Barrons is reporting that Goldman is recommending selling off your Salesforce.com shares. It's trading and $32 but its target price should be $23 – that is a 30% drop. But since when is this news? Marc Benioff, CEO and Founder, has been selling 20,000 shares a day for quite some time. Their stock has tanked over the last year. It was trading north of $70 last year. People are concerned about the effect of the revenue impact of service based apps, also their development platform is not taking off as hoped. 

http://seekingalpha.com/article/100465-salesforce-com-pricey-and-coming-down-fast

http://blogs.barrons.com/techtraderdaily/2009/04/01/sell-salesforcecom-buy-vmware-goldman-advises/trackback/

 

Scribe Insight Batch Files

Back in the day, we used batch files for tons of stuff, remember edlin?  I also remember using Copycon Autoexec.bat to create all the driver loads for NICs and mouse drivers. Oh the memories, no editors - just the command line and an a teenager's imagination.   Loading programs into your TRS-80 from a cassette tape;  getting your first modem, 1200 bps  2400 bps if you were lucky, all to download Oregon Trail from the local BBS; and talk some smack with the other Star Trek geeks; all the while we listening to the Police and Van Halen.

 

     

Well, I have found a good use for them again... to recycle the Scribe Services.  So here you go, 2 great batch files to have on your Desktop if you run Scribe Insight.

First to edit a batch file you need to right click on desktop and make a new text file.

 Then copy this text into the window.

net Stop "Scribe Monitorserver"
net stop "Scribe MessageServer"
net stop "Scribe EventManager"
net stop "Scribe BridgeServer"
net Stop "scribe AdminServer"  

Then save as

        StopScribe.bat

 Clicking on this file will stop all of the Scribe services on the box.

 Now you want to start them up too. 

 Here is the syntax for that file.

net start "Scribe AdminServer"
net start "Scribe BridgeServer"
net start "Scribe EventManager"
net start "Scribe MessageServer"
net start "Scribe MonitorServer"

Save as 

        StartScribe.bat

Now you have 2 icons on your desktop that will allow you to stop or start the Scribe Services with 1 click.   

 Note that the order of the start up and shut down process are important.  If you do it from the services control panel you start from the top down, and stop from the bottom up. 

I read the Microsoft Surface Team product blog. It always has cool stuff.  

Financial Services demo-

 

 Physics Engine Demo -

DaVinci (Microsoft Surface Physics Illustrator) from Razorfish - Emerging Experiences on Vimeo.

 The best of all – The Parody Ad

 From Microsoft Yesterday.

“Please be advised that the Americas Operations Center (AOC) for Microsoft Dynamics based in Fargo, North Dakota (USA) is currently experiencing extreme flooding and winter storm conditions that are expected to continue in the area over the next 6 days. Due to the gravity of this situation and for the safety of all AOC personnel, the physical business offices will be closing this afternoon and operating remotely with contingency staff off-site through tomorrow Friday March 27^th 2009 to enable employees to focus on flood efforts.”

Our thoughts and prayers are with our friends at Microsoft in Fargo.    

Directly from Scribe

“The Answerbook has been transitioned to the new Scribe Knowledge Base"

In speaking with our partners and customers over the past months the #1 request in support has been for us to offer more tools for you to help yourself. In response to this request one of the key changes we're making is to implement a new knowledge base as forums in OpenMind the week of 2/16/09. The key improvements to the new knowledge base are:

• Cleaner and more relevant knowledgebase articles
• Consolidated resources from multiple locations into one location: former Answerbook articles, technical workshop library, and the discussion forum
• Better search capability, syntax help and meta tag clouds for quick reference
• Scribe monitors will review submitted questions and answers, and once they have been verified the entry will be marked with a "Scribe Approved." This will ensure that readers can tell if content has been officially approved by Scribe, or if it is a helpful suggestion not yet verified by scribe.
  

All partners and customers can view the knowledge base in read-only mode without a login. Users with a login to OpenMind will be able to post questions and replies, get notified of additions to a chosen topic, and more. We have created a brief tutorial that describes how the new knowledge base works. View the tutorial now. Or visit OpenMind and the new knowledge base now.

Also In Scribe News:  They just announced that they have hired Microsoft Dynamics channel veteran John Gravely to lead the company’s Marketing and Product Marketing efforts. In his role at Scribe, John will be responsible for understanding market needs and opportunities, ensuring Scribe products meet these needs and opportunities, and communicating Scribe’s value to prospects and customers. In 2001 John founded c360 solutions, a developer of add‐on products, industry solutions and development tools for the Microsoft Dynamics CRM platform. In 2006, John engineered the acquisition of c360 by CDC Software, a division of CDC Corporation (NASDQ: CHINA). As CEO of c360 John grew the company from 2 people to a globally recognized brand with over 2,500 customers in 40+ countries, 800 resellers, products in 8 languages and receipt of the prestigious Microsoft Partner Choice ISV Award for 2005. Prior to starting c360 John was the Eastern Region Consulting Director for the Professional Services team of Onyx Software (currently Consona CRM), a mid‐market CRM provider.

Congrats to John on his new digs in “the Barn” in New Hampshire.  The weather this time of year is a bit different from his old office at C360 in Atlanta.  Also I want to find out if he was able to get any of that China.com IPO stock from 1999.  If you recall CDC was one of the Dot Bomb IPO’s. It went from 20-180 in less than a year, the stock split several time in the first year of trading.  It was highly anticipated as it was the first Chinese internet company to list on Nasdaq.  The much hyped stock crashed just as fast.  By Nov 2000 it had fallen back to 10 bucks. And continued to die a slow death.  Friday CDC closed less than a dollar at $ 0.88. Sounds like John made a great move. I have met John at several events and he always engaging. He wrote one of the first Microsoft Dynamics CRM books  “Using Microsoft CRM” with Laura Brown. It is sitting right here on my desk, maybe I’ll bring it to Convergence to see if I can get him to sign it.  

 These are round table discussions that I will help facilitate. Hope to see you all there!

Dear Blog Reader,
I am getting burried in project work and prep for Convergence 2009. Here is a taste of what is going on:

1) SL to CRM integration projects
    a) CRM to SL project Integration - we will have a product release at Convergence
    b) CRM Service activity to SL Time Card - working on it for a specific customer
    c) 4 Current integration projects...most are behind schedule

2) CRM Projects
    a) 2 Current CRM Discovery projects
    b) 1 ACT to CRM migration project
    c) On-site customer visit in Phoenix between now and Convergence

3) Convergence Prep
    a) Speaking for 2 sessions - Need to prep
    b) Testing SQL 2008 VPC so we can get our certification for SQL 2008 by Convergence

So the blog articles are slow in coming.  But keep looking as I will try to throw some tidbits along the way.

Thanks,
Pierre



   

Vendomer.com is now online.  I have been working on several projects where vendors are also customers and customers are also vendors.  I have called these relationships “vendomers.” Most of these clients are in a Broker / Dealer relationship or are in the model of providing brokered services. One is a major chemical distributor.  They have to purchase and sell pool chemicals. So they buy chlorine by the tankerfull, which then gets processed by their facilities into pool cleaner.  During the time they are in possession of a few million gallons of the stuff, the spot price of the commodity may go up. They can sell some of their stock to the same people they bought the smelly stuff from in the first place. So this previous vendor is now a customer.  

