February 2008 - Posts
Maybe I'm just dense, but I had one hell of a time trying to get the new CRM 4.0 E-mail Router configured. My main problem was trying to figure out how to configure the Deployments section. In the new E-mail Router Configuration Manager there are three tabs.
The first is the Configuration Profiles tab. This allows you to define incoming and outgoing routes for messages. Outgoing is only SMTP so you simply configure it for whatever outbound SMTP service you have. If you are running Exchange, then point this to your Exchange server. You also configure your incoming service. This can be Exchange or POP3. These are relatively straight forward. I called my profiles LCS-OUT for my outbound and LCS-IN for my incoming mail. The real problem I encountered was trying to figure out how to configure the Deployments tab.
When you create a New Deployment, you get this window
The box where you enter the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Server is where I had my problem/frustration. (Almost) No matter what I put in there, it didn't work in the final step. The dialog box recommends using https://discovery:80/<org>. There apparently is a Discovery service for IIS but it doesn't relate to CRM. I tried many things. I eventually tried using my actual server name instead of 'discovery'. When I would put in the server name, "LCS-SBS", it didn't like that. If I did it with the fully qualified domain name, same result. Finally, after MUCH frustration, and after searching the web (Google) and the CRM Implementation Guide, none of which were helpful, probably because I must be dense as stated at the beginning, I finally stumbled upon the very simple and, I guess, obvious answer, of using the URL that is used to access my CRM locally, http://LCS-SBS:5555/ plus the name of my CRM organization, LentzComputerServices. Note, this is not the 'friendly' name ;-) So, my entry for the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Server is http://lcs-sbs:5555/LentzComputerServices.
Once I did this, I went to the third tab and selected that deployment. Finally it was able to find and display the list of my CRM users and Queues. I completed the configuration.
The last step was to select the accounts I wanted to set up for the e-mail router and then Publish them. When I published, I noticed that numerous e-mail messages that should have been sent out over the last couple of weeks that I've been running CRM 4.0, mainly workflow generated, suddenly were sent! This brings ups good point. The E-mail Router in CRM 4.0 is needed not only for incoming but also for SENDING e-mail from CRM.
I searched the Internet a lot to resolve this issue but found nothing of use. I was lucky to stumble on the solution. Again, I'm probably dense, but perhaps there are other dense ones out there who will benefit from this tip.
One of the new things I've found handy in CRM 4.0 is that when you go to link an Outlook record, like an e-mail or an appointment, in CRM and then click on Set Regarding, it will list the last several records you've linked to. It also remembers the last several entity types you've selected. For instance, if I want to link a message to an Order that I've recently linked to, it's there on the list and I don't have to go search for it. Or, if i want to like a message to a Case, when I hit Set Regarding, Case is a choice. May seem like no big deal but it really is nice!
Having finally gotten my CRM 3.0 SBE upgraded to CRM 4.0 Workgroup Edition, I then went to install the Outlook client. I used the 90 Evaluation software (90 Day Wonder) that I had downloaded. It has a single setup application, setupclient.exe. If you already have a CRM 3.0 Outlook client installed, it will ask you if you'd like to upgrade. Initially I chose to upgrade my existing Outlook client. Actually, if you currently have the old 3.0 client installed, your only other option is to Cancel. If you are doing a new install you will have two options:
Install Microsoft Dynamics CRM for Outlook (Recommended)
Install Microsoft Dynamics CRM for Outlook with Offline Access (Advanced)
These are a bit confusing, at least for my addled brain. I liked the old Laptop/Desktop references. Obviously though if you are going to use the CRM Outlook client on a laptop that will be going offline, then you want to select the second option. Otherwise use the first.
Once the CRM Outlook client is installed, you must run the Configuration Wizard. I was reinstalling my client last night and couldn't figure out why it wasn't coming up when i started Outlook. This morning I realized it was because I hadn't run the Configuration Wizard. Guess I shouldn't do that kind of stuff late at night.
The Configuration Wizard for the Offline Access client asks for the URL for accessing CRM on your local network and additionally the URL for accessing it over the Internet. I haven't tried the Outlook client remotely but this could be a really nice big new feature. This option is also available in the desktop version as well. This would allow remote desktop users to directly access CRM over the Internet. This facilitates the Hosted (CRM Live) version as well as On-Premise.
