mscrmguy

CRM Consultants need a deep and broad skill set

2011-12-21T08:45:00.002-05:00

I am SO TIRED of getting pinged by headhunters with NO IDEA of what it takes to be a good CRM consultant trying to put people on projects for junior rates. This morning I got pinged by someone looking for a SENIOR lead for a CRM v4->2011 upgrade project, and they wanted to pay $50/hr! I made that on my first job right out of school!

To be a successful CRM consultant a person must have skills in:
Windows Server
Active Directory
SQL Server
Exchange (and other mail servers)
IIS
Web and Network protocols
Firewalls and Security
Microsoft .NET and software development
Client side products such as IE, Office, etc.

As well as soft skills in business analysis and design, application architecture, project management, communication, project documentation, etc.

Further, with the current trend of the “consumerization of IT”, you also need to know a lot about the competing platforms such as Apple, Linux, etc., and of course the entire range of mobile devices that people might want to connect to their IT network and CRM.

If you a CRM consultant and have expertise and actual project experience in all these subject areas, as I do, then PLEASE DO NOT work for $50/hr! If you do you might think you’re being competitive by cutting your rate, but really all you’re doing is diluting the rates for all of us and marginalizing your skills and experience. If you cannot sell your services for a decent rate, then please go find a job in another industry. I have worked far too long and hard on my skills and experiences to not be fairly compensated. In thinking of a fair rate for yourself, note that a Microsoft Partner will likely charge between $150-$200/hr for a senior CRM consultant.
Oh and by-the-way, passing certification exams DOES NOT make you a CRM consultant. The exams are sets of questions that can be easily studied for, and in no way prepare a consultant for complex real-world project implementations. The only way to prepare for projects is to actually work on several projects and face the myriad variables that will be inevitable in different businesses and IT environments.

If you’re a customer implementing CRM or considering an implementation, or a head hunter looking to staff a CRM project, PLEASE take the time to educate yourself as to the skill set a good CRM consultant needs to have (send me a note and I’ll be happy to help you). Ask meaningful interview questions, a question like “When working with plugins how does parent pipeline mode differ from child pipeline mode” is meaningless and can be looked up in the SDK in a second. A better question is to ask “Tell me about a challenge you faced on one of your projects where you were forced to use plugins, and how did you implement the plugins to successfully meet the project deliverable?”

The key here, fellow CRM consultants, is not cutting your rates, but providing real VALUE for the rates you do charge. I have seen many projects fail when a customer brings in the cheapest rate they can find, and they end up spending far more money in the long run to bring in a truly experience consultant to fix the project.

Remember:
If you think it's expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur!! - Red Adair

Windows 8 Metro CRM Contacts App

2011-10-12T17:44:00.002-04:00

Hi all:

Just playing around with the Windows 8 Developer Preview and decided to try to create a Metro App to display CRM Contacts. I know Metro Apps are meant more for consumers rather than LOB, but as Social Networks and Business Networks continue to converge Apps like this will become more relevant. The GUI needs some work but here is a screen of the App in action (Contact info hidden):

A new challenge!

2011-03-26T11:57:00.000-04:00

No, not CRM 2011, I decided to take on a physical challenge! After years of doing the same routines for weights and cardio, I wanted to make some major changes. So I cancelled my membership at my Gym, bought a Hoist V-Core home gym, and embarked on the P90X journey.
I am now at Day 20, going into recovery week, and after that I start with doubles! So far I have found the program to be very well designed and some of the workouts, like YogaX, are things I have never done and are kicking my butt. Here are some pictures of my new setup

http://thestraumanns.mine.nu/home/p90x.html

and yes that is Windows 7 Media Center being used to play the videos. I am also updating my progress on Twitter, follow me at @johnstraumann. Who knows there might even be a CRM post in there sometime!

My skills

2010-02-03T20:19:00.003-05:00

Hi all:

I haven't posted anything in a while so I thought "Why not a bit of self-promotion!" :)

Here is a list of some of my skills and experiences, as well as some products and add-ons for Dynamics CRM I have available:

- Experience with Cocoa, Mac OSX, iPod/iPhone application development
- Experience with Computer Asscoiates ITCM
- Experience with InstallShield 2010
- 7 years experience with Microsoft CRM
- Skilled in all areas of Dynamics CRM including: practice building/management, pre-sales architecture presentations, strategic business process analysis, Dynamics CRM implmentations including any required customizations.
- 7 years experience with Java/Notes/Linux
- 8 years experience with Microsoft technologies
- 10 years experience pre-sales engineering
- excellent communications skills
- excellent presentation skills

CRM ISV Solutions available for sale
Modules
- Financial Services Accelerator
-Professional Services Accelerator
- Staffing Accelerator
- Municipal Accelerator
- RFP Management Accelerator

Web Portals, Add-Ons and Plugins
- Outlook group mailing list addon
- Outlook “auto contact” addon
- contract auto-renewal plugin
- Auto-numbering plugin
- Web lead
- Service portal
- extended views
- extended views Excel Export
- SharePoint integrations
- Custom Dashboards

.NET/General Programming Experience
•Experience with Agile Scrum software development
•Extensive experience with Dynamics CRM since v1
•Experience in all facets of CRM projects including pre-salessolutions architecture, business process design, andconfigurations and customizations.
•Custom Outlook plugins
•Integration to Microsoft platform products such as SharePoint
•Integration to 3rd party applications
•Portal development
•Utility development
•Workflow/plugins development
•Integration with Java/J2EE applications
•Custom Dashboards

External Team Emails in Outlook

2009-11-19T08:52:00.010-05:00

A customer of mine is using the Events Management Accelerator, and wanted an easy way to create an Outlook email to the External team Members for a Campaign. So we developed a little utility in Outlook to enable this functionality:

We added a toolbar in Outlook:

and clicking the button shows a form which displays the current Campaigns

and then clicking a campaign loads all the External Team Members for that campaign

Clicking a name in the Team Members list adds it to the Email list, or clicking the "Add all" button adds all the team members to the email lsit

Clicking the Email button creates a new Outlook email with the To field populated with the Team Members.

Accounts Gadget for Windows 7

2009-09-15T08:14:00.004-04:00

Hi all:

Here is a link to my CRM Accounts gadget for Windows 7....

http://thestraumanns.mine.nu/win7_accounts_gadget.zip

Please note if you download the gadget, in the files Accountsv4 and Contactsv4 the references to my server and CRM org must be changed to yours...

Here is a link to the CodeProject article

http://www.codeproject.com/KB/gadgets/DynamicsCRMGadget.aspx

XRM Accelerator 2 - Financials

2009-09-10T15:06:00.005-04:00

Hi all:

Here is a screen for another XRM accelerator, this one is for financial services. This XRM package can aid your deployment of CRM if your business is in the financial services market.

A click-through PPT demo can be found on my SkyDrive:

http://cid-c986ac6b4918eaed.skydrive.live.com/browse.aspx/XRM

If you would like more information please contact us at john@straumanngroup.com. Cheers.

Cheers,

John.

HUH?!?!?

2009-09-02T20:04:00.003-04:00

In trying to find a solution to a particularly irksome programming issue, I decided to download and check out the Silverlight SDK to see what might be. As part of the process I was asked to install the “Microsoft Web Platform Installer 2.0”…sure why not. However imagine my surprise when in the menu of applications I can install through this gizmo, appeared Sugar CRM!!

I realize Microsoft is a huge company and it is not always possible for everyone to know everything everyone else is doing, but should a Microsoft install program REALLY give users the option to install a competitor to one of its fastest growing products?!?! What’s next, an option to install Linux???

