Sonoma Partners Microsoft CRM Blog

Drowning in Outlook Reminders? This hidden registry setting might help

(Note: this post also appears on the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Team blog)

One of the GREAT new features in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 is the ability to get pop-up reminders in Microsoft Outlook for activities created in CRM. Our company Sonoma Partners uses Microsoft CRM on a day-to-day basis for our own sales, marketing and service and we have a lot of workflow automation setup on our customer records to automatically create follow-ups activities such as tasks and phone calls. By default, Microsoft CRM will create reminders for every record it syncs into Outlook that has a due date. Consequently, a large number of customer records and a large number of automated activities means a large number of pop-up reminders!

Personally, I have found that sometimes these reminders were a bit too much for me and I found myself wishing I had less pop-ups. This is especially true if you don’t include the customer’s name in the activity subject because otherwise you will see a reminder dialog that looks like this (not terribly useful because all the records look identical).

Fortunately, I picked up a neat little registry setting trick from former CRM Product Manager Michael Lu. By adding the registry setting OutlookSyncDisableTaskReminders to your client computer (not the server) at HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/Microsoft/MSCRMClient and setting its value to 1, the Outlook client will not create reminders on activities it syncs into Outlook.

This solution won’t work for everyone, but I find that it works pretty well for me.

WARNING: Using Registry Editor incorrectly can cause serious, system-wide problems that may require you to re-install Windows to correct them. Only administrators will have the necessary permissions to perform this modification. Microsoft cannot guarantee that any problems resulting from the use of Registry Editor can be solved. Use the Registry Editor at your own risk.

Microsoft CRM running on Windows 7 through Internet Explorer 8

Last Friday Microsoft released a beta version of Windows 7, and of course being a software geek, I was curious to check it out. CNET really got my interest going when their Windows 7 review stated:

"Windows 7 could be one of Microsoft's greatest operating systems, if it fulfills the promise shown by the unofficial beta version (build 7000) we have been testing for the past couple of days. I have been pleased to discover over the past several days that Microsoft appears to have built on Vista's strengths and addressed most of its weaknesses with the beta release of Windows 7."

The Windows 7 beta includes a new version of Internet Explorer 8 so I was particularly curious to see how Microsoft CRM would run in that version of the browser. The Windows 7 download site wasn't available on Friday due to high volumes, but I was able to access the download on Saturday. I installed Windows 7 on a old desktop (Pentium 4 2.40 GHz processor with 1 GB RAM), and it went through without a hitch.

The first thing you'll notice in Windows 7 is the cleaned up desktop (no sidebar!) and the new taskbar at the bottom. I even kinda like the new default wallpaper too. :)

Firing up Internet Explorer 8 and browsing to a Microsoft CRM website appears pretty much the same as usual.

After you sign in, the activities page and the other pages appear to behave the same as Internet Explorer 7. I clicked around to a few different records but didn't notice anything different. However after opening a few windows, I did notice that the taskbar is quite different. Instead of adding "rectangles" (for lack of a better word) in the taskbar, Windows 7 simply updates the IE icon. After you add multiple windows, you might notice that Windows 7 adds vertical lines to the right of the IE icon to indicate the multiple windows are open. If you hover over the IE icon, you'll see a preview of the open browser windows (complete with page titles)! This guy from Wired was really excited about that.

 

I found that the text on the preview records was too small to read. However it is nice to be able to close individual records through this preview without having to open the browser window (simply click the red X in the upper-right corner of the preview). Also, if you hover your mouse over a preview window it brings that record to the top so that you can read it. I have only played with this new taskbar for a little bit but I think I will actually use it (unlike the Flip 3D feature in Vista which looks great but never gets used).

Right-clicking the IE icon in the taskbar presents you with a Jump List that includes your browsing history which is nice and convenient. You can select previous Web pages and back up from there.

