Tip #185: Dude, where is my alert?

Workflow to send SMS about alert

If you’ve been paying attention to the most recent advances in server-side CRM entertainment, you are by now should be familiar with alerts. They are system messages that tells you when something is wrong (error), suspicious (warning), or neither (information). Open any server profile or mailbox record, click Alerts link on the left to find […]

Tip #180: Don’t use that name

Microsoft Dynamics CRM restricts some words from being used for organization names. On Premises customers can find the list by running the following query: use mscrm_config select reservedname from reservednames The following is the restricted name list in CRM 2013: About Activities AdvancedFind api AppWebServices aspnet_client bi bin Biz Calendar Condition CRMReports CS dev Help […]

Tip #176: Adminless traceless troubleshooting

No administrators allowed

tl;dr When users are presented with a generic error message, URL in a browser address bar sometimes contain enough details about the error to determine the actual cause. How to fish “An error has occurred.” How wonderful. We all have seen it at one point of our CRM lives or another. Users unable to login, […]

Tip #175: Miscellaneous privileges with multiple access levels

Send As Privilege

We are all familiar with the record privileges in Dynamics CRM. User-owned entities have 5 access levels (None, User, Business Unit, Parent: Child Business Units, Organization) while organization-owned entities have only two of those (Go/No Go). Then there are miscellaneous privileges and training documentation states that (highlight is mine): Each Security Role also includes miscellaneous […]

Tip #171: If email router is having a slow day or how to add custom index

Sometimes things are slow. Very. Slow. So slow that your email router starts spitting dreadful messages: #9628 – An error occurred while delivering the e-mail message with subject “None of your business” in mailbox foo@bar.baz for delivery to https://crm.bar.baz. System.ServiceModel.FaultException`1 [Microsoft.Xrm.Sdk.OrganizationServiceFault]: SQL timeout expired. (Fault Detail is equal to Microsoft.Xrm.Sdk.OrganizationServiceFault). If you are on CRM […]

Tip #166: Become role customizer ninja

Role Editor

If you frequently modify security role and your wrist hurts because of all tiny mouse movements, there are some undocumented explicit links on the role dialog that could make your life much easier. Clicking on the entity name (e.g. Account) will cycle all privileges for this entity (i.e. Create, Read, etc) through all access levels […]

Tip #164: Not all roles are created equal

It’s a reasonably well-known fact that recreating roles from scratch and adding all privileges to replicate one of the system roles is not the same as copying that system role. There are some hidden privileges that are not exposed via security dialog. This topic has been discussed and documented for CRM 4.0 and for CRM […]

Tip #159: PowerShell fails in IFD deployment

Microsoft Dynamics CRM Windows PowerShell snap-in is an excellent automation tool but on some Internet Facing Deployments even an innocuous call to Get-CrmServer can fail with a fairly generic message “The caller was not authenticated by the service“. One of the possible reasons is that the tool always runs on CRM server but for IFD […]

Tip #155: During the upgrade all your CRM are belong to us

When importing a CRM 2011 organization into CRM 2013 UR2 or SP1 environment, you may receive a cryptic message “Database having version 6.0.0.809 is not supported for upgraded”. As it turns out, it has nothing to do with the version of the database being imported. If you are trying to import an organization database that […]