CRM Bulk Export Tool Available for CRM 4.0 and CRM Online!!

CRM 4.0 Bulk Data Export Tool

There is no facility to Bulk Export the data from Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0. This sample tool  allows users to connect to OnPremise or Online Microsoft CRM 4.0 organization and export data for CRM entities in form of CSV files.

Once you have installed the tool, launch CrmDataExport.exe, select CRM configuration and specify the credentials:

If you are connecting to OnPremise CRM Organization, make sure to open Internet Explorer, connect to CRM server and Save Password. This is necessary as this tool uses stored credentials to connect to the CRM server in OnPremise configuration.

Once you are connected successfully, you can select the entities for which you want to export the records, specify output directory, data and field delimiters, and duration. Note that All Records option is not available for Online configuration. Click Export button to export the records.

The tool creates CSV for each selected entities in the directory selected.

For this and other Web Parts, Templates, Apps, Toolkits,etc for MS CRM, SharePoint, Office 365, contact me at tomas.floyd@outlook.com

Understanding Business Intelligence

Though Business Intelligence is technology driven, it is more about Business requirements and less about technology.  BI Champion/ Sponsor in the organization defines the vision and mission.

The leader must have the ability to precisely define the Business intelligence requirements of the organization; the format of the reports; the relationship between the different data elements and version of the data to be used. The leaders need to specify how much history needs to be included; how often the data needs to be provided to the different stakeholders of the process.

BI is then driven by the business objective which may not necessarily always be to reduce the cost or increase the top line/ bottom line for an organization, but to use the data analysis in bringing efficiencies in the process or enhance the service experience for the customer.

The impetus for the BI initiative is the availability of data and technology for data analysis.  Ideally the organization should have at least two or three years of data in electronic format for meaningful analysis. The larger the volume of core data available in the systems, the more meaningful will be the output that can be expected from Business Intelligence.

However it must be recognized that data may not always be structured and data coming from multiple sources may not be in the same format. Data will have to be interpreted on the basis of logical assumptions and data gaps will have to be identified upfront so that changes can be made to business processes at the point of data capture.

The Management must be made aware that resource and time commitment for BI is much higher than resource commitment for IT projects and there must be a high level of management commitment to making the BI project a success.

1. Business leaders and IT analysts will have to allocate substantial amount of time to mapping business requirements to IT system capabilities both during the design and implementation phase of the project.  The leaders and IT developers will have to constantly interact for a proper representation of the Business questions in terms of analytical outputs.

2.      IT professionals involved in the process will have to explain to the Business leadership the nature and meaning of the data that is available in the systems. They will have to clarify how exceptions are to be handled by the leadership and also the limitations of the systems. The implication is that IT resources will also have to make a time commitment for BI.

3. Subject matter experts also have a significant role to play in Business Intelligence projects.  As ultimate users of the system, they are in the best position to test the outputs and validate the significance of the Queries and the outputs derived from such queries.  They have the experience and the ability to flag exceptions and help fix them.  This implies that subject matter experts too need to contribute a significant amount of time for the success of the project.  They may even need to join the project team on a full time basis during the testing phase.

The Project plan must reflect the level of business personnel who will be involved and the organization must be willing to release these people to join the project team as and when a request for their services is made.

It also follows that the project team and all those involved in BI must be open to learning and acquiring the skills that are essential for the effective functioning of the BI system that is being put in place.

Having said all this, it is necessary to point out that Business Intelligence cannot be a time bound project. Nor can the teams be disbanded with the first successful run of a data query or queries.

Query design, testing, redesign and use of new toolsets are inevitable. In short, BI is an evolving system that cannot be pinned down and bounded by traditional project management definitions.

The BI requirements change as business requirements evolve and change. No single requirement definition can be characterized as a permanent, unchanging requirement.  The Business leaders, IT analysts and Subject matter experts will have to be constantly engaged in designing and developing queries; testing the outputs on field formations; obtaining feedback on the usefulness or otherwise of the outputs and exceptions that need to be handled.  It is an iterative process.

It requires the institution of an agile system development and process management approach. Highly skilled personnel must constantly and continuously work together to deliver on the objectives of BI with little requirements being defined upfront with more requirements being designed and refined on the go.

Scope of work will have to be “time-boxed” to each cycle of the project and goals and objectives of each time box will have to be specified separately.  Cycles which cannot be completed within the time specified will have to be deferred and included as part of the future development cycles. As a result, traditional project management methodologies will fail.

Since change is the only constant in BI, definition of a change management strategy is an imperative. The strategy must be built around the recognition that Business requirements change, changing BI requirements/queries; resulting in a change in the type of toolsets used and the skillsets that are required by BI stakeholders.

It should be remembered that People are resistant to change. Consumers of BI reports are no exceptions. They need to be educated about the benefits of the exercise and the producers of the data must be aligned to ensure data quality is never compromised by placing appropriate controls in the systems.

Training needs must be studied, documented; trainings organized whenever there is a change in any one or more components that operationalize the Business Intelligence unit.

The organization must also recognize that reporting requirements and formats will change with every change in the BI requirement. All reporting formats cannot be axed at once and all reporting formats cannot change overnight. The change must be planned and initiated based on schedules that have been agreed upon by the different stakeholders.

