Trying Something New!

Haven’t blog for a while since I was quite busy with customers as well as the transition to my new role… Now I am finally settle down and I should start writing again!

After another 2 years in Milwaukee, I am passing the largest Siebel replacement project to my colleagues/friends to complete.  The project has been very successful! We’ve rollout the CRM system to more than 13,000 users and there are approximately 4,000 more users to go! My friends will be there for few more months to wrap it up.

For this one, I’ve enjoyed working with many great people there, got a chance to build some good relationships and I’ve learnt a lot from the people and the project. I would like to point out that I have never seen a huge company that can adapt change so fast! Just for giggling, we changed project approach 3 times to make the project more efficient so we can provide values to the end users quicker. The team just went with the change and took everything positively. Also we had fun throughout the entire process! 

For every project of mine, I like to provide some fun facts:

• Car Miles: >30,000 miles (need another new car now)
• Hotel Nights: > 350 nights
• Pound of Sushi: > 100 pound consumed (3 good sushi places in Milwaukee, 1 sushi place has all you can eat)
• Pound of Cheese: > 10 pound
• Summerfest (Largest Music Festival): 2
• Cold Winters: 2
• Coldest temperature in Milwaukee: -20F
• …

Last month I took a new role at Microsoft as a Solution Architect/Program Manager, working very closely with the CRM R&D team to support our largest global enterprise and strategic customers/partners on their Dynamics solutions, focus on CRM online! For this new role, I’ll have the opportunities to help many other customers, especially customers in China since I speak the language and always wanted to help.

Since I don’t have to travel as much as before, I’ll have more time to spend with my family! However I’ll be losing all my airline and hotel status (totally fine with it). :=)

Manually Apply CRM Update Rollup to Single Tenant

In an enterprise CRM project, you might run into a large number of tenants in an environment since there are multiple teams working on the project. Not all of the teams want to have the patch apply to their tenant due to many reasons… My customer asked me if there’s a way for them to apply the CRM Update Rollup to a single tenant instead of all tenants in an environment.  I am thinking there’s got to be a way since CRM Online applies the patches at the tenant level, so I reach out to my colleagues in PG and Premier and sure there’s a way to do it.

By default, when you install a CRM Update Rollup, it will automatically applies the update to all of the tenants (include database updates). If you want to disable the automatic database update, please execute the following PowerShell script.

add-pssnapin Microsoft.Crm.Powershell 

$itemSetting = new-object 'System.Collections.Generic.KeyValuePair[String,Object]'("AutomaticallyInstallDatabaseUpdates",0) 

$configEntity = New-Object "Microsoft.Xrm.Sdk.Deployment.ConfigurationEntity" 

$configEntity.LogicalName="Deployment" 

$configEntity.Attributes = New-Object "Microsoft.Xrm.Sdk.Deployment.AttributeCollection" 

$configEntity.Attributes.Add($itemSetting) 

Set-CrmAdvancedSetting -Entity $configEntity

After the script is executed, you may go to Deployment Manager and apply the patch to the DB at the tenant level.  Just want to clarify that you are still installing the update rollup bits to the servers, and the above script will disable the updates to the CRM databases. All tenants will get the new UR bits, there are no ways around it, but the bits are backward compatible so they will work with older database schema.

I hope this will help you in your CRM project!

Update Rollup 3 for CRM 2011 is available now!

Rollup #3 has been released and it fixes dozens of bugs in CRM 2011.  You may download UR3 at http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=26912.  Here are some of the things UR3 fixed:

• You import a solution that contains a plug-in that has empty methods. You publish the customizations. When the plug-in is triggered in this situation, you receive the following error message:

  Unexpected Error
  An error has occurred.

  .

• The search results for system views in the Dynamics CRM 2011 client for Outlook are not compliant with the search results in the Microsoft Dynamics CRM web client.
• Assume that you enable the http compression setting on the Dynamics CRM server. In this situation, the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Outlook client does not receive responses for SDK calls as compressed. This problem occurs because the Outlook client does not send an "EnableDecrompression" http header with the request.
• The Dynamics CRM 2011 client for Outlook initiates background send requests to the CRM server. This behavior can cause high server load and decreased performance because these requests are not throttled. This fix throttles these background send requests.
• Consider the following scenario:
  • You create a custom entity that has a custom icon.
  • You create at least two records that begin with the letter "A."
  • You create a "1 to many" relationship from the custom entity to another entity.
  • You expose the Lookup field for the relationship to the custom entity in the related entity.
  • You log on to a Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Outlook client that connects to the environment through IFD/Claims.
  • You clear the Microsoft Internet Explorer cache.
  • You create a new record for the related entity.
  • You run the auto-resolving lookup function by using the letter "A" for the custom entity.

  In this situation, you receive a warning message that states there are multiple matching records. Additionally, the icon does not appear.

• The Help files are updated.
• Assume that you configure the Dynamics 2011 client for Outlook. You browse to the Account folder or the Contact folder. In this situation, you experience slow performance when ribbons and menus are rendered.
• The Start Date field in the Fiscal Year Settings dialog box does not display the date that is converted according to the user time zone settings.
• The value for the Set this computer to be the synchronizing client in the Dynamics CRM 2011 client for Outlook is different if you open the personal settings dialog box by clicking the Options button in the Track In CRM pane in an email message or an appointment. Additionally, if you select the Set this computer to be the synchronizing client check box, the dialog box becomes unresponsive.
• Some duplicate attribute labels exist. Therefore, it is difficult to map data on imports.
• The Russian translations of the Create column heading and the Delete column heading are incorrect in the security role permissions.
• When you send a Direct Email message to a large dataset, duplicate email messages are generated.
• When you add a user in a multi-site domain, you experience slow performance after you click Save.
• Assume that you enable auditing for the Contact entity. If you use a Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Client for Outlook, an auditing log is displayed every 15 minutes or every time that the Outlook client is synchronized with Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011.
• Some translations for the Slovenian language are incorrect.
• Assume that you specify a comma as the decimal separator in the personal format settings. When you enter a decimal custom value in a Duration field, the value is rounded unexpectedly.
• When you export a static Microsoft Excel worksheet with non-English operating system settings, the Currency values are multiplied by 10,000.
• When you export a Duration field to an Excel worksheet, the value in the Duration field is displayed as text instead of as a number.
• If an organization starts many asynchronous operations, the Asynchronous Service allocates many resources to process those requests from the organization. In this situation, other organizations will have an increasing backlog of asynchronous operations. This fix introduces a new deployment setting, called AsyncSelectMaxItems, in the DeploymentProperties table. This setting limits the number of items that can be processed by a single organization at one time. By default, the value is not set. It can be set manually if you experience this issue.
• Metadata cache access for one organization is blocked if another organization is loading metadata.
• Assume that you create a contact who has a 200-character email message in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0. When you upgrade the system to Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011, you receive an upgrade error.
  When you create a contact who has a 200-character email message in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011, an internal server error occurs.
• When you add a URL that contains a query string parameter to a sitemap area or to a subarea in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011, the URL is rendered incorrectly.
• Some Swedish language translations are incorrect.
• Assume that you have a contact who has the Business Phone filed populated. When you add a new phone call activity by using the ribbon from the Activities area, the Phone Number field is not populated in the phone call activity.
• When you import a solution, some entities are not imported. Additionally, you receive the following error message:

  Cannot change the max length of the owneridname attribute.

• When you view the file properties of some files by clicking the Details tab, the value in the Company name field and the value in the Product name field are blank.