Monday, March 15, 2010
CRM4 User Summary Report black background overtook entire report
Last week, I did a new CRM installation. After the installation and adding users, I usually run the User Summary Report just to double check if I got all users correctly setup with the appropriate security roles. When I ran the User Summary Report, I can only see a report with black background. I decided to export the report to excel and was hoping to work-around this viewing problem, the excel report showed up nicely. Digged around different forums and found it to be a known issue with IE8. If your environment is SSRS2008 being used with IE8 the user summary report is generated with a black background. However if you use IE7 or SSRS2005 then the issue does not occur. Since it is an known issue, we can expect a hotfix for IE 8 very soon. For the time being, use export to excel as a work-around.
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Using service account as CRM4 Web Application Pool identity
I have been trying to resolve a low priority Microsoft Dynamic CRM 4.0 unpleasant user experience for a little while and not going anywhere until today. The user experience is related to Workflow Associated view not returning records. The user can see all Workflow jobs from system job list but not in the Workflow Associated View. There was no error anywhere.
Today, I had to change the CRMAppPool identify from a user account to Network Service temporarily as someone disabled the user account in CRM and no one can login. As soon as this is changed, all users can log into CRM and able to see records in the Workflow Associated view. This lead me to think the original odd behaviour of Workflow Associated view not returning records is related to this CRMAppPool identity user account. So I did a few tests and here are the testing outcomes.
**CRMAppPool identity user account must be a CRM user or Internet Explorer will give user Server Erro in '/'Application - Login failed for user DOMAIN\username. To resolve this, set the CRMAppPool identity to use built-in Network Service account, recycle CRMAppPool and go back to CRM to add the user account. Then change the CRMAppPool identity from Network Service to the user account.
**CRMAppPool identity user account must be Enabled CRM user. If disabled, users will get "The system could not log you on. This could be because your user account or the Business Unit you belong to has been disabled in Microsoft Dynamic CRM." To resolve this issue, set the CRMAppPool identity to built-in Network Service, recycle the CRMAppPool. Re-enable the disabled user account and set the CRMAppPool back to the user.
**CRMAppPool identity user account must have at least 1 Security role assigned or user will get Licence Error in the Workflow Associated View.
**CRMAppPool identity user account should have System Administrator role assigned to work around the issue where Workflow Associated view not returning records.
If you are using the same user account to run the MSCRMAsynService, the same user account must be assigned a full license and system administrator role in CRM.
Today, I had to change the CRMAppPool identify from a user account to Network Service temporarily as someone disabled the user account in CRM and no one can login. As soon as this is changed, all users can log into CRM and able to see records in the Workflow Associated view. This lead me to think the original odd behaviour of Workflow Associated view not returning records is related to this CRMAppPool identity user account. So I did a few tests and here are the testing outcomes.
**CRMAppPool identity user account must be a CRM user or Internet Explorer will give user Server Erro in '/'Application - Login failed for user DOMAIN\username. To resolve this, set the CRMAppPool identity to use built-in Network Service account, recycle CRMAppPool and go back to CRM to add the user account. Then change the CRMAppPool identity from Network Service to the user account.
**CRMAppPool identity user account must be Enabled CRM user. If disabled, users will get "The system could not log you on. This could be because your user account or the Business Unit you belong to has been disabled in Microsoft Dynamic CRM." To resolve this issue, set the CRMAppPool identity to built-in Network Service, recycle the CRMAppPool. Re-enable the disabled user account and set the CRMAppPool back to the user.
**CRMAppPool identity user account must have at least 1 Security role assigned or user will get Licence Error in the Workflow Associated View.
**CRMAppPool identity user account should have System Administrator role assigned to work around the issue where Workflow Associated view not returning records.
If you are using the same user account to run the MSCRMAsynService, the same user account must be assigned a full license and system administrator role in CRM.
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
Interesting Statistics Tom Pisello, ITBusinessEdge.com, 12/2008
Today I received a newsletter discussed about some interesting statistics around workplace...
Organisations lose around:
* $1,250 per user in annual productivity because of time spent dealing with spam
* $1,800 unnecessary emails from co-workers
* $2,100 - $4,100 due to poorly written communications.
What does this mean to you?
Organisations lose around:
* $1,250 per user in annual productivity because of time spent dealing with spam
* $1,800 unnecessary emails from co-workers
* $2,100 - $4,100 due to poorly written communications.
What does this mean to you?
