Tip #109: Manage CRM documents and attachments when working from an iPad

So you’ve joined the modern world and are using CRM exclusively from an iPad. No more heavy laptop to tie you down.

Once the thrill of being mobile wears off, you are struck with the realization, “How am I supposed to save documents and attachments to CRM?” While you have nearly full CRM functionality from the Safari browser, the lack of a shared file system limits the ability to upload files from the browser, like you can on a PC. But it can be done.

  • Using CRM for tablets, you can attach photos as attachments from the app in notes.
  • If you use SharePoint as part of an Office 365 subscription, you can use the new Office iPad apps and save directly to the CRM SharePoint document folders. You can browse the account folders by name and save the document to the appropriate account folder (or subfolder for opportunities, cases, or contacts).
  • If you use SharePoint on premises, you can upload documents to CRM SharePoint document libraries using a third-party SharePoint app like SharePlus. SharePlus can check in any file in the Documents to Go file storage.
  • Email enable your document libraries. Store the link to the email in an email field on the account. This can be a very handy way to quickly move documents to a document library.
  • Go with a different kind of tablet. Android tablets, like the Nexus 10, allow you to upload to websites in Chrome from the photos or documents folder. And of course, Windows tablets have full file upload capabilities for CRM attachments and SharePoint documents.

So you can use CRM and manage your documents and attachments from an iPad.

Tip #108: CRM 2011 External Connector License – Its not a paper weight

Did your firm acquire an External Connector License for your CRM 2011 OnPremise instance? Back in the days before CRM 2013 if you created a portal that customers, partners, vendors could use to connect to the CRM system via the custom API then you needed to buy the EC license. Alternatively, if you happened to be using CRM 4 or then later 2011 Online it came with the annual subscription built-in.

With the release of CRM 2013 OnPremise and the movement to standardize the user license nomenclature etc. between the two platforms the EC for Onpremise requirement went away.

So if you already own an CRM 2011 EC license and have upgraded your CRM OnPremise to 2013 then you can use the EC license as CRM server license.

Quick Reference Licensing Guide

CRM 2011 to 2013 License Mappings

CRM 2011 to 2013 License Mappings

Tip #107: Use metadata browser to find status reason

While working on the solution for stuck emails, I needed values for various status reasons for email entity to intelligently hide/display RESEND button depending on email record status. Quick look in local SDK help yielded zilch. Online version – bupkis. Hmmm, I do remember metadata pages in 2011… Ah, here it is and, indeed, there is no CRM 2013 version (and, besides, status reason values are not listed).

Thinking it’s a awful oversight, I reached to the people in the know. Almost full version of the reply (who am I to compete with the people who do writing for living!):

If you are looking for the default status and status reason values, see this topic in the customization guide: Default status and status reason values. For the email entity: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn531157(v=crm.6).aspx#BKMK_Email [Aha, I knew that – it’s under Implementation Guide not SDK! – gd]

… we have stopped publishing the various entity metadata topics we used to publish such as Email (E-mail) Entity Metadata became difficult to view due to change in MSDN publishing. These pages did not include the statuscode values you are looking for anyway.

The metadata pages were not viewed very often so we decided to guide people to install and use the metadata browser solution we ship in the SDK because of the advantages it offers.

  • It is easier to search
  • It is complete
  • It includes any customizations for that organization

Of course, the drawback is that you have to have access to an environment with it installed.

Thank you, Jim “Mr SDK” Daly!

Tip #106: Resend stuck emails

We use email router to send outbound CRM emails via Office 365 accounts. In our configuration email router is set to use user’s credentials, i.e. we need to enter our O365 passwords in user settings in CRM. When password in O365 expires, people (read: me) simply forget to adjust passwords in CRM, especially those for no-man accounts like queues (which happened to be our support queue). For about 2 days email router was duly picking outbound emails and placing them in Sending state. And then failing but keeping emails Sending. Fixed the password, restarted email router. New emails – fine, those sending – still sending. Arghhh…

Best find of the month: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/crminthefield/archive/2011/12/05/how-to-re-send-failed-crm-e-mails-in-bulk.aspx. Brilliant, why didn’t I think of that?

