When working on a CRM Test environment there are many scenarios where I need to add SSL to the CRM web site such as testing Claims Authentication. Instead of getting a certificate from a 3^rd party certification authority I will just use IIS to generate my own certificates. This allows me to quickly create certificates for my testing that will valid on other test machines. Below are the steps to configure the Active Directory Certificate Service so that you can easily test SSL in your CRM environment. I will also include steps on how to install the root certification on other machine so that the certificates are valid for test clients.

Install Active Directory Certificate Services Role

Before a certificate can be created for CRM the Active Directory Certificate Services Role must be installed on the IIS Server. In these steps I am installing the role directly on the CRM Server.

a. Open Server Manager from within Administrative Tools.

b. Within Server Manager Click on Roles – Add Roles.

c. Click Next to get to the “Server Roles” page within the Add Roles Wizard.

d. Select the “Active Directory Certificate Services” Role and Click Next twice to get to the Roles Services window.

e. Select Certification Authority on the Role Services Window and Click Next.

f. Choose Enterprise for the Setup Type and Click Next.

g. Choose Root CA for the CA Type and Click Next.

h. Select Create a new private key, Click Next until the confirmation screen.

i. Click Install on the Confirmation window.

Create the Domain SSL Certificate

Now that the Active Directory Certificate Services role is installed you can generate a domain certificate for the CRM website. These steps show how to generate a wildcard certificate for the awc.local test domain that I am using. This wildcard certificate will then work with the various test orgs on this environment.

a. Open IIS Manager on the CRM Server that the Active Directory Certificate Services role was installed.

b. Open Server Certificates from the IIS Manager Home Page.

c. Click Create Domain Certificate with in the Server Certificates window.

d. Enter the Certificate Properties. Common name is for the name of the certificate. Since I am creating a wildcard I will enter *.awc.local for the Common name. Once all data is populated, Click Next.

e. Select the Online Certification Authority. The Certification Authority that was created should be displayed when you choose the Select button. Enter a Friendly name to identify the certificate and click Finish.

Add SSL Certificate to the CRM Website

Now that the certificate is created a SSL binding can be created for the CRM Web Site. Since this will be the only SSL site within IIS we will use the default port 443.

a. Open IIS Manager on the CRM Server.

b. Navigate to Microsoft Dynamics CRM from the list of Web Sites and Click Bindings within Actions on the upper right side of the window.

c. Click Add on the Site Bindings Window.

d. Select HTTPS from the Type drop down menu and then Select the Wildcard certificate from the SSL Certificate menu, Click OK and Close.

At this point the certificate is bound to the CRM website and you can open CRM to test the new SSL binding. Open a browser and enter the CRM URL. In this case I will enter the Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN) for my server (https://crmsql.awc.local/CRM). If you are using an alias you will need to create the necessary entries in DNS. CRM should open properly with the SSL URL. The SSL certificate will show up as valid. When clicking on the certificate information I can see the wildcard cert that was issued by my server.

Install CA Root Certificate on Test Client Machine

This binding will work from other test machines, but will initially be prompted because the CA Root Certificate is not trusted.

The following steps will show how to install the CA root certificate so that it’s trusted and the CRM site opens without any prompts. Opening CRM without any prompts will be needed to successfully test SSL for components on other machines such as the Outlook Client or Email Router.

a. First we need to export the CA Root Certificate.

i. Open CRM using the SSL URL on the Server that the certificate is working properly.

ii. Click on the SSL Icon and choose View certificates.

iii. Click the Certification Path on the Certificate window. Select the Root Certificate tab and Click View Certificate.

iv. Click the Details Tab for the Root Certificate and Click Copy to File. This will allow you to export the root certificate so that it can be copied and installed on another machine.

v. On the Certificate Export Wizard, Click Next.

vi. Select Cryptographic Message Syntax Standard – PKCS #7 Certificates (.P7B), Click Next.

vii. Specify a name/location to save the exported certificate, Click Next.

viii. Click Finish to complete the export of the Root Certificate. The certificate is now ready to install on other machines.

b. The following steps explain how to install the root certificate on another machine.

i. Copy the certificate file to the test machine that was receiving the certificate error. Right click on the certificate and choose Install Certificate.

ii. Click Next on the Certificate Import Wizard.

iii. Select Place all certificates in the following store and Click Browse.

iv. Select the Trusted Root Certification Authorities Store and Click OK.

v. Click Next and Finish on the Import Wizard.

vi. Click Yes on the Security Warning asking if you want to install the certificate.

vii. Click OK on the prompt stating that the Import was successful.

v. Open the CRM website using the SSL address and now the site should open without any certificate warnings.

Hopefully this will help out if you ever need to test SSL for your environment without wanting to spend money on a 3rd party certificate.

Thanks!

Jeremy Morlock

Microsoft Premier Field Engineer

Contents:

• Build number, Download Center Page, Master KB article
• CRM Premier Field Engineering Update Rollup Podcast
• CRM Update Rollup Collateral Page
• Ramp up on Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013!
• Important CRM 2013 Update Rollup considerations
• General Update Rollup notes
• OrgDbOrgSettings Tool
• Update Rollup packages available for download
• Update Rollup prerequisites
• Issues resolved by this Update Rollup
• Hotfixes and updates that you have to enable or configure manually
• Mismatched Update Rollup versions within a Microsoft Dynamics CRM deployment
• Microsoft Dynamics CRM compatibility with technology stack components 

We're proud to announce that all packages for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 Update Rollup 1 were released on Monday, December 16th 2013 to the Microsoft Download Center!  The Update Rollup 1 packages should appear on Microsoft Update in January, 2014.

Update Rollup 1 Build number:

6.0.0001.0061

Update Rollup 1 Microsoft Download Center page

Here's the "Master" Microsoft Dynamics Knowledge Base article for Update Rollup 1: (KB 2891271). Going forward, the plan is for the Master Knowledge Base article for CRM 2013 Update Rollups to be published a bit in advance of release to aid planning.

On Thursday December 19th 2013 at 12:30 PM Pacific Time Greg Nichols and Mike Gast from the Microsoft CRM Premier Field Engineering Team provided information about:

• The release of Update Rollup 1 for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013
• What's new and very cool in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013
• New fixes made available In Update Rollup 1
• Collateral available about Update Rollup 1 and CRM Update Rollups in general

on BlogTalkRadio during their Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 Update Rollup 1 Podcast

BlogTalkRadio and Internet Explorer 11 compatibility

If you're having trouble viewing the podcast when using Internet Explorer 11,

• View the Podcast in Compatibility View
  • in IE 11, select Tools (the upper right "Gear" icon) -> Compatibility View Settings -> add the blogtalkradio.com website, or
• Use the "New Window" link on the Blogtalkradio page

Note regarding Podcasts: You can make our CRM Premier Field Engineering podcasts available on Zune by using the RSS feed below.  In the Zune software, go to Collection -> Podcasts and click on the Add a Podcast button on the lower left, then enter the url for the RSS feed: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/pfedynamics.rss. After that, you can adjust the series settings like any other podcast, so you can sync with your smartphone or Zune.

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The "CRM Update Rollup Collateral Page"

For pointers to download locations, release dates, build information, and CRM Premier Field Engineering blogs and podcasts for all Microsoft Dynamics CRM Update Rollups, visit the "CRM Update Rollup Collateral Page"

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RAMP UP ON CRM 2013!

As we're just getting started with Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013, I'll provide some pointers to directly accessible ramp-up resources and some insight into what people are most excited about regarding this new major release:

Recommended Ramp-up materials:

• Microsoft Dynamics CRM Customer Center
• Microsoft Dynamics CRM Developer Center
• Microsoft Dynamics CRM IT Pro Center
• Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 Implementation Guide
• Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 SDK (Software Development Kit)
• Microsoft Dynamics CRM Team Blog
• Upgrading to the CRM 2013 User Experience

Most Popular Features in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013!

• Flat User Interface (modern look UI)
• Process driven UI
• Quick create and quick view forms
• BingMaps / Skype / Lync integration
• Social and mobile integration
• Server side sync

Business Process UI

• Rich and guided UX to implement end to end business scenarios
• Reduced number of clicks and pop ups to complete transactions
• Ability to span the process UI across entities
• Security modelling and ability to assign processes to security roles
• Ability of accessing the UI using MoCA clients

The new ‘skin’ of CRM 2013

• Flat and modern UI avoiding frequent pop ups
• Inline editing
• Quick view form enabling parent entity details in child record
• Form level notifications where errors, warnings and information can be viewed inline in the field
• Avoiding redundant ribbon buttons thus showing only which is really required
• Header controls to highlight the most relevant data of the entity
• BingMaps embedded control

Configuration & Customization

• Synchronous Workflows will help developers to quickly configure workflow instead of using a plug-in (writing code/deploying)
• Actions enable multiple operations which are frequently used to be created as single action and can be re-used to minimize Dev cycle
  • Power to create custom actions such as schedule, Escalate and Route Lead are highly beneficial as well
• Portable Business Logic This easy way avoids lots of scripting for easy validations and enables CRM functional analysts to quick add validations without touching the code base

Yammer Integration

• Native integration with Yammer and thus enabling social collaboration
• Private and Public settings to control the activity feed stream

Mobility

• MoCA (Mobile Client Application) clients and Mobile clients make the long awaited dream a reality
• Support across expected devices and browsers
• Availability of process bar and new UI in the tablet clients
• UI in MoCA clients is highly appreciable, survey shows many of them like the MoCA UI more than the native web UI

General

• Quick create forms to accelerate the record creation
• Light weight command bar UI
• Multi activity support in the collaboration area

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Important CRM 2013 Update Rollup considerations!

A common question I get is “if I either upgrade from CRM 2011 or install the RTM version of CRM 2013 (build 6.0.0000.0809), what is the equivalent CRM 2011 Update Rollup level I have?" The answer is: essentially Update Rollup 14.

Some specific port requests for post-Update Rollup 14 fixes for CRM 2011 were included the original (RTM) release of CRM 2013, and port requests for other post-Update Rollup 14 CRM 2011 fixes can be requested via the normal Support process.

One set of port requests that you may be wondering about are the dramatic changes to the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Client for Microsoft Office Outlook

• They were released via CRM 2011 Update Rollup 15 and the Critical Update for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Update Rollup 11 CRM Server and CRM for Outlook Client
• These post-Update Rollup 14 changes WERE included in the RTM version of CRM 2013, and include:
  • A feature that moves the CRM client-specific workload into its own process so that it no longer shares memory with the Microsoft Office Outlook process
    • This feature is also known as Process Isolation
  • An upgrade to Microsoft SQL Server for Windows CE 4.0 for better memory management, better caching, and connection enhancements
  • Updates to CRM for Outlook configuration files to make the CRM for Outlook SDF files compatible with SQL Server for Windows CE 4.0
  • Materialization of the Address Book Provider to reduce performance issues that are caused by large address books
  • Limits to the amount of active open forms
  • A MAPI Lock time-out
  • Hard coding of a previous registry setting that prevented pinned views from pulling down information to local SQL CE cache
    • This new DisableMapiCaching setting defaults to a value of 1
    • For more information about the behavior of this setting, see Slow Performance When Pinning Views in Microsoft Dynamics CRM

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General Upgrade Rollup Notes:

• Testing CRM 2013 Update Rollups: Best Practices
  • Microsoft Dynamics CRM Premier Field Engineering recommends doing all the standard testing you generally do for all Update Rollups, which could be the functional and performance testing that you would do with a new major release or a subset of that test plan
  • The “general rule of thumb” for test plans for Update Rollup installs are:
    • Test any changes in a pre-production environment BEFORE introducing into your production environment. Manage your risk!
    • Consider using the Performance Toolkit for Microsoft Dynamics CRM to simulate your production user load in your testing environment, to shake out any performance-related issues early. The CRM 2011 version is currently being evaluated against CRM 2013
    • Test using the permissions your most restrictive end-user roles have. Testing with CRM Administrator permissions, for example, does not give you the complete picture
    • Concentrate on your SDK customizations, JavaScript, ISV add-ons – basically anything that’s not OOB functionality or customizations done from within the UI

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 Custom Code Validation Tool

• Consider familiarizing yourselves with this tool!
• The Custom Code Validation tool for CRM 2013 is mostly the same as the Code Validation Tool for CRM 2011 UR12; the 2011 version has been deprecated and is no longer available. We added some additional checks for code that references the 2007 endpoint or other functionality that has been deprecated in CRM in 2013. And, most of the checks in the tool were built into the CRM 2013 Server installer as validation checks
• Note that the URL for the CRM 2011 version of the tool now directs to the CRM 2013 version
• Use the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 Custom Code Validation Tool to identify potential issues with custom JavaScript in JavaScript libraries and HTML web resources. When using JavaScript code in Dynamics CRM, it is possible that some code will stop working or cause an error when you upgrade. The Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Custom Code Validation Tool helps identify potential problems so that a developer can fix them

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NEW RELEASE REGARDING OrgDbOrgSettings!

You're probably familiar with the OrgDbOrgSettings command line tool (mentioned above) released by the CRM Product Group in the "Tools" package that is updated and released with each set of Update Rollup packages.  With it, you configure some .xml and call your .xml with the command line utility described in KB 2691237. However, you may be daunted by configuring this .xml, to the point that you may not use the tool, or use it minimally - not exploring the many options outlined in KB 2691237 that may be of use to you.  Well, the Microsoft Dynamics PFE team now has another option for you!  By popular demand, our esteemed CRM PFE colleague Sean McNellis has developed a tool  - a CRM 2011 / CRM 2013 managed solution - that provides you with an easy-to-use GUI with which you can configure all of the options outlined in the Knowledge Base on a per-tenant basis.  Feel free to download it, install it, and check it out... I sure use it!

This is a FREE downloadable tool - the "Dynamics CRM 2011 Organization Settings Editor".  Check it out; the download page has screenshots and information that will help you make good use of the tool.  Sean has also published a Premier Field Engineering blog: "Azure Mobile + JavaScript + WebResources = Easy Editing of OrgDBOrgSettings in Dynamics CRM 2011!" to share more details on the tool. It is currently updated with settings for CRM 2011 Update Rollup 16 and CRM 2013 Update Rollup 1, and he takes pride in keeping it updated as new Update Rollups are released. Thanks, Sean!

Note: there is a code issue with the CRM Client for Microsoft Outlook that was resolved in Update Rollup 16 Client packages.  Do not set either the AddressBookMaterializedViewsEnabled or DisableMapiCaching settings in the Organization entity metadata via the OrgDbOrgSettings tool in the Update Rollup Tools package or the Organizational Settings Editor on Codeplex if you are not running CRM 2011 Update Rollup 16 or higher on the Client.  Also, do not set this key prior to the next major release of CRM 2013.

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Update Rollup 1 packages are available for download via: 

• The Update Rollup 1 Microsoft Download Center page - released December 16th, 2013
• The Microsoft Update Catalog - released January 27th, 2014
• The Microsoft Update detection / installation process

to update the Dynamics CRM Product installations listed in this Microsoft Knowledge base article:

Microsoft Dynamics CRM Installations, Updates and Documentation

Note: Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 Updates will be pushed via Microsoft Update as Important updates

• Client packages installed manually by downloading the packages and running install will require local administrator privileges. If the client packages are installed via Microsoft Update or SCCM (System Center Configuration Manager), they will not require local administrator privileges
• Consider using Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) or similar software distribution technologies to distribute Dynamics CRM Update Rollups internally.  WSUS is a locally managed system that works with the public Microsoft Update website to give system administrators more control. By using Windows Server Update Services, administrators can manage the distribution of Microsoft hotfixes and updates released through Automatic Updates to computers in a corporate environment
• For help with installation please see the Installation Information section of the Service Pack 1 Update Rollup 2 "master" Microsoft Knowledge Base article
• Please review my former teammate Jon Strand's blog posting "CRM 2011: Silently Installing Update Rollups" which provides details on installing CRM Outlook client update rollups "silently" in order to limit end-user interruption, which also applies to CRM 2013 and CRM 2015 Update Rollups and Service Packs

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Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 Update Rollup 1 Prerequisites:

• Essentially the prerequisites listed in the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 Implementation Guide download for the various CRM components serviced

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Issues resolved via Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 Update Rollup 1: 

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Update Rollup 1 is the first of a series of cumulative Update Rollups that include fixes for the issues that are or will be documented in the "Master Knowledge Base Articles" for CRM 2013 Update Rollups.  As they are cumulative, Update Rollup 2 will contain all fixes shipped via Update Rollups 1 and 2... you get the idea.

Hotfixes and updates that were released as individual fixes before the Update Rollup 1 release:

No issues were fixed and delivered to requesting customers prior to Update Rollup 1 release as Critical On Demand (COD) fixes.

Fixes released via CRM 2013 Update Rollup 1:

• Publishing a CRM report fails as the parent report already links to another report with same name
• Invalid Argument when navigating to view with related entity lookup
• The chart (for any other entity) does not display in Korean due to System.ArgumentException: "Value of 'Malgun Gothic, Segoe UI, 9.5px' is not valid for 'units'."
• Script error occurs when moving from a form. "Unable to get property 'get_filterType' of undefined or null reference"
• Disabling checkbox fields using the JavaScript API does not work
• Creating a workflow to update an appointment with fields from the regarding Lead field fails. "An unexpected error occurred."
• Hiding the last field of a section does not hide the section. Hiding the last field of a tab does not collapse the tab
• Unable to create automatic full address field workflows, as the spaces and tabs are removed if there are no other symbols like comma
• Using the Quick Search in Outlook and clicking Advanced Find right afterwards, the Advanced Find filter is populated with irrelevant criteria
• Re-import of existing solution fails with The label for base language code 1033 is not set
• Users cannot associate multiple records at once for N:N relationships
• CRM 2013 no longer warns you when you are about to delete a parent record that child records with cascade delete set on their relationships to the parent will also be deleted
• Unable to set a web resource to visible in script if 'Visible by default' not set in the Designer
• You´ve created a new business process flow and assigned that process flow to the security role of "sales manager", "system administrator" and "system customizer"
  • You publish this modification and expect the process the be visible only for these security roles
  • Instead, the BPF business process flow is hidden for all users
• When data is entered into a form, the Save button can be clicked multiple times which results in multiple of the same record being created
• For a custom duration field Xrm.Page.getAttribute("durationfield").getValue() method returns a formatted value like 30 minutes instead of 30 as expected
• When organization is deleted and then immediately imported back, import organization wizard unexpectedly displays a warning about version mismatch
• Autosave off: Entity form loses command bar after navigating away and re-opening
• Consider you've created a Business Process for cases having a related task stage with several steps and you'd like to translate all stages to different language
  • Your solution contains task and case entity as well as Business Process
  • You're exporting translation files and try to edit those
  • You'll find all stage names from case entity, but you do not find those of the related task step
  • Therefore you cannot translate those
• "Email a link" URL does not navigate to the specified entity if opened in existing browser tab
• Errors occur when using different country formats with currency attributes
• When browsing to various locations in CRM, a JavaScript exception is thrown that reports "Object expected"
• The .addCustomFilter javascript function does not work properly
• Workflow triggered on Before Delete event cannot be imported in a new organization
• When email activity with unresolved email recipient is created and saved, on load on email, value in TO field is hidden, field is empty
• Not able to see "Page Index" on subgrids from dashboards
• Published customization changes do not roll down to mobile client consistently
• Opportunity closed as won does not take custom status reason while closing
• Notes control shows time but not date for notes created before yesterday
• Mobile clients crash with UI Error: "We're sorry. Sorry, something went wrong while initializing the app. Please try again, or restart the app"
• Access team does not use correct metadata driven by Advanced Find view and hence fails in Mobile Clients
• If you create a new email message in the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 web application, you discover that you cannot modify the Description field when using the latest version of Google Chrome

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Hotfixes and updates that you have to enable or configure manually

Occasionally, updates released via Update Rollups require manual configuration to enable them. Microsoft Dynamics CRM Update Rollups are always cumulative; for example, Update Rollup 2 will contain all fixes previously released via Update Rollup 1 as well as fixes newly released via Update Rollup 2. So if you install Update Rollup 2 on a machine upon which you previously installed no Update Rollups, you will need to manually enable any desired fixes for Update Rollups 1-2:

• Update Rollup 1: no updates requiring manual configuration

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Mismatched Update Rollup versions within a Microsoft Dynamics CRM deployment

In a scenario where you may be running many client workstations with Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 for Microsoft Office Outlook, a common question is whether it is supported to run mismatched versions. For example, where Update Rollup 2 has been installed on the CRM Server but the Outlook clients are still on Update Rollup 1, or where Update Rollup 1 is on the CRM server but due to updates available to the Outlook client you have decided to install Update Rollup 2 on the clients without installing Update Rollup 1 on the server.

The general rule of thumb is to try to keep the versions in sync as much as possible, and deltas of more than one version between client and server are not supported.  So ideally, you would be running Update Rollup 2 (when it is released) on your CRM Servers with Update Rollup 1 or 2 on your Outlook clients. However, it is permissible (though not recommended as a long-term solution) to run mismatched Update Rollup versions on Outlook client and server, as Microsoft does do some testing of such combinations.

However, regarding the other Update Rollups (for example Update Rollups for the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 Email Router or Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 SSRS Data Connector), it is not supported nor recommended to run mismatched versions. A best practice is to update these components at the same time you update your CRM Server.  Do the best you can to keep these Update Rollup versions in sync.

For more information, see the blog posting "User experience while accessing CRM 2011 application servers while Update Rollups are being applied", which still applies to Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013

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Microsoft Dynamics CRM compatibility with technology stack components: Internet Explorer, Windows Client and Server, Office, .NET Framework, and more

The Microsoft Dynamics CRM Engineering team consistently tests Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 against pre-release and release versions of technology stack components that Microsoft Dynamics interoperates with. When appropriate, Microsoft will release enhancements via future Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 Update Rollups or new major version releases to assure compatibility with future releases of these products. This compatibility matrix is updated via this Microsoft Knowledge Base article: Microsoft Dynamics CRM Compatibility List.

Greg Nichols
Dynamics CRM Senior Premier Field Engineer
Microsoft Corporation

Updated: 10/27/2014

The CRM 2011 White Paper & Technical Documentation blog post that I wrote with all the links to the white papers was very popular, so I am doing a similar post for CRM 2013.  I will try to update this blog post quarterly with new white papers as well.

I am often finding myself searching for CRM 2013 White Papers & Technical Documentation URL’s to reference or send to customers and while Bing works well to find these individually, I thought it would be nice to just try include them all in a single URL for easy reference.  There are some other good blogs out there with similar lists, but I can’t update those, so I wanted my own list.  I will try keep this updated as new white papers are released also.

Enjoy!

Shawn Dieken

Follow the conversation:
@sdieken
@pfedynamics | http://www.pfedynamics.com

I am pleased to announce the General Availability of RAP (Risk Assessment Program) as a Service for Dynamics CRM. This Microsoft Premier Service takes our existing Health Check to the next level with on-demand data collection and analysis to give you the flexibility to check and re-check the state of your system whenever you want as many times as you want with regular updates to best practice guidance for up to a year.*

The best part is you still get to work with the same experienced Dynamics CRM Premier Field Engineers who deliver Health Checks today to make sure you understand the assessment results in the context of your specific deployment and make sure your questions get answered.