Overall, I was pleasantly surprised that Windows 7 and Internet Explorer 8 seemed to handle Microsoft CRM just fine! The only time I was able to get it to act funky was by playing with the compatibility view setting (the button to the right of lock icon in the address bar) and toggling it off and on repeatedly. By doing so, I noticed that the left navigation got screwed up a little, but a quick F5 refresh cleared up the issue immediately.

In summary, I am really excited about Windows 7. Apparently a lot of people are as excited as me because Microsoft just announced that they dropped the 2.5 million download limit so anyone who wants to check it out can do so. Microsoft does not plan on releasing a 2nd beta of Windows 7 so you might as well evaluate this version. You can get the goods here. The Windows 7 release timing is up-in-the-air, but it could be anytime from this summer through December. Here's hoping for sooner rather than later! I think that Microsoft CRM users can really benefit from some of the new enhancements in the taskbar and user interface.

New Forrester Wave reports released, and look who's ahead of Salesforce.com!

Analyst firm Forrester recently released new reports that evaluate and rank CRM business applications. I was very happy to see that Forrester ranked Microsoft Dynamics CRM as a "leader" in both the enterprise and mid-market space. Even better, Forrester gave Microsoft Dynamics CRM a better ranking than Salesforce.com. Very nice!

Forrester summarized Microsoft Dynamics CRM with the following:

Microsoft Dynamics CRM. Over the past five years, Microsoft has established itself as a major
CRM player thanks to deep capital investment, a formidable strategy, and strong branding. The
product is strong in SFA, internationalization, and usability. Arguably its greatest strength is
its native Microsoft Office user experience. The solution is set up to look, feel, and function
like Outlook. Sales analysis tools, opportunity management, and setup and configuration
capabilities are the application’s key SFA strengths. The product also is available in multiple
deployment options and is attractively priced below many of the alternative products in the
market. The solution is built on the Microsoft .NET framework and integrates seamlessly with
other Microsoft productivity tools, like Office, Outlook, and SharePoint.

Where the solution is weaker, however, is in support for eCommerce and industry business
process support. The product does not possess deep industry vertical capabilities, and offers
minimal partner relationship management (PRM) capabilities natively, forcing buyers that
want deeper PRM capabilities to augment the application through integration to BLUEROADS.
Microsoft Dynamics CRM is best suited for organizations that are Microsoft-technology-centric
for their business applications and technology

You can download the full Forrester reports if you want read all of the details:

• Forrester Wave Midmarket report: click here.
• Forrester Wave Enterprise report: click here.

Adding color indicators to an entity record

Yesterday, I mentioned a demo that I was preparing for a prospect. Another one of their stated requirements was:

If we wanted to flag a field could that record be in red? Such as customers past due and etc?

This was an easy demo request to accommodate, because I know that we included a nearly identical sample in our upcoming Programming Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 book! The book example actually adds a color indicator on an opportunity record that updates depending on its rating (hot, warm, cold) so I tweaked book's example code for the prospect. I added two custom attributes to the account entity:

• Notification (nvarchar)
• Payment Status (picklist)

Then I added this code to the form onLoad event for the account record, and to the onChange event for the payment status field.

UpdateDisplayBar();

function UpdateDisplayBar()

{

  var notificationDisplay = document.getElementById("new_notification_d");

  var displayColor = "#EAF3FF";

  switch (crmForm.all.new_paymentstatus.DataValue)

  {

    case "1":

      displayColor = "green";

      break;

    case "2":

      displayColor = "red";

      break;

  }

  var displayBar = "<div style='background=" + displayColor + "'>&nbsp;</div>";

  notificationDisplay.innerHTML = displayBar;

}

Now when you open an account record and update its payment status field, you'll see a color indicator on the first tab (next to the Payment Status field). Green indicates they are "OK", and red indicates "Overdue". No color indicates that neither value has been selected. This is a sample example, but it gives a flavor of what's possible within the user interface!

