by Gustaf Westerlund | Apr 26, 2007
I’ll make another posting while I at it…
I had a meeting with Hillevi Anderkrans at Swedens top MS CRM company, Cybernetics (www.cybernetics.se) and she told me that there were rumors that the long awaited Microsoft supported Nav-CRM Integration probably wont be released for CRM 3 at all but only for Titan.
This isn’t great news since there isn’t really a satisfactory integration engine for Nav-CRM and the Microsoft based integrator has been long awaited.
I have personally (as mentioned in previous posts) worked with Celenia/Tectura and found it to be far from satisfactory, especially out-of-the-box. It needs a lot of work to be ok. Perhaps Celenia will put in a good effort into it, to make it as good as it’s supposed to be.
I have argued previously, that the Microsoft Integrator might acctually be the Celenia Integrator that they (MS) have bought. This news however, makes this hypothesis a bit more improbable, and I would at the moment put my money on the Integrator being a soley Microsoft developed product.
If you here anything related to this, please let me know!
Gustaf Westerlund
CRM and SharePoint Consultant
Humandata AB
www.humandata.se
by Gustaf Westerlund | Apr 26, 2007
I’ve not been so busy here lately, mostly due to the fact that I have been working with a course I have designed and am the main teacher/coach for. It is an interesting course for a specific customer where the goal is to make the attendées into Information Worker Architects.
The guys attending are all highly skilled system developers and/or system architects and I want them to feel they are getting their moneys worth.
Well, I saw an interesting blog entry on how to set up CRM to get CRM Mobile Express to work (it is in essence only simplified lists and forms). I havn’t had the opportunity to test it myself yet, and I must say I have my doubts about how to maintain a high security level for the solution, but there might be acceptable ways of handling it, so please have a look if you are interested:
http://www.sbs-rocks.com/CRM/MobileExpress.htm
Gustaf Westerlund
CRM and SharePoint Consultant
Humandata AB
www.humandata.se
by Gustaf Westerlund | Apr 17, 2007
SQL Reporting services is great, but it is actually quite common to mess up the installation due to the steps taken in installation. Always make sure you do not install either sharepoint or CRM on the same website as CRM. (It is possible to get it to work but not recommended).
What can happen is the following:
1. Installing SQL 2005, in the process installing SQL RS on port 80 = http://localhost/reports and http://localhost/reportmanager.
2. Installing either CRM or a SharePoint site on port 80 of the same computer.
= SQL Reporting Services doesn’t work anymore…
So, what to do.
First, if you want your CRM or SharePoint site to be located on port 80, don’t install SQL RS on port 80. Create some other webapplication using host headers or TCP-ports and install SQL RS to that website instead. Then install CRM or SharePoint to port 80. No conflict = no problems.
If you happen to mess it up anyway, or is asked to fix a messed up installation, you can do magic with the tool RSConfigTool which resides in the SQL Binn-directory (usually: C:Program FilesMicrosoft SQL Server90ToolsBinn). Start it, and reconfigure it properly.
Have fun reporting!
Gustaf Westerlund
CRM and SharePoint Consultant
Humandata AB
www.humandata.se
by Gustaf Westerlund | Apr 17, 2007
I had a look at Jonas Deibe’s blog today (Jonas is the foremost CRM expert at Microsoft Sweden) and found an interesting tip I thought I’d tell you about.
He explains how to catch a url-parameter in the Javascript code, something I’d find very useful, especially if creating an integration with for instance SharePoint, since I can use this to control what is shown and what is not.
For instance, if you have a sharepoint integration with CRM where there is an IFRAME on the accounts showing the customer site in SharePoint, and the customer site shows the CRM account in an IFRAME also. It might be advisable to not show the IFRAME showing the sharepoint site, if it is shown in Sharepoint (=loop). Then you could use this technique to handle this.
It could also be used for shooting data into a CRM form from some other system. The URL-parameter could then be written to a specific field, it could even be saved and closed using the javascript command for that, in essence creating a very simple integration of data. Not very beautiful but still might be useful, since it is easy to create and very unobstrusive. Might be interesting if a program can’t consume webservices for instance.
There are certainly a million other uses for this, so enjoy!
http://blogs.msdn.com/jonasd/archive/2007/04/16/render-hidden-values-in-tester-mode-by-using-querystring-parameters.aspx
Gustaf Westerlund
CRM and SharePoint Consultant
Humandata AB
www.humandata.se
by Gustaf Westerlund | Apr 13, 2007
As many of you might be aware, there are several ways to import data into CRM, mainly:
1. Using the standard import web-GUI. It can only import to a few entities like account, lead, campaign response.
2. Using the free Migration Framework. It is a bit tricky to get it going but it can handle all system entities and relations and custom attributes, but not custom entities. Skills of SQL is more or less mandatory.
3. third party products – My favorite being Import Studio Manager 2006 professional from the Danish company Crmextensions. It supports custom entities, custom fields and relations. It uses standard ODBC to connect to a datasource and the mapping and setup can be saved for future use. Very useful for frequent imports/syncs. There are also other products, like Scribe. I havn’t had the need to test them since Import Studio Manager 2006 has had all the features I needed.
4. Developing your own import program to do the gritty stuff. Without comparisson the most flexible solution but also the most timeconsuming and demanding, since it requires good skills of a .NET language like VB, C# or J#.
What Microsoft has just released is a sample of how to create you own bulk import program (using alt 4), which simplifies this a bit. Please have a look at it:
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb291036.aspx
I havn’t tried it, but I would still suggest using third party products instead.
Gustaf Westerlund
CRM and SharePoint Consultant
Humandata AB
www.humandata.se
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