So I've been looking at a good way to get maps of locations direct from Dynamics CRM.  There are lots of neat solutions out there that embed a Google or Live map directly into a tab, but I didn't want the extra tab.  I wanted something simpler.  So I made this.  It's the simplest solution I could think of that effectively solve the issue.  It literally took more time to think of than to implement.

First,  go to customize the Entity that you want to have the link on.  I chose Account and Address for my implementation, but any entity with an address will do.  So first create an Attribute called Google Maps and put it on the form.  Make sure you give the Attribute a format of URL and increase the maximum length to 500 characters.  This will make it clickable form the UI and ensure you don't cut off the end of the address.

Now go to the Form and go to Form Properties. Open the OnLoad event and paste this JavaScript in:

crmForm.all.new_googlemaps.DataValue = "http://maps.google.com/maps?q=" + crmForm.all.line1.DataValue + "+" + crmForm.all.city.DataValue + "+" + crmForm.all.stateorprovince.DataValue + "+" + crmForm.all.postalcode.DataValue;

A few important things here:   "http://maps.google.com/maps?q=" is the beginning of the Google Maps query string. You need it.  The attributes after that, such as line1, city, etc. are specific to the Address entity.  If you want to do this in a different Entity, you'll have to find out what the specific name of the address, city, state and zip code fields are. also, these instructions are US-oriented.  For international addresses, you'll have to add whatever fields are relevant to get Google Maps to give you correct addresses.

In the end, you'll have a clickable field that will open up a map to the address in CRM in a new browser window. Very convenient, and also compatible with mobile CRM solutions!

Why is seems like just yestarday we were posting about Update Rollup 3, and here comes Rollup 4!

 

You can find the KB article here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/968176 

The actual files are here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=0ddf8e83-5d9c-4fe7-9ae6-f2713a024071#filelist  

Don't forget the updated help files!

One quick addendum, make sure you clear your Internet Explorer cache after installing on both the server and the client side.

While at Convergence last week, Microsoft went ahead and released Update Rollup 3 for CRM 4.0.  You can get it here.

A few important notes:

• Importing and exporting customizations is supported between servers with Update Rollup 2 and 3, but not supported between Release, Rollup 1 and Rollup 3. 
• The CRM for Outlook Client has some memory usage issues resolved.
• Performance issues with CRM related to the email router have been resolved.

If you've ever used the Truncate_Only to shrink logs in SQL Server 2000/2005, it may come as a surprise to you that its use has been discontinued in SQL Server 2008.

Instead, you can use the following commands to get SQL Server to do essentially the same thing:

 
Alter Database %databasename% Set Recovery Simple

 And then

Alter Database %databasename% Set Recovery Full

You can then shrink the log file as normal.

So it is a common issue that when new CRM clients (especially CRM Online clients) come online, they have data they need to import.  Well, not all of them have proper databases, or even really a budget to get a custom-developed import solution, or Scribe.  Well, we've put together a budget-oriented method that can help.

First off, the most common issue is that the client has their info in just one big Excel file.  Contacts, Company, Notes and maybe even Opportunities are all in one big flat file.  Well obviously that won't do for CRM.  However, if you just break them up into different files and upload, they aren't associated with one another.  Now if you only have a few dozen contacts and companies, it might be ok to go in after the fact and set them manually, but that's not going to be a viable solution for most.  So we need a way to associate all these different entities.

Fortunately, CRM makes a unique identifier for every record it creates (called a GUID), and we can use this record to tie record types together.  However, to do this, you're going to need a couple tools.

1. The Microsoft CRM Data Migration Manager.  This comes in both a local/hosted version and a CRM Online version. Don't get these confused, they are not compatible.  Also, I very strongly recommend setting up a virtual machine to install these on, it will save you a lot of heartache in the future, and you can avoid some "gotchas" about how the DMM works on a clean VM.

2. The CRM Bulk Data Export Tool.  This is Arke Systems' updated version of the Bulk Data Export Tool. The changes we made include being able to get GUIDs out of CRM, and not having to set a date limit for how much data you're getting out of CRM.  If you have any trouble with the app, please post the errors, and we can take a look. It's not technically a supported app by us or by MS, but I'll try to help.

So now that we have the tools we need, let's get down to brass tacks.  First things first, extract the information you need about the Account into its own CSV file.  At the minimum, you'll need a Company Name.  Once you have that file, go ahead and upload it to CRM via the Data Migration Manager.  Once that's done, open up the Bulk Data Export Tool. Authenticate to your CRM, and then export the Accounts back out.  Make sure to set in the dropdown that you want the IDs exported too.  That this does is give us the GUID of every Account you just uploaded to CRM.

Below: The Bulk Export Tool.  Important field highlighted in red.

