Dynamics CRM Usergroup Sydney Returns!

The Sydney CRM usergroup was reopened last night(Microsoft building, North Ryde). Organised by Catherine Eibner and Guy Riddle, the event will be held every 4th Tuesday of every month.

This has been a long anticipated step forward for the Sydney CRM users and consultants and a great place to meet people in your field of business.

This month's discussions were over the newly release CRM Accelerators (presented by Guy), with detailed discussions on Notifications, eService and Events Management. The remaining Accelerators will be discussed next month.

Visit www.mscrm.com.au for more information and upcoming meeting event dates.

No need to retrieve entity in order to update attribute values

Scenario:

We have an existing account with a known GUID and would like to update their phone number.

Solution:

Common sense and traditional logic would often suggest to first open the specific account record, make modifications to all specific attributes, followed by update and close the entity:

ColumnSet cols = new ColumnSet();
cols.AddColumn("telephone1");
account myAccount = new account();
myAccount = oService.Retrieve(EntityName.account.ToString(), myAccountID, cols) as myAccount;
myAccount.telephone1 = "02 1234 1234";
oService.Update(myAccount);

The above code, though it works, contains a number of entirely unnecessary steps. For a far more efficient code block, see the following with an identical outcome:

account myAccount = new account();
myAccount.accountid = myAccountID;
myAccount.telephone1 = "02 1234 1234";
oService.Update(myAccount);

Note that there is no need to retrieve the targeted record before making modifications. As long as we set the entity ID to an existing GUID, the CRM SDK will take care of the rest. The stored value in the "telephone1" attribute will be replaced with the new value for the specified account GUID "myAccountID".

Action Cancelled: MSCRMKeyGenerator - 18949

When openning the CRM shortcut you promptly receive the message "Action Cancelled"

Error log details:

Source:   MSCRMKeyGenerator

Event ID: 18949

Current active key (KeyType : CrmWRPCTokenKey) is expired. This can indicate that a key is not being regenerated properly. Current Active Key : CrmKey(Id:c2e0c738-dc7a-dd11-b61e-00188b3466e9, ScaleGroupId:00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000, KeyType:CrmWRPCTokenKey, Expired:True.....

I recently came across this error a few times. On all occasions I had no luck in sorting it out the usual way:

Start services.msc and ensure that Microsoft CRM Asynchronous Processing Service is started.

If like in my case, you find that this service was already running, then save yourself hours of scratching and simply restart the SQL Server housing the CRM database. 

I'm yet to find the specific reason behind this error.

Holiday travel through India

I've just returned from holidays over the past couple of months. Its been a holiday long awaited and well enjoyed.

I've just returned from India as a first time tourist. I managed to travel the Ragestan region and south through to goa on a death trap on two wheels... Royal Enfield 500. I can't believe those bikes were built in the first place.. India is still mass producing these 1950's mostrocities as the best model of two wheel transport in the country.

the country is a living photograph.

I'm happy to report NO food poisoning AND was not shot a single time by terrorists.

Merry Christmas everyone.

ps: I've just discovered that all 8 CRM 4.0 Accellerators have been released in my absence. This is great news. I'm looking forward to playing with them over the next few days.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

Well here it is again... It feels only a month ago I recovered from last new year's frivolities.

Wishing you all the best this Christmas and new year!!!

More Microsoft Dynamisc CRM Accelerators Released

Another CRM Accelerator was released yesterday. 

They are available on CodePlex along with full source code as promised:

Download them now…

CRM Notifications Accelerator

Extended Sales Forecasting Accelerator

Event Management Accelerator

Incedentally, if you're not familiar with these tools, here's a video introduction to CRM Accelerators presented on Microsoft's Channel 9 by Ruben Krippner.

Announcing Release of Microsoft Dynamics CRM Accelerators

Ahh… Finally we have a release of 2 of the new CRM Accelerators. 

As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, the Microsoft CRM team had announced in a live meeting that 5 of the 8 CRM Accelerators were to be released very shortly. Just as I was about to fall off the edge of my seat, I found the release of the following 2 CRM Accelerators as of 30-Oct-2008: 

• CRM Notifications Accelerator
  
• Extended Sales Forecasting Accelerator
  

I guess 2 are better than none.

As a Microsoft Partner you can access these from the Partner Source website:
https://mbs.microsoft.com/partnersource/newsevents/news/MD_CRM_Accelerators 

All installation files, documentation and source codes are freely available and fully supported.