This service is available for a single deployment of Dynamics CRM 2011 with up to 5 Organizations and up to 5 Dynamics CRM Application Servers.**

Support for Dynamics CRM 2013 and CRM On Line should be available later in 2014 - I'll provide an update when dates are determined.

What is available in RAP as a Service for Dynamics CRM?

We are checking the following categories:

• Dynamics CRM system configuration and settings
• SQL Server and database configuration
• Event logs information
• Operating system information and settings
• Operational Excellence

Learn more about RAP as a Service here:

https://services.premier.microsoft.com/assess

• Dynamics CRM RAP as a Service Datasheet
• Dynamics CRM RAP as a Service Prerequisites

Talk to your Microsoft Technical Account Manager (TAM) if you’re interested in getting started with RAP as a Service for your Dynamics CRM environment or if you just want to know more about it.

* An active Microsoft Premier Support contract is required to use the online portal and tools.

** RAP as a Service for Dynamics CRM can be used to assess a single Dynamics CRM deployment. This service is available for deployments with more than 5 Organizations / Application servers, but these are considered custom engagements that must be scoped with an engineer.

Thanks,

Brian Bakke

Microsoft Premier Field Engineer

I recently ran into a problem when trying to view the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 Implementation Guide (IG) .chm file.

I was able to view the contents in the left hand navigation and also search for content, but I was only able to see a blank white screen on the right hand side.  This is because of a built in Windows security feature that's implemented on certain file types downloaded from the Internet.  This KB article has more details on this security feature.

I ran into a similar security problem with the CRM 2011 Implementation Guide, so it was easy to fix, but I know this could be troublesome for others as well.  So, I wanted to share this blog post with you in case you run into this issue.

I had to right click and go to the Properties of the .chm file and click Unblock.  Then I was able to view the CRM 2013 IG .chm file successfully.

Hope this helps!

Thanks!
Shawn Dieken

Follow the conversation:
@sdieken
@pfedynamics | http://www.pfedynamics.com

Here are the detailed steps to resolve this issue:

1. Navigate to the folder you extracted the Implementation Guide files | Right Click on the .chm file | Select Properties.

2. Select the 'Unblock' button at the bottom of the General tab and then click OK.

You should now be able to view and search the CRM 2013 Implementation Guide chm file successfully.

Contents:

• Build number, Download Center Page, Master KB article
• CRM Premier Field Engineering Update Rollup Podcast
• CRM Update Rollup Collateral Page
• Update Rollup News!
• Cumulative Update Rollup changes
• OrgDbOrgSettings Tool
• Deferring database updates
• General Update Rollup notes
• Update Rollup packages available for download
• Update Rollup prerequisites
• Issues resolved by this Update Rollup
• Hotfixes and updates that you have to enable or configure manually
• Mismatched Update Rollup versions within a Microsoft Dynamics CRM deployment
• Microsoft Dynamics CRM compatibility with technology stack components

We're proud to announce that all packages for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Update Rollup 16 were released on Wednesday, January 22nd, 2014 to the Microsoft Download Center!  The Update Rollup 16 packages should appear on Microsoft Update in February, 2014.

Update Rollup 16 Build number:

5.0.9690.3911

Update Rollup 16 Microsoft Download Center page

Here's the "Master" Microsoft Dynamics Knowledge Base article for Update Rollup 16: (KB 2872369).

On Friday, January 24th 2014 at 9 AM Pacific Greg Nichols and Ryan Anderson from the Microsoft CRM Premier Field Engineering Team will provide information about:

• The release of Update Rollup 16 for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011
• New fixes made available In Update Rollup 16
• Collateral available about Update Rollup 16 and CRM Update Rollups in general

on BlogTalkRadio during their Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Update Rollup 16 Podcast.

Note regarding Podcasts: You can make our CRM Premier Field Engineering podcasts available on Zune by using the RSS feed below.  In the Zune software, go to Collection -> Podcasts and click on the Add a Podcast button on the lower left, then enter the url for the RSS feed: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/pfedynamics.rss. After that, you can adjust the series settings like any other podcast, so you can sync with your smartphone or Zune.

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The "CRM Update Rollup Collateral Page"

For pointers to download locations, release dates, build information, and CRM Premier Field Engineering blogs and podcasts for all Microsoft Dynamics CRM Update Rollups, visit the "CRM Update Rollup Collateral Page"

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Update Rollup 16 News!

Update Rollup 16 is one of the larger CRM 2011 Update Rollups released, including over 140 fixes.  As mentioned earlier, we plan on including the Update Rollup 16 fixes in Update Rollup 2 for CRM 2013

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Update Rollup 16 is a collection of fixes for issues reported by customers or found by Microsoft's Engineering Team, plus changes to provide support for related technology components.

Update Rollup 16 news that you need to know because Update Rollups are cumulative, so these significant changes are also in Update Rollup 16!

• UR12 includes the "Microsoft Dynamics CRM December 2012 Service Update"  See:
  • Bob Stutz's blog posting "Announcing Microsoft Dynamics CRM December 2012 Service Update"
  • Microsoft Dynamics CRM December 2012 Service Update - Release Preview Guide - November 2012
• Additional cross-browser compatibility provided
  • The December 2012 Service Update component of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Update Rollup 12 introduces additional browser compatibility for Firefox, Chrome, and Safari
    • For more information, see the Knowledge Base Article 2784954: Browser compatibility introduced with Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Update Rollup 12 or the December 2012 Service Update
    • For more information about how this affects your code additional tips see Write JavaScript for Multiple Browsers and http://bit.ly/10hcxfG.
• Indexes added to support the Update Rollup 10 Quick Find Optimizations
  • Update Rollup 12 includes new indexes for the following entities in the Quick Find Search Optimization feature. To fully reap the benefits of the platform changes included in Update Rollup 10, indexing is needed.  The indexes created are listed below:
    • Cases
    • Opportunities
    • Competitors
    • Contact (the Phone Number fields)
    • Business Unit
    • Connection
    • Connection Role
    • KB Article
    • Lead
    • Product
    • Sales Literature
  • These indexes are created during the Update Rollup 12 installation and you may notice that part of the installation will take longer to complete. The reason for this is that the indexes need to be populated and based on the size of your dataset the completion time will vary
    • Note: Documentation provided via the Optimizing Performance of Quick Find queries section of the Optimizing and Maintaining the Data Tier section of the Optimizing and Maintaining a Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Server Infrastructure whitepaper was published when Update Rollup 10 was released to the Microsoft Download Center. So, you may have already added Quick Find-related indexes based on some of the entities listed above. So keep in mind that Update Rollup 12 installation may overwrite some of the indexing you previously added
• Enhancements to Activity Feeds
  • The enhancements made to the activity feeds include a new feature called Like/Unlike
  • With this feature, you can express your immediate feedback about a post
  • For more information, see Like/Unlike
• Updated User Experience for Sales and Customer Service and Product Update Functionality for Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online
  • The Microsoft Dynamics CRM December 2012 Service Update introduces a variety of new features and functionality, including an updated user experience. For Sales and Customer Service users, the updated user experience provides a new process flow visualization, which appears at the top of the forms, such as the Opportunity , Lead or Case form. The process flow guides users through the various phases of the sales and customer service processes
  • For trials and subscriptions initiated after December 2012, the updated Sales and Customer Service user experience is included by default. Existing Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online customers have an option of adding the updated user experience to the Opportunity , Lead and Case forms by installing the Product Updates. This lets Administrators install selected feature updates based upon the specific needs of their organizations. The Product Updates are installed by using the Microsoft Dynamics CRM web application; they cannot be installed programmatically
  • For more details, see What's New for Developers for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 and Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online
• Custom Workflow Activities for Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online
  • Custom workflow activities can now be registered and executed on Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online. For more information about how to use custom workflow activities in partial trust (isolation mode)
  • For more details, see What's New for Developers for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 and Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online
• Developer Toolkit Support for Microsoft Visual Studio 2012
  • The Developer Toolkit for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 and Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online now supports Microsoft Visual Studio 2012. The installer can be found in the SDK download in the sdk\tools\developertoolkit\ folder
• Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Software Development Kit (SDK) updated December 19th, /2013 for Update Rollup 15 (version 5.0.18)
  • SDK download location
  • SDK Online location
  • Developers, please note the SDK Extensions for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 and Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online update
• Bulk Data Load performance enhancements
  • To support bulk data load scenarios, this release introduces the ExecuteMultipleRequest message. This message supports the execution of multiple message requests using a single web method call. ExecuteMultipleRequest accepts an input collection of message requests, executes each of the message requests in the order they appear in the input collection, and optionally returns a collection of responses containing each message’s response or the error that occurred. Processing requests in bulk results in lower network traffic and higher message processing throughput
  • For more information, see Use ExecuteMultiple to Improve Performance for Bulk Data Load
• Activity Feeds changes
  • Microsoft Dynamics CRM Activity Feeds provide real-time notifications and quick sharing of information through short updates. These updates appear on your personal wall in the What's New area of the Workplace . Activity Feeds enable you to follow and learn about important activities that take place around people, accounts, contacts, leads, and anything else that you care about
  • Updates can be posted manually by you, or automatically based on predefined system rules through a workflow. Activity Feeds can also be posted to by external applications through the Microsoft Dynamics CRM web services API. Activity Feeds expose Microsoft Lync real-time presence functionality so that you can initiate communication activities such as IM, phone calls, and emails. For more information, see Activity Feeds Entities
• More performance and stability-related fixes, including fixes to the CRM Client for Microsoft Outlook
• Contains all hotfixes / updates released in earlier Update Rollups
• Quick Find performance optimizations and EnableRetrieveMultipleOptimization SQL query performance optimizations (originally released in Update Rollup 10)

For Microsoft Dynamics CRM business solutions that include an entity with a large dataset, record retrieval and grid rendering performance can be negatively impacted for users that do not have global access to all records associated with that entity. Code changes to mitigate this behavior first appeared in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0, and have been fine-tuned since then.

With Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Update Rollup 10 and later, big advancements have been made to optimize the performance of queries against large datasets by adjusting specific “statistical” settings to address the issue. Should this fail to achieve desired levels of performance, adjust the value associated with EnableRetrieveMultipleOptimization (ERMO) setting. You may have heard these changes described at this year's Convergence.

A first step in efforts to optimize the performance of queries against large data sets is to make adjustments to the “statistical” settings that affect the behavior of RetrieveMultiple queries. Although you can configure these settings by modifying the Windows Registry (under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\MSCRM) on the each of the Web servers that is used in a deployment, we recommend that these settings be configured by using the OrgDbOrgSettings, which will ensure that the configuration applies to a specific organization. For additional information about configuring these settings by using the OrgDbOrgSettings, and to download the tool that makes the OrgDbOrgSettings changes you desire, see the Microsoft Knowledge Base article titled "OrgDBOrgSettings Tool for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011" (KB 2691237)

If making adjustments to these settings does not yield satisfactory levels of performance, then consider adjusting the value of the EnableRetrieveMultipleOptimization (ERMO) setting. The ERMO setting is commonly used to limit the duration of certain long running queries; specifically, to overcome issues related to local or deep business unit access within Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 security roles.

Many more details describing appropriate scenarios for the available settings are already available via the Microsoft Download Center in a revised version of the whitepaper "Optimizing and Maintaining the Performance of a Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Server Infrastructure", in the sections “Optimizing the Performance of Queries against Large Datasets” and “Optimizing the Performance of Quick Find Queries”. The details will appear in the MSDN version of this whitepaper as quickly as possible.

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NEW RELEASE REGARDING OrgDbOrgSettings!

You're probably familiar with the OrgDbOrgSettings command line tool (mentioned above) released by the CRM Product Group in the "Tools" package that is updated and released with each set of Update Rollup packages.  With it, you configure some .xml and call your .xml with the command line utility described in KB 2691237. However, you may be daunted by configuring this .xml, to the point that you may not use the tool, or use it minimally - not exploring the many options outlined in KB 2691237 that may be of use to you.  Well, the Microsoft Dynamics PFE team now has another option for you!  By popular demand, our esteemed CRM PFE colleague Sean McNellis has developed a tool  - a CRM 2011 / 2013 managed solution - that provides you with an easy-to-use GUI with which you can configure all of the options outlined in the Knowledge Base on a per-tenant basis.  Feel free to download it, install it, and check it out... I sure use it!

This is a FREE downloadable tool - the "Dynamics CRM 2011 Organization Settings Editor".  Check it out; the download page has screenshots and information that will help you make good use of the tool.  Sean has also published a Premier Field Engineering blog: "Azure Mobile + JavaScript + WebResources = Easy Editing of OrgDBOrgSettings in Dynamics CRM 2011!" to share more details on the tool. It is currently updated to include setting for CRM 2011 Update Rollup 16 and CRM 2013 Update Rollup 1, and he takes pride in keeping it updated. Thanks, Sean!

Note: there is a code issue with the CRM Client for Microsoft Outlook that was resolved in Update Rollup 16 Client packages.  Do not set either the AddressBookMaterializedViewsEnabled or DisableMapiCaching settings in the Organization entity metadata via the OrgDbOrgSettings tool in the Update Rollup Tools package or the Organizational Settings Editor on Codeplex if you are not running CRM 2011 Update Rollup 16 or higher on the Client.  Also, do not set this key prior to the next major release of CRM 2013.

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NOTE REGARDING "Deferring Database Updates when installing CRM 2011 Update Rollups"

My esteemed PFE teammate Sean McNellis published a blog you should be aware of regarding the possibility of deferring the CRM database updates when installing CRM 2011 Update Rollups.  Essentially, Dynamics CRM 2011 Update Rollup executable packages automatically process and update the organization database updates during the installation.  If your deployment has several large tenants or just one very large tenant you may prefer to first install the “binary” updates and worry about applying the database updates after the binary installation of the rollup (on an organization by organization basis). This would put the control and timing of when to update organizations from a SQL perspective in the hands of the administrator, and may make troubleshooting easier.

This feature allows you to separate the installation of the binary updates (DLL’s, executables, etc) from the installation of the database components (updated stored procedures, UDFs (user-defined functions), schema updates, out-of-box index changes, etc). Both updates still need to be completed as part of the update but you can now separately manage and execute those operations. This also allows you to retry database updates if they timeout or do not complete, without jeopardizing the installation binary updates.

I strongly urge you to read the entire blog to see if it applies to your needs.  Thanks again, Sean!

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General Update Rollup Notes:

• Testing Update Rollups: Best Practices
  • Premier Field Engineering recommends treating Update Rollup 12 (and above) testing like testing a new, major CRM release because of the introduction of new functionality introduced with the December 2012 Service Release. Do all the standard testing like you generally do for all UR’s, but then also all the functional and performance testing that you would do with a new major release
  • The “general rule of thumb” for test plans for Update Rollup installs are:
    • Test any changes in a pre-production environment BEFORE introducing into your production environment. Manage your risk!
    • Consider using the Performance Toolkit for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 to simulate your production user load in your testing environment, to shake out any performance-related issues early
    • Test using the permissions your end-user roles (most restrictive) have. Testing with CRM Administrator permissions, for example, does not give you the complete picture
    • Concentrate on your SDK customizations, JavaScript, ISV add-ons – basically anything that’s not OOB functionality or customizations done from within the UI

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 and 2013 Custom Code Validation Tool

• Consider familiarizing yourselves with this tool!
• The Custom Code Validation tool for CRM 2013 is mostly the same as the Code Validation Tool for CRM 2011 UR12; the 2011 version has been deprecated and is no longer available. We added some additional checks for things that reference the 2007 endpoint or other things that will go away in 2013, so it's best to start removing them now. And, most of the checks in the tool were built into the installer for CRM 2013 as validation checks
• Note that the URL for the CRM 2011 version of the tool now directs to the CRM 2013 version
• Use the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Custom Code Validation Tool to identify potential issues with custom JavaScript in JavaScript libraries and HTML web resources. The Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online Q2 2012 Service Update and Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Update Rollup 9 include significant changes in the web application in order to be able to support a variety of browsers such as Safari, Chrome, and Firefox. When using JavaScript code in Dynamics CRM, it is possible that some code will stop working or cause an error when you upgrade. The Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Custom Code Validation Tool helps identify potential problems so that a developer can fix them
• Update Rollup 12+ require Microsoft .NET Framework 4
• Update Rollup 6 established a new servicing baseline. This will enable uninstalls of some future CRM 2011 Update Rollups, but this also means that Update Rollup 6 is prerequisite for installation of all future Microsoft CRM 2011 Update Rollups starting with Update Rollup 7
• A database created with Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Update Rollup 6 or a higher version cannot be imported to a deployment of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Update Rollup 5 or an earlier version. This scenario is not supported.  Best practice is to import databases or customizations between environments that are at the same Update Rollup level
• As Update Rollup 15 is cumulative, containing all changes released in earlier Update Rollup releases, it also contains the Dynamics CRM Q4 Service Update features released via Update Rollup 6.  Some of these features include:
  • Outlook Client Updates:
    • Dialog Enhancements
    • Data Visualization Enhancements:
      • Chart Designer Enhancements
      • New Chart Types
    • Data Management Enhancements to:
      • Auditing
      • Duplicate Detection
    • Activity Feeds
      • Listening in on important activities in Social Media that take place around the people, accounts, contacts, leads or opportunities that you care about, including a Windows 7.5 phone application: "Business Hub"
      • Update Rollup 5 does not install Activity Feeds:
        • New organizations on CRM Online will have this Solution automatically provisioned
        • Existing Online or On Premise organizations must download and import the solution from the Dynamics Marketplace

For more information about the Dynamics CRM Q4 2011 Service Update features, consult:

• Microsoft Dynamics CRM: The Road Ahead

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Update Rollup 16 packages are available for download via: 

• The Update Rollup 16 Microsoft Download Center page (released January 22nd, 2014)
• The Microsoft Update Catalog  - all packages have a planned release date in February, 2014
• The Microsoft Update detection / installation process
  • Note: Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Updates will be pushed via Microsoft Update as Important updates
  • Client packages installed manually by downloading the packages and running install will require local administrator privileges. If the client packages are installed via Microsoft Update or SCCM (System Center Configuration Manager), they will not require local administrator privileges
  • Consider using Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) or similar software distribution technologies to distribute Dynamics CRM Update Rollups internally.  WSUS is a locally managed system that works with the public Microsoft Update website to give system administrators more control. By using Windows Server Update Services, administrators can manage the distribution of Microsoft hotfixes and updates released through Automatic Updates to computers in a corporate environment
  • For help with installation please see the Installation Information section of the Update Rollup 16 "master" Microsoft Knowledge Base article
  • Please review my teammate Shawn Dieken's superb (and recently updated) blog posting "How to install Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 without an Internet Connection" which provides details on how to set up an install on a machine without access to the Internet
  • Please review my former teammate Jon Strand's equally superb blog posting "CRM 2011: Silently Installing Update Rollups" which provides details on installing CRM Outlook client update rollups "silently" in order to limit end-user interruption

for these CRM components:

NOTE: On Jan. 20th, 2012 these installation files were updated to include CRM 2011 Update Rollup 6 (Build 05.00.9690.1992)

• Microsoft Dynamics CRM Server 2011
• Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 for Microsoft Office Outlook
• Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 E-mail Router
• Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Report Authoring Extension (Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 BIDS (Microsoft SQL Server 2008 or 2008 R2 Business Intelligence Development Studio) Fetch Extension)
• Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Language Pack (aka Multilanguage User Interface, MUI)
• Note: the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 List Component for Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 cannot be patched via an Update Rollup package.  Instead, it will be serviced (if necessary) via a new downloadable version from the Microsoft Download Center

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 Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Update Rollup 16 Prerequisites:

• Essentially the prerequisites listed in the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Implementation Guide download or online versions for the various CRM components serviced
• You must have Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Update Rollup 6 installed (build 5.0.9690.1992) to apply this Update Rollup

Note regarding Microsoft Dynamics CRM Stack Technology Compatibility:

Do you want to know if certain Service Packs or versions of a Microsoft product are supported with Dynamics CRM? Now we have all of this in one “living" Knowledge Base article: the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Compatibility List.  For example, you can use this KB article to determine the latest Microsoft SQL Server major version and Service Pack that is supported. Microsoft lists new products like Internet Explorer 10, Microsoft Windows 8, and Microsoft Office 2013 Preview as TBD until testing is complete; generally near General Availability (GA) of that product.

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Issues resolved via Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Update Rollup 16: 

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Update Rollup 16 is the fifteenth (considering that Update Rollup 9 was not released publicly) of a series of cumulative Update Rollups that include fixes for the issues that are or will be documented in the "Master Knowledge Base Articles" for CRM 2011 Update Rollups.  As they are cumulative, Update Rollup 16 contains all fixes shipped via Update Rollups 1-16, including fixes that were never publicly released via Update Rollup 9.