XRM Solution 1 - Staffing

2009-08-21T08:37:00.002-04:00

Hello all:

I have been developing vertical solution accelerators on top of Dynamics CRM for years, and now this has an actual name in “XRM”. In the next series of articles I will be posting about Vertical Accelerators I have developed either alone or jointly. These accelerators can greatly aid a CRM deployment as they give us a head-start on deployment and can cut down on the overall configurations/customizations required for the project. Please contact us at john@straumanngroup.com if you would like more information on one of our accelerators.

In the next few weeks I will be posting articles on XRM for:

Staffing
Call Center
Financial Services
Insurance
Manufacturing
Municipals
Professional Services

This first post is for the Staffing/ Human Resources vertical, allowing a user to track candidates, job orders, resumes, etc.

I posted a “click-through” demo on my LiveDrive which shows some of the solution,

http://cid-c986ac6b4918eaed.skydrive.live.com/browse.aspx/XRM

and if you would like more information please contact us at john@straumanngroup.com.

Cheers.

John.

XRM: Sports Team Management

2009-07-29T16:20:00.001-04:00

I help coach an Under-18 rugby team, and one of our challenges is compiling lists of players who are available for games. So I have started developing an XRM solution to help with this process. Eventually this is something that could be used by any amateur sports team to manage players, communications, etc. Here is a screen of the portal WIP…

CRM News Headlines

2009-07-23T06:45:00.002-04:00

Hi all:

A customer recently asked about having a scrolling news headline display in CRM, so I mocked this up...

Dynamics CRM Record Locking

2009-05-29T16:43:00.006-04:00

Hi all:

Another little project I have been hacking at, the ability to have a record "lock" when it is opened to avoid save collisions. So...

User A opens a record

User B opens the same record, it is "locked"...fields are read-only, buttons and action menu removed. Note that we could still create activities and all the functions on the Nav Bar, but hey this is a POC! :)

User A closes the record

User B can now edit

As long as user A has the record open, it will stay locked.

Outlook Utilities

2009-05-29T06:40:00.007-04:00

Hi all:

I've also been working on some utilities for Outlook and CRM to enable enhanced usability of CRM functions from within Outlook.

The first screen shows a panel displaying CRM contacts when creating a new Outlook message, and mail recipients can be added to the "To" box by simply clicking a name.

The next screen shows the user receiving an email, and they can right-click and choose "Show CRM Contact" and the contact screen from CRM will load. This saves leaving the email, going to Sales, Clicking contacts, etc.

Dynamics CRM Dashboards

2009-05-29T06:35:00.006-04:00

Hi all:

I've been working on creating some easily deployable dashbaords for Dynamics CRM, and here are some of the early WIPs...

Please feel free to contact me if you would like information on including my dashboards in your CRM deployment. john@straumanngroup.com

Dynamics CRM on the MAC

2009-02-02T21:18:00.010-05:00

Since my wife INSISTS on using Macintosh computers, I have been developing an interface to Dynamics CRM that works on OS X.

It has been coming along so if you need to access Dynamics CRM from Apple machines please feel free to contact me! mailto:john@straumanngroup.%3Cremove%3E.com Please ntoe I am getting a lot of responses so I will get back to you ASAP.

Also note that I am also in progress for a version that works on the iPhone.

CRM on Windows 7

2009-01-14T09:03:00.009-05:00

Hi all:

Of course I *had* to install Windows 7 Beta, and then I *had* to try to install CRM on it:

The install was very smooth...

***DISCLAIMER*** This post does NOT mean that CRM on Windows 7 is supported by Microsoft!!! Windows 7 is in Beta! Test this at your own risk.

Live Earth Views = a Forest of Billboards

2009-01-06T15:18:00.003-05:00

Hi all:
The other day I was playing with Live Earth and it occurred to me that all those building tops are potential billboards. I thought it would be cool to start a company offering services to create rooftop advertising displays, but the logistics could be quite challenging.

So then I thought what about just using code to insert advertising images on the building tops in the images.

For example, this view shows the Microsoft Canada Head Office in Mississauga.

The next View shows the building, but with the Microsoft logo superimposed on the rooftop…

Hmmmm.

I am a PC

2008-09-20T08:47:00.002-04:00

To MAC lovers everywhere I have asked "If they wanted to do a commerical to show Mac users are cool, then why did they not pick a cool guy to be in the commerical??" IMO the MAC guy is a geek and doesn't make me think of Macs as cool machines.

My wife has a MAC G5 and a PowerBook, and I can tell you from firsthand experience that her machines are also no more reliable, no faster, no more resistant to crashes, etc., than an average PC.

Now the Windows team is calling on you to join the "I am a PC" campaign...

http://imapc.lifewithoutwalls.com/

IAMAPC...

Setting up a “mirror” of a production environment for dev/testing

2008-07-31T09:30:00.000-04:00

I recently needed to set up a “mirror” of a production system for use in development and testing. I had worked with the Redeployment tool in CRM v3 and I was interested to see how v4 worked. I was very happy when the v4 tool was *very* easy to use, and here are the steps I followed.

1. Used SQL 2005 to do a backup of the CRM v4 production databases
2. Using the VPC image distributed by Microsoft, I copied the .bak file to the VPC. I then did a restore of the database files to the VPC SQL instance. For some reason the SQL GUI did not work, so I used the following command (Names changed):
restore database OrgName_MSCRM from disk='C:\Temp\OrgName_MSCRM.bak' WITH MOVE 'OrgName_MSCRM' TO 'C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.1\MSSQL\Data\ OrgName _MSCRM.mdf', MOVE ' OrgName _MSCRM_log' TO 'C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.1\MSSQL\Data\ OrgName _MSCRM_log.LDF'

3. Once the DB was successfully restored on the VPC image, I fired up the CRM Deployment Manager, right-clicked on the “Organizations” item, and selected “Import Organization”
4. The next step asked me to specify the SQL server, and as soon as I did that the deployment manager found the organization I wanted to import
5. The next screen asked me for a name and a display name
6. Next input was the report server URL
7. The next steps involved the mapping of users. There are several options for this tep, I chose to simply “Manually Map Users”, and the only user I mapped was the Administrator which was mapped to the Litwareinc Administrator on the VPC. I got a warning that “All users are not mapped. Do you wish to continue?” and just clicked “Yes”
8. The next screen was simply the tasks verification screen, so I clicked “Next” and then on the next screen “Import”
9. And that was it! It took a bit of time and at the end I am able to access the org via http://moss:5555/orgname/loader.aspx

You can see the screens here but please note names are hidden:

http://www.mscrmguy.com/redeploy/redeploy.html

GM OnStar

2008-07-18T08:09:00.003-04:00

Continuing the OnStar story, my wife got set up with GM and received this report via email. Click here for a full size shot!

This service rocks.

GM and OnStar take customer service to a new level

2008-07-17T07:27:00.003-04:00

As a lifelong GM fan, I have observed the company’s recent struggles with sadness. Lately GM has been making some very good cars, but unfortunately public perception is that imports are better.
We recently were in the new car market as our Explorer is getting on 10 years old. We were looking for a car with decent people space, but with today’s gas prices we were leery of a full sized SUV. In the end we decided on a GM CUV - crossover utility vehicle- and in addition to being the car we liked best, we also got the absolute best service from that particular GM dealer. “Leggat Pontiac, Buick, GMC”.
So after buying the car and getting started with GMs interactive service, OnStar, I wonder why GM does not put a lot more energy into promoting this fantastic service.