The basic installation process is pretty straight forward. I did get warnings from the System Requirements screen when I installed on my desktops that have less than 1 GB RAM ("Microsoft Dynamics CRM fro Outlook requires at least 1 gigabyte (GB) of memory"). But it seems to work OK even so.
The biggest problem with the new Outlook client, and it is a big problem, is that synchronization causes Outlook to crash and restart. This is extremely annoying, especially if you are working on an e-mail when it restarts as you are likely to lose the entire message! Apparently the problem is caused by the existence of dates in the Birthday or Anniversary fields in the Contact record that are before 1970. I guess CRM 4.0 doesn't like Geezers. Microsoft is aware of the problem and is working on a fix. Unfortunately removing those dates from your data doesn't seem to help. The workaround is to not enable synchronization. Hopefully Microsoft will have their hotfix out soon.
Well, I finally got CRM 4.0 Workgroup Edition installed on my Small Business Server. But it wasn't pretty. As I mentioned in my last post, I encountered an error in the first install. I am going to speculate about the cause. The error appears to concern upgrading the Administrator account (ConvertSetupUserToFullUser). My Setup User is my Administrator which was a Restricted Access Mode account. I also had 5 active user accounts That's a total of 5 licensed users which is the limit for Workgroup Edition. But when the upgrade process attempted to convert the setup user to full users, it exceeded the allowable license count. What I did to eventually resolve this was to reinstall my original 3.0 version (which took quite some doing, but I won't go in to that now), disable one of my regular user accounts, and then go through the upgrade process once again. That seems to have done the trick. I can only speculate that this was the cause and resolution, but it works now. By the way, the upgrade takes a LOOONNNGGGG time to complete!
As for the Outlook client, I managed to easily upgrade my V3C laptop client on my notebook to 4.0. But, it seems to have some 'special' problems. I have attempted to go Offline. When I do, it goes through the synchronization process but the Go Offline button never changes to Go Online. Plus Outlook periodically stops working and restarts. I had it do that while I was in the middle of composing an email and lost it all. I don't like that very much. I'm going to uninstall the CRM Outlook client completely and reinstall and see how that goes.
Well I FINALLY resolved some nagging issues I had with SQL Reporting Services in my CRM 3.0 SBE installation and today I decided that doing the upgrade to CRM 4.0 would be an interesting exercise for my Saturday morning CRM study group. First I decided to upgrade to the Workgroup Edition. This is the version supposedly aimed at the SBS users and upgrades from Small Business Edition. Of course it only allows for 5 users so figure that. But I only have 5 users at this time so that's OK. I wanted to see how it works and then I can supposedly easily move up to the higher versions. Moving back down to a lesser version, like Pro to WGE, doesn't work.
First we read the ReadMe that is actually a download. There were a few good ideas and pointers there. I encourage you do read that first. But we didn't find anything that would appear to stop our install. So I started the install and got several warnings about the database. One had to do with unpublished customizations. Didn't know I had any but doing a Publish all Customizations seemed to take care of that. There was one about uncompleted Bulk Imports but looking at those in the Activities list only showed completed Bulk Imports. So I ignored it. We fired off the install and it whirred and whirred for over an hour before throwing off and error! The error was:
Action Microsoft.Crm.Setup.Server.ConvertSetupUserToFullUser Action failed.
The operation or property RestoreCaller is not valid in the context without calling OnBeginRequest first
The operation or property RestoreCaller is not valid in the context without calling OnBeginRequest first
No, I didn't stutter. That last line repeats itself. Googling produced nothing at all. On looking at the error, it may be caused in part because the Administrator, which is the account I am using to do the install, is a Restricted Mode User in CRM 3.0.
My choices were Retry and Cancel. Retry as I might, I kept getting the same message. So, I finally gave up and hit Cancel. It did just that, cancelled my install leaving me with no working CRM. Of course I made backups of my data before launching this so I can always uninstall 4.0 and reinstall 3.0, again. But instead I am currently trying a Repair from the install set. I'll let you all know how that goes.