If you're attempting a command line CRM 2011 Outlook client installation using an XML configuration file, you may run into the following error:

12:12:46|   Info| Client Configuration Wizard Running Mode : Silent
12:12:47|  Error| Exception : Sequence contains no matching element    at System.Linq.Enumerable.First[TSource](IEnumerable`1 source, Func`2 predicate)
   at Microsoft.Crm.Application.Outlook.Config.ClientConfig.AddDeployment(DeploymentsDeployment[] deployments, AuthUIMode uiMode)
   at Microsoft.Crm.Application.Outlook.Config.ClientConfig.Run(Boolean runInsideOutlook)
   at Microsoft.Crm.Application.Outlook.Config.ClientConfig.Start(String[] args, Boolean runInsideOutlook)
12:12:47|Verbose| Method entry: Microsoft.Crm.Application.Outlook.Config.ClientConfig.Terminate
12:12:47|   Info| Exit code: Failure
12:12:47|Verbose| Method exit: Microsoft.Crm.Application.Outlook.Config.ClientConfig.Terminate

This error message most likely indicates that a portion of your configuration file is not set correctly.  The most common cause of this error message is because the syntax of your organization is not exactly correct.  You either have the wrong organization name listed, or the case sensitivity is off.  I've listed an example of an XML configuration file below:

<Deployments>
 <Deployment>
  <DiscoveryUrl>http://crmserver</DiscoveryUrl>
  <Organizations>
   <Organization IsPrimary='true'>JSorg</Organization>
  </Organizations>
 </Deployment>
</Deployments>

The line in question would be:

<Organization IsPrimary='true'>JSorg</Organization>

Technically, this line is asking for the following:

<Organization IsPrimary='true'>OrganizationUniqueName</Organization>

To obtain your OrganizationUniqueName, navigate to the following area within your CRM 2011 application:

• Settings - Customizations - Developer Resources

Once here, you'll find your Organization Unique Name value.  This value is case sensitive!  Once you use the correct OrganizationUniqueName within your XML configuration file, you should be good to go.

- Jon

Over the past few years, several Microsoft CRM 4.0 White Papers have been produced that cover both Outlook synchronization, as well as Offline synchronization.  You can find these white papers at the following locations:

• http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=17594
• http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=2737

The Outlook synchronization paper does a very nice job of covering the process that takes place when records are synchronized between Microsoft CRM and Outlook.  After reading the paper, you may walk away with a few questions around how the synchronization tables within the MSCRM database work with the client-side .sdf files....I know that I did anyways.  With the help of a few internal colleagues, I've put together the following information to hopefully clear up any confusion that you might have:

The CRM/Outlook synchronization process can occur in one of two ways:  1) manually clicking the "Synchronize with CRM" option, or 2) scheduled background synchronization.  The actual CRM/Outlook sync process looks like this when kicked off:

1. Prepare sync is called to query the server to prepare all the entities which should be synchronized down from the CRM server.  There are a variety of tables used within the MSCRM database during this process:
1. Subscription table = Specifies the SyncEntryTable name for each user that has been created.  There is a separate SyncEntry table for the outlook sync and the offline sync for each user.  A SubscriptionType of 0 = Offline and a SubscriptionType of 1 = Outlook.  You'll notice that a SubscriptionType of 2 for Address Book Provider will show as well.  The ABP SyncEntry table is no longer used.  The ABP sync is now handled exclusively by the Outlook MAPI sync.  Each SubscriptionId is tied to a unique SyncEntryTableName.
2. SubscriptionClients table = Specifies which of the end user's machines is set to be the synchronizing client (based off of the IsPrimaryClient column).
3. SubscriptionSyncInfo table = Specifies the sync metrics for each SubscriptionId (ex. StartTime, DataSize, InsertObjectCount, etc.).
4. SyncEntry_<guid> = Specifies object being synchronized, the ObjectTypeCode (which tells you the entity), and the state of the sync.  Remember, there is a separate Sync_Entry table for each sync process per user
2. After the information is prepared on the server end, it returns xml to the client with the number of records to be synchronized for each action type (create/update/delete) for each entity type (contact, appointment, etc).
3. The CRM Outlook client then makes another sdk call, GetSyncData, according to the xml returned by the prepare sync to get the crmid and change timestamp for each changed record.  This information is then added to the OutlookSyncTable table in the OutlookSyncCache.sdf file.  This file is located at the following location on a Win7 machine:  C:\users\<user name>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\MSCRM\Client).
4. The client also tracks the Outlook item changes and adds them to the OutlookSyncTable table in the .sdf file.  Now this table should contain all of the changed record information which comes from both CRM server and Outlook.
5. The sync process will then process each changed record in the OutlookSyncTable table according to the change type and change timestamp.  For example, if the change type from crm server is create and there is no change from the outlook client, the action will be to create an item in Outlook.
6. When one record is synced successfully, the entry in the OutlookSyncTable table will be removed and the IdMappingTable table entry will be inserted/updated/deleted accordingly. The IdMappingTable table contains the mapping between crmid and Outlook entryid.  When a crm record is synced down to Outlook, the table will help to find the corresponding Outlook item.  The only exception to the IdMappingTable table is for appointments where we cannot find an id mapping.  In that scenario, a search for an appointment with the same global object id will be done in Outlook. That is the only time that a search will be done in Outlook.
7. If one entity fails and is not synchronized, then the corresponding entry in the OutlookSyncTable table will stay.  The next time a synchronization takes place, this entry will be synced again unless the user chooses to ignore the error (Select the “Ignore all errors” checkbox in the sync dialog in Outlook).

- Jon

There is an enhanced setting (EnableRetrieveMultipleOptimization) that CRM 2011 Online customers can enable to decrease the duration of certain long running queries (ultimately improving performance if the customer is running into the issue).  The issue is magnified  for customers that are accessing views that contain a larger set of data (ex. > 100,000).  End users will only see this issue if they have a CRM security role that has business unit or parent: business unit read access on the entity in question.  This is a performance issue that would occur for certain users in one area of the product (consistently sluggish).  If things perform well one minute, and are slower the next, that’s likely something else entirely.  While not every CRM Online customer will need to enable this fix, there will be a number of customers that will see positive performance improvements if they do implement this.

