22 Mar

Dynamics CRM 2013 Implementing Claims and IFD

Scenario 1 (CRM and ADFS installation on same box)

Basic requirements

One Public IP is needed

One SSL Certificate is needed (wild card certificate preferred)

ADFS should use default website port 80 and SSL port 443 on IIS

CRM could use port 5555 and SSL port 444 on IIS

DNS need to be configured on the Domain Controller machine under the public domain lookup zone. Following are the A records for proper CRM URL resolution

ADFS Server URL(External Domain)
Dev URL(CRM Discovery Service end point)
Auth URL(CRM IFD Federation end point)
Org URL(Organization of CRM)
Internal CRM URL(CRM Claim Federation end point)

(more…)

By Usman Dynamics CRM CRM 2011 Readme, CRM Customisation, CRM Development, CRM Study Guides, Dynamics CRM 0 Comments

22 Feb

Dynamics CRM Email Tracking and Email Duplication

I found this interesting article written by powerobjects, i thought it would worth of sharing with my readers.

Email Tracking
It may not be suggested to keep employees as contacts in a customer-focused implementation of Microsoft Dynamics CRM because of the perceived problem of email tracing from Outlook. When you track an email from Outlook, it will track the email against the CRM record of everybody on the email (either sender or recipients). When you have an employee as a contact in CRM, that contact record will show all the email the employee ever sent or received under Closed Activities.

Email Duplication

Database administrators might be looking at this kind of email tracking with concern about how often the same email is being duplicated. When an email is tracked in CRM, it is NOT duplicated for each contact it is tracked against. A single email is merely ‘related’ to each contact. However, there is increased potential for duplicate records when you have employees in CRM. That is because when an employee sends and email to another employee and tracks the email, it may be tracked again when the 2^nd employee receives the email.

If You MUST Track Employees in CRM

If you must track employees, there are some options for you to avoid the email tracking conflicts described above.

Option 1 – Use Contacts but Create Email Aliases
Use the contact record for employees, but create an email alias for each employee that is used only for CRM. Since CRM uses an exact match on email address in order to identify which contact to track email against, an alias will fool it. The email will not be tracked against the employee UNLESS it is Set Regarding the employee contact directly.

Option 2 – Use Users
Some organizations are uncomfortable with a single person having two records (Contact and User). To resolve this, they enter all employees (even non-Users) into CRM as users and then deactivate the users who do not need licenses. If choosing this route, employee lookups would need to be modified in order to include inactive records. This may make some tasks difficult, such as updating the employee records, either with workflow or manually. Since they are inactive, then they would be read-only.

Option 3 – Creating a Custom Entity
By creating a custom entity for employees, it gives you the flexibility to edit the records easily, but also to NOT have to create an email alias. Custom entities can be email-enabled so that email notifications can be sent manually or via workflow.

Final Thoughts

In considering how best to store employees in Microsoft Dynamics CRM, don’t forget to consider security. Determine who needs to access (view, edit, and delete) employee records, and who does not need to access. If you repurpose contacts or users for employees, you will have less control over security because your security model must support multiple uses of the same entity. By creating a custom entity for employees, you can control the rights separately.

Reference:

http://www.powerobjects.com/blog/2013/04/03/options-storing-employees-in-crm-2011/

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By Usman Dynamics CRM CRM 2011 Readme, CRM Customisation, CRM Study Guides, Dynamics CRM 0 Comments

25 Sep

Overview Dynamics CRM Service Scheduling

In this post I am giving you basic overview of service scheduling process in Dynamics CRM 2011. Services are created by service manager (having role of system admin or service scheduler) and all appropriate resources are added to it. Once this process is completed service activity can be scheduled by service representative.
Some of the benefits of Service Scheduling include the following:

• Scheduling tighter appointments while improving service quality
• Preventing over-scheduling with predictable workloads for employees
• Ensuring reliable time estimates for your customers and clients

(more…)

By Usman Dynamics CRM CRM 2011 Readme, CRM 2011 User’s Guide, CRM Customisation, Dynamics CRM 0 Comments

15 May

Dynamics CRM 2011 serious problems when disabling business unit

Any business unit other than root business unit can be disabled in CRM 2011. This is done when you no need of this business unit anymore. Before disabling a business unit please consider this problems.

