I just blogged about using the Service Calendar as a corporate calendar. I noted that it is not available out of the box in the Outlook client. I've just experimented a bit and managed to expose the Service Calendar in my Outlook client.
To do so, you must modify the Site Map and remove the Client="Web" item from the Service Calendar entry. Below is the Site Map entry before modifying it. Be sure to save a copy of the original before you modify the Site Map. If you screw it up, you might not be able to access CRM!
<Group Id="SM" ResourceId="Area_Scheduling" IsProfile="true">
- <SubArea Id="nav_apptbook" ResourceId="Homepage_AppointmentBook" Icon="/_imgs/ico_18_servicecal.gif" Url="/sm/home_apptbook.aspx" Client="Web">
<Privilege Entity="activitypointer" Privilege="Read" />
<Privilege Entity="service" Privilege="Read" />
</SubArea>
</Group>
A client of mine actually pointed this out. I'd never thought of this. The owner wants to be able to have a common 'Corporate Calendar' for all CRM appointments. The CRM calendar doesn't do that, nor does the Outlook calendar. Thought about using a public folder in Exchange, but it wouldn't link to CRM. Then my client, (he's actually the outsource IT guy for the user) came up with the idea of using the Service Calendar. Duh! I'd only thought of it for tracking service activities but it will also track all appointments for all users and display them all in one screen with lots of options as to what to display. It also allows you to access the CRM activities directly. You can even schedule new appointments directly from there. Only problem is the business owner wants to be able to access it from the Outlook client. The Service Calendar isn't available in the Outlook client. But, perhaps we can modify the Site Map or something. I'm looking into that and will post when I see if that works or not.
I received an e-mail today purporting to be from Microsoft XP, with an e-mail address equal to one of my distribution lists. I tries to get you to download a free update by clicking the title. The web site it takes you to does not appear to be a Microsoft address. According to WhoIs.net, it is actually RIPE Network Coordination Centre in Amsterdam. I don't KNOW if this is bogus, but it SURE feels that way. Microsoft wouldn't put out a message looking like this. Beware!
Well, I guess second time's a charm. I managed to pass the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Applications certification exam. This was my second try and I barely passed it. But pass I did. I qualifies me for not only the Microsoft Certified Business Management Solutions Specialist for CR$ 4.0 Applications, but also the Microsoft Certified Business Management Solutions Professional in 4.0 Applications as well.
It is a hard test that asks questions that have responses that are either very close to each other, or are ones you wouldn't have thought of. Plus one has to read it carefully to be sure you know what's being asked. If you are planning on taking this exam, don't take it lightly.
Microsoft released the new SBS 2008 to manufacturing today. Peter Gallagher blogs in more detail at
http://ts2blogs.com/blogs/petergal/default.aspx. More info is also available at the SBS team's Official SBS Blog at http://blogs.technet.com/sbs/archive/2008/08/21/sbs-2008-released-to-manufacturing.aspx.
Congrats, Team!
Regional Director and CRM Guru David Yack has just released his latest book, CRM As A Rapid Development Platform. With this book, CRM is not just a CRM application anymore. With its extensive customization features and ability to use external programs, and for external programs to access CRM data, Microsoft Dynamics makes a great platform to develop all manner of business applications.
David has just blogged it on the CRM Team blog. A direct link to his book, and the opportunity to purchase it, can be found at http://www.thecrmbook.com.
If you are a developer, you need this book!
Microsoft's TS2 team will be presenting Dynamics CRM and ERP briefings at select cities this month. Attendees will receive a copy of Office at the CRM events and a copy of Vista Ultimate w/SP1 at ERP events. Sure hope they have one in San Antonio in September. Best hurry though as they start next week!
| City | Dates | Register Here! | Time | Presenter |
| Chicago, IL | 19-Aug | Microsoft Dynamics CRM Briefing | 9a - 12p CT | Julie Herman |
| Chicago, IL | 19-Aug | Microsoft Dynamics ERP Briefing | 1:30p - 4:30p CT |
| Denver, CO | 21-Aug | Microsoft Dynamics CRM Briefing | 9a - 12p MT | Lori Harner |
| Denver, CO | 21-Aug | Microsoft Dynamics ERP Briefing | 1:30p - 4:30p MT |
| Fargo, ND | 21-Aug | Microsoft Dynamics CRM Briefing | 9a - 12p CT | Julie Herman |
| Fargo, ND | 21-Aug | Microsoft Dynamics ERP Briefing | 1:30p - 4:30p CT |
| Bellevue, WA | 26-Aug | Microsoft Dynamics CRM Briefing | 9a - 12p PT | Kim Shek |
| Bellevue, WA | 26-Aug | Microsoft Dynamics ERP Briefing | 1:30p - 4:30p PT |
| Ft Lauderdale, FL | 26-Aug | Microsoft Dynamics CRM Briefing | 9a - 12p ET | Kathy Burkett & Todd Juchem |
| Ft Lauderdale, FL | 26-Aug | Microsoft Dynamics ERP Briefing | 1:30p - 4:30p ET |
Microsoft Dynamics CRM & ERP Events for Partners – Register now!