• Emails generated by RightFax software are not tracked by CRM when using Exchange 2010
• UnhandledException: Microsoft Dynamics CRM has experienced an error. Reference number for administrators or support: #3244E1C6 when deleting a solution
• Email attachments are not being deleted from the dbo.Attachment table when their parent record is deleted
• SSL Offloading does not work when CRM is not using Claims/IFD authentication
• OverriddenCreatedOn* attribute is missing from V3 Custom Entities
• Clicking on report preview throws error on an Updated Organization from Update Rollup 6:
  • "HttpUnhandledException: Microsoft Dynamics CRM has experienced an error. Reference number for administrators or support: #3423D182"
• When you click to create a folder for a record in CRM 2011 the SharePoint page is shown instead of the list part grid page. This causes confusion with customers
• Conditional formatting breaks page navigation in view within CRM for Outlook client
• When you select an email that is tracked in CRM, and you have the reading pane viewable for emails, Outlook may hang or become unresponsive.
  • Once Outlook returns controls and becomes responsive you notice that the Track in CRM form region for the tracked in CRM email contains a large number of parties on the TO, CC, or BCC
• Retry logic causes unexpected results on some OrganizationServiceProxy methods
• Appointment created and deleted from the web will only be deleted from the organizers Outlook calendar. Occurs when the meeting organizer sends Outlook invitations
• When you attempt to configure the outlook client for an organization and the organization friendly name matches an organization that you already have configured, you will be prompted that an organization with that display name already exists.
  • If you then correct the display name and proceed with the configuration, configuration will succeed.
  • However the next time that you launch the configuration wizard the wizard will fail to launch. "There is a problem communicating with the Microsoft Dynamics CRM server. The server might be unavailable. Try again later. If the problem persists, contact your system administrator."
• When you have more subjects in the subject tree than can be viewed without a scrollbar, the scrollbar is not shown in IE or FireFox.The scrollbar is shown correctly in Chrome
• When you attempt to view html web resources in the CRM web or outlook client application by opening them from the ribbon, the web resources that are shown are old versions.
  • This occurs even after you have published changes to the web resources. If you clear temporary internet files the web resources are shown correctly
• When you create a process step using create, update, or send email step and you put in the body of the email more than 65K characters and then publish and execute the process the step will fail
• Outlook Appointment Form is not saving fields updated by Silverlight / JavaScript
• A 404 error is seen when accessing an organization if:
  • Prior to getting the 404 error you deleted thousands of managed optionset values through the SDK or UI without replacing those deleted optionset values with new values
  • Then you published customizations
• Deployment Manager and Plugin Registration performance is slow due to Domain Controller communication
• Appointments and Service appointments are automatically shared with the user that shared the record
• Organizations that were upgraded from Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 and have existing ISV.config customizations in place may encounter situations when the import of managed solutions fails to update or overwrite components in the ribbon that were created as part of the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 upgrade
• Searching for a contact in address book fails raising this error:
  • "The Contacts folder associated with this address list could not be opened; it may have been moved or deleted, or you do not have permissions. For information on how to remove this folder from the Outlook Address Book, see Microsoft Outlook Help"
  • Or, the data in the columns is not correct
• Outlook pops up error if clicking CRM folders before the loading of CRM toolbar:
  • "Microsoft CRM has encountered a problem and needs to close. We are sorry for the inconvenience."
• Can't renew or copy a Contract when Contract Line items dates are greater than the Contract
• Custom Plugins registered against the RetrieveMultiple message and specifying "none" as the Primary Entity will fail with a SerializationException starting with the December 2012 Service Update due to an unknown Type originating from the plugins that are part of the ActivityFeeds solution
• Some fields lose data on save and synchronization when focus is not moved from the field when using the CRM Outlook client
• Reports do not render correctly after applying CRM 2011 Update Rollup 12
• "SQL Server error" on Campaign Activity quick find search if including "channeltypecode"
• Sporadically, e-mail sent from Outlook router are sent with winmail.dat attachment
• Re-tracking contacts in child contact folders result in duplicate contacts after synchronization
• When a form that contains a Silverlight Web Resource in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011, the Silverlight control fails to be resized when the user resizes the form, making it difficult to access some portions of the Silverlight resource
• You can access System Settings no matter the security role assigned
• Users are unable to view audit history is the records they own are part of another record that they do not have sufficient privileges to access.
  • If they only happens for one record, users are unable to see the remaining audit details they do have access to
• Summery Filter is not shown when using N:N relationship criteria
• Export to Excel in Outlook fails with long relationship/entity/field names
• Unable to navigate to next page records through the CRM form window using the short cut (Up/Down Arrows) in the top right corner of form
• When using Process Driven forms in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011, users with restricted privileges may encounter:
  • "Error on Page" messages or
  • "Error:  Unable to get property 'trigger' of undefined or null reference" error dialogs
• Memory growth is experienced in the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Client for Outlook when the Activity Feeds Solution is present in the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online organization
• Mail Merge fails for Office 2013 Outlook clients when using Cached Mode
• Currency symbol keeps as the base currency symbol in activity created by Dialog
• User from 1 business unit are able to see records of other business unit when entity records between business units are merged and the records are owned by the default teams for the associated business units
• If the chart pane is enabled on any view for an entity in the Outlook client, and if the user utilizes the "Email a Link" feature and selects the current view, the URL that is generated and then copied to a blank e-mail will contain invalid parameters.
  • Clicking on this link then generates a CRM platform error which indicates that invalid parameters were passed to the request
• Offline script generated Orders change Order ID's upon offline/online Sync
• When you attempt to use a service account to impersonate users in Exchange to poll for email to be delivered into CRM using the email router, and that service account does not have a mailbox, the CRM email router will not be able to proceed either with check access or during normal execution
• Controls on the new driven forms introduced in the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 December 2013 Service Update are not being updated with data that was modified as part of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 plugin
• Outlook saved views are not sorted alphabetically like in the web client
• When JavaScript references a lookup via the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 SDK and tries to access the EntityType property to see the record type, users with the Read Only license access will receive Undefined, instead of the proper entity name
• Cannot delete managed solution because of IsMapiPrivate and LeftVoiceMail fields
• Workflow failed with "The deserializer has no knowledge of any type that maps to this name"
• With a Decimal Number field with Precision parameter > 6,  a number beginning with 0.000000 errors on Orders:
  • "Error. An error has occurred"
• There is an error in XML document (1, 1181) when validating MAPI properties through EWS (Exchange Web Services)
• When you use the CRM web client or CRM client for Outlook you notice memory usage increasing when you use the SharePoint List Web Part for CRM
• Deployments with large datasets in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 may suffer performance bottlenecks on default views, lookups, and queries if the EnableRetrieveMultipleOptimization registry setting is set to zero
• Notes in the Outlook preview section are sorted by modified date instead of created date
• In Update Rollup 13 users cannot print the whole grid page with Internet Explorer 10
• When users change the field 'Start Time' (or any other date field) to third Sunday of October, for any year, in the Brasilia time zone the field is changed to 1/1/1970
• Users receive "not read" receipts if <DeleteEmails> is true in the EmailAgent.xml for the Email Router
• Post Polaris: the Timeout option in wait condition of workflow disappears on Edit
• JavaScript errors are shown when using the CRM Web Client with DOM Local Storage disabled in IE
• After applying Update Rollup 12 on the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Server, users of the offline edition of the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Client for Outlook are unable to configure their Offline Scheduled Sync settings under Personal Settings
• When running an SSRS report and using certain specific locales in personal options in CRM, the report does not contain the correct format as the correct language is not selected based upon the current users locale.
  • In this specific example end user has selected English (India) locale of 16393
• When you use IE 10 and you attempt to view an email activity using the CRM email activity form, the body of the email is not fully shown.
  • This occurs when the email that was viewed was promoted into CRM either by the Outlook client or Email router and the email body was well formed HTML
• When synchronizing service appointments in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 from Outlook To CRM, the activity parties on the appointments are being rescheduled even though they may not have changed.
  • This can potentially cause workflows or plugins to be invoked unnecessarily on the server producing inconsistent results
• Multi-threaded SDK app crash with System.InvalidOperationException
• Unable to view Personal E-mail Templates with EnableRetrieveMultipleOptimization is set to 2
• When you attempt to choose a value from a multi parameter drop down in a SSRS report from within CRM web or Outlook client you receive a script error:
  • "Error: No such interface supported"
• You cannot import a solution which contains an out of the box chart where that out of the box chart has been deleted in the destination system
• After Update Rollup 12, datetime picklist does not show the selected value when opened
• After Update Rollup 12, rows of Audit History view are not aligned
• Importing an updated solution version fails to import with UR12 or later
• Changing the resource on a service activity creates temporary duplicates
• Service activity tooltip/color not updated for change in status reason
• Deployment Manager not opening after making the failover to the SQL mirror
• Cannot use print preview for draft replied emails with images after Update Rollup 12 and 13
• Outlook offline reports not showing parameter pane
• Unable to configure CRM outlook client when TurnOffFetchThrottling is enabled
• When an error is raised when submitting the merge dialog form, and upon a second attempt to merge the data you change the selection of fields on the dialog, those changes are not submitted to the platform.
  • The initial set of fields are used instead of updated
• UI rendering issue with dynamic position option set for web hosted applications
• Multi-text content is not printed correctly
• When the Deployment Profile is set to Local System after Update Rollup 12 for the Email Router is applied, when you restart the service, the router hangs and will not send messages.
  • When you enable verbose logging, you see that it does not continue checking settings. Also, the Email Router Configuration Wizard window either hangs or takes a long time to open
• Jscript error when opening field editor for Yomi field
• Subgrid does not display correctly when using Internet Explorer 8
• After Update Rollup 12, the prvWriteSdkMessageProcessingStep privilege is required to enable some workflows
• LeftVoiceMail field is missing on some custom activities after Update Rollup 12
• Tracked Email Not Promoted if Opened in Inspector View from Sent Items
• Voice mail messages are being rejected by the email router with the error below. These emails were tracked fine when the mailboxes were on Exchange 2007. However the issue started occurring post migrating the mailboxes to Exchange 2013. The issue is only with the emails that come as part of voice mail messages; other emails are tracked correctly
  • Instance validation error: 'OneOff' is not a valid value for MailboxTypeType
• Recurring Appointment "Data Propagation" does not list Custom attribute
• Most recently viewed data disappears periodically after you have used to open more than 40 records
• SQL Deadlocks when calling Associate request adding users to teams
• Add activity button gets enabled for closed case even though it should be grayed out
• The first tab on the form becomes visible unexpectedly overriding customizations
• Filter in view does not work when for Option Set containing entries with '&' character
• Invalid XML when creating a campaign with special characters in view criteria
• Data from related entities missing when exporting to Excel from the CRM for Outlook Client
• Consider the scenario where you are creating an e-mail template:
  • During the process copy part of a rich text or HTML formatted document and paste it into the subject line. The template creation appears to have a normal subject
  • However the resulting e-mails from the template contain style tags
• Any modification to Duplicate Detection Email Template corrupts it
• When you attempt to use a view that has a condition for Owner Equals Current User's Teams and the user does not belong to any team with a security role you receive an error:
  • Invalid Argument
• Outlook Filter settings not taken into consideration when performing a quick search
• IME Settings for "Multiple lines of text” fields are not respected
• Custom entity grid icon is not visible in Outlook
• You receive error messages when accessing CRM fields in the CRM for Outlook client. "An error has occurred"
• Set Regarding does not work on a CRM 4.0 Client connecting to a CRM 2011 Server
• Save & New when editing existing Connection does not populate the Connected From field
• When you copy and paste a tracked recurring appointment in the CRM client for Outlook, the copied recurring appointment will become untracked in CRM, however a duplicate will be synchronized to Outlook upon each manual or background synchronization
  • This occurs when the source recurring appointment contains an instance of the recurrence which has been modified or deleted and it is outside of the current effective range. For example an instance of the recurring appointment was canceled many months ago
• UR12 and later, spacing between dynamic fields in Processes is not maintained correctly
• InvalidOperationException Errors occur after installing the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Client For Outlook Update Rollup 11 Critical Update (KB 2855319)
• SharePoint documents are stored to the root folder, not under accounts/contacts
• When you create an new record and as part of the process of creating the new record you add notes to the record before performing the initial save some notes may not be created
  • This occurs if you click Save, Save & Close, or Save & New on the Ribbon with focus still in the body of the note that is being entered
• Retry logic causes unexpected results on some OrganizationServiceProxy methods
• Outlook Client quick find search box suggests search will be on current view
• When opening and closing forms in Microsoft Dynamics CRM Client For Outlook, users may notice the memory of the WebFormsHost processes climb over time until the application reports it is low on memory
• When installing the slipstreamed Update Rollup 6 version of the CRM client for Outlook and the "Give me updates for Microsoft products and check for new optional Microsoft software when I update Windows" option is checked in Control Panel -> Windows Update -> Change Settings, Windows Update will automatically install the Critical Update (build 2903) patch during installation
  • However, the Microsoft.Crm.Outlook.Diagnostics.exe executable (and potentially other files) that it installs are build 3557 instead of 2903, causing Diagnostics to crash and problems when uninstalling
• There is an issue when a customer is using Outlook 2007 with the option 'Send immediately when connected' unchecked
  • When he composes a new mail, it first goes to the Outbox and when we click on Send/Receive, it goes out
  • When the CRM add-in is enabled and if we open the e-mail when it is in the Outbox to edit it, or simply to see the content, when we click on Send/Receive after that the mail does not go out
• After Update Rollup 14, the Print Preview on records does not display correctly. The footer overlaps the last tab with content
• Outlook crashes when you have ShortTel Communicator and CRM client for Outlook installed
• Mail merge fields not appear in word, template field definition not applied after template selection
• Unable to configure CRM outlook client when TurnOffFetchThrottling is enabled
• Cannot update StateCode and StatusCode of Phone Call entity via plugin code
  When you type text and separate each value you want to resolve by a semi colon in a partylist field, only the first entry you types will persist after the auto resolve completes if each entry would resolve to more than one value
• After CRM 2011 Update Rollup Up 12 lengthy form names in the Form selector are getting mixed with record data:
  • When viewing an entity form with a display name that exceed the width of the left navigation it overflows onto the form. Before UR12 form names were simply truncated and "..." was appended
  • After Update Rollup 12 the form display name overflows onto the body and can over run the data. This issues is present in all Internet Explorer versions, Chrome and Firefox
• Clients having the Update Rollup 11 Critical Update (KB 2855319) are unable to configure if the server has attributes with a DisplayMask of ValidForAdvancedFind set to be non-searchable
• Error importing org from CRM 2011 UR14:
  • System.Data.SqlClient.SqlException: Column names in each table must be unique. Column name 'LeftVoiceMail' in table 'ActivityPointerBase' is specified more than once
• Outlook client unresponsive during startup
• Copying and pasting multiple lines of text from a Word document to the body of a CRM E-mail activity record causes additional line breaks to be inserted in between each line
  • This issue did not occur prior to Update Rollup 12
• Exporting solution does not contain relationship information if changed
• Quick find within a Custom dashboard for Articles does not render any results
• When you run Contact Duplicate Detection rule Full Name does not appear in the list
• When the MAPI store for the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Client for Outlook is empty, updates to the cache may cause Outlook to terminate unexpectedly
• When replying to e-mail activity records in the application, if a user presses the enter key in the body, followed by the delete key, a line break is inserted into the body of the form
• Shared activities do not show in outlook offline mode
• CRM Outlook Client attempts to handle tracked Items in Shared Calendar
• When you open an entity form and you attempt to navigate to a side navigation item, for example Activities or Closed Activities, the navigation may be interrupted
  • You may instead find that your form focus is now the first selectable field on the main section of the entity form
  • For example on the Account entity form, the Name field is selected
• Entity records containing textarea attributes such as Notes on the Reading Pane in the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Client for Outlook may cause the client to become unresponsive
• Developer experience for script debugging is broken
• Same Ribbon Display Rule in multiple solutions cause extremely slow form load
• Script Error clicking links on side navigation before form fully loads
• Wait Until condition are not being triggered if watched attribute contains NULL value
• Outlook crashes when using CRM client for Outlook UR15 or UR11 CU
• When you attempt to choose a value from a multi parameter drop down in a SSRS report from within CRM web or Outlook client you receive a script error:
  • Error: No such interface supported
• Outlook client fails to load or crashes when client OrgDBOrgSettings are set
• Changes made to the personal view query is not updating in Outlook client since Update Rollup 12
• After installing Update Rollup 15 for CRM 2011, the Mail Merge button on the entity record Add tab does not seem to do anything when clicked
• In some environments, conditions may exist when the registry keys of the Microsoft Dynamics CRM for Outlook Client are being duplicated when being read causing an exception to occur that terminates the Outlook process
  • This functionality changed after Update Rollup 12:
    • The custom activity form is not automatically closing when clicking on Mark Complete. The ribbon buttons are disabled and only option is to close with the X
    • Prior to Update Rollup 12 the form closed when clicking "mark as complete"
• Users of the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Client for Outlook may be unable to configure the client if they are utilizing a proxy PAC file
  • The configuration wizard will terminate with a "Object reference not set to an instance of an object" error
• Creation and deletion of business units cannot be done in a timely manner
• When you are using the CRM 4.0 Client for Microsoft Outlook while connected to a CRM 2011 organization using IFD authentication you are not able to access the Organization (SOAP) endpoint or the ODATA (REST) endpoint
  • This works if you are using the CRM 2011 client for Outlook or the CRM web client
• The process of assigning records from one user to another user and changing business units via the SetBusinessSystemUserRequest takes a long time to execute if the original owner owns a large number of records
  • For example, 50,000 contacts
  • This process can also cause the tempdb log to increase in size and cause problems if you run out of disk space for tempdb
• Dashboard Tab Ordering is incorrect
• The owner of the child record in a merge inherits invisible rights to the master record

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Hotfixes and updates that you have to enable or configure manually

Occasionally, updates released via Update Rollups require manual configuration to enable them. Microsoft Dynamics CRM Update Rollups are always cumulative; for example, Update Rollup 16 contains all fixes previously released via Update Rollups 1-15 as well as fixes newly released via Update Rollup 16. So if you install Update Rollup 16 on a machine upon which you previously installed no Update Rollups, you will need to manually enable any desired fixes for Update Rollups 1-16:

• Update Rollup 1: no updates requiring manual configuration
• Update Rollup 2 for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 contains the following update that you must enable or configure manually - details on enabling or configuring can be found in this Microsoft Knowledge Base article:
  • 2535245 RetrieveMultiple optimization for basic depth needed for local and deep depth read privileges in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011
  • NOTE: see comments near the beginning of this blog regarding significant rework to EnableRetrieveMultipleOptimization released in Update Rollup 10
• Update Rollup 3: no updates requiring manual configuration
• Update Rollup 4: no updates requiring manual configuration
• Update Rollup 5: no updates requiring manual configuration
• Update Rollup 6 for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 contains the following update that you must enable or configure manually - details on enabling or configuring can be found in this Microsoft Knowledge Base article:
  • 2664150  Steps to clean up the PrincipalObjectAccess table in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 after Update Rollup 6 is applied
• Update Rollup 7: no updates requiring manual configuration
• Update Rollup 8: no updates requiring manual configuration
• Update Rollup 10 (includes hotfix components of Update Rollup 9): no updates requiring manual configuration to enable, but
  • Note my above comments regarding ERMO (EnableRetrieveMultipleOptimization) option configuration via registry keys or (preferred) OrgDbOrgSettings updates
  • This information supercedes the information in KB 2535245, which discusses EnableRetrieveMultipleOptimization enhancements shipped in CRM 2011 Update Rollup 2
• Update Rollup 11 for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 contains the following update that you must enable or configure manually - details on enabling or configuring can be found in this Microsoft Knowledge Base article:
  • 2820838 Microsoft Dynamics CRM E-mail Router Rule Deployment Wizard does not work in an Exchange 2003 and Exchange 2010 mixed environment
• Update Rollup 12 for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 contains the following update that you must enable or configure manually - details on enabling or configuring can be found in this Microsoft Knowledge Base article:
  • 2820835 Sync the private property from Outlook appointments to Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 with Update Rollup 12
• Update Rollup 13: no updates requiring manual configuration
• Update Rollup 14: no updates requiring manual configuration
• Update Rollup 15: no updates requiring manual configuration
• Update Rollup 16: no updates requiring manual configuration

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Mismatched Update Rollup versions within a Microsoft Dynamics CRM deployment

In a scenario where you may be running many client workstations with Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 for Microsoft Office Outlook, a common question is whether it is supported to run mismatched versions. For example, where Update Rollup 5 has been installed on the CRM Server but the Outlook clients are still on Update Rollup 1, or where Update Rollup 1 is on the CRM server but due to updates available to the Outlook client you have decided to install Update Rollup 6 on the clients without installing Update Rollup 4 on the server.

The general rule of thumb is to try to keep the versions in sync as much as possible, and we recommend that you avoid deltas of more than one version between client and server.  So ideally, you would be running Update Rollup 14 server with Update Rollup 13 or 14 on your Outlook client. However, it is permissible (though not recommended as a long-term solution) to run mismatched Update Rollup versions on Outlook client and server, as Microsoft does do some testing of such combinations.

However, regarding the other Update Rollups (for example Rollups for the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Email Router or Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Reporting Extensions), it is not supported nor recommended to run mismatched versions. A best practice is to update these components at the same time you update your CRM Server.  Do the best you can to keep these Update Rollup versions in sync.

For more information, see the blog posting "User experience while accessing CRM 2011 application servers while Update Rollups are being applied"

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Microsoft Dynamics CRM compatibility with technology stack components: Internet Explorer, Windows Client and Server, Office, .NET Framework, and more

The Microsoft Dynamics CRM Engineering team consistently tests Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 against pre-release and release versions of technology stack components that Microsoft Dynamics interoperates with. When appropriate, Microsoft releases enhancements via future Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Update Rollups or new major version releases to assure compatibility with future releases of these products. This compatibility matrix is updated via this Microsoft Knowledge Base article: Microsoft Dynamics CRM Compatibility List.

Greg Nichols
Premier Field Engineering
Microsoft Corporation

Hey everyone – we have a great article today provided by a guest blogger Kenichiro Nakamura from our Japan office – he’s also a Microsoft Dynamics CRM PFE who recently joined PFE from the CRM support team.  Recently, he’s been a blogging maniac on the Dynamics Japan blog, posting dozens of articles and even translating our CRM in the field blog articles for their dedicated readers – as such all his articles are in Japanese.  In an effort to keep his English translation skills sharp and help keep our blog content fresh he’s going to work with our writers to post English versions of his blog articles!

Today’s post highlights a nice feature that many of you may not have realized is out there.  Our CRM SDK dev team is now hosting the Microsoft Dynamics CRM SDK assemblies on NuGet.

What/Why is NuGet?

When you develop CRM SDK program like console application or plug-ins, one of the first things you is download the SDK package and pull out the SDK assemblies for references. Then whenever a new SDK version is available, you have to re-download full SDK packages and update references manually – something that can be painful.

NuGet is a package manager for the Microsoft development platform, it also has a Visual Studio add-in which helps developers manage updates and retrieving older versions. By using NuGet, you can download necessary assemblies from within your project and it automatically adds additional references, too! When newer version of assemblies are available, Visual Studio will alert you and you can easily update assemblies by single click!

Currently we have 5 NuGet packages and today, we will show you how to use them in your Visual Studio projects.

Step by Step

1. Open Visual Studio and create new project. In this demo, I created .NET Framework 4.0 C# console application (make sure you don’t accidentally target the Client Profile as CRM Projects will only compile under the .NET 4.0 profile).

2. Right click project and select “Manage NuGet Packages…”.

3. Select Online on the left pane, and search “crmsdk”. At this moment, it will find 5 NuGet packages then select “Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 SDK core assemblies”, and click “Install”.

4. It will install the package.

5. Some packages ask you license acceptance, if prompted, accept license agreement (after you read it, of course)

6. Close NuGet Package Manager after completing installation.

7. Expand “References” to confirm you have CRM SDK assemblies, as well as additional references.

Update Experience

Now, what happens when the next UR of CRM 2013 ships or an updated version of the SDK binaries are released – or what if your project needs to target an older version? Here we’ll install older version of the CRM NuGet package to test the update experience. To do so, you need to use Package Manager Console to install older version by using command.

1. In your project

2. Click TOOLS | Library Package Manager | Package Manager Console.

3. Type following command in the Package Manager Console.

>Install-Package Microsoft.CrmSdk.CoreAssemblies -Version 6.0.0

4. After it completes package installation, expand Reference to confirm it downloaded all the assemblies as expected. Now your project has older version of assemblies.

5. You will eventually be notified when there is newer version, but to save time here, let’s check for the updated assemblies manually.

6.  Right click your project and click “Manage NuGet Packages….”

7. Click Updates on the left pane. It automatically finds update. You just need to click Update button to update them.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 SDKs

You can also use NuGet to obtain Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 SDK binaries, but in this case if you will have to specify your version because the latest assembly versions published are for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013.

For example, use following command to obtain 5.0.18.

