Crowe Chizek and Company LLC
May 31st 2007
Summary: John O'Donnell talks about a new Microsoft CRM download and how it can help you fix Microsoft CRM problems before your users notice.
A few days ago Microsoft released a new download for Microsoft Operations Manager 2005 and Microsoft CRM 3.0. This download or Management Pack lets you automatically monitor your Microsoft CRM Servers and also get notified if anything bad happens to them such as a Microsoft CRM Service failing. Microsoft CRM has had a Management Pack available from a Swiss consulting firm for a few years but finally now Microsoft is releasing their own.
As users get more comfortable with using Microsoft CRM they will of course come to depend in the system and therefore any tool that can help you, as the Microsoft CRM Administrator fix problems quickly is a good thing. Microsoft Operations Manager can be used to monitor many of your critical servers and can also email you when a problem occurs. For instance if you were monitoring both your CRM Web Server and also DNS servers you might get an email alert telling you your Microsoft CRM server is having issues. Behind the scenes users are unable to connect to CRM. However you then also get an alert to say there is a problem with DNS. Of course if DNS down then that is probably the reason Microsoft CRM is having issues. With this type of tool you could connect remotely to the network and fix these problems before your inbox gets filled by users complaining they cannot connect to Microsoft CRM.
Without a tool like Microsoft Operations Manager you would thank your users for telling you about the problem and say we will look into it. Now with MOM and the Microsoft CRM Management Pack you will be able to notify your users in advance and also tell them when you can be expected to have a fix.
You can find the Microsoft CRM 3.0 MOM 2005 Management Pack at this URL –
Microsoft CRM 3.0 MOM 2005 Management Pack
Here is the link to the Microsoft Operations Manager product page –
http://www.microsoft.com/mom/default.mspx