Existing reports and tools should be retired gradually and transition periods must be orchestrated carefully and thoughtfully. Trainings must be organized to transition all stakeholders to the new formats.  Organization of workshops and change management seminars must be part and parcel of the Business Intelligence unit’s functioning.

Finally, it must be reiterated that BI is not a project. It is a program.  The solution must dovetail into the existing environment and reinforce the business processes that are in use.  Any data extraction exercise for BI must be done without disturbing the workflow in the organization or impacting the reliability of the information that is being gathered during business operations.

OneDrive and Yammer takes Social Collaboration to a new level on SharePoint Online

Yammer brings conversations to your OneDrive and SharePoint Online files

by Office 365 Team, on June 3, 2014 | 7 Comments | 185

Christophe Fiessinger is a group product manager on the enterprise social team.

At SharePoint Conference 2014 we announced new enterprise social experiences across Office 365 helping businesses work more like networks by leveraging the power of the cloud to bring people together, gain quicker access to relevant insights and help make smarter decisions, faster.

Today we’re announcing the release of one of those features–document conversations–which essentially embeds the social collaboration capabilities of Yammer into the Office apps you use to get work done every day. Get ready for a new, simple way to collaborate on the content you produce with Office Online and store in the cloud in SharePoint Online or OneDrive for Business.

 

Document conversations enable people to share their ideas and expertise around Office documents, images and videos right from within the content they are editing or reviewing. Imagine being able to ask questions, find expertise and offer feedback about content without having to leave the application you’re working in!

 

Because it’s Yammer you can also view and participate in conversations outside your document, on your mobile device, in Microsoft Dynamics CRM or any app where a Yammer feed is embedded! Get ready for a totally new way to produce incredible content!

Here’s how document conversations work. When you open a file in your browser from your cloud store, you see the file on the left with a contextual Yammer conversation in a pane on the right. You can collapse and expand the Yammer pane as needed.

You can do more than join in a conversation from the Yammer pane. You can also post a message, @mention your coworkers, and publish to a Yammer group—either public or private.

Document conversations are easy to join in Yammer as well. If you’re working in Yammer, you’ll see a threaded conversation in the group the post was published in with an icon that enables you to open the file from the cloud location where it lives. The Yammer conversations about files are visible to users in the group but only users who have permission to view or edit the file can open it.

Document conversations are progressively being rolled out to our customers during the course of this summer where it will then be available across all sites within a tenant. To leverage document conversations, you will need to enable Yammer as your default social network.

 

For additional information, see this post: Make Yammer your default social network in Office 365.Get started today by storing your files in the cloud on OneDrive for Business or SharePoint Online, and harness social collaboration across your company with Yammer. In the coming weeks Document conversations will then be activated in your organization and ready to use! Because we continue to innovate and integrate, subscribe to this blog to get the latest updates across Office 365. And don’t hesitate to reach out to us on Twitter or Facebook with your questions or suggestions.

—Christophe Fiessinger @cfiessinger

Frequently asked questions

Q: What file types can be used for document conversations?

A: Document Conversations supports over 30 common file types, including .doc, .xls, .ppt, .pdf, .png, .gif, .mp4, .avi, and more.

Q: Can I see conversations in Office desktop or when I send a document as a mail attachment?

A: No. Currently Yammer threads are visible only in files stored in a SharePoint Online document library or OneDrive for Business in Office 365.

Q: What happens if a file is renamed?

A: Document Conversations uses Yammer’s Open Graph protocol, so when a post is published it also contains a link to the file. This link serves as the glue between the file and its associated conversations. Because the link changes according to the file name, when a file is renamed, the link changes, causing the Yammer conversations to become disassociated from the new file name.

Q: Can I start conversations in a Yammer external network?

A: No. We set our initial goal to build Document Conversations to help teams work better internally. While the new document conversations cannot be started in Yammer external networks today, we are exploring ways to extend collaboration around content to beyond your firewall.

SharePoint 2013 and CRM 2011 integration. A customer portal approach

SharePoint and Dynamics CRM, a marriage made in heaven? As if!

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You’d think this is a simple topic. SharePoint, with all its extendibility and connectivity, should be the perfect tool for tracking all your customer related content in conjunction with tracking information in Dynamics CRM.

But reality looks rather grim. The SharePoint connector from Microsoft provides very limited logic as to where to store documents and does not scale well at all. If you have more than a mere 5000 contacts you’ll already start feeling the pinch. More on that later.

Also you may have a business portal with Dynamics AX and an enterprise portal with Dynamics GP, both give users the ability to interact with business data using a SharePoint dashboard approach. But what about the customer portal for Dynamics CRM?

Looks like the Dynamics CRM development team did not read the memo, and there is no out of the box solution to this scenario.

So that’s what we at Professional Advantage are building right now, a customer portal in SharePoint for Dynamics CRM. The foundational concept is that no matter what tool you use, SharePoint or Dynamics CRM, you can get at the most critical information needed for the task at hand.

That means not just storing unstructured data (ie documents) in a folder in SharePoint, but auto-tagging those documents with the customer and opportunity they relate to. Tagging them with supporting metadata, like the industry sector and customer region automatically.

Generating a dashboard that will allow staff to easily see all documents relating to an opportunity, grouped by type and security classification while also having an overview of the customer’s status, such as open cases, contact details and latest billing alerts.