The other day we were in Niagara Falls taking the girls to MarineLand, and we wanted to find a Starbucks. Our navigation system can find things like that, as can most navigation systems today, but OnStar took it one step further. Without ever taking my hands off the wheel I called OnStar and asked about the nearest Starbucks. The OnStar representative not only found it in about 2 seconds, she then said “Would you like me to guide you turn-by-turn, or should I send the directions to your car?” We asked to have the direction sent and presto! The directions came through on our cars navigation system.

OnStar also functions as a cell phone from the car, they can unlock the doors automatically if the keys are locked inside, they can run diagnostics remotely, and the car can even automatically call for help in the event of an accident.

In today’s competitive market, a service like this that is heads and shoulders above anything any other manufacturer offers is a serious advantage. GM, get the word out!

MVP For Dynamics CRM

2008-07-03T07:31:00.005-04:00

Hello all:

I am very happy to annouce that I have been selected as a CRM MVP for FY 2009.

CRM Gadget for Vista

2008-05-31T17:54:00.009-04:00

I have finally gotten around to updating the Vista gadget for Dynamics CRM v4. You can get the new files here: http://thestraumanns.mine.nu/accounts_gadget.zip

Just copy all the files into the accounts.gadget directory, and then in both accountsv4.html and contactsv4.html, make the following changes:

StraumannGroup must change to your org name
straumannsrvr2:5555 must change to your CRM server name and port (2 places)

and that should be it.

The original article is here:

http://www.codeproject.com/KB/gadgets/DynamicsCRMGadget.aspx

Cheap case = hard upgrades!

2008-05-09T15:30:00.004-04:00

Cheap Case = Hard Upgrade

Here’s a tip from my system builder days. I recently upgraded my workstation and made the mistake of getting a cheap case. My thinking was “Well it just sits under my desk, so who cares what it looks like??” BIG MISTAKE! I just tried to put in a new hard drive since VPCs eat up space, and what a gong show!
In order to get the new drive into the cheap case, I had to remove:
The other 2 hard drives
All the RAM chips
The Motherboard power supply cable
The IDE cables to the CD drives
The video card
The USB extension card

So what should have taken 30 seconds ended up taking me over a half hour. And of course the scary part of removing everything, is wondering whether I it all back correctly!

So, if upgrading and buying a new case, don’t judge a case by it’s cover! You might not care what it looks like but ALWAYS asks the folks in the shop about expandability and the ease of changing components.

Visual C++ Runtime Error

2008-05-09T15:25:00.004-04:00

Visual C++ RunTime Error I did an upgrade from v3->v4 the other day and all seemed well until one of the clients encountered this error:

Ouch.

A little digging revealed that there is a HotFix that would possibly fix this:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/948045/EN-US/

and that fixed the issue.

Install Dynamics CRM 4 on SBS 2003 R2

2008-04-18T10:02:00.004-04:00

Installing CRM v4 on SBS 2003 R2 with SQL 2005 Workgroup Edition

If you need to install on SBS 2003 R2 beware this error:

"Setup requires that cumulative update package 2 for Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 2 be installed on this computer. This update is required when you install Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Server on Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Workgroup Edition."

This update package is only obtainable from support via a web request. They actually responded to my request very quickly, but be aware of this and if needed request the HotFix in advance to be prepared!

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/941450

2008-03-31T14:57:00.003-04:00

Microsoft Dynamics Community

There is a nice new site for Dynamics here:

http://www.cashinwithdynamics.com/

If you decide to sign up, please enter my user name, jstraumann, as your referral code!

2008-03-31T08:18:00.001-04:00

Irresponsible Journalism

This morning while perusing my news headlines, one jumped out at me:

“Windows Vista Hacked at CanSecWest Conference”

However when I read the full article at
http://www.newsoxy.com/windows_vista_hacked_at_cansecwest_conference/article10640.htm

it turns out Vista *was not* hacked, Adobe Flash was! During the hacking contest, apparently the hackers were unable to crack Vista itself, unlike Apple OS X which fell in 1 day. It was only after the rules were amended to allow attacks against 3rd party software that runs on the OS that the flaw was found in Flash.
I do not understand how a publication can allow a headline which is completely untrue!

2008-03-29T20:06:00.001-04:00

“No returns…Exchange only” policies = BAD customer service!!
Some time ago I bought my wife some very expensive French undergarments at a nice local shop. I had guessed at her sizes and when she inevitably went back to the store to look at some other sets, she was told about the “no returns, exchanges only policy”. Today my wife bought some clothes for our 6 year old daughter at a retail shop near us that is part of a chain, and when she went back because the clothes didn’t fit, she was told “no returns…only exchanges.”

So my first piece of advice is to shoppers (caveat emptor and all that) ASK about these policies. Since the undergarments thing my wife and I almost always ask, but she was in a hurry and did not think for a minute that a chain store would have such a policy, but lo and behold, they do.

My next piece of advice is to the retailers to tell them that this is a very bad customer service policy. I think too often stores that sell tangible goods don’t consider themselves as a service business, but let me tell you this…if you sell ANYTHING to customers, you ARE a service business, and service is what keeps people coming back.

I was speaking to a small business owner one day about this topic, and this person said “Well a lot of small retailers cannot afford to have people returning things.” Hmmm, maybe a valid point, but my answer to that is “What can they afford more, someone returning something or someone NEVER coming to their store again?”

In the case of the French undergarments, the product was a very high quality and overall my wife was pleased with it, however I (we) will never shop there again. In my opinion (and I am a customer, therefore I am ALWAYS right J) if I buy something I should have a reasonable amount of time to return it for a full refund if I so choose. I understand if retailers do not want people coming in after 6 months to return things, but how about a 2-week or 1 month policy?

In speaking with some of these retailers, the mind set seems to be that once a sale is made, this policy ensures they keep the sale, but I guarantee in the end it is costing repeat customers. As anyone who works in sales knows, repeat customers are the lifeblood of any business, and for a small business the loss of even one customer can be significant.

2008-03-25T17:04:00.001-04:00

KISS
I was working on a little callout assembly recently and all went well until I had to hook into the customer's Java web service. I used WSDL.exe to generate a proxy class and was able to successfully instantiate the object and call into the Java web service (thanks Adam!), but I could not for the life of me get the XML right! I needed to pass in CRM account data, which comes into a postcallout in a very nice XML string, but then when I passed that XML string into the java web service it puked. I tried all kinds of fancy .NET methods to build the XML, for example:

System.Xml.XmlDocument mydoc = new System.Xml.XmlDocument();
mydoc.LoadXml("" );
mydoc.LoadXml("" );

XmlElement newElem = mydoc.CreateElement("account_request");
newElem.InnerXml = postImageEntityXml;
mydoc.DocumentElement.AppendChild( newElem );

XmlElement resp = mydoc.CreateElement("response");
newElem.InnerXml = "";mydoc.DocumentElement.AppendChild( resp );

with no joy.

Thankfully, a programmer at the customer lent a hand and as anyone who programs for a living knows, those extra eyes *really* come in handy! The end string that worked looked like this:
String myXML = "" +
"" +
postImageEntityXml +
"";
mydoc.LoadXml(myXML);
XmlElement element = mydoc.DocumentElement;

Which without the formatting ended up at 3 lines. Nice. Keep It Sweet and Simple...isn't that what the acronym KISS stands for?? :)

2008-03-22T07:59:00.003-04:00

CRM v4 Unleashed!

The book has been released and is available now:

2008-03-21T21:58:00.006-04:00

I got tagged with the latest chain Meme!

Menno has tagged me as part of the latest chain Meme that is going around in the blogosphere!

Here are 8 random facts about me.

