eXtremeCRM 2012 Berlin

eXtremeCRM is the premier event focused exclusively on Microsoft Dynamics CRM and dedicated to advancing best practices and strategies for Microsoft Dynamics CRM organizations. There are two separate eXtremeCRM events held each year, one in Europe and the other in the United States.

After the successful eXtreme Prague in 2011 the next venue is Berlin coming up in February 2012. The event is held over a number of days and covers a wide range of subjects all related to CRM. There are 4 tracks including Sell. Deploy, Extend and the highly anticipated eXtreme Practice Leader Summit. There is something for everyone at eXtreme, if you’re a customer or partner, user or developer, sales or management, check out the agenda and see what best suits you.

There are some great speakers presenting in Berlin at eXtreme including 2 of my colleagues Ramon Tebar and Wael Hamze. These guys know their stuff and if you look at the speakers list you will see just how much experience is going to be there including Microsofties, MVP’s and other industry experts, the Ask the Experts session should be awesome!

The next eXtreme after Berlin is in Las Vegas during September-October 2012, if you can’t get there for that, then you should get to Berlin in Feb, learn something new and network with an exciting bunch of people.

Berlin ist Wunderbar!

CRM 2011 SDK version 5.0.9 available

The MS CRM Team have released an updated CRM 2011 SDK version 5.0.9 which can be downloaded here http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=24004 or viewed on MSDN here http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg309408.aspx Check out the release notes here http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh547453.aspx#bkmk_ReleaseHistory

In Summary the update contains

• Updated assemblies for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Update Rollup 6 and the Microsoft Portal developer toolkit and developer extensions.
• Information about creating localized dialog processes.
• New samples that authenticate the user with the web services without using the helper code
• New topic to help developers find information about using JavaScript with various features that support it.

Dynamics CRM 2011 Rollup 6 now available

The Microsoft Dynamics CRM Sustained Engineering (SE) team have been hard at work to get the UR6 release to us all.  

You can find the related Rollup 6 items here

• Microsoft Download Center: http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=28712
• KB Article: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2600640
• Microsoft Update: http://catalog.update.microsoft.com/v7/site/Search.aspx?q=2600640

Rollup 6 Build Number: 05.00.9689.1985

You can find Complete CRM download links here http://bingsoft.wordpress.com/2011/11/18/updated-crm-2011-download-links/

Important

• Update Rollup 6 cannot be removed. Specific database updates are applied in Update Rollup 6 that will not allow for uninstall.
• Future Update Rollups will require Update Rollup 6 to be applied before they can be installed.  This is so future Update Rollups can support uninstall.
• Full product installations on the download center will be replaced with new packages that include Update Rollup 6.  If CRM is installed from those packages, UR6 does not need to be installed.

CWR Mobility – Mobile dashboards at your finger tips

Many of you may be looking for a mobile solution for Dynamics CRM 2011 and from my experience CWR Mobility has it all. It supports Windows Phone, iPad, iPhone, Blackberry and Android devices. Here are some of the key features http://www.cwrmobility.com/mobile-crm/microsoft-dynamics-crm-2011-4-3-online-features

A great feature of the CWR software is the native dashboard support. CWR Mobile CRM 2011 smart clients make Dynamics CRM 2011 dashboards available to users as real-time mobile dashboards.

Dashboards on a mobile device are truly awesome, check it out and hopefully you or your customers will gain that competitive advantage.

CRM 2011 SDK version 5.0.8 available

The MS CRM Team have released an updated CRM 2011 SDK version 5.0.8 which can be downloaded here http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=24004 or viewed on MSDN here http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg309408.aspx

Check out the release notes here http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh547453.aspx#bkmk_ReleaseHistory

Updated CRM 2011 Download Links

Here is an updated list of available CRM 2011 downloads. It is good practice to have these files on a portable drive but it’s also recommended to have an updated list of download links.

Component	URL
Server	http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=27822
Outlook Client	http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=27821
Language Pack	http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=27819
Email Router	http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=27818
Report Extension	http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=27823
SharePoint List	http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=5283
Software Development Kit	http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=24004
Implementation Guide along with additiional Planning Tools	http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=3621
Update Rollup 5	http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=27820

Silverlight + XRM Book by David Yack MVP

Building the next generation of business applications using Microsoft Silverlight and Dynamics CRM 2011

Fellow MVP David Yack has produced the perfect guide to Silverlight with Dynamics CRM 2011. I highly recommend this book for people new to Silverlight or Dynamics CRM but I also think  those already working with either Silverlight or Dynamics CRM should check it out. I’ve been reading through it this past week and have been learning key things that will help during the design and implementation of my latest projects. I wish I had this book earlier, as my CRM tools on Codeplex could have really benefited from the details in this book too. It shows the knowledge and understanding David has of Microsoft’s latest incarnation of CRM along with Silverlight and how to integrate them.

David Yack MVP is the CTO of Colorado Technology Consultants based in Colorado. He is a Microsoft Regional Director and a Microsoft MVP for Silverlight. This guys knows his stuff…

For an overview of the book’s chapters check it out here, and here is a quick summary of chapter titles.