A place for support staff to easily get at infrastructure details so they can better support the customer and store reports and supporting material against the client.

A place for consultants to manage customer projects, store deliverables and contractual documents and also track project status and financial information.

A place where sales and marketing can perform searches across industry and region. Where they can access past deals and case studies easily by drilling down on common metadata.

And finally, a place where the customer can engage us, collaborate on projects, check on outstanding cases and get copies of legal documents.

How are we doing it? Without giving away too many secrets, I can tell you that several components come together: a CRM plugin which hooks into the document management module and creates not a folder but a whole site for a new account.

Using some CSS magic and html tweaks, we embed parts of the site directly into the document management views of accounts and opportunities.

A SharePoint site definition which creates several dashboard style pages with standard BCS web parts, custom filter web parts, lots of xsl and jquery and some event handlers.

A series of library event handlers to take care of the auto-tagging of documents placed against a customer/opportunity.

A series of search pages allowing staff to search across multiple customers to find documents for sector, product, area or other custom criteria.

And most importantly, a flexible web service which allows the CRM data to be surfaced in tags, lists and web parts on the customer portal through BCS driven external content types.

Add a claims-based login mechanism using Azure for customer access and strict security and governance guidelines on what content is shared with the customer through designing the information architecture with compartmentalisation in mind and you have your customer portal for Dynamics CRM!

 

Now for the techies:

If you ever attempt this yourself I thought I’d share a few gotchas:

1. The samples Microsoft provide are rudimentary at best and don’t scale! The default CRM/SharePoint plugin creates a new folder for each entity. Once you have more than 5000 contacts you can say goodbye to WebDAV access to that data. Say goodbye to performance. Say goodbye to simple navigation. More importantly, say goodbye to data management concepts! Sure you can increase the thresholds but they are there for many good reasons, which I won’t go into today.

So? Build your own which also has scalability in mind. We effectively sucked the creation logic out of the plugin into a web service which also takes care of creating new site collections in new databases for every 1000 new customers.

That way we have much more control over storage allocation and can manage customer bases exceeding a million with terabytes of data.

2. The sample CRM proxy that comes with the SDK does not work that well with BCS. You’ll notice that BCS will try to add the “substringof” parameter to the query for BCS filters. That parameter is not supported by the current implementation of the SDK. Not good. So you’ll need to build your own filter mechanism, and the SDK proposes a LINQ approach. Which in turn would be very scary as the default tries to return all records against which you then do a filter in-code. Grrrr.

A much better approach is to build your own implementation of a proxy. Add your own custom functions which in turn execute queries against the CRM organization web service. When building your web service, you can chose either the WSDL or the WCF OData approach for both your web service and the CRM service endpoint you connect to.

For the final endpoint (ie our own CRM proxy service) we chose WSDL, simply because that format is understood by SharePoint Designer (OData services must be registered and modified via a BCS model) and allowed us much faster prototyping when designing the external content types.

3. So you want to pull BCS data onto a page and only display the correct account information without needing to use query strings everywhere? Create your own filter web part which uses the ITransformableFilterValues interface.

That way you can create your own logic as to where the parameter comes from. Maybe from the site property bag? Maybe from a regex you run over the URL? That’s up to you now.

4. Finally, if you ever try to provision web part connections using the itransformablefiltervalues in your site definition or feature, then I recommend staying away from embedding a WebPartConnection into your onet.xml of elements.xml file as some would suggest.

Instead take the cheeky but much simpler approach of embedding the final ASP.Net markup directly in the page you are provisioning. (Extract it from your prototype using SharePoint designer) This works like a charm as long as you specify an ID on your AllUsersWebPart and use that ID in the on-page markup.

 

And there you have it – You’re CRM working for you with SharePoint doing all the heavy lifting

Remember to check out CRM and SharePoint Online at the respective Microsoft sites…….

Creating Your Own Document Management System With SharePoint and Dynamix

With the R2 release of Dynamics AX 2012, a new feature was quietly snuck into the product that allows you to store document attachments from Dynamics AX within SharePoint rather than within an archive location, or within the database. This opens up a whole slew of possibilities when it comes to document management within SharePoint.

In this example we will show how you can create a document management structure within SharePoint that you can use in conjunction with the Dynamics AX attachments feature, and also we will show a few tweaks that you can make that may make managing your documents within SharePoint just a little easier.

Creating a new Document Management Site

The first step that we are going to work through is the creation of a new Document Management site where we will put all of our Dynamics AX document attachments. We are just creating a site to separate out the documents from other items that you may already have stored within SharePoint.

How to do it…

To create a new Document Management Site in SharePoint, follow these steps:

1. Open up the SharePoint Workspace that you want to use to house your Document Management site and from the Site Actions menu, select the New Site option.
   
2. When the Site Templates are displayed, select the Blank Site template. Give your site a name, and also a sub site name (probably the same as your site name). When you are done, click on the Create button for start the site creation process.
   

How it works…

When the site is created, you should be taken to a new blank site which you will be able to use as a document repository.

Creating Document Libraries for the Business Areas

The next step in the process is to create document libraries to store all of your documents away in. You could create one big library, or a number of smaller ones, broken out into groups based on business area or function. In this example we will do the latter because it will give us more flexibility with the indexing of the documents, and also make it easier to find particular documents.

