April 2008 - Posts
So, last week I finally took my CRM 3.0 certification exams. I did the Applications exam before we went to Europe in September, 2006. I've been prepared to take the remaining two, Installation & Configuration, and Customization for some time but hadn't quite gotten around to taking them. Last week I finally went ahead and took them, Installation & Config on Monday (passed with a 90), and Customization on Wednesday (95). Then on Thursday I learned that the CRM 4.0 exams have been released. (I knew they were imminent.)
The new exams are a little different. They are Applications, Installation & Deployment, and Customization and Configuration. I am working through the course materials for these exams as well as studying for the 3.0 Extending CRM exam. The Applications exam now includes Workflow since workflow is now available to the user. Configuration has been moved from the Install exam to the Customization and Configuration exam. That includes setting up Business Units, Teams, Users, and Security Roles. Will be interesting adjusting to the new software and courseware.
John O'Donnell, former CRM MVP and now Microsoft employee, blogged about the exams here.
I didn't know this. You can only have a maximum of 8 tabs in a CRM 4.0 (and 3.0) form.
Today Microsoft announced the availability of CRM Online, formerly called CRM Live. Here is an online article about it.
CRM Online will offer smaller groups of users, like small businesses with out a server (they should consider SBS, of course) to have the benefits of CRM without the up front expense of a server and all that entails.
Well, today was the last day of the 2008 Microsoft MVP Global Summit. No busses were involved!!! At least not for me. We had breakfast at the Washington State Convention and Trade Center followed by a session by the new Chief Software Architect, Ray Ozzie. The former CSA, Bill Gates, spoke to us last year. Ray was followed by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. Steve is a dynamic speaker, to say the least. He is interested in our feedback and gave us his personal e-mail address. I e-mailed him during the presentation and received a reply later today. His most famous line from the morning was his admission the "Windows Vista is a work in progress". I suspect that will be bouncing around the Internet for quite a while. He also had something on one of his few slides that caught CRM MVP Matt Witteman's eye. It referenced something called Dynamics Entrepreneur Solution. None of us had heard of it before. Apparently it is a new small business ERP system of sorts. More info is available here.
That was pretty much it for the formal part of the Summit. They served us lunch and there were a number of breakout sessions, in my hotel thank goodness. I attended the Windows Essential Server session for awhile as well as the MCT session. But I was pretty beat so went back to my room for awhile and updated the ROM on my cell phone (more on that in a later post). Then I attended the Puget Sound SBS User Group meeting for a little while before joining the remaining CRM MVPs for dinner.
I'd like to post a special thanks for our MVP host, Jim Glass (aka JaAG), who did a great job setting up and managing our sessions and experience during the two days on campus. Thank you SO MUCH for everything, Jim.
Tomorrow will be a pretty full day of travel back home. I'm looking forward to next year's Summit!
Today was another great day spent at the Microsoft campus with the CRM Team. We started off with a conference call with the India Development Center, IDC. They highlighted several of the major additions they are working on for CRM 5. Sorry, can't tell you about them but they all look good and some are long awaited.
Next we had one of the best sessions of Summit so far, a discussion with Phil Richardson, Senior Program Manager Lead for Dynamics CRM. He solicited our comments on problems with existing versions and (mostly) recommendations for the next version of CRM. He entered all this into an issue tracking system they use so that the suggestions will be methodically addressed. He was given an hour but stayed with us much longer, into the lunch period, until his notebook battery gave out! All the MVPs really appreciated the session.
Our next session was unfortunately canceled but Greg Nichols, who has been involved with CRM support for some time, gave us an impromptu session on supporting CRM. There was some discussion about some problems that had been encountered in the latest Update Rollup, UR3. Apparently it can cause some weird SQL issues (one of my clients has experienced this). There is a Hotfix scheduled for release very shortly.
Next Michael Höhne, CRM MVP from Germany, gave us a demonstration and explanation of Filtered Lookups which he has developed and will be marketing. It is slick and his presentation included the process for not only developing such a tool, but how to make it a commercial product. I thought the process was very interesting.