Monday, February 8, 2010
Microsoft Dynamic CRM 4 Event Accelerator Installation
Today, I have installed the Microsoft Dynamic CRM 4.0 Event Accelerator onto a brand new CRM4 deployment on Windows sever 2008 R2 64 bit server. During the installation process, I experienced 3 issues:
1. Unable to save changes to web.config file located in web virtual directory due to permission error. "You don't have permission to save in this location. Contact the administrator to obtain permission. Would you like to save in the username folder instead?" My login has domain administrator role and is the creator and owner of the folder. Resolved this issue by manually share the folder with myself! Some new Server 2008 feature!
2.When browsing the sample customer portal site, saw this error "...an attempt was made to load a program with an incorrect format". Found this blog "http://ts2community.com/blogs/larrylentz/archive/2009/08/07/crm-accelerators-and-sbs-2008.aspx" and replaced the microsoft.crm.sdk.dll and microsoft.crm.sdktypeproxy.dll files in the Event Management Web Site with the files in the sdk\bin\64-bit folder.
3. done a iisreset and browse the Sample Portal again, found "Object Reference not set to an instance of an object" error. Updated the sample portal web site binding to use the actual server ip address and all working now!
Now I can demonstrate the Event Management Portal to the end users!
1. Unable to save changes to web.config file located in web virtual directory due to permission error. "You don't have permission to save in this location. Contact the administrator to obtain permission. Would you like to save in the username folder instead?" My login has domain administrator role and is the creator and owner of the folder. Resolved this issue by manually share the folder with myself! Some new Server 2008 feature!
2.When browsing the sample customer portal site, saw this error "...an attempt was made to load a program with an incorrect format". Found this blog "http://ts2community.com/blogs/larrylentz/archive/2009/08/07/crm-accelerators-and-sbs-2008.aspx" and replaced the microsoft.crm.sdk.dll and microsoft.crm.sdktypeproxy.dll files in the Event Management Web Site with the files in the sdk\bin\64-bit folder.
3. done a iisreset and browse the Sample Portal again, found "Object Reference not set to an instance of an object" error. Updated the sample portal web site binding to use the actual server ip address and all working now!
Now I can demonstrate the Event Management Portal to the end users!
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
Microsoft Dynamic CRM 4.0 Marketing List Entity - Unused but useful attributes
The out of box CRM comes with many attributes. We can find most of them on the forms after successful installation. The remaining attributes maybe system fields or were created by the CRM team in the schema and waiting for us to use during customisation. Today I am going to talk about 3 attributes in the Marketing List entity that I have just realized their existence during an data migration of Marketing List and Marketing List members. They are:
1. Members Court: Courts total number of members in the marketing list including inactive members. The court happens each time the form is refreshed (by clicking "Save" button, open the form or simply hit "F5" on your keyboard). Adding or removing members will not trigger the court. You can also see the total member court on the "Marketing List Members" associated view (below the search box). Unlike the Members Court field, this information refreshes each time you add or remove members.
2. Exclude Members Who Opt Out: This is a bit field to capture information about whether to send marketing material to list members that prohibit sending of marketing material. For example: when this field is marked as "No", CRM will create activity for member(s) even if the member record (ie. Contact) has "Do Not Send Marketing Materials" marked as "Do Not Allow".
3. Ignore Inactive List Members: This is a bit field to tell CRM whether to ignore inactive marketing list members during propagation/execution. For example: when the field is marked as "No", CRM will create activity for any inactive member(s) during distribute campaign activities.
That's all for now.
1. Members Court: Courts total number of members in the marketing list including inactive members. The court happens each time the form is refreshed (by clicking "Save" button, open the form or simply hit "F5" on your keyboard). Adding or removing members will not trigger the court. You can also see the total member court on the "Marketing List Members" associated view (below the search box). Unlike the Members Court field, this information refreshes each time you add or remove members.
2. Exclude Members Who Opt Out: This is a bit field to capture information about whether to send marketing material to list members that prohibit sending of marketing material. For example: when this field is marked as "No", CRM will create activity for member(s) even if the member record (ie. Contact) has "Do Not Send Marketing Materials" marked as "Do Not Allow".
3. Ignore Inactive List Members: This is a bit field to tell CRM whether to ignore inactive marketing list members during propagation/execution. For example: when the field is marked as "No", CRM will create activity for any inactive member(s) during distribute campaign activities.
That's all for now.
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Last week I had 401.5 error when browsing CRM4 on IIS7 using a host header and was very lucky to have our internet network adminstrator Zubair to resolve this issue for me. Basically, this is what he did.
1.) We checked the spn (use Windows Support Tool) and the service account was associated with all the host headers correctly. Checked CRM website NTAuthenticationProviders (use IISMetaBaseExplorer) and it was setup correctly. Then use Microsoft Network Monitor 3.3 to monitor http traffic from the client and filtered for kerberosv5 error, found KRB_ERR_RESPONSE_TOO_BIG(52). Follow http://support.microsoft.com/kb/244474/en-us and added MaxPacketSize attempt to resolve the issue, did not help
2) Added BackConnectionHostNames regkey as per http://support.microsoft.com/kb/926642 , able to browse crm using host header mscrm from crm server itself. Still having 401.5 error when browsing host header from LAN.
3) Removed and re-added setspn -A http://mscrm crmserver_name
4) Forced Windows Authentication using NTLM by the following 2 cmd line
appcmd set congif /section:windowsAuthentication /enabled:true
appcmd set config /sectionLwindowsAuthentication /-providers.[value='Negotiate']
Finally got around the 401.5 error! Very happy now. What a great start of a week!
1.) We checked the spn (use Windows Support Tool) and the service account was associated with all the host headers correctly. Checked CRM website NTAuthenticationProviders (use IISMetaBaseExplorer) and it was setup correctly. Then use Microsoft Network Monitor 3.3 to monitor http traffic from the client and filtered for kerberosv5 error, found KRB_ERR_RESPONSE_TOO_BIG(52). Follow http://support.microsoft.com/kb/244474/en-us and added MaxPacketSize attempt to resolve the issue, did not help
2) Added BackConnectionHostNames regkey as per http://support.microsoft.com/kb/926642 , able to browse crm using host header mscrm from crm server itself. Still having 401.5 error when browsing host header from LAN.
3) Removed and re-added setspn -A http://mscrm crmserver_name
4) Forced Windows Authentication using NTLM by the following 2 cmd line
appcmd set congif /section:windowsAuthentication /enabled:true
appcmd set config /sectionLwindowsAuthentication /-providers.[value='Negotiate']
Finally got around the 401.5 error! Very happy now. What a great start of a week!
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
CRM4 Installation error parsing config file
Installed Microsoft Dynamic CRM4 (64bit) on Windows Server 2008, IIS7, SQL 2005, SSRS2008, ISA2006 environment with IFD enabled using a config file last week and experienced a few errors:
1. Error parsing config file - The config file was very simple. I pretty much just copied and pasted the parameters from the implementation guide. Found out to be the actual copy and paste caused the problem. When copy and past from Microsoft Word document to notepad, it did not translate the " properly. Replaced all the funny " from the config.xml file, re-ran the installation, this error did not pop up again.
2. Error Active Directory groups and an organisational unit cannot be specified in the configuration file - found out to be I don't need to use the Active Directory group parameter if the security groups are pre-created. Removed the parameter referencing to the Active Directory groups resolved this problem.
3. Followed every word on KB950100 and avoided 7 potential errors listed on the article.
4. After the installation, had a blank crm web.config file. Backed up the web.config, copied from another web.config from the CRM4 Demo VPC and it worked.
5. IIS error 401.5 when browsing CRM using a host header. Still troubleshooting this issue. Confirmed it is not related to NTAuthenticationProviders, setspns. Performed a Network Monitor trace, found to be Response Too Big for UDP. Will let you know later when this is resolved.
1. Error parsing config file - The config file was very simple. I pretty much just copied and pasted the parameters from the implementation guide. Found out to be the actual copy and paste caused the problem. When copy and past from Microsoft Word document to notepad, it did not translate the " properly. Replaced all the funny " from the config.xml file, re-ran the installation, this error did not pop up again.
2. Error Active Directory groups and an organisational unit cannot be specified in the configuration file - found out to be I don't need to use the Active Directory group parameter if the security groups are pre-created. Removed the parameter referencing to the Active Directory groups resolved this problem.
3. Followed every word on KB950100 and avoided 7 potential errors listed on the article.
4. After the installation, had a blank crm web.config file. Backed up the web.config, copied from another web.config from the CRM4 Demo VPC and it worked.
5. IIS error 401.5 when browsing CRM using a host header. Still troubleshooting this issue. Confirmed it is not related to NTAuthenticationProviders, setspns. Performed a Network Monitor trace, found to be Response Too Big for UDP. Will let you know later when this is resolved.
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