How to do it…

To create document libraries for the business areas, follow these steps:

1. From within your new Document Management site, select the New Document Library option from the Site Actions menu.
   
2. When the Document Library Creation dialog box appears, give your library a Name, Description, and also set the Document Template to None. In this example we are creating a library for all of the AP Documents.
   When you are done, click on the Create button to start the document library creation process.
   

How it works…

After it finishes you should have a new library for you to use. You can repeat the process for all of the other business areas that you want to manage documents for – in our example we just used the standard business areas from the Dynamics AX navigation menu.

Creating Dynamics AX Document Types that Link to the Document Libraries

Once you have created your document libraries, you can connect them to Dynamics AX with the new SharePoint option so that the users are able to attach documents from the client and then store them within SharePoint for everyone to access.

How to do it…

To create a file attachment type that links to SharePoint, follow these steps:

1. From the Organization administration area page, select the Document types menu item from the Document management folder of the Setup group.
2. When the Document types maintenance form is displayed, click on the New button in the menu bar to create a new entry.
3. We will start by creating a link for all of our generic Accounts Payable documents by giving our new Document type a Name and Description. In the Group select File from the dropdown options and select SharePoint for the Location option.
   
4. Now return back to your document libraries within SharePoint and copy the URL for the document library.
   
5. Paste the URL into the Archive
   directory field.
   
   Note: Remove all of the extra parameters though so that you are just referencing the base folder location.
   Also, if you click on the folder browser to the right of the Archive directory field you can test the link to SharePoint.

How it works…

Now, if you attach a document, then you will see the option for your new document type.

It will allow you to attach any file that you have on your desktop.

And rather than showing you the thumbnail image, it will show you a reference link to your SharePoint document library.

After attaching the document, if you look within SharePoint, you will see your document is saved away for you.

You can repeat this process for all of your other document libraries that were created in the previous step.

Adding Columns to your Document Libraries for Better Indexing

One of the reasons why you want to start using SharePoint is so that you can take advantage of the indexing functionality to code and classify your documents. Now that you have people storing the documents away, it’s time to add some indexes to you document libraries.

How to do it…

To create new indexes for your document libraries, follow these steps:

1. Open up your document libraries within SharePoint and select the Library ribbon bar. Then click on the Create Column button within the Manage Views group.
2. When the Create Column form opens, set the Column Name to be the field that you want to index, select the type of the column, and also set the columns Description.
3. Note: Sometimes it’s a good idea not to have spaces in the column name, later on when we add filters, it becomes a litter easier to manage this way.
   
4. After you have finished defining the column, click on the OK button to add the column to your library.
5. When you return back to your document library, there will be a new column on the form.
   
6. Repeat the process for all of the columns that you want to use as index fields for the library.
   
   Note: All of the columns do not have to be used during the indexing process, so it’s OK to have variations of columns, like InvoiceNum, CreditNoteNum, etc.

How it works…

To edit the columns, select the options menu for the document, and choose the Edit Properties option.

This will allow you to update the fields that Dynamics AX did not populate initially.

Now when you look at the document within SharePoint, you will see the additional metadata that is associated with the document.

Embedding Document Libraries into Dynamics AX Forms

Now that we are able to index documents a little more effectively within SharePoint, we can go the extra step, and link SharePoint to our forms within Dynamics AX so that we are able to access them without even leaving the application. Doing this just requires a little bit of coding, but is well worth the effort.

Getting Started…

You can manipulate the information that is displayed by SharePoint, and also how it is displayed through the URL that you use.

If you filter any of the views, then you will notice that it uses two qualifiers – FilterFieldX
and FilterValueX to restrict the viewed records.

Also, if you add a IsDlg=1 qualifier, then all of the navigation areas are hidden giving you a clean list of filtered documents.

This is the perfect type of view to embed within Dynamics AX.

The other half of this step is to choose a form to add your document libraries to. In this case we will update the Vendors form.

How to do it…

To embed your SharePoint document libraries within Dynamics AX forms, follow these steps:

1. Start the process by opening up AOT, and create a new project for this tweak.
2. From the Forms area in the AOT, drag over the form that you want to add the documents to – in this case it’s the VendTable form.
   
3. Expand out the form within the project, and navigate to the group that you want to add your document library view into.
4. Right-mouse-click on the parent tab, and select the TabPane option from the New Control sub-menu.
5. Reorder your tabs (ALT+UpArrow/DownArrow) so that they are in the sequence that you want and then give your new Tab Control a Name and Caption in the Properties section.
   
6. Right-mouse-click on the new tab that you added for the document library and select the ActiveX control from the New Control sub menu.
7. When the list of ActiveX controls are displayed, select the Microsoft Web Browser control, and click the OK button to add it.
8. Rename your ActiveX control, and set the Width to Column width
   and Height to Column height.
   
9. Now we need to have Dynamics AX update the URL that is navigated to when the form is opened. To do this, right-mouse-click on the parent Methods group for the form, and select the activate method from the Override methods submenu.
10. Update the activate method by building the URL that will define the specific document index that you are wanting to show. You are able to now add conditional filters that pick up the record values, and filter based on the current record – in this case the vendor number.
    
11. Once you have finished the update, save the project.

How it works…

Now when you open up the Vendor form, there will be a Documents tab that shows all of the documents that are associated with the current record.