Why is this important and why is this a problem one may ask.  You may ask, “Pierre, did you see Lost this week?  It was so cool when Hurley…..”  and I will say “No, I have been theorizing on ERP to CRM integration infrastructure issues specific to reconciling Vendor and Customer to a single record in a CRM system.”  I really need to get a life….

But I digress. The issue is trying to address this from a CRM perspective.  That is, from the Dynamics ERP side a vendor is a vendor and a customer is a customer. They are different entities, they are different records, different keys. etc.  So in a situation like this the poor sales guys are trying to figure our how much we bought from where and how much we sold to a specific company.  

Our solution for the integration was pretty straightforward. We built an xreference between the CRM record ID and the Customer ID and another one between CRM ID and Vendor ID.  So 1 Record in CRM, 2 records in SL.  Next we modified the sales order header to indicate that the Sales order was either a Purchase Order or a Sales order.  We then wired up the 4 dts coming into the 2 objects in CRM from SL to CRM. By the magic of Scribe Insight we are able to look at a single record in CRM for the Vendomer and in the order history see Sales Orders and Purchase orders. 

See….  Vendomer. 

The CRMUG will be facilitating discussions again this year at Convergence. The sessions were just announced today. The schedule it still being developed; however, the topics are now all set.

• Extending Dynamics CRM with the SDK
• Successful Marketing with Dynamics CRM
• Deploying Dynamics CRM at YRC Logistics - A Case Study
• Using SharePoint with Dynamics CRM
• Data Migration and Integrations with Dynamics CRM
• Integrating Dynamics CRM with Dynamics ERPs
• Leveraging Dynamics CRM Workflow
• Upgrading to CRM 4.0 The Smart Way

EHTC Technology Solutions is a sponsor of CRMUG. We are encouraging all of our customers to get involved in the CRMUG.  EHTC continues it commitment to the CRMUG and hopes that you can find the time to attend one of these sessions.  Hope to see you there.

One of the unexpected behaviors of the Solomon Business Objects is that they validate Customer data during any sales Order insert. This can deliver some confusing errors because what appeares to be an error with the Sales Order is actually an error with the customer. Recently we ran into one site where the Sales Orders randomly failed. It became clear that the sales orders and the DTS were correct but the customer record was bad. By that we mean that the Default Ship to ID on several customers were NULL#.  

This Script will show you all the bad customers.  If this returns any records they should be corrected.

Select Custid, dfltShiptoID from SERVER.SOLOMONAAPP.dbo.Customer

where dfltShipToID=''

Last week I wrote that about 60% of Mac users are using Microsoft office. Actually that number is officially 77%, as reported in Mac World.

 http://www.techflash.com/Microsoft_Mac_Office_77_37139129.html

 
Stored Procedures are EVIL is an article released by Tony Marston, who is a veritable fountain of SQL knowledge and theory. I would amend his comments to say Stored Procedures (SPROCS) are sometimes a necessary evil.  I agree with everything Tony says. Periodically we need to use stored procedures in our solution. One time is when we use SPROCS to generate a SL customer number. A technical limitation of Scribe is that it only connects to 2 data sources. So during the step where we take the xml from CRM and insert it into the staging table for Infuse to process, we need to generate the customer number. At that exact moment, we need to query SL to see if the customer ID we are creating exists.  It is at that point we have a PROC that we have written to fetch the customer IDs and compare.

We have several triggers on the SL database. This is the most reliable Scribe method to capture net changes in any ERP system. Relative to CRM we do not touch the database at all. 

Here are some reasons to stay away from SPROCS:

Stored procedures are not customizable This is a big issue if you want an application where the customer can insert their own business logic, or where different logic is required by different customers. Achieving this with application code is a piece of cake, but with database logic it is a can of worms. Database triggers are hidden from the application A big problem with database triggers is that the application does not know that they exist, therefore does not know whether they have run or not. This became a serious issue in one application (not written by me) that I was maintaining. A new DBA who was not aware of the existence of all these triggers did something which deactivated every trigger on the main database. The triggers were still there, they had not been deleted, but they had been turned off so they did not fire and do what they were supposed to do. This mistake took several hours to spot and several days to fix. Version Control It is easy to control all changes to application code by running it through a proper version control system, but those facilities do not exist for stored procedures and triggers. How much damage could be caused if a stored procedure were to get out of sync with the application code? How easy is it to check that the application is running with the correct versions? How much more difficult would it be if the application you were supporting was running on a remote site with nothing more than a dial-up connection? This is a reason why some teams avoid stored procedures like the plague - it eliminates an area of potentially disastrous screw-ups.

In our client work, we deal with many  IT folks and they often want to go to triggers to build work abounds. I always recommend against it.  If we can do it in a DTS, at least  we will get some more awareness and control over what is going on under the covers. 

Here is a data flow diagram.  It shows where we are using SPROCS. 

Scribe has invented a method to call a SPROC as a step in a DTS. Which we use for auto Customer nuber generation.

In yet another article of brilliance titled “Why Microsoft must abandon Vista to save itself,” Don Reisinger, a self confessed Apple biggot, Vista users are encouraged to ditch Vista. In his article, he suggests that PC users fed up with Vista, like rats abandoning a sinking ship, are throwing in the towel on Vista and should be looking for alternatives like Apple.

Most of this mumbo jumbo about Vista is more about users' perceptions and marketing hype, than anything actually broken in Vista. If he is like most Mac people I know, this man would be the first to tell you that he can run Vista on his Mac. Granted, Microsoft (MSFT) has a major PR problem on its hands. But articles like these point out the bias that most tech writers have — they are in love with the Apple Computer.  

“As a daily user of Mac OS X, Ubuntu, and Vista, I'm keenly aware of what works and what doesn't. Mac and Linux work.” How about this quote: ”The road ahead looks dangerous for Vista and Microsoft must realize that with Mac OS X hot on its tail, Vista is simply not capable of competing at an OS level with some of the best software around. If Microsoft continues down this path, it will be Vista that will bring the software giant to its knees—not Bill Gates' departure.”

Come on — is he serious?  The people who own the 180 million computers that are currently running Vista are not going to go  “Oh my Digital Music Rights are too secure I need to sell my HP and buy an Apple, or Red Hat computer.”  The failure is in the softer marketing MSFT does versus the aggressive marketing of Apple. So there is tons of hype but the Mac vs. PC wars were fought and lost by Apple many years ago.  Apple still sells about 2% of the desktop computers in the country. That is not going to change drastically. Most all of the Apple revenue and profit improvements over the past 5 years are all due to the iPhone and iTunes. Actually, while the Window PC’s have increased overall sales 2% this year, Apple has shrunk 1%. Sales of the Apple desktop machines are down 35% this year. If it wasn’t for the iPhone and iTunes, Apple would be 1/2 the company, and riding a thin margin toward collapse. 65% of their revenue comes from the most competitive market in the world, consumer electronics. Which is why Apple’s stock is not looking so attractive now. Customers can too easily stop using their products. Apple Earning per share is about $1, where MSFT is about $2.  