Now that we have those GUIDS, we need to find a way to set those in your Contacts list (or whatever list you need to associate with those Accounts).  Sure, you could just copy and paste those GUIDs next to the appropriate contact, but that would take forever.  What we need is a little Excel magic.  First, you're going to need to understand how to use the OFFSET and MATCH functions in Excel. Say you have an Excel document with two sheets in it (this can also work across documents).  the first one has a list of all companies and the related GUIDs.  The second one has a list of contact names and the companies they are part of.  So on the Contacts sheet, you're going to add two more columns, Match and Account ID.  On the Match column, you're going to write something like this: =MATCH(A2,Sheet1!A:A,0).  What that tells me is that on Sheet1 (where the Company list resides), I want to find the relative position of the Company Name and report a row number back.  On the Account ID column, you'll put something that looks like this: =OFFSET(Sheet1!$B$2,Sheet2!B2-2,0). What that means is that you want Excel to go look on Sheet1 and grab the GUID relative to the Match number you've pulled to Sheet2 (the Contacts sheet).

Below: Sheet2 and Sheet1 examples

So now you should have a list of contacts that also has a list of GUIDs under the heading Account ID.  Save that file as a raw CSV, it's time to go back to the Data Migration Manager.  Start another migration with your contacts, and match up fields like normal until we get to the Account ID. For this one, we're going to do things a little different.  First, select the field in CRM called "Parent Customer".  When you do, it should take you to another page asking you to link up this field with one in Accounts.  That's good, we want that. So select the dropdown that says Account ID and continue on.

Assuming the rest of the migration goes smoothly, you should be able to go into a Contact and see that it has a Parent Customer all set. If you prefer to have the Primary Contact field in Accounts populated instead, just reverse the order of uploads.  Do Contacts first, and then upload Accounts with the Primary Contact ID instead. Speaking of which, that is a limitation of this method.  You will always have one standalone Entity at the beginning (normally Accounts or Contacts).  I have not found a good way around that, yet.

So I hope that helps all of you that have been struggling with a simple, yet reasonably effective way of importing data to CRM on a budget.  Please hit up the comments with suggestions on improving this, or any questions you have about the process!

For those of you who are looking for resources to help with CRM issues, or just to keep up on the news of CRM, I wanted to provide a few links.

• Microsoft Dynamics CRM Team Blog
• Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online Blog
• Microsoft Dynamics official forum The Development forum specifically is nice for customization issues. (Updated link to reflect new site)
• Microsoft CRM Google Group   
• Microsoft CRM Developer Google Group  
  
• Microsoft CRM Deployment Google Group   
• Microsoft Dynamics CRM - Jim Wang's technical blog  
• Stunnware CRM JavaScript Snippets  (works best in IE)

So I hope that helps anyone looking for solutions and/or community for CRM.  If you are in LinkedIn, there are numerous CRM groups there as well.

Finally, Update Rollup 2 for CRM 4.0 has been released!  Get those patches up and running.

First off, I want to give a big thank you to Jeremy Winchell for writing up the post that got me started in the right direction for this solution.

For those of you that customize Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0, like I do, then likely one of the things you repeatedly run into is clients and users that need to have better names for their actions.  Changing these names on the main navigation page relatively simple, but what about on all the other pages, like Contacts, Accounts, etc.?  These, for whatever reason Microsoft had, aren't removable or changeable.  It's a really painful oversight to have to tell a client that even though you have renamed "Products" to "Hardware", they're going to have to remember that it's still going to be "Products" in a few places.  Hopefully the next version of CRM will have the capability to alter and remove these natively, but until then, we'll have to roll our own.

 Warning, the following actions are not supported or even documented by Microsoft.  Use at your own risk.

Now that the disclaimer is out of the way, let's take a look at the meat of the solution.  First, go to the customization area of the Entity you want to change, and open its form view.  In there, click Form Properties and enable JavaScript for the OnLoad action.  The link above has pictures if you're not sure how to get there.

Now you will need the JavaScript:
document.getElementById("%variableName%").style.display = "none"

So in this line, %variableName% is the variable related to the button on the left-hand nav.  “none” will hide this element entirely.  (Also, make sure if you copy and paste that you don’t end up with retarded Word-style quotes.  That happened to me and I spent 10 minutes trying to find a typo in my code)

If you want to change the display name of a button, then you have a bit more work to do.

Again, the JavaScript:
document.getElementById("%variableName%").innerHTML= "<img src=\"%imageLocation%\" /> %displayName%";

Here, you will see that we’re using innerHTML to actually change the content of that button.  Now you don’t have to have the image code in here, but if you leave it out, then your link won’t have an image anymore, and will just be text.  If you want to keep the image, the best thing I have found is to use the IE Dev Toolbar and then look at that button’s properties (to get the IE Dev toolbar on a popup screen, hit Ctrl+N).  You will see the link to the default image there.  This is going to be different for every CRM install, so I have not included it on the table below. Then just change the Display Name with whatever you want the button to actually say, and you’re set!  Note that the quotes around the image location have to be escaped.