We closed out the day with an open discussion just among the MVPs, no Microsoft folks in attendance, discussing stuff. This was great as well as it provided another opportunity of us to share amongst ourselves.
The ride back to Seattle from Redmond was a challenge. Last night, leaving around 7:50, took 15 minutes from the Microsoft Conference Center to my Seattle hotel. Tonight, leaving at 5:50 took 1 hour 40 minutes! Some busses took as long as 2 hours. So much for Seattle traffic. But we finally made it. I took a quick break in the hotel and then headed to the Attendee Party. This year it was at the Experience Music Project/Science Fiction Hall of Fame near the Seattle Space Needle. it was a really nice party. I ran into a couple of SBS MVPs but eventually hooked up with the CRM guys. We went through the Science Fiction Hall of Fame together which was pretty interesting. They had memorabilia from many of the classics like Star Trek, Planet of the Apes, and many more. But the best part of the night was sitting around sharing a few drinks and many stories with the other CRM MVPs and getting to know more about their backgrounds, experiences, etc. This has been the best part of Summit for me, and the one i looked forward to the most.
Tomorrow we will be back in Seattle (yea!!!) with morning sessions, highlighted by the keynote by Steve Ballmer. The afternoon sessions will actually be in my hotel which will be great. I will likely hook back up with the SBS folks in the Centro (Windows Essential Business Server) session. I may slip out to attend an MCT session midway.
Many thanks to Jim Glass (JaAG) who has been our chief Microsoft honcho who arranged all the sessions, the Product Group dinner, and everything we did on campus. Thank you so much, Jim. Everyone has expresses great appreciation for everything you've done for us, not only this week, but always.
Well, it's real late and though I don't have to catch an early bus back to Redmond in the morning, tomorrow's sessions will start early enough. I'll give me final report tomorrow.
Today we traveled to the Microsoft campus in Redmond and spent the day in Building 110 with the CRM folks. I was joined in line waiting for the bus in Seattle by Guy Riddle, CRM MVP from Australia. Guy and I first met at Convergence in Dallas in 2006. Guy is also an MCT so we discussed CRM training on the ride to Redmond. The busses from Seattle drop us all off at the Microsoft Conference Center (MSCC). Then we hopped on another bus for the ride to Building 110. Joining Guy and I on that bus were Ron Lemmen from the Netherlands, and Marco Amoedo from Spain. I learned that Marco had recently moved to London. I was very pleased to meet Ron in person for the first time. Marco and I had met last year at the Summit. Once we got to the meeting, I also met Giorgio Garcia-Agreda from Naples, Italy, and David Yack. David is from Colorado and is actually a Regional Director.
Our sessions included presentations on CRM Live, er that should be CRM ONLINE. They recently changed the name to CRM Online from that other thing. One of the presentations was by Manisha Powar whom I have conversed with via e-mail in the past. I was very pleased, and impressed, to see her in person. The next presentation was on the SDK (Software Development Kit). Look for updates about once a month for now. You can download the SDK from here. We also had sessions on the CRM Help functions, the new Resource Center which is part of the CRM Navigation area, and the newsgroups, forums, the Community, and where the MVPs fit in.
We had a bit of a break after the sessions and before the Product Group dinner. So, a number of us trekked off to the Microsoft Company Store. There one can purchase Microsoft Software at ridiculously low prices. Frankly, as a Microsoft Partner, I get all the business software I can use. But I was tempted by the latest Flight Simulator. Then I saw the long check out line. I had hoped to find some Microsoft Dynamics logo shirts but found none there. Guess I'll have to wait and go to the next Convergence.
Tomorrow we're back to the Redmond campus. Gotta start off at 8:30 for a conference call with the India team. With an hour bus commute, that means an early start. Nite nite.
Well, it got off to a bumpy start. The hotel didn't have a room ready for me when I got to the hotel. But eventually got my room and crashed for a bit.
Then off to the Reception. There I was pleased to finally meet in person our new MVP lead, Tom Archer. I also got to meet some of the CRM MVPs I hadn't personally meet before, and many I'd previously met. Michael Höehne, German CRM MVP, and I went into the MVP dinner together. Most of the other CRM MVPs went out to get sushi instead. Don't ask me why. Michael and I had better sense.
