Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 White Papers & Technical Documentation

July 24, 2012, 8:25 am

≫ Next: Introducing the Dynamics CRM Support Blog!

≪ Previous: How to install Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 without an Internet Connection

I am often finding myself searching for CRM 2011 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

Microsoft Premier Field Engineer

Titles	Date Published
Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Implementation Guide	(Updated Quarterly)
Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Software Development Kit (SDK)	(Updated Quarterly)
Connector for Microsoft Dynamics installation guides	7/13/2012
Optimizing and Maintaining Client Performance for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 and CRM Online	7/9/2012 (Refreshed)
Deploying Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 and CRM Online Solutions from Development through Test and Production Environments	7/9/2012
White Paper: Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online Service Description	7/9/2012
White Paper: Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online Enterprise Planning Guide	7/9/2012
White Paper: Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online Security and Service Continuity	7/9/2012
Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online: Security Features	7/9/2012
Optimizing and Maintaining the Performance of a Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Server Infrastructure	7/9/2012 (Refreshed)
IT Showcase On: Microsoft Dynamics CRM	7/5/2012
Microsoft IT Replaces Siebel with Dynamics CRM	5/30/2012
Productivity Pack for Microsoft Dynamics	5/22/2012
Standard Response to Request for Information – Security and Privacy	4/10/2012
IT Showcase On: Adopting Cloud Services at Microsoft	4/5/2012
Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Performance and Scalability with Intel	1/13/2012 (Refreshed)
Connector for Microsoft Dynamics Installation Guides	12/21/2011
Using EFS and BitLocker to Protect Microsoft Dynamics CRM Data on Client Computers	11/2/2011
Deploying Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 and CRM Online Solutions from Development through Test and Production Environments	10/25/2011
Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 for Outlook Quick Start Guide	9/29/2011
Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Quick Start Guide for Business Users	9/29/2011
Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online: Security Features	9/22/2011
Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 for Outlook Installing Guide for use with Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online	8/18/2011
Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 User's Guide	8/12/2011
Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Performance Counters	8/11/2011
Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Administrator's Guide	8/11/2011
Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Configuring Claims-based Authentication	8/1/2011 (Updated)
System Center Monitoring Pack for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011	7/12/2011
Microsoft Dynamics CRM for Microsoft Office Outlook Compatibility with Citrix XenApp 6	7/5/2011
How to configure the Microsoft Dynamics CRM on-premises and Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online E-mail Router in different deployment scenarios	5/2/2011
Microsoft CRM Online Data Migration to Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 on-premises	4/29/2011
Deployment and Operational Guidance for Hosting Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011	4/5/2011
Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Entity Relationship Diagrams	3/24/2011
Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 for E-mail Router Installing Guide for use with Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online	12/9/2010
Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 ISV White Paper	11/4/2010

↧

Introducing the Dynamics CRM Support Blog!

August 14, 2012, 12:30 pm

≫ Next: Optimize CRM 2011 Service Channel allocation for multi-threaded processes using .NET Task Parallel Library (TPL) and a thread-local service proxy

≪ Previous: Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 White Papers & Technical Documentation

Cross posting this introductory message from the new Dynamics CRM Support Blog

Welcome to the Dynamics CRM Support Blog! The Dynamics CRM Support blog was created to provide insights, knowledge, and techniques that support engineers around the globe utilize each day. Microsoft Dynamics CRM has a few other blogs available on the internet and these are linked off on the right hand side. Some of these are maintained by the different regions for some other languages and some like The Microsoft Dynamics CRM blog or CRM in the Field are put out by some of the other groups from within Microsoft.

As there are various Dynamics CRM support blogs, we have decided that it would be best to central CRM blog on the Communities that is connected to the other blogs and that also allows quick access to the Dynamics CRM forums. This allows you as the customer or partner to have that "all in one place" feel for Dynamics CRM technical information. With content supplied from Microsoft's own support teams we will be focusing on topics like:

Current hot support topics
Common errors and fixes
Tips-n-Tricks
Best practices
How To articles

The Dynamics CRM Support Team will be working together with our Product Development team and other global Dynamics CRM support teams to drive the content for this blog:

This team is part of the Commercial Technical Support organization. Contributors to the blog reside in our Fargo campus, which is the Global Escalation Center. These team members have a deep technical knowledge and a passion for troubleshooting.

We hope you enjoy the site. We're happy to hear your feedback and suggestions for content that will help you be successful with Dynamics CRM.

Please feel free to comment if you have a blog idea that is not currently available and would be helpful for you and your company.

Dynamics CRM Support Blog

↧

Optimize CRM 2011 Service Channel allocation for multi-threaded processes using .NET Task Parallel Library (TPL) and a thread-local service proxy

September 7, 2012, 3:46 pm

≫ Next: CRM Upgrade Best Practices

≪ Previous: Introducing the Dynamics CRM Support Blog!

The latest release of the Dynamics CRM 2011 SDK (v5.0.12) provides new guidance on improving service channel allocation performance. This guidance builds upon a previous recommendation to cache your references to service proxy objects such as OrganizationServiceProxy. While this recommendation still holds true, it presents an issue for another best-practice, implementing multi-threaded processes, because the proxy objects are not thread-safe.

Enter IServiceManagement<TService> and the ServiceConfigurationFactory.CreateManagement as well as new constructor overloads for the service proxy types. These capabilities now allow you to minimize expensive operations such as downloading endpoint metadata (WSDL) and authenticating (in claims/IFD/Online auth scenarios) by decoupling them from creating instances of the actual service proxy objects. Those operations are minimized because the references obtained can be safely cached and shared across threads. Below is an example based on the SDK documentation of how to use these new capabilities:

IServiceManagement<IOrganizationService> Example

//Perform metadata (WSDL) download once and re-use
//across multiple OrganizationServiceProxy connections
var orgServiceManagement = ServiceConfigurationFactory.CreateManagement<IOrganizationService>(newUri(organizationUrl));

//If claims-based/IFD or CRM Online auth scenarios, obtain
//a reusable SecurityTokenResponse via Authenticate() method
var authCredentials = orgServiceManagement.Authenticate(newAuthenticationCredentials(credentials));

Read more about the latest CRM 2011 Development best-practices here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg509027#Performance

In addition to highlighting these exciting capabilities, I’d like to focus the remainder of this post on providing a few practical patterns for combining the above technique with implementing multi-threaded operations that interact with the CRM 2011 services.

These patterns will utilize both Data and Task Parallelism methods provided by the .NET 4.0 Task Parallel Library (TPL). The beauty of TPL is that the .NET framework provides a fluent means of adding parallelism/concurrency to applications while abstracting the developer from low-level implementation details. If you haven’t checked out this library and still implement your own ThreadPool mechanism, then you’re definitely missing out!

Read more about Parallel Programming in the .NET Framework here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd460693(v=vs.100)

To differentiate, Data Parallelism refers to performing the same operation concurrently against a partitioned source collection or arrays, whereas Task Parallelism refers to the queuing and dispatching of independent tasks that can be executed concurrently. Start to think about how typical operations that involve communication with the CRM 2011 services could fall into one of these two categories. When I think Data Parallelism, operations that immediately come to mind involve executing the same query over multiple paged result sets or Create/Update/Assign/Delete operations on a batch of entity records. For Task Parallelism, I think about scenarios that require retrieval of multiple entity types such as a cross-entity search or retrieving the true equivalent of a left-outer join query. These two scenarios both involve unique queries and handling of the result sets.

So, being able to leverage TPL, how do we keep our CRM service proxy objects aligned with individual threads when implementing concurrent operations? At first glance, it appears that service proxies would be instantiated and disposed of within the delegate method being executed. That isn’t exactly an optimal scenario since the same thread will likely perform multiple iterations thus creating and disposing of an unnecessary amount of proxy objects. Luckily, TPL provides the means to manage thread-local variables when implementing Data/Task Parallelism certain methods.

A quick aside, the patterns below use lambda expressions to define delegates in TPL. If you are not familiar with lambda expressions in C# or VB, review the following article before moving forward: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd460699(v=vs.100)

Data Parallelism: Parallel.For<TLocal> and Parallel.ForEach<TSource, TLocal> with thread-local OrganizationServiceProxy variable

Our first two concurrent patterns will involve the Data Parallelism methods Parallel.For and Parallel.ForEach. These methods are similar in nature to standard for and foreach iteration statements respectively. The major difference is that the iterations are partitioned and executed concurrently in a manner that makes optimal use of available system resources.

Both methods offer generic constructor overloads that allow you to specify a thread-local type, define a delegate action to instantiate your thread-local variable, and another delegate action to handle any final operations that should be performed after the thread completes all of its iterations. To properly align CRM service proxy objects with threads we’ll incorporate proxy instantiation and disposal into this overload. (Note that the term “thread-local” is slightly inaccurate, because in some cases two partitions may be executed on the same thread. Again, TPL makes these optimization decisions on our behalf and is an acceptable scenario given that we’re still minimizing service proxy objects.)

Let’s start with the Parallel.For<OrganizationServiceProxy> loop pattern. The code sample below illustrates this pattern in the context of concurrently retrieving paged query results. The first delegate (Action) returns a new OrganizationServiceProxy, instantiated using our cached IServiceManagement<IOrganizationService> reference and potentially via pre-authenticated credentials.

The second delegate (Func<TResult>) accepts multiple parameters including a reference to our thread-local service proxy. The delegate body contains the primary operation to be executed and it is supplied with three parameters: index, loopState, and our thread-local proxy reference. In our example scenario, we’re handling paged queries, thus the index parameter can supply the necessary query PagingInfo and the proxy reference allows us to execute the RetrieveMultiple request. The proxy reference must be returned at conclusion of the operation so that it can be passed to the next iteration. This is useful to ensure any changes to the thread-local variable are carried forward to subsequent iterations, but is not directly relevant in our service proxy scenario other than satisfying the intended implementation.

Lastly, cleanup of the service proxy object is performed in the third delegate (Action<T>). The name of this delegate parameter, ‘localFinally’ suggests a try-finally statement where resources are assured release in the finally block. It indeed behaves similarly in that unhandled exceptions in the body delegate are wrapped into an AggregateException type and the localFinally delegate is always executed. Thus, we’ll use this delegate Action to dispose of our service proxy reference after the thread has completed all of its assigned work.

Parallel.For<OrganizationServiceProxy> Pattern

//*SCENARIO*: Retrieve a number of pages concurrently
var pageCount = 10;
var pageSize = 5000;

try
{
    Parallel.For<OrganizationServiceProxy>(1, pageCount,
        newParallelOptions() { MaxDegreeOfParallelism = maxDop },
        () =>
        {
            //Setup a client proxy for each thread (scenario assumes AD auth)
            var proxy = newOrganizationServiceProxy(orgServiceManagement, credentials);

            //*TIP* For claims-based/IFD and CRM Online re-use
            //a pre-authed security token for each proxy connection

            //var proxy = OrganizationServiceProxy(orgServiceManagement, authCredentials.SecurityTokenResponse);

            //*OPTIONAL* Enable early-bound entities

            //proxy.EnableProxyTypes();

            return proxy;
        },
        (index, loopState, proxy) =>
        {
            //Do iterative work here using the thread-local proxy

            //*EXAMPLE* use thread-local loop index to specify page

            //var page = new PagingInfo()
            //{
            //    Count = pageSize,
            //    PageNumber = index
            //};

            //*EXAMPLE* use thread-local proxy to retrieve paged results

            //var results = proxy.RetrieveMultiple(query);

            //*TIP* To consolidate results across threads,
            //use a concurrent collection type defined
            //in the System.Collections.Concurrent namespace

            //return proxy to the next iteration in the current thread's loop
            return proxy;
        },
        (proxy) =>
        {
            //Dispose of proxy in thread's localFinally Action<T>
            proxy.Dispose();
            proxy = null;
        });
}
catch (AggregateException ae)
{
    foreach (var ex in ae.InnerExceptions)
    {
        //Handle exceptions
    }
}

Read more about how to write a Parallel.For loop with thread-local variables here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd460703(v=vs.100).aspx

For our Parallel.ForEach<TSource, OrganizationServiceProxy> pattern, the below code sample illustrates using a thread-local proxy reference to submit Create requests for a list of new CRM Entity objects. Notice that the structure of Parallel.ForEach loop is very similar to Parallel.For loop from the perspective of handling a thread-local variable and defining the primary operation. The only difference is that we instead supply an IEnumerable<TSource> where each item is targeted as an iteration rather than performing a specified number of loops. We also have the ability to update the current enumerated item submitted to the loop body delegate. In the example below, we are assigning the Entity.Id property from the System.Guid value returned as the Create response.

Parallel.ForEach<TSource, OrganizationServiceProxy> Pattern

//*SCENARIO*: Create a list of entities concurrently
var entities = newList<Entity>();

try
{
    Parallel.ForEach<Entity, OrganizationServiceProxy>(entities,
            newParallelOptions() { MaxDegreeOfParallelism = maxDop },
            () =>
            {
                //Setup a client proxy for each thread (scenario assumes AD auth)
                var proxy = newOrganizationServiceProxy(orgServiceManagement, credentials);

                //*TIP* For claims-based/IFD and CRM Online re-use
                //a pre-authed security token for each proxy connection

                //var proxy = OrganizationServiceProxy(orgServiceManagement, authCredentials.SecurityTokenResponse);

                //*OPTIONAL* Enable early-bound entities

                //proxy.EnableProxyTypes();

                return proxy;
            },
            (e, loopState, index, proxy) =>
            {
                //Do iterative work on source items here using thread-local proxy

                //*EXAMPLE* use thread-local proxy to create entity

                //e.Id = proxy.Create(e);

                //return proxy to the next iteration in the current thread's loop
                return proxy;
            },
            (proxy) =>
            {
                //Dispose of proxy in thread's localFinally Action<T>
                proxy.Dispose();
                proxy = null;
            });
}
catch (AggregateException ae)
{
    foreach (var ex in ae.InnerExceptions)
    {
        //Handle exceptions
    }
}

Read more about how to write a Parallel.ForEach loop with thread-local variables here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd460703(v=vs.100)

Task Parallelism: Parallel.Invoke with ThreadLocal<T> OrganizationServiceProxy

Our third pattern involves Task Parallelism, meaning it’s appropriate when needing to execute multiple, independent operations concurrently. In this pattern we’ll focus on the use of Parallel.Invoke(Action[] actions) method. Nevertheless, TPL also provides the ability to create and run Tasks explicitly providing more control over nesting and chaining Tasks.

The Parallel.Invoke method only accepts an array of delegate actions, so we can utilize a ThreadLocal<T> instance to align our OrganizationServiceProxy with each concurrent thread. Be sure to instantiate the ThreadLocal<T> instance inside a using statement or explicitly call .Dispose() to release resources held by this reference. Since we must also dispose of our service proxy objects, we’ll track each instance created in a ConcurrentBag<T> that we can reference after executing our concurrent operations.

Within each delegate Action, we can safely access the ThreadLocal<T>.Value to get the reference to our service proxy object. Again, each of these actions should be independent of each other. There is not guarantee as to the execution order or even whether they execute in parallel.

Once all of the concurrent operations are complete, we revisit our proxyBag tracking object in the finally block to cleanup up each of the service proxy objects that were created. An more sophisticated approach involving a wrapper class to ThreadLocal<T> is provided here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7669666/what-is-the-correct-way-to-dispose-elements-held-inside-a-threadlocalidisposabl

Note that in .NET 4.5, a new collection property, ThreadLocal<T>.Values, has been added. If a new ThreadLocal<T> is constructed specifying ‘trackAllValues’ = true, then this collection can be accessed to obtain references to each thread-specific instance created over the life of the ThreadLocal<T> object.

