Tip #928: When CRM monthly charts won’t render

Just another pie chart

In Dynamics 365/CRM on premises, if you create a chart and group by month and find that it doesn’t render, you may need some additional SQL permissions. Database owner must have external access assembly/unsafe assembly permission SQL database Trustworthy property must be set to “on.” With these settings in place, your monthly grouped charts should render […]

Tip #917: Too many business units

Microsoft org chart

Someone recently asked me what I thought of someone adding 1,000 + business units to Dynamics 365. I told them it was a bad idea. Here’s why: Business units are like large granite rocks–they are designed to be permanent and infrequently moved. While users can be moved between business units, it is not a trivial […]

Tip #785: How to restore USD session

Restore

This question frequently comes up during the USD (Unified Service Desk, not $) projects and training sessions: what is the most effective way to save/restore the entire USD session? This functionality would enable some interesting scenarios, e.g. transfer the entire session from one user to another with the call transfer, or simply save a complicated […]

Tip #655: Defensive use of undocumented functions

Black box

This is a sweet lesson for all the lovers of the undocumented functions. On odd occasion yours truly is guilty of being lazy and choosing a shortcut worthy spießrutenlaufen. From time to time those fits of laziness come back hard. For a long time I’ve been using SaveAsCompleted internal function on a command bar for […]

Tip #639: I shall call him Squishy

I shall call him Squishy

Selecting a good name for an organization in CRM On-premises has always been a challenge especially when you automate provisioning of your CRM organizations. At least one would hope that the chosen name would stick. However, our special correspondent Mehmet “Sputnik” Ozdemir reports from the trenches that organizationid and name fields in the organization entity […]

Tip #625: The death of Activity Feeds has been exaggerated

Refresh Activity Feeds

I’ll start today’s truckstop with a rant (which, in itself, is nothing unusual). <rant> Why do I always have to type up Joel’s tips for him? What world are we living in when even Jukka “Kalsarikännit” Niiranen does not know the answer? </rant> Jukka New 2016 instances of CRM Online no longer show the custom […]

Tip #623: Contact export to Excel and full name field

With the new Excel export in CRM 2015 and later, if your view includes the Full Name field, when you export to Excel, your Excel spreadsheet will include three additional fields: First Name, Last Name, and Middle Name. The reason for this change is because all static worksheets are formatted for reimport now. This is […]