For end-users I did not want to explain how to run workflows, etc. Instead, I’ve created a small solution that adds RESEND button to email command bar:

Resend button for emails

All this button does, it places email into Pending Send state and refreshes the form. And here is the unmanaged solution to do just that (4 web resources plus RibbonDiffXml for email). The usual disclaimer applies: use at your own risk, contains small parts, choking hazard, swim between the flags.

Tip #105: Can I remove SQL SysAdmin and Local Administrator permissions

A question that is frequently raised in large enterprise deployments of Microsoft Dynamics CRM is can the local administrator and SQL SysAdmin permissions be removed from the installing user after the installation. The answer is “yes, but…”

Yes, you may remove these permissions after the installation is complete. The user who performed the installation will be able to log into CRM without having these permissions.

But…keep in mind that when it comes time to install an update rollup, to perform the database update, the user installing the update will need to have SysAdmin privileges in SQL Server.

Tip #103: Email Router Needs Updating after Moving to Office 365

Has your CRM Organization moved from the old CTP Platform and now is running in Office 365? Did emails that depend on the email router to be sent out appear to be stuck inside of CRM?

The reason is that the end points changed and you need to update your email router deployment configuration. I have found that it is necessary to delete the current deployment configuration and create a new one to solve the issue.

The key difference is that you need to use the correct url – change the dev to disco

Old

  • https://dev.crm.dynamics.com/<OrganizationName> where OrganizationName is a placeholder for the actual ID of your organization.

New

  • https://disco.crm.dynamics.com/<OrganizationName> where OrganizationName is a placeholder for the actual ID of your organization.

Have a great day

PS. don’t forget that the organization name is Case Sensitive

Tip #102: Replace the first things first woman

For today’s tip we are going to revisit our most popular tip to date — #68: Do you know this woman?

What if you don’t want to get rid of First Things First woman, but rather you would like to replace her with alternative versions? One thing we like to do is replace her with seasonally appropriate variations. It really makes your CRM environment seem more festive.

First thing first, obligatory note that this is totally unsupported, contains small parts, not suitable for children and only works for On Premise deployments.

  1. Locate the image files for the First Things First wizard. They are typically located in C:\Program Files\Microsoft Dynamics CRM\CRMWeb\_imgs\NavTour\NavTourContent.
  2. There are multiple images for the wizard, the main images are NavTourPage1Back.jpg opening the tour with NavTourPage7Back.jpg wrapping up the parade.
  3. Edit the image to create seasonally appropriate variation.
  4. Save in the same location with the same file name, being sure to back up the original first.

To get you started, we have included some variations for our favorite holidays.

Christmas

Christmas

Halloween

Halloween

September 19--International Talk Like A Pirate Day

September 19–International Talk Like A Pirate Day

Election Day

Election Day

The other cheerful variation is manipulation of the last image in series to create a reward scheme for persistent users who actually do go through the tour. Include cut-out sales coupons or simply include posters from your favorite shows and movies. Few samples to get you started:

JCPenney Coupon

JCPenney Coupon

Breaking Bad

Breaking Bad

Sponge Bob

Sponge Bob

The Regular Show

The Regular Show

Pulp Fiction

Pulp Fiction

Noitcif Plup (RTL Version)

Noitcif Plup (RTL Version)

And while you are at it, why wouldn’t you swap over the contents of en-US and ar-SA folders under C:\Program Files\Microsoft Dynamics CRM\CRMWeb\_imgs\NavTour\NavTourContent. Then curious English-speaking users who decide to take up the tour will see what does RTL world look like (and, yes, the tour is delivered as a series of animated GIFs):

RTL Dynamics CRM Tour

Dynamics CRM Tipper
The Custodians of The Tipping Jar, bringing you tips by a truckload

Tip #101: Can you transate this please?

So just how many languages does Microsoft Dynamics CRM speak?  Is it 10, 15 or maybe 25?  Dynamics CRM speaks a whopping 41 languages.  It’s a translating machine.

