Showing posts with label CRM 2011 Installation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label CRM 2011 Installation. Show all posts

Tuesday, June 19, 2012

CRM 2011 Install Errors - Tips and Tricks continued

The more I get to install/upgrade to CRM 2011 in different environment the more I come across different issues and fortunately there are workarounds to it. So here are some additional items found since the last post on this subject.

A Microsoft Dynamics CRM Server component is using the same account as the instance of SQL Server Reporting Services

You receive the above error when installing SSRS Data connector. I had never seen this before. But this was a system on which there was a previous install of CRM 2011 Async service (A distributed install). The Reporting Service was running under Network Service Account. Changing it to another domain user account did not fix this issue.

This issue has been explained in detail in this KB article http://support.microsoft.com/kb/974584. Though this KB has been targetted for CRM 4, the following section of the resolution worked in this particular case

Add the IgnoreChecks registry key to the computer that is running Microsoft Dynamics CRM so the installation can proceed when an error is shown in the Environmental Diagnostic Wizard (EDW):
  1. Click Start, click Run, type regedit, and then click OK.
  2. In the registry, locate the following subkey:
    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\MSCRM
  3. Right-click MSCRM, point to New, click DWORD Value, and then type IgnoreChecks.
  4. Double-click IgnoreChecks, and then type 1 in the Value data field.
After this change is made, the Environmental Diagnostic Wizard will still point the same error. But notice the Next button is now enabled :) Go ahead click Next and complete the install.

After successful installation remove the key added to the registry.

Index was outside the bounds of the array.

I came across this while trying to fix the one above :) The one above complained about same service account being used, so I tried to fix it by using a Domain user account. Instead of typing the user name, I chose to use the lookup button to seach the user from the AD. Selecting the user set the service user name in the form of user@domain.com.

Change the service account back to domain\user and this error will vanish.

Action Microsoft.Crm.Setup.Server.GrantConfigDBDatabaseAction failed.
Windows NT user or group 'NTDomain\SQLAccessGroup{xxx} not found.

If you see this error during an install or upgrade and if you are using SQL Server on another machine, you are connected to the SQL Server machine through an RDP session. Log off. Restart the install and it will proceed without any error :)

The transaction log for database 'ORG_MSCRM' is full due to 'ACTIVE_TRANSACTION'.

Do not try to check the transaction log size for this. Most probably all is good there. The first thing to check is free disk space on the drive on which the ORG_MSCRM database and log file resides. You are probably running out of space there. Make some space and you are ready to go. Check this

Installation of Microsoft Visual C++ Runtime failed. Exit code: 5100. Result: Asia

Setup will not run on a machine that has Visual C++ 2010 with version 10.0.40219 install. This system had SQL 2012 installed that probably installed this higher version. CRM Setup requires an older version to continue. Go ahead and uninstall the VC++ redistributable on this machine and let CRM install the required components including Visual C++

As usual, the above solutions have worked in our scenario and you can give them a try at your own risk

Wednesday, May 16, 2012

Reports Not Working After Upgrade to CRM 2011

I have worked on various upgrades and none have really had issues with the reports not working. I make sure that the SRS Data Connector is installed without fail. 


When you install CRM with the SQL server being separate from the CRM server, the setup does not automatically prompt you to install Reporting Services Extensions. You need to manually copy the  SrsDataConnector folder found in the CRM install directory to your SQL server. Run SetupSRSDataConnector.exe from there. This will prompt you to select the SQL server and the Reporting Server instance and go ahead and install all the reports for you.


In my case this was already done and yet the Sub-Reports did not work. The main reports would work but the moment we clicked on Show More Details that would require the sub-report to be executed, it would throw an error "Details could not be displayed as the sub-report could not be found". The Event viewer recorded the following error


Report render failure. Error: The item '/SharedReports/5.0.xxxx/{6177ee54-f42e-e011-a793-001ec9bbc670}' cannot be found. (rsItemNotFound)


Checking the Report Server using http://server/Reports showed that though the sub-report was present in that folder it had a different Guid than the one shown in the event viewer.


Since this was an upgrade, I thought it might still be using CRM 4 Guids and publishing the reports again would probably fix the issue. I found "PublishReports.exe" in the tools folder of CRM Installation directory. 


Executed that exe from command prompt using publishreports.exe uniqueorgname


It showed that it published some reports but that did not resolve my problem :(


I then came across this post that helped me reset the setting in MSCRM_Config database .


There is a setting in MSCRM_Config --> Organization table "AreReportsPublished". You need to set the value of this attribute to 0/False. This will be get the PublishReports to publish the reports once again.


After making this change, executing the PublishReports.exe tool helped in get my reports working again!


