Ignore this post.

A quick update on the CRM for VARs sample. The Shared Source stuff is with the administriviologists and lawyers. Hopefully we will have an answer soon. I'm meeting with a powerful team (yes they have big horns) tomorrow to discuss collaborating on the sample.

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

Tags: microsoft crm dynamics crm microsoft crm

The Boss links to the recent CRN Article which hints at CRM being Microsoft's next 1 billion dollar product. The size of the opportunity is certainly there and we (the team) along with Microsoft (the company) can certainly achieve it. What you won't often hear is that revenue is often used within Microsoft as a symbol of power, much like the antlers on a deer. Big $$ = Big Horns.

BTW: Props to The Boss for taking the blogging stuff seriously. I'm impressed at his recent posting blitz. Frank has an interesting take on blogging from a manager's perspective.

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

Tags: microsoft crm dynamics crm microsoft crm

I've made some minor changes to my RSS infrastructure today. http://www.philiprichardson.org/blog/rss (which is in fact http://philiprichardson.org/blog/rss/default.aspx) is now a simple redirect to my new FeedBurner Feed (http://feeds.feedburner.com/PhilipRichardson).

There shouldn't be any impact on readers: however if you do encounter any RSS strangeness please use this feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/PhilipRichardson. It is supplied from a private RSS feed on my site.

I've switched over to FeedBurner primarily for statistics. BlogBeat also has some FeedBurner integration. It will be nice to be able to give jaag (our Site Manager) some solid stats.

I doubt anyone will care: but CRM is now part of the Office Server Group. ALL our current plans, schedules, releases, milestones, office locations, features, code bases, brand, marketing team, price etc stay unchanged. The only difference is that our big boss has a new boss.

In my last job at Microsoft we used have a restructure every 2-3 months (once it only took 3 weeks to restructure again). In that group each restructure would cause complete havoc. I'm pleased to say that this restructure here in CRM was very smooth. Zero disruption! It's a testament to our sensible management and results oriented approach.

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

Tags: microsoft crm dynamics crm microsoft crm

If you subscribe to my blog because of 'CRM reasons' then you should check out my boss's new blog. It's probably worth subscribing to since he is more important than me.

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

Tags: microsoft crm dynamics crm microsoft crm

I've been playing around with Groove 12 over the last few days. Our SharePoint ran out of disk space and Microsoft's IT department has decided that we aren't allowed any more (we only have 7 freaking gig)! It's sad when a digital camera become a more attractive storage option that the official corporate repository. Needing somewhere to save stuff while our fearless release manager battles the IT trolls I turned to Groove 12.

Having not used previous versions of Groove I have no idea what is new. I found the interface easy to use and had no trouble figuring out it's features in <15 minutes. For some reason it needs it's own password and wouldn't let me save it (I think this option was denied by group policy). My main 'concern' with Groove is psychological. It's not clear to me where my files actually are. Is there a server? Is it on my laptop or my desktop? What happens if I loose both computers simultaneously? My mind began to race with all kinds of ridiculous data loss scenarios. Quickly I realised I was a victim of 'business change superstition' and an 'overactive analytical imagination'.

Groove will take some getting used to. But it looks like it will be worth the time investment. I'll send an update in a couple of weeks.

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

Tags: microsoft

A great deal of partners (OK ... maybe a dozen) have emailed me asking if I am going to WWPC. I won't actually be attending (it's my wife's birthday that week and to tell the truth I wasn't invited to WWPC). It will be a fun conference with lots of cool CRM stuff on show. If you do have a question or feedback which you would have sent my way you can always track down my boss who will be there (play nice now people).

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

Tags: microsoft crm dynamics crm microsoft crm

Adam has a great post about his recent PT Cruiser experience. I was about to roast him for bailing on gaming this week until I read this.

Ellie and I headed up to Vancouver on the weekend with some friends from Sydney who were passing through. We walked around town (Robson Street, Stanely Park, Gastown etc) and checked out a couple of bars/restaurants.

For dinner we headed to the Granville Room. The service was prompt and friendly and portion sizes were sensible (ie. small). Mixology is where they really let me down. My martini had so many ice flakes in it that it resembled a frozen lake. Their 'specialty' cocktails were OK but everything else was substandard.

After dinner we went in search of better cocktails. Down the street we found the Sip Restro Lounge which was nestled between a 25c peep show place and a store which primarily sold phone calling cards. Don't let the neighbours fool you: this place was chic, clean and comfortable. The cocktails were much better here (although they could do with a larger bar as many common spirits/liquours were missing). Worth going for a drink but I'm not sure that I would eat there.

Ben already blogged this - but it's big news. We now support SQL Named Instances. It's a little tricky to set up - so you need to work with support. Check out Ben's blog post.

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

Tags: microsoft crm dynamics crm microsoft crm

The 3.0.5 version of the CRM SDK has been released. You can download it here. Here are some of the highlights:

-Sample: Convert a dynamic entity to a core entity.
-Sample: Work with lookup form controls.
-Sample: Retrieve the state and status codes.
-Sample: Find the entity instance ID of a record for use in SDK methods and messages.
-The Security Roles and Privileges Appendix has a new section that contains detailed privilege information for the nearly 200 messages supported in the SDK. This section, which lists privileges by message, allows you to determine exactly which privileges are needed for each operation you can perform.
-Client Programming: Access the Microsoft CRM Web services from your custom scripts.

A big thanks to our User Experience (UE) team who made this happen!

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

Tags: microsoft crm dynamics crm microsoft crm

Adam Barr's fantastic Microsoft Code (a parody of DaVinci Code) is worth the read. I love the fact that Microsoft IT are the evil minions...

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

Tags: microsoft

Recently I had an unusual experience writing some reports for CRM 3.0. Normally it is very straightforward to author a SQL Server Reporting Services (SRS) report in CRM. You simply create the report in the SRS and use CRM’s Filtered Views as the data source. The Filtered Views are very cool feature of CRM as they implement the same read access privileges which our API/UI has. This ensures that users will only see records in reports which they have read access to.

Back to my unusual experience. I wanted to use the ‘Contextual Reporting’ feature of CRM 3.0. This allows you to use CRM’s filters on your own reports (eg. You are on the Account Form and you want to execute the report on that Account). To use this feature you need to alias you source table in a special way: FROM dbo.FilteredAccount as CRMAF_FilteredAccount. When you use this CRMAF_[Entity] table alias CRM actually rewrites your SRS command text when you upload the report and replaces your SQL with special parameters. You must upload the report from CRM (ie. Don’t use the SRS Report Manager or the SRS Web Service). It is the code in the CRM UI which handles the rewriting of the command text. Here is another gotcha: if you are using related entities in your report (ie. More than one data source) ensure that you use sub-reports. The CRMAF_ alias approach only works for one entity in the report. This little problem had me confused for a few days until one of our Dev Managers put me on the right track.

More info can be found in our SDK under the Report Writers Guide.

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

Tags: microsoft crm dynamics crm microsoft crm

This one one of the slickest hoaxes on the internet: Genpets. It doesn't look like a scam since you can't actually give them any money. I actual fact the whole thing is actually an art installation. I'm impressed at this innovative commentary on bioengineering. Via Adam.