Here are the the Meme rules:
Each player starts with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
People who are tagged need to write a post on their own blog (about their eight things) and post these rules.
At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.
Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

My 8 things are:
I used to own a pizza shop and coincidentally weighed 260 lbs
I really want to move back to my homeland
I miss playing rugby like a limb, a part of me is gone
My ultimate fantasy is to play for, speak before, whatever...a crowd of 100,000 people
I have had surgery 10 times and am facing #s 11 and 12, yet I am surprisingly upright
An indulgence I only occassionaly allow myself is to buy new books
I have no idea why my wife married me
I miss my parents terribly

Here are the 8 people I would like to see post their 8 random facts:
Jim Glass
Al Fournier
Simon Hutson
Matt Wittemann
Anne Stanton
Michael Höhne
Ben Vollmer
Bill Gates

2008-03-18T08:01:00.003-04:00

CRM - it's not software, it's a state of mind!!

As someone who works with CRM solutions, my goal is always to help my customers improve their relationships (translate: loyalty) with *their* customers. CRM is not software, it is a state of mind that needs to be practiced by everyone in an organization. Companies must view *every* customer contact as a chance to impress their customers and therefore keep their existing customers, or cultivate new customers. Let me illustrate this with an example.

Our Ford Explorer is getting on a bit in years, and our driver side power window recently broke. While the window would not move up or down, it was wedged in place and so we left it alone whilst our friend who works on our car looked for the parts to fix it. Unfortunately on the weekend we used a valet parking service and the guy, despite the fact that the window button was covered in tape, pressed the button which left the window wedged downward a centimeter or so, resulting in a very pleasant (NOT) whistling noise whilst driving.
So I figured we need to get this sorted out and on Monday morning I called a local Ford dealership. We usually use a dealer a bit far from our house so I decided to try one closer, here is the transcript of that call, names omitted as I do not want to get sued:

Ford guy answers gruffly "Hello?"
Me: "Oh, I was trying to reach X Ford Service"
Ford guy: "This is It"
Me: "Oh, OK. Anyway our power window is broken and I need to get a service appointment to get it sorted out. It's a 2000 Explorer and as far as I can tell the window has detached from the brackets that attach it to the power mechanism...."
Ford guy cuts me off and says "You need parts, I'll transfer you"
Me: "Wait, I want to make a service..." cut off, transferred to Parts
Ford Guy #2, again gruffly: "Hello?"
Me: "Um, I was talking to service and they said they had to transfer me to parts, is this the right department?"
Ford guy #2: "No, this is the body shop"
Me: "Oh, can you transfer me back to service"
Ford guy #2: "No, I don't know how to do that, you have to call back." Hangs up.

You know the expression "You never get a second chance to make a first impression"?!? Wow, what an AWFUL introduction to their dealership. Here they had a golden opportunity to get a new service customer, and possibly a new customer for a new car sometime in the future, and they flat out blew it! No software in the world could help these folks because they don't practice the right attitude of customer service. I have always told my customers that in many ways I think service is more important than sales force automation, as it is service that retains customers and impresses new ones!

So, after this dealership goes through customer relationship training from The Straumann Group - if you're interested in this training you can email me here: john@straumanngroup.com - let's see how this scenario *could* play out:
I call:
Ford guy: "Good morning, thanks for calling X Ford, how can I help you today?"
Me: "Hi, I have a problem with a broken power window on my 2000 Ford Explorer Eddie Bauer and I need to schedule an appointment to get it looked at"
Ford guy: "Wow a broken window in winter, that cannot be fun! What's your name and phone number sir?"
Me: "John Straumann, 123-456-7890"
Ford guy: "OK Mr. Straumann, I do not see you in our database so it seems you have not been to our location before"
Me: "That's right, I have not"
Ford guy: "Ok Mr Straumann, in that case I am going to waive the initial service fee to check the window. We pride ourselves on our service and we are always happy when we have the chance to meet new Ford owners!"
Me: "That's great, thanks"
Ford guy: "So I have an appointments open at 10 AM and 12 PM today. Do either of those times work for you?"
Me: "Sure, 12 PM is great."
Ford guy: "Perfect, do you need me to send you directions to our store and will you need a ride home from our courtesy van?"
Me: "No I know where you are and I do not need a ride, thanks"
Ford guy: "OK, thanks for calling and we will see you at 12".

Anyone see a difference in the dialog as compared to my actual experience? Now let's take this one step further. This ultra courteous and "proud to be a Ford guy" guy hangs up and begins creating the service request. He notes the car is a 2000 Explorer, and it occurs to him that it being 2008 this car is likely getting on in years....Hmm, could Mr. Straumann be a potential new customer?

Absolutely! It just so happens I am currently looking at new cars, and the Ford Explorer is on our short list because our 2000 ha been rock solid! However in today's very competitive market that short list still has about 10 cars on it, so the manufacturers really need to impress me!

Meanwhile, the Ford guy forwards my info to their star sales guy.

Ok, so now it is 10:30 AM and I get a call:
Ford guy #2: "Mr. Straumann?"
Me: "Yes"
Ford guy #2: "Good morning. This is Peter from X Ford and I work in the new cars sales department. I saw that you are bringing in your Explorer for service today and I wanted to say hello."
Me" "Ah, ok"
Ford guy #2: "Mr Straumann, since your Explorer is a 2000, it occurred to me that you might be considering a new car purchase sometime in the near future. Since your car is going to be in our shop today, I'd like to offer you the use of a 2008 Eddie Bauer Explorer while we fix your car. Would you be interested in that?"
Me: "For sure, that would be great"
Ford guy #2: "That's great, are you coming to our store alone or is your wife coming with you?" Me: "Actually my wife is coming with me"
Ford guy #2: "OK, well we are always happy to meet loyal Ford owners, so since you have had your car for almost 8 years, when you take the 2008 Explorer I will also give you a coupon to have lunch on us! So you and your wife take the car, go have lunch and have fun! Hopefully that will alleviate some of the inconvenience while your window gets fixed, and you can go enjoy a free lunch"
Me: "Wow that's great, thank you very much"
Ford guy #2: "Ok, I will come and see you at the service counter at about 12:10 PM to give you time to get your car checked in."
Me: "Sounds good, see you then."

Wow, what a difference,. Not only am I getting great service from the repairs department, now I am also being courted by the sales department but in a very subtle way. Peter did not call and go straight for the pressure sale, he introduced himself, made it very easy for me to test drive the new Explorer, and bought me lunch. Peter is building a REALTIONSHIP!

Statistics say it costs car manufacturers about $500 just to get someone to walk in the front door of a dealership. In this case the Ford dealer has used a service call to cultivate a potential new customer, and even factoring in the free lunch, their costs are a heck of a lot less than $500!

So at the end of all this of course I might not buy the Ford, the market *is* very competitive, however through the application of Customer Relationship Management principles, this Ford dealership has greatly increased the chances I will buy another Ford Explorer. Further, I will be very likely to relate this story of great service to people I interact with, and everyone knows word-of-mouth is extremely important to anyone in business.

Happy CRMing!

2008-01-18T09:24:00.000-05:00

Hi all:
As soon as I saw the alerts on the web that Windows Server 2008 RC1 x64 with Hyper-V was out, of course I HAD to have it. So I grabbed the download and began installing on my lab serer, only to be slapped with a rather cryptic message: “A required CD/DVD device driver is missing. If you have a driver floppy disk, CD, DVD or USB flash drive, please insert it now.”

Hmmm. I tried 3 DVD drives I have in my lab here but had no joy with any of them. This is a less than auspicious start!

