MSCRM

When configuring the MSCRM 4.0 email router for Exchange incoming you may get the following message when testing: Incoming Status: Failure - The remote server returned an error: (403) Forbidden.

This is actually caused by a bad UI (IMHO) which kinda gets you to configure it wrong. What has happened is that the outgoing has a tick box saying to use SSL and asks for a server name, while the incoming asks for a URL. It automatically puts in http:// so naturally you fill in your server, i.e. http://myexchange

However Exchange runs on SSL so it actually needs to be https://myexchange

If that doesn't help then open up the URL you are putting in, in a web browser and see if it works. You'll get a lot more information on the real cause.

In MSCRM 3.0 I did a few redeployments of MSCRM and what was nice was in the database was the license table which contained the key. This was great since most of the time the customer couldn't find the original media a year down the line.

Well for MSCRM 4.0 the license table is gone, but fear not you can still get the key. If you have the media the key is in a file called license.txt (atleast according to the implementation guide). If you got the download version there is no such file but you can still get it from the MSCRM_CONFIG database in the ConfigSettings table.

Subjects in MSCRM are this interesting tree view structure which allows you to associate cases, kb articles and products in interesting ways. However they have never been customizable, which has limited the usefulness of them, in addition to a few interesting limitations they had. Well MSCRM 4.0 takes two steps forward into making subjects useful, namely:

• You can now delete used subjects. In MSCRM 3.0 once you used a subject it was locked and could never be deleted, even if you updated all your cases etc... to another one. This made management of the tree a nightmare since it basically meant that you got one chance. In MSCRM 4.0, provided nothing is currently associated to the subject, you can delete it. If you try and delete one and it is associated you'll get an error message, simply fire up advanced find and remove/update the linked items and you will be able to delete the subject!
• You can now associate subjects to other entities! But not with the full MSCRM 4.0 power. In fact the only thing is a one to many (1:N) relationship (see attached screen shot), many to one (N:1) and many to many (N:N) are not available. This means that your custom entities or system entities can now use the main subject tree too!

It's still not where it needs to be, namely support for multiple subject trees, customization support (even just adding attributes would help) and better display showing the full structures (ala X > Y > Z) but it is now much more usable than before.

My first MSCRM 4.0 upgrade was last night and so was my first MSCRM 4.0 issue. The issue after upgrading MSCRM and going to the site was "System.Data.SqlClient.SqlException: Invalid object name 'Entity'.". Screen shot is attached to the post if you want to see that.

Straight away you can see it is a SQL error, so I whipped out SQL profiler to see what is going on. I first limited to the _MSCRM and _METABASE databases (remember this is an upgrade) and started to watch what is happening. What I noticed is that it is running a "select * from entity" so entity must be a table or view. Checking the DB though I can't find it and running the select statement myself also failed. I also noticed that the _METABASE is not being called at all.

So using deployment manager I created a new tenant to see what that looked like. First thing I noticed is no _METABASE for the new tenant, and that if I ran the select statement in the new tenant DB myself it worked. So I look through that and what do I find a table named entity. But wait whats this before it? Normally tables are prefixed by dbo this isn't it's prefixed by metabase something or other, and then I remembered my SQL 2005 training on schemas.

See MSCRM 4.0 doesn't need 2 databases anymore since it uses schema's to put both the metabase and data in one database and can control the security seperately on that! This is also why SQL 2000 is not support, since it doesn't have schemas (atleast one of the reasons).

To resolve this I made sure the network service account (since we upgraded with that) had the same permissions on the original DB as on the new tenant DB and viola it worked!

MSCRM 4.0 is now RTM!

Read more http://blogs.msdn.com/mscrmfreak/archive/2007/12/16/microsoft-dynamics-crm-4-0-hits-rtm.aspx

BizTalk Server 2006 R2 has a set of features which work great doing what BizTalk is normally used for, integration. But these features are so powerful by themselves in a non-integration environment that I can see customers buying BizTalk and never using it, just some of the features. The first I want to look at is a feature call BAM, Business Activity Monitoring. This feature initially allowed you to see inside a running BizTalk orchestration. This is helpful in so many many ways. But the real power is starting to come through in R2 as it now allows you to see in side Workflow Foundation (WF) processes, since R2 supports those.

But most of the time IT thinks BizTalk = Integration. But really with BAM it is almost an infrastructure tool as well, especially if you think the following products all have WF as a core system:

• Microsoft CRM 4.0 (was Titan)
• Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007
• Speech Server 2008
• Customer Care Framework 2008

Now how do you see whats going on inside all of these without your own tools or Visual Studio? BAM it! Also just think of developing a custom WF solution, now you can no spend time on a WF monitor rather just use BAM for that.

The next feature is the rules engine. The rules engine takes data from a BizTalk mapping, .NET component (so basically anything) or a database and runs it through a set of rules. The rules are versioned and items on one set of rules remain on those until they end of life. Now just thinking about how many applications I have written which have a very tightly built rules engine (i.e. business rules) which you can only really change the parameters, to extend that to add/remove rules etc... would be great. The rule designer also is in readable English, rather than C# or some weird language. This is great since it means that a business analyst or customer can manage it, not a developer. Why this is great is that you can integrate this engine into .NET in 5 lines of code or less! Image just plugging in a full rules engine in 5 min and then moving onto something else (in reality maybe not that easy but still easier than building your own).