Parallel.Invoke with ThreadLocal<OrganizationServiceProxy> Pattern

//*SCENARIO*: Perform multiple entity queries concurrently
var proxyBag = newConcurrentBag<OrganizationServiceProxy>();

using (var threadLocal = newThreadLocal<OrganizationServiceProxy>(
    () =>
    {
        //Setup a client proxy for each thread (scenario assumes AD auth)
        var proxy = newOrganizationServiceProxy(orgServiceManagement, credentials);

        //*TIP* For claims-based/IFD and CRM Online re-use
        //a pre-authed security token for each proxy connection

        //var proxy = OrganizationServiceProxy(orgServiceManagement, authCredentials.SecurityTokenResponse);

        //*OPTIONAL* Enable early-bound entities

        //proxy.EnableProxyTypes();

        //Track the proxy in our ConcurrentBag<T> for disposal purposes
        proxyBag.Add(proxy);

        return proxy;
    }))
{
    try
    {
        Parallel.Invoke(
            () =>
            {
                //*EXAMPLE* Action A: retrieve using thread-local proxy

                //var results = threadLocal.Value.RetrieveMultiple(query);
            },
            () =>
            {
                //*EXAMPLE* Action B: retrieve using thread-local proxy

                //var results = threadLocal.Value.RetrieveMultiple(query);
            },
            () =>
            {
                //*EXAMPLE* Action C: retrieve using thread-local proxy

                //var results = threadLocal.Value.RetrieveMultiple(query);
            });

        //*TIP* To consolidate results across threads,
        //use a concurrent collection type defined
        //in the System.Collections.Concurrent namespace
    }
    catch (AggregateException ae)
    {
        foreach (var ex in ae.InnerExceptions)
        {
            //Handle exceptions
        }
    }
    finally
    {
        //Dispose of each proxy instance tracked
        //in the ConcurrentBag<T>
        foreach (var p in proxyBag)
        {
            p.Dispose();
        }

        proxyBag = null;

        //.NET 4.5 provides a .Values collection to track
        //all instances across threads. It requires setting
        //'trackAllValues' parameter to true when
        //constructing the ThreadLocal<T>

        //foreach (var p in threadLocal.Values)
        //{
        //    p.Dispose();
        //    p = null;
        //}
    }
}

Read more about how to use Parallel.Invoke to execute parallel operations here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd460705

Remember that any reference types accessed or assigned within the body of each parallel operation should be thread-safe. As noted in each of the patterns, certain thread-safe data structures for parallel programming such as ConcurrentBag<T> can prove helpful .

Hopefully these patterns have provided some practical guidance for combining documented SDK best-practices and lead to a positive impact on general performance within your custom solutions/extensions for Dynamics CRM. I also hope that the scenarios presented with each pattern provide a starting point to identify ways that these patterns can be applied. If you have any questions or suggestions, feel free to post in the comments below.

Austin Jones

Microsoft Premier Field Engineer

↧

CRM Upgrade Best Practices

October 10, 2012, 9:03 am

≫ Next: Podcast and Overview: Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Update Rollup 11

≪ Previous: Optimize CRM 2011 Service Channel allocation for multi-threaded processes using .NET Task Parallel Library (TPL) and a thread-local service proxy

Sean McNellis, Ryan Anderson and I recorded a podcast (http://aka.ms/tndfbt) last Friday on Dynamics CRM Upgrade Best Practices. During the podcast we mentioned that we would be posting a blog article outlining the topics that we covered with links to more details. That podcast and this blog post are by no means all encompassing upgrade best practices, but are just meant to cover some of the common topics and practices that we have been doing with our premier support customers.

Preparing for the Upgrade

Reasons to upgrade to CRM 2011– We started out talking a little bit about this as your organization prepares for the upgrade to CRM 2011 there are lot of resources available online.
- Microsoft Dynamics CRM Site: http://crm.dynamics.com
- More Reasons to Upgrade: http://aka.ms/vqblvn
- PodCast – Planning for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011: http://aka.ms/po4bfu
Installation Media– Ensure that you have the CRM install media with Update Rollup 6 slipstreamed. The version should be 5.00.9690.1992 if you right click on SetupServer.exe and go to Properties | Details. I always use Greg Nichols post on our blog to get the updated download links. http://aka.ms/jwfeje
- This setup includes Update Rollup’s 1-6 as well all all the setup updates for Dynamics CRM 2011. This version is also required if you are planning to deploy to SQL 2012.
CRM White Papers and other Technical Documents
- Recommended White Papers
  - CRM 2011 Implementation Guide
  - CRM 2011 Optimizations
  - CRM 2011 SDK
  - Deploying CRM 2011 from Development to Test and Production environments
- Complete list of white papers with links: http://aka.ms/aiiriw
There are 3 types of upgrades– When upgrading you can choose between 3 different upgrade paths. The path you choose will vary depending on your current CRM infrastructure and your plans for your CRM 2011 production environment. We almost always recommend going with the Migration Upgrade approach as it provides the ability to test the upgrade multiple times, allows for performance benchmark testing and leaves your existing CRM 4.0 environment in tact in case a rollback is necessary. Most of our customers are using NLB and have an alias record setup in DNS which is pointing to the CRM 4.0 environment. The IP address on that alias in DNS is all that you would have to update once you decide to go live with your upgraded CRM 2011 environment in order for web and Outlook (Assuming you configured using the alias name which is also always recommended) to be pointed at CRM 2011.
- Upgrading from Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0: http://aka.ms/q3cybt

Server Optimizations – Prior to Upgrade

Registry keys on the CRM server that we recommend implementing for the CRM upgrade.

Registry Key	Value	Post Upgrade
MaxUserPort - http://aka.ms/dims52	65534	Leave in place
TCPTimedWaitDelay - http://aka.ms/xhts4r	30	Leave in place
OLEDBTimeout - http://aka.ms/yc14kw	86400	Set back to previous value or delete key
*EnableRetrieveMultipleOptimization - http://aka.ms/bcii0b	0	Leave in place
MaxDopForIndexCreation - http://aka.ms/kw0kzz	4	Delete
SortInTempDB - http://aka.ms/kw0kzz	1	Delete
NumThreadsForIndexCreation - http://aka.ms/kw0kzz	4	Delete
BatchAddAttributeUpdates - http://aka.ms/kw0kzz	1	Delete

* We used to recommend setting the EnableRetrieveMultipleOptimization to 2 or 1 for most of our customers with millions of records in the PrincipalObjectAccess table, but now with the UR10 optimizations we are recommending that customers set this to 0 or delete the key as CRM dynamically sets this now based on your dataset.

Enable AuthPersistNonNTLM
- After you set the authPersistNonNTLM property to True, you do not require a reauthentication for every request that is made over the same keep-alive connection. This will help to reduce the number of 401 requests that the CRM server receives and help reduce unnecessary traffic.
- Please refer to the following KB for complete details for checking and enabling this: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/954873
- Sean McNellis also wrote a blog post on Kerberos in Load Balanced Environments which also has details and screenshots on checking if this is enabled and commands to enable authPersistNonNTLM
  - http://aka.ms/hw3vzw
Remember to Set “UseAppPoolCredentials”in the webservers configuration file
- This is something that I have run into multiple times with our premier customers who are using NLB setups and running the CRM Application Pools as a domain user with Kernel Mode authentication enabled. You must do this extra step or your users will be prompted for credentials and\or get a 401 error message when trying to access CRM.
- Sean details how to check for and set this up in IIS in his Kerberos blog post as well. http://aka.ms/hw3vzw

Enable WCF Compression
- Enabling WCF Compression can greatly help to improve the CRM 2011 network performance in your environment. Especially when using the CRM 2011 Outlook client.
- Jeremy Morlock on our PFE team has written a great blog article on the benefits of WCF compression and also how to enable this in CRM 2011. http://aka.ms/may2aj

SQL Server Settings – Prior to Upgrade

Run the SyncEntry clean up scripts- If your users are utilizing the CRM Outlook client to clean up old sync entry tables.
- http://aka.ms/hqmihq
Run the Async clean up script– The AsyncOperationBase table can grow to be very large and degrade performance overtime, so clean this up prior to upgrading.
- http://support.microsoft.com/kb/968520
Change the database backup model to SIMPLE Recovery Model- After restoring the database backup on the new CRM 2011 SQL instance we recommend changing the recovery model to Simple. This will help reduce the amount of data logged to the SQL database transaction logs during the upgrade process and can help prevent issues with running out of drive space on the disk that the transaction logs are stored on.
- Reference the SQL Recovery Model MSDN page for details on changing this - http://aka.ms/skw22a
SQL Max Degree of Parallelism
- You can use the max degree of parallelism option to limit the number of processors to use in parallel plan execution. In the past we have always recommending customers setting the Max Degree of Parallelism to 1 on the SQL instance that hosts the CRM databases. However, with the larger SQL servers that we are seeing with 8 or more cores we are starting to see better performance setting this to a 2 or a 4. There is no magic number here, but we have still always found that anything is better than leaving this at 0 for Dynamics CRM. We would recommend testing with 2 or 4 rather than 1 for CRM 2011 on SQL servers with 8 or more cores as that’s what we have typically been using with our premier customers. With the query optimizations that were done in UR10 and UR11 we recommend re-visiting this setting as you may get better performance leveraging parallelism even more now.
- SQL Server 2008 R2 Max Degree of Parallelism MSDN reference - http://aka.ms/luij0u
Enable SQL CLR
- CRM 2011 has a MSCRMSqllogin that is used for time zone conversions when you run dashboards, charts and advanced finds. When the Microsoft SQL Server is enabled to use common language runtime (CLR), it can show a significant improvement in performance for those features.
- Here is the MSDN link with steps to enable this - http://aka.ms/x0rert
Update statistics with Full Scan– We recommend doing this prior to and after the upgrade to CRM 2011
- Here is the command you can use in SQL Management Studio: Exec sp_MSForEachTable 'Update Statistics ? with FULLSCAN'

Post Upgrade Optimizations

Change the database backup model back to FULL Recovery Model– Remember to change the database recovery model back to FULL after the upgrade has completed.
- Reference the SQL Recovery Model MSDN page for details on changing this - http://aka.ms/skw22a
Install Update Rollup 10 on the CRM Servers, SRS Data Connector, E-mail Router and Outlook Clients
- Installing the latest Update Rollup is always recommended from Microsoft, but Update Rollup 10 in particular offers a lot of enhancements and optimizations. Specifically around Quick Finds and searches involving the PrincipalObjectAccess table and the use of the EnableRetrieveMultipleOptimization registry key.
- Update Rollup 10 blog and podcast with download links - http://aka.ms/dtkco3
  - Note Update Rollup 10 was re-released on 10\4\12, so please ensure you have the latest V2 build installed. We have a blog post detailing this as well - http://aka.ms/behme3
SQL Server
- Setup a custom SQL job to re-index all CRM out of the box and custom indexes. CRM will re-index all of this out of the box indexes by default, but we have found that our customers are better off disabling that feature as it also shrinks the CRM database and that can take a very long time and lead to possible downtime when your database is several hundreds of GB’s or larger. We will be posting a blog article on our recommendations for this process soon and I will update this post with a direct link.
Run the CRM 2011 Maintenance Job Editor - http://crmjobeditor.codeplex.com/
- Download and run this tool to update the CRM 2011 Maintenance jobs, so that these run during off hours. If you do not set these CRM will run them based off of when you installed CRM and that could be during business hours in many cases since the server was not in production while you were setting this up.

Jobs to update:

Deletion Service	Set this to run during off hours
Index Management	Set this to run during off hours.
Re-Index All	Set this to run during off hours. - Set this to run in 2050,for example, so it essentially disables the job - You would want to setup a separate SQL job to maintain indexes outside of CRM as I mentioned above
Clean up Workflows	Set this to run during off hours
Create Audit Partition	Set this to run during off hours
Check for MUI Updates	Set this to run during off hours
Refresh Sharing Counts	Set this to run during off hours
Refresh Entity Row Counts	Set this to run during off hours

CRM Outlook Clients

We ran out of time on this podcast to spend much time talking about upgrading the CRM Outlook clients, so we are planning to do a follow up podcast on that topic specifically. However, we do want to provide you with a few quick best practices for upgrading CRM Outlook clients

Use SCCM or other management tools to push the CRM Outlook client upgrade. Most of our customers use SCCM or other management tools to install and upgrade their CRM Outlook clients.
- Install CRM 2011 Outlook client using SCCM - http://aka.ms/mv4hru
- Install CRM using command prompt and config XML files - http://aka.ms/fhh305
- I wrote a blog post awhile back that I have used several times with my customers when building SCCM packages to deploy the client which details how to install CRM without an Internet connection. Ideally you would push the pre-reqs ahead of time, but if that is not an option you can follow this blog and build them into your installer package too. - http://aka.ms/bnzpx0
User Sync Filters, Settings, etc. are all maintained in the database and will be upgraded.
CRM 4.0 Outlook Client can communicate with a CRM 2011 Server! This is a huge benefit for organizations where they cannot upgrade all the CRM Outlook clients over a single weekend. CRM 4.0 Outlook clients will continue to work with an upgraded CRM 2011 server. The only exceptions are that some new features like Connections, the Reading Pane and other settings will not be available in the ribbon or toolbar because those are CRM 2011 specific features. Also, if you are using the CRM 4.0 Outlook client with offline access you will not able to go offline when configured to a CRM 2011 server until you upgrade to the CRM 2011 Outlook client.

Some Lessons Learned

We could write an entire book on this and probably should some day, but for the purposes of this blog supporting our podcast we wanted to highlight a few areas.

Operations Manual– Take the time to document and build an operations manual for CRM, so that you can track how to build servers, which registry keys or other settings were setup, etc., so that when you add another server later or move to a new deployment you are not running into issues that you prevented or resolved in the past.
Ensure you have enough free space on your SQL disk that hosts your transaction log file. During the upgrade your transaction log will grow and we have seen this grow as much as twice the size your SQL data file, so make sure to allocate enough free space for the transaction log to grow during the upgrade. We recommend allocating at least 2 to 3 times the size of your SQL data file for your transaction log during the upgrade. Changing the backup model to Simple (as detailed above) will really help here as well. The bottom line is to make sure you test this prior to upgrade and don’t let this be the reason why your upgrade fails on Friday night.
Supportability– CRM 2011 provides much more functionality and extensibility than CRM 4.0 did, so re-visit any unsupported stored procs, triggers, etc. that you have in place and look into whether or not you even need that workaround in place anymore, or if there are ways to do that with plug-ins or other supported methods in CRM 2011. This will only help you in the long run and keep you out of unwanted trouble.
Smart Matching - This is how CRM correlates e-mail and sets the regarding values on e-mails automatically in CRM 4.0 and CRM 2011. We had some customers in CRM 4.0 that wanted to disable this feature and it was possible through a registry key detailed in this KB - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/958084. In CRM 2011 we added the ability to configure and disable Smart Matching to the UI. Because of this change we had to enable Smart Matching by default for all installs and upgrades. So, if you had Smart Matching disabled in CRM 4.0 and want it to be disabled in CRM 2011 as well, you will need to go disable this in the UI.
- Steps to disable in CRM 2011 – Settings | Administration | System Settings | E-mail | Un-check “Use Smart Matching” in the ‘Configure e-mail correlation’ section and click OK. You will want to make sure that you are using Tracking Tokens then as well.
Configure CRM Deployment Manger for Network Load Balancing (NLB). Almost all of our customers are using NLB in their CRM deployments and one of the steps that is sometimes forgotten is to setup NLB correctly after installing the additional CRM servers. By default the first CRM server you installed will be listed in Deployment Manager, so you will not be leveraging NLB correctly until this is configured properly.
- This MSDN page details the steps - http://aka.ms/kodk1u

Well, this blog post got a lot longer than I had anticipated, but I wanted to provide you with supporting details and URL’s to all of the topics that we covered during our podcast. I hope that you enjoyed listening to our podcast, or even just consuming the information in this blog post. Hopefully this will help your CRM 2011 upgrades go smoothly.