***The EnableRetrieveMultipleOptimization setting can have the same effects in a CRM 2011 on-premise environment by enabling it through a registry key.***

 More details:

• The EnableRetrieveMultipleOptimization functionality was introduced in CRM 4.0.  Enhancements to the functionality have been made in CRM 2011 to cover basic (user), local (business unit), and deep (parent: child business unit) access levels.  With the new functionality in place, we've seen certain long running queries greatly reduced (specifically when dealing with the local or deep access levels within CRM security roles).  Improving these long running queries can result in much better performance.

 Workaround:

• An easy workaround to verify if the customer is encountering this perf issue would be to move the user’s role to organizational access for the read privilege on the entity in question.  For example, let’s assume that a customer is seeing very slow performance when opening the lead view.  First, verify whether or not the user has a CRM security role that has business unit or parent: business unit access level on the Read privilege for the Lead entity.  If they do, give the user a security role that has organizational level access on the Read privilege for the Lead entity.  After this has been done, have the user attempt to reproduce the issue again.  If you see that performance is now much better, the EnableRetrieveMultipleOptimization fix will likely positively impact the customers.  If the customer enables this fix, users should be able to see better performance with their original CRM security roles than what they originally saw (the modified CRM security role would not be needed).

 Requesting the fix:

• There is a tool available that to update the EnableRetrieveMultipleOptimization settings
• A download location for the tool, with instructions on tool usage, is available via Microsoft Knowledge Base article 2691237:  "OrgDBOrgSettings Tool for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011"

 
- Jon

The CRM Online performance topics listed below are general ideas that should be considered when working through performance issues.  I will do my best to update this blog entry with new content when it becomes available.

Questions To Ask

Before digging in, we’ll need to get a better understanding of the performance issues that the user is experiencing.  I’ve listed some of the questions that you’ll want to consider below.  The answers to these questions will help you determine what areas you need to focus your troubleshooting efforts on.

• General
• What OS is being used?
• What is the total memory on the machine?
• Can the issue be reproduced in another CRM Online environment?
• Does the issue repro in the CRM web client, CRM Outlook client, or both (it will be important to verify this)? 
• If the issue reproduces in the CRM web client, troubleshoot there first as there are other layers of the CRM Outlook client that could slow you down to reaching the root cause.
• What version of Office is being used (only relevant if we’re dealing with a CRM Outlook client issue)?
• If the issue is occurring on the CRM Outlook client, what Update Rollup is currently on the user's machine (this can be verified by getting the version of the crmaddin.dll…located in the Microsoft Dynamics CRM\Client\bin directory or by clicking the About Microsoft Dynamics CRM button within the Outlook client?
• Magnitude of the issue
• How many users are experiencing the issue?
• Can the issue be consistently reproduced, or does it happen sporadically?
• Does the performance issue happen only in certain areas of the CRM Online application?  If so, what area(s)?
• If the issue is happening sporadically, does it seem to be occurring during a certain time of the day, or when a certain process is running?
• Performance related
• What type of internet connection does the user(s) have?
• Do multiple users experience this issue during the same period of time, or does it appear to be a one-off performance issue?
• What datacenter is your CRM Online deployment in?  This can be determined based on your deployment URL.  At the time of this post, the following information links the CRM Online URLs to their correlating datacenter:
• --https://<orgname>.crm.dynamics.com = North America
• --https://<orgname>.crm4.dynamics.com = Europe
• --https://<orgname>.crm5.dynamics.com = Asia
• What country is the user experiencing the issue accessing CRM from?

Network Issues

One of the first things that we can do to verify where the issue lies is to verify whether or not the network (mainly bandwidth or latency) seems to be part of the problem.  Low bandwidth and high latency will negatively impact the end-user CRM Online experience.  It is a good idea to test WAN performance at the beginning of the troubleshooting process.  Our CRM Online R&D team has created a CRM Online Network Performance tool that gathers client network configuration data.

• Log in to your CRM Online organization
• Navigate to the appropriate relative path for your organization
  https://<orgname>.crm.dynamics.com/tools/diagnostics/diag.aspx
• Click the Run button for All Tests.

The client latency tool provides insight into the network conditions you are working with.  It’s important to note that CRM Online is designed to work best over networks with latency under 150 milliseconds and bandwidth greater than 50 KB/s.  These numbers are provided as general performance guidelines rather than guarantees.

Browser Related

Client-side browser settings can have a significant impact on the performance of the CRM Online application.  The items listed below are a few items to consider:

• For optimal CRM Online performance, use the latest IE browser (currently IE9 at the time of this blog).  IE9 includes JavaScript acceleration functionality to help improve client-side performance.
• By default, Windows Internet Explorer 7 and earlier versions limit the number of files that you can download at one time to two.  Windows Internet Explorer 8 limits the number of files that you can download at one time to six.  This change reflects the faster connection speeds that are now typical for most users.  Note that for dial-up connections, the limits from earlier versions still apply.  If you find that you are running on a version prior to IE8, you may want to follow the steps listed within the “Optimizing and Maintaining the Performance of Microsoft Dynamics CRM Clients” to increase the MaxConnection settings.
• IE Internet Option Settings:
• Internet Options – General – Browsing History – Temporary Internet Files and History Settings – Check for newer versions of stored pages.  Verify that Automatically is selected.
• Internet Options – General – Browsing History – Temporary Internet Files and History Settings – Disk space to use.  Verify that a value from 50 to 250 MB is selected (the closer to 250 MB, the better).
• Internet Options – General – Browsing History.  Verify that “Delete browsing history on exit check box is cleared to prevent the deletion of temporary Internet files each time that the browser is closed.
• Internet Options – Advanced – Security.  Verify that the “Do not save encrypted pages to disk” check box is cleared, and then click OK.

Note:  After the client-side browser settings on a computer are modified, loading the Dynamics CRM Web client for the first time (the “cold” load) may take several moments longer than usual. Subsequent page loads (“warm” loads) will show improved performance, however, as many of the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Web pages will have been cached during the initial load.

Customizations

When optimizing the performance of Microsoft Dynamics CRM clients, keep in mind that client performance is directly affected by the:

• Number of (limit where possible):
• Columns and grids in use
• Rows returned per page
• Quick find enabled fields
• Sub-grids used on a page
• Controls on a form (Form Design)
• Controls on the ribbon
• Client-side events (OnLoad, OnSave, OnChange)
• Complexity and number of visualizations used in dashboards
• Use of Jscript and Plugins. Advanced Jscript can add a significant amount of time to, open, save, close and other events especially if calls are made to Microsoft Dynamics CRM or other system. Plug-ins can also affect performance when saving.