If you select a record that does not have attached documents, then you will not see anything there.

How cool is that.

Creating Custom Views for the Document Libraries

Now that all of the heavy lifting has been done, you can now start tweaking the SharePoint libraries and the way that the information is displayed. Based on the form that you are in you may want to show only particular information. You can do that by creating new custom views.

How to do it…

To create a custom view for your document libraries, follow these steps:

1. Open up your document libraries within SharePoint and select the Library ribbon bar. Then click on the Library Settings button within the Settings group.
   
2. When the document library settings maintenance form is displayed, scroll down to the bottom of the page, and there will be a section for Views that will show you all of the different ways that the form could be displayed. In this case there is only one, but we can fix that by clicking on the Create View link.
   
3. Select the Standard View option from the format templates that are displayed.
   
4. Assign your new view a Name and select the fields that you want to be displayed in the view.
   
5. Once you have made the changes, click on the OK button to save your new view.

How it works…

When you return to the document library you will be able to see the new format of the view.

You can then change the view within the URL of your project to make it the default view for the form.

Now when you see all of the documents within your Dynamics AX form you will see just the information that you need.

Using the SharePoint Designer to Edit Document Libraries

Although you can do everything that we have shown so far within SharePoint, you can also take advantage of the SharePoint Designer application to update your SharePoint document libraries. You don’t even have to search for the install kit, because it is embedded within your SharePoint site, just waiting to be downloaded and installed.

How to do it…

To access the SharePoint Designer to manipulate your SharePoint site, follow these steps:

1. To use the SharePoint Designer to update your SharePoint site, just select the Edit in SharePoint Designer option from the Site Actions menu.
   

   Note: If you don’t have SharePoint Designer installed then it will ask you to install it, and download the kit directly from your SharePoint installation.

How it works…

When SharePoint Designer opens up, it will be connected to your current SharePoint site, showing you all of the libraries, etc. that you have been creating.

If you select the Lists and Libraries option from the navigation pad, you will be able to see all of the document libraries that you created in the previous steps.

Drilling into the libraries you will be able to also see all of the views etc. that you configured within SharePoint.

Creating New Content Types to Manage Document Types

When we set up our document libraries we deliberately created them so that all of the documents for a particular area are within the same library. This allows us to save multiple types of documents away within the library like Invoices, Credit Notes, Vendor Certificates etc. The way that we can identify the type of document is through the creation of Content Types.

How to do it…

To create custom Content Types to help make classification easier, follow these steps:

1. Open up SharePoint Designer (although you can also do this within SharePoint itself) and select the Content Types from the navigation menu and click on the Content type menu button within the New group
   of the Content Types ribbon bar.
   
2. When the Content Type creation form is displayed, give your Content Type a Name, and Description, select a parent content type, and also a group that you want to show the Content Type in.
   

   Note: For the first content type that you create, you may want to create a new Content Type Group so that it isn’t intermingled with all of the other content types.

3. When you have finished creating your Content Type click on the OK button to add it to SharePoint.
4. When you return to your SharePoint Designer workspace you will be able to see your new Content Type.
   
5. Repeat the process for all of the other types of documents that you want to file away within SharePoint.
   
6. Now we need to enable Content Types within our document libraries, and then assign them. To do this, open up your Document Library within SharePoint Designer, and within the Settings group, check the Allow management of content types check box.
   
7. Then click on the Add button to the right of the Content Types group to open up the Content Type Picker. Find the new Content Types that you just created, and click on the OK button to assign them to your Document Library.
   
8. Now the Content Type will show up as a valid option for the document library.
9. Repeat the process for all of the other content types that you created.
   

How it works…

Now when you edit the properties for your documents, there will be a new indexing option for your documents that allows you to define the type of document that you are looking at.

Specifying Document Columns by Content Types to Simplify Indexing

There is an additional benefit that you get from using Content Types within SharePoint, which is the ability to specify what columns are applicable to different Content Types at the time of indexing. For example, you probably don’t want to specify a Invoice Number when indexing a Vendor Insurance Certificate, but would definitely would want to when indexing an Invoice and even a Credit Note.

How to do it…

To modify your Content Types within your Document Libraries to only require certain columns to be indexed, follow these steps:

1. From within your SharePoint Document Library (or from within SharePoint Designer) click on the Library Settings button within the Settings group of the Library ribbon bar.
   
2. Within the Library Settings you will be able to see all of your Content Types that have been assigned. Select any of them to edit their options.
   
3. When you first create the Content Types then they will have no columns assigned to them. Click on the Add from existing site or list columns link to assign the valid columns to your Content Type.
   
4. When the Add columns to Content Type form is displayed, you will be able to see all of the available columns within the Document Library.
   
5. Just select the ones that you want to use for the indexing, and then click the Add button. Once you have selected all the ones that you want to use, click on the OK button to save your changes.
   

How it works…

Now you will have indexing by Content Type.

Showing the Content Type in the Document View

Now that we are classifying documents by Content Type we might as well show it in the views so that we are able to differentiate different document types.

How to do it…

To add the Content Type field to our Document View, follow these steps:

1. From within your SharePoint Document Library (or from within SharePoint Designer) click on the Modify View button within the Manage Views group of the Library ribbon bar.
   