Please let us know if you have any questions regarding this podcast and\or blog, or if you are interested in learning more about Microsoft Premier Support and the services we deliver to our Premier Support customers.

Thanks!
Sean McNellis, Ryan Anderson & Shawn Dieken

↧

Podcast and Overview: Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Update Rollup 11

October 22, 2012, 11:07 am

≫ Next: Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 and v4.0 Service Updates and Update Rollups: Release Dates, Build Numbers, and Collateral

≪ Previous: CRM Upgrade Best Practices

NEW UPDATE as of 10/22: Please note!

UR11 Outlook Client packages: The Update Rollup 11 installer packages for the CRM 2011 Client for Microsoft Office Outlook (build 5.0.9690.2835) were removed from the Microsoft Download Center temporarily and replaced on Wednesday Oct. 17th with a new build: 5.0.9690.2838. The reason for the re-release was an issue being reported when the client was running on Windows XP, where a user may see Watson errors when clicking on entities.

If you have already installed the original 5.0.9690.2835 Client build and you are not running Windows XP, there is no need to update to the new packages.

Build 5.0.9690.2838 (Outlook Client) as well as all other packages except Server were released to the Microsoft Update site Tuesday 10/23 around 10:30 AM Pacific time.

UR11 Server packages:

The UR11 server packages were reposted on the Download Center on 10/23/2012 to resolve the duplicate key error when importing solutions. The duplicate key fix is the only addition to the Re-released (v2) server packages. You only need to install V2 if you are experiencing the issue, i.e. cannot import your customizations.

----------------

We're proud to announce that Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Update Rollup 11 was released on Thursday, October 11th,2012 to the Microsoft Download Center! The release of Update Rollup 11 to Microsoft Update is still planned for October 23rd, 2012.

Here's the "Master" Microsoft Dynamics Knowledge Base article: (KB 2739504). Going forward, the plan is for the Master Knowledge Base article to be published a bit in advance of release to help your release planning.

On Friday, October 12th at Greg Nichols and Ryan Anderson from the Microsoft Premier Field Engineering team provided information about:

The recent re-release of Update Rollup 10 for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011
New fixes available In Update Rollup 11

at 9 AM Pacific time on BlogTalkRadio during their Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Update Rollup 11 Podcast.

Big Update Rollup 11 news!

Increased support for Windows 8 / Internet Explorer 10 / Office 2013 Preview compatibility
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.

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.

Update Rollup 11 Build number:
5.0.9690.2835

Notes:
You will be able to uninstall Update Rollup 11, unlike Update Rollups 4-6 which could not be uninstalled. However, you should always back up your databases and application servers before you install an Update Rollup.

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 11 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 5. Some of these features include:

Outlook Client Updates:
- Enhancements to the Reading Pane
- Asynchronous promotion for tracked emails
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

Packages will be available for download via:

The Update Rollup 11 Microsoft Download Center page (released Oct. 11th, 2012)
The Microsoft Update Catalog (release planned for Oct. 23rd, 2012)
The Microsoft Update detection / installation process (release planned for Oct. 23rd, 2012)
- 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 11 "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: As of Jan. 20th, 2012 these installation files have been 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

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Update Rollup 11 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.

Issues resolved via Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Update Rollups:

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Update Rollup 11 is the eleventh (or tenth, 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 11 contains all fixes shipped via Update Rollups 1-11, including fixes that were never publicly released via Update Rollup 9.

Hotfixes and updates that were released as individual fixes before Update Rollup 11 release:

The following issues were fixed and delivered to requesting customers prior to Update Rollup 11 release as Critical On Demand (COD) fixes and are included in Update Rollup 11:

Assume that you have a Microsoft Dynamics CRM database that contains more than 100,000 users. You import an organization. In this situation, when you try to map users during the organization import process, the Import Organization wizard seems to freeze before the User Mapping table is opened
When you open a managed dialog box in a Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 client for Outlook, a memory leak occurs. Additionally, the Outlook client may crash
When you add an OnSave action script on a Service Activity entity by using Jscript Libraries Editor, the OnSave action does not work as expected before a Service Activity record is updated in the database
When you change a price list item, closed opportunities are updated unexpectedly
Unexpectedly, you cannot enable the Sending email option for an entity that has existing records
When you reply to an email message that was tracked in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011, two entries are inserted in the ActivityPointerBase table incorrectly
Custom error messages for software development kit (SDK) plug-ins are not displayed as expected. Instead, a generic error message that states that ISV code aborted the operation is displayed
Unexpectedly, you cannot add a sales literature attachment to a custom entity
When you add many members to a marketing list, you experience slow performance. Additionally, an Internet Explorer script error may occur. This issue occurs when the paging functionality is used in the members lookup
When multiple secure token services (STS) are used to access Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011, the WHR parameter (Home Realm) that was added to the CRM sitemap is blocked by the parameter filter unexpectedly
After you install Internet Explorer 9, you cannot export or save reports from the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Client for Outlook
Assume that you create an appointment in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011. You edit the appointment in Outlook. In this situation, duplicate appointments are created
After you apply Update Rollup 10, a SDK DataContractJsonSerializer error may occur in Service Contracts
You receive the following error message in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 client for Outlook:
- Event ID 9646 : Mapi session Exceeded the maximum of 250 objects of type "objtmessage"
When you run the Set Regarding function in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 client for Outlook, you may receive a warning message that states that you do not have permissions to take this action
If you have the Symantec Enterprise Vault add-in installed, unhandled Windows forms thread errors may occur in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 client for Outlook

Other fixes released via CRM 2011 Update Rollup 11:

When you upgrade an organization from Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 to Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011, permissions for the SystemForm entities are not assigned correctly
When you run the Set Regarding function on an email message, the lookup view lists all active accounts. However, you should be able to set a different default view for the lookup
The table header cells in CRM tables do not have a specific row or column attribute
The WAUTH parameter is not supported in Federation Provider properties in the deployment web service
When you run the Mail Merge function, the CRM add-in crashes on the Word Automation services
When you change the First Week of Year setting in the organization settings, the changes are not considered when the system uses the fetch functionality to retrieve some date data that is grouped by week
After you change the reminder time in Outlook, recurring appointments are corrupted
When you perform a Quick Find search on the Activities view, the search may return unexpected results
You cannot hide CRM ribbons in Outlook 2010
The Address Book Sync Entity list is not filtered by security permissions
When you perform bulk operations in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 client for Outlook, you experience slow performance
When you access a CRM website in a claims authentication deployment, the Authentication Engine may reject the request. In this situation, you receive the following error message:
- 404 - File or directory not found
When you browse to the Discovery service, you receive the following error message:
- The server was unable to process the request due to an internal error
- This issue occurs because of the address in the deployment manager
The Rule Deployment wizard does not work in a Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 and Exchange Server 2010 mixed environment
When you use custom menu options, an Internet Explorer script error may occur
The Quick Find search does not apply the user's default date-format setting
The secondary sorting function does not work in a view in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 client
- This issue occurs when the DisableMapiCaching registry key is enabled
Workflow instances that are upgraded from Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 workflow definitions do not work correctly when the workflow definitions use owning users or owning teams
The CreatedOn and ModifiedOn values for a UOM Primary Unit record are generated in incorrect formats in the database
Incoming email messages are sometimes associated with inactive records
When you create a telephone call activity, a pre-operation plug-in does not update the From value as expected
Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 client for Outlook does not work correctly when you connect the client to a Dynamics CRM 2011 organization
When you export a view to an Excel worksheet, the view name is not displayed as the Excel worksheet name correctly
When you perform a synchronization in Outlook 2007 that has the Cached Exchange mode disabled, the synchronization tries to re-promote CRM email activities that were sent through a web client
When you try to close the Print Preview form, a script error occurs
- This issue occurs when a tab that contains a subgrid is hidden
When you import a managed solution, audit records are generated unexpectedly
Dynamics CRM claims-based authentication does not work with trusted partner Active Directory Federation Service (ADFS) users
After you change the searchable setting for a Dynamics CRM 2011 attribute in the editor form, all fields in the editor form are dimmed unexpectedly
When you install an Update Rollup for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011, you experience slow performance
- This issue occurs because indexes are rebuilt during the installation
When you import a solution that contains a field that has the searchable value set to No, the searchable setting of the field is not updated correctly
When you install Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 client for Outlook on a computer that is running Windows 8, Windows Identity Foundation (WIF) is not enabled
When you connect Microsoft Exchange Server in the Online mode, you experience slow performance in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 client for Outlook
The JavaScript editor is limited to 2,000 characters unexpectedly
- In this situation, a script that contains more than 2,000 characters may be truncated
When you configure Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 client for Outlook to use SQL Server CE 4.0, the client crashes
When you try to import a solution, you receive the following error message:
- The solution package cannot be imported because it contains invalid XML
The Quick Find search fails and displays no results
When you save a form, the save action may be blocked by an update action of the background main page grid
- The following error message is logged in the Microsoft Dynamics CRM client trace log
  - NullReferenceException <InvalidateItemCache>

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 10 contains all fixes previously released via Update Rollups 1-9 as well as fixes newly released via Update Rollup 10. So if you install Update Rollup 10 on a machine upon which you previously installed no Update Rollups, you will need to manually enable any desired fixes for Update Rollups 1-10:

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 and 11 (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

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. 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"

Internet Explorer 10, Windows 8, and Office 2013 Preview Compatibility

The Microsoft Dynamics CRM Sustained Engineering team consistently Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 against pre-release and release versions of these products. When necessary, Microsoft plans to release enhancements via future Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Update Rollups to assure compatibility with future releases of these products.

Greg Nichols
Premier Field Engineering
Microsoft Corporation

↧

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 and v4.0 Service Updates and Update Rollups: Release Dates, Build Numbers, and Collateral

October 22, 2012, 2:56 pm

≫ Next: Improving Dynamics CRM Report Performance – Part 1 “The Basics”

≪ Previous: Podcast and Overview: Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Update Rollup 11

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011

Note: These Update Rollups update the following components available via the Microsoft Download center. As of Jan. 21st, 2012 these installation files have been updated to include CRM 2011 Update Rollup 6 (re-release Version 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, aka Microsoft SQL Server 2008 or 2008 R2 Business Intelligence Development Studio Fetch Extension)

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Language Pack (aka Multilanguage User Interface, MUI)

Notes:

CRM 2011 pre-release builds				Build number		Knowledge Base article
Beta				5.0.9585.101		n/a
RC				5.0.9688.53		n/a
RTM				5.0.9688.583		2461082

CRM 2011 UR #	Release date and Download Center URL	Release date – Microsoft Update	Build number		Knowledge Base article		PFE Blog	PFE Podcast
1	4/4/2011	4/26/2011	5.0.9688.1045		2466084		Blog	Podcast
2	6/6/2011	6/28/2011	5.0.9688.1155, 5.0.9688.1157 (server)		2466086		Blog	Podcast
3	7/26/2011	8/23/2011	5.0.9688.1244		2547347		Blog	Podcast
4	9/22/2011	Was not released to Microsoft Update	5.0.9688.1450		2556167		Blog	Podcast
5	10/25/2011	11/8/2011	5.0.9688.1533		2567454		Blog	Podcast
6	1/12/2012	1/24/2012	5.0.9690.1992 (contains the Q4 2011 Service Release and provides limited SQL 2012 support)		2600640		Blog	Podcast
7	3/22/2012	3/27/2012	5.0.9690.2165		2600643		Blog	Podcast
8	5/3/2012	5/22/2012	5.0.9690.2243		2600644		Blog	Podcast
9	Not released publically	n/a	n/a		n/a		n/a	n/a
10	8/16/2012	n/a	5.0.9690.2720		2710577		Blog	Podcast
10 re-release	10/4/2012	n/a	5.0.9690.2740		2710577		Blog	Podcast
11	10/11/2012	n/a	5.0.9690.2835		2739504		Blog	Podcast
11 re-release	10/15/2012 (client), 10/22/2012 (server)	10/23/2012	5.0.9690.2838 (Client), 5.0.9690.2839 (Server)		2739504		n/a	n/a

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0

NOTE: Due to the low volume of fix requests for CRM 4.0, the CRM SE team paused releases of CRM 4.0 rollups after Update Rollup 21 was released 2/9/2012. CRM SE will continue to service CRM 4.0 requests on an individual basis using our Critical on Demand process, and plans to release CRM 4.0 Update Rollup 22 on 11/15/2012.

Keep in mind that Mainstream Support for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 ends April 9th, 2013, as per CRM 4.0’s supported lifecycle.

CRM 4.0 UR #	Release date and Download Center URL	Build number	Knowledge Base article	Premier Field Engineering Blog	Premier Field Engineering Podcast
1	11/24/2008	4.0.7333.1113	952858	n/a	n/a
2	2/9/2009	4.0.7333.1312	959419	n/a	n/a
3	3/12/2009	4.0.7333.1408	961678	n/a	n/a
4	5/7/2009	4.0.7333.1551	968176	n/a	n/a
5	7/2/2009	4.0.7333.1644, 4.0.7333.1645	970141	n/a	n/a
6	8/27/2009	4.0.7333.1750	970148	n/a	n/a
7	10/22/2009	4.0.7333.2138	971782	n/a	n/a
8	12/17/2009	4.0.7333.2542	975995	n/a	n/a
9	2/11/2010	4.0.7333.2644	977650	n/a	n/a
10	4/8/2010	4.0.7333.2741	979347	n/a	n/a
11	6/3/2010	4.0.7333.2861	981328	n/a	n/a
12	7/27/2010	4.0.7333.2935	2028381	n/a	n/a
13	9/23/2010	4.0.7333.3018	2267499	PFE Blog	PFE Podcast
14	11/16/2010	4.0.7333.3135	2389019	PFE Blog	PFE Podcast
15	1/10/2011	4.0.7333.3231	2449283	PFE Blog	PFE Podcast
16	3/10/2011	4.0.7333.3335	2477743	PFE Blog	PFE Podcast
17	5/5/2011	4.0.7333.3414	2477746	PFE Blog	PFE Podcast
18	6/28/2011	4.0.7333.3531	2477777	PFE Blog	PFE Podcast
19	8/25/2011	4.0.7333.3628	2550097	PFE Blog	PFE Podcast
20	11/10/2011	4.0.7333.3732	2550098	PFE Blog	PFE Podcast
21	2/9/2012	4.0.7333.3822 (provides SQL 2012 support)	2621054	PFE Blog	PFE Podcast
22	TBD	4.0.7333.TBD	TBD	PFE Blog	PFE Podcast
See notes above regarding future CRM 4.0 Update Rollup releases

Notes:

Microsoft Dynamics CRM Stack Technology Compatibility: Do you want to know if certain Service Packs or versions of a Microsoft product or technology 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 to determine the latest Microsoft SQL Server major version and Service Pack that is supported. Microsoft will list new products like Internet Explorer 10 and Windows 8 as "TBD" until testing is complete; generally near General Availability (GA) of that product.

