CRM

You can read about the changes, fixes, and updates here, when the web caches catch up.

You can download the update here, again, when the web caches catch up.

You can read the announcement from the CRM blog here, right now!

The long awaited CRM DST patches are out here.

I'll be happy when March is over.

You can download it from here.

There has been a lot more added to the "V3C" update than just Vista compatibility, such as:
- Integration with the Office 2007 “Ribbon”
- Custom MAPI Store (no more PST file!)
- SQL Express Edition 2005 SP1
- Inclusion of all existing client hotfixes
- Windows Vista Support
- User Access Control
- GPO deployments
- Internet Explorer 7

You can read the general announcement here.

It looks like about 30 to 40 hot-fixes have been wrapped up into one nice downloadable package. If you have seen "Buffer Overflow detected!" or had trouble with IE 7, you'll want to apply this rollup.

Actually, I'd recommend applying the update even if you haven't seen those common errors.

Grab the update here.

If you are having this problem, here is the fix.

I can't say it any better than she can so I'm just going to link to her blog entry on it!

http://msmvps.com/blogs/bradley/archive/2006/05/30/98329.aspx

I really want a Smartphone as my next phone if anything for the Exchange features but this is also another compelling reason to get a Smartphone. CRM mobile client!

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=ea5a3566-7ec8-4afe-bbfa-91e7210c55c4&DisplayLang=en

The requirements overall don't look too bad - as long as you are running WM 2003, it seems like you are golden.

I've been looking into bridging our CRM 3.0 installation with the billing section of Quickbooks so we can do simple imports and exports of data between the two. So far, as far as I can tell, this might be more work than I initially suspected. Although not directly related to this, I did find a good write up on how the callout functions have evolved from 1.x to 3.x

I like doing little 'quickhack' widgets from time to time that do functions like this, but it looks like this will be more than just a quickhack.

A CRM-centric blog, and the callback info I talked about, can be found here: http://blogs.msdn.com/mikemill/archive/2004/12/09/279021.aspx

Think of Nancy Reagan and just say No.

I haven't pinpointed yet but there is a machine that acts as an Exchange frontend, providing RPC over HTTPS for the enterprise, and also functions as the frontend for CRM 3.0. For whatever reason, they do not get along. I would love to figure out why but for the sake of keeping things running, I'm going to move the Exchange frontend to another machine as soon as I can.

I'm not sure how common this setup is, but it could be I'm the only one trying to do this type of setup. I doubt it is a recommended setup but we currently don't have a choice at the moment.

I used to have a Dell Axim X50V but had to give it up when I changed jobs last year. If I had it, I'd probably be trying out this client since we're trying out CRM for internal use. There are a lot of things I like about CRM but there are also some things that don't quite make sense to me, but I'm sure they are done that way for a reason.

You can grab the client here:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=ea5a3566-7ec8-4afe-bbfa-91e7210c55c4&DisplayLang=en

I'm not certain that it is a supported configuration but it certainly made my laptop run a lot faster when I upgraded from MSDE to SQL 2005 Express. Simply install the CRM client, which in turn will install MSDE, then once you have sync'd with the CRM database, install SQL 2005 Express and tell it to upgrade your CRM database on your local machine.

I haven't done any real world time trials but the application responsiveness is a lot better after the upgrade. My laptop might be a bit of a strange one, with 2GB of RAM, but I think even RAM starved machines will run better with the new backend.

I don't know if it makes a difference, but I used the March CTP of SQL Express 2005 SP1.

Great idea. Once I get better versed with CRM 3.0, I am going to use this quite a bit I believe.

http://blogs.msdn.com/mikemill/archive/2006/03/24/560334.aspx

Is it possible to use SQL 2005 Express with the CRM 3.0 'fat' client instead of MSDE? I'm tempted to try it but I'm also worried that it might break my install. I haven't seen much mention of it but I've been such a fan of SQL 2005 over SQL 2000 that I'd really love to give it a shot.

I can't seem to find much on the internet about people trying it.

Please drop me a line if you figure it out.

It looks like you can run the server portion of it on SQL 2005 according to this link:
http://thenorwichgroup.blogs.com/mscrm/2006/03/sql_2005_and_ms.html#more

No mention of the client.

Integrate Microsoft.Net MapPoint and CRM with this add-on:
http://www.cwrmobility.com/Products/MSCRMMapPointIntegration/tabid/56/Default.aspx

Spell checker add-on:
http://www.cwrmobility.com/Products/DynamicsCRM30SpellChecker/tabid/71/Default.aspx

Image add-on:
http://www.cwrmobility.com/Products/DynamicsCRM30ImageAddIn/tabid/67/Default.aspx

I haven't tried them out yet but most likely will be shortly once we complete our CRM roll out.

I haven't had to do this yet, but I am sure I will have to at some point. We're working on a test deployment of CRM right now, and from what I can see, it is going to be pretty nice.

http://blogs.msdn.com/midatlanticcrm/archive/2006/03/08/Changing_Port_Numbers_in_Microsoft_CRM.aspx