If the issue is general slowness, can the user reproduce the issue in a CRM Online test environment with no customizations?  It will be important to determine whether or not the issue is potentially related to customizations from the environment where the issue has been reproduced.  Can any customizations be disabled in the environment for testing purposes (ex. OnLoad events)?  If subgrids are contributing to the long form load times, it may be helpful to contract the subgrid sections as a test to see if performance improves.  It is possible to contract sections by default on the load of the form, then expand the form shortly after.

CRM Online Configurable Settings

• EnableRetrieveMultipleOptimization
• When you perform RetrieveMultiple queries on large datasets in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011, such as pulling together a CRM Online view, you experience slow performance.  This problem occurs because large datasets cache the Microsoft SQL query plans for the RetrieveMultiple queries.  The RetrieveMultiple optimization for the basic depth is required for the "local depth" read privilege and for the "deep depth" read privilege
• http://blogs.msdn.com/b/crminthefield/archive/2011/09/28/crm-online-performance-enableretrievemultipleoptimization.aspx
• http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2535245

CRM Outlook Client Performance

There are several factors, specific to the CRM Outlook client, that can increase the amount of time that certain actions take to complete (ex. CRM Outlook client opening, navigating to a view, etc.).  You’ll find some troubleshooting items below to test out:

• Limit the number of views per entity
• Limit the number of pinned views per entity
• Limit the frequency at which customizations are published
• Limit the number of columns within views

You may also see sluggish CRM Outlook client performance due to background polling activities that are taking place.  During these polling intervals, the CRM Outlook client is communicating with the CRM server (often times reacting to server-side changes).  These process will take place within your CRM Outlook client whether or not CRM functionality is actually being used at the time.  There are caches for various CRM features like address book, reminders, views, and metadata.  For example, one polling interval that takes place on the CRM Outlook client machine occurs when when the metadata file is being refreshed.  Metadata refreshes occur due to certain CRM Admin related activities, such as publishing customizations, creating new CRM security roles, or modifying existing CRM security roles.  To keep the metadata refresh minimal, publish your customizations at a less frequent rate.  Ultimately, the less that you publish customizations, the less you’ll see the metadata.xml file refresh.  If you have installed additional MUI packs (language packs) that you aren’t using, it will be in your best interests to remove the unused packs as those do add to the size of the metadata file.  There are also a set of registry keys that can be modified to tune the polling intervals.  For more information on these keys, please see the following KB:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2585157

Our CRM Online team is always attempting to improve the CRM Outlook experience.  This includes incorporating new functionality, as well as improving performance and resolving any existing CRM Outlook client issues.  Improving the CRM Outlook client in this way is done through Microsoft CRM Update Rollups.  When running into CRM Online performance issues within the CRM Outlook client, it's always a best practice to download and install the most recent Update Rollup.  Update Rollups can be found at the Microsoft Download Center.  You can find the most recent CRM 2011 Outlook client Update Rollup by doing the following:

• Navigate to:  http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/default.aspx
• Search for CRM 2011 Update Rollup
• Set the Sort by option to "Newest to Oldest"
• Once an Update Rollup is selected, you'll have two options to download for the CRM Outlook client:
• CRM2011-Client-KBxxxxxxx-ENU-i386.exe for 32 bit versions of the Outlook client.
• CRM2011-Client-KBxxxxxxx-ENU-amd64.exe for 64 bit versions of the Outlook client.

Tools

• Fiddler
• Run a Fiddler trace to see how long each section of the page opening process is taking.  When looking at the timeline in Fiddler, you should be able to identify which process is taking the longest.
• To capture CRM Online data, you’ll need to do the following:  Tools – Fiddler Options – HTTPS.  Check HTTPS Connects and Decrypt HTTPS traffic.
• For more information on Fiddler, review the following post:
• http://blogs.msdn.com/b/crminthefield/archive/2011/05/19/using-fiddler-http-debugger-for-crm-troubleshooting-and-performance-tuning.aspx
• SQL Tools
• In situations where more advanced SQL tracing is needed to determine long running queries and/or blocking, the Microsoft support team will need to be engaged.  All previously mentioned levels of troubleshooting should be completed prior to this step.

- Jon

I recenty worked through an issue where a customer was receiving the following error when attempting to install the CRM 2011 Reporting Extensions:

Check ReportingAccountMemberOfSecurityGroupValidator : Failure: A Microsoft Dynamics CRM Server component is using the same account as the instance of SQL Server Reporting Services.

This error can occur for a variety of reasons.  One reason can be related to the SQL Reporting Services service being started by a domain account that is a member of the SQLAccessGroup (this account does not need to be in the SQLAccessGroup).  The same situation could occur if the SQL Reporting Services service is starting with the Network Service account and the SQL Reporting Services server name is located within the SQLAccessGroup.  To get past this issue, you have two options:

1. Remove the account from the SQLAccessGroup
2. Use the IgnoreChecks registry key to get past this error message in the short term (specified in KB 974584).  It would be recommended to remove the account that is in the SQLAccessGroup at a later time.

There may be situations where the CRM server and the SQL Reporting Server are installed on the same physical server running under the same account.  Ideally, the services would be running under different accounts.  If the CRMAppPool and the SQL Reporting Services service are running under the same account (and that account is added to the SQLAccessGroup), you would receive a warning message rather than an error message. 

The reason that the error occurs is listed below:

Microsoft Dynamics CRM Reporting Extensions should not be installed on an instance of Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services that is running under an account that is a member of the SQL Access Group.  This can occur when Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services is running under the same account as a Microsoft Dynamics CRM Server 2011 component. This configuration can make the system vulnerable to certain attacks. During installation, Setup detects this scenario.

Thank you,

Jon

My name is Eric Newell and I manage the Premier Field Engineering team.  We've been bringing you many great technical articles over the past year, and I wanted to broaden the scope of the blog site a little by highlighting some key non-technical concepts that are important to a successful CRM deployment.

The Microsoft Dynamics team has collaborated with our services and product team members and select partners to release the Sure Step 2012 implementation framework.  The release is available on CustomerSource or PartnerSource (here's the CustomerSource link: https://mbs.microsoft.com/customersource/surestep/?r=61&l=5).  You can download Sure Step or access it online at https://mbs2.microsoft.com/Surestep/default.aspx.

