Dynamics 365 Outlook Client Not Rendering Views After September 2018 Update
The 5th September 2018 Office 365 update has stopped the Dynamics 365 Outlook client from rendering views.
This is not resolved by the ‘EnableRoamingFolderHomepages’ registry key that fixed a similar issue after the October update.
To get it working again, you’ll need to roll back to the previous update, then turn off automatic updates until it is resolved:
See the edit at the bottom for a better workaround!
Rollback the update
To roll back to the previous update, run the below from a command prompt
Read the rest of this entry »
Outlook Client Repeated Login Prompts Post V9 Upgrade
After your Dynamics 365 organisation has finally been updated to the July 2017 October 2017 December 2017 February 2018 V9 version, you may find that your Outlook client (full version, not the lightweight app) no longer works.
Uninstalling and re-installing the version offered via the ‘Get Apps’ page within Dynamics 365 doesn’t help as you are repeatedly prompted for your login when trying to configure the organisation.
Viewing the trace log gave the error:
Metadata contains a reference that cannot be resolved: 'https://crm_url/XRMServices/2011/Organization.svc?wsdl&sdkversion=8.2
This is because the Outlook client is still using the old SDK (8.2) which is still using SSL rather than the TLS1.2 protocol for authentication required by V9.
The solution is to install update KB4054414 after installing the Outlook client.
Silverlight no longer works in Chrome 42
In Google’s continuing effort to annoy me, starting with Chrome version 42, the Silverlight plugin no longer works. This is due to Google no longer supporting NPAPI plugins (see here).
To get around it until September 2015, you can use the below fix to re-enable NPAPI.
1. Type the below into the Chrome address bar and press enter: –
chrome://flags/#enable-npapi
2. Click on ‘Enable’ under ‘Enable NPAPI’
3. Click on ‘Relaunch Now’ when it appears towards the bottom of the screen
You’ve now got until September to re-write your Silverlight controls in a compatible technology. Good luck!
CRM Outlook Client Spell Check
Recently, a customer has found that spell checking is not available when typing into forms on the CRM Outlook client. Spell checking is built into Internet Explorer and works fine on the web client, so I wanted to find a way to get it working in Outlook.
Using this MSDN article, I found that adding a registry key may help. After some trial and error, the following key and value had the desired effect. Read the rest of this entry »
Chrome 37 breaks CRM 2011 and 2013 functionality
Google has removed a number of APIs from Chrome 37 which is causing a lot of issues with CRM 2011 and CRM 2013. So far I’ve noticed: –
- You can no longer add options to Option Set fields via customisation
- Changes made to an email in a workflow are not saved when the save button is clicked
- The ‘Upload’ button on the SharePoint list component no longer works
- Anything using the ‘window.showModalDialog’ function no longer works as the API has been deprecated
- Can no longer save field properties such as ‘Visible by default’
- Export to Excel no longer works
In order to fix the problem until Microsoft issue a real fix, you can re-enable the deprecated features by following the below: – Read the rest of this entry »
Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 Installation
Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 was made available for download earlier today. You can grab it from here if you’d like to try it out. Also, you can get the official implementation guides from here.
Since my CRM 2011 setup video proved quite popular, I thought I’d take the opportunity to record an updated version for 2013 while I setup my own development environment.
The video is embedded below, but I recommend watching it on YouTube in HD quality, otherwise some of the text can be quite hard to read.
I hope that you find it useful!
Reducing Bandwidth Requirements Via Compression
I’ve been looking at ways to try to increase the performance of our CRM infrastructure recently. I followed this Technet Optimisation guide some time ago, but thought it was worth a revisit. The tips here were great when I first configured our CRM environment, but that was almost 2 years ago now!
One thing which jumped out at me was the ‘Using Compression Techniques’ section. I remember following this in the past, but the section on ‘Dynamic Compression’ jumped out at me, as I don’t recall following before. It specifically talks about compressing responses sent to SDK clients such as the Outlook client. Standard HTTP compression does not do this, so since a lot of my our users use the Outlook client, I gave it a go.
Both the command line and GUI steps can be found in the Technet article, but here are the IIS 7.5 steps which I followed to enable it: –
- In Internet Information Services Manager, click the <Server name>, scroll down in the Features View to the Management section, and then start the Configuration Editor.
Read the rest of this entry »
Moved to WordPress
Unfortunately, Posterous is closing down, so I’ve transferred my blog to WordPress.
Some of the SQL and JavaScript formatting got lost during the transfer, so I’m currently in the process of checking it all over. If you find anything not working, leave a comment and I’ll get it fixed.
Thanks!
Restricting Hosted CRM Users From Browsing Active Directory
When adding users to CRM via the Add Multiple Users wizard, it’s possible to view all users in Active Directory and then add them as CRM users
In a hosted environment, this is not ideal, as admin users for each organisation will be able to see users from all other hosted customers.
With CRM 4, there was a method of restricting users to only browse users in a particular business unit (see here). Unfortunately, this tool does not work with CRM 2011.
By looking at an old CRM 4 instance, I had a hunt around to see which settings were actually changed by the config tool to see if they would still work in CRM 2011. Thankfully, I found where to add the settings and it still appears to work in CRM 2011.
Note: The rest of this post involves making changes directly to the MSCRM_CONFIG database and this is completely unsupported. Please only try this if you have your CRM databases backed up. Please try it on a test environment first. Read the rest of this entry »