CRM Blog

June 2007 - Posts

Update Rollup 2 for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0
by Bryan Van Antwerp 06.26.07

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Crowe Chizek and Company LLC
June 26th 2007
http://www.crowecrm.com

Summary: John O'Donnell highlights the new service pack for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0

On June 25th Microsoft published the new service pack for Microsoft CRM at this location.

Microsoft CRM Service Pack

This update is a cumulative set of patches for Microsoft CRM including bug fixes and also performance enhancements. The update includes patches both for the Microsoft CRM Server and also Microsoft CRM Outlook clients. It is recommended that all production Microsoft CRM environments are upgraded to the new release however before making the update be sure to make full backups of your entire Microsoft CRM environment just in case.

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Microsoft CRM Community Resources
by Bryan Van Antwerp 06.25.07

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Crowe Chizek and Company LLC

June 25th 2007

http://www.crowecrm.com


Summary: John O’Donnell highlights some of the new and existing Microsoft Dynamics CRM community resources.


 

If you are new to the world of Microsoft CRM then you may have been wondering where you can get more information about the product. Here is a short list of some of the more popular resources.


 

 

Using Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 – This site is very useful for high level information and also some good walk-throughs of how to complete various tasks.

 

Microsoft Download Site – It is always worth checking this site out for CRM downloads at least one a month. If you are going to be building code with Microsoft CRM it is always worth seeing if the SDK has been updated for example.

 

Microsoft Dynamics CRM Developer Center - As the title suggests this site will quickly become the go to site for administrators and CRM developers.

 

GotDotNet CRM User Samples – The CRM Community has produced many pieces of sample code which can be found at this site.

 

Microsoft Dynamics CRM Forums – This site is a great place to chat with other users of Microsoft CRM and get an answer to that tricky Microsoft CRM question. It is also where many of the Microsoft CRM MVP’s hang out.


 

 

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Speeding up Microsoft Dynamics CRM Callout Development
by Jeremy Hofmann 06.15.07

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Jeremy Hofmann
Crowe Chizek and Company LLC
June 15th 2007
http://www.crowecrm.com 

Summary: Jeremy Hofmann shows how to speed up deployment your callouts during the development process.

Microsoft CRM 3.0 supports an easy deployment model for developing your own business logic extensions, commonly known as "callouts".  You simply develop your .NET code, copy your assembly (.dll) to the web server, and add the appropriate entries to a configuration file.

During development, you often need to run through this develop deployment cycle several times in rapid succession.  To make life easier, you may find it useful to use Visual Studio post-build events. Post-Build events in Visual Studio allow you to run a command line set of instructions upon a successful build of your Visual Studio Project. You can use the post-build event to xcopy your custom assembly and configuration file to your test CRM server.  If you do your development directly on the server, you can also issue an iisreset command which is needed to recognize the changes. This will save you from manually having to copy the .dll and config file out each time you rebuild.

In Visual Studio, right-click on your project, go to Properties, then select the Build Events side tab.  In the Post-build event box, copy the following command lines:

iisreset

xcopy "$(TargetDir)*.dll" "C:\Program Files\Microsoft CRM Server\Server\bin\assembly" /y

xcopy "$(ProjectDir)*.xml" "C:\Program Files\Microsoft CRM Server\Server\bin\assembly" /y

This assumes you are developing on the server, and that the callout config file is part of your Visual Studio project.  You can change the names and paths to suit your needs. Hopefully this will free your mind a little when developing and testing your callouts in rapid succession. 

Jeremy Hofmann is a Manager and CRM specialist at Crowe Chizek. 

New Virtual PC Image for Microsoft CRM
by Jeremy Hofmann 06.12.07

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Jeremy Hofmann
Crowe Chizek and Company LLC
June 12th 2007
http://www.crowecrm.com

Summary: Jeremy Hofmann highlights the upcoming revised Virtual PC image for Microsoft CRM.

Like most consultants in the Microsoft Dynamics CRM world, you probably make regular use of the Virtual PC Image for Microsoft CRM from May 2006. This image has been useful in that it saves time when you just need a fully loaded CRM system. Of course, you can always build your own Virtual PC image from scratch but this can take hours to get to the same level as the Microsoft VPC image. That being said, the May 2006 could be said to be just a bit too big and therefore it was great to hear that very soon we can expect to see a revised Virtual PC image with a reduced footprint of about 7-8GB. Sounds like it will still be a feature rich image but any reduction in size is a good thing.

You can read more about this new image at this location and we will follow up when it is released.

New VPC almost here

Jeremy Hofmann is a Manager and CRM specialist at Crowe Chizek.

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