Chinese (Hong Kong), Chinese (PRC), Chinese (Taiwan), Danish, Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese (Brazil), Spanish (International), Basque, Bulgarian, Catalan, Croatian, Estonian, Galician, Hindi, Kazakh, Latvian, Lithuanian, Romanian, Serbian (Latin), Slovak, Slovenian, Thai, Ukrainian, Arabic, Czech, Finnish, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Norwegian (Bokmal), Polish, Portuguese (Portugal), Russian, Swedish, Turkish

Tipped to the jar by

Tipp Jarr’s double dip

Great tip, as usual, Donna! One thing I’m always surprised at is that, when 41 language is mentioned, astonishing number of people believe that it’s the number of languages users can enter their data in. CRM has full Unicode support and, as such, will keep your data safe in any language you can master on your keyboard including Bork-bork, Pig Latin and Klingon.

CRM supports 41 language for user interface, i.e. navigation, messages, labels, etc. and that is configurable per user! These languages are installed by downloading and installing appropriate language pack on top of your base system. Base CRM system can also be installed in multiple languages – and administrators have 26 to choose from.

Tip #100: How to be a tipster

Wow. 100 tips!

Tipping truckWe’ve covered a lot of tips in the past five months. Each of us learned many useful things from the other tipsters.

One question we get asked from time to time is how do we come up with a steady stream of fresh tips? If you want to start your own blog or produce fresh content to tweet, how can you come up with ideas?

  1. Use the software yourself. If you are in a role where you implement Microsoft Dynamics CRM, if you don’t personally use the application every day, it is difficult to put yourself in the shoes of actual users.
  2. Be curious. It may kill some domesticated animals but won’t do you any harm. Experiment and click on those cogwheels and obscure buttons. You never know, that ticket number could be just behind the next one!
  3. Talk to other users or look at questions being posted in forums like Dynamics Community, Dynamics CRM Facebook group, Microsoft Dynamics CRM LinkedIn group. This will show you topics that real world users are interested in, and problems that they are having. Post solutions to these questions.
  4. Look for areas of the application that could be improved. Share configuration changes you make that improve the application.
  5. Raise suggestions on Microsoft Connect, read and vote for suggestions of others. The team does listen.

Here are some of our favorite tips from the first 100, and the story behind where these tips came from:

Our most popular tip of all times is neither technical nor business. With double-digit retweets, bookmarks on facebook and google+, it’s all about usability for end-users: Tip #68: Do you know this woman. Effectively it came from a very determined customer who said they are going to cancel their hosted Dynamics CRM subscription if we don’t stop this dialog from appearing. And more on this to come, stay tuned!

Tip #95: Track emails using forward inbox— I love these kind of tips where you find that something used primarily for one purpose can meet another need. This one came from a project where we had users using Mac where Outlook was not an option, but it was still a requirement to be able to track emails.

Tip #88: Duplicate activities — The best tips come from actual users. So when a user came to me and asked “why are my appointments duplicating since we upgraded to CRM 2013?” I watched how she was creating activities, and noticed that she was assigning them before saving the appointment. Once the question came up during the Convergence “Ask the MVP” session, I knew that this was an issue that other users were probably experiencing, and that it would make a good tip. If you work with support and identify an issue or a workaround, blog or tweet it (or submit it to the tip jar). That way you don’t forget about it, and you will help others who are having the issue. Note–if you are going to blog about bugs, be sure that you do it responsibly. Don’t just explain the issue, give users a workaround to deal with the issue.

Tip #41: Compare CRM Online and Salesforce pricing – that was a result of a foul mood and one hour to spare after a bitter loss to a competitor who literally took CEO to lunch and stole the deal right from under our noses.

Tip # 75: Make IOS remember your CRM password — Even though I am a loyal Windows Phone user, I get plenty of experience with IOS and Android by helping troubleshoot and support my friends and family’s smartphones. When my Father-in-law got upgraded to IOS 7 and his phone stopped remembering his password, I found this helpful video that explained the issue. A couple of months later, when a colleague started using CRM for Phones on his iPhone, this tip came back to me when her iPhone would not remember her CRM password.

Sometimes we get it right, sometimes we get it wrong, but are certainly having a blast.

Tipping hatAnd we always on a lookout for external contributions from you, our readers. You don’t have to be a regular tipster, just send your favorite to jar@crmtipoftheday.com and we’ll take care of the rest.

The crew