I am not bashing Apple. I think they have a fantastic product, and their brand and marketing strategies verge on brilliance. Their customer loyalty is amazing. They are what Martin Lyndstrom calls a Smashable Brand, recognizable in any form. And just as Harley Davision now makes more on licensing their name to clothing companies than making motorcycles, Apple has reinvented itself again and again to match the needs of customers, taken huge risks, and built some great products. Although they lack the deep connection to business decision-makers and have not built out a compelling reason for running one's company on Apple (unless you are a tech writer in the Bay area, or run an ad agency). they have built something that is truly a product of passionate and brilliant folks.  

Microsoft loves them too. Several years ago I did an analysis for some clients on Microsoft profits. At the time, Microsoft actually made as much profit on the sale of most Apple desktops and laptops as did Apple. About 60% of all Apple desktops ran Microsoft Office. When you run the profit margins on a $1,500.00 computer, Apple makes about $120 profit on that sale. Office sells on the Apple for about 300 bucks. Microsoft made about 70% profit on that sale.  So 300 x .7 x .6 =  about $120. Gates knew this about 10 years ago when they invested about $5 billion in Apple; it is a cash cow for Microsoft. The numbers are a bit dated, but the fact remains that the business of Apple versus PC is a stupid fight and there are much more interesting things to discuss now. 

And on a technical note, most of the issue with Vista have been because too many IT professionals, AKA "Nick Burns, the Company Computer Guy,” have failed to implement the desktop using machines that matched the power required to run the machine. Vista was designed to run on a fast computer, with 4 to 8 GB RAM, on a 21 inch monitor. As most companies have found out, they lack the testing, training, and hardware to move to this platform. So when the projects fail, the IT folks put the blame on Vista and not their inability to correctly manage a proper  rollout. Sure, there are going to be technical issues with any upgrade so that is why you test, and plan, and train your users.  

Just as 8 bit computing ended, and then 16 bit,  the world of 32 bit desktop computing is coming to an end.  I was at a conference recently and spoke with several of my friends from Microsoft and the phrase they used was the “32 bit platform is in its sunset years.”  Microsoft is not committing their vast innovation developers in building out more 32 bit platform apps, that is why the push to Vista and Windows 7. The XP platform has reached it technical limits. Let’s move on people. Vista is here to stay, and Windows 7 will be out next year, and the band will play on. In the meanwhile, Apple’s stock price and future will remain a rollercoaster. Get over it people…..  Submit…. You will be assimilated into the collective…. Resistance is futile…You will love Windows…... Your life is over as you know it…. All your bases belong to us….. Submit to me… Worship me….. We are Windows……

Free CRM 4.0 Training Guide<< MORE >>

More Than a Million Without Power in New England After Ice Storm.  That puts our friends at Scribe without power.  As of 3:00 pm they were still not able to take phone calls, and their support site is down.  However, e-mail is working for them. So if you have any issues......   support@scribesoft.com

Stay warm guys, drive safe.  BTW if you ever are in Manchester, NH you need to stop by their office.  They literally work in a barn.  It is a 200+ year old barn that has been fitted for office space. It is very cool!

 

I use this thing every day. I read about 200 blogs and this application pulls them all together for me. However ,when they are broken like this.... Not good.   So much for Web 2.0....

I am working on an integration with SL multi currency  CRM multi currency.   I have many parts to this to manage so in this post I will just describe the products issues.

But we will still have issues with Phone number formatting, state code validation, and passing currency values into SL with the sales orders, and synchronizing the currency conversion rates between CRM and SL.   More on these issues in later posts.

For now let's put products into CRM using a SQL query, and Scribe DTS. 

1) CRM supports multi Currency

2) Each Order From CRM to SL needs to contain the target currency of the customer.   In our system US dollars, Mexican Pesos, or Italian Euros.

3) To be on a sales order in CRM in Pesos or Euros multi currency needs to be established.

Easy enough to do: Settings | Business Management | Currencies

 

4) Next Price List items need to be made for each inventory item in each Currency. For all 3 currencies this is going to call for a 9 step DTS.

• the First 2 steps pull in the Currency Conversion Rates as variables.  Step 3 is update/insert the Product Record. 
• Step 4,5 insert/update the Price List Item for Each Product on US Dollar Price List for the Stock Unit of Measure and then for the Alternative unit of measure converting the stock base price to the correct price based on unit. 
• Step 6,7 and 8,9 do the same as 4,5 but add the multiplier for the currency conversion as SL stock base price is expressed in the US dollar for this install. 
• This calls for a large update job 250 items with the standard SL UOM conversions turn into over 2000 steps.  
• When completed we will see a product on 3 price lists with each UOM expressed. 
• Here is a product where stock UOM does not Convert to any others. 

Here is one that has several Alternative UOM's available in SL.  Remember the SL rule is that any unit that can be converted to the SOTCK UOM is a valid Selling UOM.  This "Feature" makes for many interesting combinations.  

4) Now we have inventory Items in the System with 3 currencies, on 3 price lists, with converted prices, and ready to sell.  I haven't addressed rounding issues, and the date that the price conversions happen.  These issues will still need to be decided with the customer as we move thru the rest of the integration.  

 

Next I will show you how we get these on sales orders.  

Having your inventory items in CRM has been for a major boon to productivity for many of our distribution customers. What often happens is that the purchasing agents are constantly being asked by sales folks, "When are we going to have a given product in stock,?" and "How many are we expecting to get?"   It seems like a simple request.  The technical issue is that SL is set up to manage multiple warehouses (sites), and when you find the table that contains the inventory quantities you will find that there is a one-to-many relationship between inventory items and sites, and there are about sixteen different fields that represent quantity.

Our solution has been to build a view in the SL app database with the following criteria, and then build a DTS that plunks the ReqDate and QtyOnPo into fields on the CRM inventory items. In the Scribe DTS we are using a time-based DTS and using the lUpd_DateTime field with a Date Diff formula. The sync status fields normally used do not get fired during quantity updates, or Purchase Order Transactions until the product is received. So this solved several problems at once. 

Build a view in SL app:

SELECT TOP (100) PERCENT a.InvtID, SUM(a.QtyOnHand) AS QtyAvail, AVG(a.AvgCost) AS AverageCost, SUM(a.QtyOnPO) AS QtyonPo, a.LUpd_DateTime,

MAX(c.RequiredDate) AS ReqDate

FROM dbo.ItemSite AS a INNER JOIN

dbo.Inventory AS b ON a.InvtID = b.InvtID LEFT OUTER JOIN

dbo.POReqDet AS c ON a.InvtID = c.InvtID

WHERE (b.TranStatusCode = 'AC')

GROUP BY a.InvtID, a.LUpd_DateTime

ORDER BY a.InvtID

Overview

Video: General Overview - Time: 15:00
This video will provide a navigation overview of Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online via the Outlook client and Internet Explorer Web Browser.

Video: Sales Overview - Time: 12:00
This video will show the sales features in Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online from creating a lead that leads to an opportunity that then
leads to a quote.

Video: Workflow: Sales Process Overview - Time: 25:00
This video will show to how easy it is to utilize workflow to create a sales Process.