SWOT Analysis in Microsoft CRM

In preparation for a customer demo tomorrow, I was reviewing their list of questions/requirements. One of their requirements was:

"Does Microsoft CRM have a Competitor/SWOT analysis function? If not, how would we set one up?"

Of course, you can track competitors in Microsoft CRM but I wasn't sure if there was an out-of-the-box SWOT analysis. I opened the competitor record, and I was pleasantly surprised to find that the competitor entity includes the SWOT fields (on the second tab). Since this was obviously important to the prospect, I decided to move these fields up to the first tab. Voila!

Microsoft CRM Outlook client and authentication balloons

You know those little "balloons" that pop up from time to time in the Outlook 4.0 client? Below are some registry settings to change the Outlook client's behavior around network connectivity, notifications and so on. Our support manager recommend increasing ClientAuthAllowRetries to 10 and ClientAuthNotificationThrottle to 60000 (60 seconds), but you can obviously tweak to fit to your unique environment.

Regkey Name	Default	Description
ClientAuthNotificationThrottle	30000	Specifies the required elapsed time before which another balloon notification may be displayed (helps prevent too frequent balloon notifications).
ClientAuthRenewPeriod	60000	Specifies how frequently the hoster process will check if it should renew authentication.
ClientAuthVerifyConnectionPeriod	30000	Specifies how frequently the hoster process will check connectivity to the web application by downloading a tiny icon (anonymous access).
ClientAuthVerifySignedInPeriod	5000	Specifies how frequently the hoster process will check if authentication has been lost (ex: detect if cookies have been deleted or the CRM ticket has expired).
ClientAuthAllowRetries	3	Specifies the number of failed authentication attempts (after this an error will be shown or the client will move to the offline state).

Known issues and related support articles for Outlook client in CRM 4.0

We received this information from Microsoft partner support manager, and we thought we'd pass it along:

1. Outlook hangs during initialization (progress toolbar displays “Loading…” and never finishes)
This must-have fix is likely the most common perf/stability issue out there, especially on Outlook 2007. This fix resolves the issue. A current workaround exists by turning off the To Do bar.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/952724 (not yet published, but fix available from support)

2. With E-mail Auto Promotion Enabled, Outlook may not close cleanly/properly.
This fix addresses a memory allocation issue that can occur somewhat unpredictably. If your users are using e-mail auto promotion, I encourage you to deploy this hotfix.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/948121

3. Contacts with birthdays earlier than 1/1/1970 causes Outlook to crash
This was caused by an API change by one of our dependencies.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/948045

4. Hoster process can crash on startup of CRM for Outlook with Offline Access (Laptop Client)
This fix addresses a memory allocation issue that occurs rarely, but worth checking out if your hoster process inexplicably crashes.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/951884

5. Items in Shared Calendars will report Sync Issues
We do not support Shared Calendars in CRM 4.0, we encountered a couple of cases where some code was getting executed against a shared calendar and causing problems.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/949086

6. Appointment attendees do not resolve properly
This problem occurs when you set to option to only “Match against contacts synchronized to Microsoft Dynamics CRM.”
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/949141

7. Unable to Go Offline with a MUI pack installed
This fix resolves a parsing error that occasionally appears in the Go Offline process, causing a failure.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/951179

8. Changing CRM website port after re-configuring IIS
We’ve encountered some customers who have made changes to the CRM IIS configuration after installation (such as adding host headers) and then had trouble with configuring clients. This is because certain config values are stored during setup which become invalidated after these IIS changes. The KB article below talks to this issue.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/947423/

Microsoft CRM 4.0 Application series eLearning available

Microsoft recently posted the eLearning material in PartnerSource/CustomerSource for the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Applications series (collection 8913). These sessions are a pretty decent introduction to the core functionality of Microsoft CRM.

Two default views? How to get back to one

You might come across a scenario where you see that Microsoft CRM lists two different views as the "default" for an entity (as shown in the screenshot below):

Obviously this is not the intended behavior as only one view should be listed the default. Changing the default view and re-publishing the entity with the web interface does not appear to correct this issue. While we're not 100% what causes this scenario, we have figured out a method to fix it.