Partners - Looking for new ways to expand your offerings and grow your business? Be sure to attend the Microsoft Dynamics partner event in your city!
· Microsoft Dynamics CRM Event: We’ll discuss how you can empower your customers with unprecedented choices of how to buy, run, and use Microsoft Dynamics CRM, and also how to increase your reach by addressing opportunities in new geographies, market segments, and industries.
· Microsoft Dynamics ERP Event: Learn how Microsoft Dynamics ERP can adapt to the changing environments of organizations through collaboration and extensive business intelligence, and how it integrates with Microsoft Platform tools. We’ll show you how to position Microsoft’s ERP offerings to better engage with your customers and prospects.
Register NOW for your local event, and even take home some software.
Although I've been in the SBS 2008 Beta program since the start, I haven't had the appropriate hardware to be able to play with it. I was able to access a few remote sites kindly set up by some of the SBS MVPs, and I even loaded SBS 2008 on a new server for a client, before I wiped it and installed the real (SBS 2003) system. But I've not had a system of my own to play with. Well, I didn't think I did. My notebook is 64 bit and when I first got it, I had Vista 64 running on it and figured that I could run the 64 bit version of Virtual PC to load SBS 2008 (a 64bit only system). Nope, couldn't do that. Never did it dawn on me, until recently, that I could purchase a second hard drive for my notebook and load SBS 2008 directly on it. So, I did!
My notebook is a Dell D830 with 4 GB RAM (the max it will hold and pretty much the minimum for SBS 2008). I looked for an appropriate hard drive for my system, a SATA notebook drive. The SBS MVPs recommended I spring for a 7200 RPM drive as performance would be miserable with a slower drive. I looked around and although I found some slightly lower prices, I decided to purchase a new drive from Dell. It cost a little more ($15) but it came with its own caddy so all i have to do is slip out the old drive (OK, I have to unscrew and couple of screws) and slip in the new drive (I leave the screws out until I put the old drive back in). I have another drive I bought for my previous notebook and I had to unscrew the drive from the caddy, then screw in the new, etc. A pain!)
On to installing SBS. I have the RC1 DVDs and was very impressed at the installation process, for the most part (a little on disappointments in a bit). The first screen asked me to select the drive I wanted to install it on (only one). There was a link to install drivers but I didn't need that. I had anticipated it would take a bit for it to format the new hard drive. Nope. It seemed to go right on installing. I did notice that the glide point mouse on my notebook didn't work, at least not until I got further into the install. My USB mouse did work so I was OK.
On my first run, I was just running 'RAW', meaning my notebook sitting here on my den chair with its normal connection to the world, WiFi. Well, naturally SBS didn't pick up on the WiFi NIC which is fine. But I do have a problem with the fact that it sat there looking for whatever it was looking for for quite some time before finally giving me a report that the network connection I was using was routable and that I needed to connect it to a router/modem. There was no indication of what IP address was being used nor any indication of how to configure an IP address. And it took a LONG time to give me that error. That was last night.
Tonight, I hooked up a small router (no external connection) which gave the SBS 2008 installation a 'proper' IP address. The installation went great, except it bombed at the end. I think it was because I selected the options to include OneCare and ForeFront Security for Exchange, which SBS 2008 provides as 120 day Trials. Since I don't have it connected to the Internet yet, it probably couldn't do whatever it needs to do for those trials. I restarted the whole installation, did NOT select the OneCare or ForeFront, and my install worked great, except it would have liked some online updates. I was most impressed with how quickly the installation went. With previous versions of SBS, installs took hours. This install only took about an hour (I didn't time it).
So much for Part 1 of my SBS 2008 Odyssey. I've been motivated by using this to present SBS 2008 to my SBS user group. We have a lot of material for several months of meetings.
Stay tuned as I continue to play with/learn about SBS 2008. Oh, and I still have CRM stuff to blog too.