Video: Customer Service Overview - Time: 14:54
This video will provide an overview of the customer service functionality in Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online.

Video: Marketing Overview - Time: 21:04
This video will show the marketing features of Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online, including Campaigns, Marketing Lists, Campaign Activities and Responses, and Reporting.

Video: Service Scheduling Overview - Time: 13:55
This video will provide an overview of the service scheduling functionality in Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online.

Video: Reporting Overview - Time: 15:29
This video will show the reporting capabilities in Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online.

Video: Working with Accounts & Contacts - Time: 05:30
This video will show how to work with Accounts & Contacts within Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online.

Video: Internet Marketing - Time: 02:29
This video will show the new Internet Marketing capabilities with Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online.

The No Complaining Rule: Positive Ways to Deal with Negativity at Work

Jon Gordon

Negativity in the workplace costs businesses billions of dollars and impacts the morale, productivity and health of individuals and teams. In The No Complaining Rule: Positive Ways to Deal with Negativity at Work, acclaimed motivational speaker, Jon Gordon, shares an enlightening story that demonstrates how you can conquer negativity and inspire others to adopt a positive attitude. Based on one company’s successful No Complaining Rule, the powerful principles and actionable plan are practical and easy-to-follow, making this book an ideal read for managers, team leaders, and anyone interested in generating positive energy.

Both of my managers are excellent at this — staying positive! In all of my years, I have never seen more negative energy in customers and partners as now. This is a great book for helping folks stay positive.

 

Event:

CRMUG Workshop: Using the CRM Platform for Building Complex Business Applications -
The Sequel

Date and Time:

11/06/08 12:30PM - 2:00PM EST

Description:

Are you leveraging the integration of Dynamics CRM with the Microsoft Stack?  Did you miss our session on October 14th?  Here's your second chance! Microsoft Dynamics CRM is a robust platform that can be used to build different lines of business applications besides the out-of-box functionality of sales, service and marketing.

We’ll look at how one such business application could be built and how it can provide a seamless user experience by integrating with various technologies like WPF, Silverlight, SharePoint, and the Office Business Applications.  

On our first call in September, we were blown away by the free tools that are available to rapidly expand the CRM application. 

By popular demand, this sequel will focus on what can be done with the Accelerators just released from Microsoft. Join Girish Raja, Dynamics Technical Evangelist (http://blogs.msdn.com/girishr) and Reuben Krippner from the Microsoft CRM Team (http://blogs.msdn.com/crm/pages/bio-reuben-krippner.aspx) as they reveal the hidden power of a robust, integrated solution for your business.

 A new tat over the weekend.  

 

946649 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/946649/EN-US/)
Error message when you retrieve CRM schemas from a CRM 4.0 Web Service: "401 Unauthorized"
February 14, 2008

948045 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/948045/EN-US/)
Outlook stops responding when you track an Outlook contact in the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 client for Outlook
March 5, 2008

948035 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/948035/EN-US/)
FIX: The "New Record" button and the "Add Existing Record" button are missing in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0
March 12, 2008

948876 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/948876/EN-US/)
Internet Explorer stops responding when you use the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Web client to save or to send an e-mail message that has a large body
March 12, 2008

949141 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/949141/EN-US/)
Error message when you click "View in CRM" after you create an appointment in the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 client for Outlook: "At least one recipient could not be resolved to a record in the system"
March 12, 2008

948005 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/948005/EN-US/)
The OnSave event code or the OnLoad event code is not triggered after you modify a step in a workflow rule in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0
March 12, 2008

948155 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/948155/EN-US/)
A date or a time may not be converted to UTC time in the database for some time zones in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0
March 13, 2008

947860 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/947860/EN-US/)
FIX: Error message when you use the Response messages of the SetStateEmailRequest object to set e-mail messages to Completed in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0: "Crm Exception: Message: The specified sender type is not supported"
March 13, 2008

948008 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/948008/EN-US/)
A new follow-up activity is still owned by the original user after you change the user in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0
March 13, 2008

948157 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/948157/EN-US/)
Error message when you create a new record or open an existing record in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0: "Invalid Argument"
March 16, 2008

948002 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/948002/EN-US/)
The started time and the completed time are incorrect in workflows on an entity record in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0
March 17, 2008

948122 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/948122/EN-US/)
The collection of installed localized labels is incomplete when you use the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 metadata Web service to retrieve the collection
March 19, 2008

947401 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/947401/EN-US/)
Error message when you import customizations to another Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 organization: "Identifiers cannot be more than 50 characters long"
March 19, 2008

949086 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/949086/EN-US/)
You receive Outlook sync messages when you view a shared calendar or a shared contacts folder in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 client for Outlook
April 1, 2008

951179 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/951179/EN-US/)
Error message when you try to go offline in the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 client for Outlook with Offline Access: "Failed move data for entity"
April 6, 2008

949569 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/949569/EN-US/)
The Duplicate Detection function cannot detect duplicate records when you use a pre-update plug-in assembly in the update process in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0
April 17, 2008

948121 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/948121/EN-US/)
Outlook may stop responding when you exit Outlook, go offline in the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 client for Outlook, or go online in the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 client for Outlook
April 17, 2008

951180 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/951180/EN-US/)
Error message when you upgrade from Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 to Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0: "Action Microsoft.Crm.setup.Server.DeleteHotFixesAction failed. Object reference not set to an instance of an object"
April 25, 2008

948746 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/948746/EN-US/)
Error message when you execute a plug-in on a nondefault organization instance in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0: "The request failed with HTTP status 401 unauthorized"
April 27, 2008

948298 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/948298/EN-US/)
The records list in the Look Up Records dialog box is not filtered by a new contact in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0
April 27, 2008

948629 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/948629/EN-US/)
Error message when you try to go offline in the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 client for Outlook with Offline Access: "Failed move data for entity 'Plug-in Assembly' during action Insert, countRows=[Number]"
April 27, 2008

948172 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/948172/EN-US/)
Error message when you delete a queue item from a queue in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0: "Record is unavailable"
May 3, 2008

948588 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/948588/EN-US/)
Error message when you import customizations in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0: "Failure: bulkoperation: Invalid Argument"
May 4, 2008

951884 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/951884/EN-US/)
The Microsoft.crm.Application.Hoster.exe service stops running when you run the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 client for Outlook with Offline Access
May 5, 2008

950229 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/950229/EN-US/)
Error message when you try to add a product to an opportunity in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0: "An error occurred during pricing of a detail line item"
May 6, 2008

949347 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/949347/EN-US/)
The "Move Up" button and the "Move Down" button are not available when you open the Attribute page for a bit type attribute in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0
May 6, 2008

949925 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/949925/EN-US/)
A service case is not assigned to a user when you click Assign in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0
May 12, 2008

952945 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/952945/EN-US/)
The Privacy tab on the Set Personal Options page does not contain a link to the error reporting privacy statement in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0
May 12, 2008

951718 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/951718/EN-US/)
You receive script error messages when you browse through pages under the Microsoft Dynamics CRM folder in the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 client for Outlook
May 15, 2008