Stay tuned…

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/bb383572.aspx

2008-01-15T11:54:00.000-05:00

I know v4 is out, however the other day I faced the task of creating a “mirror” of a v3 production system for development purposes. I posted a question in the newsgroups and go back a very helpful response, so I thought I would post the steps and my experiences here. The steps are numbered, and my notes are prefaced by JJS>>.

1. Export all customizations from the production implementation.
2. Install the RedeploymentTool on the dev environment. JJS>>Found on the install CD in \Server\RedeploymentTool
3. Copy the databases from the production environment to the dev
environment.JJS>> For this step I simply copied over the latest backup set created by SQL. To get the DBs onto the DEV system I created “shell” DBs in SQL with the same names as the production databases, and then I did a “restore” with the “force overwrite” option selected.
4. Create domain accounts for CRM user if the domain differs from
production environment to the dev environment.JJS>> This is an important step. I discovered that the redeployment tool will want to map the users from the source CRM system to users in the target system. Note that the user names do not have to be the same, however there does have to be the same *number* of accounts on the target as existed in the source. I found the easiest way was just to create accounts in AD on the target that matched the AD accounts on the source, and then let the RedeploymentTool do an automatic mapping.
5. Run the RedeploymentTool. (Please refer the documentation in the
RedeploymentTool folder for details)JJS>> Very easy, step-by-step, wizard.
6. Run setup for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 Server and choice existing
database as a database.
7. Import and publish all the customizations.JJS>> I found that I did not have to do this step, all the customizations were brought over to the dev system by the redeployment of the Metabase.

And that was it. The process was actually quite painless.

2008-01-12T17:48:00.000-05:00

If you're like me and you get frustrated by scratches on your shiny new laptop, you'll appreciate this story. I was picking up Leopard for my wife's Mac when I noticed a product by Speck (www.speckproducts.com). This ingenious deice is a hard-shell plastic case which fits perfectly onto the MacBook Pro, protecting it from scratches, dings, etc. What a great product! I just got a new Dell XPS with a very nice Red MicroSatin finish, and what do you think the chances are someone out there has produced such a product for PCs? That's right, zero. :(

Check it out: http://www.macnn.com/reviews/see-thru-hard-shell-case.html

2008-01-12T13:54:00.000-05:00

Hi all:

I just finished the technical edit for "Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Unleashed" due out soon...Click the image to see the book on Amazon.com

2007-12-07T06:55:00.000-05:00

Well it certainly has been a while since my last post, but I am up early this morning and bored so….MSCRM v4 RC0 was released recently, and the corporate team subsequently released a new VPC image with RC) on it. So after downloading it, I fired it up and was immediately greeted with an error message:

Hmmm, that seems a little strange, does the corp team not have enough accumulated knowledge to build a VPC without errors? I also found that after I opened up the VPC that Exchange was not installed, the image is set to a dynamic IP, and that DNS seems to be a bit messed up.

2007-08-21T09:25:00.001-04:00

If you're like me and constantly switching between email accounts, you'll love this little utility from Microsoft. It allows you to access your Hotmail account from Outlook:

Outlook Connector

2007-07-12T10:56:00.000-04:00

It's things like this that have me thinking it is time to bid ADIEU to MSCRM and software in general.

Today I was working away on a demo VPC image, and since I was about to make some changes to the image, I thought I’d better back up my virtual server hard drives, I always do that before making major changes. So I get the thing backed up and restart, and for some reason I’ve lost the network on the image. It was working fine before I exited, now it is not.

No idea why, no messages from Virtual Server or Windows. The physical network adapter is properly bound to the image, the Virtual Server Network services are OK.

I’ve been sitting here for 3 hours trying to figure it out with no luck. My blood pressure is through the roof and I am about to punch a hole in my monitor.

As a last resort I decided to re-install VS 2005 and that seemed to work for now but this *cannot* be a recommended fix.

2007-07-12T08:26:00.000-04:00

This being the “dog days of summer” there’s not much sales activity going on, so I dove into a little project to stay interested. As you may or may not know, before I was the “MscrmGuy” I was “JavaMann”, winner of a worldwide Java programming contest in 1997. So I started thinking about ways to access MSCRM on a MAC, and thought a J2EE application might fit the bill nicely. So here’s a screenshot of what I mocked up over a few hours…stay tuned for more!

2007-04-13T08:21:00.000-04:00

When is the government going to realize that teenage kids should not be driving cars??

Yesterday afternoon seemed like a normal day, my wife left our house at right around 3:30 PM to walk the few blocks to the bus stop to pick up our 6-year old daughter. She and our 3-year old do this every Tuesday and Thursday, and there are always a lot of kids around after the bus leaves, playing and chatting. I have pasted a map here that shows the streets, and the bus stop is marked with the dot.

So on this day, seconds after my wife collected our daughter, an idiot kid came SCREAMING up Chalmers in a white minivan. We don’t know for sure how fast he was going, but my wife saw him and said she thinks he was going well over 100 KM/Hr. So as this jackass tears up the road, he completely loses control of the car, skids into a tree, jumps the curb, and then the car does a complete rotation while spinning ACROSS the sidewalk, taking out everything in its path! The route the idiot followed and the final placement of the car is shown here in red:

Now on most days, my wife and kids walk home by going up Chalmers to Mohawk, and then up Mohawk, so as you can see by the path this kid took, he put that car right through the sidewalk where they usually walk, at the EXACT time they usually walk it. By some miracle yesterday they went the opposite way and so were standing safely on the opposite corner when this jackass obliterated the route they are normally on.

All this time I was working away in my basement office, and I remember glancing at the clock, seeing it was 4:10 PM and wondering why it was taking the family so long to get home from the bus. Never imagining for one minute what might have just occurred I figured they were just stopping along the way to play with some of the neighborhood kids.

When my wife got home and told me the story, she realized that since she saw the whole thing she should probably go and give the police a statement, so we went back. I cannot describe to you the feeling I had seeing the tire tracks right through the exact spot where my family usually is.

To make matters worse, I saw the kid who did this standing over by the police cars with his mother. He is s typical young punk with an attitude, and we observed him laughing with one of his buddies, and then when he caught one of the neighborhood kids looking at him, he actually give this kid the “flip off” with his middle finger! The mother also proved herself to be an idiot, not offering one word of apology or show of remorse to the gathered parents standing there contemplating how close they came to losing some children that day.

My comment on this is that sometimes I walk to the bus with my wife, and I am very happy I wasn’t here yesterday because if I had been, I would have dragged that little jackass out of the car and beaten him to within an inch of his life, and then in a twist of irony I am sure I would have been the one arrested!

To top it off we found out where idiot-stick was speeding off to…to pick up his 7-year old sister from school! Sadly this kid was not hurt himself, and since he is a minor I am sure the consequences of his actions will be negligible, however the consequences to my family or any of the other families who use that bus stop could have been enormous.

So back to the title of this article, when is the government going to realize teenage kids should not be driving? Driving a car is an enormous responsibility that too many people take far too casually. A car is a multiple-thousand pound hunk of metal, propelled by extremely powerful engines. It’s not a toy, it’s a killing machine and most teenagers simply do not have the maturity to handle it.

In another example of this when we moved to this neighborhood a few years ago, there was a kid who was speeding up and down our street one day. I walked up the street and had a word, and I got the typical teenager blow off “yeah yeah, whatever”. The kid did stop speeding on our street, but then not 2 nights later he crashed while racing on another street, killing himself and his passenger, who just happened to be a kid living on our street. The only positive that came out of this tragedy is that this kid did not kill anyone of the family in the mini-van that they crashed into while racing.