>Install-Package Microsoft.CrmSdk.CoreAssemblies -Version 5.0.18

NOTE: If you are prompted to update your 2011 assemblies you should ignore the updates, if you accept the updates they will bring down the latest version 6.0 DLL’s replacing the 2011 V5 DLL’s.

Have questions about this?  Looking for guidance or workshops on CRM Developer topics?  Please reach out and let us know – use the contact links on our site.  Also, don’t forget about Dynamics Convergence 2014 March 4th – 7th – if you haven’t registered yet head on over and get registered.  We’ll be speaking in no fewer than seven Dynamics CRM sessions this year and we absolutely want readers of our blog to be there to ask questions and say hello!  For a list of our sessions – head over to the Schedule Builder and search for speakers: Shawn Dieken, Sean McNellis, Jeff Thompson, Brandon Kelly, and Daren Turner for a list of our sessions.

Thanks for reading!

Ken & Sean

I just wanted to share with our blog followers that the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 Implementation Guide (IG) and Software Development Kit (SDK) are now available on MSDN and TechNet!  These have both been available via download since CRM 2013 released, but they were just recently published to MSDN and TechNet.  They should be indexed now or very soon and searchable via your favorite web search engine.  Bing of course!

IG- http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh699811(v=crm.6).aspx

SDK - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg309408(v=crm.6).aspx

I prefer the online links for ease of searching via Bing and also because you will always have the most recent versions of the IG and SDK as they are updated quarterly.

Enjoy!

Thanks!
Shawn Dieken

Follow the conversation:
@sdieken
@pfedynamics | http://www.pfedynamics.com

For those attending Convergence 2014 in Atlanta, GA in a few weeks, I wanted to let you know that we will have members of the PFE Dynamics team there presenting some great content.  In addition, make sure to follow @PFEDynamics on Twitter to get updates on other PFE Dynamics activities at Convergence.  Below is a list of the sessions we will be presenting during the conference.  It would be great to meet you at our sessions, so please stop by and check them out! You can also find us at the Expo throughout the week in the Premier Support booth.  You can get more info on these sessions and others via the Convergence Session Catalog.

Virtual Convergence
We will once again be offering a Virtual Convergence for those of you who are unable to attend in person.  Virtual Convergence is our free online event experience for those unable to attend Convergence in person.  Tune in the morning of March 4, 2014 for live broadcasts from Atlanta, including our amazing pre-show and keynote from Philips Arena, followed by our roster of General Sessions. We’ll also give you an insider’s view of the event with our on-site reporting – talking to customers, partners and speakers about their experiences with Microsoft Dynamics and Convergence.  While watching, you'll be able to join the conversation via social media, including a chance to have live Q&A with the experts!

Registration is simple! Sign up today, share the opportunity with your friends and colleagues and then return on March 4, 2014 for the live event. We’ll see you (virtually) in Atlanta!

PFE Sessions @ Convergence 2014 – click on the hyper linked speaker name to see a real-time listing of sessions in the session catalog.  This will include scheduled repeats and room changes. If you want to see when and where we’re speaking – be sure to follow @PFEDynamics on Twitter and we’ll tweet our session times & rooms as they come up. 

Click on the hyper linked names to see a real-time listing of sessions in the session catalog.  This will include scheduled repeats and room changes. You may also find updates on our sessions through the following Twitter feeds:
@sdieken
@seanmcne
@PFEDynamics

I know that personally Convergence is my favorite onsite of the year as I get a chance to network and reconnect with so many great customers and partners.  I really enjoy hearing all of the success stories about how you are leveraging Dynamics products to accelerate and grow your business success!  I also enjoy hearing about any challenges you are having with your deployment and how we can help make it successful.

Thanks for reading and I hope to see you at Convergence 2014!

Shawn Dieken

Follow the conversation:
@sdieken
@pfedynamics | http://www.pfedynamics.com

There are going to be times that an issue with a Microsoft Dynamics CRM server will arise and the application log will not provide enough information to help resolve the issue. Or you might be asked by the Microsoft CRM support team for a trace log of the server to help troubleshoot an issue. Depending on the level of tracing, the CRM Tracing can provide very detailed information on what CRM is doing. If you’re interested in enabling tracing, read the article written by a teammate discussing how to enable the CRM Platform Tracing with the Registry or Windows PowerShell, http://blogs.msdn.com/b/crminthefield/archive/2013/10/15/crm-2011-platform-tracing-registry-vs-powershell.aspx.

Dynamics CRM Tracing produces a text log file that can contain information of the operation that the Microsoft CRM server performed. The trace file is difficult to read because there might be log entries between steps of the operation that you are interested in. The PFE CRM Trace Log File Reader Tool is supposed to help with reading the log file so you can get an insight on what the CRM server is doing.

You can download the log reader at https://pfecrmtracetool.codeplex.com/.

Open the trace log file from the file menu, once the tool opens the log you will see the individual log entries in a grid. If there are errors, the row will be marked with red. Warnings will have their rows marked with yellow.

Right clicking on a cell is a quick way to search the rest of the log files loaded, for the content in the in the cell. Here I am searching on the ReqID across the log.

The search yields 5 records that are a part of the 13cbc1d9-2e16-4d16-8302-c6b2c8ee64d9 request. In the search area, a count of the number of records that are in the grid and the amount of time those 5 steps took.

You can also search on individual columns. It is best to use contains when searching the Call Stack and Message columns.

The search yields 5 records that are a part of the 13cbc1d9-2e16-4d16-8302-c6b2c8ee64d9 request. In the search area, a count of the number of records that are in the grid and the amount of time those 5 steps took.

You can also search on individual columns. It is best to use contains when searching the Call Stack and Message columns.

In the details area, there are tabs that display the Message and Call stack information. Sometimes there will be message that contains escaped URL’s making them difficult to read, in this case you can check the “Remove HTTP Code” checkbox and it will remove HTTP codes with the corresponding symbols.

Please let me know if there are features that would help in reading CRM trace files.

Thanks,
Walter

<sig>

Here are some of the tools and features that we use as a team and see some of our customers using in their environments. We’ll be going over some of these at our Convergence 2014 Customization Tips and Tricks sessions but wanted to provide links for customers and partners to reference.

If you have any other tools or features that would be useful to the community, feel free to provide the details in the comments section.

Update: I’ve updated the list to include recommendations from the comments section as well as adding additional tools that are available.  Some of them were mentioned in our Convergence 2015 sessions as well.

Thanks

Daren Turner

Microsoft Premier Field Engineer

I was recently assisting a CRM Online customer with troubleshooting a custom report they built. The report was running on the Opportunity as the main entity and also had 5 related datasets that were bringing in some specific connections related to that Opportunity. They were facing three big hurdles:

1. They wanted to use pre-filtering on the report so that users could run the report from list views and advanced find

2. They wanted to display Opportunity information but also related connection information in one table

3. Being that they are using CRM Online the report must use FetchXML as the data processing extension and due to some server side settings, they also had to consider the timeout settings that are in place.

Report Design

They were able to accomplish the pre-filtering requirements by creating their main data set and setting pre-filtering = 1: 

<fetch distinct="true"  no-lock="true" mapping="logical">
    <entity name="opportunity" enableprefiltering="1">
        <attribute name="statuscode" />
        <attribute name="statecode" />
        <attribute name="new_stage" />
        <attribute name="estimatedvalue" />
        <attribute name="customerid" />
        <attribute name="name" />
        <attribute name="actualclosedate" />
        <attribute name="ownerid" />
        <attribute name="estimatedclosedate" />
        <attribute name="createdon" />
        <attribute name="opportunityid" />
        <order attribute="estimatedvalue" descending="true" />
    </entity>
</fetch>

They the created 5 related data sets that were pulling specific connection relationships, the following example is the dataset named “Employee”:

<fetch version="1.0" output-format="xml-platform" mapping="logical" distinct="true">
  <entity name="connection">
    <attribute name="record1id" alias="OpportunityID"/>
    <attribute name="record2id" alias="Employee"/>
    <filter type="and">
      <condition attribute="record1objecttypecode" operator="eq" value="3" />
      <condition attribute="record1id" operator="in" value="@OpportunityID" />
 <condition attribute="record2id" operator="not-null" />
    </filter>
    <link-entity name="connectionrole" from="connectionroleid" to="record2roleid">
      <filter type="and">
        <condition attribute="name" operator="eq" value="Team"/>
      </filter>
    </link-entity>
  </entity>
</fetch>

Then in the report table, they used the following expression to pull the values from those other datasets into their respective fields, joining based on the @OpportunityID parameter being set by default from the main dataset query:

=join(LookupSet(Fields!opportunityid.Value, Fields!OpportunityIDValue.Value, Fields!TeamLead.Value, "Employee"), Constants.vbcrlf)

So we were able to get the report working as expected in a development environment where there was significantly less data than their UAT and Production environments. When they deployed the report into their UAT environment, we noticed that the report was timing out, regardless of the view we were running it from or how many records were being returned in our pre-filter criteria.

After reviewing the report and considering causes, what we found out is that by default, when using pre-filtering, FetchXML will return the max number of records allowed for a dataset (15001) unless otherwise specified and then filter by the pre-filter and reporting criteria after. Because we couldn’t change the timeout settings from the server side, we had to modify the report query to get the report working:

<fetch version="1.0" count='5000' output-format="xml-platform" mapping="logical" distinct="false">
    <entity name="opportunity" enableprefiltering="1">

By adding the count = ‘5000’ into the header of the FetchXML, the report was able to render successfully in the environments with larger datasets, preventing the timeout. For more information around Count and other functions within fetch you can reference this MSDN article Use FetchXML to Construct a Query.

The final outcome ended up something like this:

If you are interested, our PFE team is ready to help you. We have many services we offer such as reporting workshops, developer training, admin workshops, and code reviews.  If you would like to have another Microsoft PFE or I visit your company and assist with the ideas presented on our blog, contact your Microsoft Premier Technical Account Manager (TAM) for booking information.  For more information about becoming a Microsoft Premier Customer email PremSale@microsoft.com.

Thanks!

Sarah Champ

Follow the conversation:
@pfedynamics | http://www.pfedynamics.com

This post has been cross posted from The Microsoft Dynamics CRM Blog and describes considerations that customizers will want to take into account when upgrading CRM forms to CRM 2013.

When using CRM 2013 or the CRM Online Fall '13 upgrade, it doesn't take much time to realize that the form layout for CRM Information forms has changed considerably.  New CRM users will immediately notice the new form experience, however upgraded forms from CRM 2011 will not contain all of the new form enhancements after the upgrade.  After upgrade, end users will see the same forms they are used to working with translated into the CRM 2013 User Interface. As a result, the older forms will render in inline edit mode with Command bar capabilities.

After upgrading, it is possible to merge the CRM 2011 form layout with new CRM 2013 forms on a case by case basis.  You have full control to choose the form and capabilities on your own terms via Form Editor.

‘Merge Forms’ button in Form Editor (Only Updated entity Forms) 

Figure 1 - Ribbon in the CRM 2013 Form Editor

Functionality

• Allows the customizer to select any information form (including role-based forms) and bring it into an updated form as a customization by appending the form definition to the bottom of the current form. 
  All scripts, fields, field settings, etc. are also brought in working. This includes iframes, custom web-resources, and any dependencies those may have.
• The header and footer from the old form gets converted into a tab with 1 column, and 1 section in their equivalent to the section settings in header.  The header goes before the body of the new form and the footer goes after the body of the new imported form.
• Customizers can do this merge as many times they want provided that the total number of events on the form does not exceed 50.

Restrictions

• This functionality is available only for updated entities (Lead, Opportunity, etc.).
• This functionality is not applicable for custom entities as well.
• This functionality only apples to 'Main' forms (not mobile or other form types)

Scenario

Mary, a CRM customizer, has just upgraded to CRM 2013.  However, she still uses the information form for all her ‘Account’ records.  She now wants to try the new ‘Updated Form’ experience.  With the newly introduced ‘Form Merge’ feature she can make a smooth and easy transition to the new UI and at the same time also keep the sections she wants from the old form. All she needs to do is follow these simple steps:

1. Go to customizations, activate the updated main form for ‘Account’.  Open the form editor of the updated form in ‘Active Forms View’.
   

2. Click the Merge Forms button on the ribbon.

3. A lookup dialog opens.  Select the information form which you want to Import and click Add.
   

4. The Header , Footer and Body(including all the events, web resources etc.) of the selected Information form gets merged into the updated form in the following manner:
   

5. You can remove any unwanted tabs, sections and fields from this merged form according to your need. You can add web resources from ‘Form Properties’. All the functionalities of form editor can be used on this form to get the desired look.

6. After all the customizations are done, save and publish the changes. You also need to change the form order and bring this form up in order if you want it to be opened by default.

Now when Mary opens any Account record she sees the form with all new updated experience, just as she wanted.

More Information

For more information, see Update your forms to Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 or Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online Fall '13. 

Happy customizing!

Brandon Kelly

Microsoft Premier Field Engineer

Much of this content is a repost from: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/crm/archive/2014/03/20/introducing-sandbox-instances-in-crm-online.aspx 

More Test Environment (sandbox) UI capabilities are now launched for Dynamics CRM Online. If you’re an existing customer and have multiple instances you may have noticed this change in one of your organizations.  Also, just an FYI – if for any reason your production organization was marked as “Sandbox” please don’t panic – the change made was literally a visual differentiator and keep reading on how to alter your organization settings.  For those familiar with CRM from a development perspective this term may be a bit confusing – but I assure you this is completely separate from CRM’s sandbox plugins and sandbox service – this term is being used to describe non-production CRM instances.

Many of you with CRM Online may have logged in early this week and noticed changes to the navigation bar at the top of one or more of your Dynamics CRM Online instances.  For both free and paid test instances, you’ll now see an orange navigation bar with a SANDBOX watermark.  Production instances will continue to display the blue bar you’ve come to expect.  This post covers what this change means to you and how this relates to some new capabilities we’ll be releasing in the near future.

Changes to Non-production Instances

Dynamics CRM Online 2013 introduced the concept of non-production, test, instances.  These instances could either be purchased as an add-on to your subscription or you would be granted a single free non-production instance if you purchased 25 or more user licenses for CRM Online.  Since they are either purchased at a considerable discount from additional production instances or free, these instances may only be used for non-production purposes.  Earlier this year we published a thorough blog post introducing test instances.

Up until now, the only noticeable difference between a production and non-production instance was the instance type displayed on instance’s edit settings page in the CRM Online admin center.  The type displayed was either Production instance, Paid Test instance, or Free Test instance, depending on how it was obtained.  The type is set when an instance is provisioned and can’t be changed by a customer administrator.

The most recent changes amount to the following:

Free Test instance and Paid Test instance types have been renamed to Sandbox instances.  Not sure what your settings are?  See the edit settings page in the CRM Online admin center (you can access this from your Microsoft Online Portal http://portal.office365.com):

After this change, when you sign into a Sandbox instance, you’ll see the orange nav bar and SANDBOX watermark:

We’ve made this change to ensure that end users know when they’ve signed into a sandbox instance and do not make production changes by mistake.

Other than the changes mentioned above, there are no functional differences between production and sandbox instances.  You can perform all of the customization, development, and testing work in a sandbox instance without concerns that the experience will be different in production.

Welcoming Sandbox Instances to CRM Online

These changes are part of a much larger wave of improvements we are making in Dynamics CRM Online to better support enterprise application development.

Your mission critical business applications run on Dynamics CRM Online and all changes must be managed carefully.  Without the proper development time, evaluation, and testing, the stability of your application may suffer and result in unnecessary downtime that could have been avoided by making these changes elsewhere.  The ideal place to develop and test new application change is a Sandbox instance that is isolated from your production application.

We don’t treat the running Sandbox applications any differently from Production instances.  They are both given the same level of resources and support.  By design, though, your Sandbox Instance application database is completely isolated from production.  It may contain a full or partial copy of production data, users, and customizations.  Since changes in a Sandbox Instance do not affect production, you can build your applications with the confidence that their daily productivity will not be adversely affected.

In the near future, we’ll release additional capabilities to the CRM Online admin center that target Sandbox instances exclusively.

Reset Instance (RESET)

Delete the instance completely and re-provision from scratch.  This is particularly useful when you are starting a new implementation or have completed a project and you’d like to free up the resource consumed by a large sandbox instance.

- Copy Instance (COPY)

• Make a copy of an instance into a sandbox.  You can copy either a production or sandbox instance, but the target must be a sandbox.  There are two types of copies you can perform:

- Full Copy

• Copy the full application database from the source to the target.  This make an exact copy of the source instance, including all application data, users, customizations, etc.  You’ll need to make sure you have enough available storage space to copy before you copy the instance.

- Minimal Copy

• Copy only the customizations, core configuration data, and users from the source to the target.  This is primarily useful for development scenarios when the full production database is not needed.  You will need to import your custom configuration and sample data to complete the process.

Administration Mode (ADMIN)

Even though the production and sandbox databases are isolated from each another, you may have customizations that reach out to external services.  Without updates to these connections, you could inadvertently perform operations in a production service while working in a sandbox instance.  We’re introducing a new administration mode for sandbox instance to reduce the risk of production impact.  When you perform a copy operation, for example, the target sandbox instance is placed in administration mode.  After the copy is complete, the admin will have an opportunity to resolve any issues in the sandbox instance before bringing the instance fully back online.

- Enable Administration Mode

• Only users with the System Administrator or System Customizer role can sign in at this time.  This allows an admin to lock out end users and give them a chance to make customization changes without having end user signed into the system.

- Disable Background Operations

• Sometimes, even with no users signed into the system, asynchronous operations may result in your CRM application reaching out to an external service.  With this mode enabled, all asynchronous operations will be cancelled.  This includes workflows, sending email, Exchange sync, and Yammer.

- Custom message for end users

• This text will be displayed to end users when they attempt to sign in.  Admin can use this to provide more information on what is going on in the sandbox instance and when the instance is expected to be available.

Between these new sandbox admin capabilities and our rich development tools, we are making it easier than ever before to build, test, deploy, and maintain your Dynamics CRM Online solutions.  Keep an eye on this blog for announcements of future updates to your CRM Online administration experience.

Contents:

• Build number, Download Center Page, Master KB article
• CRM Premier Field Engineering Update Rollup Podcast
• CRM Update Rollup Collateral Page
• Ramp up on Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013!
• Important CRM 2013 Update Rollup considerations
• General Update Rollup notes
• OrgDbOrgSettings Tool
• Update Rollup packages available for download
• Update Rollup prerequisites
• Issues resolved by this Update Rollup
• Support for new technologies provided by this Update Rollup
• Hotfixes and updates that you have to enable or configure manually
• Mismatched Update Rollup versions within a Microsoft Dynamics CRM deployment
• Microsoft Dynamics CRM compatibility with technology stack components 

We're proud to announce that all packages for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 Update Rollup 2 were released on Saturday, March 22nd 2014 to the Microsoft Download Center!  The Update Rollup 2 packages should appear on Microsoft Update in April 8th 2014.

Update Rollup 2 Build number:

6.0.0002.0046 (Server re-release is 6.0.0002.0051)

Note: The CRM 2013 Update Rollup 2 Server package has been re-released for customers potentially having issues with authentication associated with Yammer integration or with CRM 2013 Server installation issues on Windows Server 2012 R2.  The filename for the re-released package is CRM2013-Server-KB2919956-v2-ENU-amd64.exe, and is not needed if you are not using Yammer integration or setting up on Windows Server 2012 R2.  The UR2 Server re-release build number is 6.0.0002.0051.

Update Rollup 2 Microsoft Download Center page

Here's the "Master" Microsoft Dynamics Knowledge Base article for Update Rollup 2: (KB 2919956). Going forward, the plan is for the Master Knowledge Base article for CRM 2013 Update Rollups to be published a bit in advance of release to aid planning.

On Friday, March 21st 2014 at 3:30 PM Pacific Time Greg Nichols and Ryan Anderson from the Microsoft CRM Premier Field Engineering Team provided information about:

• The release of Update Rollup 2 for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013
• New supporting Microsoft technologies supported in CRM 2013 via Update Rollup 2
• New fixes made available In Update Rollup 2

on BlogTalkRadio during their Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 Update Rollup 2 Podcast

BlogTalkRadio and Internet Explorer 11 compatibility

If you're having trouble viewing the podcast when using Internet Explorer 11,

• View the Podcast in Compatibility View
  • in IE 11, select Tools (the upper right "Gear" icon) -> Compatibility View Settings -> add the blogtalkradio.com website, or
• Use the "New Window" link on the Blogtalkradio page

Note regarding Podcasts: You can make our CRM Premier Field Engineering podcasts available on Zune by using the RSS feed below.  In the Zune software, go to Collection -> Podcasts and click on the Add a Podcast button on the lower left, then enter the url for the RSS feed: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/pfedynamics.rss. After that, you can adjust the series settings like any other podcast, so you can sync with your smartphone or Zune.

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The "CRM Update Rollup Collateral Page"

For pointers to download locations, release dates, build information, and CRM Premier Field Engineering blogs and podcasts for all Microsoft Dynamics CRM Update Rollups, visit the "CRM Update Rollup Collateral Page"

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Important CRM 2013 Update Rollup considerations!

A common question I get is “if I either upgrade from CRM 2011 or install the RTM version of CRM 2013 (build 6.0.0000.0809), what is the equivalent CRM 2011 Update Rollup level I have?" The answer is: essentially Update Rollup 14.

Some specific port requests for post-Update Rollup 14 fixes for CRM 2011 were included the original (RTM) release of CRM 2013, and port requests for other post-Update Rollup 14 CRM 2011 fixes can be requested via the normal Support process.

One set of port requests that you may be wondering about are the dramatic changes to the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Client for Microsoft Office Outlook

• They were released via CRM 2011 Update Rollup 15 and the Critical Update for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Update Rollup 11 CRM Server and CRM for Outlook Client
• These post-Update Rollup 14 changes WERE included in the RTM version of CRM 2013, and include:
  • A feature that moves the CRM client-specific workload into its own process so that it no longer shares memory with the Microsoft Office Outlook process
    • This feature is also known as Process Isolation
  • An upgrade to Microsoft SQL Server for Windows CE 4.0 for better memory management, better caching, and connection enhancements
  • Updates to CRM for Outlook configuration files to make the CRM for Outlook SDF files compatible with SQL Server for Windows CE 4.0
  • Materialization of the Address Book Provider to reduce performance issues that are caused by large address books
  • Limits to the amount of active open forms
  • A MAPI Lock time-out
  • Hard coding of a previous registry setting that prevented pinned views from pulling down information to local SQL CE cache
    • This new DisableMapiCaching setting defaults to a value of 1
    • For more information about the behavior of this setting, see Slow Performance When Pinning Views in Microsoft Dynamics CRM

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General Upgrade Rollup Notes:

• Testing CRM 2013 Update Rollups: Best Practices
  • Microsoft Dynamics CRM Premier Field Engineering recommends doing all the standard testing you generally do for all Update Rollups, which could be the functional and performance testing that you would do with a new major release or a subset of that test plan
  • The “general rule of thumb” for test plans for Update Rollup installs are:
    • Test any changes in a pre-production environment BEFORE introducing into your production environment. Manage your risk!
    • Consider using the Performance Toolkit for Microsoft Dynamics CRM to simulate your production user load in your testing environment, to shake out any performance-related issues early. The CRM 2011 version is currently being evaluated against CRM 2013
    • Test using the permissions your most restrictive end-user roles have. Testing with CRM Administrator permissions, for example, does not give you the complete picture
    • Concentrate on your SDK customizations, JavaScript, ISV add-ons – basically anything that’s not OOB functionality or customizations done from within the UI

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 Custom Code Validation Tool

• Consider familiarizing yourselves with this tool!
• The Custom Code Validation tool for CRM 2013 is mostly the same as the Code Validation Tool for CRM 2011 UR12; the 2011 version has been deprecated and is no longer available. We added some additional checks for code that references the 2007 endpoint or other functionality that has been deprecated in CRM in 2013. And, most of the checks in the tool were built into the CRM 2013 Server installer as validation checks
• Note that the URL for the CRM 2011 version of the tool now directs to the CRM 2013 version
• Use the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 Custom Code Validation Tool to identify potential issues with custom JavaScript in JavaScript libraries and HTML web resources. When using JavaScript code in Dynamics CRM, it is possible that some code will stop working or cause an error when you upgrade. The Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Custom Code Validation Tool helps identify potential problems so that a developer can fix them

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NEW RELEASE REGARDING OrgDbOrgSettings!