948604 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/948604/EN-US/)
Error message when you try to provision a language in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0: "Cannot insert duplicate key row in object 'dbo.LocalizedLabel' with unique index 'ndx_LocalizedLabel_ForSingleSelect'"
May 19, 2008

952724 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/952724/EN-US/)
You cannot view any e-mail messages in the folders after you install the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 On-Premise client for Outlook
May 19, 2008

951301 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/951301/EN-US/)
Error message when you try to go offline in Microsoft Dynamics CRM for Microsoft Office Outlook with Offline Access: "A SQL Server error occurred. Try this action again due to configured cascading"
May 29, 2008

947978 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/947978/EN-US/)
Some string variables are not passed to a custom Web form after you set a custom Web page as the default home page in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0
May 29, 2008

951206 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/951206/EN-US/)
A FetchXML statement that contains the <Link-Entity> statement may return incorrect data or incorrect data in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0
May 29, 2008

953185 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/953185/EN-US/)
The Resume function does not work as expected when you run the function for the Update Contract States job in the Turkish version of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0
May 29, 2008

950202 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/950202/EN-US/)
The translated labels disappear when you add a new value to a picklist field of an attribute for an entity in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0
June 3, 2008

951477 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/951477/EN-US/)
Error message when you run the "Send Direct E-mail" functionality by using a user-defined query in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0: "Either you do not have access to the record or the record does not exist"
June 3, 2008

949719 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/949719/EN-US/)
Error message when you track a received e-mail message or when you send a tracked e-mail message in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0: "An error occurred promoting this item to Microsoft Dynamics CRM"
June 5, 2008

947818 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/947818/EN-US/)
A field that does not have a name appears on the Non-Event Dependencies tab in the Form Properties dialog box after you create a new custom entity in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0
June 5, 2008

950006 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/950006/EN-US/)
An e-mail activity is not added to a case when you convert the e-mail activity to a case in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0
June 5, 2008

952925 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/952925/EN-US/)
Error message when you try to add a user to Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 from a trusted domain: "An error has occurred. Try this action again"
June 9, 2008

951274 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/951274/EN-US/)
Error message when you try to import an organization into Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0: "Exception System.DirectoryServices.DirectoryServicesCOMException (0x80072030): There is no such object on the server"
June 9, 2008

950414 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/950414/EN-US/)
Error message when you promote an e-mail message in the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 client for Outlook: "An error occurred while promoting a Microsoft CRM e-mail message"
June 9, 2008

951502 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/951502/EN-US/)
You cannot open an e-mail message that is sent from a Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 user
June 16, 2008

951919 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/951919/EN-US/)
A workflow rule does not continue even though the "Wait" conditions are met in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0
June 17, 2008

951197 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/951197/EN-US/)
The "ModifiedBy" field of a record is not automatically set when you enable or disable a user in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0
June 18, 2008

952149 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/952149/EN-US/)
The Male label and the Female label are translated incorrectly in the Czech version of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 (952149)
June 18, 2008

950542 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/950542/EN-US/)
Synchronous plug-ins do not respond to the events that are triggered in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0
June 19, 2008

949068 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/949068/EN-US/)
The Regarding field in an e-mail activity contains no value when you use a template that contains a Regarding field in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0
June 21, 2008

952018 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/952018/EN-US/)
A POP3 provider delivers hundreds of copies of the same e-mail messages to a Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 database
June 24, 2008

950374 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/950374/EN-US/)
Text appears in a single line when you open the Preview page for an activity in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0
July 16, 2008

955049 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/955049/EN-US/)
Error message when you try to go offline in the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 client for Outlook: "Failed move data for entity 'Saved View' during action Insert, countRows=13"
July 16, 2008

952019 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/952019/EN-US/)
Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 E-Mail Router service stops processing e-mail messages after a specific period of time
July 16, 2008

951711 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/951711/EN-US/)
An update is available for the Israel 2008 daylight saving time changes in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 and in the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 client for Outlook
July 21, 2008

951098 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/951098/EN-US/)
The Year view of the MiniCalendar view does not display the data correctly if you click to select the "Show week number in Calendar views" check box on the Customer Regional Options - Personal Options form in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0
July 23, 2008

948843 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/948843/EN-US/)
You may experience slow performance when you run or edit workflows in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0
July 24, 2008

950175 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/950175/EN-US/)
You cannot use Outlook as expected until all Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 add-ins are loaded
July 25, 2008

952815 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/952815/EN-US/)
Error message when you run an Advanced Find query in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0: "Microsoft CRM Unhandled Error Details: Server Error in '/' Application"
July 25, 2008

950088 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/950088/EN-US/)
E-mail messages are not sent from Outlook Web Access, from Outlook Mobile Access, or from Outlook Rules after you open the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 client for Outlook
July 28, 2008

948126 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/948126/EN-US/)
Not all workflows are displayed in a lookup window for the relationships of an account in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0
August 1, 2008

951538 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/951538/EN-US/)
The value in the Actual End column is incorrect in the "My Received E-mails" view in the E-mail type activities list in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0
August 1, 2008

951174 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/951174/EN-US/)
The content in the Notes tab may not be displayed when you click the Notes tab in an entity page in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0
August 13, 2008

952547 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/952547/EN-US/)
A record moves to the bottom of the grid area if you expand the preview section of the record in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0
August 13, 2008

950886 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/950886/EN-US/)
Error message when you start the report wizard or when you perform the Bulk Import activity in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0: "The logged on user does not have the appropriate security permissions to view these records or perform the specific action"
August 13, 2008

950154 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/950154/EN-US/)
Error message when you change the Parent Account field in an opportunity form in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0: "No Attribute"
August 14, 2008

954498 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/954498/EN-US/)
The marketing list still contains the members that you want to remove when you click Update Marketing List in the Manage Members page in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0
August 14, 2008

954800 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/954800/EN-US/)
Outlook stops responding when you open, close, reply to, or forward e-mail messages in the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 client for Outlook
August 14, 2008

952115 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/952115/EN-US/)
The dynamic value fields contain no content when you use an e-mail template to send a direct e-mail message in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0
August 14, 2008

Not only do we consult on CRM for our clients, we are also users of the system.  EHTC Technology Solutions is part of Echelbarger, Himebaugh, Tamm & Co., P.C. (EHTC), a professional corporation that was established in 1977 by Dennis M. Echelbarger. Since that time, our firm has grown to become one of the largest, most successful, local accounting firms in the Greater Grand Rapids area of Michigan, and we are a recognized leader in the business community. Our success is based on building partnering relationships with our customers. We are large enough to serve a wide diversity of customers but small enough to maintain personalized attention. 

We have highly customized CRM. It was installed in 2004 so we have had the system for 4 years.  So when CRM 4.0 came out we took a more formal approach to the upgrade.  Here is a copy of the punchlist we used.

On the day we went live with new system we went around to all the desktops and babysat the install.  All the issues we had were related to workstation problems.  Not CRM issues but problems with low RAM, users installing popup blockers, and the like. We have only 1 machine that refuses to run the CRM installer because it thinks it has the wrong version of office.  Overall a pretty good install by all accounts, which for our internal systems comes down to a measure of user interruptions.  To them, CRM was down for a Friday afternoon in July.   Little did they realize the energy and effort that went into a successful upgrade.     