We ate with several members of the SBS Family. It was good to see everyone in person once again. Then back to the hotel to crash. I am too beat to fire up the notebook to properly post the to my blog tonight. So I am e-mailing it to myself and will copy it to my blog tomorrow.
Speaking of tomorrow, it starts early. Breakfast starts at 6:15, then we board the busses for the trip to the Microsoft campus where I plan to spend the day with the CRM product group and MVPs.
Stay tuned.
This coming week (14-17 April '08) is the Microsoft MVP Global Summit in Seattle. MVPs from around the world converge to learn from Microsoft and get o know each other. I will be leaving tomorrow (Monday) morning but many are already there. The SBS folks are having their annual party at the Rock Bottom in Seattle tonight which sadly I'll miss this year. Tomorrow there's a lunch but I'll be on the plane at that point. I should get there in time for the User Group Leader session Monday evening followed by the dinner and party. Tuesday and Wednesday will be spent at the Microsoft campus. This gives the MVPs a chance to visit with the product groups to get to know them better and learn what's going on. I am looking forward to the chance to spend time with the CRM Team plus getting to know the other CRM MVPs better. There will be only 13 MVPs at Summit so we should be able to spend some quality time with the Team, and each other. Thursday it will be back to Seattle with sessions there. I plan to attend a session on Centro, otherwise known as EBS (Essential Business Server), which is the new product being positioned for companies that have grown beyond the capabilities of SBS. I believe that Thursday night is the Puget Sound SBS User Group and I'm going to try to make that, if I'm not too worn out. Then back on the plane Friday headed for home.
I'll report more during the week to give you the highlights of the Summit.
One of my SBS customers decided he liked the Blackberry phones better than the Windows Mobile ones and so bought a couple of phones and the Blackberry Enterprise Server. He's a competent DIY'er and so installed BES himself. However they encountered a problem trying to connect BES to the mothership. After some digging I finally discovered that BES uses TCP port 3101 to communicate with the Blackberry server. I opened up ISA 2004 Server Management and create an Access Rule. I created a custom protocol called Blackberry Outbound (Inbound didn't seem to be needed), and configured it for port 3101. The rule was set to allow the destination to be Anywhere (using just External didn't seem to work either). I used the logging feature of ISA Monitoring to track what was happening. I could easily tell when the BES server attempted to connect and when it was successful. That was a great help in figuring out just exactly what was needed to make the access rule, and BES, work.
In today's Saturday morning CRM Study Group, the question came up as to whether CRM reports are available while the Outlook client is Offline. I wasn't sure so I gave it a try this evening. When using the Microsoft Dynamics CRM for Microsoft Office Outlook with Offline Access, the 'new name' for the CRM Outlook Laptop client, ONLINE, i was able to access all the reports in CRM. However, once I went OFFLINE, all the reports disappeared from the reports list. Not a big revelation. Just hadn't actually checked it out yet.
I have a client with a branch office. They are connected via a VPN. It's been working well, well until recently. Their Line of Business (LOB) vendor installed a new server at the home office. Machines at the home office location were able to use My Network Places to browse to shares, etc. on the new server with no problem. But computers at the remote branch office were not able to do so. They would receive the error "\\xxServer is not accessible. You might not have permission to use this network resource. Contact the Administrator of this server to find out if you have permissions. Network path not found." I tried all kinds of 'stuff' and yet could not browse the server from a remote office. I could ping the xxServer from the remote office OK. Interesting twist is that if I first browsed FROM the xxServer to a remote office computer, then the remote office computer could subsequently browse back to the xxServer with no problem.
Long story made short. After many hours of investigation it turned out to be a Routing Table issue. I had checked the routing tables on the remote systems to be sure they knew how to access the home network, but it turned out the problem was the xxServer did not have any entry in it's routing table back to the remote. So, I used Route ADD on the xxServer to add a new route to the remote office.
Since the xxServer could browse to the remote server with no problem, it was a surprise that the problem resided in the xxServer Routing table. I learn new stuff EVERY DAY!