Ever wanted to clone an object in CRM? There is no easy way to do this with “out-of-the-box” functionality. However, on the following link you can download some code that can do this for you! http://www.c360.com/Clone.aspx
I just found it and havn’t had time to test it.
Gustaf Westerlund
CRM and SharePoint Consultant
Humandata AB
www.humandata.se
I just read a good posting on a blog concerning how to add buttons to the toolbar. The most obvious way is to use the isv.config.xml but this page also explains how to add buttons to the toolbar using javascript. This technique can be expanded to do even more interesting things with the GUI, if needed. Enjoy:
http://www.tconv.com/blogs/crm3tips/2006/03/modifying-standard-toolbars-in.html
Gustaf Westerlund
CRM and SharePoint Consultant
Humandata AB
www.humandata.se
A customer of mine wanted to minimize the installation of clients and wanted to install the clients using a CNAME and then be able to point this to either the test/education environment or the production environment. We tried it out and it seemed to work (we used the lightweight client of course). However, after a while I found one feature in Outlook that stopped working, the function to invite attendees to a meeting.
If you created a normal appointment in outlook without attendees, and linked it to CRM. All was well, but if you tried to link an appointment with attendees, you got an error message, and the appointment wasn’t saved to CRM.
There was a work-around, by first creating the appointment without attendees, saving it, repopening it and adding attendees. You would get the same error message, but since the appointment was created in CRM the first time you saved the appointment, and Outlook sent the invitation the second time. Most of the functionality worked with some extra clicking.
When the client was reinstalled using the same CNAME, this worked, just like it should.
This is a bit strange, I actually hadn’t expected it to work at all, but that it worked in general and that just this function did not, was a bit strange.
Please note that even the desktop clients are registered in the CRM SQL Database, which is an indication against trying this techique. Perhaps it would work if it was the same server and the same database, but with a new IP.
Generally I would advise against trying this, and I have heard of people trying to modify the registry to achieve the same functionality (to be able to skip reinstalling clients) but none have succeded as far as I know. If you have, please let me know. I will of course give you credit!
Gustaf Westerlund
CRM and SharePoint Consultant
Humandata AB
www.humandata.se
Hi,
Microsoft have just released the BizTalk adapter for MS CRM 3.0, enabling connections to other software which have connectors to BizTalk.
I havn’t tried it, but would like to, especially since the Tectura integration between CRM and Nav in many ways is incomplete. BizTalk is also a more general integration engine which enables connection to other ERP-systems like Oracle, SAP and more.
You can download it here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=4628FCA6-388D-45BC-A154-453B920DBCB8&displaylang=en
Gustaf Westerlund
CRM and SharePoint Consultant
Humandata AB
www.humandata.se
Some of you might have the problem of the Outlook client crashing when loading. I read an interesting posting on the official MS CRM Forum, and I have cut-n-pasted it here for your pleasure! It is a great tip, thanks a lot to Mike Sullivan at Quest Business Solutions!
____
Tired of getting CRM Outlook client errors. “An error occurred loading
Microsoft CRM functionality. Try restarting Microsoft Outlook or
contact your system admin if errors persist”
I’ve had the problem at two clients since Feb and finally solved it!
The symptoms are that every other time you open Outlook CRM client
installed, you get the above error and the toolbar is disabled. I’ve
read just about every posting out there and tried them all, but they
just weren’t the right fix for me.
I would consider this a definite bug in the crmaddin.dll file. The
problem is simple: When the crmaddin.dll file is loading the Outlook
client GUI using the isv.config.xml file, if it runs into an “empty
menu” (a menu with not menuitems below to click on), it will fail to
create that menu on every other attempt, and stops processing the XML
file, so it doesn’t load the toolbar..and you get the error box “An
error occurred loading Microsoft CRM functionality. Try restarting
Microsoft Outlook or contact your system admin if errors persist”
The problem is easy to identify (and fix) if you look in the
isv.config.xml file and have something like I did at the first client:
<MenuBar>
<!– Custom Menus that appear between the Goto Menu and the Help
Menu –>
<CustomMenus>
<Menu Title=”My Custom Menu”>
</Menu>
</CustomMenus>
</MenuBar>
To fix it, just remove the empty menu.
However, it’s not so obvious in the sample below…..
<MenuBar>
<!– Custom Menus that appear between the Goto Menu and the Help
Menu –>
<CustomMenus>
<Menu Title=”My Custom Menu”>
<MenuItem Title=”My Workplace”
Url=”http://crm/c360/MyWorkPlace/redirect.htm” WinMode=”0″
Client=”OutlookLaptopClient” AvailableOffline=”false” />
<MenuItem Title=”My Workplace”
Url=”/c360/MyWorkPlace/redirect.htm” WinMode=”0″
Client=”Web,OutlookWorkstationClient” AvailableOffline=”false” />
<MenuItem Title=”My Summary”
Url=”/c360/Summary/redirect.htm” WinMode=”0″
Client=”Web,OutlookWorkstationClient” AvailableOffline=”false” />
<MenuItem Title=”My Summary”
Url=”http://crm/c360/Summary/redirect.htm” WinMode=”0″
Client=”OutlookLaptopClient” AvailableOffline=”false” />
<MenuSpacer />
<MenuItem Title=”c360 Products”
Url=”http://www.c360.com/products.aspx” WinMode=”0″
Client=”OutlookLaptopClient” AvailableOffline=”false” />
</Menu>
</CustomMenus>
</MenuBar>
In the 2nd sample above, what’s not apparent is that there are no
MenuItems that are Available Offline – all are false. So, if the
Outlook Laptop Client goes offline, the custom Menu is left empty, and
the error occurs while the user is offline, and will disappear when the
user goes online.
As a workaround, I made sure that at least one Menu item was available
offline by changing the following:
<MenuItem Title=”c360 Products”
Url=”http://www.c360.com/products.aspx” WinMode=”0″
Client=”OutlookLaptopClient” AvailableOffline=”true” />
Viola! No more problem…and a bit more advertising for c360.
Disclaimer: I just used c360 as my example, as this problem is not
related to c360 products, rather to modifications made to the
isv.config.xml file and what I feel is a bug in the crmaddin.dll file.
Michael Sullivan
www.questnbs.com
Quest Business Solutions
— END
Thanx again Mike. Great tip!
Gustaf
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