Our Premier Field Engineering team has partnered with the Sure Step team on the last couple versions to help grow the Optimization Offerings section of Sure Step.  Optimization Offerings are services that can help augment the implementation by bringing in expertise for a particular topic (such as performance, reporting, development, etc.) to deliver a short-duration service that provides great value to the implementation.  In this version, the heading in Sure Step has changed to "Solution Optimization".  We broke the offerings out by product this time so you have particular service information for each of the Microsoft Dynamics product - AX, GP, NAV, SL, CRM.

The Solution Optimization content was created through a collaboration between Microsoft Consulting Services, Support and the Product teams.  Premier Field Engineer currently delivers many of the services on the list, including the following services:

• Infrastructure Design Review (under the Architecture Review heading)
• Storage Management (pre and post go-live)
• Performance Benchmark
• Health Check (pre and post-go live)
• Performance Review and Tuning
• Development Workshop
• Admin Workshop
• Post Go-Live Workshops (Performance, Finance, Supply Chain, Reporting)
• Upgrade Review Serivces

Check out the latest version of Sure Step and let us know if you need any help with the Solution Optimization offerings.

Eric Newell

I recently had a customer report an issue that CRM e-mails were failing to send out of Microsoft CRM.  We were able to isolate the issue down to an Exchange issue by using the “Test Access” button in the E-mail Router Configuration Manager.  The Exchange Admin fixed the issue and then we were able to successfully “Test Access” and new e-mails were sending out of CRM successfully again.

The outstanding problem was that there were 700+ e-mails that had went to a Failed status because they had reached the re-try limits to send e-mails out of Microsoft CRM.  You could go into each e-mail individually and click “Send” and it would go back into a Pending Send status and the e-mail router would pick it up and send it out successfully.  However, there is no option to multi-select and mass re-send e-mails that are in a failed state.

We looked into this a bit and found out that we could actually use CRM Workflow to re-send failed e-mails message.  We created a new on-demand workflow on the e-mail entity to change the status back to “Pending Send”, so that the router would process them again and send them out to SMTP and update the status to “Sent” in CRM.

We used Advanced Find in CRM to locate e-mails that were in a status of “Failed” and then ran this newly created on-demand workflow against those e-mail records. 

Hopefully you never run into this issue, but if you do, I hope this saves you some time!

Thanks!

Shawn

Steps to create the workflow to re-send failed e-mails:

1. Create a new Workflow in CRM | Processes on the E-mail entity

2. Set the workflow to be Available to Run “As an on-demand process”, Change the scope to Organization and uncheck “Record is created”.  This will make the workflow available to run On-Demand, function for all e-mails in the organization and also not run when every time a new e-mail is created as we just want to use this when needed on specific e-mails.

3. Click “Add Step” and choose “Change Status”

4. Set the E-mail to a status of “Pending Send”

5. Click Save and then Activate in the toolbar.  Click ”OK” to the message to confirm you want to Activate the workflow and then click “Close” on the workflow.

Advanced Find to see how many e-mails are in a failed status:

1. Open Advanced Find by clicking the “Advanced Find” button in the CRM ribbon

2. Select “E-mail Messages” in the Look For option set and then select “Status Reason” and set it equal to “Failed”. Then click the Results button in the Advanced Find ribbon.

3. You can refine the results using the filter criteria from here as well in case you do not want to re-send all of the e-mails. Once you are done, multi-select the e-mails you want to re-send and then click the “Run Workflow” button in the CRM ribbon.

4. Select the e-mail workflow that you created using the steps above and click OK.

The workflow will then run and change the status of all the e-mails you had selected back to “Pending Send”.  This is an asynchronous process, so it may take a few minutes depending on your current asynchronous workload in CRM.  Then the CRM e-mail router will process them again and send them out through SMTP as expected. 

I’ve seen a number of questions coming through these days asking for steps to link CRM Online organizations with SharePoint Online for document management purposes.  The following steps should walk you through this process:

1. Create a CRM Online organization.  If you need to create a 30 day trial organization, click here.
2. If you haven’t already, set up an Office 365 organization.  You’ll want to verify that you can reach the SharePoint site (ex. https://organization.sharepoint.com).  To sign up for a free 30 day Office 365 trial, click here.
3. Download and extract the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 List Component for Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010.
4. Add the crmlistcomponet.wsp file to your SharePoint Online site:
1. Click Site Actions, and then click Site Settings.
2. Under Galleries, click Solutions.
3. On the Solutions tab, in the New group, click Upload Solution.
4. Click Browse, locate the crmlistcomponent.wsp file, and then click OK.
5. On the Solutions tab, in the Commands group, click Activate.
5. Add the SharePoint URL to the Document Management Settings area in your Microsoft CRM Online organization:
1. Settings – Document Management Settings
2. Select the entities you want to enable document management on
3. Specify the SharePoint Online URL
4. Select Next
5. Select whichever option you’d like for the “Select folder structure” page.  If you want to keep things basic where you have the following format, Contacts – [Contact Name] – [Documents], you’ll want to leave this section blank.
6. Continue to select Next

At this point, you should be ready to add document storage locations to your enabled entities.  You’ll need to open a document management enabled record (ex. Contact) and select the Documents are on the left-hand pane.  If things are working correctly, you’ll be presented with a message that says the following “A folder will be created in the location: [SharePoint site]  Click OK to continue.”

- Jon

When I first joined our services team about 7 years ago we were keeping track of our customers in one master spreadsheet and virtually everyone on the team had their own spreadsheet where they kept track of their customer issues and time.  Having just spent 4 years working with IT and being a dabbler in ASP and SQL, I thought this was a good opportunity to build a little system to consolidate this information into one database and some web pages.  This took some time to development, but it was a fun little project and was working pretty well for the team. 

As Dynamics CRM started to grow in popularity with our customers, I volunteered to get up to speed on it and to start managing CRM customer needs.  As I learned more and more about it, I realized my little ASP site was cute, but CRM was definitely the way to go for tracking our business going forward.  I wouldn't have to worry about building grids or programming every little thing we did.  CRM offered the capability to run this whole sit without having to code everything (which was good because I'm not really a programmer - I just knew enough ASP to get by). 

So in January 2007, we launched our CRM 3.0 site to our team of about 40 people with basic Account, Lead, Opportunity and Contract capabilities.  We also used the Outlook client for tracking activities - emails, calendar appointments, etc.  If you've ever rolled out a CRM system before, you probably understand the challenges in adoption with any new system - some guys used it much more extensively than others, but it was a good opportunity to dogfood our own application while keeping track of key customer interactions.

