Tuesday, October 30, 2012

Sync Your Organizations With Microsoft CRM 2011 Instance Adapter

Microsoft has released a great new tool that will allow you to easily synchronize data between multiple Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 organizations.  The tool is called the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Instance Adapter.  It works for IFD, Online, AD, any CRM 2011 environment and should be a great tool for refreshing data from prod to dev, or any other synchronization scenario.

Since it's free, this can save you a lot of time and money and can be a real life saver if you don't have budget for a beefier tool like Scribe.

Get it here:
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=35385

-

Thursday, October 25, 2012

New Logo for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011!

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 has got a new logo, or at least new coloring.  I was wondering what the rest of the community thought.  Maybe it will grow on me but, as for right now, I think I liked the old one better.


I am interested in hearing your thoughts!



-Happy Monday!

Tuesday, October 16, 2012

Demo Builder For Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Adding New Verticals

If you haven't worked with the new re-released demo-builder that makes use of Office 365 with CRM Online, I highly recommend it.   They have it working and fully functional now.  They also have started releasing verticals for it.

The demo-builder creates a trial lab, fully configured, with working Dynamcis CRM 2011 Online, Sharepoint Online integrated, Customer Portal already set up and integrated, and a lot of other goodies.  It does A LOT of ground-work for you

The first two are:

  • Citizen Service (311) Accellerator for CRM 2011
  • Retail Banking for CRM 2011


Tuesday, October 9, 2012

Useful and Funny! Top 5 and Bottom 5 Blogposts of the Last 2 Years

In honor of reaching 400,000 blog hits today I figured I would share which five blog-posts in the last two years have been the most popular.

It should be said that by far, the top page (other than the homepage) was my CRM 2011 SDK Example Index , But that doesn't really count since it's just a listing of MANY of my other blogposts.  It has probably been one of my biggest achievements within the community and I know it has helped a lot of people.

Ok, on with the countdown!

First the TOP 5

5. Instantiating a Service Object Within a Plug-in in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011
Ok, This one probably only got so many hits because it was linked on so many of my other posts in the last two years.  It is a simple example of the correct way to instantiate a service object in a plugin.

4. How to: Retrieve the Metadata for an Entity Using Jscript or .NET Using the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 SDK
This illustration shows you how to retrieve metadata for an entity using SOAP (JScript) or C# (.NET) with the RetrieveEntity message against the CRM 2011 organization service. 

3. CRM 2011 Jscript Soap Request Formatter RELEASED!!
This is my tool I created that allows you to take soap envelopes captured from .NET calls (using the SDK SoapLogger for C# or my derivative work for VB.NET) and instantly convert those to JSCRIPT!

2. How to: Get and Set a Lookup Value in Jscript in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011
This is one of those posts that came from the fact that there are a lot of questions in the forums that relate to this topic and there are a lot of good posts that demonstrate either how to set a lookup value or get a lookup value, but there aren't many that show both.  So that is what we I did.

1.  RetrieveMultiple Calls in Jscript in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011
RetrieveMultiple is probably the most common call you will have to format up in your Microsoft CRM career,  It has been for me anyways.  I wanted to give you a couple examples of how to do this in Jscript.  The first one is taken partially derived from the SDK that contains a linkentity (join) and the second is a simpler call that is a basic call that has criteria (where clause) but no links (joins).

Notable Bottom 5

5.  Deprecated SDK Messages in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011
In this post I called out every message included in the CRM 2011 SDK that are currently considered deprecated by Microsoft.   The only comment I got about it was that it would be better if I suggested alternatives to them all.

4. I will be Speaking at Twin Cities Code Camp Tomorrow if anyone wants to come out. It's FREE!!
My last ditch effort to get people out to see my presentation on CRM development at Code Camp last year.  Luckily more people showed to the presentation than viewed this blog-post.

3. My Twin Cities Code Camp Presentation
After my presentation last year I posted my slide deck.  According to Google Analytics it was on people's screens for a total of 4 Minutes and 29 Seconds.

2. Delete an Entity in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Using Jscript or .NET With DeleteEntityRequest
Evidently no one really cares about how to delete an entity (not a record in the system, AN ENTIRE ENTITY) in .NET or Jscript.  It got very little activity in the last year or so after it was written.

1. Too Much Technology, Not Enough Life!!
Evidently my daughter sitting next to a toilet and a fun spider picture taken at 936mm (one of my best I might add) wasn't much of a draw.  It got mention on Ben Hoskings blog, but beyond that that I don't think anyone else looked at it.

-Happy Tuesday!

Thursday, October 4, 2012

VB.NET Soap Logger for Microsoft Dynamics CRM Updated For OSDP / Office 365 Environments

I have updated my CRM 2011 VB.NET Soap Logger tool.  It now works with Office 365 / OSDP orgs.  Please check it out.  It's based very heavily on the C# version included in the SDK.  It basically allows you to write VB.NET code to the organization service and log the soap for the request and response.  I also put the new version in CodePlex now that I see there will be some minimal maintenance associated with the tool.

Get the new version of the tool here:
https://vbsoaplogger.codeplex.com/

Here is a link to the original informational blogpost on this tool

http://mileyja.blogspot.com/2012/01/microsoft-dynamics-crm-2011-soap-logger.html

- Happy Thursday!