You're probably familiar with the OrgDbOrgSettings command line tool (mentioned above) released by the CRM Product Group in the "Tools" package that is updated and released with each set of Update Rollup packages.  With it, you configure some .xml and call your .xml with the command line utility described in KB 2691237. However, you may be daunted by configuring this .xml, to the point that you may not use the tool, or use it minimally - not exploring the many options outlined in KB 2691237 that may be of use to you.  Well, the Microsoft Dynamics PFE team now has another option for you!  By popular demand, our esteemed CRM PFE colleague Sean McNellis has developed a tool  - a CRM 2011 / CRM 2013 managed solution - that provides you with an easy-to-use GUI with which you can configure all of the options outlined in the Knowledge Base on a per-tenant basis.  Feel free to download it, install it, and check it out... I sure use it!

This is a FREE downloadable tool - the "Dynamics CRM 2011 Organization Settings Editor".  Check it out; the download page has screenshots and information that will help you make good use of the tool.  Sean has also published a Premier Field Engineering blog: "Azure Mobile + JavaScript + WebResources = Easy Editing of OrgDBOrgSettings in Dynamics CRM 2011!" to share more details on the tool. It is currently updated with settings for CRM 2011 Update Rollup 16 and CRM 2013 Update Rollup 1, and he takes pride in keeping it updated as new Update Rollups are released. Thanks, Sean!

Note: there is a code issue with the CRM Client for Microsoft Outlook that was resolved in Update Rollup 16 Client packages.  Do not set either the AddressBookMaterializedViewsEnabled or DisableMapiCaching settings in the Organization entity metadata via the OrgDbOrgSettings tool in the Update Rollup Tools package or the Organizational Settings Editor on Codeplex if you are not running CRM 2011 Update Rollup 16 or higher on the Client.  Also, do not set this key prior to the next major release of CRM 2013.

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Update Rollup 2 packages are available for download via: 

• The Update Rollup 2 Microsoft Download Center page - released March 22nd, 2014
• The Microsoft Update Catalog - packages released April 24th, 2014
• The Microsoft Update detection / installation process

to update the Dynamics CRM Product installations listed in this Microsoft Knowledge base article:

Microsoft Dynamics CRM Installations, Updates and Documentation

Note: Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 Updates will be pushed via Microsoft Update as Important updates

• Client packages installed manually by downloading the packages and running install will require local administrator privileges. If the client packages are installed via Microsoft Update or SCCM (System Center Configuration Manager), they will not require local administrator privileges
• Consider using Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) or similar software distribution technologies to distribute Dynamics CRM Update Rollups internally.  WSUS is a locally managed system that works with the public Microsoft Update website to give system administrators more control. By using Windows Server Update Services, administrators can manage the distribution of Microsoft hotfixes and updates released through Automatic Updates to computers in a corporate environment
• For help with installation please see the Installation Information section of the Service Pack 1 Update Rollup 2 "master" Microsoft Knowledge Base article
• Please review my former teammate Jon Strand's blog posting "CRM 2011: Silently Installing Update Rollups" which provides details on installing CRM Outlook client update rollups "silently" in order to limit end-user interruption, which also applies to CRM 2013 and CRM 2015 Update Rollups and Service Packs

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Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 Update Rollup 2 Prerequisites:

• Essentially the prerequisites listed in the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 Implementation Guide download for the various CRM components serviced

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Issues resolved via Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 Update Rollup 2: 

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Update Rollup 2 is the second of a series of cumulative Update Rollups that include fixes for the issues that are or will be documented in the "Master Knowledge Base Articles" for CRM 2013 Update Rollups.  As they are cumulative, Update Rollup 2 contains all fixes shipped via Update Rollups 1 and 2... you get the idea.

Fixes released via CRM 2013 Update Rollup 2:

• CRM 2013 Outlook filtering does not work after you perform a quick find search
• When you use Internet Explorer 8, the related record dropdown is missing when a record is opened
• When you use the Upgrade Wizard, an error message is shown with a red flag in the System Checks window: "The product key is not compatible with the installed version of Microsoft Dynamics CRM"
• Upgrade does not create relationship for custom activity entities to mailbox_sendermailboxid
• When you run the email router to process incoming email, some email may be skipped. This occurs if the email in Exchange Server has a different message class than the IPM.Note default
• When you try to use a view that has a condition for Owner Equals Current User's Teams and the user does not belong to any team that has a security role, you receive an error:
  • Invalid Argument
• When you click the hyperlink in a lookup field after you focus in the field, you receive a script error
• When you create a recurring appointment that has exactly 16 occurrences, only 15 occurrences are created. When you create 17 occurrences or more (or 15 occurrences or less), the correct number of appointments are created
• Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 has inconsistent behavior, depending on the place from which the case is resolved:
  • When you click Resolve Case from the entity Form, the Resolution (subject) that is passed in by the end-user is replaced by the generic phrase "Resolve Case."
  • When you click Resolve Case from the Grid, Microsoft Dynamics CRM saves the value that was provided by the end-user
    • In Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011, the value was provided by the end-user and not overridden by CRM
• When you view completed activities, such as email, you cannot select any text on the record
  • This includes the body control
• Users of the offline edition of the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Client for Outlook cannot configure their Offline Scheduled Sync settings under Personal Settings
• Depending on the placement of an option set field in a section of the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 form, the number of visible options is limited, and the user has to scroll to see the remaining options
• After you upgrade Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 to Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 or import Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 appointment customization, you receive a pop-up error message while you are saving appointments:
  • There was an error with this field’s customized event
  • Field:crmform
  • Event:onsave
  • Error: Object doesn't support property or method 'Form_onsave'
• Field alignment setting is not respected on Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 forms
• You cannot customize YomiName fields because the detail form does not display
• Copying and pasting multiple lines of text from a Microsoft Word document to the body of a Microsoft Dynamics CRM email activity record causes additional line breaks to be inserted between each line
• When you use the Chrome browser to view duplicate detection rules in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013, the criteria are not shown every time that you open the record
  • You may have to close and then reopen the record an undetermined number of times before the criteria are shown
• The Client for Microsoft Office Outlook client is unresponsive during startup
• When you save or send an email from the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 web client in an email activity that had a template inserted, the body is saved or sent with nothing in it
  • If you edit the email body after you insert the email template, or if you use the insert template button on the email editor toolbar, the body is saved or sent correctly
• When you use Internet Explorer 8, the related record dropdown is missing when a record is opened
• After you upgrade or install Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 when you create a telephone call activity from an existing contact or lead, the telephone number field is not populated correctly
  • This behavior is different from what occurred in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011
• Outlook saved views are not sorted alphabetically as they are in the web client
  • Outlook saved views should be sorted exactly as they are in the web client
• Deadlocks occur when an Associate request is called to add users to teams
• Custom entity grid icon is not visible in Outlook
• A large number of notes cause the focus to be lost when you create new notes
• Custom reports that aggregate with a groupby on OptionSet fields display:
  • #Error
• When a user searches for a string of numbers that exceed the upper bound of the whole number column in Microsoft SQL Server, the following error is returned to users, and the search is ended:
  • "Invalid Argument"
• Field security on check boxes causes JScript error when you save
• When you have a web resource that should be shown across the width of a section, and you change the visibility of the web resource, the width is reduced by half
• Incorrect "Do Not Allow" notification is generated on Phone Call/Email
• Subgrids update continuously with a "Loading..." message
• Consider the scenario in which using Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 affects synchronous plug-ins or synchronous workflows to perform an update of the StateCode and StatusCode of Activity entity:
  • The StateCode and StatusCode action is taken Post-Create synchronously then an exception occurs on the Save
  • When the same plugin code registered asynchronously, it will process and complete without error
• Query Builder error occurs when you use addCustomView that contains a related attribute
• When you set IME mode on an attribute on an entity to ACTIVE, the IME mode is not honored
  • This occurs with Single Line of Text, Multiple Lines of Text, and other attributes that are bound to input elements or text area elements
• After you paste a numbered list into the email body control and convert the pasted content to a bulleted list, the bullets are misplaced above the selected text
  • The bullets will appear on their own separate line, even though there is no line break
  • Additionally, the text cannot be moved up to the bullet so that both the text and the bullet appear on the same line
• Personal View is removed when Show Selected Views is used on Dashboard Grid after redraw
• Time Format selection is not reflect correctly in setting
• Unexpected format changes occur when you create mail messages from an email template
• Users who have no Create permissions but has Read, Write, Append, and Append To permissions cannot select an Entity record that has an N:N relationship
  • This occurs for both custom-to-custom and system-to-custom entities:
    • Unable to get property 'get_element' of undefined or null reference
    • SCRIPT5007: Unable to get property 'get_element' of undefined or null reference
    • File: inlineeditcontrols.js, Line: 1, Column: 89186
• When you import an updated solution that contains lots of entities, the import is not completed in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013
• If a user presses the Enter key in the body and then presses the Delete key when the user is replying to email activity records in the application, a line break is inserted into the body of the form
• The mailbox (CRM User) has been disabled for synchronizing appointments, contacts, and tasks due to unknown error
  • The owner of the associated email server profile (Profile Name) has been notified
• When you review Microsoft Dynamics CRM client for Outlook tracing, the tracing incorrectly suggests that an item was being updated when in fact it was being created in Outlook from a synchronized CRM Microsoft Dynamics CRM item such as a contact, appointment, or service activity

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Support for new technologies provided by this Update Rollup

The Microsoft Dynamics CRM Engineering team consistently tests Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 against pre-release and release versions of technology stack components that Microsoft Dynamics interoperates with. When appropriate, Microsoft releases enhancements via future Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 Update Rollups or new major version releases to assure compatibility with future releases of these products. This compatibility matrix is updated via this Microsoft Knowledge Base article: Microsoft Dynamics CRM Compatibility List. Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 Update Rollup 2 provides support for:

• Microsoft Windows 8.1 and Internet Explorer 11 using the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 web application and Microsoft Dynamics CRM for Tablets
• iOS 7 support with Safari on iPad using the Microsoft Dynamics CRM web application
• Support for Safari using the Microsoft Dynamics CRM web application and CRM for Tablets using the tablet app for iPad Air
• Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 for Microsoft Dynamics CRM Server

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Hotfixes and updates that you have to enable or configure manually

Occasionally, updates released via Update Rollups require manual configuration to enable them. Microsoft Dynamics CRM Update Rollups are always cumulative; for example, Update Rollup 2 will contain all fixes previously released via Update Rollup 1 as well as fixes newly released via Update Rollup 2. So if you install Update Rollup 2 on a machine upon which you previously installed no Update Rollups, you will need to manually enable any desired fixes for Update Rollups 1-2:

• Update Rollup 1: no updates requiring manual configuration
• Update Rollup 2: no updates requiring manual configuration

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Mismatched Update Rollup versions within a Microsoft Dynamics CRM deployment

In a scenario where you may be running many client workstations with Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 for Microsoft Office Outlook, a common question is whether it is supported to run mismatched versions. For example, where Update Rollup 2 has been installed on the CRM Server but the Outlook clients are still on Update Rollup 1, or where Update Rollup 1 is on the CRM server but due to updates available to the Outlook client you have decided to install Update Rollup 2 on the clients without installing Update Rollup 1 on the server.

The general rule of thumb is to try to keep the versions in sync as much as possible, and deltas of more than one version between client and server are not supported.  So ideally, you would be running Update Rollup 2 (when it is released) on your CRM Servers with Update Rollup 1 or 2 on your Outlook clients. However, it is permissible (though not recommended as a long-term solution) to run mismatched Update Rollup versions on Outlook client and server, as Microsoft does do some testing of such combinations.

However, regarding the other Update Rollups (for example Update Rollups for the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 Email Router or Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 SSRS Data Connector), it is not supported nor recommended to run mismatched versions. A best practice is to update these components at the same time you update your CRM Server.  Do the best you can to keep these Update Rollup versions in sync.

For more information, see the blog posting "User experience while accessing CRM 2011 application servers while Update Rollups are being applied", which still applies to Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013

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Microsoft Dynamics CRM compatibility with technology stack components: Internet Explorer, Windows Client and Server, Office, .NET Framework, and more

The Microsoft Dynamics CRM Engineering team consistently tests Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 against pre-release and release versions of technology stack components that Microsoft Dynamics interoperates with. When appropriate, Microsoft will release enhancements via future Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 Update Rollups or new major version releases to assure compatibility with future releases of these products. This compatibility matrix is updated via this Microsoft Knowledge Base article: Microsoft Dynamics CRM Compatibility List.

Greg Nichols
Dynamics CRM Senior Premier Field Engineer
Microsoft Corporation

CRM2013UR2_PFEPodcast.mp3

Contents:

• Build number, Download Center Page, Master KB article
• CRM Premier Field Engineering Update Rollup Podcast
• CRM Update Rollup Collateral Page
• Cumulative Update Rollup changes
• OrgDbOrgSettings Tool
• Deferring database updates
• General Update Rollup notes
• Update Rollup packages available for download
• Update Rollup prerequisites
• Issues resolved by this Update Rollup
• Hotfixes and updates that you have to enable or configure manually
• Mismatched Update Rollup versions within a Microsoft Dynamics CRM deployment
• Microsoft Dynamics CRM compatibility with technology stack components

We're proud to announce that all packages for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Update Rollup 17 were released on Thursday, May 8th, 2014 to the Microsoft Download Center!  The Update Rollup 17 packages should appear on Microsoft Update in late May, 2014.

Update Rollup 17 Build number:

5.0.9690.4150

Important Note: Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Update Rollup 17 is compatible with Windows 8.1 or Windows 7 and Internet Explorer 11!

This includes the following supported configurations:

• The browser application running in Internet Explorer 11 on Windows 8.1 or Windows 7
• Dynamics CRM for Microsoft Office Outlook when running Office 2013 on Windows 8.1

Update Rollup 17 Microsoft Download Center page

Here's the "Master" Microsoft Dynamics Knowledge Base article for Update Rollup 17: KB 2915687

On Monday, May 12th 2014 at 10 AM Pacific Greg Nichols and Ryan Anderson from the Microsoft CRM Premier Field Engineering Team provided information about:

• The release of Update Rollup 17 for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011
• New fixes made available In Update Rollup 17
• Collateral available about Update Rollup 17 and CRM Update Rollups in general

on BlogTalkRadio during their Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Update Rollup 17 Podcast.

Note regarding Podcasts: You can make our CRM Premier Field Engineering podcasts available on Zune by using the RSS feed below.  In the Zune software, go to Collection -> Podcasts and click on the Add a Podcast button on the lower left, then enter the url for the RSS feed: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/pfedynamics.rss. After that, you can adjust the series settings like any other podcast, so you can sync with your smartphone or Zune.

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The "CRM Update Rollup Collateral Page"

For pointers to download locations, release dates, build information, and CRM Premier Field Engineering blogs and podcasts for all Microsoft Dynamics CRM Update Rollups, visit the "CRM Update Rollup Collateral Page"

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Cumulative Update Rollup Changes

Update Rollup 17 is a collection of fixes for issues reported by customers or found by Microsoft's Engineering Team, plus changes to provide support for related technology components.

Update Rollup 17 news that you need to know because Update Rollups are cumulative, so these significant changes are also in Update Rollup 17!

 UR12 included the "Microsoft Dynamics CRM December 2012 Service Update"  See:

• Bob Stutz's blog posting "Announcing Microsoft Dynamics CRM December 2012 Service Update"
• Microsoft Dynamics CRM December 2012 Service Update - Release Preview Guide - November 2012

• Additional cross-browser compatibility provided
  • The December 2012 Service Update component of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Update Rollup 12 introduces additional browser compatibility for Firefox, Chrome, and Safari
    • For more information, see the Knowledge Base Article 2784954: Browser compatibility introduced with Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Update Rollup 12 or the December 2012 Service Update
    • For more information about how this affects your code additional tips see Write JavaScript for Multiple Browsers and Script Errors after Installing UR12
• Indexes added to support the Update Rollup 10 Quick Find Optimizations
  • Update Rollup 12 includes new indexes for the following entities in the Quick Find Search Optimization feature. To fully reap the benefits of the platform changes included in Update Rollup 10, indexing is needed.  The indexes created are listed below:
    • Cases
    • Opportunities
    • Competitors
    • Contact (the Phone Number fields)
    • Business Unit
    • Connection
    • Connection Role
    • KB Article
    • Lead
    • Product
    • Sales Literature
  • These indexes are created during the Update Rollup 12 installation and you may notice that part of the installation will take longer to complete. The reason for this is that the indexes need to be populated and based on the size of your dataset the completion time will vary
    • Note: Documentation provided via the Optimizing Performance of Quick Find queries section of the Optimizing and Maintaining the Data Tier section of the Optimizing and Maintaining a Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Server Infrastructure whitepaper was published when Update Rollup 10 was released to the Microsoft Download Center. So, you may have already added Quick Find-related indexes based on some of the entities listed above. So keep in mind that Update Rollup 12 installation may overwrite some of the indexing you previously added
• Enhancements to Activity Feeds
  • The enhancements made to the activity feeds include a new feature called Like/Unlike
  • With this feature, you can express your immediate feedback about a post
  • For more information, see Like/Unlike
• Updated User Experience for Sales and Customer Service and Product Update Functionality for Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online
  • The Microsoft Dynamics CRM December 2012 Service Update introduces a variety of new features and functionality, including an updated user experience. For Sales and Customer Service users, the updated user experience provides a new process flow visualization, which appears at the top of the forms, such as the Opportunity , Lead or Case form. The process flow guides users through the various phases of the sales and customer service processes
  • For trials and subscriptions initiated after December 2012, the updated Sales and Customer Service user experience is included by default. Existing Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online customers have an option of adding the updated user experience to the Opportunity , Lead and Case forms by installing the Product Updates. This lets Administrators install selected feature updates based upon the specific needs of their organizations. The Product Updates are installed by using the Microsoft Dynamics CRM web application; they cannot be installed programmatically
  • For more details, see What's New for Developers for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 and Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online
• Custom Workflow Activities for Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online
  • Custom workflow activities can now be registered and executed on Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online. For more information about how to use custom workflow activities in partial trust (isolation mode)
  • For more details, see What's New for Developers for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 and Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online
• Developer Toolkit Support for Microsoft Visual Studio 2012
  • The Developer Toolkit for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 and Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online now supports Microsoft Visual Studio 2012. The installer can be found in the SDK download in the sdk\tools\developertoolkit\ folder
• Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Software Development Kit (SDK) updated December 19th, 2013 for Update Rollup 15 (version 5.0.18)
  • SDK download location
  • SDK Online location
  • Developers, please note the SDK Extensions for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 and Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online update
• Bulk Data Load performance enhancements
  • To support bulk data load scenarios, this release introduces the ExecuteMultipleRequest message. This message supports the execution of multiple message requests using a single web method call. ExecuteMultipleRequest accepts an input collection of message requests, executes each of the message requests in the order they appear in the input collection, and optionally returns a collection of responses containing each message’s response or the error that occurred. Processing requests in bulk results in lower network traffic and higher message processing throughput
  • For more information, see Use ExecuteMultiple to Improve Performance for Bulk Data Load
• Activity Feeds changes
  • Microsoft Dynamics CRM Activity Feeds provide real-time notifications and quick sharing of information through short updates. These updates appear on your personal wall in the What's New area of the Workplace . Activity Feeds enable you to follow and learn about important activities that take place around people, accounts, contacts, leads, and anything else that you care about
  • Updates can be posted manually by you, or automatically based on predefined system rules through a workflow. Activity Feeds can also be posted to by external applications through the Microsoft Dynamics CRM web services API. Activity Feeds expose Microsoft Lync real-time presence functionality so that you can initiate communication activities such as IM, phone calls, and emails. For more information, see Activity Feeds Entities
• More performance and stability-related fixes, including fixes to the CRM Client for Microsoft Outlook
• Contains all hotfixes / updates released in earlier Update Rollups
• Quick Find performance optimizations and EnableRetrieveMultipleOptimization SQL query performance optimizations (originally released in Update Rollup 10)

For Microsoft Dynamics CRM business solutions that include an entity with a large dataset, record retrieval and grid rendering performance can be negatively impacted for users that do not have global access to all records associated with that entity. Code changes to mitigate this behavior first appeared in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0, and have been fine-tuned since then.

With Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Update Rollup 10 and later, big advancements have been made to optimize the performance of queries against large datasets by adjusting specific “statistical” settings to address the issue. Should this fail to achieve desired levels of performance, adjust the value associated with EnableRetrieveMultipleOptimization (ERMO) setting. You may have heard these changes described at this year's Convergence.

A first step in efforts to optimize the performance of queries against large data sets is to make adjustments to the “statistical” settings that affect the behavior of RetrieveMultiple queries. Although you can configure these settings by modifying the Windows Registry (under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\MSCRM) on the each of the Web servers that is used in a deployment, we recommend that these settings be configured by using the OrgDbOrgSettings, which will ensure that the configuration applies to a specific organization. For additional information about configuring these settings by using the OrgDbOrgSettings, and to download the tool that makes the OrgDbOrgSettings changes you desire, see the Microsoft Knowledge Base article titled "OrgDBOrgSettings Tool for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011" (KB 2691237)

If making adjustments to these settings does not yield satisfactory levels of performance, then consider adjusting the value of the EnableRetrieveMultipleOptimization (ERMO) setting. The ERMO setting is commonly used to limit the duration of certain long running queries; specifically, to overcome issues related to local or deep business unit access within Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 security roles.

Many more details describing appropriate scenarios for the available settings are already available via the Microsoft Download Center in a revised version of the whitepaper "Optimizing and Maintaining the Performance of a Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Server Infrastructure", in the sections “Optimizing the Performance of Queries against Large Datasets” and “Optimizing the Performance of Quick Find Queries”. The details are also available in the MSDN version of this whitepaper.