We went live on a pre-RTM build of CRM 2011 back in early January and we've been running well ever since.  With our evolved system, we are able to track all service deliveries we've done for customers (even those we proposed but didn't end up doing), all Dedicated Support Engineer contracts (along with the use of workflow to manage our pipeline), all interactions we have with customers and their contacts, our labor as well as our team's revenue.  We have even started to track our team member's yearly commitments as well as any positive feedback they've received from customers, partners or internal team members.  We have built reports with SQL Reporting Services to track these integrated business functions so we can look quickly (with dashboards and charts) at our team's pipeline and we can show engineers how they are doing against their commitments for the year with the full picture in one place. 

Also, as a team who supports Dynamics CRM, we have the opportunity to test out every update rollup before our customers do so we can give real-world feedback to them as they apply these in their test and production environments.  We even built a "GAL Sync Tool" which we use to automatically add users to our CRM system based on the team member hierarchy (eg. If they report to someone who rolls up to the leader of the Premier Field Engineering organization, they automatically get added to CRM).  We've shown this to customers who need this kind of tool for their business as well.

The ability to know our customers and team members has been a strategic differentiator for us - we have been able to grow our business and know everything about how it's happened.

Eric Newell

We're delighted to announce that Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Update Rollup 21 released Thursday February 9th,2012! 

Note regarding Podcast: Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Update Rollup 21 was discussed briefly during the CRM 2011 Update Rollup 6 Podcast delivered on October 26th, 2011.

NOTE: Due to the low volume of fix requests for CRM 4.0, the CRM SE team will stop shipping CRM 4.0 rollups on a regular schedule after Update Rollup 21. CRM SE will service CRM 4.0 requests on an individual basis using our Critical on Demand process. 

CRM SE will continue to evaluate the need for Update Rollups for the remainder of CRM 4.0’s supported lifecycle.  A rollup will be shipped if there is a significant increase in volume of fix requests or in the event that a rollup will benefit a majority of the 4.0 installation base.

Related links you should know about: 

• Update Rollup 21 Microsoft Download Center page
• Update Rollup 21 "master" Microsoft Knowledge Base article (KB 2621054)
• This article also contains links to related Microsoft Knowledge Base articles
• Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 and 2011 Update Rollup Release Dates, Build Numbers, and Collateral

Build number:
04.00.7333.3822 

Packages are available for download via the Update Rollup 21 Microsoft Download Center page for these CRM components:

• Microsoft Dynamics CRM Server
• Microsoft Dynamics CRM for Microsoft Office Outlook
• Microsoft Dynamics CRM Email Router
• Microsoft Dynamics CRM Data Migration Manager
• Microsoft Dynamics CRM Connector for Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS)
  • Typically included in the Server product (extracted download or DVD) in the srsdataconnector folder
• Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Language Pack (aka Multilanguage User Interface, MUI)

 Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Update Rollup 21 Prerequisites:

• Update Rollup 7 is a prerequisite for Microsoft Dynamics CRM for Microsoft Office Outlook and Microsoft Dynamics CRM Data Migration Manager
• Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Update Rollup 11 (and beyond) Prerequisites:

• Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Update Rollup 11 added support for SQL Report Viewer 2008 SP1 and this has a prerequisite on .Net Framework 3.5 SP1, so this is also a requirement for installing UR11 and future Update Rollups on your CRM servers, routers, clients, etc.
• Update Rollup 11 also included changes that require Visual C++ 2008 + SP1, so this is also a requirement for installing Update Rollup 11 and future Update Rollups on your Microsoft Dynamics CRM servers, routers, clients, etc.
  • Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1
  • Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 Redistributable Package (x86)
  • Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 SP1 Redistributable Package (x86)
  • Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 Redistributable Package (x64)
  • Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 SP1 Redistributable Package (x64)

Issues resolved via Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Update Rollup 21: 

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Update Rollup 21 is a cumulative Update Rollup that includes all the fixes for the issues that are documented in the "Master Knowledge Base Articles" for Update Rollups 1 through 21.

Hotfixes and updates that were released as individual fixes:

Update Rollup 21 for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 contains one update that was released as an individual fix:.

• 2667046  Applications that use the Microsoft CRM Deployment web service may experience time-out errors in deployments that have large domains and multiple sub domains

Other fixes released via CRM 4.0 Update Rollup 21:

• When you map users during the organization import process and then delete the users from Active Directory, the organization import process fails
• When you add many marketing list members by using the Advanced Find function, and then you use the Add all the members option, you experience slow performance in Microsoft Dynamics CRM. Additionally, Microsoft SQL Server stops responding
• Assume that you have two related entities. When only one of the entities has the Create privilege, Microsoft Dynamics CRM users cannot see the Add Existing button on the sub grids of the entity that does not have the Create privilege
• When you enable or disable a user, SYSTEM is displayed in the Last Modified By field of the record. However, the user who performed the action should be displayed in the field
• Assume that you upload data in a Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 client for Outlook that is in offline mode. Then, you go online and perform a client synchronization. In this situation, you experience slow performance during client synchronization. However, the issue does not occur when you run the Fiddler tool
• Assume that you reassign a workflow rule definition to another user, and the user publishes the workflow. The workflow instance records are associated with an entity type against which the workflow is run. In this situation, you cannot open the workflow instance in the System Jobs menu. Additionally, the workflow instance is not displayed in the relationship entity for workflow instances in the System Jobs menu in the workflow definition form

Hotfixes and updates that you have to enable or configure manually

Update Rollup 21 for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 contains no updates that you must enable or configure manually:

Special Considerations

• 64-bit versions of Office 2010 will not be supported in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0
• With Update Rollup 8 installed, Microsoft CRM E-mail Router Service supports Microsoft Exchange Server 2010
• With Update Rollup 12 installed, the Rule Deployment Wizard supports Microsoft Exchange Server 2010

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 4.0 for Microsoft Office Outlook, a common question is whether it is supported to run mismatched versions. For example, where Update Rollup 20 has been installed on the CRM Server but the Outlook clients are still on Update Rollup 15, or where Update Rollup 10 is on the CRM server but due to updates available to the Outlook client you have decided to install Update Rollup 20 on the clients without installing Update Rollup 20 on the server.

The general rule of thumb is to try to keep the versions in sync as much as possible. 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.