The last feature is Enterprise Single Sign On (ESSO), where it was originally developed to store credential mappings. i.e. You are MYDOMAIN\USER1 in AD and in Siebel you are ROBMAC01 and your password is XYZ. BizTalk could then use ESSO to authenticate you into these other systems because it knows your user name/password etc.... and it's authenticated you against AD. It's also secure since your credentials are encrypted by your AD account, meaning no one can see other peoples details and there is even a nice client tool which users can use to manage password changes. This is great and maybe useful in your next application, but BizTalk internally and many other people don't use it for this. They use it for configuration setting storage per user. Since the credentials could be anything, including simple name/value pairs, instead of storing credentials you store values. Now instantly you have a accessible and secure config system with a client management tool and a great admin interface which is also scriptible. Once again all for very little development.

Update 16 October 2007: Thanks to Ryan for pointing out BAM is Business Activity Monitoring not Business Automation Monitoring.

This past week I battled to install MSCRM for almost 6 hours. I've done countless and fought every problem so believe me when I say this is such an odd event in my life now days that it actually is enjoyable trying to find out the problem. Now normal MSCRM install issues happen either at the environmental diagnostic wizard stage, or during the actual install. This happened much earlier, in fact when I tried to add a license key. When Adding the key and hitting add I got  a dialog saying:

The specified license is invalid.

For additional details see logfile C:\Documents and Settings\XXX\Application Data\Microsoft\MSCRM\Logs\crm30svrsetup.log.

Odd, but maybe it is wrong. I try it a few times and think well I'll pop on my trust 90 day trial to get up and running and deal with Microsoft on issuing a new key. Guess what he trial key failed too.

I'm not posting this on my IW blog (see right bar) because it's more than a MSCRM issue, because then I thought maybe something in the OS is wrong so lets install all the patches and reboot. One of the patches was Internet Explorer 7 which also refused to install with an error: Setup could not verify the integrity of the installation files. Make sure the Cryptographic service is running on this computer.

What now? I tried numerous articles and suggestions gleamed from the Internet including a monster (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/822798) on from Microsoft which has reinstall Windows as an option listed (no I didn't do that, this box is running other applications just fine). But from what I learnt is that all Microsoft software is digitally signed but if something goes wrong with the certificates on the machine then it's borks the installation of those applications. MSCRM in my mind had the same problem since (I guess) it uses the digital certif to do the CRC (or similar) check on the key I used.

What was interesting was all the certificates were 100% fine, but if I right clicked on the MSCRM install MSI file and checked it kept saying the certificate had been revoked. Odd? Since it's not revoked on my machine or any other machine. And if Microsoft revoked a certificate like this why don't I know, hell, why are they still shipping IE with it? Something must be wrong.

What I found was a rouge revoked certificate had been installed, where it came from I do not know but it was there. To remove it I opened IE 6, went to the Tools Menu -> Internet Options. Then on the Content tab clicked Certificates, and on the last tab (Untrusted Publishers) I was able to see the rogue certificate and remove it. After that all installed ok.

Now just a side thought round this, but Microsoft recommends digitally signing all software. So if I was an anti-virus company or security company that took this serious I would not only sign the install of the software but the runtimes and update definitions. The downside is that if a virus/trojen could install a revoked certificate (not sure what privileges you need on XP, but I guess this is a UAC controlled operation on Vista) then it could bork all your security. Scary how 1 file can do that.

Update 13 Feb 2008: Trust me to have the wrong link for the monster article, then send it to a client as the solution to there problem. DOH! Fixed now.

Through my experiences with software development a lot of time how good (polished) a software looks is almost as important as if it works well. It seems easier to get people to grant an extension on that deadline if the software looks good. A key point for any development on Windows (and in my main area Microsoft CRM) is icons. Be them for tool bars, menus, start menus or (in MSCRM) entities and ISV.Config changes good icons are a must.

To date I've collected around 11000 and sometimes never have the right one but it's a good collection to have and build from. I do share these with my coworkers but a lot of the time they ask me where I get them from so I have decided to share some of the places I got them from.

This is all inspired by the great set of 105 icons released today Sekkyumu so the first item is hers, but these are in no real order. If I can think of anything special about the site I will put it in but some places I just found some icons there. All these sites have free icons available and most also have paid for icons. I do recommend supporting these guys by buying (or getting your customers) to buy icons from them if you use them alot.

• Developper Icons by Sekkyumu - DeviantArt is also a great place in general to search.
• IconKits - These guys have some great free ones and there is a points system (each month you get a point and if you recommend someone you get points) which enables access to more icons.
• Evraldo.com
• GlyphLab - I got exposed to these guys when they bundled their icons with Delphi 2005, which still beats the pants off of the ones that ship with Visual Studio.
• FastIcon
• Icon Experience
• FamFamFam - Of all the icons I have their Silk ones (and there is over a thousand in the set) have graced more MSCRM deployments than any others.

Just posting a notice here that the August 2007 version of the Microsoft CRM VPC is now out. You can get all the details at my information worker blog.

Sarah Grant noted today on the CRM team blog that support for Dynamics had been added to the MCP logo builder, which is great for me since it means I can now build a logo for myself  Which will be shown with pride on website from now on. But for those reading through rss readers then here is the logo