This is what it took. This process took us 60 days to complete as it contended with other projects. 

Be sure to review the Summit schedule at www.crmug.com before you arrive in Vegas for your game plan.  A couple of items I’d like to highlight:

· There are 2 Conduit sessions scheduled for Monday morning (9/22) – this is a unique opportunity to provide feedback on the product directly to Microsoft.  Capacity is limited, so get there early!

· We are kicking off a new Special Interest Group!  If you are interested in participating in the our new BI/Reporting SIG, join us Tuesday morning (9/23).

· We are launching our first Regional Chapter! If you live in the Pacific Northwest (Portland, Seattle, Vancouver) you’ll definitely want to participate in this Regional Chapter.  Join us Tuesday morning (9/23). 

· CRM Support / R&D Concierge Desk – have a burning issue or question you need answered regarding Dynamics CRM?  Come talk to the expert team from Microsoft in the Expo Hall throughout the conference. 

Not to mention four role-targeted tracks, a Town Hall session with Microsoft CRM leadership, fantastic partner showcases, a bustling Expo Hall, and of course - networking with other CRM users. 

See you there!

 

PS.  I was married at 28. 

We have been an early partner sponsor of the CRMUG, a national CRM user group. This group is sponsored by Microsoft and many other organizations in the partner channel. But like any good user group, content is driven by end users.   Check out HTTP://www.crmug.com

The user group meeting is September 22 - 24, 2008, at the Green Valley Ranch Resort in Las Vegas, Nevada.

I will be there during this meeting facilitating the Customer Care Track, and also delivering a Break-Out Session presentation on:

    The Anatomy of an Integration between CRM and an ERP Application using Scribe. 

I think that it would be helpful for the users who are curious to understand how Scribe works to see an integration in action. We have written and deployed many Scribe integrations with SL, CSP, GoldMine, Act, Telemagic, and Intuit. I will show all the working parts, and have a conversation on architecture, options, and scale. It will be a great conversation — I will share all my "Tricks of the Trade."

Looking forward to seeing you all there. 

Microsoft does a great job of documenting applications. We use these guides often during training for new admins and power users.  

Product Documentation

· Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Implementation Guide http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=1CEB5E01-DE9F-48C0-8CE2-51633EBF4714&displaylang=en

· Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Server Readme http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=1DB2D16D-7885-4561-A461-20B948913B3F&displaylang=en

· Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 E-mail Router Readme (On-Premise and Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Service Provider Editions) http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=C54B428B-3565-4037-B4F3-C553F3288C45&displaylang=en

· Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Software Development Kit http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=82E632A7-FAF9-41E0-8EC1-A2662AAE9DFB&displaylang=en

· Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Logical Database Diagrams http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=B73912E8-861E-43AE-97B4-72B3E809F287&displaylang=en

· Developing ISV Applications using Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=1217EFFF-BE8F-4AC8-8E32-AF367305FBA9&displaylang=en

· Microsoft Dynamics CRM Developer Center http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics/crm/default.aspx

Books

· Microsoft Dynamics® CRM 4.0 Step by Step http://www.microsoft.com/MSPress/books/12643.aspx

· Working with Microsoft Dynamics™ CRM 4.0, Second Edition http://www.microsoft.com/mspress/books/10598.aspx

Community Resources

· Microsoft Dynamics Resource Center http://rc.crm.dynamics.com/rc/regcont/en_us/opdefault.aspx

· Microsoft Dynamics CRM Technical Community https://community.dynamics.com/crm/home.aspx

Training

· Microsoft Dynamics Sure Step information available on PartnerSource (registration required) http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=88066

· Available on PartnerSource (registration required)  https://mbs.microsoft.com/partnersource/training/

· Available on CustomerSource (registration required)  https://mbs.microsoft.com/customersource/training/

 

Hello Dear Readers! This is Pierre's editor. Pierre is off on a well-deserved vacation for the next two weeks. So, I just wanted to let you know that he's away and won't be able to respond to any comments until he gets back.

We hope you are enjoying the rest of your summer!

Sincerely, Teri Stora

Test that the creation of orders in CRM moves to SL as Sales Orders.

· Create an Order in CRM.

· In CRM, under the Sales menu, select Orders.

· Create a new Order.

· Enter Information in the highlighted fields as shown below:

  -Green highlights are REQUIRED fields
  -Yellow highlights are integrated fields

NOTE: When non-required fields are left blank, SL will use its default values to populate these fields.

NOTE: Although many of the Product fields are not listed as required, it is required that every Order have at least one Product or SL will kick back an error code to Infuse. (You do not need to test this.)

NOTE: Infuse is not set up to accept “Write-In Products”. Only use “Existing Products” in the Orders. Customer work can be done to make Infuse work for Write-In Products, but it is not part of the Out-of-the-box product.

· When you are finished with the creation of an Order, save the record and click “Submit Order”.

NOTE: The Order will not be queued to create one in SL until the “Submit Order” button is pushed.
NOTE: After the order is submitted, it will be disabled in CRM.
NOTE: If there are multiple Price Lists, select the “Solomon” Price List.

REPEAT THESE STEPS, USING VARIATION OF DATA, UNTIL SATISFIED.

The below screen shot s should be used to understand to various scenarios that can be used when creating an order. Mix and match these scenarios when testing orders.

Creating the Order Header

The Order header information must be entered and saved before you can create product for the order. Below are three screens shots showing the required and integrated fields.

Creating the Order Detail/Products

Once the Order header information is saved, you can add the line items/products to the order. Below are screenshots with brief explanations of the various scenarios that should be tested for line items.

This screen shot uses the simplest entry for a product line item by using all the default values. There are simply three required fields.

Here a Manual Discount has been added for this product line item.

Here the Override Price is selected, enabling the Price Per Unit field to be used over-riding the default system price of this product line item.

Here a Unit (UOM) is used other than the default. The pricing information should reflect the appropriate Price List Item information for the UOM Conversion.

Submitting the Order

Save the Order with the Line Items and click on Submit Order. This will queue the Order to be synched with SL. Here are two screen shots showing the Order after submission as it is waiting to be synched with SL and after it has been synched. Notice the different Status and Order Numbers.

NOTE: I am not sure why the “Total Amount” dollar amounts differ in the two screen shots.

Review the Sales Orders as they were created in SL to see that the information came across accurately. Here are a few screen shot to show where the information will be found.

NOTE: There is some incompleteness of the DTSs at the point that these screenshots were taken. Some of the information, such as Shipping and Billing Addresses that were entered in CRM were over-written in SL the Default Shipping and Billing addresses.

Revising the SL Sales Order

Use the SL Sales Order created above and revise various information and see that it is also changed in CRM.

Test that the creation of an Account in CRM moves to SL as a customer.

· Create an Account in CRM.

· Set the Relationship Type to “Customer”.

· Be sure to include data in all the fields as shown below.
Enter different phone numbers, street info, cities, states, etc in all fields to test that the correct values are being mapped.

· When you SAVE the record it will be queued to create a customer in SL. The SL Customer ID will have the same first three letters as the Account Name plus five numbers appended to it. The system assigns the numbering starting with “00001” and will increment by 1 until it finds a unique value.