Internet Explorer 9 Compatibility

The Microsoft Dynamics CRM Sustained Engineering team extensively tested Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 against pre-release versions of Internet Explorer 9 and continue to address compatibility issues, as they're reported, against the released (Released to Web) version of Internet Explorer 9.0.  If necessary, they plan to release enhancements via future Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Update Rollup releases to assure compatibility with Internet Explorer 9.

Greg Nichols

Premier Field Engineering

Microsoft Corporation

When analyzing traffic from a web application such as CRM you may notice that many of the requests result in a 401 (Access Denied) before they get the 200 Success response. This is a normal authentication sequence for Kerberos or NTLM. Internet Explorer will first attempt anonymous access before any type of authentication attempts.

Some of the static objects such as graphics will allow anonymous access so the request immediately gets a 200 response. Other objects such as ASPX pages require authentication before the content is returned. In that case we have two round-trips before we get our data. This can result in many extra round trips to load an entire page. If the users are on a WAN or if there is high latency on the network the performance may be impacted. On some custom pages I have seen one 401 for every 200 which doubled the round-trips to load page.

IIS 6.0 and IIS 7.0 require the client to be reauthenticated for each HTTP request. This behavior causes network traffic to increase. The following KB articles describe fixes you can apply to change this behavior. When the fix is applied the client will authenticate on the first request and then remain authenticated for the remaining requests in that HTTP Keep-Alive session. This can greatly decrease the round-trips and amount of data being transferred.

You may experience slow performance when you use Integrated Windows authentication together with the Kerberos authentication protocol in IIS 6.0

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/917557

You may experience slow performance when you use Integrated Windows authentication together with the Kerberos authentication protocol in IIS 7.0

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/954873

In the following example the customer had a custom page displayed on their contact form. After applying the fixes the total round-trips decreased by 40%. Each environment is a little bit different, but there may be some performance gains found by testing these fixes.

Sample Results after Applying Changes from the KB:

Please leave a comment if you found this post helpful.

Jeremy Morlock

Microsoft Premier Field Engineer

One of the common questions I get is about Microsoft stack technology updates and if certain service packs or versions of a Microsoft product are supported with Dynamics CRM.  Now we have all of this in one “Living KB”.  For example; You can use this to find out if the latest version of SQL is supported.  We list the Microsoft Product in the first column, followed by the minimum Update Rollup version required for supportability, corresponding CRM build number and the Status of compatibility testing.  We will list new products like Internet Explorer 10 as TBD until we finalize our testing which will be at or near General Availability (GA) of that product.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2669061

Let us know if you have any feedback on how we could improve this KB and\or other Microsoft products or service packs that we should include.

Thanks!

Shawn Dieken

Microsoft Premier Field Engineer

Network performance between the client and server will play a key factor in how well CRM performs for the end users. It is very common to have users working from remote locations where the network performance is unknown. There are several methods to test network performance, but since the release of Update Rollup 4 CRM has included its own diagnostics page to show bandwidth, latency and JavaScript Rendering performance.

This diagnostics page will issue a series of pings from client to server and transfer several blobs of data. Based on this data it will provide the latency in milliseconds and max transfer speeds achieved. This is a quick and easy way to identify the network performance without having to install any tools on the client or server. Using this tool you can gather baseline performance from various locations and determine expected response times given the users bandwidth and latency.  This should be taken into consideration when planning and designing a CRM environment to provide the best user experience available. 

In the Optimizing and Maintaining Client Performance for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 and CRM Online document it states that “Microsoft Dynamics CRM is designed to work best over networks with latency under 150 milliseconds”. Each company may have a different acceptable latency and bandwidth ranges depending on what their acceptable load times are. I have worked with CRM users in other countries where the latency between client and server has been as high as 350ms. CRM was still usable, but will not perform at the same level as someone that is near the CRM Server location. High latency will be expected when traveling over such a long distance and is something that needs to be factored into the design.  New features in CRM 2011 such as the Read-optimized forms continue to improve the user experience where latency and bandwidth are a concern.

To use the diagnostics page you can simply browse to the page by using the URL http://<YourCRMServerURL>/tools/diagnostics/diag.aspx and click the Run button to start the tests. This page is available for both CRM Online and OnPremise.

Please leave a comment if you found this post helpful.

Thanks,

Jeremy Morlock

Microsoft Premier Field Engineer

By default CRM 2011 will create six maintenance jobs which are scheduled to run daily. These jobs are executed by the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Asynchronous Processing Service (maintenance).  Depending on when the organization was created the maintenance jobs may run right when users are in the system. The CRM users may notice slowness or timeouts if the jobs are running while they are working in CRM. It is recommended to reschedule the jobs to a time when there will be a limited number of users in the system to avoid impact to the users.

How to Reschedule the Jobs

The maintenance jobs can be rescheduled using the CRM 2011 Maintenance Job Editor Tool. Below are the steps to use this tool.

1. Download the CRM 2011 Maintenance Job Editor Tool
http://crmjobeditor.codeplex.com/

2. Copy extracted contents to the C:\Program Files\Microsoft Dynamics CRM\tools directory.

3. Double Click the CRM2011JobEditor.exe to launch the tool.

4. Select your organization.

5. Each of the jobs will be staggered a few minutes so they do not execute at the same time. To ensure they remain staggered you can go through each Job and update the Starting At Time by changing the only the hour, switch between AM/PM and then click Update.

Alternatively, you may update the Starting At Time and choose the Apply Settings To All Jobs in the Organization option instead of updating each individual job.

Before:

After:

Disabling the Reindex All Job

The Reindex All job will ReIndex and Shrink your CRM database. Many customers will not want to shrink the database and may already have SQL maintenance jobs in place that will Reindex databases. For those reasons they may want to disable this particular job and control the maintenance within SQL. There is not a “disable” feature for the jobs, but the Next Run Time for this job can be set into the future such as 12/31/2099 so that it will never execute.

Additionally the following errors may be logged in the event viewer application logs if this particular job is running for a long duration or timing out on a larger database. This would be another situation where you may choose to disable the Reindex All job and perform these actions within a SQL maintenance plan.