We have all seen teenagers speeding through our streets, getting arrested for racing, causing accidents, etc. yet NOTHING is done to raise the driving age! I wouldn’t trust the average 16 year old with a loaded gun, so why does the government insist on letting these kids get behind the wheel of a car??

Why, in our society do the brilliant powers-that-be decree a kid shouldn’t drink alcohol until they are 19, but, by all means, go get behind the wheel of a killing machine at 16? In my opinion the change that needs to happen is to lower the drinking age to 16, and raise the driving age to 25! Who cares if a bunch of kids want to stagger around drunk, that’s a hell of a lot safer than watching them speed down suburban streets at breakneck speeds.

We can only hope that sooner or later the government gets a clue and raises the driving age. For now we are going to petition the city to put in a stop sign at that intersection – not many teenage drivers I see pay attention to stop sings anyway –and hope that this never happens again.

2007-03-28T20:14:00.000-04:00

SNEAK PEEK

I am working on a project that will allow an MSCRM user to create a Word document from a quote. All the user has to do is click a button on the Quote toolbar, and a formatted quote document will be created in Word 2007...

Here are some screenshots:

http://www.mscrmguy.com/awcquotestream/quotestream.html

2007-03-28T20:13:00.000-04:00

I just did an article on the Code Project web site for my MSCRM Vista gadget...

http://www.codeproject.com/gadgets/DynamicsCRMGadget.asp

2007-03-24T09:41:00.000-04:00

Everyone knows I am a big fan of Microsoft technology. For example recently at work I was asked to be able to speak about the business value of Blackberry, and I cannot even get that sentence out of my mouth! J

However, it continues to amaze me how complacent SO MANY people at Microsoft are. I am currently working on a deal where we have a chance to displace not 1, not 2, but 3 (that’s right, 3!) major competitors, and when I pinged some people at Microsoft to ask for help what did I get? “Check the website”. Nice. One MSFT employee actually told me to check http://arsenal/ which is a bloody Microsoft internal site! Brilliant.

Hey Microsoft employees, time to wake up! You’re getting your ASSES kicked all over the map in pretty much every product area, and for some reason the company continues to pour bad money into stupid products, ala the Zune. If it wasn’t for that damn Office cash cow, MSFT would be in serious trouble yet there is this overall attitude of complacency I just don’t get. For example take MSCRM. I work very closely with this product, and Salesforce.com now has 646,000 Subscribers!!! Holy crap! How many licenses does MSCRM have? I am not sure of the exact number today, but the latest slides I have say about 180,000. Here’s a bulletin…that’s a good old-fashioned ASS KICKING!

The Zune debacle is even worse. The iPod owns the portable music player market, much the same way Google owns search. As to whether Google owns search because it is better, or just because people like to say “Google” is up for some debate, I use http://www.live.com/ exclusively and I’ve never managed to not find something! So anyway let’s take on the iPod and release the Zune. BUT let’s not make the Zune BETTER than the iPod, and let’s certainly make sure e come up with some bizarre scheme for the online music store and use points as opposed to simple cents! Brilliant, what did that cost, about a billion dollars??

So what’s the point of this? Microsoft is BEHIND in pretty much every market segment excepting the Windows desktop and Office, and it’s time the employees started behaving as such. Many of the product groups need to adopt a “startup “mentality and when a Microsoft partner needs help, don’t just blow it off with a “look at the web site” reply…Get off your ass and let's kick some!

2007-02-02T16:11:00.000-05:00

So Vista has launched and websites everywhere are talking about how although Microsoft says it’s the most secure OS they have released for consumers, there are bound to be security holes.

Gee, do you think?

Why can’t we stop talking about this and everyone just get over the fact that ANY computer system has vulnerabilities, and those are caused by the very features people want. You want a more secure computer system? Then don’t plug it into that cable modem. Oh wait, we can’t do that because then you won’t be able to chat with your new online friend in Timbuktu and send those pictures of Uncle Nestor’s new dog. Face it folks, if you want all those great features, and you seem to, there are GOING to be risks! And please note that I did not say that not plugging into the cable modem would make the system secure, it’s just a bit more secure than the one that *is* plugged in!

People like to make that joke about cars vs. computers so let's use that analogy and ask this: are cars secure? Can someone steal your car if they REALLY want to? Hell yes! And why?? Because the doors are a possible security risk, but how would we get in the car without them or if we welded them shut to prevent access?? The starter is a possible security risk, but how we would start the car without it? And let’s not forget the windows, we could cover them up with steel plating so they couldn’t be broken and deny access to the car that way, but a window with a steel plate over it ain’t much of a window now is it?!

Does that help all you folks out there understand the problem Microsoft faces? People want features, and those features create security risks. And don’t even try and say that the Mac/UNIX/Linux is secure because if someone REALLY wanted to hack those systems, they damn well can, will, and do. It’s just that the press they would get from the 16 people who use Macs getting upset isn't worth thier time. And that includes that loser on those commercials- if Apple wanted to show Macs as cool, why didn’t they pick a cool dude???

Here endeth the lesson.

2007-01-30T17:00:00.000-05:00

Vista Sync Toy.

Since I use a USB drive for data backup, one of my favorite XP programs is SyncToy from Microsoft. Now that I am using Vista I missed this tool, so I was very happy to find SyncToy 1.4 which works with Vista!

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=E0FC1154-C975-4814-9649-CCE41AF06EB7&displaylang=en

2007-01-21T18:57:00.000-05:00

So a few weeks little Avery was running around and snapped my wife’s iPod Shuffle off her USB port. So she went out and bought a new one, and WOW. So this thing is 1 GB, rectangular in shape, and has a built-in clip. The biggest complaint I had with my Creative Zen is its size, trying to work out and/or run with the Zen is like attaching a small brick to my shorts, and I’ve dropped it several times resulting in the belt clip breaking. So today, my lovely wife surprised me with a new iPod. So my allegiance to Microsoft notwithstanding, I think I am going to love this thing! I can just clip it on my sleeve and the weight is negligible. I am still not sure how it will work with my music, stay tuned!

2007-01-19T08:02:00.000-05:00

So for some reason I have lost my icons for Office, Office Documents, and Acrobat documents in Vista.

http://www.mscrmguy.com/vista_icons.html

Hmmm....

2007-01-18T19:50:00.000-05:00

I am trying to install Visual Studio patches for Vista, but I keep getting this strange message:

I am searching like crazy trying to find a fix, so if anyone knows, please do tell!

2007-01-18T19:33:00.000-05:00

I found this 8th Grade Math test via Ben Riga's Blog

You Passed 8th Grade Math

Congratulations, you got 10/10 correct!

Could You Pass 8th Grade Math?

I always knew that 5-year engineering degree would come in handy! :)

2007-01-18T16:44:00.000-05:00

I recently saw a hypothetical situation which described an ISV who has developed a solution on Java Servlets and they are thinking about moving to MSCRM.

Here is a condensed version of how I would go about addressing this question.

First we need to find out some info about where they are today.

1. The first question I would ask is why they chose to develop with only servlets, which are traditionally a presentation layer technology, and not utilize features such as EJBs
2. I would next ask about vendors, who the web server is, what about the servlet container, is there an application server, etc. Usually those come from several sources and can be used to create some FUD around who is supporting this application, what about licensing costs of any servers, this gets passed on to the end-use resulting in higher costs. This could relate back to #1. Servlet containers can be had for free whereas full-fledged J2EE App Servers generally have high costs associated with them ala WebSphere!
3. I would next ask about their team, do they have developers who are aligned with the technology directions? What are their skill sets, if any? For all we know they could have outsourced the entire project which leads to whole different set of questions and issues! Sometimes, more often than not, it turns out a very small team of people have developed the code base, no one has documented anything, and they are not sure where the code is!
4. Are they keen to leverage some of their existing work, most probably yes, any J2EE project is a substantial work so if we can re-use some work as part of a migration strategy then great.

So those are 4 main questions which generally lead to more questions as we dig into their environment. Some strengths of the MSFT platform I usually address are:

1. People love to say Microsoft solutions are proprietary, but most people do not understand the difference between Open Source and Open Standards. For example, MSCRM adheres to open standards such as the Web Services Interoperability Basic Profile 1.1, and the utilization of a SaaS architecture for its API. This means that if an ISV embarks on a substantial project customizing MSCRM, the tools and APIs they would use, all from Microsoft, lend themselves to maintainability. If, half-way through a project the team lost some people, it is relatively easy to replace those people and ramp them up due to the consistencies of the Microsoft tools. Not so the J2EE environment where in this example we might have 5 different vendors, and the code to tie all those vendors together was probably custom written by someone on the project., In this scenario companies find themselves locked to a proprietary solution not from 1 company, but proprietary to 1 *person*!
2. What about future directions? Who are the vendors, what are their future plans, who is maintaining the products they use in their solution in the future? Let’s say they chose a more obscure servlet container suck as Gemstone/J. What happens if Gemstone goes out of business? Although Java promised a “write once, run anywhere” paradigm, the reality is this was not the case and changes almost certainly have to be made when porting from one app server to another. Similarly, what if they chose an open source container for cost reasons, and then find they need to go to a paid product? This could drive the costs of the project beyond acceptable limits. With the Microsoft platform, the web server and application server are IIS and .NET technology, a fully supported platform from Microsoft.
3. Future enhancements to their products? They develop a solution for HR, so I am betting there are *lots* of paper forms involved. This can be a logistical and storage nightmare, so what about possibly extending the solution to include document management via Sharepoint Team Services? This is yet another Microsoft product, so incorporating this into their solution (once it is developed using .NET) would be a lot less labor intensive than if they tried to hook into Sharepoint using their current servlet implementation. And I wouldn’t even want to begin to estimate what it might take to find an open source Sharepoint equivalent or develop one from scratch. In fact, a guy from Canada even has step-by-step instructions on his blog on how to hook MSCRM and Sharepoint together! J
4. If their in-house team has Java development skills, the transition to .NET will be relatively painless due to the language support. The team could use C# which is so syntactically similar to Java that I have seen Java developers productive with the language in as little as 1 day. Or their in-house team might have VB people who were not used for the current project, but could be utilized with greater productivity when they start developing with .NET.
5. By utilizing MSCRM as the basis for their development, they can significantly decrease the time it takes to implement new features. MSCRM has extensive built-in functionality that would otherwise need to be developed from scratch, so instead of concentrating on the “plumbing” the ISV can do what they do best, develop a solution based on their area of expertise and spend their time adding value to the solution.

So let’s assume the ISV likes what they hear and are interested in beginning to look at the platform, but want to leverage some of their existing technology as they transition. I would suggest a phased migration, utilizing the interoperability features of .NET to allow them to exploit the work they have done on the presentation layer using Servlets, and being by hooking their servlets into the MSCRM business logic layer via web services interoperability. Something like this:

With the business and data tiers being provided by MSCRM.

2007-01-14T18:58:00.000-05:00

2007/01/14

So the phone system at work is an IP system, and a particularly cool feature is that when I get a voicemail it comes to my email inbox. However with every cool feature comes more frustration – the VMs are saved in WAV format, which doesn’t play back on WM 10 Mobile (or whatever version is on my WM 5 Smartphone). Why is that? I have no idea.

So after a Live search (www.live.com) I found a really cool mobile player that plays WAV files:

http://tcpmp.corecodec.org/download

2006-12-22T07:14:00.000-05:00

Hi all:

Since I still need to run XP for my guitar software, I found that I really missed having the Vista sidebar. So I went looking, using http://www.live.com/, not that other search engine, and found a great post detailing how to run the sidebar on XP!

http://joejoe.org/

2006-12-06T19:53:00.000-05:00

So I fired up my MSCRM demo virtual image the other day to see the image shown to the right. Track this issue, and hopefully its resolution, here: Suspect DB

2006-12-04T18:00:00.000-05:00

The other day as I left for work my daughter, Alex, gave me a little Hello Kitty statue to put on my desk and "remind me of home" as she said. So I promised her I would, and that I would take a picture and send it to her, which she got a big kick out of! Kids are so great. :)

2006-12-04T17:52:00.000-05:00

Hi all:

Ok I've noticed some strange behavior with Vista Ultimate RTM when I start the TV window, I also get this behavior when I get a security alert from Vista. See the video here:

http://www.mscrmguy.com/vista_movie.html

John.

2006-11-29T10:33:00.000-05:00

More good stuff from Live.com The new Live mail is great!

2006-11-29T06:58:00.000-05:00

I have been searching for a WM 5 app to display Canadian weather, and so far the only one I found costs $40 and then also has a yearly subscription fee. So how happy was I to find this: http://mobile.live.com/

I guess as equally DISMAYED I was to discover it only works in the US right now. OH Canada... :(

2006-11-28T16:32:00.000-05:00

Hi all:

I saw some recent newsgroup posts about performance problems in MSCRM, and I have seen improvements by applying the steps in this document. Note that these steps may or may not fix your particular problem, but the steps have worked for me on several servers.

2006-11-28T09:03:00.000-05:00

Zune

I just read a great Business Week article on J Allard and his Entertainment and Devices Unit:

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_49/b4012001.htm

Man that must be a fun division to work in. I think going into Corporate software rather than new product development was a HUGE mistake for me. I was bored about 3 weeks after I got out of school and started my first project. All corporate projects are the same, get some old data, do something with it, create some new forms, and then put the old data back. That’s why I keep trying new things like the Vista gadgets and new ways for MSCRM to work with Office 2007, I need to think or my brain will atrophy! Anyway the new Zune sounds like a cool device, I hope it is both available and affordable up here in the frozen North.

2006-11-28T07:53:00.000-05:00

Further Blue Screen Notes

I find it funny that some people have made some jokes about that fact that I got a BSOD in Vista, which after a bit of research I traced back to Messenger. There is a fix and upgrade to Messenger 8.1 here:

http://ideas.live.com/ProgramPage.aspx?versionId=39014087-6c05-4de9-98ac-b37d7ccd5617&pageId=0

Anyway, back to the folks who are delighting in making jokes about a Vista crash. Vista, even though it shows similarities to XP, is a completely revamped OS, and so we have to EXPECT incompatibilities with existing applications. You might as well try to run an application from Windows for Workgroups 3.11 and then be surprised when it doesn’t work on Vista! Some applications will work, some will not, that’s what happens when a new OS is released!

2006-11-25T10:20:00.000-05:00

More Security Notes

A newly published whitepaper details SQL Server beats Oracle for security!!

http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2169225/microsoft-beats-oracle-security

Troy, any rebuts? :)

2006-11-23T13:55:00.000-05:00

Office 2007
So now that Vista and Office 2007 are upon us, a co-worker and I were discussing whether customers will want to upgrade and he felt they would not. This might be true, however I believe it is my job (perhaps now even more than when I was at Microsoft since now I am actually selling to customers!) to show customers the value of the new products and how they can benefit from them. Microsoft’s people-ready messaging is excellent and true, people ARE the most important part of any business and the hardest to replace. The Microsoft Office System’s goal is to enable people to collaborate and be more productive, and every business can benefit from this. So it is up to us to show customers ways in which these new products can help boost productivity and that’s where they will see the value!
As a simple example of this, look at my Vista gadget to display accounts and contacts. At first the gadget’s usefulness might not be readily apparent beyond the “cool toy” aspect, but think of the benefit to an information worker who needs to find a contact name. Instead of opening MSCRM finding the name, and clicking to open it, they can now find the name and open it with 1 click! The gadget saves them 3-4 clicks and a couple minutes which multiplied over an entire workday and entire workforces, can add up to a lot of saved time, especially in today’s hectic world where seconds matter!
Look for more tips and tricks as I ramp up on Vista and Office 2007.

