by Gustaf Westerlund | Oct 30, 2007
During Convergence 2007 in Copenhagen, it got into a discussion with some Microsoft empolyees concerning the licensing issues when creating applications that directly or indirectly access CRM-based data.
According to what I have heard, it boils down to the fact that a user license is required for all users who interact with the data in any way. This means that no user license is required for a static report displayed in, for instance, SharePoint, but, as soon as there is any interactivity with the data, as for instance, drill down, a separate user license is needed.
So, if you want to display data in SharePoint that comes in whole, or part, from the CRM-database, make sure it is a static report, so that no special user license is required. Creating a report (with for instance SQL Reporting Services) that has drill-down, will require each user to have a user license.
This rises the question of what kind of licensing is needed to access OLAP cubes that are assembled from a data warehouse based on data from many different system, among these, Microsoft CRM. As far as I have understood a full user license is required for all users who can access the OLAP-cubes.
This issue will probably change in CRM 4.0 when there will be a new “light-user-license”. Exactly what this means is still unclear and I have heard no details from Microsoft.
When creating any outside interaction with CRM, like a web based tool for submitting service cases, the separate “External Connector” license is needed. This is independant of the magnitude of the application or number of external users (company employees cannot use the external connector). It is also independant of if each user actually uses a named user or some common system user. I am unsure of the exact price for the external connector, but I believe it is somewhere around $40 000.
So, what does this mean for CRM-developers? That we have to have some basic understanding of the licensing modell and what limitations there are to it, so that our customers don’t have to pay unnecessary license fees just because we thought that drill-down was a nifty feature in our report that is published on a SharePoint portal.
As many of you, I think these limitations are non benificial for Microsoft since they greatly restrict the possibilities of creating nice Mash-up applications and portals, something Microsoft technology is very good at and something I would view as a great advantage in comparison to Microsofts competitors.
I would also like to point out that I might be wrong in understanding some of these details, and I would be greatful if you could leave a comment if you know or think that I might have understood something wrong.
Gustaf Westerlund
CRM and SharePoint Consultant
Humandata AB / Soon Logica CMG/WM-Data
www.humandata.se
by Gustaf Westerlund | Oct 26, 2007
Now Convergence is over and I feel stuffed with info and experiences. There is so much I would like to write about and so little time. I will try to spread it out a bit.
During one of the sessions Clint Warriner, an Escalation Engineer (he writes hotfixes) held a very interesting chalk-&-talk about CRM system maintanance and performance best practices.
It was crammed with goodies, and I will write more about it later, but one interesting thing he talked about was the possible delay in loading forms. He said this, most often, depends on the SQL server. When loading forms the list of which reports are relevant and so on, are also loaded from the Reporting server. This can, in some cases, take some time, and in some bad cases, really afect the load time of forms.
They have created a hotfix for this, that can be requested from Microsoft support (no cost) if you give the referece: KB 941592. It simply caches the information on what reports exist so that the request to the SQL-server doesn’t have to be executed every time.
I will get back to the subject of performance tuning later.
Gustaf Westerlund
CRM and SharePoint Consultant
Humandata AB
www.humandata.se
by Gustaf Westerlund | Sep 21, 2007
Silverlight is a new product from Microsoft that can be viewed as the same sort of plug-in as for instance Flash, Java Applets or ActiveX. There are two feautres that make it stand out from the rest, namely:
– Vector based graphics built on the new Windows Presentation Foundation (a part of .NET 3.0). The definition of the GUI is definied in a langauge called XAML.
– From Silverlight version 1.1, you can write managed code. In other word you can finally start working with C# or VB.NET on the client side instead of the irritating language javascript.
These two features make the foundation for a more user friendly and more rich experience of using the web, something at least I have been longing for. Being able to use managed code/CLR-code, will make web development a lot easier and speed up the process of making more robust and reusable programs.
On the CRM Team Blog you can download an example of how silverlight can be used in conjunction with Dynamics CRM 3. I saw that some people had had some problems with it, and I havn’t had time to test it myself yet, so be advised.
Here is the link: http://blogs.msdn.com/crm/archive/2007/06/19/crm-and-silverlight-integration.aspx
Gustaf Westerlund
CRM and SharePoint Consultant
Humandata AB
www.humandata.se
by Gustaf Westerlund | Sep 16, 2007
The most common way of requesting a specific hotfix for Microsoft Dynamics CRM or SharePoint is to call Microsoft Support (they cannot be downloaded directly). However, there is also a webpage where you can request a hotfix online. Have a look an add it to you favorites, you will probably need it.
https://support.microsoft.com/contactus2/emailcontact.aspx?scid=sw;en;1410&WS=hotfix
Gustaf Westerlund
Microsof CRM and SharePoint Consultant
Humandata AB
www.humandata.se
by Gustaf Westerlund | Sep 16, 2007
As I mentioned before, when I was working with the company Cybernetics, there is a way of creating false lookups when it might not be possible to do so normally (for instance system-system relationsships).
The blog http://andrewn23.blogspot.com/ describes in detail how this is done, so, if you are interested, please have a look. This technique can of course be enhanced in many ways.
Also, I am not certain if this technique is supported since Microsoft might decide to change the way some of these more internal pages (lookupsingle.aspx) work, hence breaking the customization.
The blog also mentions some hazards of using allcolumns that are very worthwhile reading (I like to use them to increase development time and change to specific attributes when I get performance issues).
So, take some time and have a look at it, I am however sad to see that the last entry was in october 2006.
Gustaf Westerlund
CRM and SharePoint Consultant
Humandata AB
www.humandata.se
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