Podcast and Overview: Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Update Rollup 15

Contents:

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

We're proud to announce that all packages for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Update Rollup 15 were released on Tuesday October 8th, 2013 to the Microsoft Download Center!  The Update Rollup 15 packages should appear on Microsoft Update on or about October 22nd, 2013.

Update Rollup 15 Build numbers:

5.0.9690.3731
5.0.9690.3739 (Outlook Client re-release)

Update Rollup 15 Microsoft Download Center page

Here's the "Master" Microsoft Dynamics Knowledge Base article for Update Rollup 15: (KB 2843571). 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 Tuesday, October 8th 2013 at 3 PM Pacific Greg Nichols and Ryan Anderson from the Microsoft Premier Field Engineering provided information about:

• The release of Update Rollup 15 for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011
• New fixes made available In Update Rollup 15
• Collateral available about Update Rollup 15 and CRM Update Rollups in general
• The upcoming release of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013

on BlogTalkRadio during their Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Update Rollup 15 Podcast.

Note: We have identified a compatibility issue that occurs when you use the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Client for Outlook with Update Rollup 15 applied against a Dynamics CRM 2013 server. This issue does not affect Dynamics CRM 2011 servers. New Update Rollup 15 client packages were released to address this issue. If you are not in this specific scenario, you will not have to apply the new Update Rollup 15 client package. The new Outlook Client packages follow this naming convention:

CRM2011-Client-KB2843571-v2-ENU-amd64.exe
CRM2011-Client-KB2843571-v2-ENU-i386.exe

And are build 5.0.9690.3739.  Only the Outlook Client packages were re-released.

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

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The "CRM Update Rollup Collateral Page"

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

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Update Rollup 15 News!

Update Rollup 15 provides a few functionality changes you should be aware of, including:

Many important CRM for Outlook Client improvements:

• It includes a new feature that is also scheduled to be delivered with Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013
  • This feature moves the CRM client-specific workload into its own process so that it no longer shares memory with the Microsoft Office Outlook process
  • This feature is also known as Process Isolation
• An upgrade to Microsoft SQL Server for Windows CE 4.0 for better memory management, better caching, and connection enhancements
• Updates to the CRM for Outlook configuration files to make the CRM for Outlook SDF files compatible with SQL Server for Windows CE 4.0
• It materializes the Address Book Provider to reduce performance issues that are caused by large address books
• It limits the amount of active open forms
• It provides a MAPI Lock time-out
• It hard codes a previous registry setting that prevented pinned views from pulling down information to local SQL CE cache. This new DisableMapiCaching setting defaults to a value of 1
  • For more information about the behavior of this setting, see the Microsoft Knowledge Base Article Slow Performance When Pinning Views in Microsoft Dynamics CRM
  • Note: This value can be overridden by modifying the DisableMapiCaching setting in the OrgDbOrgSettings tool if the critical update has been applied to the Dynamics CRM server
  • For more information, see the Microsoft Knowledge Base Article OrgDBOrgSettings Tool for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011

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Update Rollup 15 is of course also 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.

• New support for the technology stack that CRM 2011 relies upon was added via Update Rollup 15 for Exchange Server 2013 and Office 2010 SP2, as per the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Compatibility List

Update Rollup 15 news that you need to know because Update Rollups are cumulative, so these significant changes are also in Update Rollup 15!

• 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 sdktoolsdevelopertoolkit folder
• Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Software Development Kit (SDK) updated for Update Rollup 12 (version 5.0.17 updated for CRM 2011 Update Rollup 13 and Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online)
  • SDK download location
  • SDK Online location
  • Developers, please note the SDK Extensions for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 and Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online update
• Bulk Data Load performance enhancements
  • To support bulk data load scenarios, this release introduces the ExecuteMultipleRequest message. This message supports the execution of multiple message requests using a single web method call. ExecuteMultipleRequest accepts an input collection of message requests, executes each of the message requests in the order they appear in the input collection, and optionally returns a collection of responses containing each message’s response or the error that occurred. Processing requests in bulk results in lower network traffic and higher message processing throughput
  • For more information, see Use ExecuteMultiple to Improve Performance for Bulk Data Load
• Activity Feeds changes
  • Microsoft Dynamics CRM Activity Feeds provide real-time notifications and quick sharing of information through short updates. These updates appear on your personal wall in the What's New area of the Workplace . Activity Feeds enable you to follow and learn about important activities that take place around people, accounts, contacts, leads, and anything else that you care about
  • Updates can be posted manually by you, or automatically based on predefined system rules through a workflow. Activity Feeds can also be posted to by external applications through the Microsoft Dynamics CRM web services API. Activity Feeds expose Microsoft Lync real-time presence functionality so that you can initiate communication activities such as IM, phone calls, and emails. For more information, see Activity Feeds Entities
• More performance and stability-related fixes, including fixes to the CRM Client for Microsoft Outlook
• Contains all hotfixes / updates released in earlier Update Rollups
• Quick Find performance optimizations and EnableRetrieveMultipleOptimization SQL query performance optimizations (originally released in Update Rollup 10)

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

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

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

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

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

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NEW RELEASE REGARDING OrgDbOrgSettings!

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

This is a FREE downloadable tool - the "Dynamics CRM 2011 Organization Settings Editor".  Check it out; the download page has screenshots and information that will help you make good use of the tool.  Sean has also published a Premier Field Engineering blog: "Azure Mobile + JavaScript + WebResources = Easy Editing of OrgDBOrgSettings in Dynamics CRM 2011!" to share more details on the tool. He will be updating it for the settings available in Update Rollup 15 very shortly.  Thanks, Sean!

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

My esteemed PFE teammate Sean McNellis published a blog you should be aware of regardi