Mismatched Update Rollup versions within a Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 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.

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

Silent Update Rollup installs: Please review 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

↧

Improving Dynamics CRM Report Performance – Part 1 “The Basics”

January 28, 2013, 6:00 am

≫ Next: Podcast and Overview: Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Update Rollup 12

≪ Previous: Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 and v4.0 Service Updates and Update Rollups: Release Dates, Build Numbers, and Collateral

A lot of times customers have questions around how to improve reporting performance in Dynamics CRM. Of course, with every CRM deployment and report the answer may be different, but some tips can be applied more generally. In this post I will discuss some basic tips and tricks to improve your Dynamics CRM reports, specifically around query tuning and using Visual Studio’s Business Intelligence Development Studio. This is the second blog post in the CRM Reporting Series, you can find the first post in the following link which focuses on the different options for querying data and building reports out of CRM: Custom Reporting in Microsoft Dynamics CRM - Fetch vs. Filtered Views

When thinking about reporting, the total time that it requires to generate a report can be split into three different actions:

Time it takes to execute the reports queries on the SQL Server.
Time it takes to process the report on the reporting server, based on the result set of the executed queries.
Time it takes for the report to render.

There are many possible culprits of reporting performance issues and often users jump to the conclusion that it has to be a server side issue. Maybe so, though many times we see that report performance issues in CRM are directly related to the datasets, queries and report formatting logic within the report that could be optimized for better performance. The following are suggestions for optimization as you begin to troubleshoot:

Suggestions for all Dynamics CRM Deployment Types:

The following summarizes the recommendations that can be performed using reporting tools for both CRM On-Prem and CRM Online, specifically what can be done using either SQL Queries OR FETCHXML, which is the only option for CRM Online.

Optimize Report Queries & Retrieve the Minimum Amount of Data Needed in your Report

Review the number of fields returned in each dataset, you will likely find that they contain more columns than used in the report. The more columns returned the slower your query execution, if there are fields that are not being using in the report, they should be removed from your query.
Ensure all queries being executed are being used in the report. When a report is run every dataset in the report will be executed, regardless of if it is being used in a report. A lot of times new datasets are added during building of reports and not cleaned up later on. Check to ensure that all datasets are still being used, for instance, datasets for available parameter values and if it is determined that there are data sets no longer being used be sure to delete them from your report.
If possible, add filters and parameters to reduce the number of records returned, large result sets (more than 250 records) are more like a data export. By adding parameters that users must specify when they run the report, such as date ranges or owner, or by adding additional selection criteria to a report you can greatly reduce the data that is filtered for the report each time it is run by a user.
Look very critically at the need for the large result sets and scale back if possible. The time it takes to render a report will increase based on the number of records being returned, as well as the number of data sets in your report. If the details are only used in a small amount of the situations, create another report to display the details which will avoid the retrieval of all details in the larger number of situations.
Using ORDER BY in the dataset differs from the ORDER BY in the Tablix\list. You need to decide where the data will be sorted. It can be done within SQL Server with an ORDER BY clause in the dataset or in by the Reporting server engine. It is not useful to do it on both sites. If an index is available use the ORDER BY in your dataset query.
Additionally, a lot of times data is GROUPED in the report without any drill down, in that scenario perform the GROUP BY in your dataset query which will save on data transfer to the SQL Server and it will save the reporting server engine having to complete the GROUP BY.

Reporting Services (Business Intelligence Studio) Recommendations

Keep in mind where you are using page breaks, reports are rendered into pages based on where page breaks occur. Although the entire report is processed before the rendering phase, the performance of the rendering extension is significantly impacted by the page size.
Using a primary report to operating the parameters and filtering aspects and then passing those parameters to a sub report. This can have a beneficial benefit because it can avoid issues with how parameters and data sets operate.
Try restricting your report from first parameter. Sometimes when you select first parameter, based on that you need to fill in a second parameter option set. If there are hundreds of records then also reports will be very slow. In that case remove those parameters, if possible.
Limit Text Length and Number of Items in Charts, reports use only some of the possible chart types from Reporting Services. For any chart type, limiting label length and number of items is recommended for the chart contents to be displayed correctly. When Reporting Services displays a chart with long labels, the chart itself becomes too small to be usable.

Limit your chart label length, truncating it if it is necessary.
Consider limiting the number of items displayed in charts.

CRM On-Prem Only Suggestions

Use the SQL Profiler to measure the performance of all datasets (Reads, CPU and Duration), to determine where your more expensive queries may be happening and identify if they can be tuned.
Ensure that you are NOT using the dreaded “SELECT * FROM Table/View” syntax that returns all fields for a table or view. For those of us who are report developers, at first this seems to be the easy way, though retrieving all columns creates a lot of overhead, especially if multiple data sets are using this syntax. Assume you use 7 columns in the tablix\list, change the syntax of the dataset to only return these 7 columns.
When comparing dates, use the UTC date fields for comparisons. For example, compare the createdonutc fields and not the createdon fields in a filtered view.
Using SQL JOINS

One of the best ways to boost JOIN performance is to limit how many rows need to be JOINED. This is especially beneficial for the outer table in a JOIN. Only return absolutely only those rows needed to be JOINED, and no more.
If you perform regular joins between two or more tables in your queries, performance will be optimized if each of the joined columns have their own indexes.
If you have two or more tables that are frequently joined together, then the columns used for the joins on all tables should have an appropriate index.
Avoid joining tables based on columns with few unique values. If columns used for joining aren’t mostly unique, then the SQL Server optimizer may not be able to use an existing index in order to speed up the join. Ideally, for best performance, joins should be done on columns that have unique indexes.

Additional Considerations to take when optimizing your reports:

Do not make a report with a large dataset or a complex SQL query available on-demand to all users. Instead schedule a snapshot in Report Manager during a time schedule when the system is lightly loaded.
How the software and reports are being used and if the process can potentially be improved. (IE: Can you replace reports with views and/or dashboards?)
If Microsoft CRM for Outlook is used and if users go offline which can tax system resources.
Peak usage patterns, understanding which reports are being used when and if those reports can be tuned for optimized performance.
You could also opt to create a data warehouse(another database). The drawback is you will have to refresh this data warehouse with your CRM data every few hours.

For additional perspective on the different options that the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 SDK provides for retrieving data programmatically, check out a recent post by Austin Jones explaining Dynamics CRM 2011 SDK Query Limitations by API.

If you are interested, our PFE team is ready to help you with this, we can assist with query examples and various other engagements to help you improve your CRM reports and performance. In addition, we have many other 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

Microsoft Premier Field Engineer

↧

Podcast and Overview: Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Update Rollup 12

January 28, 2013, 3:11 pm

≫ Next: Podcast and Overview: Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Update Rollup 13

≪ Previous: Improving Dynamics CRM Report Performance – Part 1 “The Basics”

We're proud to announce that all packages for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Update Rollup 12 were released on Tuesday, January 29th, 2013 to the Microsoft Download Center! All packages except Server were released to Microsoft Update on January 21st, 2013. We plan on releasing the server packages to Microsoft Update on February 12th, 2013.

Update Rollup 12 Build numbers:

5.0.9690.3233 (all packages except Server)
5.0.9690.3236 (Server)

Update Rollup 12 Microsoft Download Center page

Here's the "Master" Microsoft Dynamics Knowledge Base article for Update Rollup 12: (KB 2795627). Going forward, the plan is for the Master Knowledge Base article for CRM 2011 Update Rollups to be published a bit in advance of release to aid planning.

On Thursday, Jan. 31st Greg Nichols and Ryan Anderson from the Microsoft Premier Field Engineering team plan to provide information about:

The release of Update Rollup 12 for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011
New fixes and Service Release functionality made available In Update Rollup 12

at 9 AM Pacific time on BlogTalkRadio during their Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Update Rollup 12 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.

Big Update Rollup 12 news!

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
- 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 for Update Rollup 12 (version 5.0.13)
- 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)

Notes:
You will be able to uninstall Update Rollup 12. However, you should always back up your databases and application servers before you install an Update Rollup.

This update requires Microsoft .NET Framework 4.

As Update Rollup 12 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:
- Enhancements to the Reading Pane
- Asynchronous promotion for tracked emails
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

Packages will be available for download via:

The Update Rollup 12 Microsoft Download Center page (released January 29h, 2013)
The Microsoft Update Catalog (all packages except Server released Jan. 21st, 2013 - Feb. 12th is the projected MU release for the Server packages)
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 12 "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: As of Jan. 20th, 2012 these installation files have been 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

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Update Rollup 12 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:

Issues resolved via Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Update Rollups:

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Update Rollup 12 is the eleventh (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 12 contains all fixes shipped via Update Rollups 1-12, including fixes that were never publicly released via Update Rollup 9.

Hotfixes and updates that were released as individual fixes before Update Rollup 12 release:

The following issues were fixed and delivered to requesting customers prior to Update Rollup 12 release as Critical On Demand (COD) fixes and are included in Update Rollup 12:

Assume that you install Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Update Rollup 10 and then open Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 in Windows Internet Explorer. When the MaxRowsPerPafe or TurnOffFetchThrottling key is enabled, you receive an error message that states that you received page number zero
- For more information about how to enable the MaxRowsPerPage and the TurnOffFetchThrottling keys, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: 911510; The number of search results that is returned is 5,000 when you set the "Count" attribute to 20,000 in Microsoft Dynamics CRM
After you apply the Internet Explorer Cumulative Security Update 2699988, and when Internet Explorer 9 is installed, you cannot export reports from a Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Outlook client.
- For more information about this Cumulative Security Update, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: 2699988: MS12-037: Cumulative Security Update for Internet Explorer: June 12, 2012

Other fixes released via CRM 2011 Update Rollup 12:

A scope attribute is not used for data table header cells to identify row and column headers
When you enable the Check Incoming E-mail in Outlook parameter in a Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Outlook client, you receive email messages that have a link state of zero
You can publish an article even though you do not have the permissions to publish the article
You cannot connect to the Online Service Delivery Platform (OSDP) organization by using the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Development Toolkit
After you install Update Rollup 6 for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011, you cannot install the SSRS Data Connector
You cannot set up HomeRealmUrl by using an email message router in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011
The width of the email message template selection box is fixed. Therefore, long titles occupy multiple lines
It takes longer than expected to import an organization into the User Mapping table in a database that contains more than 100,000 users
You cannot open the Audit History, Workflows, or Dialogs form from the Connections form
Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 logs private information in the application event log unexpectedly
When you click Save after you change an entity in an account form, the account form is sent to the background
You experience slow performance in CRM 2011 Outlook client when you disabled the Use Cached Exchange Mode parameter in Outlook settings
When you log in to Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011, the system processes an expensive query in the PrincipalObjectAccessReadSnapshot table
After you enable the Slovenian multilingual user interface (MUI) and set the duration of a record to more than one hour, you cannot save the record
After you open a grid from a website that is not related to Microsoft Dynamics CRM by using a navigation heading link, you cannot open a record or lookup value in the grid
Duplicate appointments are created when you track an appointment on a shared calendar. This issue occurs when the Use Cached Exchange Mode parameter is disabled
Assume that you add a Unit Test project to a Solution in Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 that uses a Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 package project. When you generate a wrapper by using the developer toolkit for the Unit Test project, you receive the following error message:
- The parameter is incorrect. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80070057(E_INVALIDARG))
When you export a record to Microsoft Excel, a stack trace error occurs
Assume that you log in to Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 by using Internet-facing Deployment (IFD). When you open multiple windows, you receive the "Authentication is Required" prompt form in each window
When a plug-in related error occurs, you receive the following error message instead of a plug-in exception:
- ISV code aborted the operation
After you install Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Update Rollup 10, and when the Claims Base Authentication feature is enabled, you cannot access the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2007 endpoints
Assume that you use a profile whose username has the same prefix as the username of another profile. Then, you specify credentials for the profile in an email message router. When you test the access to the profile in the email message router, you receive the following error message:
- The specified object was not found in the store. Verify that the specified user credentials have Receive permission on the target mailbox
The Mail Merge button is disabled in the Account form for a salesperson user who does not have Write permissions
You cannot enable the "Audit on Process Entity" feature for an organization that is based in Japan
You cannot change the Sender field for a phone call record by using a plug-in that was registered in the pre-operation stage in synchronous execution mode
You can use the Quick Campaign & Campaign Response feature even though you do not have the permission to create a Quick Campaign in a Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Outlook client
When the "Preview all items in Auto Preview" setting is enabled for the Japanese language option in Outlook, Outlook crashes
Assume that you enable the ADFS features in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011. Then, you copy the URL of an entity record in a browser, you paste the URL in an Excel worksheet, and then you click the hyperlink. When you click the hyperlink again, the hyperlink does not direct you to the correct page
When you click Calendar control in a form that has the Datetime field set as read-only in Internet Explorer 8, a script error occurs
The MaxLength value is incorrect in the MaxLength attribute for theActivityPartyBase.ExchangeEntryIdfield
Assume that you receive an updated appointment that was created by using the web form in a Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Outlook client. When you click Synchronize with CRM, the original appointment is not removed
Assume that you install Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Update Rollup 10, and then you open Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 in Windows Internet Explorer. When the MaxRowsPerPage or TurnOffFetchThrottling key is enabled, you receive an error message that states that you received page number zero
- For more information about how to enable the MaxRowsPerPage and the TurnOffFetchThrottling keys, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: 911510: The number of search results that is returned is 5,000 when you set the "Count" attribute to 20,000 in Microsoft Dynamics CRM
Assume that you install Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Update Rollup 10. When you manually process a synchronization for which the "Ignore all errors" setting is enabled in a Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Outlook client, failed records are displayed in the synchronization results
After you deploy a Help server that is connected to Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011, images are not displayed in Help files
When an active and inactive contact use the same email address, email messages are associated with the inactive contact
When you run the Detect Duplicates function on all records and pages in a personal view in a Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Outlook client, you receive the following error message:
- Column 'a_queryapi' does not belong to table Cache_userquery_6f93545d-69ed-4bee-ba03-c678d850c844
When the LookupMru and RecentlyViewed web services are called, Internet Explorer freezes
It takes longer than expected to install an update rollup for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 on a database that contains large amounts of data. This issue occurs when a RecreateIndex column is set to 1 in the MetadataSchema.EntityIndex table
When you enable an audit an entity that uses a plug-in in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011, the entity does not work as expected
After you apply the Internet Explorer Cumulative Update 2699988, and when Internet Explorer 9 is installed, you cannot export reports from a Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Outlook client
- For more information about hotfix 2699988, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: 2699988: MS12-037: Cumulative Security Update for Internet Explorer: June 12, 2012

Hotfixes and updates that you have to enable or configure manually

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 10-12 (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

Mismatched Update Rollup versions within a Microsoft Dynamics CRM deployment

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

Internet Explorer 10, Windows 8, and Office 2013 Preview Compatibility

Greg Nichols
Premier Field Engineering
Microsoft Corporation

↧

Podcast and Overview: Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Update Rollup 13

March 26, 2013, 1:09 pm

≫ Next: CRM Online Document Management with SharePoint Online (Office 365)

≪ Previous: Podcast and Overview: Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Update Rollup 12

We're proud to announce that all packages for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Update Rollup 13 were released on Wednesday, March 27th, 2013 to the Microsoft Download Center! We plan on releasing the Update Rollup 13 packages to Microsoft Update in April, 2013.