2. Now that the Content Type is enabled on our Document Library, it will show up on the list of valid columns. To add it to our view, just check the Display checkbox, and possibly change the order of the field so that it is first in the table.
   
3. When you’re done, click on the OK button to update the view.

How it works…

Now the Content Type is shown in the document library view.

And also will show up when we browse to the documents within Dynamics AX.

How neat is that.

Grouping Records in the Document View by Key Columns

One final tweak that we will show within SharePoint is the ability to group columns within our document library views so that common information is shown together. These groupings can be different by view, and just make it a little easier to find information if we don’t’ initially filter the data.

How to do it…

To group records within your document library view, follow these steps:

1. From within your SharePoint Document Library (or from within SharePoint Designer) click on the Modify View button within the Manage Views group of the Library ribbon bar.
   
2. Scroll down your view definition until you see the Group By configuration options. Here you will be able to change the Group By fields.
   

How it works…

Now when you look at your documents, they will be classified by key fields.

Summary

In this walkthrough we have shown how you can:

• Create a simple document management repository within SharePoint
• Link the document attachments function within Dynamics AX to SharePoint to make the acquisition of the documents easier
• Index your documents more effectively by defining custom columns
• Embed SharePoint back into Dynamics AX and also
• Tweak your views within SharePoint to make it easier to find and view documents

This is really just a starting point, and once you have mastered the basics, you can start investigating:

• Assigning workflows to documents for approvals and updates
• Enabling version control for your documents
• Acquire documents into SharePoint through scanning technologies
• Link the index column fields to Dynamics AX for validation of key information
• And much more.

SharePoint is a great document management tool, and can usually handle all of your document indexing needs. Especially now that it is connected with Dynamics AX natively.

FREE Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 List Component for Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010

 

 

CRM2011 – SharePoint 2010 Integration? Glue CRM 2011 & Share Point 2010 together? Make CRM 2011 and Share Point 2010 converse? I wasn’t sure what to call this exactly. “Hooking together” works for me!

Now that we have a CRM 2011 instance and a Share Point site working, let’s get them connected up! Go to this website and download Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 List Component for Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010:

Accept the License Terms.

Extract the files to a folder (I chose C:\CRM List).

You will get a prompt “The Installation is complete.” Click OK.

Let’s go over to the Share Point Central Administration Server to install the list component we just extracted. Connect to http://localhost:48835/ (your port might be different, be aware of this). Click Manage web applications.

Click the new Share Point site, and then “General Settings” (the blue cogs).

Scroll down to Browser File Handling and choose Permissive, Click OK.

Let’s head back over to our new Share Point Site. Click Site Actions up top left, and then “Site Settings”.

Under Galleries click “Solutions”.

Click the Word “Solutions” up top (you have to click the word “Solutions”, even though it looks selected), and then click “Upload Solution”.

Select the .wsp component that we extracted wayyy back at the top of this. I used C:CRM List as my extract folder. Click OK.

You’ll get prompted at this point, I couldn’t active the control on this screen (but it still needs to be done). We need to make sure some services are running to activate the solution. Click Close.

Head back to the Share Point Central Administration. http://localhost:48835. Found at

Click System Settings –> Manage Services on this server

Click Start beside “Share Point Foundation Sandboxed Code Service”. I also started “Microsoft SharePoint Foundation Subscription Settings Service (by accident)” so that’s why that ones started.

Now to head back to our Share Point site http://localhost:39083/

Under Galleries click “Solutions”.

Click Solutions again, select crmlistcomponent, and the click “Activate” up top. Activate is now un-greyed out! Click Activate!

The solution has now been activated! Hurray!

There seems to be some confusion whether or not you need to run a power shell script to enable Activation of Share Point 2010 solutions (AllowHtcExtn). According to what I’ve read, you would need to run this if Share Point 2010 is running on a domain controller. I didn’t have to do this (and we’re on a domain controller), and I’ve yet to run into a problem with .htc stuff. Even in the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Readme it says:
“If you are using Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 (On-Premises), you must add .htc extensions to the list of allowed file types:
a. Copy the AllowHtcExtn.ps1 script file to the server that is running Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010.
b. In the Windows PowerShell window or in the SharePoint Management Console, run the command: AllowHtcExtn.ps1 .
Example: AllowHtcExtn.ps1 http://servername%E2%80%9D

Some people say the script works for them , and some say that using just the blog method (what we did) works
The sharepoint configuration is complete at this point. You probably want to take a snapshot, name it “After Sharepoint Configuration”. Let’s head over to our CRM server (localhost:85).

In CRM Click Settings –> Document Management –> Document Management Settings

Select the entities that you want to have documents enabled on. This will create a “Documents” area when you open an instance of the entity. I’ll just leave the defaults for now. At the bottom punch in your Share Point site that you’ve created and click Next. This is the Share Point server we installed the list component on. You’re not allowed to use localhost:port, just use the computer name:port like below.

Don’t select the box, otherwise it will relate the files to those entities. Without checking the box you will end up with something like Site/EntityName/Record Name (which is what I want, especially if you’re using custom entities). Click Next.

If “Libraries are being created in the path”, click Next.

Everything should “Succeed”, Click Finish.

Let’s test this bad boy out now.

Create a new account called “Test”.

Click Save! Click “Documents” on the left side. You’ll get a prompt saying that the folder (Test) is being created under “Account”. Click OK.

