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
Friday, April 18, 2008
Monday, March 31, 2008
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!
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!
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!
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!
Saturday, March 29, 2008
“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.
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.
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
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?? :)
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?? :)
Saturday, March 22, 2008
Friday, March 21, 2008
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
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
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
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!
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!
Friday, January 18, 2008
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
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
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
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.
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.
Saturday, January 12, 2008
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
Check it out: http://www.macnn.com/reviews/see-thru-hard-shell-case.html
Friday, December 07, 2007
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.
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
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
Outlook Connector
Thursday, July 12, 2007
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.
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.
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!
Friday, April 13, 2007
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.
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:
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.
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
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
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
I just did an article on the Code Project web site for my MSCRM Vista gadget...
http://www.codeproject.com/gadgets/DynamicsCRMGadget.asp
http://www.codeproject.com/gadgets/DynamicsCRMGadget.asp
Saturday, March 24, 2007
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!
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!
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