set up, at least for me. And apparently for Microsoft support as I was fortunate enough to have their assistance on two occasions and it took them a bit as well. With CRM 3.0, it's been a bit easier to live without CRM Mobile. CRM and Outlook are very tightly integrated in CRM 3.0 so when I synchronize my Pocket PC with Outlook, I am in fact also synching it with CRM. I once tried to install CRM Mobile 3.0 but ran into problems and gave up. Plus, I understand that CRM Mobile does not support Cases and perhaps some other stuff. But recently I've been hearing good things about CRM Mobile Express.
CRM Mobile Express is basically a web interface into CRM that is designed to fit on the Windows Mobile screen. That's nice thought I, but not very handy when you have to be connected to the Internet to use it. Open hot spots can be hard to find, especially when you NEED them. But then I realized that with the new SmartPhones and Pocket PC phones, you can connect easily from pretty much any where. I'm planning on upgrading my phone to a PDA phone so the CRM Mobile Express becomes more attractive.
CRM Mobile Express is a free download. However, the site that it was originally posted on has been discontinued. It took a little digging, but I found it recently here. Installation is an exercise is setting up a new web site. The instructions included with the package is somewhat sparse but it's adequate if you have any idea of what you are doing. It requires some editing of the web.config file(s) to set it up for your own installation. Pay attention and be patient while you're working through it.
There are two parts to the package, the Administration part, and the Mobile Applicaton. The Administration part hooks into your Settings area in your main CRM web application. It lets you specify exactly what entities and attributes (tables & fields) you want to expose to CRM Mobile Express. The Mobile Application is just that.
I have just gotten it running on my server, and on my Pocket PC. It ain't real pretty, but it's there. I'll let you know how it goes as it play with it.
Today the Alamo PC Small Business Server Special Interest Group, APCO SBS SIG, hosted Kristen Wild of StorageCraft. StorageCraft has a very interesting imaging/backup solution. You can find more information on the StorageCraft site at http://www.storagecraft.com.
Kristen gave a great presentation and although I've been using their products since I learned about them at the IT Pro Conference in New Orleans over Memorial Day weekend, I learned a bunch today.
Kristen was generous enough to buy the group lunch at a local Tex-Mex restaurant after our formal meeting. You can view photos from the presentation and our lunch get together at http://www.lentzcomputer.net/SBS/StorageCraft%20Presentation%209707/Forms/AllItems.aspx.
Of interest to SBSers, StorageCraft has come out with an SBS specific version. Basically it is a version of their Server Edition that can only be run on a Small Business Server server, but at a big discount. Check 'em out!
For most of the summer I fought a frustrating problem at one of my client's. Occasionally their SBS 2003 R2 server would reboot. Well, it started out as occasionally. The first time was in late May or early June. An isolated incident. Then it happened again at the end of June. Time to look into it. The Event Log showed that the system was kicking off mraid35x errors. mraid35x is the RAID card driver. The error would happen four times in a row in a span of a couple of minutes and then the system would reboot. The error was Event ID 9 and the text was
The device, \Device\Scsi\mraid35x1, did not respond within the timeout period.
I consulted Google and the SBS MVP e-mail list. All seemed to point to a problem with the RAID card or connections. So, I replaced the RAID card. The problem persisted. We updated the drivers, changed out the motherboard, power supplies, hot swap RAID caddy, and just about everything that was attached to the box. We even tried setting a big fan to blow into the server in case it was a heat problem (it is summer in south Texas). Nothing seemed to help and the problem started occurring much more frequently, like every hour or so at times! Finally, at the suggestion of Microsoft support, I decided to try changing out the hard drives. I had to replace them one at a time over a span of several days so the new drive would have a chance to regenerate and become part of the RAID before replacing the next one. And the client was a 40 minute drive away. I replaced each drive in the system drive mirror. The problem persisted. I replaced the first drive in the RAID 5 data drive. The problem persisted. I replaced the second drive in the RAID 5... hmmm. It didn't reboot that night, nor the next day. Matter of fact, it's been up and running for a week now! I went ahead and replaced the last drive so that all would be of the same vintage.
I'm guessing that the drive was getting 'soft', for lack of a better term. Over time it was getting worse and worse. But tracking it down was obviously quite hard. No where did I see any mention of the problem possibly being with the hard drives themselves. So, if you encounter this problem, be sure to check the drives when every thing else fails.