First you need to export the customizations.xml file for the entity. Then open the customizations file and search for the duplicated defaulted view and change the

<isdefault name="Yes">1</isdefault>

To

<isdefault name="No">0</isdefault>

Note that when you find the view "name" in the customizations.xml file, it is actually at the bottom of the node. This means you will need to scroll up in the file to find the <isdefault> node.

Save, import, publish and you should be all set again.

Convergence wrap up

I am wrapping up some emails and getting ready to start the week tomorrow. Since I was out of the office all of last week at Convergence, I expect that tomorrow will be busy! Therefore, I want to post my final thoughts tonight on Convergence 2008 (otherwise it might never get done):

• Steve Ballmer keynote: Steve is a great speaker and I think he is one of the most direct and straight forward executives I have heard. When he gives his opinion, it isn't full of "corporate speak" and "marketing fluff" and I really appreciate that. Overall I thought his keynote was interesting but I wish he showed more software demos! On the plus side, the two demos that he did show were both for Microsoft CRM.
• Kirill Tatarinov keynote: This was the first time I heard Kirill speak and I thought he was solid. The demos were for ERP products, but I did think they were pretty interesting.
• Kevin Schofield keynote: I wasn't able to attend this in person because it was on Friday and I had already left. I plan to watch the recorded version in the next few weeks, again hoping for cool demos.
• Sold out sessions: I was very disappointed at the multiple stories I heard about "sold out" sessions where our customers and prospects were not able to attend a breakout session/event. Considering the amount of time and money people invest to attend the conference, I think this is simply in-excusable and I hope that Microsoft corrects this in the future.
• Book launch: We used the Convergence conference to launch our Working With Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 book and it was a great success. On Wednesday, Microsoft gave away approximately 1,500 copies of the book to everyone who attended the Microsoft CRM sessions presented by Brad Wilson (see photo where they put a book on every attendee's chair). In addition, the CRM product team gave away some copies of the book at the Expo trade show. We followed the book giveaways with a Sonoma Partners' celebratory party on Wednesday night, and that event went off perfectly.

• Space shuttle: On Monday night/Tuesday morning there was a space shuttle launch at 2:30am. I thought about attending the launch in person but the late night timing was too much for me to handle. Amazingly, I woke up in my hotel room at that time and I was able to see the shuttle launch from my window on the 11th floor. Unfortunately there was a heavy cloud cover that night so people could only see the shuttle for about 10 seconds before it disappeared into the clouds! I also heard some horror stories about traffic jams on the return trip for those people who attended the launch in person.
• Location: This was my first event in Orlando and overall it wasn't too bad. The weather was good, and I was able to walk back and forth between our hotel and the convention center (this is key!). I still think San Diego was the best Convergence location, but Orlando definitely beat Dallas as a Convergence host city. I learned this weekend that Convergence 2009 will be in New Orleans. Now THAT is a city that knows how to host a convention! I attended the Microsoft Partner conference in New Orleans in 2003 and it was one of my absolute favorite events. Convergence 2009 should be outstanding.
• Logistics: With more than 9,500 people attending from 60+ countries, I can't even imagine how complicated it is to host an event like Convergence. I would say that the event logistics ran pretty smoothly but I did have problems connecting to the WiFi network (too many users) and eating (lunch hall closed at 12:30pm one day!).
• Overall: Convergence is a "must attend" event for anyone who's serious about Microsoft Dynamics, and I had a great time! I spent most of the week meeting with customers, prospects or people from Microsoft so I only attended one session (about Microsoft CRM of course!). The conference does take a toll on you physically as you start around 7:30am and one can can easily go until 1:00am (or later) on almost every night with the various dinners, parties, etc. Do that five days in a row, and you can imagine how I felt on Friday! However Convergence was worth every single dime we invested, and I'm already looking forward to next year's event.