Nishant Rana's Weblog » Microsoft Dynamics CRM

Error connecting to Report Server from virtual machine.

Nishant Rana — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 09:08:15 +0000

Hi,

I was trying to connect to report server (installed on my machine) from the virtual machine on which CRM is installed.(While creating a new organization using Deployment Manager MMC snap-in)

I was getting page not found error for the following url of the report server

http://servername/reportserver.

Later realized that it was because of the new anti virus tool that i had installed, the firewall was set enabled by default.

Disabled the firewall and then everything was fine.

Bye.

Trace file size almost 40 GB in CRM 4

Nishant Rana — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 06:15:57 +0000

Hi,

I was getting the low disk space notification on my CRM 4 server . I realized that i had enabled Tracing for CRM 4. ( through CRM 4 Diagnosis Tool). I had enabled it some 4-5 months ago, while i was facing certain issue in CRM 4 installation.

I checked the size of the Trace folder, and i was surprised to see it’s size to be almost around 40 GB ! I think as suggested by Microsoft we need to carefully think before we enable tracing.

More on CRM 4 diagnosis tool http://blogs.msdn.com/benlec/archive/2008/03/04/crmdiagtool4-for-microsoft-crm-4-0-has-been-released.aspx

Bye..

Deploying a multiple assembly plugin

Nishant Rana — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 08:53:58 +0000

Lets take a simple example for it !!

Suppose this is our Pre-Update Plugin

public void Execute(IPluginExecutionContext context)
{
Calculate myCalculate;
DynamicEntity entity = (DynamicEntity)context.InputParameters[ParameterName.Target];
if (entity.Name == EntityName.lead.ToString())
{
// Get the Last Name string
String lastName =(string) entity.Properties["lastname"];
// Call the function within the assembly
myCalculate = new Calculate();
lastName=myCalculate.RemoveCharSwithN(lastName);
// Assign the value back
entity.Properties["lastname"] = lastName;
}
}

This plugin would update the value for lastname field for

the lead record on pre update. It is making use of a

custom function which is there in some other assembly.

The function is a simple function which would replace the

char ‘s’ with ‘m’

public class Calculate{public string ReplaceCharSwithN(string a){

return a.Replace(’s’, ‘n’);

}

If we register the above plugin without putting Calculate class’s assembly in GAC, we would get the following error

“Count not load the file or assembly ‘Calculator’ or one of its dependencies”

Here we need to put the referenced assembly in the GAC,

followed by an IISReset.

Or the other option with us is to use ILMerge tool. Using it we can combine multiple .NET assemblies into one.

Download and find more information about the tool here

http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/people/mbarnett/ILMerge.aspx

Using the following command we can merge multiple assembly into one

ilmerge /keyfile:g.snk Test.dll Calculator.dll /out:ILMergedLibrary.dll

keyfile –> valid key file

Test.dll—> the plugin’s dll

Calculator.dll—> the custom assembly.

ILMergedLibrary.dll –> The resulting assembly.

And register this newly merged assembly.

Bye.

Developing a simple context sensitive report for CRM

Nishant Rana — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 10:29:14 +0000

Suppose we want to develop a context sensitive report for contact entity. This report, i should be able run on selected records and it should show information related to those records only.

Lets take an very simple example,

We could develop a report for contacts entity that would display firstname and lastname of the selected records from the grid within CRM.

So we could have our dataset like this

select CRMAF_FilteredContact.FirstName, CRMAF_FilteredContact.LastName
from FilteredContact as CRMAF_FilteredContact

Then while uploading we would select

“Conacts” for Related Record Types

“Related record types” for Display In.

Another way of creating the above report could be this

Our query for the dataset could be

declare @sql nvarchar(2000)

set @sql=’SELECT CO.firstname, CO.lastname FROM (‘+@CRM_FilteredContact +’) CO’

exec(@sql)

Here for @CRM_FilteredContact we would define a report parameter with

name=CRM_FilteredContact

DataType= String

Checked Internal option

Non queried for Available Values

Non queried for Default Values with the following value

select firstname,lastname from FilteredContact

Than we would upload it in CRM the way described above.

Bye..

Cleared MB2-632 Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Applications exam

Nishant Rana — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 09:02:35 +0000

Last Saturday, i cleared the Applications exam.

Total number of 50 questions were there, divided into five sections General, Sales, Marketing, Service and Service Scheduling.

I had read all these books to learn about CRM as an application

Course 8913: Applications in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0
MS CRM 4 for dummies.
Maximizing your sales using Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0
Microsoft CRM 4.0 unleashed

as well as the videos at

http://www.democrmonline.com/ and few other videos as well….

The course 8913 is more than enough for preparation of this exam. However other books are also very good and informative.

Some of the topics that could be helpful while preparing are

Outlook offline client, Relationship Roles, Setting Personal Options dialog box,Bulk edit feature, User Settings for Service Scheduling, Functionality of Service Calendar, Templates for different entities, Specific functionality of MS CRM outlook client, How Activities are used, Specific functionality attached with each entity, e.g. converting lead, closing opportunity etc…

bye..