Beatnik's Microsoft CRM Blog

Donnerstag, 12. Februar 2009

Re-Release of Update Rollup 2 - V2

After experiencing issues with Update Rollup 2 on several servers we decided to uninstall it and stay with Rollup 1. One bug was that servermessages were encrypted and (almost) unreadable. It could be reproduced on several servers using the german version of CRM 4.0.

Due to that we opened a Microsoft supportcase. In the meantime a new version of Rollup Update 2 - "V2" has been released. The issues regarding the servermessages are gone.

So watch out to get the re-released version when planning to install it! You can tell by filename (contains -V2) and in the setupwindow.

Get the re-release here:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=aa671769-61e9-45c4-919f-c88199aa4241&displaylang=en

Donnerstag, 24. April 2008

Create "real" CRM 4.0-Style form-buttons in 5 minutes

There are several ways to add custom buttons onto a crm form (apart from the boring method of adding buttons via ISV-config 8-):
1. use an iFrame and an external page
Drawback: no offline availability

2.do some DOM-injection and create the buttons at runtime
Drawback: a bit tricky with placement and so on

And then there is:
3. Adis idea to transform a textattribute into a button.
The nice thing is, that you can use the normal formeditor to place it.

So I took the idea further and applied the CRM 4.0 styles to make it look 100% native and more generic to use. (it even reacts to mousedown as expected - hehe ;-)

What to do:

create a textattribute (you can set searchable to "no" so the attribute doesn't show up in advanced search

put it on the form
make it "readonly" (Thanks Marcel!)
copy the sourcecode into the onLoad event.

replace the fieldname "bwt_button1" in the last line with your attributename.
create your functions to tell the button what to do when clicked.
have fun

source:

//////////////////////////////////////////////////////
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////

//CRM 4.0-Style button creator
//Creates a Button from a Textattribute.
//For every Button you need, create a nText Attribute and place it on the Form
//mario raunig, world-direct 04/2008

function create_button_from_textattribute(fieldname, buttontext, buttonwidth,clickevent)
{
functiontocall=clickevent;
crmForm.all[fieldname].DataValue = buttontext;
crmForm.all[fieldname].style.borderRight="#3366cc 1px solid";
crmForm.all[fieldname].style.paddingRight="5px";
crmForm.all[fieldname].style.borderTop="#3366cc 1px solid";
crmForm.all[fieldname].style.paddingLeft="5px";
crmForm.all[fieldname].style.fontSize="11px";
crmForm.all[fieldname].style.backgroundImage="url(/_imgs/btn_rest.gif)";
crmForm.all[fieldname].style.borderLeft="#3366cc 1px solid";
crmForm.all[fieldname].style.width=buttonwidth;
crmForm.all[fieldname].style.cursor="pointer";
crmForm.all[fieldname].style.lineHeight="18px";
crmForm.all[fieldname].style.borderBottom="#3366cc 1px solid";
crmForm.all[fieldname].style.backgroundRepeat="repeat-x";
crmForm.all[fieldname].style.fontFamily="Tahoma";
crmForm.all[fieldname].style.height="20px";
crmForm.all[fieldname].style.backgroundColor="#cee7ff";
crmForm.all[fieldname].style.textAlign="center";
crmForm.all[fieldname].style.overflow="hidden";
crmForm.all[fieldname].attachEvent("onmousedown",push_button);
crmForm.all[fieldname].attachEvent("onmouseup",release_button);
crmForm.all[fieldname].attachEvent("onclick",functiontocall);
}

function push_button(){
window.event.srcElement.style.marginLeft="1px";
window.event.srcElement.style.marginTop="1px";
}

function release_button(){
window.event.srcElement.style.marginLeft="0px";
window.event.srcElement.style.marginTop="0px";
}

// tell the button what to do
function testfunction()
{
alert('Ta-da!');
}

// create the button
create_button_from_textattribute('bwt_button1', 'What a nice CRM 4.0 Button','184px',testfunction);

//////////////////////////////////////////////////////
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////

Mittwoch, 16. April 2008

This year's "CRM Jahrestagung 2008"

Also this year we could showcase one of our projects at the annual "CRM Jahrestagung" which is organized by Businesscircle and considered the most important CRM-Event in Austria. Amidst other speakers from companies such as "D. SWAROVSKI & CO", "Nestlè Nespresso", "Telefònica" and "Dresdner Bank" I could talk about our current project for BWT. Project Manager Markus Nachtmann and me focussed on the challenges of user adoption and training. We also gave our solution a name (Jeannie) to be able to blame someone, if it doesn't work as expected ;-)

PS: And yes, you can ask me how we got Jeannie into the left navigation area.

Montag, 31. März 2008

CRM Picklist Generator is 1 year old - and 4.0 compatible

One year has passed and - as tiny as it might be - it seems that my tool to save time when creating large picklists has proved to be pretty handy for many of you out there. It has been used more than 1.400 times up to now by visitors from 71 countries, from New Zealand to Ecuador and 700 cities, from Wellington to Nanaimo. As we are working on 4.0 projects I decided to make it compatible. It was just a minor that distinguishes 3.0 from 4.0 picklists in the export-XML. What is missing in 4.0 is the <options nextvalue="...">-tag. Have fun and drop me a line if you like it.

You can get to the tool here and see how to use it in the original post.

Dienstag, 5. Februar 2008

Meeting with Mark Corley, Senior Director of Dynamics CRM Channel Strategy

Today I had a chance to meet up with Mark Corley in Vienna to talk about the Austrian CRM market with special emphasis on hosting. Mr. Corley is responsible for building Microsoft’s global Software + Service business for the Dynamics CRM product line – the delivery of sales force automation, customer service and marketing automation solutions directly over the Internet via hosting service providers. He is also responsible for managing all channel strategy activities and helping grow the CRM practices of its various business partners, including Value Added Resellers, System Integrators, Outsourcers, Independent Software Vendors (ISV) and Hosters.

Among other things we also talked about CRM Live (the Microsoft-hosted sort of „out-of-the-box“ model) and I expressed my concerns, having in mind what every piece of literature about CRM will teach you first: „CRM is not a Software“. Anyway, CRM Live will not hit Europe in the next couple of months, so there is still some time to see what happens and how the US-market reacts. I asked Mark about integration of OWA (Outlook Web Access) which would be a huge step towards ASP-operation working without any software that has to be installed on the client. Hmmm… That seemed to have been a very good question. In my eye the complexity of such an integration would not be that high, let’s see what comes out of that. Having talked about expanding marketshare it looks like that our business model matches Microsoft’s long-term strategy. I can’t tell you more, sorry ;-)