Dynamics CRM 2013 SP1 - Enterprise Case Management features for On-Premise

My earlier posts on Service Management Spring release were on the online version of Dynamics CRM, as at the time of the first post Service Pack 1 was not available for on-premise installs. Since then, Service Pack 1 has been released for public consumption, and I was very excited to install the same on my own VirtualBox VM. After the SP1 install and the server reboot, I was all set to continue messing around with the Service management features, except that I could not find the darn "Service Management" section under settings. Follow along as I will explain how make the new section available for use!

In Place Upgrade - CRM 2011 to CRM 2013

Now that the latest and greatest version of Dynamics CRM has been released, I was ready to get hands on with the new features. Since I had my own VM (details on building a VirtualBox VM here) to mess around with, I planned on doing an in place upgrade. Please note that this is not the recommended approach especially in production environments. A new install of CRM 2013 or a migration upgrade would be the best options for stage/ prod setups.

Here are the steps to follow for an in place upgrade from CRM 2011 to CRM 2013.

Manually Uninstall Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Server

I recently had a very weird experience installing Dynamics CRM 2011 server front end role. The front end server would start the install process and make the connection to the sql server. Midway through the install the sql connection was getting terminated, resulting in the following error:

Action Microsoft.Crm.Setup.Common.Update.DBUpdateAction failed.
A transport-level error has occurred when receiving results from the server. (provider: TCP Provider, error: 0 - The semaphore timeout period has expired.)

Adding a sever to an existing CRM 2011 intallation

Recently I had a harrowing experience trying to add a front end server to existing install. The existing CRM 2011 setup had UR 12 rollup update applied on the Front End, Back End and SSRS Server. When trying to install the front end role on a new server, I kept getting the following error in the Installation Wizard: "The Product key is not compatible with installed version of Microsoft Dynamics CRM".

CRM 2011 - Pre-Install checklist for IFD/ ADFS setup

While there is a lot of good documentation on the web about the IFD setup for CRM 2011, it is still a bit daunting for a newbie to wade though the deluge. In this post, I will document a few items that need to be in place before the actual ADFS install and configuration can happen. This checklist is especially important if you do not have complete access/ control and are dependent on an external teams assistance.

Many thanks to my colleagues Ash Dupree and Rakaesh Navaneethan for validating the data!

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?

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.

MS Dynamics CRM 2011 installation checklist and tips

While there is a wealth of information in the installation and planning guide for CRM 2011, it is always good to have a high level checklist of items, along with possible issues and workarounds, when dealing with a multi server install. Here I have attempted to document some of the critical items to have in place before we attempt the install.

Update Rollup 11 for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011

Update Rollup 11 for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 is now available for download. As you might know, update rollup 10 had performance enhancements for retrieving multiple queries and for the Quick Find search. Some salient points from the announcement are listed below: