CRM 2011 SDK version 5.0.13 available

The MS CRM Team have released an updated CRM 2011 SDK version 5.0.13 which can be downloaded here 
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/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/jj863620.aspx

Quick Overview

• Custom workflow activities can now be registered in the sandbox and are supported by Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online.
• The Developer Toolkit for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 and Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online now supports Microsoft Visual Studio 2012.
• Added information about the new getClientUrl method. This method returns the base URL that was used to access the application. This is now the recommended method to use to access the organization URL. The getServerUrl method is deprecated.
• Updated the metadata browser to version 2.0
• Added a new topic for the new metadata query capabilities included in the Microsoft.Xrm.Sdk.Metadata.Query namespace.
• Updated the topic to include information related to support for browsers other than Internet Explorer.
• Added information about the new Like/Unlike feature. Updated information about default number of records that you can follow, and the maximum allowed number of characters in the post and the post comment. Also, updated configuration information about obtaining full functionality for activity feeds.
• Updated exported ribbon definitions for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011
• Added support for the Microsoft online services environment to connect to Microsoft Office 365.
• Added a new topic to address issues related to solution development when Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online includes features that cannot be enabled in an on-premises deployment of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011.
• Added a note to the Export an Unmanaged Solution section to indicate that, after Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Update Rollup 12 and Microsoft Dynamics CRM December 2012 Service Update, un-customized form definitions will no longer be exported with unmanaged solutions.
• Added new and updated information about using Windows Azure with Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 and Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online.
• Added a new sample to show a way to deal with the situation where portions of the Xrm.Page object load into the updated forms asynchronously so they may not be available to scripts in HTML web resources at load time.
• Updated these samples to build with newer versions of the Windows Azure SDK, version 1.7 or 1.8.
• A bunch of sdk samples have been added and others updated.

CRM 2011 Rollup 11 now available

The Microsoft Dynamics CRM Sustained Engineering (SE) team have been hard at work to get the UR11 release to us all on October 12 2012.

You can find the related Rollup 10 items here

• Microsoft Download Center:
  http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=34969
  
• KB Article:
  http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2739504
  
• Microsoft Update:
  http://catalog.update.microsoft.com/v7/site/search.aspx?q=2739504
  

Rollup 11 Build Number: 05.00.9690.2835

Dynamics CRM in the Field has a great post on this subject already including a podcast, along with a lot of other excellent articles, bookmark the site now. Podcast and Overview: Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Update Rollup 11.
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/crminthefield/archive/2012/10/05/podcast-and-overview-microsoft-dynamics-crm-2011-update-rollup-11.aspx

The CRM Team Blog also has a brief overview
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/crm/archive/2012/10/11/update-rollup-11-for-microsoft-dynamics-crm-2011.aspx

You can find complete CRM download links here on the CRM Wiki 
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/2550.microsoft-dynamics-crm-2011-resources-en-us.aspx

The Social Media Roadmap for Dynamics CRM

Check out this interview by CRMSoftware TV’s Lauren Carlson with David Pennington, Director of Product Marketing for Microsoft Dynamics CRM, where  they discuss where Microsoft is headed in terms of social. I have a feeling they are only scratching the surface and only time will tell how far Microsoft invest and advance in this area. If you are not already looking at Social then you are potentially losing out to your competitors and falling behind on capturing valuable information about your existing and future customers.

David Pennington Interview on CRMSoftware.TV  
http://www.crmsoftware.tv/videos/social-roadmap-dynamics-crm/

Microsoft Dynamics CRM Partner of the Year 2012

Microsoft have announced their awards to partners and the following list contains the Dynamics CRM Partner of the Year winner and finalists.

• Winner: PowerObjects
• Finalist: Accenture/Avanade
• Finalist: Navantis Inc.
• Finalist: Sonoma Partners

You can view the other category winners and finalists here
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/Press/2012/Jun12/06-25MSWPCPartnerAwardsPR.aspx

Dynamics CRM 2011 Rollup 9 Beta is available

Sometimes there are just too many labels for something and in this case we now have the Dynamics CRM 2011 Rollup 9 R8  Q2 Service Release CRM Anywhere  BETA available, essentially Rollup 9. You can now test your code against multiple browsers and check out the latest Activity feeds features along with a bunch of other cool features coming in this major release.

Make sure you check out the updated SDK download if you are interested in the code side of things.

You can download the Release Preview Guide here.

Check Girish Raja’s blog on MSDN 
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/girishr/archive/2012/05/09/microsoft-dynamics-crm-2011-ur9-a-k-a-r8-beta-is-here.aspx
 for all the links on how to get access and start learning about the new bits.

Or the PFE site at Dynamics CRM in the Field on MSDN
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/crminthefield/archive/2012/05/10/crm-2011-update-rollup-9-beta-has-arrived.aspx

 

Optimise Dynamics CRM 2011 using WCF Compression

IIS automatically compresses many types of content including script, images and css files to help improve network performance by minimizing the amount of data required to be transferred between the client and server. WCF responses which have a mimetype of ‘application/soap+xml;charset=utf-8’ are not compressed by default by IIS.

Dynamics CRM 2011 Outlook client uses WCF to retrieve data from the server and minimizing the network traffic across these clients especially when there are a large number of Dynamics CRM Outlook client users can have a positive impact on network load freeing up resource for other processes.

With WCF compression enabled you may see up to 30% reduction in response size and you can discover this by analyzing network traffic before and after it is enabled. The largest benefit that can be obtained from compression is by enabling SSL for your Dynamics CRM deployment, even for on-premise. Using SSL you may be able to gain an 80% reduction in the response size for your Dynamics CRM Outlook clients. The side effect to all of this is the impact on server resource in particular CPU when it performs the compression and with SSL, the encryption. Therefore it may not provide benefits in every scenario though weighing up the different aspects of your environment including the amount of users, and performance testing these features may show a positive increase in network performance.

Enable compression using a command line

• Open the Command Prompt on the CRM Server.
• Run the following command:

%SYSTEMROOT%\system32\inetsrv\appcmd.exe set config -section:system.webServer/httpCompression /+”dynamicTypes.[mimeType='application/soap+xml; charset=utf-8',enabled='true']” /commit:apphost

•  Reset IIS for the setting to take effect.

Enable compression by manually updating the ApplicationHost.Config

• On the CRM Server Navigate to: C:\Windows\System32\Inetsrv\Config\applicationHost.config and open it with notepad.
• Locate the Section: “<httpCompression directory=” and in that section find a child node titled <dynamicsTypes> and an entry that looks like this:
  <add mimeType=”application/x-javascript” enabled=”true” />
• Below that, add the following line:

<add mimeType=”application/soap+xml; charset=utf-8″ enabled=”true” />

• Save the file and reset IIS for the setting to take effect.

Enable Compression in IIS using Configuration Editor

• Open IIS on the CRM Server
• Open Configuration Editor and navigate to the system.webServer/httpCompression Section

• Choose dynamicTypes and open to add the new mimeType
• Add a new item and enter application/soap+xml; charset=utf-8 as the mimeType.

• Enable the mimeType and close the window.
• Select Apply on the Configuration Editor and then reset IIS for the setting to take effect.

Note: Ensure you test this thoroughly in a test environment before configuring your production environment with this setting.

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: 05.00.9690.1992

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.

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