Click Add.

Now you’ll probably get these errors! /crmgrid/scripts/DialogContainer.js and 403 FORBIDDEN! Depressing. The only real information on this error was here: . It wasn’t very clear, but I stumbled through it. It seems that CRM 2011 doesn’t enjoy being called localhost. Let’s fix these up.

The fix for this was to run inetmgr –> Click Microsoft Dynamics CRM –> click Stop

Click “Bindings…” on the right side. Click “Edit” on the items that show “localhost” and change it to my machine name: “win-b80icqrvluf”. This is so it has a a “real” name to connect to.

Before:

After:

Now click “Start” on the right side.

Head back over to the CRM (http://win-b80icqrvluf:85/CRMTest/main.aspx) make sure to use the host name, as it might give you the error if you use localhost. Open your Test Account again.

Click Documents –> Add, you should now see this popup (it can take a while to load for the first time on the VM). If you continue to get the error, stop both CRM 2011 and Share Point 2010 servers and restart them. If that doesn’t work, try restarting the whole server.

Pick a file, and click OK.

The file should be uploaded to Share Point now.

Head over to Share Point at http://win-b80icqrvluf:39083 and click “All Site Content” or “Libraries”.

Click Account.

You can see that CRM has created a folder “Test” (for our record). It creates 1 folder per record. Click it to see the files associated to that record!!

The files associated to the record “Test” in Accounts.

Share Point and CRM have combined into a super awesome force of doom. But we’re still missing 1 core piece of functionality (due to not picking a port when we installed CRM).

 

 

Sandbox Solutions available in CRM 2013 and Online

You may have noticed changes to the navigation bar at the top of one or more of your Dynamics CRM Online instances.

For both free and paid test instances, you’ll now see an orange navigation bar with a SANDBOX watermark.  Production instances will continue to display the blue bar you’ve come to expect.

 

This post covers what this change means to you and how this relates to some new capabilities we’ll be releasing in the near future.

Changes to Non-production Instances

Dynamics CRM Online 2013 introduced the concept of non-production, test, instances.  These instances could either be purchased as an add-on to your subscription or you would be granted a single free non-production instance if you purchased 25 or more user licenses for CRM Online.

Since they are either purchased at a considerable discount from additional production instances or free, these instances may only be used for non-production purposes.  Earlier this year we published a thorough blog post introducing test instances.

Up until now, the only noticeable difference between a production and non-production instance was the instance type displayed on instance’s edit settings page in the CRM Online admin center.  The type displayed was either Production instance, Paid Test instance, or Free Test instance, depending on how it was obtained.  The type is set when an instance is provisioned and can’t be changed by a customer administrator.

The most recent change amounts to the following:

• Free Test instance and Paid Test instance types have been renamed Sandbox instance.  See the edit settings page in the CRM Online admin center:

• When you sign into a Sandbox instance, you’ll see the orange nav bar and SANDBOX watermark:

We’ve made this change to ensure that end users know when they’ve signed into a sandbox instance and do not make production changes by mistake.

Other than the changes mentioned above, there are no functional differences between production and sandbox instances.  You can perform all of the customization, development, and testing work in a sandbox instance without concerns that the experience will be different in production.

Welcoming Sandbox Instances to CRM Online

These changes are part of a much larger wave of improvements we are making in Dynamics CRM Online to better support enterprise application development.

Your mission critical business applications run on Dynamics CRM Online and all changes must be managed carefully.  Without the proper development time, evaluation, and testing, the stability of your application may suffer and result in unnecessary downtime that could have been avoided by making these changes elsewhere.  The ideal place to develop and test new application change is aSandbox instance that is isolated from your production application.

We don’t treat the running Sandbox applications any differently from Production instances.  They are both given the same level of resources and support.  By design, though, your Sandbox Instance application database is completely isolated from production.  It may contain a full or partial copy of production data, users, and customizations.  Since changes in a Sandbox Instance do not affect production, you can build your applications with the confidence that their daily productivity will not be adversely affected.

In the near future, we’ll release additional capabilities to the CRM Online admin center that target Sandbox instances exclusively.

Reset Instance (RESET)

Delete the instance completely and re-provision from scratch.  This is particularly useful when you are starting a new implementation or have completed a project and you’d like to free up the resource consumed by a large sandbox instance.

Copy Instance (COPY)

Make a copy of an instance into a sandbox.  You can copy either a production or sandbox instance, but the target must be a sandbox.  There are two types of copies you can perform:

• Full Copy

Copy the full application database from the source to the target.  This make an exact copy of the source instance, including all application data, users, customizations, etc.  You’ll need to make sure you have enough available storage space to copy before you copy the instance.

• Minimal Copy

Copy only the customizations, core configuration data, and users from the source to the target.  This is primarily useful for development scenarios when the full production database is not needed.  You will need to import your custom configuration and sample data to complete the process.

Administration Mode (ADMIN)

Even though the production and sandbox databases are isolated from each another, you may have customizations that reach out to external services.  Without updates to these connections, you could inadvertently perform operations in a production service while working in a sandbox instance.  We’re introducing a new administration mode for sandbox instance to reduce the risk of production impact.  When you perform a copy operation, for example, the target sandbox instance is placed in administration mode.  After the copy is complete, the admin will have an opportunity to resolve any issues in the sandbox instance before bringing the instance fully back online.