Query execution time of x seconds exceeded the threshold of 10 seconds. Thread: 13; Database: <database_name); Query: exec p_ShrinkMirroredDatabase <database name>

Query execution time of x seconds exceeded the threshold of 10 seconds. Thread: 20; Database: <database_name); Query: exec p_ReindexAll <database name>

Host <CRMServerName>.MSCRMAsyncService$maintenance.8b60c4b9-0879-4a1d-96c0-eada4e3cbc91: Job Scheduler has executed tasktype=30, organizationid=<OrganizationID>, starttime=5/9/2011 3:25:23 PM, endtime=3/9/2012 3:55:23 PM, resultcode=1, errormessage=System.Data.SqlClient.SqlException (0x80131904): Timeout expired.  The timeout period elapsed prior to completion of the operation or the server is not responding.

Please leave a comment if you found this post helpful and whether it resolved an issue you were facing.

Thanks,

Jeremy Morlock

Microsoft Premier Field Engineer

One of the most popular services that the PFE Dynamics team offers is the Microsoft Dynamics Health Check.  The Microsoft Dynamics Health Check is a comprehensive review of your Microsoft Dynamics environment. The Health Check service will provide you with a detailed analysis of the overall system health, including the Microsoft Dynamics application servers and the Microsoft SQL Server database configuration. In addition, the Premier Field Engineer will review the hardware, infrastructure, and application configuration for identification of potential risk areas. The Health Check offers formal recommendations in a scorecard deliverable that covers each reviewed component of the Microsoft Dynamics implementation.

The Health Check can be scheduled at any time either during implementation or post go-live.  However it can be most effective when users are actively using the environment so actual performance data can be gathered based on real-world usage.  It can also be very helpful prior to a busy cycle in your business to determine how much overhead you have left in your current hardware and infrastructure.

The Health Check is a “point-in-time” snapshot of your deployment and is designed to uncover performance and application configuration risks, saving valuable time and money in the future.  For further information on this service, listen to the podcast below where Premier Field Engineers Brian Bakke and Ryan Anderson discuss the details of the service.  You can also email PFEDynamics@microsoft.com for further information.

Recently one of my customers noticed some of their workflows were failing and had been failing for quite some time without knowing it. When looking at the failed workflow instance within System Jobs it only showed a generic error message that did not provide enough detail to troubleshoot with.  You could get detailed errors by gathering a server side platform trace, but the easiest ways to get the error details is to view the message attribute within System Jobs. The message attribute will contain a stack trace of the error that the workflow or system job had encountered.  Many times this attribute will provide all the detail you need for troubleshooting without having to gather any server side tracing. This attribute is not on the default System Jobs view, but it is very easy to create a personal view in Advanced Find to view this and monitor moving forward.  Below are the steps on creating the personal view and viewing the message attribute.

1. Open CRM Web Client and click Advanced Find.

2. Choose System Jobs from the Look For dropdown menu.

3. Click Show Details so we are able to add filter criteria

4. Add the filter criteria “Message Contains Data”. This way it will only return jobs that have encountered an error. You may also add another filter on status to only show those jobs in a waiting or failed status.

5. Click on the Edit Columns button so that we can add the message attribute to our view.

6. Click on the Add Columns button once the edit columns window opens. Then choose the Message attribute and click OK twice to get back to the main advanced find window.

7. Now that you have an advanced find view created for troubleshooting you can save this as a personal view. To save the view click on Save As in the toolbar, provide a name and click OK. Now this will show up in the system jobs view for future use.

8. Click on Find within the advanced find window to see the results.

9. Scroll to the far right to see the message column for any failed workflows.  You can also export the list to Excel and that will allow you to easily format, filter and search the results.

10. If you saved the view it will show up under the system jobs section. This will provide an easy way to watch for failing workflows and troubleshoot them without accessing the server.

By having a system jobs view that includes the message column it will help catch failing workflows faster and provide necessary data to troubleshoot the issue.

Thanks,

Jeremy Morlock

Microsoft Premier Field Engineer

We are pleased to announce the availability of several open enrollment workshops for Dynamics CRM 2011. The two titles that the Premier Field Engineering team will be delivering are 'Microsoft Dynamics CRM Administration & Troubleshooting Workshop' and 'Microsoft Dynamics CRM Development Workshop'.  These workshops are for Microsoft Premier Support customers only at this time.  Both of these workshops are 3 day workshops with presentation and also hands on labs where you get direct interaction and practice using the skills presented to you during the workshops.  The classroom size is limited to 16 attendees to ensure that you get direct interaction and adequate time from the trainer.  The datasheets for both workshops with a workshop summary, target audience, focus areas and agenda are available below with additional details.

If you are interested in attending these workshops, please work with your Technical Account Manager (TAM) to get pricing details and registration information.

If you are not already a Microsoft Premier Support customer and are interested in finding out more details about Microsoft Premier Support, please visit our site and contact your Microsoft representative for more details.

http://www.microsoft.com/premiersupport

CRM 2011 Admin & Troubleshoot Workshops

Datasheet:http://bit.ly/JL6cH2

1. Los Angeles, CA – June 5^th-7^th

2. Chicago, IL – June 19^th– 21^st

3. Dallas, TX – July 10^th– 12^th

CRM 2011 Development Workshops

Datasheet:http://bit.ly/Hrc0OF

1. Los Angeles, CA – June 12^th-14^th

2. Chicago, IL – June 26^th– 28^th

3. Dallas, TX – July 17^th– 19^th

Thanks!

Shawn Dieken

Microsoft Premier Field Engineer

Understanding Microsoft stack technologies is an important aspect of supporting Dynamics CRM.  Staying current with all of these technologies takes time on your part to read and understand how these stack technologies work and what features and functionality you may want to use with Dynamics CRM.  There are a number of different books, classes, blogs, etc. out there, but one resource that is often overlooked is our free MS Press books.  I wanted to share a blog post from another co-worker at Microsoft (Kim Spilker) who highlighted some of the more recent free ebooks available for download right now.  SQL Server 2012, SQL Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2008 R2, Office 2010, Windows 7 and many more!  These books can be a great resource even if you are not supporting Dynamics CRM specifically.

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/microsoft_press/archive/2012/05/04/free-ebooks-great-content-from-microsoft-press-that-won-t-cost-you-a-penny.aspx

Enjoy!

Shawn Dieken

Microsoft Premier Field Engineer

Even with the world we live in, there will be scenarios when you need to install CRM 2011 when there is no Internet connection available.  The most common scenarios are for virtual (Hyper-V) demo environments and environments with firewalls, and\or other security requirements that block Internet access.  I looked through the Implementation Guide and I didn't see the detailed steps available yet, so I wanted to share them on our PFE blog.