NOTE: The Account Number field will only have a value after it has integrated with SL.

NOTE: On the creation of a new Account, the Credit Limit will be set to Admin Hold in SL regardless of how it is set in CRM.

NOTE: The Credit Limit will not integrate from CRM to SL.

REPEAT THESE STEPS, USING VARIATIONS OF DATA, UNTIL SATISFIED.

Check that the data moved to SL just as it was entered in CRM. You don't need to check for proper text casing (UPPER CASE, lower case, Proper Case, MiXEd cAsE, etc.), but the screen should have similar casing throughout. Below are screen shots of where the data will be presented in SL.

Creation of SL Customers that move to CRM

Once you have tested the creation of CRM Accounts that move to SL, test the reverse situation of creating Customers in SL that become Accounts in CRM.

REPEAT UNTIL SATISFIED.

NOTE: Credit Limit and Status will update from SL to the CRM Account. Also, the SL Customer ID will populate the CRM Account Account Number field.

Modifying CRM Accounts that will Update SL Customers

Update, all, but at random, linked fields in a previously created Account. Make sure that the changes are automatically made in SL.

REPEAT UNTIL SATISFIED.

NOTE: The Credit Limit and Credit Hold fields will not be updated in SL from CRM.

Modifying SL Customer that will Update CRM Accounts

Update, all, but at random, linked fields in a previously created Customer. Make sure that the changes are automatically made in the CRM Account.

REPEAT UNTIL SATISFIED.

This is the first in a series of integration testing scripts.  As we release the next version of Infuse for SL 7 and CRM 4 we are releasing our testing documents. This will help you get a feel for what is integrating, also what to look for in your integrations, as your installation may vary a bit. 

Infuse 4.7 is the platform that integrates CRM 4 and Dynamics SL 7.0 SP1.

Testing Infuse 4.70 Inventory/Product Integration

NOTE: This is a single direction integration. Infuse only integrates Inventory from SL to CRM. Any changes to Products in the CRM system will not updated SL.

Test that the creation of an Inventory in SL moves to SL as a Product.

· Open Dynamics SL (SL).

· Select Inventory from the SL menu.

· Select the Inventory Items (10.250.00) screen.

· Create an Inventory Item in SL.

· Create an Inventory Item ID that is unique and easy for you to remember and track.

· Be sure to include data in all the highlighted fields as shown below.
When you SAVE the record it will be queued to create a Product in CRM. The CRM Product ID will be the same as the SL Inventory ID and the CRM Name will be the same as the item Description.

NOTE: The SL item must be a “Stock Item,” so be sure to always have that check box checked.

NOTE: There will be at least one and likely more than one Price List Item create in CRM for each SL Inventory Item. See details below.

NOTE: SL will have additional fields that require data, other than the ones that are highlighted below. As a guide, use the picture below to help select the fields for data input. If you miss a required field, SL will give you a message letting you know that additional data is required. It will often take you to the specific field requiring data.

REPEAT THESE STEPS, USING VARIATIONS OF DATA, UNTIL SATISFIED.

Open the Sales area in CRM and under Products, search for the Product ID that matches the SL Inventory Item you just created. Make sure the data came across correctly.

When an item is created in CRM, there will be at least one Price List Item created and possibly more. In SL, there are Unit of Measures (UOM) set up so that SL can sell, purchase and receive items in UOMs other then the default stocking amount. For instance, the sample item listed in this document has the SL Stocking UOM set to EA (each). In order to sell, purchase, or receive the item in a UOM other then each, the UOM Conversion chart is used. See the screen shot below. It shows that the UOM of Dozen will convert from EA (each) by multiplying by 12 (also see the sample listed and highlighted at the bottom of the screen shot).

In order to be able to sell the item in these different UOM in CRM, a Price List Item must be set up for each UOM that applies to an item. Please review the UOM Conversion screen in SL and see that a Price List Item is created for UOM that converts from the SL Stocking UOM in SL.

From the CRM Product window, with your test product listed, select the Price List option in the left menu. You should see a Price List Item for every UOM that converts from the Stocking UOM in SL.

NOTE: There will usually be the 1-to-1 conversion of a UOM to itself, such as Each to Each.

Open each Price List Item by clicking on the icons (as highlighted in green above). You should see that the Amount field is the SL Stock Price times the UOM conversion. Example: If the stocking price of EA is $100 then the Amount if the Dozens Price List Item should be $1200 ($100 X 12)). See screen shot below.

Modifying SL Inventory Item that will Update CRM Product

Update various linked fields in a previously created SL Inventory Item. Make sure that the changes are automatically made in the CRM Product. Repeat until satisfied.

Create SL Unit Conversions for Various Stocking UOMs Products.

Create new Unit Conversions in SL for UOMs used as the Stocking UOM in the SL Inventory Items. Check that these new Unit Conversions create new Price List Items for related CRM Products. Repeat until satisfied.

Example: Below the UOM of “Peck” was created to convert from “EA” at a Conversation Factor of .10000. Since the SL Inventory Item of “BLC Test Item 002a” has the Stocking UOM as “EA” a new Price List Item should be created for the associated CRM Product. See series of screen shots below. Notice that the Amount field for the CRM Price List Item is $10 ($100 X .1).

Customer experience initiatives are boosting the bottom line of our clients daily. The desire to manage the experience a customer has with your company becomes the guide to most successful CRM implementations. Before you install any software, particular attention has to be paid to understanding what needs to be managed, and how we are going to measure and manage that success. So here are some suggestions I have gleaned from recent projects.

8.75 Key Recommendations:

1. Build a Diverse Team: Customer experience initiatives teams are often comprised of people who are responsible for customers across the organization. We suggest a diverse group from sales, marketing, customer care, administration, and management.

2. Design Processes from the Customer’s Viewpoint: Mapping the customer experience requires your team to walk in the customer's shoes for a while. The exercise will reveal the difficulties that customers have working with you. Build a touchpoint map that lists the touchpoint, customer importance rating, and customer satisfaction rating for each one.

3. Actually Listen to the Customer: Feedback is a better indication of faulty processes and procedures than surveys. The challenge is not how to solicit feedback, but actually listening and taking action on the suggestions. Confronting internal process managers with raw customer feedback can be very painful. However, when the changes are deployed as the customer suggests, this needs to be communicated to employees and the customers who offered the feedback. Customer communication is a two-way street. They need to hear back from you that you heard them and that you worked to improve their experience.

4. Get Up Close and Personal Personalization is complex, and complexity can mean increased costs for the company. But increasingly, customers are expecting an Amazon.com experience. Organizations mastering offerings and services tailored to customers' expectations are beating their competition by almost every measure. Reward customer loyalty with personal attention and friendly, helpful, and caring employees.

5. Build Institutional Memory: Ensure that information gleaned from a customer at one interaction is not forgotten later on. Customers hate repeating their stories. From their perspective, they think we all work together and know everything about them because they just told the last person at our company the same information. So they get irritated when the next touchpoint in their journey does not know what happened before.