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OrgDbOrgSettings Editors:

You're probably familiar with the OrgDbOrgSettings command line tool (mentioned above) released by the CRM Product Group in the "Tools" package that is updated and released with each set of Update Rollup packages.  With it, you configure some .xml and call your .xml with the command line utility described in KB 2691237. However, you may be daunted by configuring this .xml, to the point that you may not use the tool, or use it minimally - not exploring the many options outlined in KB 2691237 that may be of use to you.  Well, the Microsoft Dynamics PFE team now has another option for you!  By popular demand, our esteemed CRM PFE colleague Sean McNellis has developed a tool  - a CRM 2011 / 2013 managed solution - that provides you with an easy-to-use GUI with which you can configure all of the options outlined in the Knowledge Base on a per-tenant basis.  Feel free to download it, install it, and check it out... I sure use it!

This is a FREE downloadable tool - the "Dynamics CRM 2011 Organization Settings Editor".  Check it out; the download page has screenshots and information that will help you make good use of the tool.  Sean has also published a Premier Field Engineering blog: "Azure Mobile + JavaScript + WebResources = Easy Editing of OrgDBOrgSettings in Dynamics CRM 2011!" to share more details on the tool. It is currently updated to include setting for CRM 2011 Update Rollup 16 and CRM 2013 Update Rollup 2, and he takes pride in keeping it updated. Thanks, Sean!

Note: there is a code issue with the CRM Client for Microsoft Outlook that was resolved in Update Rollup 16 Client packages.  Do not set either the AddressBookMaterializedViewsEnabled or DisableMapiCaching settings in the Organization entity metadata via the OrgDbOrgSettings tool in the Update Rollup Tools package or the Organizational Settings Editor on Codeplex if you are not running CRM 2011 Update Rollup 16 or higher on the Client.  Also, do not set this key prior to the next major release of CRM 2013.

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NOTE REGARDING "Deferring Database Updates when installing CRM 2011 Update Rollups"

My esteemed PFE teammate Sean McNellis published a blog you should be aware of regarding the possibility of deferring the CRM database updates when installing CRM 2011 Update Rollups.  Essentially, Dynamics CRM 2011 Update Rollup executable packages automatically process and update the organization database updates during the installation.  If your deployment has several large tenants or just one very large tenant you may prefer to first install the “binary” updates and worry about applying the database updates after the binary installation of the rollup (on an organization by organization basis). This would put the control and timing of when to update organizations from a SQL perspective in the hands of the administrator, and may make troubleshooting easier.

This feature allows you to separate the installation of the binary updates (DLL’s, executables, etc) from the installation of the database components (updated stored procedures, UDFs (user-defined functions), schema updates, out-of-box index changes, etc). Both updates still need to be completed as part of the update but you can now separately manage and execute those operations. This also allows you to retry database updates if they timeout or do not complete, without jeopardizing the installation binary updates.

I strongly urge you to read the entire blog to see if it applies to your needs.  Thanks again, Sean!

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General Update Rollup Notes:

• Testing Update Rollups: Best Practices
  • Premier Field Engineering recommends treating Update Rollup 12 (and above) testing like testing a new, major CRM release because of the introduction of new functionality introduced with the December 2012 Service Release. Do all the standard testing like you generally do for all UR’s, but then also all the functional and performance testing that you would do with a new major release
  • The “general rule of thumb” for test plans for Update Rollup installs are:
    • Test any changes in a pre-production environment BEFORE introducing into your production environment. Manage your risk!
    • Consider using the Performance Toolkit for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 to simulate your production user load in your testing environment, to shake out any performance-related issues early
    • Test using the permissions your end-user roles (most restrictive) have. Testing with CRM Administrator permissions, for example, does not give you the complete picture
    • Concentrate on your SDK customizations, JavaScript, ISV add-ons – basically anything that’s not OOB functionality or customizations done from within the UI

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 and 2013 Custom Code Validation Tool

• Consider familiarizing yourselves with this tool!
• The Custom Code Validation tool for CRM 2013 is mostly the same as the Code Validation Tool for CRM 2011 UR12; the 2011 version has been deprecated and is no longer available. We added some additional checks for things that reference the 2007 endpoint or other things that will go away in 2013, so it's best to start removing them now. And, most of the checks in the tool were built into the installer for CRM 2013 as validation checks
• Note that the URL for the CRM 2011 version of the tool now directs to the CRM 2013 version
• Use the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Custom Code Validation Tool to identify potential issues with custom JavaScript in JavaScript libraries and HTML web resources. The Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online Q2 2012 Service Update and Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Update Rollup 9 include significant changes in the web application in order to be able to support a variety of browsers such as Safari, Chrome, and Firefox. When using JavaScript code in Dynamics CRM, it is possible that some code will stop working or cause an error when you upgrade. The Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Custom Code Validation Tool helps identify potential problems so that a developer can fix them
• Update Rollup 12+ require Microsoft .NET Framework 4
• Update Rollup 6 established a new servicing baseline. This will enable uninstalls of some future CRM 2011 Update Rollups, but this also means that Update Rollup 6 is prerequisite for installation of all future Microsoft CRM 2011 Update Rollups starting with Update Rollup 7
• A database created with Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Update Rollup 6 or a higher version cannot be imported to a deployment of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Update Rollup 5 or an earlier version. This scenario is not supported.  Best practice is to import databases or customizations between environments that are at the same Update Rollup level
• As Update Rollup 17 is cumulative, containing all changes released in earlier Update Rollup releases, it also contains the Dynamics CRM Q4 Service Update features released via Update Rollup 6.  Some of these features include:
  • Outlook Client Updates:
    • Dialog Enhancements
    • Data Visualization Enhancements:
      • Chart Designer Enhancements
      • New Chart Types
    • Data Management Enhancements to:
      • Auditing
      • Duplicate Detection
    • Activity Feeds
      • Listening in on important activities in Social Media that take place around the people, accounts, contacts, leads or opportunities that you care about, including a Windows 7.5 phone application: "Business Hub"
      • Update Rollup 5 does not install Activity Feeds:
        • New organizations on CRM Online will have this Solution automatically provisioned
        • Existing Online or On Premise organizations must download and import the solution from the Dynamics Marketplace

For more information about the Dynamics CRM Q4 2011 Service Update features, consult:

• Microsoft Dynamics CRM: The Road Ahead

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Update Rollup 17 packages are available for download via: 

• The Update Rollup 17 Microsoft Download Center page (released May 8th, 2014)
• The Microsoft Update Catalog - all packages have a planned release date in late May, 2014
• The Microsoft Update detection / installation process
  • Note: Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Updates will be pushed via Microsoft Update as Important updates
  • Client packages installed manually by downloading the packages and running install will require local administrator privileges. If the client packages are installed via Microsoft Update or SCCM (System Center Configuration Manager), they will not require local administrator privileges
  • Consider using Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) or similar software distribution technologies to distribute Dynamics CRM Update Rollups internally.  WSUS is a locally managed system that works with the public Microsoft Update website to give system administrators more control. By using Windows Server Update Services, administrators can manage the distribution of Microsoft hotfixes and updates released through Automatic Updates to computers in a corporate environment
  • For help with installation please see the Installation Information section of the Update Rollup 17 "master" Microsoft Knowledge Base article
  • Please review my teammate Shawn Dieken's superb (and recently updated) blog posting "How to install Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 without an Internet Connection" which provides details on how to set up an install on a machine without access to the Internet
  • Please review my former teammate Jon Strand's equally superb blog posting "CRM 2011: Silently Installing Update Rollups" which provides details on installing CRM Outlook client update rollups "silently" in order to limit end-user interruption

for these CRM components:

NOTE: On Jan. 20th, 2012 these installation files were updated to include CRM 2011 Update Rollup 6 (Build 05.00.9690.1992)

• Microsoft Dynamics CRM Server 2011
• Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 for Microsoft Office Outlook
• Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 E-mail Router
• Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Report Authoring Extension (Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 BIDS (Microsoft SQL Server 2008 or 2008 R2 Business Intelligence Development Studio) Fetch Extension)
• Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Language Pack (aka Multilanguage User Interface, MUI)
• Note: the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 List Component for Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 cannot be patched via an Update Rollup package.  Instead, it will be serviced (if necessary) via a new downloadable version from the Microsoft Download Center

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 Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Update Rollup 17 Prerequisites:

• Essentially the prerequisites listed in the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Implementation Guide download or online versions for the various CRM components serviced
• You must have Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Update Rollup 6 installed (build 5.0.9690.1992) to apply this Update Rollup

Note regarding Microsoft Dynamics CRM Stack Technology Compatibility:

Do you want to know if certain Service Packs or versions of a Microsoft product are supported with Dynamics CRM? Now we have all of this in one “living" Knowledge Base article: the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Compatibility List.  For example, you can use this KB article to determine the latest Microsoft SQL Server major version and Service Pack that is supported. Microsoft lists new products like Internet Explorer 11+ and Microsoft Windows 8.x as TBD until testing is complete; generally near General Availability (GA) of that product.

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Issues resolved via Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Update Rollup 17: 

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Update Rollup 17 is the sixteenth (considering that Update Rollup 9 was not released publicly) of a series of cumulative Update Rollups that include fixes for the issues that are or will be documented in the "Master Knowledge Base Articles" for CRM 2011 Update Rollups.  As they are cumulative, Update Rollup 17 contains all fixes shipped via Update Rollups 1-17, including fixes that were never publicly released via Update Rollup 9.

• A partial import is reported as a failure instead of a partial failure: The record could not be updated because the original record no longer exists in Microsoft Dynamics CRM
• With the latest version of the CRM 2011 SDK you cannot use the Workflow activity that is part of the Windows Workflow Activities provided in the Microsoft.Xrm.Sdk.Workflow.dll in the Workflow Designer
• ViewID for custom view is not respected when same relationship is added multiple times on form by directly editing the entity FormXML and adding different ViewID for same relationships
• Quick Find fails with "Invalid Argument" when whole number fields are added as find columns
• You are not able to navigate as Next Page arrow option disabled in Service Calendar Frame
• You are not able to edit properties of a SharePoint document on Dynamics CRM when clicking on Actions -> Edit Properties
  • This message is displayed: "You must check out this item before making changes. Do you want to check out this Item now?"
  • Click on OK and then you can see a page to edit the properties of the document but when click on Save button, we receive the message:
    • "The file "File name" is not checked out. you must check out this document before making changes"
• Recurring Series Expansion job does not complete if Recurring Appointment owner is a team
  When you create service activities and you sync those activities to your Outlook Exchange Mailbox, and you have devices like an iPhone or Windows Phone you will see UNKNOWN:UNKNOWN on the activity parties or invitees on those devices when viewing those service activities
  • This can lead to invitees getting removed from the service activity or becoming duplicated in CRM
• Any modification to the "Goals with Same Metrics and Time Period" View loses filter on Active records
• Bulk Edit on Cases shows an incorrect dialog box
• Poor performance with smart matching when the Email Hash and Activity tables have a large number of records
• Clicking the mail merge button in the Ribbon bar of the Advanced Find screen opened from the Contacts entity does not display the Mail Merge dialog
• When adding users to a dynamic list using manage members and having a related entity link in the advanced find query to find members, the query generated doesn't execute because of duplicate table alias
• When a User does not have permission on a folder created by Dynamics CRM record,
  • The user is redirected to the Parent SharePoint folder
  • They are able to see all folders that belongs to other Dynamics CRM entities on the SharePoint List Component when access should be denied
• The context sensitive ribbon is not displaying in the Outlook 2011 Client when configured to a CRM 2013 deployment
• Removing / Adding any field to the form after enabling the option "Automatically expand to use available space" causes the sub grid to shrink or resize to much smaller in size
• Recurring appointment fails to track with exceptions outside EffectiveRange
• When you go offline in the CRM 2011 client for Outlook running on UR11 Critical Update or UR 15+ you receive the following error:
  • An error occurred during Offline Synchronization. Try going offline again, or restart Microsoft Outlook
  • Exception happened. The formatter threw an exception while trying to deserialize the message: There was an error while trying to deserialize parameter /:args">/:args">http://<organization>/:args
  • The InnerException message was 'There was an error deserializing the object of type Microsoft.Crm.Application.Outlook.OfflineSync.SyncInfoRequest. The maximum string content length quota (8192) has been exceeded while reading XML data. This quota may be increased by changing the MaxStringContentLength property on the XmlDictionaryReaderQuotas object used when creating the XML reader.’
• After Update Rollup 12 or greater is applied to the Outlook client, the startup time for Outlook.exe can be significantly impacted if the configured organization contains many customizations
• Microsoft.Interop.Mapi.MAPINameId.GetHashCode module leads to an Outlook crash
• Reports cannot be executed once the default filter form the report is removed and the update is saved. The execution fails with the following error on screen:
  • "Reporting Error: The repot cannot be displayed"
• Outlook start-up time is impacted post Update Rollup 12
• Outlook Quick Find does not work correctly for custom entities after Update Rollup 12
• When users have several forms open in the Outlook Client and then open a model dialog such as a Lookup, several of the forms will be forced to the background, losing focus
• In CRM 2011, the PostFollow(Follow) entity workflow cannot be triggered
• When creating an activitymimeattachment using the REST endpoint and JavaScript when the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Client for Outlook is offline, the user will see an error:
  • "activitymimeattachment With Id = <GUID> Does Not Exist"
• After applying Update Rollup 16, Solution import fails with overwriting components
• SharePoint 2010 Integration won't work if Windows6.1-KB2894844-x64 is installed
• An environment where the SendEmailSynchronously OrgDbOrgSetting set to 1 the message below is presented when forwarding e-mails from Outlook:
  • "A record with these values already exists. A duplicate record cannot be created. Select one or more unique values and try again. Do you want send the e-mail?
  • If you click Yes, the e-mail will be sent out, but no corresponding activity will be created in Microsoft Dynamics CRM."
• Update to CRM UR16 fails with error: SqlException:
  • Invalid column name 'IsMapiPrivate'
• When a manually tracked contact in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Client for Outlook is merged with another contact as a subordinate record, that contact can be incorrectly synchronized to Outlook if the Outlook Client is reconfigured
• After installing Update Rollup 16, CRM reports embedded in IFRAME objects (on forms / dashboards /etc...) no longer display correctly when using Internet Explorer 9 or Internet Explorer 10
• N:N relationship records are not replicated offline
• After installing UR12+, addCustomView method from SDK fails on multi-entity lookups
  • This was previously fixed in UR 10 and UR 11 for CRM 2011
• SDK OrganizationServiceContext fails to update a related record while in a create transaction
• Reports cannot be executed once the default filter has been changed
• A form has multiple tabs which are initially hidden and then made visible programmatically
  • Once the tabs are made visible, the navigation bar containing the links to other related entities moves down and part of it gets off the screen, making the users unable to see or select some links
• Horizontal scrollbar appears on mouse over the form sections navigation pane
• Queue emails not being tracked in CRM via the e-mail router
• When processing async operation jobs, the CrmAsyncService crashes unexpectedly
  • Event Viewer shows that there was a problem deserializing some data to process a job:
  • Exception: System.ArgumentException: An item with the same key has already been added
    • at System.Runtime.Serialization.XmlObjectSerializer.ReadObjectHandleExceptions(XmlReaderDelegator reader, Boolean verifyObjectName, DataContractResolver dataContractResolver)
    • at System.Runtime.Serialization.DataContractSerializer.ReadObject(XmlReader reader)
• Chart is not displayed when a subgrid is placed on the business unit entity
• When opening and closing service activities in the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Client for Outlook, the parent ribbon for the Service Calendar will render a single blank tab
• Untracking an email you do not own results in the email being deleted from CRM
• After exporting the results of a Quick Find search to Excel Pivot Table, the resulting file cannot be opened. The following error appears:
  • "[Microsoft][ODBC SQL Server Driver][SQL Server]The SELECT permission was denied on the object 'AccountBase', database '...._MSCRM', schema 'dbo'."
• Advanced Find date range with "last-x-fiscal-years" is incorrect when exported to a Dynamic Worksheet
• Adding an out of the box optionset field for the Connection Entity in a view, causes the view to not load in the CRM Outlook client
• When a user selects a Service Appointment in the Outlook calendar and they choose to click the Untrack button in the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Client For Outlook, users will encounter error dialogs such as:
  • Invalid ArgumentItem Name=<SubjectOfServiceActivity>
  • An error has occurred. Try this action again. If the problem continues, check the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Community for solutions or contact your organization's Microsoft Dynamics CRM Administrator. Finally, you can contact Microsoft Support.Item Name=<SubjectOfServiceActivity>
• Cannot change owner on create of Appointment after Update Rollup 16
• Quick campaigns are not working in Outlook client when Critical Update is installed
• When you have an HTML web resource on a form, the web resource is removed when clicking the backspace button in Internet Explorer
• You cannot select "Goals with Same Metrics and Time Period" view for parent goal lookup
• Spaces used in a Grid URL cause the URL to add additional http:// to the beginning of the URL and renders as http://http://
• When a form is opened, if a user clicks "Insert Template" before the rest of the form finishes loading, one of the following script errors might occur:
  • <ScriptErrorDetails>
  • <Message>'Mscrm.FormControlInputBehavior.GetBehavior(...)' is null or not an object</Message>
  • <Line>1</Line>
  • <URL>/_static/_controls/emailbody/emailbody.js?ver=-764166174</URL>
    or:
  • <ScriptErrorDetails>
  • <Message>Unable to get property 'Items' of undefined or null reference</Message>
  • <Line>1</Line>
  • <URL>/_static/_controls/emailbody/emailbody.js?ver=-55529662</URL>
    or:
  • <ScriptErrorDetails>
  • <Message>Object expected</Message>
  • <Line>58</Line>
  • <URL>/userdefined/edit.aspx?contactInfo=&etc=4202&pId=%7b0D1757B9-FC47-E311-BF17-
    or:
  • The value of the property 'ApplyTemplate' is null or undefined, not a Function object
• Audit setting is disabled when changing cascading behavior
• The AddCustomView method from SDK does not work on a multi-entity lookup as expected
• When a manually tracked contact in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Client for Outlook is merged with another contact as a subordinate record, that contact can be incorrectly synchronized to Outlook if the Outlook Client is reconfigured
• When doing a multi-select lookup of an unresolved email address in CC the email address are not properly transferred to the dialog. Subsequently changes to the addresses in the dialog are not copied back to the form and some are removed
• When you invite multiple CRM users to a meeting in the Outlook client and that meeting is recurring and you do not initially track the meeting, each CRM user could track that meeting resulting in duplicate recurring appointments in CRM for the same meeting causing confusion
  • This can also result in problems with the scheduling engine showing that a resource is not available, when in fact they are not available since the meeting which is blocking is the same meeting attempted to be created
• Dynamics CRM users are unable to add more than one Document Location when the document location is based on an entity centric structure, like: Account/<accountname>/opportunity/<opportunityname>
  Users attempting to delete the oldest audit log in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 after Update Rollup 12 receive the following error:
  • "You can only delete the oldest audit log"
• The CRM Outlook client first looks locally for an icon. If the icon does not exist local it makes an asynchronous request to the server and when the response comes back caches it locally for future reference
  • The cache location is *local appdata*/Microsoft\MSCRM\Client\IconCache
    • In this scenario the request made to obtain the custom entity custom 16x16 grid icon doesn't have an orgname in the URL
    • This results in HTTP 401 and 500 errors
• Recurring Series Expansion job does not complete if Recurring Appointment owner is a team
• Activity Types change when importing Solutions. As a result a view on the Activity entity that references the custom activity entity stops working
  • Warning message on the filter: This condition had one or more list values that no longer exist in the system
• After applying Update Rollup 16 in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011, users are unable to remove Deployment Administrators if the account exists in a separate domain.
• After installing Update Rollup 12, there are changes to the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 forms that may impact the visually impaired such as lighter colors and the absence of highlighting on items such as the SiteMap and Tab titles
• When users have several forms open in the Outlook Client and then open a modal dialog such as a Lookup, several of the forms will be forced to the background, losing focus
• When going online in Outlook, the view duplicates window for the record appears, but the value for lookup and optionset attributes will not be shown in offline record grid
• Users of the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Client for Outlook may experience issues where shared personal views may not show up on entity grids if the views had been shared or unshared previously
• Fonts with spaces are ignored in CRM reports
• After installing Update Rollup 10, 11, or 12, file attachments for emails get a contentId appended to them
• If file name is mywordfile.doc, then the file attachment in CRM will show {cid:somecontentid@somedomain}mywordfile.doc
• The newly-released SharePoint List Web Part will cause the Document Management functionality to hang on the loading circles when configured on a SharePoint 2010 server
• If the number of notes on a record exceeds the records per page set in a user personal options, you will not be able to see the additional notes in the control
  • For example, if the records per page is set to 25, and you have 26 notes on the record, you will not be able to see the first note
  • Prior to Update Rollup 12 the Notes Control had "Add a new note..." and "Show more notes" hyperlinks on the notes control.”Show more notes" would allow you to display the next page of notes in the notes control
• Microsoft.Interop.Mapi.MAPINameId.GetHashCode module leads to Outlook crash
• Clicking the mail merge button in the Ribbon bar of the Advanced Find screen opened from the Contacts entity does not function
• When you attempt to deploy a mailbox rule using the forward mailbox rule deployment wizard, with a split deployment for Exchange 2010 where your mailbox servers are not client access servers, you receive an error:
  • Failed to access the default store for the user
• After Update Rollup 4 of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011, exports of fetch based reports to Excel gave users to ability to include an unformatted column of data to allow for calculations in Excel
• Even though the print preview fits one page, a blank page 2 is printed

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Hotfixes and updates that you have to enable or configure manually

• Occasionally, updates released via Update Rollups require manual configuration to enable them. Microsoft Dynamics CRM Update Rollups are always cumulative; for example, Update Rollup 16 contains all fixes previously released via Update Rollups 1-15 as well as fixes newly released via Update Rollup 16. So if you install Update Rollup 16 on a machine upon which you previously installed no Update Rollups, you will need to manually enable any desired fixes for Update Rollups 1-16:
  • Update Rollup 1: no updates requiring manual configuration
  • Update Rollup 2 for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 contains the following update that you must enable or configure manually - details on enabling or configuring can be found in this Microsoft Knowledge Base article:
    • 2535245 RetrieveMultiple optimization for basic depth needed for local and deep depth read privileges in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011
    • NOTE: see comments near the beginning of this blog regarding significant rework to EnableRetrieveMultipleOptimization released in Update Rollup 10
  • Update Rollup 3: no updates requiring manual configuration
  • Update Rollup 4: no updates requiring manual configuration
  • Update Rollup 5: no updates requiring manual configuration
  • Update Rollup 6 for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 contains the following update that you must enable or configure manually - details on enabling or configuring can be found in this Microsoft Knowledge Base article:
    • 2664150  Steps to clean up the PrincipalObjectAccess table in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 after Update Rollup 6 is applied
  • Update Rollup 7: no updates requiring manual configuration
  • Update Rollup 8: no updates requiring manual configuration
  • Update Rollup 10 (includes hotfix components of Update Rollup 9): no updates requiring manual configuration to enable, but
    • Note my above comments regarding ERMO (EnableRetrieveMultipleOptimization) option configuration via registry keys or (preferred) OrgDbOrgSettings updates
    • This information supercedes the information in KB 2535245, which discusses EnableRetrieveMultipleOptimization enhancements shipped in CRM 2011 Update Rollup 2
  • Update Rollup 11 for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 contains the following update that you must enable or configure manually - details on enabling or configuring can be found in this Microsoft Knowledge Base article:
    • 2820838 Microsoft Dynamics CRM E-mail Router Rule Deployment Wizard does not work in an Exchange 2003 and Exchange 2010 mixed environment
  • Update Rollup 12 for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 contains the following update that you must enable or configure manually - details on enabling or configuring can be found in this Microsoft Knowledge Base article:
    • 2820835 Sync the private property from Outlook appointments to Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 with Update Rollup 12
  • Update Rollup 13: no updates requiring manual configuration
  • Update Rollup 14: no updates requiring manual configuration
  • Update Rollup 15: no updates requiring manual configuration
  • Update Rollup 16: no updates requiring manual configuration
  • Update Rollup 17 for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 contains the following update that you must enable or configure manually:
    • When you attempt to deploy a mailbox rule using the forward mailbox rule deployment wizard, with a split deployment for Exchange 2010 where your mailbox servers are not client access servers, you receive an error: Failed to access the default store for the user. To enable this fix,
      • On the Email Router machine, add a new String value Key named "CASServerName" in the path HKEY_Local_Machine\Software\Microsoft\MSCRMEmail, then:
      • Enter the NetBIOS name of one of the Exchange CAS servers

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Mismatched Update Rollup versions within a Microsoft Dynamics CRM deployment

In a scenario where you may be running many client workstations with Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 for Microsoft Office Outlook, a common question is whether it is supported to run mismatched versions. For example, where Update Rollup 5 has been installed on the CRM Server but the Outlook clients are still on Update Rollup 1, or where Update Rollup 1 is on the CRM server but due to updates available to the Outlook client you have decided to install Update Rollup 6 on the clients without installing Update Rollup 4 on the server.