No matter how many upgrades you work on.... each one is a different case :)

Monday, October 10, 2011

Working with CRM 2011 Solutions

With Dynamics CRM 2011, Microsoft goes one step further in simplifying the process of moving the customizations from one system to another. In the CRM 2011 you can now simply export and import the customizations in the form of solutions. There are two type of solution in the CRM 2011.

1. Default Solution: This is the customizations of your entire CRM 2011 Organization.

2. Managed Solution: Managed solution is a packed and user can install it on their machine. The benefit of the Managed solution is that, it can be uninstalled if you do not wish to use any of its components any more. The deleting/uninstalling does not impact any other customization in the system. Unlike CRM 4.0 if you want to remove something, then you need to remove the fields from the Form, delete from the entity and remove the buttons from the ISV config. But in the CRM 2011, if you have imported the managed solution then you need to simply delete this solution, it will automatically remove all the components included in the solution like, Forms Customizations, Fields and Buttons.

It is advisable to package products as managed solutions.

3. Un-Managed Solution: We generally use the unmanaged solution during the development process. An un-managed solution cannot be deleted like the Managed solution. Changes made by importing the unmanaged solution are permanent and is included as a part of the existing entity customizations. If we have imported the Solution on any system as Un Managed, and if we need to remove the that, then we need to remove the each item manually from CRM.

Export the Solution:

1. Export the Default Solution: If you want to take a backup of your entire organization customization you can export the Default customization. To export the default solution, please open the CRM.

Go to the Settings --> Customizations, as shown in the below screenshot.



Now click on “Customize the System”, it will open the following window.




As shown in the above screenshot, you need to click on the “Export Solution” button, to export all the customizations from the CRM.

We generally export these customizations when we need to move all the customizations from one system to another. If you have any managed solution already imported in your organization. Exporting the default solution will not let you import this customization set on a new organization unless you import that managed solution on the new organization as well. The managed solution is not inherently included when the default solution is exported.

2. Export the Managed Solution: To export the solution as Managed, you need to create a solution. And add the required component in this solution.

To create the new solution, open the CRM and go to the Settings --> Solutions as show in the below screenshot.



Now click on the new button to create the New Solution. And you can add the required component in this solution. Suppose if we want to export the account entity customizations, then the solution will be as follows.



As shown in the above screenshot, we have created a solution in which we have added the Account entity. now you need to click on the Export Solution button to export the account entity customization.

In the Export Solution wizard, on the 4th Screen you need to select the option to export the customization as managed. As show in the below screenshot.



When you export the solution as a managed solution, it only exports that part of the entity customization that was not included in the default entity design. This means to say that only custom attributes or custom form layouts will be exported for the entity when the solution is exported as Managed solution.

When you import the managed solution it will merge these customizations with the existing entity design on the system where it is being imported. This allows for the original entity customizations not being lost or overridden with Import and export of customizations as was the case with CRM 4.0.

3. Export the Un-Managed Solution: To export the Solution as Un-Managed, you need to select the “Unmanaged” option, as shown in the below screen.




When you export the solution as Unmanaged, it exports the entire entity customization and when it is imported on another organization, existing entity customization on that organization would be overridden

Import the Solution:

To import the Managed/Unmanaged solution, please open the CRM, and Go to the Settings --> Solutions and click on the Import button. It will display the following window.



Now you need to Browse the .zip or .cab solution file to import the CRM 2011 Managed or Un-Managed customizations.

Delete or Un-Installing the Solution: To uninstall the Managed solution you need to delete the solution from the CRM. If you uninstall the Managed solution then all components which is installed by you managed solution will be deleted. Say for example you added 2 custom fields in the account entity as a part of a managed solution. If you delete/uninstall this solution from that system, then these two fields will automatically be deleted without impacting any other part of the entity customization.

To delete the solution, open the CRM and go to Settings --> Solutions and select the solution and click on the delete button. As shown in the below screenshot.




Issues faced with managing the solutions:
• Suppose if you install the Managed solution on the any CRM and this solution contains the some html web resources. And these are then manually added to the SiteMap and entity ribbons etc. Deleting this managed solution will give the dependency error. You cannot delete this solution because the components of this solution are used elsewhere in the project and not as a part of the managed solution. As shown in the below screenshots, we are trying to delete the below Managed Solution.



It will give the following error.



After clicking on the Details link, it will clearly shows the dependencies. As shown below.



• Also if you want to Transfer the plug-in steps from one machine to another machine through the Solution, you need to make sure that the plug-in assembly is set to be registered on the database. If it is set to Disk importing this solution on another system would result in error as this assembly would not be present on the target system