Microsoft CRM 2011 and Office 2013 Support

There are new versions of popular Microsoft products released recently such as SQL Server 2012, Windows Server 2012 and Windows 8, and finally this week – Office 2013!  Since the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 for Outlook is a very popular CRM client for many CRM users – you’d be happy to know that Microsoft CRM 2011 with Update Rollup 10 and up is compatible with Microsoft Office Outlook 2013 per this KB Article.  I would recommend installing Update Rollup 11 or later for the enhanced compatibility.

I have the following screen shot and guess what – it is running on Microsoft CRM Online, Windows 8 and the CRM Outlook Client in Outlook 2013!

 

Frank Lee
Microsoft Dynamics CRM MVP since 2006

Microsoft Office 365 and CRM Online Trial Setup

A common question I get asked is how to setup an Office 365 and CRM Online Trial together under the same account.  Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online shares the same administration, billing and provisioning platform used by Microsoft Office 365 vs. using LiveID in earlier CRM Online environments.  So setting up a Trial for both using the same account is pretty straight forward.

Here are the steps:

Setup the Office 365 Trial by going to this link and select the “Plan E3” Free Trial.  The “Plan P1” doesn’t offer the CRM Online option at this time.

After signing up for the Office 365 Trial, from the Office 365 Admin Portal, navigate to the Subscriptions >> Purchase area:

Look for the “Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online” plan, click on the Trial and complete the Trial request process:

Afterwards, the Microsoft Dynamics CRM entry is listed under the Admin Overview:

While Dynamics CRM is setting up – add a licensed Global Administrator user for CRM:

From the Office 365 Admin Portal, navigate to the Management >> Users >> select a user and click on edit >> select the “Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online” to assign the license to the selected user:

When Dynamics CRM setup is completed – you will see the “CRM” entry on the top portion of the Office 365 Admin Portal:

Click on the “CRM” and begin configuring your Dynamics CRM Online.

 

Now, if you have already started a Dynamics CRM Online trial and like to setup the Microsoft Office 365 Trial with the same CRM Online trial account – navigate to the Office 365 Admin Portal and login using the CRM Online trial administrator user account.  Then navigate to the Subscriptions >> Purchase area >> click on the Trial for Microsoft Office 365 (Plan E3) and complete Trial request process.

 

 

That’s about it to the Office 365 and CRM Online trial request process. I’d recommend the next step is to setup the CRM Online List Component for SharePoint to support document management in CRM leveraging SharePoint Online.  CRM and SharePoint work well together.

 

Frank Lee
Microsoft Dynamics CRM MVP since 2006

Microsoft CRM 2011 and Windows 8 Support

Windows 8 with the new Metro UI is a major change – I’m still getting use to it.  In terms of Microsoft CRM 2011 support – Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 with Update Rollup 10 is compatible with Windows 8 per this KB.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 with Update Rollup 10 is compatible with Internet Explorer 10 in Compatibility Mode per this KB.   IE menu >> Tools >> Compatibility View Settings >> Check the Display all websites in Compatibility View checkbox or enter the specific CRM URLs under Add this website:

 

For the Microsoft CRM 2011 Outlook Client Setup – need to enable Windows Identity Foundation 3.5 feature component to avoid the following error per this KB:

Cannot connect to Microsoft Dynamics CRM server because we cannot authenticate your credentials. Check your connection or contact your administrator for more help.

To enable Windows Identity Foundation 3.5 feature component go to Control Panel >> Programs and Features >> Turn Windows features on or off >> select Windows Identity Foundation 3.5.  You may need to reboot Windows 8.

 

Frank Lee
Microsoft Dynamics CRM MVP since 2006

Microsoft CRM 2011 and SQL Server 2012 Support

When you are installing a new Microsoft CRM 2011 On Premise – a common best practice is to install it on the latest version of the required software (Operating System, Database, etc.).  For the Microsoft CRM database – that would be on the Microsoft SQL Server 2012.

As of July 2012, according to Microsoft KB Article 2686619 – Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 (Update Rollup 21) and Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 (Update Rollup 6) are compatible with Microsoft SQL Server 2012.