The general rule of thumb is to try to keep the versions in sync as much as possible, and we recommend that you avoid deltas of more than one version between client and server.  So ideally, you would be running Update Rollup 14 server with Update Rollup 13 or 14 on your Outlook client. However, it is permissible (though not recommended as a long-term solution) to run mismatched Update Rollup versions on Outlook client and server, as Microsoft does do some testing of such combinations.

However, regarding the other Update Rollups (for example Rollups for the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Email Router or Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Reporting Extensions), it is not supported nor recommended to run mismatched versions. A best practice is to update these components at the same time you update your CRM Server.  Do the best you can to keep these Update Rollup versions in sync.

For more information, see the blog posting "User experience while accessing CRM 2011 application servers while Update Rollups are being applied"

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Microsoft Dynamics CRM compatibility with technology stack components: Internet Explorer, Windows Client and Server, Office, .NET Framework, and more

The Microsoft Dynamics CRM Engineering team consistently tests Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 against pre-release and release versions of technology stack components that Microsoft Dynamics interoperates with. When appropriate, Microsoft releases enhancements via future Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Update Rollups or new major version releases to assure compatibility with future releases of these products. This compatibility matrix is updated via this Microsoft Knowledge Base article: Microsoft Dynamics CRM Compatibility List.

Greg Nichols
Senior Premier Field Engineer
Microsoft Corporation

CRM2011UR17_PFEPodcast.mp3

I was recently assisting a customer with an import of their CRM 2011 organization into a new CRM 2013 deployment. The import completed successfully and after logging in we noticed that the some of the sitemap links were either broken (no response when clicking on them) or completely missing when compared with a brand new CRM 2013 organization.

Examples of Missing Links: 

• Email Configuration
• Dashboards
• Post Configuration
• What’s New
• Post Rule Configuration
• Activities

Examples of what might be missing:

We were able to restore the missing links and fix the broken links by using the SiteMap Editor from the XRM ToolBox. The sitemap links in question were all out of the box and the customer had only added a few customized links within the SubArea element of the sitemap.  The steps for resetting your sitemap to the 2013 defaults are outlined below. Please read the disclaimer below before following these steps.

Disclaimer: The steps below will reset the top 3 elements of your CRM sitemap. If you have added custom sitemap links in the Area>Group>SubArea elements of your sitemap, these changes will be overwritten with the default sitemap values. There is a step below outlining how to backup your pre-existing sitemap in case you do need to perform a restore, but it is not advised to move forward with these steps unless you plan to add back those custom sitemap links manually. As an alternative solution, review the information at the following link to add the new sitemap areas manually after upgrading your organization:  http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn486920.aspx

Steps for Resetting your 2013 SiteMap to the Default Values

1.       Download the XRM Toolbox for Dynamics CRM 2011/2013 found at:  http://xrmtoolbox.codeplex.com/

2.       Once downloaded, extract the package contents

3.       Open File Explorer and browse to the location where you extracted the package

4.       Locate the XrmToolBox.exe file, right-click on the file and click Run as administrator
          
            Note: If your receive an error stating you must first install .NET 4.0, please download and install before continuing to the next step.

5.       Once the application is open, click on the Connect to CRM icon in the upper left-hand corner
          

6.       On the Select connection page, click New Connection
            

7.       Enter the connection information for your CRM deployment and click Get Orgs to populate the Organization dropdown box
          

8.       Select the Organization that contains the broken sitemap from the Organization dropdown box and click OK

9.       Click Yes to confirm you’d like to connect now
          

10.   You should now see your connection listed in the lower-left corner of the ToolBox window

11.   On the ToolBox main menu, scroll down the list of tools and click on SiteMap Editor
         

12.   On the SiteMap Editor tab, click Load SiteMap
        

         You should now see the sitemap listed in the SiteMap dialogue box on the left
         

13.   From the actions menu, click Save SiteMap to export a copy of the pre-existing sitemap for backup purposes
        

14.   Click OK to the SiteMap Saved informational message
        

15.   Now that you have a backup of your sitemap, click the More actions dropdown and click Reset CRM 2013 SiteMap to default
        

16.   Click Yes when asked if you are sure you want to reset the sitemap
        

17. Click Update SiteMap to apply the changes

18.   You should now be able to login to CRM and verify that your sitemap is fully functional

If you have any additional SiteMap tips or tricks you'd like to share with the community, please comment below!

Thanks!
Reed Wolfe
Premier Field Engineer

Last week, we publically released a C# .NET library for Dynamics CRM that's the result of multiple customer and partner advisory engagements. Predictably, for every development question we answer or recommendation we provide, a request for a code sample to illustrate the concept is sure to follow. When authoring code samples for customers and partners, we found ourselves continually writing similar code to connect to and maximize request throughput with Dynamics CRM services regardless of the scenario. We began to consolidate our techniques into a library that we then delivered as a foundational component to our sample solutions. Over time, the patterns in the library evolved and have been further refined. Fast forward to today, we felt that openly sharing the result of our journey, education and mentoring others, will at best offer insight into new techniques or at a minimum validate what you already know and practice.

What is it?

The PFE Dynamics Core library for Dynamics CRM is a managed C# .NET library that can be included in .NET projects needing to directly communicate with Dynamics CRM services. What does the library offer? Primarily two objectives, 1) efficiently authenticate and establish communication channels, and 2) provide an easy interface to parallelize requests for maximum throughput. The former simply builds on techniques and constructs offered in the CRM SDK.  Whereas the latter is a play on the IDiscoveryService and IOrganizationService service operations, where equivalent methods, each accepting a collection of requests, abstract the actual implementation of parallelized processing. To the developer, an operation involving many CRM service requests can be quickly parallelized in a single line of code. Interested in the meat? Check out these two code files: XrmServiceManager.cs and ParallelServiceProxy.cs. You'll also find a few other goodies sprinkled in.

Where can I get it?

If you just want to reference the assembly, we have versions for Dynamics CRM 2013 (v6) and 2011 (v5) available on NuGet.org.  Simply install the appropriate package into your project to get the latest version and be kept up to date on future releases.  We even built in a dependency on the appropriate CRM SDK Core Assemblies package for each version, so adding our package is a one-stop shop for getting connected to CRM. Otherwise, if it is source code that you're after, head on over to our CodePlex project site. In addition to source code, you'll find documentation, release notes, and ability to contribute feedback.

• NuGet Packages
  • CRM 2013: https://www.nuget.org/packages/Microsoft.Pfe.Xrm.CoreV6/
  • CRM 2011: https://www.nuget.org/packages/Microsoft.Pfe.Xrm.CoreV5/
• CodePlex Project Site
  • https://pfexrmcore.codeplex.com/

What's next?

First, we have a few minor refinements queued for a 1406.0 build that further optimize our patterns. We also plan to expand the documentation and supplement with some examples of how to use the library. From there we anticipate additional improvements that are driven by upcoming CRM product releases (Leo and beyond). Lastly, we're always looking for notable and repeatable techniques that can benefit the broader community from our day-to-day advisory work, including feedback we receive via the project site, our blog, twitter, etc.

By publishing this library, we hope to drive awareness for best-practices when communicating with Dynamics CRM services, increase the performance of your .NET applications, and possibly eliminate some redundant code in the process. We would love to hear your story about tackling similar challenge, ideas for improvement, or even how our library has directly or indirectly benefited your solution. Comment below, suggest a feature on our CodePlex project site, or contact our team directly!

FYI Everyone – the product team released a blog post regarding supportability for the next major release of CRM (A.K.A. “Vega” as termed in the 2013 release preview guide, from a version standpoint it is expected to be v7).

NOTE: This is a summary from the product teams posting – if you have comments or questions feel free to head over and post in the product team’s blog comments section: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/crm/archive/2014/05/14/important-information-about-supported-configurations-in-the-next-major-release-for-crm.aspx.  What you’ll find below is a summary of the CRM Team blog post, as well as a few helpful notes around the current version numbers, etc.

To level set, right now the versions (as of today 5/19/2014 10/30/2014) are as follows:

• Operation System and DB:
  • Windows Server 2012
  • Windows Server 2012 R2
  • SQL Server 2012
  • SQL 2014 support is still pending for the initial release – keep your eye on the CRM Product Team blog for more information
• Removed OS and DB support:
  • Small Business Server, Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2
  • SQL 2008 and SQL 2008 R2 are no longer part of the support matrix
  • Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2 versions of Remote Desktop Services, and Office 2007
• Browser Support:
  • Removing support for Internet Explorer 8 and Internet Explorer 9 – *important* these browsers will not be blocked from accessing CRM.  However, because they are no longer part of the support matrix the best experience will be on Internet Explorer 10 or 11 (or any other supported browser version)
• Endpoints:
  • MSCRM 2007 SOAP Endpoint is now going to be completely removed.  This was replaced in CRM 2011 by a WCF Endpoint, for scripting access there was also a REST endpoint added in CRM 2011.
• JavaScript:
  • GetServerUrl() is removed – replaced by getClientUrl since CRM 2011 UR12
  • IsOutlookClient() is removed – replaced by client.getClient()
  • IsOutlookOnline() is removed – replaced by client.getClientState()
  • getAuthentication() was deprecated previously and was removed in CRM 2013
• Forms:
  • ReadOptimized forms are removed (this was a CRM 2011 form type)
  • CRM 2011 Forms are no longer allowed – you will have to update your 2011 forms to 2013 forms before you upgrade to the next version.
  • The associated form types will also be removed from GetFormType()
• Entities:
  • Product Kits are deprecated in the next version (the next major release after CRM2015 or V7 + 1). 

Make sure to keep these things in mind as you’re planning for your releases and updating your code.  If you’re using any of the deprecated functions or areas it’s worth taking the time to plan today so nothing catches you by surprise.

Thanks!

Sean

Contents:

• Build number, Download Center Page, Master KB article
• CRM Update Rollup and Service Pack Collateral Page
• Ramp up on Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013
• Dynamics CRM 2013 SDK updated for Service Pack 1
• New functionality in CRM 2013 Service Pack 1:
  • Marketing
  • Sales
  • Customer Service
  • Social
  • Platform Enhancements
• Service Pack 1 packages available for download
• Update Rollup prerequisites
• Functionality and Performance issues resolved by this Service Pack
• Support for new technologies provided by this Service Pack
• Hotfixes and functionality that you have to enable or configure manually

We're proud to announce that all packages for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 Service Pack 1 (codename "Leo") were released on Tuesday, May 27th to the Microsoft Download Center!  The Service Pack 1 packages should appear on Microsoft Update in June 2014.

Service Pack 1 Build number:

06.01.0000.0581

IMPORTANT NOTE:

• Service Pack 1 for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 cannot be uninstalled from the Microsoft Dynamics CRM server to roll back the program to the previous version
  • Therefore, it is very important that you back up your organizational databases, including your customizations, prior to installing Service Pack 1
  • Going back to your previous install version will involve uninstalling / reinstalling CRM 2013, then importing your database backup via Deployment Manager

Service Pack 1 Microsoft Download Center page

Here's the "Master" Microsoft Dynamics Knowledge Base article for Service Pack 1: KB 2941390. Going forward, the plan is for the Master Knowledge Base articles for CRM 2013 Update Rollups and Service Packs to be published a bit in advance of release to aid planning.

On Monday, June 2nd at 1:00 PM Pacific Time Greg Nichols and Ryan Anderson from the Microsoft CRM Premier Field Engineering Team provided information about:

• The release of Service Pack 1 for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013
• New features available in Service Pack 1
• New fixes made available In Service Pack 1

on BlogTalkRadio during their Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 Service Pack 1 Podcast

BlogTalkRadio and Internet Explorer 11 compatibility

If you're having trouble viewing the podcast when using Internet Explorer 11,

• View the Podcast in Compatibility View
  • in IE 11, select Tools (the upper right "Gear" icon) -> Compatibility View Settings -> add the blogtalkradio.com website, or
• Use the "New Window" link on the Blogtalkradio page

Note regarding Podcasts: You can make our CRM Premier Field Engineering podcasts available on Zune by using the RSS feed below.  In the Zune software, go to Collection -> Podcasts and click on the Add a Podcast button on the lower left, then enter the url for the RSS feed: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/pfedynamics.rss. After that, you can adjust the series settings like any other podcast, so you can sync with your smartphone or Zune.

sdk

The "CRM Update Rollup Collateral Page"

For pointers to download locations, release dates, build information, and CRM Premier Field Engineering blogs and podcasts for all Microsoft Dynamics CRM Update Rollups and Service Packs, visit the "CRM Update Rollup and Service Pack Collateral Page"

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RAMP UP ON CRM 2013!

Here are some pointers to directly accessible ramp-up resources and some insight into what people are most excited about regarding the release of CRM 2013:

Recommended Ramp-up materials:

• Microsoft Dynamics CRM Customer Center
• Microsoft Dynamics CRM Developer Center
• Microsoft Dynamics CRM IT Pro Center
• Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 Implementation Guide
• Microsoft Dynamics CRM Team Blog
• Upgrading to the CRM 2013 User Experience

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Dynamics CRM 2013 Service Pack 1 SDK (Software Development Kit)

Includes new assemblies for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 Service Pack 1. These assemblies are also compatible with the latest service update for Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online

• In addition to the documentation, this download package includes the assemblies and tools needed for development, helper code for authentication, and Microsoft Visual Studio projects for sample code found in the documentation
• You can also choose to download the User Interface Integration (UII) solution framework, which includes a deployment guide, development guide and api reference
  • UII uses Microsoft Dynamics CRM for the delivery of configuration data for the Integrated Agent Desktop. It includes development and run-time components. Applications built with UII can provide unified access to customer information across different systems and can aggregate different modes of customer interactions or channels
  • The UII download package also contains developer assets for the Unified Service Desk, which includes default Unified Service Desk configuration data schema file, default style (theme), a sample panel layout, api reference guide, and sample code for the custom controls available in the sample applications. For more information about Unified Service Desk, see Getting Started and the Administration guide
• The CRM 2013 SP1 SDK includes new tools:
  • Package Deployer
    • Package Deployer is a new tool that enables administrators to deploy packages on Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online and Microsoft Dynamics CRM (on-premises) instances
    • A “package” can consist of any or all of the following:
      • One or more CRM solution files
      • Flat files or exported data files from the Configuration Migration tool
      • Custom code that can run while the package is being deployed to the CRM server, or after it’s been deployed
      • HTML content specific to the package that can display at the beginning and end of the deployment process
      • This can be useful to provide a description of the solutions and files that are deployed in the package
  • Configuration Migration Tool
    • The Configuration Migration tool is a new tool for Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online Spring ‘14 and Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 Service Pack 1 (on-premises) that enables you to move configuration data across Microsoft Dynamics CRM instances and organizations
      • Configuration data is used to define custom functionality in Microsoft Dynamics CRM, and is typically stored in custom entities
        • Configuration data is different from the end user data (account, contacts, and so on)
          • A typical example of configuration data is what you define in Unified Service Desk for Microsoft Dynamics CRM to configure a customized call center agent application
          • The Unified Service Desk entities, along with the configuration data that is stored in the entities, define an agent application
          • For more information about Unified Service Desk, see the Administration Guide for Unified Service Desk for Microsoft Dynamics CRM
• Updated SDK tools include:
  • Developer Toolkit
    • The Developer Toolkit is a set of Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 and Microsoft Visual Studio 2012 integration tools focused on accelerating the development of custom code for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 and Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online
    • The Developer Toolkit for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 and Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online is included in the SDK package at SDK\Tools\DeveloperToolkit
      • The Developer Toolkit supports creation and deployment of plug-ins, custom workflow assemblies, XAML workflows and web resources
      • A developer can write custom code within Visual Studio and deploy the code to an unmanaged solution on a Microsoft Dynamics CRM server
  • Device Registration Tool
  • Metadata Browser
    • You can use the Entity Metadata Browser to view entities and their properties in Microsoft Dynamics CRM
    • The Entity Metadata Browser is a managed solution available in the downloadable files available in the Microsoft Dynamics CRM SDK at SDK\Tools\MetadataBrowser\
  • Plugin Registration Tool
    • Walkthrough: Register a plug-in using the plug-in registration tool
  • Web Resource Utility
    • Manually creating Web resources one at a time using the customization tools can take a long time when you have to create many files
    • The Web Resource Utility is a WPF application project that you can compile and run to import many Web Resource eligible files from a folder structure with a consistent naming convention based on the folder structure
    • The Web Resource Utility sample project is included with the downloadable files for the SDK at SDK\Tools\WebResourceUtility.
• Deprecated SDK tools include:
  • Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 Style Guide
  • See the blog post "Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 CSS Style Reference using Browser Developer Tools"

Most Popular Features in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013!

• Flat User Interface (modern look UI)
• Process driven UI
• Quick create and quick view forms
• BingMaps / Skype / Lync integration
• Social and mobile integration
• Server side sync

Business Process UI

• Rich and guided UX to implement end to end business scenarios
• Reduced number of clicks and pop ups to complete transactions
• Ability to span the process UI across entities
• Security modelling and ability to assign processes to security roles
• Ability of accessing the UI using MoCA clients

The new ‘skin’ of CRM 2013

• Flat and modern UI avoiding frequent pop ups
• Inline editing
• Quick view form enabling parent entity details in child record
• Form level notifications where errors, warnings and information can be viewed inline in the field
• Avoiding redundant ribbon buttons thus showing only which is really required
• Header controls to highlight the most relevant data of the entity
• BingMaps embedded control

Configuration & Customization

• Synchronous Workflows will help developers to quickly configure workflow instead of using a plug-in (writing code/deploying)
• Actions enable multiple operations which are frequently used to be created as single action and can be re-used to minimize Dev cycle
  • Power to create custom actions such as schedule, Escalate and Route Lead are highly beneficial as well
• Portable Business Logic This easy way avoids lots of scripting for easy validations and enables CRM functional analysts to quick add validations without touching the code base

Yammer Integration

• Native integration with Yammer and thus enabling social collaboration
• Private and Public settings to control the activity feed stream

Mobility

• MoCA (Mobile Client Application) clients and Mobile clients make the long awaited dream a reality
• Support across expected devices and browsers
• Availability of process bar and new UI in the tablet clients
• UI in MoCA clients is highly appreciable, survey shows many of them like the MoCA UI more than the native web UI

General

• Quick create forms to accelerate the record creation
• Light weight command bar UI
• Multi activity support in the collaboration area

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New functionality in CRM 2013 Service Pack 1

• Great new YouTube Feature Videos for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 Service Pack 1 and the Spring '14 CRM Online Release!
  • See also the full list of Dynamics CRM videos on the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Channel on YouTube!
• From the Spring '14 Microsoft Dynamics Release Preview Guide:

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Marketing:

• Drag and drop visual Campaign Designer
  • Drive customer engagement with effective campaigns. An intuitive visual designer makes it easy for marketers to create multi-channel campaigns integrated with email marketing and social channels so you can generate highly qualified leads
• Lead lifecycle management
  • Build your sales pipeline with qualified leads using a solution designed to manage the process of lead acquisition, scoring, distribution, and segmentation across marketing and sales
  • Easily import leads to nurture and measure consistently for better results
  • Multi-dimensional scoring allows Marketers to create precise scoring models across multiple elements (e.g. engagement, demographics, behavioral data, etc.)
    • Leads generated last week may or may not be as hot as the Leads generated this week. Recency/frequency based scoring helps Marketers identify the best Leads by changing the scoring based on recency or frequency of engagement
  • Lead performance reporting based on campaign performance and conversion in order to optimize campaign results
• Homepage
  • Marketers can easily configure a personalized view of their key performance indicators and reports such as leads generated, email effectiveness, landing page opens, and budget performance
  • An easy to use graphical editor allows Marketers to tailor their homepage for their role – view Marketing data graphically in Charts (pie, area, bubble) or in a traditional list view, or aggregate multiple data sources for an end to end view of campaign performance using Power BI
• Scalable Email Marketing
  • Send highly personalized E-mail messages to drive improved open rates. Personalize the content per sender, recipient, subject & content allowing you to send fewer emails with greater business results via:
    • Open APIs to support emails triggered by third parties applications tracking results within Dynamics Marketing
    • Delivering mass and transactional emails scalable to millions of emails to customers per day
    • Cross campaign rules to prevent email fatigue. Manage and control how many emails a contact can receive in a given time period to improve email performance
• Power BI for Marketing
  • Visually analyze your data using predefined Power BI reports focusing on financials, lead performance, asset management and email deliverability
  • Obtain a 360 degree view of the Customer by visualizing contact demographics, online behavior, marketing lists and much more using Excel based reporting tools integrating key Marketing and Sales data
  • Demonstrate the impact of your Marketing investments with robust Campaign ROI reporting. Power BI can access your marketing spend and revenue to calculate the return on your marketing investment, or ROMI
• Improved Sales & Marketing Connector
  • The Dynamics Marketing Connector is new and improved, with easy configuration and a UI for data mapping. Users can configure data mapping to bring in important information on the contact and lead to assist in better lead scoring. Sales gets better quality leads as a result. Rich information means that reporting on lead pipeline and lead conversion is easily accessible in reports
• Office 365 Procurement
  • Easily try and buy Microsoft Dynamics Marketing through Microsoft Office 365 providing single sign in across all your Office 365 services.