Update Rollup 13 Build number:

5.0.9690.3448

Update Rollup 13 Microsoft Download Center page

Here's the "Master" Microsoft Dynamics Knowledge Base article for Update Rollup 13: (KB 2791312). Going forward, the plan is for the Master Knowledge Base article for CRM 2011 Update Rollups to be published a bit in advance of release to aid planning.

On Wednesday, Mar. 27th 2013 Greg Nichols and Ryan Anderson from the Microsoft Premier Field Engineering team provided information about:

The release of Update Rollup 13 for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011
New fixes and Service Release functionality made available In Update Rollup 13

at 11 AM Pacific time on BlogTalkRadio during their Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Update Rollup 13 Podcast.

See also:

My teammate Sean McNellis' blog posting "UR12 vs. Polaris: Commonalities Differences & Improvements" which describes what December 2012 Service Release / Polaris features were released to on-premise customers via Update Rollup 12 and which have only been released to CRM Online customers, with on-premise release planned for later this year

Update Rollup 13 news!

Unlike some earlier Update Rollup releases like Update Rollup 6 and 12, Update Rollup 13 does not add major functionality changes. It 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. So, we're pleased to announce that the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Compatibility List now indicates that Update Rollup 13 provides support for:

Windows Server 2012

Both new installs of CRM 2011 on a Windows Server 2012 and upgrading a Windows server to Windows Server 2012 require

Active Directory Federation Services (AD FS) 2.1

Windows Server role used by CRM 2011 as a security provider for claims-based authentication

Note: to install Microsoft Dynamics CRM on a server running Windows Server 2012, you must install the Update Rollup 13 SHS (Self-Healing Setup) package hosted on the Microsoft Update site when you are prompted to "update install files" during CRM setup. That release to Microsoft Update is tentatively scheduled for April 9th, 2013. This SHS package is also needed for upgrading a Windows Server to Windows Server 2013 when CRM 2011 is already installed. For more details on the last scenario, see:

How to upgrade a Microsoft Dynamics CRM Server application to Windows Server 2012

Update Rollup 12 news that you need to know because Update Rollups are cumulative, so these significant changes are also in Update Rollup 13!

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 for Update Rollup 12 (version 5.0.13)
- 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)

Notes:

Testing Update Rollups: Best Practices

Premier Field Engineering recommends treating Update Rollup 12 testing like to 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 Custom Code Validation Tool

Consider familiarizing yourselves with this tool… though the download page mentions Update Rollup 9, it hasn’t had much utility until now since the UR9 changes mentioned in the summary below were never released until UR12:

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Custom Code Validation Tool
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 13 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

Packages will be available for download via:

The Update Rollup 13 Microsoft Download Center page (released March 26th, 2013)
The Microsoft Update Catalog - all packages except Server have a planned release date of April 9th, 2013
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 13 "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

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Update Rollup 13 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:

Issues resolved via Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Update Rollups:

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Update Rollup 13 is the twelfth (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 13 contains all fixes shipped via Update Rollups 1-13, including fixes that were never publicly released via Update Rollup 9.

Hotfixes and updates that were released as individual fixes before Update Rollup 13 release:

The following issues were fixed and delivered to requesting customers prior to Update Rollup 13 release as Critical On Demand (COD) fixes and are included in Update Rollup 13:

When you add recipients to an activity record, the record is unexpectedly shared to all the recipients
When you create a telephone call, the From value is not updated by a pre-operation plugin
A stack overflow occurs at the zero line in a Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Outlook client
When you import text data, a SecLib::CheckPrivilege error occurs
Replies and forwards of a tracked email message are tracked unexpectedly in Microsoft Dynamics CRM
Assume that you run the Set Regarding function on an item in a Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Outlook client. After you cancel the Set Regarding wizard, the item is tracked unexpectedly
After you import a managed solution in Microsoft Dynamics CRM, labels on the form for the solution display incorrect information
Assume that a data import operation fails for some records in a nondefault organization. When you try to export the failure history, you receive an error message that states that the record is unavailable
The web service definition language (WSDL) information for the Organization.svc file is unexpectedly returned with secure sockets layer (SSL) offloading
When you change properties in a "send email" or "create email" step in a workflow, an exception error occurs
A "Should never reach this point" exception error occurs during the BackgroundSendEmail process
After you propose a new time for a recurring appointment, the recurring appointment is converted to a nonrecurring appointment
When events in a Wait Until condition are met, the condition is not triggered
When you start to track a contact that was tracked previously in Outlook, a Duplicate Record dialog box appears
The Zarafa add-in for Outlook does not work in a Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Outlook client

The third-party products that this article discusses are manufactured by companies that are independent of Microsoft. Microsoft makes no warranty, implied or otherwise, about the performance or reliability of these products

Other fixes released via CRM 2011 Update Rollup 13:

Assume that you enable network load balancing (NLB) for Internet-Facing Deployment (IFD) and claims authentication in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011. You set the token lifetime to more than ten hours for claims and IFD endpoints. In this situation, you unexpectedly receive a message after ten hours that requires authentication
You cannot configure the CRM Outlook client by using the organization URL of an Office 365 CRM organization
The CallerId property is not configured for Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) calls that are made from Microsoft Silverlight or Microsoft Jscript
When you reassign all records from one user to another user, a time-out error occurs
When you export a Microsoft Excel worksheet, the name of the exported file differs from the view name of the worksheet
When you try to reply to a tracked email message that you received from another Microsoft Dynamics CRM user, a "prvWriteActivity permission" error occurs
You cannot import customizations into Microsoft Dynamics CRM. This issue is caused by relationships that do not use the correct prefixes
Out-of-Box SQL based reports do not work as expected if the dynamically generated string is longer than 4000 characters
When you merge email messages by using rules in Microsoft Word, Microsoft Outlook crashes
The WorkflowContext.CreateOrganizationService function does not use the current user ID
Assume that you create an SDK application, and then the application creates an email message. You create an activity mime attachment that is associated with the email message, and then you retrieve all columns for the attachment. In this situation, the logical name of the email message is listed incorrectly as the name of the activity mime attachment
When you click a link in a site map, all the links in the site map are opened expect for the link that you clicked
When you create an entity in Microsoft Dynamics CRM, form level ribbon customizations are not imported
After you install Update Rollup 12 for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011, you cannot configure lookup values by using Jscript
Assume that you copy an appointment into Microsoft Dynamics CRM. However, when you view the appointment in Microsoft Dynamics CRM, you are directed to the original appointment instead of the copied appointment in Microsoft Dynamics CRM
The time is not displayed correctly in the tooltip for follow-up tasks for Microsoft Dynamics CRM records in Outlook
When you set the read permission for email message templates to Business Unit, you cannot view templates for personal email messages
Assume that you refresh a form to load data into the form by using the green circle button. When you export the data to Excel, the data in the fifth sub-grid is not exported
When your user account is disabled in a default organization, you cannot run path based reports
When you load role based forms, the computer freezes
When the subject line is empty in an email message in a Microsoft Dynamics CRM Outlook client, you cannot convert the email message to a case or opportunity
The Azure Service Bus Integration procedure does not consider message size
You cannot export translations that have duplicate labels
After you export data to Excel by using the "Export saved view" option, the data is not displayed in Excel
You cannot import a record when the parent record of the record has an inactive duplicate
When you perform a search in the "Quick find" search option, no results are returned
When you export data to Excel by using the Dynamic Worksheet option for activities, a System.InvalidCastException error occurs
Assume that you set the Relationship Behavior for Assign value to Cascade Active. In this situation, you cannot assign an appointment to a user
When you retrieve multiple queries, you experience slow performance in Microsoft Dynamics CRM. Additionally, when there are over 1,000 business units in Microsoft Dynamics CRM, and then you retrieve queries, you receive the following error message:

Incorrect syntax near the keyword 'UNION'

If an error occurs when you call the AppGridWebService.ashx feature, you do not receive the correct error message
You cannot install Update Rollup 11 for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 on a computer that has a French version of Windows, SQL Server, and Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 installed
When out-of-the-box dashboards are deleted, you cannot import or export a solution
When a plugin cancels the save operation of an opportunity product, the "customer exceptions" error message is not displayed
When you select the Show only my records value in a lookup dialog box, records that are owned by all users are displayed unexpectedly
After you change some user roles, no users can visit the Microsoft Dynamics CRM site. This issue occurs because of SQL string blockings
When you try to create business units, you experience slow performance in Microsoft Dynamics CRM
"Track in CRM" is displayed instead of "Untrack" on the Track in CRM button for appointments
After you delete role privileges by using a managed solution in Microsoft Dynamics CRM, you cannot add the role privileges again
The titles of notes are not displayed in the notes control
You cannot change the parent of a business unit to a root business unit
You cannot open a custom activity in the Month calendar view
Outlook client configuration trying to access invalid max endpoint with Windows 2012 and ADFS 2.1
When you add an attachment to a mail merge document, the file name of the attached file contains the full path of the file
When the security role settings are configured so that a group of icons are hidden, ribbons are not displayed
After you delete a referenced team from a record share, you cannot view the audit history of the referenced team. Additionally, you receive an error message
Accounts are not displayed in the active account view in a Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Outlook client

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 13 contains all fixes previously released via Update Rollups 1-12 as well as fixes newly released via Update Rollup 13. So if you install Update Rollup 13 on a machine upon which you previously installed no Update Rollups, you will need to manually enable any desired fixes for Update Rollups 1-13:

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

Mismatched Update Rollup versions within a Microsoft Dynamics CRM deployment

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 13 server with Update Rollup 12 or 13 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.

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

Internet Explorer 10, Windows 8, Office 2013, and Windows Server 2012 Compatibility

The Microsoft Dynamics CRM Engineering team consistently 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.

Greg Nichols
Premier Field Engineering
Microsoft Corporation

↧

CRM Online Document Management with SharePoint Online (Office 365)

December 7, 2011, 9:44 am

≫ Next: Podcast and Overview: Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Update Rollup 6

≪ Previous: Podcast and Overview: Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Update Rollup 13

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:

Create a CRM Online organization. If you need to create a 30 day trial organization, click here.
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.
Download and extract the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 List Component for Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010.
Add the crmlistcomponet.wsp file to your SharePoint Online site:

Click Site Actions, and then click Site Settings.
Under Galleries, click Solutions.
On the Solutions tab, in the New group, click Upload Solution.
Click Browse, locate the crmlistcomponent.wsp file, and then click OK.
On the Solutions tab, in the Commands group, click Activate.

Add the SharePoint URL to the Document Management Settings area in your Microsoft CRM Online organization:

Settings – Document Management Settings
Select the entities you want to enable document management on
Specify the SharePoint Online URL
Select Next
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.
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

↧

Podcast and Overview: Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Update Rollup 6

January 12, 2012, 2:34 pm

≫ Next: Tracking Your Business with CRM

≪ Previous: CRM Online Document Management with SharePoint Online (Office 365)

We're proud to announce that Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Update Rollup 6 released Thursday, Jan. 12th,2012!

On Friday Jan. 13th, 2012 at 8 AM Pacific Standard Time, Greg Nichols and Ryan Anderson from the Microsoft Premier Field Engineering team, as well as Corey Hanson, Supportability Program Manager for Microsoft Dynamics CRM, provided information about the recent release of Update Rollup 6 for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011. They also discussed the upcoming release of Update Rollup 21 for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 during their:

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Update Rollup 6 Podcast

PLEASE NOTE:

Note: The CRM 2011 Update Rollup 6 packages, originally released on Jan. 12th, 2011, were recalled early Jan. 13th. If you have downloaded any of these packages (build 1985) please discard them and download new versions available now (build 9692.1992). The new packages were released Saturday, Jan. 21st.

If you did new installs with the Update Rollup 6 "slipstream" packages that were released (these would be the packages that include the full install bits as well as Update Rollup 6) you will get an error trying to patch those components to the new Update Rollup 6 build. This Knowledge Base article describes the issue:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2668504 . This Knowledge Base article is live, as well as the updated Update Rollup 6 KB article: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2600640.

The only workaround is to reinstall if you happened to use the Update Rollup 6 slipstream builds. For server you can connect to existing databases on the reinstall. The reinstall goes for any of the components that you installed with the Update Rollup 6 slipstream builds, (Client, Router, etc.). If you do not reinstall you will not be able to patch to the re-released Update Rollup 6 packages or future Update Rollups, as Update Rollup 6 represents a new baseline.

Related links you should know about:

Update Rollup 6 Microsoft Download Center page
Update Rollup 6 "master" Microsoft Knowledge Base article (KB 2600640)
- This article also contains links to related Microsoft Knowledge Base articles
Microsoft Dynamics CRM Sustained Engineering Team's Update Rollup 6 blog posting (will update when available)
Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 and 2011 Update Rollup Release Dates, Build Numbers, and Collateral

Update Rollup 6 Build number:
5.0.9688.1992

Note: Update Rollup 6 cannot be uninstalled. Specific database updates are applied during Update Rollup 6 installation that will not let you uninstall Update Rollup 6. You should back up your databases and application servers before you install this update.

Note: Update Rollup 6 establishes a new servicing baseline. This will enable uninstalls of some future CRM 2011 Update Rollups, but this also means that Update Rollup 6 will be a prerequisite for installation of post-Update Rollup 6 Update Rollups.

Note: As Update Rollup 6 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 5. Some of these features include:

Outlook Client Updates:

Enhancements to the Reading Pane
Asynchronous promotion for tracked emails

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 Service Update features, consult:

Microsoft Dynamics CRM: The Road Ahead

Packages are available for download via:

The Update Rollup 6 Microsoft Download Center page (on Jan. 12th, 2012)
The Microsoft Update Catalog (on Jan. 24th, 2012)
The Microsoft Update detection / installation process (on Jan. 24th, 2012)
- 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 6 "master" Microsoft Knowledge Base article
- Please review my teammate Shawn Dieken's superb 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 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: As of Oct. 20th, 2011 these installation files have been updated to include CRM 2011 Update Rollup 5 (Version 05.00.9688.1533)

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

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Update Rollup 6 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 build 5.0.9688.583 (RTM, aka Release-To-Market) installed. CRM Update Rollups are neither compatible with nor supported on pre-release builds of Microsoft Dynamics CRM - for example, the Beta and RC (Release Candidate) builds

Issues resolved via Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Update Rollups:

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Update Rollup 6 is the sixth 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 6 will contain all fixes shipped via Update Rollups 1-6.

