Microsoft Dynamics CRM - Tips, Tricks and Add-ons

Sunday, March 7, 2010

How to check the actual error reported for a Workflow failure

When a workflow fails, all it shows in CRM is a window similar to the following.

This is very vague and does not help you in any way to identify the cause of the failure, especially if you were using a workflow assembly in the workflow.

To check the actual error reported during the execution workflow, you can search for the error code and message column of the System Job.

You can create an advanced find view as described below to get the error message.

- Go to advance find select “system job” entity with “all system job”.
- Change the condition to “Status reason=”waiting”
- Click on edit column
- Add error code, message, message name columns and save it

This view will list out the actual error message.

Well, wonder why this attribute was not added on the UI/form for the Workflow…

Tuesday, March 2, 2010

How to add scroll bar to CRM Dashboard accelerator

The CRM Dashboard accelerator released displays Dashboards in its Workplace. However there is one issue with it, that being that it does not provide scrollbars to scroll through the page to view all the available charts on the screen.

In this blog we have describe how to add the scrollbar for this report page.

For this we need to do some changes in the “sitemap” file and add one custom page with iframe control.

Steps are:
1) Create the custom page (DBpage.aspx) with following code.

<html>
<head>
<title>Dashboard</title>
<style type="text/css">HTML { SCROLLBAR-FACE-COLOR: #ffffff; SCROLLBAR-HIGHLIGHT-COLOR: #6699cc; SCROLLBAR-SHADOW-COLOR: #6699cc; SCROLLBAR-ARROW-COLOR: #6699cc; SCROLLBAR-TRACK-COLOR: #e3efff }
</style>
<script type="text/javascript">
//function will set the height and width of the iframe
function calcHeightWidth()
{
//initialize variables
var main_height = null;
var main_width = null;
var height = null;
var width = null;

// for all except Explorer
if (self.innerHeight) {
main_height = self.innerHeight;
main_width = self.innerWidth;
// Explorer 6 Strict Mode
} else if (document.documentElement
&& document.documentElement.clientHeight) {
main_width = document.documentElement.clientWidth;
main_height = document.documentElement.clientHeight;
// other Explorers
} else if (document.body) {
main_height = document.body.clientHeight;
main_width = document.body.clientWidth;
}
//set final height and width
height = main_height + 'px';
width = main_width + 'px';

//change the height of the iframe
document.getElementById('dashboardframe').style.height=height;
document.getElementById('dashboardframe').style.width=width;
}
</script>
</head>
<body onload="calcHeightWidth();" onresize="calcHeightWidth();" leftmargin="0" topmargin="0" >
<form id="form1">
<div id="MainFrame" style="overflow:auto;">
<iframe id="dashboardframe" visible="true" frameborder="0" src="http://crm-srv-01/reportserver?%2fCRM+Accelerator+Dashboards%2fSales+Manager+Dashboard&rs:Command=Render,menu=no&rc:Parameters=False;" >
</iframe>
</div>
</form>
</body></html>

After creating page, add this page under ”/ISV/NewFolder” location in the CRM web root.

2) Change URL of Dashboard subarea to be:
//Here we set the location of custom page
<SubArea Id="Dashboard" Title="Dashboard" Url="/ISV/NewFolder/DBpage.aspx" Icon="/_imgs/bar_bottom_ico_reports.gif" />

3) Clear the browser history and do iisreset to apply the changes and see the result as shown in below screen shot.

Thursday, February 25, 2010

How to Sort CRM views by more than one attribute

Quite often there stems a need to have the CRM views sorted by more than one column being displayed. Say you would first like to sort accounts by Type followed by City and then by the account name.

Using the CRM view designer, we can only provide the sorting for one column.

You can however achieve this by using CRM shortcut key combination of Ctrl+Shift+Mouse Click on the selected columns of the view.

By default this view is sorted by Account Type.

The Sorting works in the sequence in which the columns are clicked.

Since we are looking for sorting by Type à City à Name

First click on Type column then City and in the end Name. This should then give you the following results.

Hope this makes working with CRM views a lot easier!!!

Thursday, February 11, 2010

Experience with recovering a CRM database marked as SUSPECT

Unfortunately we had our CRM down because the CRM database was marked suspect in SQL. Had a tough time getting it back. Here we share our experience and the steps/commands that helped us get our system back up and running. These may not be the only way of fixing it and perhaps not everyone’s problem would be solved by following these but I hope some of the points below would perhaps get you closer to retrieving your data back.

- Stop the SQL server service.
- Go to Physical location of the suspected database and rename the database.
- Create new database of the same name to suspected database name.
- Remove the newly created database after this rename suspected database to original suspected database name
- Start the SQL server service.
- Open SQL server Management Studio and find “new Query”
- Click on new query , new command window will be open.(See below the screen)

- Select the master database.
- After that in command window type below the statements
o ALTER DATABASE SET EMERGENCY
o ALTER DATABASE SET SINGLE_USER
o DBCC CheckDB ('', REPAIR_ALLOW_DATA_LOSS) WITH NO_INFOMSGS
o ALTER DATABASE SET MULTI_USER

Once these commands are successfully processed the database would be available. Note that the DBCC statement above may result in some data loss if any part of the data is corrupt. But if you do not have a SQL backup for you to restore then this is the only option you have…

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Posted by: Inogic
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Please be free to visit the following links or email us:
Web: http://www.inogic.com
Blog: http://inogic.blogspot.com
Email: news@inogic.com
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Tuesday, February 9, 2010

InoLink: QuickBooks - Dynamics CRM Integration Version 2.0 Released

We have come up with the next version of InoLink: QuickBooks - Dynamics CRM Integration

InoLink: QuickBooks is an integration link developed to integrate QuickBooks with Dynamics CRM. After detailed evaluation of the feedback received over a period of time we have come up with this version.

What’s new in this version?

1. The general look and feel has been vastly improved for seamless integration with Dynamics CRM.

2. Better user experience in terms of use of Ajax for user feedback to processes.

3. Additional feature added to the Promote Account functionality to support the Alternate Contact and multiple address feature of QuickBooks.

4. Ability to unlink existing linked accounts from Dynamics CRM to QuickBooks in case you want to no longer link the two records.

5. It now supports import of QuickBooks product types such as Inventory, Non-Inventory, Services, Other Charges, Inventory Assembly products.

6. Huge changes in the Sales Order/Invoice promote functionality to account for the discount and tax calculations.

7. Ability to associate discount with Discount type of Line items in QuickBooks so that they are taken over to QuickBooks correctly.

8. Once an account is linked to a customer in QuickBooks, ability to calculate tax of the order/invoice based on the Tax % in QuickBooks has been provided.

9. Closes the Sales Order in QuickBooks when an invoice associated with it has been promoted from CRM. This makes sure that promoting invoices from CRM does not leave the Sales Order in QB open.

For detailed information on the features of InoLink: QuickBooks Dynamics CRM Integration click here