If you download the CRM 2011 ISO from MSDN, or have a physical DVD that you are installing from, you will already have the Redist folder and all the pre-requisites downloaded.  However, if you downloaded your CRM 2011 installation media from the Microsoft download site, then you will have to manually build this Redist pre-requisite folder structure.

Note: If you are installing CRM 2011 on a server that has Internet access, the installation will automatically go out and download the pre-requisite files during the install.

Step 1: Create the Redist folder structure at the same level as the Server, Client, EmailRouter and BIDSExtensions folders.

Once you create the Redist folder it should look something like this:

Step 2: Create the following subfolders directly under the Redist folder

Note: This is a Redist setup for all CRM components: Server, Outlook Client, Email Router, SRS Reporting Extensions and Bids.  For the CRM Outlook client, customers are commonly pushing this out via SCCM or other push technologies, so you want to keep the install package as small as possible.  For the CRM Outlook client the only prerequisites that you would need to include are the ones below.  You could even take it a step further and only include the specific OS and architecture components if you are deploying to clients that are all similar in OS and architecture. 

1. dotNETFX

2. IDCRL

3. MSI45

4. MSOIDCRL

5. ReportViewer

6. SQLCE

7. VCRedist

8. SQLEXPR - Only needed if installing offline CRM Outlook clients

Step 3: Download the pre-requisite files and copy them into the appropriate subfolders

Note: The following download links are for US English (1033), but you can change the language you want to download if you search for the filename and go to the actual download page. Also, these download links will always have the latest update for the prerequisite software regardless of whether I have the correct name listed below. The reason for this is that I may just not have had time to update the Prerequisite name below for every Service Pack or Cumulative Update that is released.

•  Redist
• dotNETFX
  • Prerequisite Name: Microsoft .NET Framework 4 (Standalone Installer)
  • File name:
    • dotNetFx40_Full_x86_x64.exe
  • Download: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=182091&clcid=0x409
• DotNetServicesSDK 
  • Prerequisite Name: Windows Azure AppFabric SDK V1.0
  • File name:
    • WindowsAzureAppFabricSDK-x64.msi
  • Download: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=178254&clcid=0x409
• IDCRL
• Prerequisite Name: Windows Live ID Sign-in Assistant 6.5
• File names:
  • wllogin_32.msi
  • wllogin_64.msi
• Downloads:
• x86: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=194721&clcid=0x409
• x64: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=194722&clcid=0x409
• MSI45
• Prerequisite Name: Windows Installer 4.5 Redistributable
• File names:
• WindowsServer2003-KB942288-v4-x86.exe
• WindowsServer2003-KB942288-v4-x64.exe
• Windows6.0-KB942288-v2-x86.msu
• Windows6.0-KB942288-v2-x64.msu
• WindowsXP-KB942288-v3-x86.exe
• Downloads:
• WindowsServer2003-KB942288-v4-x86.exe - http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=139114&clcid=0x409
• WindowsServer2003-KB942288-v4-x64.exe - http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=139115&clcid=0x409
• Windows6.0-KB942288-v2-x86.msu -
  http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=139108&clcid=0x409
• Windows6.0-KB942288-v2-x64.msu -
  http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=139110&clcid=0x409
• WindowsXP-KB942288-v3-x86.exe -
  http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=139113&clcid=0x409
• Msoidcrl
• Prerequisite Name: Microsoft Online Services Sign-in Assistant
• File names:
  • msoidcli_32.msi
  • msoidcli_64.msi
• Downloads:
• Note: Both versions are named msoidcli, so you have to rename them using the naming conventions above when you download them.
• x86:http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=221498&clcid=0x409
• x64: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=221500&clcid=0x409
• ReportViewer
• Prerequisite Name: Microsoft Report Viewer 2010 Redistributable Package
• File name:
  • ReportViewer.exe
• Download: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=193386&clcid=0x409
• SQLCE
• Prerequisite Name: Microsoft SQL Server Compact 3.5 SP2 with Cumulative Update 2
• File names:
• SSCERuntime-ENU-x86.msi
• SSCERuntime-ENU-x64.msi
• Downloads:
• Note: The files need to be re-named after you download them to match the exact names above.
• x86: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=147327&clcid=0x409
• x64: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=147326&clcid=0x409
• SQLExpr
  • Prerequisite Name: Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Express
  • File name:
    • SQLEXPR_x86_ENU.exe
  • Download: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=179623&clcid=0x409
• SQLNativeClient
• Prerequisite Name: Microsoft SQL Server Native Client
• File name:
• sqlncli_x64.msi
• Downloads:
• Note: The file name in the download is sqlncli.msi, but should be renamed to sqlncli_x64.msi when you save it in the SQLNativeClient folder.
• x64: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=178252&clcid=0x409
• UrlRewriteModule
  • This pre-req is now installed from the server\amd64\urlrewriteModule directory, so it's no longer required to be in the \Redist folder.  We are looking at updating this on the DVD as well to avoid confusion.
• VCRedist
• Prerequisite Name: Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable Package
• File names:
• vcredist_x86.exe
• vcredist_x64.exe
• Download: x86 http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=195255&clcid=0x409
• Download: x64 http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=195257&clcid=0x409
• WindowsIdentityFoundation
• Prerequisite Name: Windows Identity Foundation
• File names:
• Windows5.2-KB974405-x86.exe
• Windows5.2-KB974405-x64.exe
• Windows6.0-KB974405-x86.msu
• Windows6.0-KB974405-x64.msu
• Windows6.1-KB974405-x86.msu
• Windows6.1-KB974405-x64.msu
• Downloads:
• Windows5.2-KB974405-x86.exe -
  http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=200432&clcid=0x409
• Windows5.2-KB974405-x64.exe -
  http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=200430&clcid=0x409
• Windows6.0-KB974405-x86.msu -
  http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=190775&clcid=0x409
• Windows6.0-KB974405-x64.msu -
  http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=190771&clcid=0x409
• Windows6.1-KB974405-x86.msu -
  http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=190781&clcid=0x409
• Windows6.1-KB974405-x64.msu -
  http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=190780&clcid=0x409

Now you have all of the pre-requisites downloaded and saved in the correct folder structures, so you can continue with the CRM 2011 installation even without an Internet connection.

Hopefully this saves those of you who run into this scenario some time!

Thanks!
Shawn