2006-11-22T11:16:00.000-05:00

First Vista Blue Screen!!

Well I've been running Vista for a couple of months now, and I noted intermittent problems with MSN Messenger. From time to time Messenger will stop working and have to be re-started, but today it actually Blue Screened Vista! L I was chatting with a buddy in the UK and he asked if we could share desktops via Messenger. I had no idea so I clicked “Call Computer” in Messenger and BOOM! Up it went with a BSOD…

2006-11-21T08:44:00.000-05:00

Hi all: I have expanded the MSCRM Vista Gadget to include Contacts as well as Accounts.

More screens here: http://www.mscrmguy.com/blogs/2006_11_21.htm

2006-11-20T16:49:00.000-05:00

Hi all:

In the recent issue of Popular Science, one of my favorite magazines, I read with dismay a letter written by Troy Davis touting the bullet-proof security of Linux and Mac OS X vs. Windows. I am not sure what bothered me more, that someone so obviously ignorant of computer security trends could so authoritatively make false statements, or that PopSci printed the letter! I have a dual degree in computer science and engineering, spent the first part of my career in the Linux/Java world, and the last 5 years of my career in the Microsoft world, and I have some actual facts for Troy.

While Tory states that Windows is the most insecure computing platform available, I challenge Troy to show me the data to back up his claims. The fact is that Windows actually has better security than these other products; however it is the media that has lead to the false public perception of Windows security lagging far behind other OSes. This is because there are hundreds of millions of users of Windows so that when there is a security breach it affects far more people, and writing about these breaches with sensational headlines sells papers/magazines/online subscriptions etc. NO computer system that is plugged into the internet is secure, but the simple truth is that hackers don’t get much glory for attacking Linux or the 115 people in the world who use Macs. Unfortunately people not only believe everything they read, but they seem inclined to repeat it without the proof to back up their statements.

Troy’s suggestion that people switch OSes to have better security is ludicrous. According to Troy the solution is for everyone to stop using Windows and re-learn new OSes and applications from the ground up, costing businesses and home users untold dollars and lost productivity. Further, products such as Linux are far more difficult to properly administer than Windows is, so the end result of a mass migration to Linux would be a far less secure infrastructure than is in place today. Further, if this migration did happen, hackers attention would soon turn from Windows to whatever the new OS of choice ended up being, and soon we would see just as many new attacks highlighted in the press as there are today with Windows. Also note the attacks DO happen today, but they are simply not sensationalized as are the attacks on Windows.

If Troy, or anyone else would like to seem some actual data, please feel free to head over to my other site, http://www.mscrmguy.com/pop_sci_2006_12.htm where I have posted this article as well as some graphs showing actual data from 2004 on OS vulnerabilities. I realize 2004 is a while ago now, but does anyone think the numbers have gotten any better for Linux as more users adopt the system?! If you don’t believe my data, feel free to do a little digging on the Internet, this information is readily available!

The fact is that no OS is secure; security is an ongoing strategy that must be practiced and continually improved upon by organizations. Today’s’ secure system is tomorrows’ wide open door for hackers.
John Straumann.

PS: A SHORT list of Linux Viruses
Linux.Jac.8759Linux.Pavid (NAV)Linux.Ramen Linux.Scapler.Worm (NAV)Linux/AlfaLinux.Lion.Worm (NAV)Linux.Peelf.2132 (NAV)Linux.Ramen.Worm (NAV)Linux/Adore.worm Linux/Amdcrash Linux/DDoS-Kaiten Linux/Ehcapa.worm Linux/Exploit-Lsub Linux/Exploit-SuLinux/ForkLinux/Kaiten Linux/Lindose Linux/MightyLinux/Ramen.worm Linux/Rootkit Linux/Seclpd Linux/Slapper.worm.b Linux/Slapper.worm.d Linux/Devnull Linux/Etap Linux/Exploit-Statdx Linux/Exploit-Woot Linux/Gulzan Linux/Kokain Linux/Lion.worm Linux/Osf Linux/RedLinux/Rpcmountd Linux/Slapper.worm.a Linux/Slapper.worm.c Linux/Snoopy.b

2006-10-25T19:27:00.000-04:00

MSCRM Workflow
I am working on a demo and wanted to create a couple workflow processes to assign a new opportunity, and then fire a new sales process. So the first rule was a rule on the opportunity firing OnCreate and its tasks were:

When a new opportunity is created, assign it to Gail, our sales rep
Send Gail an email to alert her to her new opportunity

I also created a Sales Process to fire from the OnCreate event for the opportunity to carry out a number of steps. However due to the asynchronous nature of the MSCRM workflow engine, this refused to work. The first task in the sales process would not create, and when I checked the workflow monitor I noticed it paused, and if I clicked “retry” it would complete. This makes sense, I think the issue is that the sales process was firing and trying to create new tasks for the owner of the opportunity, but the opportunity had not been assigned by the previous rule yet.

So to solve this I changed the Sales Process to a manual rule, and then in the rule that fires OnCreate I put in a 1 minute wait timer, and then called the sales process as a sub process. Bingo, problem solved.

2006-10-16T09:20:00.000-04:00

As we speed toward the release of Vista and Office 2007, I have been running the Betas of both products for a month or so, and naturally this gets me thinking about new and exciting users for these new technologies with MSCRM! So on Saturday night, another ROCKING night in the burbs, I decided to get into the world of Vista sidebar gadgets.

Below are a couple screen shots of MSCRM Gadget 1...please note this is a WIP which must now be put on hold whilst I build a demo for this Wednesday, but there will be more on this topic coming soon!

Screen 1: The Sidebar Gadget

Screen 2: Clicking in the gadget to load an account record

2006-10-16T08:25:00.000-04:00

MSCRM v3 Article coming soon...

Ask several different people what Customer Relationship Management (hereafter referred to as “CRM”) software is, and you’ll likely get answers as varied as the physical characteristics of the people you ask. However out of such a poll, someone will probably give an answer such as “Sales Force Automation” or “a way to increases sales” or “a software tool to organize accounts and contacts”. While these views are not necessarily incorrect, let me illustrate what CRM truly is with an example.

I’ve just landed at La Guardia Airport in NY, and in the taxi on my way in, my favorite hotel, which recently put in a system to track flight arrivals of its preferred customers, sends me an email on my Windows Mobile device “Mr. Straumann, we see your flight has arrived and you are most probably in the taxi on the way to the hotel. You are checked into Room 1625 on our preferred floor, a single, non-smoking room with a king-sized bed, and we also assumed you would like the Tempur-pedic pillow you requested on your last visit here, so we took the liberty of putting one in your room. Please enter key code 1066 on the keypad near the door handle to enter the room, that code corresponds to your month and year of birth and should be easy for you to remember. We also note that the last time you visited us, you ordered a late dinner of a club sandwich. Would you like one sent to your room after you arrive? If so, please reply to this note and when you enter the code in the room lock we will be notified of your arrival and have your meal brought up right away. Thank you for visiting us again.”
THAT is an example of what CRM software is supposed to accomplish!

Read the full article soon....