Unitek Microsoft CRM Blog

Direct from the Microsoft Dynamics Download Center, this guide contains comprehensive information about how to plan, install, and maintain Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0.

The Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Implementation Guide consists of the following documents:

• Planning Guide: This guide gives you the information and tools that help you get your organization ready for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0. It includes two main aspects of planning for a customer relationship management (CRM) system:
  • Technical: These topics focus on such areas as the supported topologies, system requirements, and technical considerations to address before you install.
  • Implementation methodology: These topics cover the business management, CRM requirements, and project management aspects that are needed when you deploy a CRM system. Additionally, there are several documents included that you can use as tools to plan the implementation of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0. These tools are in the planning tools folder where the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Implementation Guide is located.

• Planning Tools: The planning tools are 43 template, project, and worksheet Microsoft Office documents that can be used to help plan your implementation.
• Installing Guide: This guide provides the information that you need to install Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0, such as step-by-step instructions for running Setup, command-line installation instructions for silent installations, and guidance about how to remove Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0.
• Operating and Maintaining Guide: This guide gives you information about how to back up, restore, and provide data recovery for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0. Additionally, this guide provides troubleshooting steps for known issues.

Supported Operating Systems: Windows Server 2003

Other Requirements: Microsoft Office Word 2003 or later version, or a compatible viewer

Download Here [Microsoft Download Center]

Good Luck!! And as always, feel free to leave comments if you need any further assistance!

JH
Microsoft CRM Consultant
Unitek Microsoft CRM Services

After doing a number of upgrades of Microsoft CRM 3.0 to CRM 4.0, which went off without a hitch, one of our customers was anxious to get their system on the newest platform. This customer had a number of customizations and 3rd party add-ons that we needed to plan for. The customizations fell into the category of both “supported” and “unsupported”. The 3rd party software was from a well known vendor who had updated their products to support Microsoft CRM 4.0. Things were looking good!

After carefully backing up servers and also making disc images, we began the upgrade process. The story gets ugly at this point…

The customer had about 40,000 items in Workflow. Each and every one of these needed to be upgraded. This process took about 18 hours! But it finally did complete and we breathed a sigh of relief. “At least it finished!”

Next we worked on the unsupported customizations, mostly Jscripts. These were fairly easy as we knew exactly what we needed to change.

“We’re cooking now!”

Now we installed the 3rd party add-on software. This was accomplished fairly easily, even though the install documentation often referred to CRM 3.0 and directories within 3.0. But the upgrade did complete and the functionality seemed to be working.

Finally it’s time to install the Microsoft CRM 4.0 Outlook client. And now we come to a screeching halt.

No errors during install but not a single client can get CRM functionality! How can this be?

During the conversation with Microsoft Dynamics support, they asked if we had installed any products from the 3rd party vendor, mentioned earlier. Yes we have, but how can that effect the Outlook client?

No real explanation was given but Microsoft says they are working on a fix with the 3rd party vendor.

Thankfully we had backup images of the CRM 3.0 server and SQL server so the retro-grade wasn’t nearly as painful as the upgrade attempt!

How did your Microsoft CRM 3.0 to CRM 4.0 upgrade go?

DG
Microsoft CRM Consultant
Unitek Microsoft CRM Services

Lately I have been receiving dozens of questions about our Microsoft CRM consulting services therefore I decided to use this weeks post to share with you all some general information on what we provide to our clients.

If you are interested in receiving information on Unitek’s Microsoft CRM consulting services please visit us by clicking here.

Unitek’s Microsoft CRM consulting practice can provide systems analysis, installation and customization of your company’s Microsoft CRM implementation. Unitek has a long history of partnership with Microsoft both as a training center and information technology consulting company. Unitek is a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner and was the 2006 Microsoft Training Center of the Year.