Chapter 1 – Using Silverlight with CRM 2011 
Chapter 2 – Getting Started
Chapter 3 – XAML 101 and Basic Layout
Chapter 4 – Silverlight Controls
Chapter 5 –Data Binding Basics
Chapter 6 – Application Navigation
Chapter 7 – Out of Browser Support
Chapter 8 – Application Composition with MEF
Chapter 9 – Other Silverlight Business Application Features
Chapter 10 – Enhancing the User Experience
Chapter 11 – Discovering SketchFlow
Chapter 12 –Interacting with CRM Form
Chapter 13 –OData Basics
Chapter 14 –OData Beyond the Basics
Chapter 15 – Using the WCF Service
Chapter 16 – Application Architectures
Chapter 17 –Silverlight Debugging

There is now no excuse for not producing high quality Silverlight apps when developing for Dynamics CRM.

CRM 2011 SDK version 5.0.7 available

The MS CRM Team have released an updated CRM 2011 SDK version 5.0.7 which can be downloaded here http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=24004 or viewed on MSDN here http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg309408.aspx

There are a number of things in this release that relate to the Microsoft Dynamics CRM UR5 and the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online November Service Release

•  A new organization of the content that highlights and separates the core SDK from developer extensions.
• A new section to collect the growing number of developer tools, including version 1.0 of the Developer Toolkit.
• Developer documentation for the new Activity Feeds feature.
• Over 15 new samples! See the complete list of new and updated samples and links to all  the new topics in the Release History on the first page.

There is loads to read and discover.

 

Dynamics CRM 2011 Rollup 5 now available

The Microsoft Dynamics CRM Sustained Engineering (SE) team have been hard at work to get the UR5 release to us all so please take a look at the CRM Team blog for further details. http://blogs.msdn.com/b/crm/archive/2011/10/25/update-rollup-5-for-microsoft-dynamics-crm-2011.aspx

• Microsoft Download Center: http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=27820
• Article: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2567454
• Microsoft Update: http://catalog.update.microsoft.com/v7/site/Search.aspx?q=2567454

Rollup 5 Build Number: 5.0.9688.1533

Important

You cannot remove Update Rollup 5.
Specific database updates are applied in Update Rollup5 that will not let you uninstall Update Rollup 5. You should back up your databases before you install this update.

Dynamics CRM Q4 Service Update

Update Rollup 5 also contains the Dynamics CRM Q4 Service Update features. For more information about the Dynamics CRM Q4 Service Update features, visit the following Microsoft website:

Microsoft Dynamics CRM: the road ahead

• Improvements to Dialogs (i.e. Lookup and Date fields included)
• User Access Auditing
• Multi series charts
• Dynamic Links in Emails and Dialogs

New Solutions on MarketPlace that require UR5 

Activity Feeds

http://dynamics.pinpoint.microsoft.com/en-us/applications/microsoft-dynamics-crm-activity-feeds-12884926310

Microsoft Dynamics CRM Activity Feeds provide real time notifications and quick sharing of information that the team cares about via quick and short updates. Activity Feeds enable a user to follow and listen in on important activities that take place around the people, accounts, contacts, leads, opportunities or anything else that they care about.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM Mobile

http://dynamics.pinpoint.microsoft.com/en-US/applications/microsoft-dynamics-crm-mobile-12884927739

Microsoft Dynamics CRM Mobile is a Windows Phone 7.5 app which brings Activity Feeds to your mobile device.

CRM 2011 Client Diagnostics Tool for On Premise

Previously only available for CRM Online, the CRM Diagnostics tool is now released with CRM 2011 Update Rollup 4 for On Premise installations.

It runs a couple of tests, measuring latency to the datacenter/server, bandwidth, and performs a few Javascript performance tests to measure the CPU/browser performance of the machine.

You can access the tool using the following URL after you install UR4 or later.
http://<serverUrl>/tools/diagnostics/diag.aspx

The latency and bandwidth test the download speed across the wire from the CRM web site to the client browser. A low latency and high bandwidth is ideal. If your values show a high latency and low bandwidth then your CRM experience may be slow depending on the extremity of the range. For some performance reading you can take a look here.

Optimizing and Maintaining Client Performance for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 and CRM Online
http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=23261

Optimizing Performance for CRM Online 2011
http://community.dynamics.com/product/crm/crmnontechnical/b/crmonlineteam/archive/2011/04/08/optimizing-performance-for-crm-online-2011.aspx – even though this is for Online there are some important points

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Performance and Scalability with Intel
http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=16673

Improving Microsoft Dynamics CRM Performance and Securing Data with Microsoft SQL Server 2008
http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=8438

Optimizing and Maintaining the Performance of a Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Server Infrastructure
http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=27139

The above documents should give you a solid understanding of performance relatedimprovements you can apply to your Dynamics CRM deployment.

The JavaScript test items are testing your CPU/browser performance of your machine. Ideally you want low values here and upgrading your IE browser to the latest version should give you the best results.

Happy tuning.

Cheers,

Rhett Clinton