Hotfixes and updates that were released as individual fixes before Update Rollup 6 release

The following issues were fixed and delivered to requesting customers prior to Update Rollup 6 release as Critical On Demand (COD) fixes:

When you access Microsoft Dynamics CRM with Claims enabled over Internet-Facing Deployment (IFD), the 404 error pages are generated at random
When you add a custom lookup field to the quick find field list in Quick Find view in the Microsoft Dynamics CRM client for Outlook, the custom lookup field displays no records
When you assign records from one user to another user in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011, you experience slow performance. Additionally, the assignment process may time out
When you switch quickly between several Microsoft Dynamics CRM Account records, Microsoft Office Outlook crashes
When you save appointments in Outlook, you experience slow performance
Assume that you close opportunities by using a Microsoft CRM software development kit (SDK) in the Microsoft CRM client for Outlook in offline mode. When you try to change the client back to an online state, a playback error occurs
When you try to configure the Microsoft Dynamics CRM client for Outlook that has Update Rollup 5 for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 installed, you receive the following error message

LDAP server is unavailable

Consider the following scenario:

You change the data group filter in the My Tasks area to include additional filtering in the due date field
You create a task in the application that satisfies the My Task filter and includes the due date criteria
You synchronize this task with the Microsoft Dynamics CRM client for Outlook
You delete the task from the application
You synchronize the task with the Microsoft Dynamics CRM client for Outlook again
In this scenario, you receive the following error message:

An error has occurred. Try this action again. If the problem continues check the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Community

Assume that two records use a duplicate email address. You have access to only one of the two records because of the configuration of security permissions. In this situation, when you try to send an email message to the record to which you have access, the email message is not sent. Additionally, you receive an error message that resembles the following:

Crm Exception: Message: SecLib::AccessCheckEx failed. Returned hr = -2147187962, ObjectID: ed22c90f-269c-e011-98b4-00155d516fbe, OwnerId: 3618883d-509c-e011-98b4-00155d516fbe, OwnerIdType: 8 and CallingUser: ebc6a2c7-259c-e011-98b4-00155d516fbe. ObjectTypeCode: 2, objectBusinessUnitId: 4a9246dd-7285-e011-ab97-00155d52100d, AccessRights: ReadAccess, ErrorCode: -2147187962

Assume that the Microsoft Dynamics CRM client for Outlook is configured by using the IFD URL. In this situation, you are not prompted for credentials if the stored credentials that you have are no longer valid
You cannot run reports in the Microsoft Dynamics CRM client for Outlook when Claims Authentication is enabled
When you browse in the Microsoft Dynamics CRM web client by using Internet Explorer 9, Internet Explorer consumes excessive memory. Therefore, you experience slow performance
The sub-grid views do not load records
When you change the queue after you perform a quick search on queues, a script error occurs
When you pin a view in the Microsoft Dynamics CRM client for Outlook, the tab for the view is remembered across sessions and the data for the view is cached locally
When you synchronize a recurring appointment that includes a canceled meeting, and the canceled meeting is not removed from the calendar, Outlook crashes
Assume that you have an asynchronous plugin or workflow that is registered on the update of a queue item. When the queue item is routed through a Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 SDK endpoint route request in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011, the route request fails
Reports cannot be displayed for users in the Top Level business unit after the EnableRetrieveMultipleOptimization DWORD registry entry value is set to 2
When multiline text fields are included in an email template in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011, the line breaks in the multiline text fields are formatted incorrectly

Other fixes released via CRM 2011 Update Rollup 6:

After you create the Self-Healing Setup (SHS) administrative image by using the .msp file that is included in Update Rollup 5 for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011, you receive the following error message:

CString::LoadString(7407) failed

When you try to upgrade from Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 to Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011, the upgrade fails during the ComponentCollector.RetrieveDependencyNodes method on the RetrieveMultiple request
You experience slow performance during the upgrade to Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011
When you access the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Mobile URL page, and then try to create an account, you receive the following error message:

An unexpected error has occurred

When you use Microsoft Silverlight together with web resources, forms are not displayed as expected. This problem occurs when the Expand this tab by default tab property check box is not selected
Assume that you use the following full name format for your organization:

Last Name, First Name, Middle Initial
When you use only a last name to create a contact, an additional comma (,) is displayed at the end of the contact's name

Assume that you click Change Properties in the Article Comment (Article) field of an article entity. When you close the Form Editor dialog box, you receive the following error message:

Microsoft Dynamics CRM has encountered an error

When the Description field is added to an Activity view for email activities, HTML code is displayed in the grid column and in the tooltip text
Assume that you add an HTML web resource that contains a reference to the "ClientGlobalContext.js.aspx" page in the navigation pane of a form. When you open the web resource again, you receive the following error message:

Microsoft Dynamics CRM has encountered an error

When you open the calendar from the My Work area, Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 does not scroll to the first hour of the work day
Consider the following scenario:

You are in an environment that has parent and child business units
You create an email template at the parent level
You set the email template to be viewable at the child level
A user tries to create an email message in the child level business unit
In this scenario, the user cannot use the email template to create the email message

When you use the Schedule feature in a service appointment in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 with Internet Explorer 9, you receive the following error message:

Can't execute code from freed script

When you export a solution in Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online, you are not prompted to open or save the file
After you import a solution that contains customized views, the default view attribute is set incorrectly on either the existing views or the new views
When you make a change to a customization, and then click Publish All Customizations, you receive the following error message:

Unhandled Exception

When you run the PersistMatchCode plugin in Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online, you receive the following error message:

Generic SQL error

When you try to import account data, you receive the following error message:

A SQL Server error occurred. Try this action again. If the problem continues, check the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Community for solutions or contact your organizations Microsoft Dynamics CRM Administrator. Finally, you can contact Microsoft Support

When you delete a record that contains Principal Object Access (POA) records in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 and Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online, the records are not deleted from the POA table
When you try to perform a Bulk Delete process from the My Views frame, you receive the following error message:

Record is Unavailable. The requested record was not found or you do not have sufficient permissions to view it

You cannot use the OrgDBOrgSettings tool with an organization that has a duplicated friendly name in Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online
When you import Microsoft Dynamics CRM solutions, SQL cascading functions are not rebuilt
When you run filtered views for activities in reports or ISV applications, the filtered views do not display shared records
Duplicate indexes are created for the OrderClose, OpportunityClose, and Letter activities in the ActivityPointerBase table
An auto-generated Knowledge Base (KB) article number contains a suffix unexpectedly in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011

Note: When you install Update Rollup 6, the SkipSuffixOnKBArticles setting is moved to the Orgdborgsettings table. To remove the suffix from the KB article number, enable the setting by using the Orgdborgsettings tool

Some BusinessEntityMoniker, EntityExpression, and BusinessEntity constructors do not use the existing organization context
Assume that you create a report by using the report wizard in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011. When you try to insert a pivot table that is exported from the report into an Excel worksheet, you receive the following error message:

The PivotTable field name is not valid. To create a PivotTable report, you must use data that is organized as a list with labeled columns. If you are changing the name of a PivotTable field, you must type a new name for the field

Assume that you use Microsoft Dynamics CRM front end servers in a load balanced environment. When a node in the deployment fails or becomes unreachable, you cannot run a FetchXML report
The log level for Exchange Web Service (EWS) traces is set to Default instead of Verbose
You cannot deploy rules to user mailboxes in Microsoft Exchange 2010 environments when the Exchange CAS server and Exchange Mailbox roles are not on the same server
Assume that you delete the permissions for documents and SharePoint website access for a Microsoft Dynamics CRM security role. When you log in as a user who has the security role, the "documents" section is still displayed on the navigation bar.

Additionally, when you click the "documents" section, you receive a permissions error message

When you try to change the Quantity value by adding a script to the OnLoad event in the Opportunity Product form, you receive the following error message:

The value in the Quantity box has changed from "1.0000000000" to "1.00000" due to an update to the decimals supported in the product

After you configure the claims rule and exclude a rule for the Name claim in Microsoft Dynamics CRM claims and IFD setup, the OrganizationData.svc page does not work
When you try to configure a double byte character name for a discount list, you receive the following error message:

Duplicate Record: A record with these values already exists. A duplicate record cannot be created. Select one or more unique values and try again

When you create a dynamic marketing list by using a filter, and the filter includes a lookup field that represents an N:N relationship with a custom entity, the filter does not change the marketing list that you create
Saved queries do not return data to dynamic marketing lists
When a partylist type cell is exported to an Excel worksheet, the semicolon (;) in the partylist type cell creates a line unexpectedly
When you perform a save operation in a form for a second time, your receive the following error message:

Access Denied

In the Microsoft Dynamics CRM client for Outlook, the following polling intervals are updated to improve performance:

State Manager (15 minutes)
Notification Manager (30 minutes)
MAPI Sync – Non-ABP (60 minutes)
MAPI Sync – ABP (4 hours)
MAPI Sync – Sitemap (4 hours)
MAPI Sync – Metadata (4 hours)

When you switch to an activity view that contains the Activity Type column in the view definition, the Microsoft Office Outlook client crashes
The Expect100Continue .NET setting should be disabled when the authentication method is not Active Directory
The Edit.aspx page should be preloaded to improve form load times
Consider the following scenario:

You open a form
You resize the form to fill the screen
You open and close the form multiple times
In this scenario, the form grows until it expands off the bottom and sides of the screen

If Microsoft Visual C++ Redist package or a later version is preinstalled on a computer, the Microsoft Dynamics CRM client installation fails
The tooltip for an appointment or service activity in the service calendar displays incorrect time. The time that is displayed is several hours before or after the actual time of the appointment and depends on the time zone settings in Microsoft Dynamics CRM and the time zone of the server on which Microsoft Dynamics CRM is installed
In Internet Explorer 8 or 9, ribbons are not displayed immediately when you open a form in Microsoft Dynamics CRM
When you try to accept an invitation to Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online, you receive the following error message:

The Windows Live ID, xxxx.xxxx@healthiergeneration.org, does not have an active Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online invitation. To sign out of this Windows Live ID and sign in again with the correct Windows Live ID for the invitation, click Sign Out

When you have multiple Outlook filters, the Track in CRM button is not displayed in Outlook contacts or in other synchronized entity types. This problem occurs when one of the filters is disabled
After you unpin a view in a Microsoft Office Outlook client, records are not returned to a paged view
Email messages are not sent from Outlook when you edit the email messages in the Outbox. This problem occurs when the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 client is configured. After the Microsoft Dynamics CRM configuration is removed, email messages can be edited and sent from the Outbox
Consider the following scenario:

You open the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 client for Outlook
You click Workplace, expand My Work and then click Import
You open a completed import, and then click to view the Fully Imported, Partially Imported, or Failed records
You close the dialog box
In this scenario, you receive the following error message:

Microsoft Dynamics CRM has encountered an error

When you track an email message in Outlook, and then convert that email message into a case or opportunity in Outlook, the email activity in Microsoft Dynamics CRM is not linked to the new case that you create
When you click Set Regarding in the Microsoft Dynamic CRM client for Outlook, you receive the following error message:

Error: an error has occurred
This problem occurs when you do not have access to accounts

Consider the following scenario:

You start Outlook
You open the contacts folder
You open the Inbox, and then open the contacts folder again
In this scenario, it takes more time to open the contacts folder the first time

You cannot save the value in a check box in an appointment in the Microsoft Dynamics CRM client for Outlook
When you try to use the "My Received Emails with Unresolved Senders" view in the Microsoft Dynamics CRM client for Outlook, Outlook crashes
The SQL query for exporting data to Excel worksheets should be disabled in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011
The Audit History view displays incorrect data after you update one field at a time
Internet Information Services (IIS) stalls for several seconds during peak hours
When you try to delete a large import job, the deletion process times out
You experience slow performance in the default grid view after you import many records in Contact view
The SkipGettingRecordCountForPaging setting is added to the Orgdborgsettings tool. When the setting is set to true, the "select COUNT(*) as [#TotalRecordCount]" query is skipped and the total record count is not returned in a view
A custom error message is not displayed when plug-ins fail during the Assign Message process
Time zone information is updated for northern winter 2011/2012
When you click Show Dependencies in the user entity in the Solution Components grid in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011, you receive the following error message:

Error: Exception of type 'System.Web.HttpUnhandledException' was thrown
Error Number: 0x80040216
Error Message: There should be one DependencyNode for the ObjectId

Consider the following scenario:

You create a custom entity
You do not create a relationship between the entity and activities. Instead, you create a relationship in which an activity type is the parent of the custom entity
You create a relationship in which the custom entity is the parent of the activity type
In this scenario, a circular relationship structure exists. This causes Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 to crash

If two system entities are related through a custom relationship, you cannot import a managed solution that includes a custom relationship between the same two system entities
Assume that you have an organization with a Multilingual User Interface Pack (MUI) installed, and the MUI pack is set to All Languages. When you try to import a report into the organization, you receive an error message. Additionally, the report is not updated
Assume that you have a Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 plug-in. When you register the plug-in on the GrantAccess message in asynchronous mode for an entity, and then share a record, an exception error occurs. When the plugin tries to execute asynchronously, you receive the following error message:

Exception: System.Runtime.Serialization.SerializationException: Error in line 1 position 916. Element 'http://xxxx' contains data from a type that maps to the name 'http://xxxx'. The deserializer has no knowledge of any type that maps to this name. Consider using a DataContractResolver or add the type corresponding to 'PrincipalAccess' to the list of known types - for example, by using the KnownTypeAttribute attribute or by adding it to the list of known types passed to DataContractSerializer

The support dashboard does not display results in Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online. Additionally, you cannot send user invitations
You cannot save an email address that contains the at sign (@) or straight quotation marks (" ") in the local part
Reports display an incorrect time stamp
You cannot log in to an organization after you import customizations. This problem occurs when the customizations contain an invalid Sitemap. The Sitemap XSD file must be updated to validate that the Entity attribute has a non-empty string
The language provisioning job fails, and then you receive the following error message:

Process:CrmAsyncService - Crm Exception: Message: The LocalizedLabel entity or component has attempted to transition from an invalid state

A memory leak occurs when you reload web resources from the side navigation. Additionally, a memory leak occurs when you load the following pages:

Calendar
Announcements
Dynamics Marketplace
Resource Center

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 6 contains all fixes previously released via Update Rollups 1-5 as well as fixes newly released via Update Rollup 6. So if you install Update Rollup 6 on a machine upon which you previously installed no Update Rollups, you will need to manually enable any desired fixes for Update Rollups 1-6:

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

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

Mismatched Update Rollup versions within a Microsoft Dynamics CRM deployment

Internet Explorer 9 Compatibility

The Microsoft Dynamics CRM Sustained Engineering team extensively tested Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 against pre-release versions of Internet Explorer 9 and continues to address compatibility issues, as appropriate, against the RTW (Released to Web) version of Internet Explorer 9. When necessary, Microsoft plans to release enhancements via future Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Update Rollups to assure compatibility with Internet Explorer 9.

There are three CRM 2011 application compatibility fix released via Update Rollup 6 related to Internet Explorer 9:

When you browse in the Microsoft Dynamics CRM web client by using Internet Explorer 9, Internet Explorer consumes excessive memory. Therefore, you experience slow performance
When you use the Schedule feature in a service appointment in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 with Internet Explorer 9, you receive the following error message:

Can't execute code from freed script

In Internet Explorer 8 or 9, ribbons are not displayed immediately when you open a form in Microsoft Dynamics CRM

There is a Update Rollup 5 fix for an expanding memory footprint issue associated with Internet Explorer, but it impacts all versions of Internet Explorer supported by CRM 2011 - those being Internet Explorer versions 7, 8, and 9.

Greg Nichols
Premier Field Engineering
Microsoft Corporation

↧

Tracking Your Business with CRM

January 24, 2012, 7:03 pm

≫ Next: Overview: Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Update Rollup 21

≪ Previous: Podcast and Overview: Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Update Rollup 6

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

↧

Overview: Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Update Rollup 21

February 10, 2012, 10:34 am

≫ Next: CRM 2011 Server Setup Commonly Asked Questions

≪ Previous: Tracking Your Business with CRM

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.