When you disable a business unit, it not only disable this business but also disables all its child business units as well.
The user who are assigned to these business units will also be disabled and they will not be able to login Dynamics CRM. However these user will still exist in CRM and their license will not be revoked.
You cannot assign users to disable business unit.
Same case with child business units, they cannot be assigned to disabled business unit.
When you disable business unit, no data associate to business unit will be deleted. (more…)

By Usman Dynamics CRM CRM 2011 Readme, CRM Customisation, CRM Study Guides, Dynamics CRM, Dynamics CRM Update 0 Comments

01 Oct

How to Install CRM Dynamics 2011 Outlook Client

In this post i am going to explain, how you can install CRM Dynamics 2011 Outlook Client.

Prerequisites

The following prerequisites are required before you can install and use the full functionality of Microsoft Dynamics CRM:

Internet Explorer 8 or 9 (although IE8 will work, IE9 is highly recommended)
Microsoft Outlook 2010
Client operating system: Windows 7, Windows XP, Vista
CRM account access
You must be an Administrator on your PC to install new software.

Installation Process

Preparation

Ensure Microsoft Outlook is closed prior to the installation.

Client Software

Download the following client software file and save it in your Downloads folder:

http://download.microsoft.com/download/4/6/6/466BA2EA-4A6B-4623-86A4-B205A7B3A7F9/CRM2011-Client-ENU-i386.exe

Information about this download can be found here:

http://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/download/details.aspx?id=27821

Update Software

Download the following update file (‘rollup 10’ – version 05.00.9690.2730, published: 16/08/2012) and save it in your Downloads folder:

http://download.microsoft.com/download/3/6/0/36048F57-2D2A-412C-9C53-AF9BE5AC1378/CRM2011-Client-KB2710577-ENU-i386.exe

Information about this update can be found here:

http://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/download/details.aspx?id=30711

Install the client

Run the following file that you downloaded in your Downloads folder: CRM2011-Client-ENU-i386.exe
This will prompt you for a location to extract the files:
Ensuring ‘Desktop’ is selected first, click on the ‘Make New Folder’ button.
Create a folder for example CRM:
Select it and click on ‘OK’. The files will extract which may take several minutes:
The installation will automatically start the ‘Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 for Outlook Setup’ wizard. Follow the steps in the wizard, accepting all default options. The process may take several minutes:

How to Install CRM Dynamics 2011 Outlook Client

CRM Client for Outlook

Do not restart Microsoft Outlook at this point. Proceed to install the update instead

Install the Update

Run the following file that you downloaded in your Downloads folder: RM2011-Client-KB2710577-ENU-i386.exe

This will start the Update Rollup wizard:

Rollup 10 CRM Dynamics

2. Follow the wizard through until the end:

Update Completed CRM Rollup

Configuring Microsoft Dynamics CRM for First Use

After Microsoft Dynamics CRM has been installed on a PC, the first time every user of that PC runs Outlook, the configuration wizard will automatically start. This will only once, per user, per PC:

Launch Microsoft Outlook.
The configuration wizard should automatically start:

Dynamics CRM for Outlook

If the configuration wizard does not start automatically, you must run it manually by clicking on the ‘Configure Microsoft Dynamics CRM for Outlook’ button on the new ‘CRM’ tab on the Microsoft Outlook ribbon:

CRM Client Configuration

3. Enter ‘Your Server Address‘ into the ‘Server URL’ field and click on ‘Test Connection’. The correct ‘Organization Information’ should automatically populate:

4. Select ‘OK’ and the organisation will be added and initialised:

Microsoft Dynamics CRM can only allow one PC to synchronise with Microsoft Outlook at any one time. If you have previously installed or used Microsoft Dynamics CRM on another PC, that PC will automatically be set as the synchronisation client.

When you use Microsoft Dynamics CRM on a different PC, if it detects that you have already have a synchronisation client, it will prompt you as follows:

CRM Dynamics Sync Message

You should always answer ‘Yes’ to this question if you want your work in Microsoft Dynamics CRM to be synchronised immediately with Microsoft Outlook. If you select ‘No’, the work you have carried out in Microsoft Dynamics CRM will not be synchronised until you next run Microsoft Outlook on your other PC.

If you answer ‘Yes’ to this message, when you return to your other PC, the same prompt will appear and again you should answer ‘Yes’.