I took my first CRM 4.0 certification exam today, Customization and Configuration. Passed with an 86! Yea. I found it to be a good exam, though I have heard otherwise about the other 4.0 exams. CRM 4.0 Customization and Configuration includes configuring Business Units, Users, and Security Roles which were in the Installation and Configuration course in 3.0. Also, they have left off many of the meatier areas covered in the 3.0 Customization course to include Workflow, Client Side Scripting, and Reporting. These (well maybe not reporting) are briefly touched on in the final chapter of the course. Next I think I will attempt the Installation and Deployment test. Our Saturday morning study group as been working through this. I had thought I'd take the Applications exam but there has been some concern about it voiced in response to my post on the Team Blog. I may wait on that one a bit.
I recently authored a short article on the various courses available on MS CRM and the levels of certification one can achieve. It has been posted to the CRM Team blog at http://blogs.msdn.com/crm/archive/2008/07/23/are-you-certifiable.aspx. Please give it a read.
I have received a few e-mail messages from time to time that I cannot Track In CRM in CRM 4.0. When I do, I receive an error message stating the message is too big. This is interesting because even one word messages will produce this error, as long as it's from a specific sender. I've found that certain senders, only a few, but enough to be a problem, cause this problem. ANY message they send cannot be tracked in CRM.
Thanks to CRM MVP Michael Höhne who gave me the solution. It's simple. Just increase the size of the MessageID attribute on the Email entity. It defaults to 100. Michael suggested increasing it to 250. That worked for all the problem senders I had. However, other MVPs suggested perhaps an even larger was sometimes necessary.
Of additional interest is that in CRM 4.0 you can actually increase the size of an existing attribute. In CRM 3.0, although you could change the size of an attribute, increasing it did nothing. You could reduce it which would only reduce the size the form would allow you to enter. But it would not change the actual data size. This has been changed in CRM 4.0. A nice addition.
For the last 9 months or more I have been using Exchange Defender (www.OwnWebNow.com) as a spam filter. When I first started using it, I felt very lonely. Nobody loved me any more, at least not the spammers. I noticed an immediate drop in spam, and I was already pretty well filtered with IMF and Trend Micro. Recently the owner, Vlad Mazek, Exchange MVP, sent me some stats. Seems i had been the victim of a spam attack. Vlad sent me a short note about it:
"Yesterday someone used your email address to SPAM the net. You received 29,009 messages in the past 24 hours. OF those, 22,942 went to SPAM, 7,879 went to SureSPAM and your server never saw any of it. Your server only got about 1,139 messages in the entire day, less than 3% of the float."
If hadn't told me, I never would have known. I never saw any of it here.
Exchange Defender not only filters incoming messages but outgoing as well. If you've got spam, check it out. But Vlad only sells it through resellers (computer guys like me). So, if your a normal business owner and not a computer guy, get your computer guy to check it out as well.
The SBS 2008 team would like some feedback and has posted a survey at https://connect.microsoft.com/SBSCommunity/Survey/Survey.aspx?SurveyID=6295&wa=wsignin1.0. I would encourage you to take it as it's pretty short. Shouldn't take more than about 5 minutes.
Today I took, and passed (!!!) the Extending CRM 3.0 certification exam (MB2-498). This was quite an accomplishment for me since I am not a developer (these days, but I used to be one heck of a programmer in the '80s! Maybe again...). I learned an awful lot working my way through the course. Granted I pretty much copied the code from the solutions to the exercises, but that still gave me great insight into what was going on.
One of the things I enjoyed learning about was Callouts (now called Plug-Ins in 4.0). These are extensions to the business logic in CRM (hang on). In the other courses and exam I've taken, Callouts were mentioned but never explained, at least not HOW to do them. But all the CRM Gurus (the other CRM MVPs and others) casually mention them with great familiarity. Well, the Extending course explained, finally, what they are and how to use them. Basically Callouts are configured in the Callout.config.xml file and can be configured to run before an event, like creating a new Account or other record, or after. These are called Pre and Post callouts.
The course also covered how to write web pages to access CRM data, use of web services to process and update CRM data, and a whole bunch of other stuff. All in all it was great to finally work my way through the material. You can find a bit more info on the test here. Even if you are not a developer, going through this course will give you a greater understanding of the capabilities of Microsoft Dynamics CRM.
I have noticed in both my own installation and in a client's that the CRM 4.0 e-mail router seems to pause for awhile on a random basis. For instance, I have a workflow rule that sends out an e-mail when a Case is created. I've noticed that the e-mails tend to go out at rather random times. In CRM 3.0, they were sent almost immediately. My client, also a Microsoft Partner, filed a Microsoft Support incident and was told this is a known issue and that a hotfix is in the works. When I learn more, I'll post it.
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