Our Dynamics CRM 3.0 and 4.0 team members are all Microsoft Business Solutions Certified Professionals in:

• CRM Installation and Configuration
• CRM Customization
• CRM Applications

Unitek can provide consulting services in all phases for your Microsoft CRM implementation including:

Business and Systems Analysis

• Analysis of a company’s current sales and marketing processes and how those processes will be integrated into the CRM system.
• Some business processes may need to be changed for CRM but in most cases preliminary planning to customize CRM customized will need to be done to meet the company’s goals for the system.

Installation and Configuration

• Deployments in Multi-Server Environments
• Smooth Upgrades from CRM 1.2 and 3.0
• Integration with Windows Server 2003 Active Directory

Data Migration

• Unitek is Scribe Certified!
• Integration of CRM with SharePoint, Great Plains and legacy applications
• Expertise with integrating and data migration and development tools like SCRIBE and c360
• Data migrations from Siebel, GoldMine, ACT! and other popular data base applications.
• Connection of CRM back-end to corporate websites
• Unitek Consulting has partnered with c360 Solutions and Scribe Software to deliver custom Microsoft CRM 3.0 and 4.0 solutions. Get more information on c360 Solutions and Scribe Software.

Customization

• SQL Reporting Services
• Custom ASPX Pages Specialized
• Custom Client Side Code
• Customize your Workflow

Training

• Check Out Unitek’s Microsoft CRM 3.0 Boot Camp!
• Check Out Unitek’s Microsoft CRM 4.0 Boot Camp!

RM
Microsoft CRM Consultant
Unitek Microsoft CRM Services

Throughout my experiences instructing and consulting with Microsoft CRM, the majority of CRM implementations that I’ve seen and worked with, all look exactly alike! It doesn’t matter what industry they are in, or what they sell, or how they operate… the layout, look, and functionality are typically the same. Not all are setup this way; but the vast majority seems to struggle with deploying CRM to fit their needs. I like comparing it to walking into any Home Depot – it’s this huge open space that’s filled with potential and you have access to any tool you would need; but if you don’t know what you’re looking for, you’ll just end up walking the aisles, wondering why the ceilings are so high and why you can’t find anyone that knows what they’re doing. The only thing you’ll accomplish is buying that hot dog on the way out.

Sometimes, I’ll ask my students… “Imagine that you are working for Microsoft and you’ve been assigned the task of developing a CRM solution. The only catch is that the entire application must be universally applicable to all users.” So, how do you design an application that provides organizational management, produces measurable data, and has the ability to grow with the company…all the while, making it unique and personal to each organization?

Answer? You design it so that every facet, feature, add-on, plug-in, field, form, view, and entity can be customized. Using customization to its fullest potential allows those like “Mom & Pop Liquors” or “Wholesale Distribution Centers-R-Us” or even companies like “Hewlett Packard” to all use the same application and apply it directly to their business model. In my opinion, Microsoft nailed it with CRM 4.0.

I was recently asked to consult on a Microsoft CRM 4.0 implementation for an organic food distributor. They had only been working with CRM for a few months and were struggling with user adoption, overall functionality, and the knowledge of what could be done “outside of the box.” There were some custom forms, tabs, and other modifications being used, but the missing features were those that were specific to their unique business policies and procedures. After analysis of their situation, I gave my recommended customizations and they were excited to see that they were merely scratching the surface of what CRM could provide.

They wanted to have Microsoft CRM work for them right out of the box, but their willingness to recognize the infancy of their initial deployment allowed them to take a step back. Realizing that CRM would be ever evolving, (nothing is customized overnight) they were able to prioritize their “Critical Needs” vs. “Critical Wants”, which gave them a starting point for a successful implementation. Sometimes we just need to know what’s possible … and why we need it in the first place!

Statistics show us that over 50% of ALL CRM implementations FAIL. It’s not surprising, considering that most managers and executives tell me they are tired of hearing their employees complain that they won’t work with Microsoft CRM because CRM isn’t working for them. I truly believe that the majority of these organizations just aren’t shown how dynamic Microsoft CRM can be! It’s not anyone’s fault… it just wasn’t clear as to what they should have done back at Step #1.