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Sales:

• CRM tablet app enhancements
  • Microsoft Dynamics CRM for tablets: helps you stay connected and productive wherever you are. Use your Windows 8, iPad or Android tablets to stay up to date with your customer info—even when you’re on the go. Arrive prepared for every appointment, and update your notes, tasks, contacts, accounts, and leads while the details are still fresh in your mind. Data is cached for offline viewing so you can still access key data if connectivity is lost
• Insights: (Insights is available through a strategic partnership with InsideView at no additional cost to Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online customers with Professional licenses in the United States, with broader global rollout coming later in 2014)
  • Insights puts real-time company and contact information from 30,000 sources into Microsoft Dynamics CRM, helping marketing, sales and account management professionals engage more effectively with prospects to win more deals as a result of less time spent researching and more time selling
    • Data
      • Millions of company and contact profiles from around the world
      • Email addresses and phone numbers
      • One-click data sync into CRM
      • Financials, SEC filings, family trees, and industry profiles
    • Insights
      • Breaking news (e.g. funding news, company expansion, leadership changes)
      • Social buzz for target companies (blogs, Facebook, Twitter)
      • Social profiles for decision makers (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter)
    • Connections
      • Warm introductions through personal and corporate connections
      • Aggregate personal connections from Outlook, LinkedIn, and Facebook
      • Connection sharing (access all co-workers’ connections privately and securely)

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Customer Service:

• Unified Service Desk (see also the Administration guide)
  • A powerful desktop designed to improve key business metrics such as Average Handling Time, First Call Resolution and Customer Satisfaction by providing agents a unified experience to access all of the tasks and applications across diverse environments required to complete customer interaction processes via any channel; Handle voice, chat, email in a unified experience, automate repetitive tasks using contextual interaction data (e.g. launching applications, performing searches, data entry) and handle multiple customer sessions simultaneously; Customers can easily create agent desktop applications through a configurable interface within Microsoft Dynamics CRM
• Enterprise Case Management
  • Deliver world-class case resolution by automating case creation and routing rules, creating failure and warning actions that execute if your Service Level Agreements are not met on time. Ensure you exceed your customers' expectations by easily:
    • Defining and managing service entitlements and SLA’s
    • Creating dynamic routing and queuing rules to ensure you hit your service targets
  • Define and customize enterprise-wide KPI’s (e.g. first response, resolution by, customer sat) and associate processes and rules (e.g. routing, queuing, escalation and notification) to ensure they are met
  • Note: The following Enterprise Case Management features are Opt-In. To Opt-In: go to Settings > Administration and then click Install Product Updates. Installing optional product updates is a one-way process. Once enabled, the features can’t be disabled.
    • Case form
      • With the updated case form, you can now view merged cases, view or add child cases, review entitlements, and even add a Timer to ensure you do not exceed/breach your SLA’s. The timer control can be set-up to show a running counter displaying remaining time by when SLA KPIs need to be met
    • Entitlements
      • Service organizations need to keep track of how much support to provide to all their customers, including the type of support. Now you can create entitlements, which are like contracts that let your service reps know how much support to provide, when a customer has a support request
    • Service Level Agreements
      • Provide excellent service to your customers by using Service Level Agreements (SLA) that track the level of service a customer receives. Create an SLA to track when a customer will receive a response on a support case, how long it takes to close a case, and what happens if the case isn’t closed on time; When you create an SLA, it’s important to also let your service reps know how much time they have to answer and resolve a case. A new Timer control can be added to the case form to show how much time a rep has to perform tasks such as initiate first response or to resolve a case
    • Merge Cases
      • Eliminate redundancies between similar cases by merging them into one case. When a case is merged all of the open case activities, notes, and attachments of the constituent cases will be reparented to the primary case
    • Parent / Child Cases
      • When there is a case where work needs to be done by multiple teams or when one issue effects multiple customers–- now a customer service rep can open a primary case, called the parent case, and then create a secondary case, called the child case
    • Define Status Reasons
      • Status reason transitions are an optional additional level of filtering to define what the status reason value can be changed to for each status reason. Defining a limited list of valid options can make it easier for people to choose the correct next status reason for a record when you have a large number of combinations for valid status reason values
    • Automatic Case Creation
      • When someone sends an email to your support email address, the automatic case create rule converts the email in to a support case. The same happens if someone is talking about your product or service on social media, the issue is captured and converted into a support case
    • Social Care
      • Find out what your customers and others are saying about your product or service on Facebook and Twitter, and resolve emerging issues before they escalate. Download, optimize and quickly start using the new Social Care Sample application to extend your customer service on social channels. Companies who have their owns means of social listening can also customize and extend Social Care Application to create cases, contacts and social profiles from the social posts they are monitoring
    • Service Management
      • Easily manage the configuration of the your Customer Service capabilities
  • CRM tablet application - Case Management
    • Continue to deliver amazing customer experiences even when you are away from the office. The CRM for tablets app has been extended to include Customer Service capabilities optimized for people who are always on the move but want to keep an eye on high priority Cases, monitor Queues or route items across the queues to deliver amazing experiences no matter where they are
  • Multi-channel Care
    • Customers are more connected and better informed than ever before. Organizations are looking for business solutions that can strengthen their ability to connect with customers on their own terms, using whatever device and whatever channel they prefer. Parature offers one of the best cloud-based solutions for customer self-service
      • Parature Portal
        • A 24/7 customer support center that is seamlessly integrated into your organization’s current website. This web-based help center gives your customers easy and convenient access to an intuitive, searchable knowledge base which delivers quick answers to their most-commonly asked service and support questions. If your customers still require personal support after using the knowledge base, they can submit a help ticket, track its progress at their convenience and receive an automatic notification email when an answer is available for them
      • Parature Mobile Self-Service
        • Allow your customers to access answers to frequently asked questions using whatever device they prefer. The responsive design of Parature Portal enables you to increase the reach of your knowledge management efforts and provide consistent and personalized experiences across desktop and mobile devices
      • Parature Facebook Portal
        • Provide businesses and organizations with a 24/7 multi-service channel for customer support on Facebook. Customers and consumers can browse FAQs and updates, or submit a help desk tickets. In addition, you can integrate Parature Live Chat seamlessly to deflect customer complaints and service issue posts on your brand’s Facebook page
      • Parature Real-time Chat
        • Provide your customers with instant and personalized online support with Parature Chat. Empowers your organization with an immediate, seamless transition from a self-service to assisted channel at critical times during the support interaction. Comprehensive rules for escalation, deflection and prioritization ensure a timely response and that Service Level Agreements (SLAs) are met
  • Knowledge Management
    • Parature Knowledgebase
      • An intuitive customer self-service solution that provides quick answers to common questions and support issues, plus essential downloads including forms, how-to videos, product manuals, knowledge base information updates and more. Easily add and update information and customize its order and placement to put the most-viewed information in a prominent place.

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Social

• Microsoft Social Listening
  • Microsoft Social Listening is a powerful new service that your organization can use to monitor social media channels like Twitter and Facebook. Use Microsoft Social Listening to track products, brands, competitors, and campaigns globally and in real time to gain a true understanding of your customers and your business across the social web
    • Listen & Analyze
      • Global sentiment analysis
        • Gain a true understanding of your customers and your business on a global scale across the social web. Native language sentiment analysis means you won’t miss cultural cues
      • Share of voice
        • Track your brand, products, and influencers in 28 languages across Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, news channels, blogs, and forums
      • Competitive intelligence
        • See how you stack up against the competition
      • Campaign management
        • Measure social impact on marketing, sales, and service campaigns. Gain insight into what’s working and what isn’t
    • Monitor & Respond
      • Top influencers
        • Identify and connect with the most influential voices in your community
      • Early warning system
        • Gain early insight on problematic issues; stay on top of hot topics
      • Post alerts
        • Notifications on custom key words, competitive conversations, industry info
      • Trend alerts
        • Get notified when posts and publications differ from statistical expectations
• Social Insights in Microsoft Dynamics CRM
  • Bring the benefits of social listening to your Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online experience with Social Insights. Microsoft Social Listening visuals can be added your CRM dashboards and forms. These Social Insights charts and graphs help you identify buzz, trends and sentiment related to things like your customers, campaigns and competitors
    • A Social Dashboard within Microsoft Dynamics CRM presents a global view of the Social Insights that are most relevant for your role
    • Contextually displaying Social Insights within a Microsoft Dynamics CRM record helps sellers stay on top of their customers’ social conversations

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Platform enhancements

Powerful tools allow you to tailor Microsoft Dynamics CRM to meet your unique business requirements. Microsoft Dynamics CRM facilitates the delivery of rapid business value with an agile solution framework that can be easily tailored and configured. The Microsoft Dynamics CRM platform provides a declarative paradigm that ranges from defining the data model to providing integrated persistence, security, API access, user experience and programming paradigms based on a modern open architecture. This release will introduce several new investments in our platform capabilities to further our commitment to an open, customizable and extensible online service:

• Server-side Synchronization
  • Stay productive and up to date no matter where you are or what device you’re on. With server-side synchronization, administrators can easily manage the synchronization of email, tasks, appointments and contacts between CRM and Exchange
  • Originally introduced in the Dynamics CRM 2013 / Fall ’13 Release to synchronize emails, tasks, appointments and contacts between Dynamics CRM and Microsoft Exchange on-premises deployments. The server-side synchronization capabilities have been enabled as a cloud service to configure and manage the synchronization of Email, tasks, appointments and contacts between Dynamics CRM Online and Microsoft Exchange Online. POP3/SMTP3 providers are also supported for sending and synchronization of Email
  • Synchronization using the Email Router and Outlook client will continue to be supported
  • Supported POP3 / SMTP providers include: Gmail, Yahoo
• SharePoint Integration Enhancements
  • Simplified integration between CRM Online and SharePoint Online managed within Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online
  • Customers of Dynamics CRM Online and SharePoint Online will no longer need to install and configure the CRM List Component to enable the Document Management integration
  • An Alert is shown in CRM notifying CRM Administrators when Server-based SharePoint Integration is not enabled (similar to Outlook Client install notification)

General Upgrade Rollup and Service Pack Notes:

• Testing CRM 2013 Update Rollups: Best Practices
  • Microsoft Dynamics CRM Premier Field Engineering recommends doing all the standard testing you generally do for all Update Rollups, which could be the functional and performance testing that you would do with a new major release or a subset of that test plan
  • The “general rule of thumb” for test plans for Update Rollup installs are:
    • Test any changes in a pre-production environment BEFORE introducing into your production environment. Manage your risk!
    • Consider using the Performance Toolkit for Microsoft Dynamics CRM to simulate your production user load in your testing environment, to shake out any performance-related issues early. The CRM 2011 version is currently being evaluated against CRM 2013, but CRM Premier Field Engineering can help you with using the CRM Performance Toolkit with CRM 2013
    • Test using the permissions your most restrictive end-user roles have. Testing with CRM Administrator permissions, for example, does not give you the complete picture
    • Concentrate on your SDK customizations, JavaScript, ISV add-ons – basically anything that’s not OOB functionality or customizations done from within the UI

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Service Pack 1 packages are available for download via: 

• The Service Pack 1 Microsoft Download Center page - released May 27th, 2014
• The Microsoft Update Catalog  (packages scheduled for release in June, 2014)
• The Microsoft Update detection / installation process
  • Note: Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 Updates will be pushed via Microsoft Update as Important updates
  • Client packages installed manually by downloading the packages and running install will require local administrator privileges. If the client packages are installed via Microsoft Update or SCCM (System Center Configuration Manager), they will not require local administrator privileges
  • Consider using Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) or similar software distribution technologies to distribute Dynamics CRM Update Rollups internally.  WSUS is a locally managed system that works with the public Microsoft Update website to give system administrators more control. By using Windows Server Update Services, administrators can manage the distribution of Microsoft hotfixes and updates released through Automatic Updates to computers in a corporate environment
  • For help with installation please see the Installation Information section of the Service Pack 1 "master" Microsoft Knowledge Base article
  • Please review my former teammate Jon Strand's blog posting "CRM 2011: Silently Installing Update Rollups" which provides details on installing CRM Outlook client update rollups "silently" in order to limit end-user interruption, which also applies to CRM 2013 Update Rollups and Service Packs

for these CRM components:

Microsoft Dynamics CRM Server 2013

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 for Microsoft Office Outlook (Outlook Client)

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 Email Router

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 SSRS (SQL Server Reporting Services) Data Connector

• The SSRS Data Connector is not available as an individual download. It is included in the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Server 2013 download. When you extract the Server package (CRM2013-Server-ENU-amd64.exe /extract:path: extracts the content of the package to the path folder), you’ll find the Data Connector in the SrsDataConnector folder

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 Language Packs

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Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 Service Pack 1 Prerequisites:

• Essentially the prerequisites listed in the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 Implementation Guide download for the various CRM components serviced

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Issues resolved via Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 Service Pack 1: 

Though Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 Service Pack 1 releases new, important functionality mentioned above, it also contains fixes for issues reported by customers or discovered via internal testing.

Fixes released via CRM 2013 Service Pack 1:

• When you are using CRM 2013 and not using IFD or claims based authentication, the link created by the Yammer integration will not be correct for path based URLs. The links created for the yammer feed are missing the orgname
• Add New button missing from lookup forms in the iPpad application for Dynamics CRM
• When you call the setLabel function to change the label of a control and that control is marked as required, the required asterisk is removed
  • This also occurs if the control is marked as recommended and the label is changed with the setLabel function
  • If you then attempt to set the requirement level after changing the label, the asterisk is shown before the label instead of after
• When creating a Quick Create Form in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 using the Form Editor, the security roles of System Customizer and System Administrator are being applied to the form preventing users without those roles from accessing the forms and in some cases, they are unable to access CRM when there is no fallback form for the user to use
• Updating an activity using Real-time workflow to update the owner causes an error:
  • “There should be only one owner party for an activity”
• If an entity that has the Social Pane on the form has its Post Configuration disabled in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 and have set the control to default to the Notes tab in the Form Editor, the control will default to the Activities tab
• Synchronous workflow fails with an error on update:
  • Business Process error: An Unexpected Error occurred
• When you are using CRM 2013 web client and outlook client and you view an entity record you may experience scripting errors or sub grids on the entity form appear to continuously refresh
  • If you get a script error it will state in the details <Message>Object expected</Message>
• Unresolved sender email address not showing as unresolved on the email form and Convert to Case does not work
• When a customer requests a POC of their CRM Online database in order to test their customizations prior to their CRM Online upgrade to 2013 they are not able to import the database into CRM 2013 on premise
  • The import fails with an error stating that some solution components could not be removed
  • This occurs if the customer had opted into the Fall 2013 update to CRM Online
• When attempting to load activities on the Social Pane in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 that have large amounts of text in the description, users encounter the following error:
  • Error during serialization or deserialization using the JSON JavaScriptSerializer
  • The length of the string exceeds the value set on the maxJsonLength property
• When you use the Forward mailbox option and server side synchronization for incoming email, the incoming emails too be delivered into CRM from the Forward mailbox will be delivered no matter what the preferences are for the user and queue parties
  • For example, if an email contains a TO party that is a user and that user only accepts emails in reply to CRM emails, they will get all emails no matter if it is not a reply to CRM email
• When you click the note content of an existing note in the social pane of a CRM form, and then without changing anything on the note, you click anywhere else on the form, the note will be modified. However nothing changed
• Typing ALT(AltGR)+E to enter a € symbol causes the page to refresh
• SDK- preventDefault is not working to stop deactivation from Account record
• When having a subgrid which shows records, if you open one of the records and click Next from the record, it will freeze and then show a script error:
  • Mode: Jscript
  • Source: "src\Application\web\ScriptSharp\_Common\Scripts\Global\Menu\Dialog.cs"
• Spaces used in a Grid URL cause the URL to add additional http:// to the beginning of the URL and renders as http://http://
• When opening and closing service activities in the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Client for Outlook, the parent ribbon for the Service Calendar will render a single blank tab
• User Lookup View of Japanese CRM does have Full Name column unlike English CRM 2013
• The Postfix setting in the Fiscal Year Settings menu cannot be changed from the default blank setting
• When we import, the import logic creates two values for each entry within the RibbonDifBase. But When we export the application ribbon we do not have any check for this and we export 2 values directly from the DB to the XML
  • This if imported to a new org will create 4 values in the table RibbonDiffBase. If the solution is imported again to the same org causes an error
• If the setVisible Client API for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 SDK is used on the form to hide a section or tab, any validation errors on the form will fail to clear even if the values are valid for the given attribute
• Added organization enhancements to control potential data interception scenarios within specific incoming email conditions within an intranet deployment
• In CRM 2013 there was a change to allow users who has Impersonate(actonbehalf) privileges to activate and deactivate the workflows. This also allows users with the appropriate permissions to activate and deactivate workflow owned by other users in the UI
  • When you do this it creates a new line in the workflow base making the user the published this workflow the owner
  • If the workflow is set to the scope of a User, this workflow will only fire for the modifiedby user (the user that published this.)
• When entering a note description in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 containing numeric characters such as "Lunch @ 2" or "1234567899" may not render correctly
• Some fields lose data on save and synchronization when focus is not moved from the field when using the CRM Outlook client
• When using server side sync and configuring users mailbox for email sync, embedded images within emails are not displayed when using the web client to view the tracked email
• Users are not able to select text on forms or fields that are read-only in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013
• The "like" feature from the Activity Feeds Posts wall is incorrectly translated in Portuguese-Brazilian. It is "Como", instead of "Gostar"
  • If the user clicks "Como", it turns into "Gostar (desfazer)". Translate the "like" feature from the Feeds Wall
  • The word "Como" is displayed on Activities posts wall instead of "Gostar"
• Consider the scenario where you qualify a lead and specify an existing Account or Contact to avoid the qualification process creating duplicates
  • If the fields parentaccountid or parentcontactid do not exist on the lead form, new Account and Contact records will be created regardless of whether or not existing Account and Contact records were specified in the dialog
• Convert phone call does not open new opportunity record when requested
• If using the 2011 Outlook Client with UR15, UR16, or the UR11 Cumulative Update, but have CRM Server version 2013, using Advanced Find can throw an error:
  • Clicking Advanced Find from Dashboards or any sitemap area other than views will generate a Permission Denied/Access Denied Script error
• User images are not loaded within CRM 2013 if the Display Name and Unique Name of the Organization are not exactly the same
• Solution import fails with Update Rollup 16 failing when overwriting components
• If using custom number formats, charts render data points with the correct number format, however, this format is not applied on the x and y axis
• “Currency not set” when overriding the price and adding new Opportunity product
• When a manually tracked contact in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Client for Outlook is merged with another contact as a subordinate record, that contact can be incorrectly synchronized to Outlook if the Outlook Client is reconfigured
• JavaScript methods will not trigger when a business required field is changed to be blank.Custom plugin Exception is not thrown in UI
• After upgrade of CRM 2011 to 2013 or importing CRM 2011 Appointment customization users receive error pop up while saving appointment:
  • There was an error with this fields customized event
  • Field:crmform
  • Event:onsave
  • Error:Object doesn't support property or method 'Form_onsave'
• In Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013, users are unable to set a Matching Connection Role to the same Connection Role
• Querying using OData endpoint returns 500 internal server error in Dynamics CRM 2013
• Dynamics CRM users are unable to add more than one Document Location when the document location is based on an entity centric structure:
  • For example, Account/<accountname>/opportunity/<opportunityname>
• Cannot Delete Audit Partitions in CRM 2013
• Cannot change owner on create of Appointment after installing Update Rollup 16
• Clicking the mail merge button in the Ribbon bar of the Advanced find screen opened from the Contacts entity doesn't do anything
• After installing Update Rollup 16, CRM reports embedded in IFRAME objects (on forms / dashboards /etc...) no longer display correctly when using Internet Explorer 9 or Internet Explorer 10
• When using the CRM Email Router, attachment file names of incoming emails is created with a GUID appended in it
• The Save and Close button does not save appointments or recurring appointments they've entered
• Missing translations labels on exported translations file after merging Entity forms from Dynamics CRM 2011 to Dynamics CRM 2013 Forms
• When you edit a workflow in CRM Online or CRM 2013 and you have custom workflow activities that can be used in your workflow, or are already used in your workflow, it will take a long time before the form is ready to be edited
  • This may also result in an error and you may not be able to edit your workflow.
• When you apply conditional formatting to a CRM View in the Outlook Client, you receive an error when changing the sort order and navigating to page 2 of this view:
  • "There was an error displaying the records in this view."

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Support for identical new technologies provided by CRM 2013 Update Rollup 2 and Service Pack 1:

The Microsoft Dynamics CRM Engineering team consistently tests Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 against pre-release and release versions of technology stack components that Microsoft Dynamics interoperates with. When appropriate, Microsoft releases enhancements via future Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 Update Rollups, Service Packs, or new major version releases to assure compatibility with future releases of these products. This compatibility matrix is updated via this Microsoft Knowledge Base article: Microsoft Dynamics CRM Compatibility List. Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 Update Rollup 2 and Service Pack 1 provide support for:

• Microsoft Windows 8.1 and Internet Explorer 11 using the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 web application and Microsoft Dynamics CRM for Tablets
• iOS 7 support with Safari on iPad using the Microsoft Dynamics CRM web application
• Support for Safari using the Microsoft Dynamics CRM web application and CRM for Tablets using the tablet app for iPad Air
• Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 for Microsoft Dynamics CRM Server

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Hotfixes and updates that you have to enable or configure manually

Occasionally, updates released via Update Rollups require manual configuration to enable them. Microsoft Dynamics CRM Update Rollups are always cumulative; for example, Update Rollup 2 will contain all fixes previously released via Update Rollup 1 as well as fixes newly released via Update Rollup 2. So if you install Update Rollup 2 on a machine upon which you previously installed no Update Rollups, you will need to manually enable any desired fixes for Update Rollups 1-2:

• Update Rollup 1: no updates requiring manual configuration
• Update Rollup 2: no updates requiring manual configuration
• Service Pack 1: no updates requiring manual configuration, but some new features need to be enabled by a CRM Server Administrator
  • Go to Settings > Administration and then click Install Product Updates

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Microsoft Dynamics CRM compatibility with technology stack components: Internet Explorer, Windows Client and Server, Office, .NET Framework, and more

The Microsoft Dynamics CRM Engineering team consistently tests Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 against pre-release and release versions of technology stack components that Microsoft Dynamics interoperates with. When appropriate, Microsoft will release enhancements via future Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 Update Rollups, Service Packs, or new major version releases to assure compatibility with future releases of these products. This compatibility matrix is updated via this Microsoft Knowledge Base article: Microsoft Dynamics CRM Compatibility List.

Greg Nichols
Dynamics CRM Senior Premier Field Engineer
Microsoft Corporation

CRM2013SP1_PFEPodcast.mp3