Here are some notes:

• If you are installing the Microsoft CRM 2011 server on a Microsoft SQL Server 2012 environment – you will need to use the latest Microsoft CRM 2011 installation files that have Update Rollup 6 included.

 

• You may encounter the following error during the Microsoft CRM 2011 Reporting Extensions (SetupSrsDataConnector.exe) installation:

“The SQL Server Reporting Services account is a local user and is not supported”

If the Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Reporting Service was installed via default settings – then the service account is set to “ReportServer” – to resolve the issue, open the Reporting Services Configuration Manager and update the Service Account to something else such as “Local System”.

 

• Microsoft CRM 2011 Report Authoring Extension is only supported on SQL Server 2008 or SQL Server 2008 R2 BIDS at this time.  You will encounter the below error if trying to install the CRM BIDS Report Authoring Extension on SQL Server 2012 Data Tools (SSDT), SSDT includes BIDS functionality.  Workaround: Install SQL Server 2008/2008 R2 BIDS on a separate PC and then install the CRM BIDS Extension on this PC – the RDL that it generates is supported on CRM 2011 running on SQL Server 2012.

 

Frank Lee
Microsoft Dynamics CRM MVP since 2006

Microsoft CRM Mobile Express on iPad / iPhone Setting

A common Microsoft CRM mobile question I’d often come across – does Microsoft CRM supports iPad or iPhone?

As of June 11, 2012, the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Mobile Express client runs on iPad/iPhone.  Be sure to check the setting to allow for cookies:

 

 

There are other 3rd party Microsoft CRM Mobile solutions that support iPad and iPhone such as CWR Mobile.

The exciting news is that the upcoming Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Release 8 “R8” Q2 2012 service update will provide the ability for end users to access the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Web Client across all modern Internet browsers on various platforms.  This includes browsers such as Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, and Safari running on PC, Apple Macintosh or iPad.

 

 

Frank Lee
Microsoft Dynamics CRM MVP since 2006

Activity Feed – Auto Follow based on CRM Conditions via Workflow

The Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Activity Feed offers a very practical internal facing social communication tool.  Since it is produced by Microsoft and is available as a FREE solution – I’d recommend everyone to check it out and take advantage of it.

A good example would be to setup an auto follow workflow based on specific conditions – I want to follow CRM Accounts that are customers and are in the “California” territory:

Here is how to set the auto follow via CRM Workflow:

The “Follow” entity allows for our auto follow based on the above workflow conditions.

This entity only asks for two inputs – the regarding CRM record that the owner (user) wants to follow.

That’s about it.  If you are familiar with Microsoft CRM Workflow – then this rule takes about a few minutes to setup!

I know some of you would like to know how to remove existing follows “unfollow” – the easiest way would be to use the Microsoft CRM Advanced Find – the Follows entity is available to take action on:

 

 

Frank Lee
Microsoft Dynamics CRM MVP since 2006

How to Enable Queues to support Contacts and Use Workflow to add Contacts to a Queue in Microsoft CRM 2011

Recently, I have been involved with how Microsoft Dynamics CRM could help with the education sector.  One interesting scenario is how to reach out to each student at least once a month by a pool of different department representatives (Teachers, Counselors, Admission/Administrative/Registration/Finance Staffs, etc.) within the school that the student is attending.

A typical approach would be to create corresponding CRM Activities and add them to a queue.

However, another creative approach is to put the Student (CRM Contact) records into a Queue and have them accessible by the pool of different department representatives to take actions on.  This is possible with MS CRM 2011 – CRM Queues can support most of the CRM entities including custom entities.

Here is how to enable MS CRM Queues support for a CRM entity:

• Open the CRM entity General tab under customization and select the “Queues” option

Then we can use Microsoft CRM Workflow to assign the CRM Entity to a Queue based on some workflow event and condition:

• Use Create Queue Item to assign a corresponding CRM Entity to a specific Queue

 

Frank Lee
Microsoft Dynamics CRM MVP since 2006