Below is a list of the links, their variable names, and their default Title.  From there, making changes to the left nav of any entity in CRM should be simple.   You will see repeats of some.  The reason for that is because MS was not 100% internally consistent in its naming scheme.  For example, Cases is IDed by both navService and navCases, depending on where you are.  For those, I would either try both, or check on the screen itself.

Link	Link ID Name	Default Title
Activities	navActivities	View Activities
Campaign Activities	navCampaignActivities	View Campaign Activities
Campaign Responses	navCampaignResponses	View Campaign Responses
Campaigns	navCampaignsInSFA	View Campaigns
Campaigns	navCampaignsInList	View Campaigns
Cases	navService	View Cases
Cases	navCases	View Cases
Competitors	navComp	View Competitors
Competitors	navComps	View Competitors
Contacts	navContacts	View Contacts
Contacts Excluded	navBulkOperationFailures	View Contacts Excluded
Contacts Selected	navTargetedMembers	View Contacts Selected
Contract Lines	navContractLines	View Contract Lines
Contracts	navContracts	View Contracts
Documents	navDoc	View Documents
E-mail Messages Created	navBulkOperationSuccesses	View E-mail Messages Created
Existing Products	navExistingProducts	View Existing Products
History	navActivityHistory	View History
Information	navInfo	View general information about this record
Invoices	navInvoices	View Invoices
Marketing List Members	navListMember	View Marketing List Members
Marketing Lists	navListsInSFA	View Marketing Lists
More Addresses	navAddresses	More Addresses
Opportunities	navOpps	View Opportunities
Orders	navOrders	View Orders
Other Contacts	navContacts	View Other Contacts
Planning Tasks	navTasks	View Planning Tasks
Price List Items	navPrices	View Price List Items
Products	navProducts	View Products
Quick Campaigns	navMiniCampaignsForList	View QuickCampaigns
Quotes	navQuotes	View Quotes
Related Campaigns	navCampaigns	View Related Campaigns
Relationships	navRelationships	View Relationships
Sales Literature	navCollaterals	View Sales Literature
Sales Literature	navSalesLit	View Sales Literature
Sub-Accounts	navSubAct	View Sub-Accounts
Sub-Contacts	navSubContacts	View Sub-Contacts
Substitutes	navSubs	View Substitutes
Target Marketing Lists	navTargetLists	View Target Marketing Lists
Target Products	navTargetProducts	View Target Products
Workflows	navAsyncOperations	View Workflows
Write-In Products	navWriteInProducts	View Write-In Products

 

So now you should have all the tools you need to customize the Entity Screens into something useful for your clients and users.  And don't forget, if you break something, you can always just delete the JavaScript and start over.

Microsoft has updated Virtual PC 2007 to support a few more guests.  One of those guests is Windows Server 2008 Standard.  I bold a very important word there.  Windows Server 2008 Enterprise will install in a VM, but after that, most everything won't work.  Windows Update fails, Internet Explorer crashes.  Most importantly, SQL Server 2008 won't install, and it will throw an error saying that your .NET 2.0 version is incorrect.

So make sure that if you're putting VPC images of Server 2008 together that you're using Server 2008 Standard, the only version supported on Virtual PC 2007.  Also, if you're still having trouble, make sure your VPC version is 6.0.192.0.  The older versions don't work right with Server 2008 at all.

Tomorrow, June 17th, is the long-awaited release of Firefox 3.  I have been using version 3 for quite a while now, and I've been using it at work since the Developer Tools were made compatible. It vastly improves both its performance and memory footprint over version 2, so the biggest complaints people have had about Firefox should be resolved.

Also, for you Opera users, 9.5 is out as well.

For those of you, like me, that have to support old sites for your clients, dealing with the vulnerabilities of old code can be quite a hassle.  Especially now that the best documented and known exploits can be completely automated.  One of our clients was recently subject to such an attack.  Unfortunately, when the site was originally developed, no real security was built into the code.  One user posted all SQL requests, no matter if it was coming from the public side or the admin side. All requests came directly from the page, meaning that every page had the code, and every one would have to be touched to really fix it.

As we were already redeveloping the modern replacement to the site, the client wanted us to spend as little time as possible on the old one.  So a true security audit was out of the question.  This, of course, is still the right way to solve the problem, but right isn't always in the budget.  So that leads us to a couple tools to help avoid the problem until we could release the replacement site.

The first is a tool from Microsoft called URLScan. URLScan has a lot of features, but what we used it for here was to limit the length of query strings.  Since the attack strings were almost always longer than a regular POST or GET, we just had to limit the length of the strings for most of those attacks to fail. Take a look at it, there's lots of neat tricks URLScan can do.

The big gun we used was an ISAPI filter written by Rodney Viana.  It's designed to scrub GET and POST requests of anything that would look like an attack.  It has been a life saver, especially when the attacks were happening hourly.