• Enable Administration Mode

Only users with the System Administrator or System Customizer role can sign in at this time.  This allows an admin to lock out end users and give them a chance to make customization changes without having end user signed into the system.

• Disable Background Operations

Sometimes, even with no users signed into the system, asynchronous operations may result in your CRM application reaching out to an external service.  With this mode enabled, all asynchronous operations will be cancelled.  This includes workflows, sending email, Exchange sync, and Yammer.

• Custom message for end users

This text will be displayed to end users when they attempt to sign in.  Admin can use this to provide more information on what is going on in the sandbox instance and when the instance is expected to be available.

Between these new sandbox admin capabilities and our rich development tools, we are making it easier than ever before to build, test, deploy, and maintain your Dynamics CRM Online solutions.  Keep an eye on this blog for announcements of future updates to your CRM Online administration experience.

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Free integration guide -Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online and Office 365

Combining the online services of Office 365 with Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online empowers your teams to work where and when they want with best-of-class cloud services.

This guide is intended for Microsoft Dynamics CRM administrators and technical decision makers interested in exploring Office 365 services and how they integrate with Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online. Integration with Office 365 becomes increasingly relevant to

Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online users as management of Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online shifts to the Microsoft online services environment.

For a .pdf version of this document: Integration Guide: Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online and Office 365 please visit – http://download.microsoft.com/download/D/4/F/D4F5A3C3-E3CB-48C9-85DE-4ED0B7FFBD60/CRMO365Integration.pdf

Some of what this paper covers:

• Add an Office 365 trial subscription to Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online
• Set up CRM Online to use Exchange Online
• Set up CRM Online to use SharePoint Online
• Set up CRM Online to use Lync Online
• Set up CRM Online to  use Yammer

Dynamics CRM, SharePoint, and Office – A Great Combo (Channel 9 Video)

Office, SharePoint and CRM

With the first release of the OBA Sample Application Kit for SAP, http://archive.msdn.microsoft.com/obasapsak, you learned the concepts around OBAs. These powerful composite applications bring Line-of-Business (LOB) data (e.g. SAP, PeopleSoft, or Dynamics) to the end-user’s fingertips within the context of the Office applications they use and know.

Version 1.0 of the Sample Application Kit for SAP was built on Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Microsoft Office 2007. Version 2.0 is built on SharePoint 2010 and Office 2010 using Visual Studio 2010.

The sample application is a travel package booking application designed to allow users to work within their familiar Microsoft Office environment to access and update some LOB data in SAP.

The sample application is composed of an Excel 2010 add-in, and on SharePoint 2010, a Silverlight user experience is used for interacting with LOB data via Business Connectivity Services (BCS).Each part of the sample application is developed, at least partially, with Visual Studio 2010.

The SharePoint portion, of course, uses SharePoint specific tools.The OBA Sample Application Kit for SAP v. 2.0 accesses data from both SAP via Web services and from SQL Server.

These OBA resources were recommended reading for v. 1.0 and still provide an excellent conceptual foundation for v. 2.0:

1. Six Office Business Applications (MS Press) or Programming Microsoft Office Business Applications (MS Press).

2. Overview of an OBA: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb614538.aspx 

3. Overview of OBA Solution Patterns: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb614541.aspx 

So, with the above in hand what is this OBA Sample Application Kit for SAP v. 2.0?

In many cases, developers don’t have the knowledge on how to programmatically integrate Office applications with LOB systems.

What this kit provides is guidance on how you can integrate with Web services that have been generated from within SAP and then consume those services within a .NET and managed code environment.

The OBA Sample Application Kit for SAP v. 2.0 (one in a series of kits) includes a deep dive technical document, istallation document, demo walkthrough document of the end-user experience and source code.

The sample application kit is composed of an Excel 2010 add-in and a SharePoint 2010 site.

The Excel 2010 add-in facilitates the process of purchasing packages, maintaining packages and associated events and booking flights.

The application is also used to dynamically generate PowerPoint 2010 presentations using the Open XML SDK.

These PowerPoint 2010 presentations are shown to potential customers and display marketing information designed to entice customers to purchase packages.

The SharePoint 2010 site is a web site that enables the browsing of packages, events, flights and customer data.

The goal of the kit is to provide developers with information on how they can learn to programmatically integrate SAP with Office and SharePoint using Visual Studio 2010.

So click on the Downloads tab where you’ll find links to the documents and source code.

Please note that the download items are unsupported and are intended only for instructional use.

Additional Office and SharePoint Resources:

1. Office Developer Training Course on MSDN: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/Office2010DeveloperTrainingCourse .

1. SharePoint DeveloperTraining Course on MSDN:http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/SP2010DevTrainingCourse 

3. SharePoint Sideshow for Developers on Channel 9:http://channel9.msdn.com/Shows/SharePointSideshow 

4. Video instructions for how to get and setup a turn-key VHD for Office and SharePoint development and demo: http://bit.ly/hSd8nJ .

5. Office Developer Center on MSDN: http://msdn.microsoft.com/office 

I hope you enjoy the v. 2.0 kit, and if you’re looking for something on PeopleSoft integration, the OBA Sample Application Kit for PeopleSoft v. 2.0 is here, http://bit.ly/obapsftsak20 .