I’m sure that most of us have either experienced or worked with Microsoft CRM setups like this, correct? Is the “out of the box” version so great that there’s no reason to tinker with it? NO! Are the default settings good enough to get the job done? Maybe for some, but probably…NO! Does it take time, thought, and some self-analysis to understand what you should do with CRM? YES! So take the time and make it yours. Or if you are the one making these customizations; make sure the priorities are set and you know exactly how CRM is going to work within their needs. Otherwise, you’re just going to end up leaving Home Depot…only to buy ANOTHER hot dog.

JH
Microsoft CRM Consultant
Unitek Microsoft CRM Services

Guess what? I will be co-teaching our 6 day Microsoft CRM 4.0 boot camp here in Fremont week of April/28. I look forward to meeting some of you face to face.

My main focus is on Microsoft CRM consulting so teaching is always a welcome change. I am excited to be able to share some of my field experience with you.

Here is some info on our Microsoft CRM 4.0 boot camp

• Award-winning boot camp was recognized by Microsoft (Northern California) district for contribution to customer and partner readiness
• 6 days of intensive readiness training & cert prep for MS Partners and Customers; covers 9 days of training
• 12-hours a day of Instructor-led training
• Hotel stay, shuttle and all meals for all participants (with the subsidized travel package - select locations only)
• Microsoft subsidies are available to U.S. and Canadian partners. Please call to get exact details of subsidy for your location.
• Read our outstanding student reviews for this event

Here is a list of dates and locations for our upcoming Microsoft CRM boot camp

For more information or to register please click here to visit our Microsoft CRM website.

RM
Microsoft CRM Consultant
Unitek Microsoft CRM Services

If you’re a Microsoft CRM Consultant and ever needed to work with Microsoft Excel for cleansing data you’ve probably encountered the unwanted formatting of certain characters like leading and trailing spaces, and more to the point, leading zeros. Of course any Office guru can remind you about the ‘special’ formatting on cells in excel like ‘zip code,’ but what if your experience in excel is just one stop in your data cleansing experience, and you don’t plan on using excel as the data source?

If you’re using Scribe as an ERP migration/integration tool like Unitek Consulting does, you’re probably in the habit of opening the .csv file to make sure your formatting kept the leading zeros on your zip codes intact – but of course excel does not store cell formatting changes in .csv files so you won’t see your leading zeros.

So let’s say you don’t open that .csv file, and use it as a source for your Scribe import (Scribe has an Excel Driver, but you can’t run SQL queries for your pre-operation step controls or data translations) without opening the file in Excel – you STILL don’t see your leading zero!
The problem there exists when your ODBC driver fails to capture the leading zero because it would rather see a VARCHAR field…
Solution:

Force Scribe to read your zip code fields that only have 4 characters by using the following formula expression:

IF( LEN( S1 ) < 5, SUBSTITUTE( PAD( S1, “R”, 5), ” “, “0″), S1 )

Where S1 is your zip code source field.

Please note that this is only one of several solutions, but if you are in the Scribe Workbench you can avoid lots of data cleanup in various other applications.

For more information about working with .csv files converted from Excel, please visit: Creativyst Docs.

Happy Migrating!!

MM
Microsoft CRM Consultant
Unitek Microsoft CRM Services

At Unitek, we cover the full gamut of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 and CRM 4.0

• CRM 3.0 & 4.0 Training
• CRM 3.0 & 4.0 Consulting
• and CRM 3.0 & 4.0 Everything Else…

For today’s blog, I would like to share with you a story from a recent discussion I had with one of our clients using Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0. They were having some difficulties setting up a QUEUE in Microsoft CRM 3.0 and were stuck in the process. They were doing everything right, step-by-step, but were missing a major part in the process and maybe there are some of you out there that are experiencing the same thing?

So, everyone say it with me… the first step is… Create the user. Simple process, just make sure you set the correct privileges and attributes.

