Upgrading callouts to CRM 4.0

by | Apr 22, 2008

Hi again,
Busy as ever, I am still working on this large CRM project with lots of integrations. Very complex and very interesting.

At the moment we running CRM 3.0 but we are currently looking at upgrading to CRM 4.0 since we need to implement a new datamodell containing more than 40 very tighly connected entities with multiple relationships, self referentail relationships and much more! We are very lucky to be working with CRM 4.0.

The first part of the upgrade we are doing will be to just get everyting working in CRM 4.0 with as little or no code review as possible. We will lift all the code later (i.e. converting callouts to plug-ins, using the new web service and so on) when we have got everything running.

In other words, I first of all needed to get callouts from CRM 3.0 to work properly in CRM 4.0. After the “sleep-inducing-upgrade”, I found that they simply didn’t work. As I had made a few callouts that generated custom accountnumbers and other similar tasks, it became clear that it crashed because of the callouts.

I activated CRM tracing (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/907490/en-us) and soon found that the reason for the callouts not working was that CRM could not find the dll containing callout.base. So, I added the dll (Microsoft.Crm.Platform.Callout.Base.dll, found on the CRM 3.0 CD 1) to the GAC (C:windowsassembly) and then ran iisreset.

After this, the callouts worked just like they should!

On the same topic, if you have a custom virtual directory bellow the CRM website, just add the file: C:Program FilesMicrosoft CRMCRMWebbinMicrosoft.Crm.WebServices.dll to the GAC aswell, since it won’t work otherwise. There are other ways of getting around this problem aswell, but I prefer this solution.

On the first of may I will be on parental leave for 4 months, so that I can really get to know my daughter without my wife getting in the way! 😉

Hopefully I will have time to write a bit on this blog aswell.

Gustaf Westerlund
Microsoft Dynamics CRM Architect

Logica Sweden
www.logica.com

p.s.
If you havn’t tried Bio Shock on XBOX 360, you really should!