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.

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

↧

CRM 2011 Server Setup Commonly Asked Questions

February 11, 2012, 8:48 pm

≫ Next: How to Decrease 401 Responses in CRM Web Traffic

≪ Previous: Overview: Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Update Rollup 21

As customers are starting to plan for CRM 2011 installations and upgrades, we’ve begun to see questions regarding environment setups. Here’s a list of the questions I’ve seen thus far:

Q: Are the CRM 2011 Report Extensions (commonly referred to as the “report connector”) an optional component?

A: All installations now require the CRM 2011 Report Extensions to be installed and configured on the SQL Reporting Server. If it is not installed, certain features will not work properly: reporting will not function, creating new organizations, and organization imports will be blocked until the extensions are installed and configured.

Q: Do I need to install the CRM 2011 Reporting Extensions prior to installing CRM?

A: No, these should be installed after you install the CRM 2011 Server components.

Q: When installing CRM server roles on different servers (ex: install front-end and deployment components on server1 and back-end components on server2) I am not prompted to install the reporting extensions, why is this?

A: When the CRM server roles are installed separately (without first installing a CRM full-server) you’ll notice that no organizations are created by default. Once the servers are all setup and configured, the first step to setup CRM is to launch deployment manager and create an organization. It is at that time you will be required to input a reporting server that has the CRM 2011 Reporting Extensions installed.

Q: On CRM 4.0, as long as the report extensions were not installed, a Reporting Server (or scaled out reporting server farm) could host reports for multiple CRM installations/deployments. How has this changed in CRM 2011?

A: In CRM 2011 the Reporting Extensions are now required, which means each Reporting server (or scaled out reporting server farm) with the report extensions installed may only host reports for a single CRM 2011 Deployment. NOTE: The Reporting Server (or scaled out reporting server farm) can host reports for multiple tenants (organizations) in the deployment.

Q: If I were to run all CRM servers services under different service accounts how many service accounts do I need and what CRM groups should each service account belong to?

A: There are numerous configurations you could use to accomplish this, but if you were to separate everything here is a table explaining what group membership is required-- I’ve also included SSRS and SQL server:

Service	PrivUser Group	SqlAccess Group	PrivRept Group	Rept Group	Perf. Log Users*	CRM User?
Deployment Services SvcAcct	þ	þ	-	-	-	NO
Application Service (CRMAppPool)	þ	þ	-	-	þ	NO
Async service SvcAcct	þ	þ	-	-	þ	NO
Sandbox services SvcAcct	NO	NO	-	-	þ	NO
SQL Server SvcAcct	-	-	-	-	-	-
SQL Reporting Services SvcAcct	þ	-	þ	-	-	NO
Email router account**	þ	-	-	-	-	NO
Installing User***	-	-	-	þ	-	þ
User accounts in CRM	NO	NO	NO	þ	-	þ

* The performance log user group is a local group on each server and not a domain group

** Email router will run as local system

*** The Installing user should be a separate service account, but it should not be used to run any services.

IMPORTANT: If any of the service accounts are created as users in CRM, you may encounter various problems, some of which are potential security issues.

Q: I am concerned when it comes to security and want to be sure I limit my attack surface whenever possible. What Windows Server Roles and Features are required for each CRM Server role?

A: Below is a table broken down by the 8 different server roles CRM installs.

	Component	Web App	Org WS	Disc WS	Help Server	Depl Tools	Depl WS	Async Svc	Sandbox Svc
	IIS Web Server Role	þ	þ	þ	þ	-	þ	-	-
	.NET HTTP Activation	-	þ	þ	-	-	þ	-	-
	File Server Indexing Services	-	-	-	þ	-	-	-	-
	Windows PowerShell	-	-	-	-	þ	-	-	-
NOTE: The IIS Web Server will also install the following role services: ·Web-Static-Content ·Web-Default-Doc ·Web-Http-Errors ·Web-Http-Redirect ·Web-Dir-Browsing ·Web-Asp-Net ·Web-Windows-Auth ·Web-Stat-Compression ·Web-Dyn-Compression ·Web-Mgmt-Console ·Web-Metabase

Q: If I want to split up my roles between a CRM Front-End Server and a CRM Back-End Server, but I don’t want to have a third server just for the purpose of hosting the deployment tools. Is there a best practice or preferred placement given the two choices?

A: The deployment tools can live on either server. As you see in the chart above, the IIS Windows Web Server Role is required for both the Front-End Server services as well as the Deployment tools. If you have a goal of minimizing your attack surface and want to limit your installations of IIS, the best location for the Deployment Tools role would be on the Front-End Server as all web services would be hosted on your Front-End Server and the Back-End Server would be hosting non-IIS based components.

Q: How does the CRM Front-End Server Roles contact the CRM Sandbox and Async Services and do I need to set anything up or allow for any firewall exceptions?

A: The CRM Async service is not called directly by any of the other services. The async service operates out of the AsyncOperations queue and will process records as they’re place into the queue. However, the Sandbox service operates differently. When work is handed off to the Sandbox service it is done so over a TCP channel (port 808 by default). In the case of a synchronous plugin, the web application server will contact the sandbox service; in the case of an asynchronous plugin, the async service will contact the sandbox service. Also, note: if you are: A) Running the sandbox service on a dedicated server (not installing the full server role) and B) running the sandbox service as a service account identity, and not as network service, a dedicated SPN is required in active directory. The SPN would be homed under the service account running the sandbox service and would look like this: MSCRMSandboxService/<SandboxServerName>. For example: if my sandbox server was named “CRMSandboxSrv01” and my sandbox service ran under CRM_Sandbox_SvcAcct my SPN would look like: MSCRMSandboxService/CrmSandboxSrv01 and the SPN would live under the CRM_Sandbox_SvcAcct user object in Active Directory.

Q: If I want to manage my CRM deployment via PowerShell are there any specific recommendations or “gotcha’s”?

A: Currently, if you wish to manage your CRM deployment via PowerShell, the Deployment Web Services must be running as a service account identity and not as Network Service. If you run the deployment web services as Network Service, certain functions of the CRM PowerShell add-in will return a security error.

If additional questions come up feel free to leave them as comments and we’ll do our best to address them in some way, shape, or form. I hope this helps clear up the confusion around some of the more complex environment configurations and what operating system features and roles are required for various CRM Server Roles.

Thanks for reading!

Sean

↧

How to Decrease 401 Responses in CRM Web Traffic

February 22, 2012, 7:50 am

≫ Next: Microsoft Dynamics CRM Stack Technology Compatibility List KB!

≪ Previous: CRM 2011 Server Setup Commonly Asked Questions

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:

BEFORE	AFTER	Percent Change
Request Count: 126	Request Count: 76	-40%

RESPONSE CODES	RESPONSE CODES
HTTP/200: 64	HTTP/200: 64	0
HTTP/401: 62	HTTP/401: 12	-81%

Please leave a comment if you found this post helpful.

Jeremy Morlock

Microsoft Premier Field Engineer

↧

Microsoft Dynamics CRM Stack Technology Compatibility List KB!

March 13, 2012, 8:10 am

≫ Next: Podcast and Overview: Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Update Rollup 7

≪ Previous: How to Decrease 401 Responses in CRM Web Traffic

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

↧

Podcast and Overview: Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Update Rollup 7

March 24, 2012, 6:17 pm

≫ Next: Using the CRM Diagnostics Page to Capture Network Performance

≪ Previous: Microsoft Dynamics CRM Stack Technology Compatibility List KB!

We're proud to announce that Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Update Rollup 7 released Thursday, Mar. 22nd,2012!

On Friday Mar. 23rd 2012, Ryan Anderson and Mike Gast from the Microsoft Premier Field Engineering team provided information about the recent release of Update Rollup 7 for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011. They also briefly discussed changes in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 servicing during their:

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Update Rollup 7 Podcast

Feature Addition in Update Rollup 7!

Update Rollup 7 for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 introduces a new feature known as Read Optimized Forms. Read Optimized Forms allow a user to quickly open a read-only copy of a record form. Read Optimized Forms improve performance for users who have high network latency and users who spend most of their time consuming information instead of editing. Form loads are faster because of the removal of the ribbon, navigation pane, web resources, and form scripting. However, you can still open the standard editable form if changes have to be made. The ability to default to using the Read Optimized Forms can be set at the Organization level, but is also controlled per user to meet individual needs. For more information about Read Optimized Forms, see "Customize Entity Forms in Microsoft Dynamics CRM"

Update Rollup 7 Build number:
5.0.9690.2165

Note: Update Rollup 7 can be uninstalled, unlike Update Rollups 4-6, which could not be uninstalled. However, you should always back up your databases and application servers before you install an Update Rollup.

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 future Update Rollups, starting with Update Rollup 7.

Note: As Update Rollup 7 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 5. Some of these features include:

Outlook Client Updates:

Enhancements to the Reading Pane
Asynchronous promotion for tracked emails

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 Service Update features, consult:

Microsoft Dynamics CRM: The Road Ahead

Packages are available for download via:

The Update Rollup 7 Microsoft Download Center page (on Mar. 22nd, 2012)
The Microsoft Update Catalog (on Apr. 3rd, 2012)
The Microsoft Update detection / installation process (on Apr. 3rd, 2012)
- 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 7 "master" Microsoft Knowledge Base article
- Please review my teammate Shawn Dieken's superb 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 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: As of Jan. 20th, 2012 these installation files have been 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

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Update Rollup 7 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 to determine the latest Microsoft SQL Server major version and Service Pack that is supported. Microsoft will list new products like Internet Explorer 10 as TBD until testing is complete; generally near General Availability (GA) of that product.

Issues resolved via Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Update Rollups:

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Update Rollup 7 is the seventh 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 7 will contain all fixes shipped via Update Rollups 1-7.

Hotfixes and updates that were released as individual fixes before Update Rollup 7 release

The following issues were fixed and delivered to requesting customers prior to Update Rollup 7 release as Critical On Demand (COD) fixes:

Assume that you have a solution that contains an option set attribute which has no prefix. When you import updates to the solution from an earlier version of Microsoft Dynamics CRM, you receive the following error message:

The schema attribute is not unique

Mail items from Outlook Explorer are not promoted when the items are opened in the background
Consider the following scenario:

You open Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 by using https protocol and do not specify the port number
You open an existing account or create a new account, enter a value in the Account Number field, and then click Save
You update the same form again, and then click Save
In this scenario, you receive the following error message:

Access Denied

When you try to promote an item by using the Set Regarding function and the promotion fails, the item continues to have the regarding information set with only four user-defined fields. Therefore, when the promotion error is resolved, and then you try to promote the item again, the promotion still fails
When you try to configure Microsoft Dynamics CRM client for Outlook, you receive the following error message:

Cannot connect to Microsoft Dynamics CRM server because we cannot authenticate your credentials. Check your connection or contact your administrator for help

When you try to import a managed solution that contains a label change, you receive the following error message:

The evaluation of the current component (name=LocalizedLabel, id=631f30e6-1ebf-48c8-8ef4-f8000ee973dd) in the current operation (Update) failed during managed property evaluation of condition: Microsoft.Crm.BusinessEntities.IsRenameableCondition

When you tab on a user domain name to retrieve user information from Active Directory in a large domain that contains multiple child domains, you experience slow performance
Assume that you change the SiteMap in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 by linking to custom views as an html web resource. When you click the link to the views, you receive the following error message:

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
Additionally, the following error message is logged in the platform trace:

Error: CRM Parameter Filter - Invalid parameter 'layout=0' in Request.QueryString

When you perform a quick search in Microsoft Dynamics CRM client for Outlook, you experience slow performance
When you click Add Existing to associate more than 250 records to a record in Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Internet Explorer becomes unresponsive. Additionally, you receive the following error message:

Message: Stop running this script? A script on this page is causing your web browser to run slowly. If it continues to run, your computer might become unresponsive

When you try to assign an entity to a team in a Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 workflow, you cannot select any existing team field value for the assignment
Assume that an entity form is customized to have multiple sub-grids with auto-expansion enabled in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011. When you move grids to a sub-area in the form, the grids are resized
When you import a contact by using the Add Contacts wizard, the Company Name field for the contact is deleted in Office Outlook. This problem occurs when the Use Company Name to be the Account option is disabled
Consider the following scenario:

You create a new email message in Office Outlook
You select Rich Text format on the Format Text tab
You add some text to the email message, and then add embedded images
You enter data in the To, From, and Subject fields
You click the Track button, and then click Send
You review the tracked Email activity in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011
In this scenario, the inserted image is not displayed in the Email activity. Instead, the picture is displayed as an attachment that has a zero size

Other fixes released via CRM 2011 Update Rollup 7:

When you open a record directly from a bookmark or a link, an unusual padding appears. Additionally, when you try to browse away from the page, you receive a script error message that asks you to send an error report to Microsoft
You cannot enter a backslash (\) in a text field in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 forms. This problem occurs when the system is set up to use a German standard keyboard
When you open a record on an associated view, picklists become inactive in Internet Explorer 9
After you upgrade to Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011, you cannot resolve cases that have contract lines associated
Consider the following scenario:

You open a record, and then click Connect
In the Connect dialog box, you enter information into fields, and then click Save and New
In this scenario, the new Connect dialog box does not save the connection to the original record

You cannot type special characters that require the right alt key (AltGr) on keyboard in some Microsoft Dynamics CRM forms
When you open a record and then click the notes text, the width of the text area shrinks to the default size. This problem occurs when you do not have the Write permissions on notes for the record
When you right-click a read-only field in a form in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011, you receive the following error message:

Microsoft Dynamics CRM has encountered an error

When you merge accounts or contacts, the related connection records are not updated to point to the master record in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011
When you try to add more than 50,000 members to a marketing list, you receive the following error message:

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. AggregateQueryRecordLimit exceeded. Cannot perform this operation

When you create a new solution, and then export it as a managed solution, the xml is invalid. This problem occurs when you rename a subgrid control on an existing form for an existing subgrid. In this situation, the import wizard does not validate the xml and you receive the following error message:

The import file is invalid. XSD validation failed
Additionally, when you view the technical details, you receive the following error message:
Element 'control' cannot appear more than once if content model type is "all"

Consider the following scenario:

You click File, click New activity, and then click Appointment
You enter a subject
You enter a date in the Appointment Activity field that is 2 weeks in the future, and then click Save
You click Recurrence
In this scenario, the date in the Start Range field displays the current date instead of the expected date of 2 weeks in the future

Consider the following scenario:

You create a new account in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011
In the Website field, you enter a URL that contains a quotation mark
You create a grid view on accounts and then add the Website column
You view the grid
In this scenario, the script is executed incorrectly and you receive an error message

When you configure a bulk deletion job, and then you send the customer a link by using an email message to check the status of the bulk deletion job, the URL in the email message is incorrect
When you import a price list from an Excel worksheet, the prices are multiplied by one hundred. This problem occurs when the Excel spreadsheet resides on a server that has non-US regional settings
When you update a Microsoft Dynamics CRM organization to another Microsoft SQL Server SKU, no audit partition is created
When you try to add a column to an incident related view in the Activity entity in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Turkish installation, you receive the following error message:

Entity type does not exist in Microsoft Dynamics CRM

When you try to run the Account Summary reports in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 in a non-English language, you receive the following error message:

Subreport could not be shown

Consider the following scenario:

You make a copy of the Salesperson Security Role, and then you set the User Read permission to the business unit (BU) level on the Business Management tab in the copy.
You create a user in a BU that is not the primary BU, and then you assign the new role that you created to the user
You configure the user for Microsoft Dynamics CRM client for Outlook
In Office Outlook, the user clicks Option, and then clicks Mail
The user selects the Create check box and the Contacts option for the Automatically create records setting in the Microsoft Dynamics CRM section
An email message is sent to the user from a non-Microsoft Dynamics CRM user
The user tracks the email message from inbox
In this scenario, the user receives the following error message:

An unknown error occurred while synchronizing data to Outlook

When you import dashboards as part of a solution and the solution contains labels for languages that are not the base language, the labels are not created during the import of the solution
Too many trace log error events are logged in the trace logs in for Microsoft Dynamics CRM
You cannot execute a request to retrieve metadata by using the 2007 Metadata Service, as the System or Integration user, in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011
You cannot register a plugin on the Create message function for the UserQuery entity
Assume that you use LINQ in a Microsoft Dynamics CRM plugin with the OrganizationServiceContext object to retrieve related records. When you update the records, you receive the following error message:

Type: System.InvalidOperationException
Message: The entity is read-only and the 'Id' property cannot be modified. Use the context to update the entity instead

Assume that you try to create a quick campaign from the results of an Advanced Find query. When you complete the Quick Campaign wizard, you receive the following error message:

Invalid Argument error

Service Activities continuously synchronize to the Microsoft Dynamics CRM client for Outlook
When you try to open a message that is saved in the .msg format and the message is set to read-only in the file properties, you receive the following error message:

Microsoft CRM has encountered a problem and needs to close. We are sorry for the inconvenience
This problem occurs in Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 and Microsoft Office Outlook 2010

The grid views and the reading pane in Microsoft Dynamics CRM client for Outlook do not display the data by using the number formats that are specified in the Personal Options settings in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011
When you import or re-import some currency or decimal field values from Excel spreadsheet XML files, the record imports fail with format exceptions
When you import data by using the "Templates for Data Import" process with Excel or XML files, white spaces are not removed
If you enable the Do Not Create Activities option, attachments are not attached to email messages during mail merges
If you cancel the duplication detection process, the PreValidation plugin does not merge changes
When you reassign an appointment record that is recurring to a user, only the master record is assigned. The recurring records are not assigned to the user
The RenderGridView.aspx page is cached for only one day; the cache time should be longer
Reprocessing for the async process for transport level errors has been added
When you create a record in an entity in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011, you receive the following error message:

CrmException: Cannot insert duplicate key

When you run Microsoft Dynamics CRM client for Outlook, Microsoft Office Outlook client crashes. This problem occurs when the FormRegion object is set

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 7 contains all fixes previously released via Update Rollups 1-6 as well as fixes newly released via Update Rollup 7. So if you install Update Rollup 7 on a machine upon which you previously installed no Update Rollups, you will need to manually enable any desired fixes for Update Rollups 1-7:

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

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

Mismatched Update Rollup versions within a Microsoft Dynamics CRM deployment

Internet Explorer 9 Compatibility

There are two CRM 2011 application compatibility fixes released via Update Rollup 6 related to Internet Explorer 9:

When you click Add Existing to associate more than 250 records to a record in Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Internet Explorer becomes unresponsive. Additionally, you receive the following error message:

Message: Stop running this script? A script on this page is causing your web browser to run slowly. If it continues to run, your computer might become unresponsive

When you open a record on an associated view, picklists become inactive in Internet Explorer 9

Greg Nichols
Premier Field Engineering
Microsoft Corporation

↧

Using the CRM Diagnostics Page to Capture Network Performance

April 9, 2012, 2:41 pm

≫ Next: Podcast and Overview: Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Update Rollup 8

≪ Previous: Podcast and Overview: Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Update Rollup 7

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

↧

Podcast and Overview: Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Update Rollup 8

April 20, 2012, 1:45 pm

≫ Next: Avoid Performance Issues by Rescheduling CRM 2011 Maintenance Jobs

≪ Previous: Using the CRM Diagnostics Page to Capture Network Performance

We're proud to announce that Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Update Rollup 8 released Thursday, May 3rd,2012!

On Friday May 4th 2012, Greg Nichols and Ryan Anderson from the Microsoft Premier Field Engineering team provided information about:

The recent release of Update Rollup 8 for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011
The potential for future release of CRM 4.0 Update Rollups for support of Microsoft Windows 8 and Microsoft Windows Internet Explorer 10
Some of the new features (the Q2 2012 Service Update) being released via CRM 2011 Update Rollup 9

during their Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Update Rollup 8 Podcast

Feature Addition in Update Rollup 7, also available in Update Rollup 8!

Update Rollup 7 for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 introduced a new feature known as Read Optimized Forms. Read Optimized Forms allow a user to quickly open a read-only copy of a record form. Read Optimized Forms improve performance for users who have high network latency and users who spend most of their time consuming information instead of editing. Form loads are faster because of the removal of the ribbon, navigation pane, web resources, and form scripting. However, you can still open the standard editable form if changes have to be made. The ability to default to using the Read Optimized Forms can be set at the Organization level, but is also controlled per user to meet individual needs. For more information about Read Optimized Forms, see "Customize Entity Forms in Microsoft Dynamics CRM"

Update Rollup 8 Build number:
5.0.9690.2243

Note: Update Rollup 8 can be uninstalled, unlike Update Rollups 4-6, which could not be uninstalled. However, you should always back up your databases and application servers before you install an Update Rollup.

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 future Update Rollups, starting with Update Rollup 7.

Note: As Update Rollup 8 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 5. Some of these features include:

Outlook Client Updates:

Enhancements to the Reading Pane
Asynchronous promotion for tracked emails

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 Service Update features, consult:

Microsoft Dynamics CRM: The Road Ahead

Packages are available for download via:

The Update Rollup 8 Microsoft Download Center page (on May 3rd, 2012)
The Microsoft Update Catalog (on May 22nd, 2012)
The Microsoft Update detection / installation process (on May 22nd, 2012)
- 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 8 "master" Microsoft Knowledge Base article
- Please review my teammate Shawn Dieken's superb 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 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: As of Jan. 20th, 2012 these installation files have been 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

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Update Rollup 8 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 to determine the latest Microsoft SQL Server major version and Service Pack that is supported. Microsoft will list new products like Internet Explorer 10 as TBD until testing is complete; generally near General Availability (GA) of that product.

Issues resolved via Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Update Rollups:

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Update Rollup 8 is the eighth 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 8 contains all fixes shipped via Update Rollups 1-8.

Hotfixes and updates that were released as individual fixes before Update Rollup 8 release

The following issues were fixed and delivered to requesting customers prior to Update Rollup 8 release as Critical On Demand (COD) fixes:

When you browse through many records in the Hungarian version of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 1011, the alphabet clickable index (the jump bar) is in English
Assume that the Microsoft Dynamics CRM website application pool identity is configured as a domain user account. When you try to configure Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 client for Outlook over the HTTPS protocol, a generic error occurs
You cannot configure Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 client for Outlook with Office 365 platform when you use a name that contains multibyte characters
When you make a change in an existing appointment, and then you save the appointment, the form reloads with the original values. Therefore, you cannot see the change that you made
Multiple Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 toolbars appear randomly when you use Microsoft Office Word 2003 to edit email message
Custom saved views that are shared are not available in Microsoft Office Outlook when you are offline
When you run the Test Access function on Microsoft Dynamics CRM Email router produces for some Office 365 Exchange users, you receive the following error message:

An error occurred while opening mailbox.
Microsoft.Crm.Tools.Email.Providers.EmailException: The remote Microsoft Exchange e-mail server returned the error "(401) Unauthorized"

Other fixes released via CRM 2011 Update Rollup 8:

An appointment is not displayed in the service calendar in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011

This issue occurs when the duration of the appointment is zero, and the end date of the appointment is the same as the start date of the next appointment

Consider the following scenario:

You create an appointment in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 client for Outlook
You select the option to track the appointment in Microsoft Dynamics CRM, and then save the appointment
You open the appointment and change the value in the pick list
In this scenario, the value in the pick list is not saved

When you copy the Service Manager role to rename it, and then assign the role to a user, the service calendar is not displayed

This issue occurs after you create a new organization in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 with the Portuguese language pack installed

The Import Data Wizard stays in the loading status in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 with Internet Explorer 10
Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 client for Outlook crashes when the reading pane is enabled in a form that contains many multiline text box fields in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011
The W3WP process crashes with unhandled exceptions in the scheduling engine thread in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011
When there are many users and equipment and the LeastBusy option is enabled in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011, you experience slow performance in the service scheduling process
When you click attachments in the reading pane in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011, the Open button is enabled unexpectedly
Software Development Kit (SDK) receives a deserialization exception for users on Microsoft Office Online

This issue occurs because of an unexpected response from the GetUserRealm call

There is no validation for domains in the stage.axpx.cs page in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011
When you create a new Email type quick campaign, and then select a new template that you created, an alert popup appears
When you run a report in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 in a Report Definition Language (RDL) sandboxed environment, images in the report truncate or do not load
After you set the Min Pool Size value to 20 in CrmSqlCnnectionManager, many SQL connections without a valid SQL handle are generated or remained in Microsoft SQL Server
When you switch folders in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 in a wide area network (WAN) environment, you experience slow performance
No Performance Monitor data is logged for the "#Organizations" performance counter
When you apply Update Rollup 6 for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011, the language provisioning jobs fail

Additionally, you receive the following error message:
Reprovisioning Job for 1033 Failed

When you click Insert Template in an email activity, you receive the following error message intermittently:

An error has occurred

After you perform a synchronization process in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 client for Outlook, status reason codes are changed to the default status reason code in activities that are closed
When you click to open an attachment in a Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 record, the Open button is unavailable in the file download dialog box
You cannot seamlessly access Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 pages in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 client for Outlook
Assume that you call the SetLabel function from the "Xrm.Page.ui.controls" namespace on the priceperunit attribute of the Quote entity in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011. When you set the product type option to Write-in, and then you close the quote product form, you receive the following error message:

Object doesn't support this property or method

When you try to list trusted domains in the New Multiple Users wizard in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011, an error occurs
You cannot import an organization into the same Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 deployment if the business unit entity has new attributes added
Assume that you update the default Outlook filter templates by using the CRM 2011 SDK. When you perform an Outlook Filter Reset process, two or three filters with the same name but different fetchxml are generated
Assume that you untrack Microsoft Dynamics CRM email messages in the Outlook inbox explorer view in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011. When you try to delete the corresponding email activity from the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 server, you receive the following error message:

Unrecognized GUID Format

Assume that you are not a member of any administrative groups in Active Directory. When you export a dynamic worksheet to an Excel worksheet, you may receive the following error message:

[Microsoft][ODBC SQL Server Driver][ SQL Server] The select permission was denied for the object 'fn_GetGuidsFromString'

The donotbulkpostalmail account attribute is not editable. Additionally, the account attribute is not listed when you design the entity form
When you synchronize appointments in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 by using the Microsoft Office Outlook online mode (noncached mode), all attendees in the appointments become organizers in Microsoft Office Outlook
When you export advanced find views that contain "Or" conditions to dynamic worksheets, incorrect SQL query syntax is generated
When you revise a closed quote, you receive the following warning message:

Are you sure you want to navigate away from this page?
However, the Revised Quote form opens above the Closed Quote form

You cannot cancel the "On Save" event in a recurring appointment form by using Java scripts in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011
When you perform RetrieveMultiple queries for the listmemeber entity by using the paging functionality and pass the paging cookies to improve performance, not all listmembers are returned. Some queries retrieve two full pages of data, and the second page indicates there are more records. However, no records are returned on the third page

This issue occurs when the "OrderType.Descending" order type is used in the OrderExpresion for the createdon or modifiedon attributes

When you open a form in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011, you receive the following script error message:

The disk is full

Consider the following scenario in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011:

You click My Work, and then click Activities
You click Phone Call, and then open the debugging tool
You click the Script tab on the left side, and then click the Console tab on the right side
You click the List in regarding field
In this scenario, you receive an error message that resembles the following:

HTML1422: Malformed start tag. A self closing slash should be followed by a U+003E GREATER-THAN SIGN (>).
lookupinfo.aspx, line 1018 character 5434
HTML1422: Malformed start tag. A self closing slash should be followed by a U+300E GREATER-THAN SIGN (>).
lookupinfo.aspx, line 1018 character 5440
HTML1409: Invalid attribute name character. Attribute names should not contain ("),('),(<), or (=).
lookupinfo.aspx, line 1018 character 5455

Assume that you have a named SQL instance that has ports specified and you disable the SQL Browser service. When you try to install Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 in the named SQL instance, the installation fails. Additionally, you cannot create organizations by using the named SQL instance in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011
If you register a plug-in against an opportunity entity in the post-operation stage, the plug-in is unexpectedly executed outside the transaction
When you try to export campaign activity distribution failures to Microsoft Office Excel, you receive the following error message:

Invalid Argument

When you receive incoming email messages from duplicate contacts in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011, the email messages are tracked incorrectly
A dynamic value, such as a date, in a record from a query does not reflect your time zone or regional date format in a dialog box
When you try to qualify an opportunity, an account, or a contact, a duplicate detention dialog box appears. However, when you continue to qualify the record, the dialog box stops responding. Additionally, you receive the following error message on the Internet Explorer status bar:

Error on page

View list caching causes an incorrect list of views in other parts of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011. Therefore, when you customize dashboard with a grid component and set certain views to be available in the grid component, not all views are displayed
Some entities are added to the cache to improve the performance for the Service Scheduling process

For more information about how to enable the performance improvements, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

2651621 Service Scheduling performance enhancements for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011

When you synchronize appointments in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 to Microsoft Office Outlook, the appointments are generated as meeting requests. This issue occurs even though there are no attendees who are listed in the appointments
Assume that a contact entity contains trailing spaces in a text field in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0. In this situation, the contact entity is synchronized continuously in the Microsoft Dynamics CRM client for Outlook. This occurs even though no record is changed in the contact entity
The edit.aspx page double loads unexpectedly

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 8 contains all fixes previously released via Update Rollups 1-7 as well as fixes newly released via Update Rollup 8. So if you install Update Rollup 8 on a machine upon which you previously installed no Update Rollups, you will need to manually enable any desired fixes for Update Rollups 1-8:

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

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

Mismatched Update Rollup versions within a Microsoft Dynamics CRM deployment

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

Internet Explorer 9 Compatibility

There are two CRM 2011 application compatibility fixes released via Update Rollup 6 related to Internet Explorer 9:

When you click Add Existing to associate more than 250 records to a record in Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Internet Explorer becomes unresponsive. Additionally, you receive the following error message:

Message: Stop running this script? A script on this page is causing your web browser to run slowly. If it continues to run, your computer might become unresponsive

When you open a record on an associated view, picklists become inactive in Internet Explorer 9

Greg Nichols
Premier Field Engineering
Microsoft Corporation

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Avoid Performance Issues by Rescheduling CRM 2011 Maintenance Jobs

April 26, 2012, 9:36 am

≫ Next: Microsoft Dynamics Health Check service

≪ Previous: Podcast and Overview: Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Update Rollup 8

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

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