If you’re using the CRM implementation guide, you’ll notice that they require you to DISABLE the user account. There is still some question in the greater CRM community as to whether or not it’s a required step; but do as Microsoft says here… disable the user account.

Next step? Add the queue into the CRM Application.

And this next step is where the struggles started for my client. After sending out a test email to the queue, they saw that nothing happened. They had reviewed the event logs on both Exchange and CRM servers, but there was nothing listed. They tried working with user privileges and registry keys, but to no avail. Because they had restarted the Exchange Router, IIS, and Exchange Server itself (Several times), the system admin got pretty upset because MOM (Operations Manager) was driving him up the wall with alert messages.

What step did they forget? Believe me, it’s an easy step to remember… You have to add mailbox rules to the user of the queue. Using the rule deployment wizard for this step. It’s that simple. Once the rule deployment wizard is finished, you can send out a sample email to test. If these steps were completed, you’ll see the email appear in the QUEUE you just created. Congrats! You’re now ready to go onto the next issue.

JH
Microsoft CRM Consultant
Unitek Microsoft CRM Services

Hello fellow Microsoft CRM 4.0’ers – today’s blog entry involves an issue that at least 3 implementations that I’m aware of are suffering. This issue sometimes appears when you import customizations and subsequently attempt to change the default public view for that entity.

In this scenario, I’ve renamed the “Accounts” entity to “Company” (a common customization) and according to the business requirements I attempted to change the default public view to “Active Companies.”

When this is completed we see two default public views for this entity: Continue Reading »

It happens often that you would want to access/update fields of other entities using jscript from either OnLoad, OnSave or OnChnage events. Here I am using SOAP calls to make this happen.

As a CRM consultant, recently I had to do a project that required using a read, check and update SOAP calls. I will provide a very simplified version of this project for this blog entry.

Scenario:
Company X sells widgets and not only they want to keep track of who they sell these widgets to but also they want Microsoft CRM to automatically generate a Serial Number each time they create a new widgets record. To keep it simple, we will use a simple Serial number format: WID1000 would be the first Serial number; WID1001 would be the second, WID1002 the third and so on.

Created a new custom entity named “Widget”. Related it to Account entity with a Parental relationship (Account being the parent). Created an attribute for the Widget entity and named it WidgetSerialNum.

Created a new custom entity called Counter to hold the next available counter value. Added three attributes to this entity:

1. “ItemType” to hold the type of the item we would want to create serial numbers for. In this scenario there is only one; Widget. The value is “Widget”
2. Prefix set to “WID” to hold the Prefix for the serial number
3. Countervalue set to 1000 to hold the next available counter value

Placed the following Code in the OnSave event of the Widget entity. All the instructions are part of the comments so you can just cut and past the code.

Continue Reading »

Unitek’s Microsoft CRM Practice not only specializes in CRM Certifications, but also has a large force related to CRM 3.0 & 4.0 Consulting Services. With that in mind, I’d like to talk a little bit about some of the issues that we have seen with other clients and the following topics will specifically address the Mail Merge Wizard within Microsoft CRM 4.0.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 Mail Merge was created to work only with Accounts, Contacts, and Quotes. The overall functionality was there, but the tool had some limitations and complications that Microsoft obviously felt needed to be changed.

• It did not allowing the user to easily create email templates or other letters, faxes, documents.
• It did not support Mail Merge for the Web Client.
• It did not support Quick Campaigns.

Just a few of the improvements made to the Microsoft CRM 4.0 Mail Merge tool includes:

• Automatic upload of templates from MS WORD. (all versions) MS WORD 2007 even includes a section dedicated to CRM Mail Merge E-mail templates!
• The ability to run with both the Outlook and Web Clients.
• The creation of Activities associated with the Mail Merge and upon completion, the listing of those completed activities in the History view.
• The ability to run Mail Merges for Quick Campaigns, which is very helpful for those quick email blasts and newsletter distributions.

Continue Reading »