Scheduled custom notifications for Dynamics CRM 2011

The closest thing that Dynamics CRM 2011 has to a notification is the concept of Announcements. There are some drawbacks to Announcements, most important being that they cannot be scheduled. Also, can we expect the user to keep going back to the Announcements page each time to see the latest? I think not :)

CRM 2011 rsProcessingAborted error when running custom reports

Have you had a situation where the default reports in CRM 2011 and reports created from VisualStudio work, but reports created from the Report Wizard (or any Fetch based reports) result in a rsProcessingAborted error?

Product Review: InRule® for Microsoft Dynamics® CRM

Business logic can be applied to Dynamics CRM by a combination of these processes:

1. OOB workflows
2. Custom workflows

3. Plugins
4. JavaScript

Other than the OOB workflows (which has its constraints), the rest involve some knowledge of coding, with the plugins and workflows requiring background in C#. So if there is new requirement to create a business rule, typically the request is submitted to the IT/ Development team, and depending on their schedule the rule is created. If the rule needs changing, the business user needs to again reach out to someone outside of his/ her department.

Business Intelligence for CRM 2011 data- Part II - PowerView

In Part I of the two part series, I had talked a little bit about the cool things that can be done with the Excel add on called PowerPivot, with the data feed coming in from a crm 2011 organization. In Part II, we are going to dive in to Power View, which is a browser-based Silverlight application launched from SharePoint  that enables users to present and share insights through interactive presentations.

Business Intelligence for CRM 2011 data- Part I - PowerPivot

In a typical CRM system, there might be huge quantities of data (like case items) that we would want to gain insight into. In the first part of a two part series, I will focus on using PowerPivot to connect to a CRM system, extract data, and present the data in powerful new ways using Excel.

PowerPivot is a powerful data mashup and data exploration tool based on xVelocity in-memory technologies providing unmatched analytical performance. The goal of PowerPivot is to empower users of all levels with new insights through familiar tools, which in this case is Excel.

Active Directory password reset via CRM 2011

A couple of months ago, my colleague Robert Shurtleff (@rgsiii) came to me with an interesting idea about a CRM add on to change AD passwords. After a few emails back and forth thrashing out the design, it was time to make it actually work. In this post, I am going to provide some of the details of a solution to enable a user to change his or her AD password from within CRM.

Branding a CRM 2011 application

The Dynamics CRM 2011 application, along with the XRM framework, enables us to model a varied requirement set with a high degree of customization. But there are instances when CRM is used adjacent with another LOB application, either as sections inside of CRM 2011, or outside of it. In such a case, the user experience should be as streamlined as possible. Dynamics CRM approaches this issue by providing the style sheets that crm uses as part of the sdk (sdk\resources\styleguide), so that other applications can be brought in line with CRM. In situations where other LOB applications take precedent (or their UI cannot be modified), what are the options for the CRM customizer?