Building a CRM 2011 Virtual Machine on Windows 7 using VirtualBox

For folks like me who keep messing around with crm 2011 and its features, it makes a lot of sense to have a dedicated sandbox environment. My goal was to create a virtual machine on my Win 7 laptop, with the following requirements:
1. Able to guest host a x64 OS (Windows 2008)
2. Ability to take snapshots of my VM
3. And of course, ease of use and compatability.

UserName cannot be null error message while connecting CRM 2011 Developer toolkit to CRM Office 365 online

Recently I had a need to create a simple plugin that works with a CRM online setup. If you are not aware yet, the CRM Developer toolkit it a great way to easily create code, and automatically deploy that code to CRM from within visual studio itself. The Developer toolkit for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 was released as part of UR5 SDK release and is available for download here.
Once extracted, install the toolkit located in folder \sdk\tools\developertoolkit.

Microsoft gets Social - Outlook Connectors for social and business networks

Social networks have a wealth of information just waiting to be harnessed, but I personally have two big issues with them:

• I do not want to be logging into multiple networks and going back and forth to collate data
• I want contextual information rather that a fire hose deluge 

Social Connectors to the rescue!
If you are using Outlook, and especially if you are a Sales person using Outlook with CRM, there is a cool new way to get information on specific contacts using the social networks. I see this being particularly useful in the social selling arena, as you get a bigger and better picture into customer connections, preferences, behaviors and sentiments, presented to you in one place.