Posted on May 16th, 2013%
Some would wonder why such a question is asked… but in my Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 environment, we do not require a First Name or Last Name on a Lead. When a Lead is qualified, users often click the buttons to create an Account and a Contact, even when they haven’t specified any contact-specific information (such as first and last name). What results is often a Contact with no name, and that contact is the Primary Contact for the Account. Ouch!
To fix this, we created a workflow on the Contact entity, which would deactivate the Contact if it had a Qualifying Lead, and had a blank First Name or Last Name. This took care of the Contact, but there was still a problem: the Account’s Primary Contact pointed still pointed to the nameless Contact we just deactivated!
Looking at the Audit History on the Account, we were able to figure out that, when . . .
→ Read More: Getting rid of nameless Contacts when Leads are qualified in Dynamics CRM
Posted on April 10th, 2012%
In the “oh my, how did that slip through?” category comes this one: in Dynamics CRM 2011, the ZIP/Postal Code field on the Address (CustomerAddress) entity is not searchable by default.
Weirder is that the ZIP/Postal Code fields on the Account, Lead, and Contact entities are searchable by default. Weird only because they use the same underlying table (CustomerAddress).
Keep this in mind when you wonder why you can’t search for additional addresses by ZIP code. Make that ZIP/Postal Code field on the Address entity searchable, and you’re good to go.
. . .
→ Read More: Dynamics CRM doesn’t enable search on Address ZIP/Postal Code by default
Posted on January 15th, 2012%
Anyone who has attempted to configure Dynamics CRM 2011 with an Internet-Facing Deployment (IFD) knows that it is no trivial task. Where there are blog posts that discuss setting up an IFD, and Microsoft documentation for configuring the IFD, they often assume that ADFS and Dynamics CRM are installed on the same server, and that there is only one Dynamics CRM front-end server. Unfortunately, real-world implementations don’t always follow that.
For example, take the following configuration:
- a Dynamics CRM front-end server on the internal network, providing services to internal clients
- a Dynamics CRM front-end server in an Internet-facing zone, providing services to external clients
- a separate ADFS server accessible to internal and external clients
Dynamics CRM with IFD requires a combination of ADFS relaying party trusts and DNS configuration to get things working. One caveat with IFDs is that the internal and external host names for the Dynamics CRM front-end servers must be different because, externally, the host name includes the CRM organization name. Where, internally, you may have https://icrm.contoso.com/crm, externally you would have https://crm.contoso.com.
Let’s flesh out our sample implementation and requirements:
- icrm.contoso.com is our internal Dynamics CRM front-end server, accessible only on the internal network
- ecrm.contoso.com is our external Dynamics CRM front-end server, accessible to our internal network and the public Internet
- adfs.contoso.com is our ADFS server, accessible to our internal network and the public Internet
- We have two Dynamics CRM organizations: CRM and CRM-Test.
- We want our internal and external (public Internet) clients to access CRM using the same URLs: crm.contoso.com and crm-test.contoso.com. In other words, we don’t want the two-URL problem outlined above.
The last bit has nothing to do with Dynamics CRM: it is all done in IIS. Let me explain how. . . . → Read More: URL Rewriting for user-friendly URLs with Dynamics CRM 2011
Posted on January 13th, 2012%
Working with Dynamics CRM 2011, I started getting an error when attempting to delete a managed solution:
Error deleting a managed solution: State code or status code is invalid
State code is invalid or state code is valid but status code is invalid for a specified state code.
The ErrorDetails.txt file states the following — note the text in bold.
Unhandled Exception: System.ServiceModel.FaultException`1[[Microsoft.Xrm.Sdk.OrganizationServiceFault, Microsoft.Xrm.Sdk, Version=5.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35]]: 1 is not a valid status code for state code SavedQueryState.Inactive on savedquery.Detail:
Error Code -2147187704
CallStack
at Microsoft.Crm.Extensibility.VersionedPluginProxyStepBase.Execute(PipelineExecutionContext context)
at Microsoft.Crm.Extensibility.Pipeline.Execute(PipelineExecutionContext context)
at Microsoft.Crm.Extensibility.MessageProcessor.Execute(PipelineExecutionContext context)
at Microsoft.Crm.Extensibility.InternalMessageDispatcher.Execute(PipelineExecutionContext context)
at Microsoft.Crm.Extensibility.ExternalMessageDispatcher.ExecuteInternal(IInProcessOrganizationServiceFactory serviceFactory, IPlatformMessageDispatcherFactory dispatcherFactory, String messageName, String requestName, Int32 primaryObjectTypeCode, Int32 secondaryObjectTypeCode, ParameterCollection fields, CorrelationToken correlationToken, CallerOriginToken originToken, UserAuth userAuth, Guid callerId, Guid transactionContextId, Int32 invocationSource, Nullable`1 requestId, Version endpointVersion)
at Microsoft.Crm.Extensibility.OrganizationSdkServiceInternal.ExecuteRequest(OrganizationRequest request, CorrelationToken correlationToken, CallerOriginToken callerOriginToken, WebServiceType serviceType)
at Microsoft.Crm.Extensibility.OrganizationSdkServiceInternal.Execute(OrganizationRequest request, CorrelationToken correlationToken, CallerOriginToken callerOriginToken, WebServiceType serviceType)
This error came about after we marked some of the out-of-the-box views as Inactive (like “Accounts: Responded to Campaigns in Last . . .
→ Read More: Fixing ‘State code or status code is invalid’ errors when deleting solutions in Dynamics CRM 2011
Posted on August 15th, 2011%
While working on migrating data from a legacy CRM system to Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 using Scribe Insight, I decided to set the owner of all migrated entities to a specific team (rather than the default, which is the Dynamics user specified in the Scribe connection). To do this seemingly would require one simple steps: to look up the GUID of the team, and set the value of the Dynamics CRM “ownerid” to that value.
To set the “ownerid” I used the DBLOOKUP command to look up the team by name, and return the teamid: DBLOOKUP( “MyTeamName”, “CRM”, “team”, “name”, “teamid” ). This worked fine, but on its own, Dynamics threw an error, saying that the GUID wasn’t valid.
The problem lies in how Dynamics manages owners: an owner can be a user or a team. The owner of an entity is assumed to be a user unless you change the “owneridtype” field, which . . .
→ Read More: Setting the entity owner to a team using Scribe Insight and Dynamics CRM 2011
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