6. No Sacred Cows Allowed: Extending hours, or giving web access to order history are typical first steps, but organizational improvements often take courage, innovation, and risk. The team should be transparent and clear, open-minded and inclusive. Basically, everything should be on the table and nothing should be so sacred that it can not afford to be changed. This is where a committee structure can often be detrimental to success, as a committee will often skip over process improvements that are too hard, even though the reward may be very high. Failure needs to be allowed, and risk need to be taken.

7. Get An Attitude Adjustment: I have stated often that the lowest paid employees in a company have the highest effect on a customer’s perception of value. Training employees to how to behave with customers on the phone, in person, or in writing will make a good experience better. It is personal “one on one” interaction that defines the core customer experience.

8. Eat The Whole Enchilada: Taking charge of the experience from end to end is not an easy task. Expect resistance and barriers from people. Many of the managers that are stake holders in their specific processes fail to realize that their process, although important to company policy, may be negatively affecting the customer. You will find these the most difficult issues to deal with.

8.5 Pull Up A Chair You Are Going To Be Here A While: You may want to change team members every six months but this process will never be complete; it is a journey not a destination. The process is a continuous quality improvement, unless you never expect your customer’s needs or wants to change. This process of improving the experience will keep going moving as long as customers needs and wants change.

8.75 Embrace The Ambiguous: Solutions to effective customer improvements are locked up in the heart of your customers. What improvement is going have the good ROI, or please customers enough to stay longer, or spend more money with you is often a mix of common sense, innovation, and failures. There are a lot of “Best Practices” that consultants are can bring to the table. The ones that work best vary from project to project.

Remember that most of your customers like working with you. Let their wishes, feedback, and direction be your guide.

Family time this last weekend, very "Middle America".   After Church we took a trip to Ludington, Michigan.     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludington%2C_Michigan  We visited 2 lighthouses. 

First was the Ludington Light, a 57 foot breakwater light. Built in 1924, it has been in operation since. It is at the end on the Ludington pier and an easy walk from the parking lot. 

 

 

Next, we walked up the beach to the Big Sable Point Light. This is 112 foot tall and about a 2 mile hike up the dunes.  The weather was perfect for such a walk.  About 55 degrees with a steady wind coming off the big lake.   All the kids and the dog, too, took the walk.  We got there just before they closed.  So we climbed all 130 steps to the top and got to spent about 20 minutes in fellowship with the lighthouse keeper.  He told us all about how the building was constructed, and what the life of a life keeper is like. This lighthouse has a group of volunteers that man the place all summer.  They get to stay in the lighthouse during the evening and during the day they give tours and help keep the place maintained.  So we got to hear all about the history of the house, the keepers and the like.  I love that stuff.  I am always reminded of my Dad and his work as a Docent at the museum.  During his final few years he was a fixture at the Grand Rapids Public Museum giving tours and explaining the history of our fair city.  So I guess that is where I get that history bug from. Given our close proximity to Lake Michigan, we love going to the beach with the kids.   Michigan has more shoreline than any other state in the lower 48 states, more boats per capita, and more lighthouses than any other state in the country. We have a family goal to visit every lighthouse in Michigan.  We have visited most of them in Southwestern Michigan, but we have many more to go.   I'll post some pics of the kids and the dog, as soon as I get my hands on the camera. 

 

 

 

 

With 64 Bit version of windows being released several months ago Scribe has stepped it up a notch.  They have just released a new edition of their integration engine.    Many improvements in the product and we are working thru the testing.  One item that seems to have fallen off is support for Server 2000.   We have many of our installs that are on Windows server 2000 and now will need to be upgraded to accommodate the new version.  So they have an edition 6.2.2 that will support CRM 4, and windows 2000.  However, Version 6.2.2 has been removed from their site.  I have a word in with them, I'll keep you apprised of progress.  

How did I become the instant expert in this?  I have an install for a new customer in Phoenix.  Guess what server they choose for me to put this on?   That is right Win2k.  .... I wonder if they support OS/2?   I hear that it is making a come back.... 

 

Pierre is currently rockin' to " Break" By: Newsboys - on the  Love Liberty Disco album. 

On the heels of their third studio album they made a tour stop in Grand Rapids, Van Andel Arena a few months back. This band combines U2 big guitar sound with lyrics from the heart of a youth pastor. I took the kids with us.  Izzy and Judah got to go to their first rock concert. So aside from having the kids out on a school night, they really enjoyed the music. I showed them how to do a windmill guitar strum, and strike a great rock pose, they had a great time.

This was the first concert that I have been to with Casting Crowns. I was blown away with tight big guitar sound.  Staging was warm.  They had build a stage to look like an old theater curtain. It was red velvet. All the lyrics were shown on a large video screen. 

Needless to say, it was such a great experience to share with the kids. If you have never heard of them I will let the music speak for itself.  We really enjoyed the evening and the kids loved seeing dad play his "Air Guitar."   

Pics from the Camera in my Phone. So forgive the blueness.

 

 

Here is a promo link that is hosted - CLICK

 

Pierre is currently rockin' to " One Thousand Apologies" By: Demon Hunter - on the  The Triptych [CD/DVD] Disc 1 album. 

CRM has a "Create On" date for all the invoices.  However, it is not safe to assume that this is the date that the invoice date was processed in SL and sent to the customer. This date is the day that the DTS created the Invoice.  There is often a delta between the SL AR document date and the CRM Invoice. This is a result of the inherent latency between the two processes, and data migrations.  Most companies process all their invoices in a batch at the end of  the day.  And because of this flood of invoices, we usually set the DTS for invoices in our high volume clients to run later in the day.  I have written about this before, but as a refresher if you are processing 1000 orders in a day, that also means you are receiving 1000 checks, and sending out 1000 new invoices, when you include returns and credit memos there may be 2,500 daily AR transactions.  To process all of these in 1 batch makes a great deal of sense for many installations. 

But back to the main question.  Where in CRM can I find the SL Invoice date?   That is mapped to the LastBackOfficeSubmit field.   This schema field is not on the form by default so you may want to add it to the administrative tab.  So that is why it seems to be missing from the system.    

 Using this query you should get a count of your invoices in CRM by month:

 Select Month(lastbackofficesubmit), Year(lastbackofficesubmit), Count(*)

from FilteredInvoice

Group By Month(lastbackofficesubmit), Year(lastbackofficesubmit)

order by year(lastbackofficesubmit)

Additionally you may want to try modifying this query.  Here, I am joining the CRM, SL and Xref table and I am adding the AR doc Date to the query.  If we are looking for the SL data, I suggest joining out to the SL data directly to get the info you are looking for. This will give you the most accurate result  This Query is also a good starting point to get the other invoice data as it joins CRM, SL and the Shadow tables. 

SELECT s.RefNbr, s.Crtd_Prog, s.Crtd_DateTime,

x.Object, x.ObjectKey, x.SyncStatus1, x.Operation, x.CreatedDate, x.ModifiedDate,

k.App_B_Key, c.Name AS MSCRM_Name, s.docdate as SL_Date

FROM [SERVER].SOLOMONAPP.dbo.ARDOC AS s

LEFT OUTER JOIN   [SERVER].SolomonApp.dbo.xInfuseScribeShadow AS x ON x.ObjectKey = s.BatNbr + CAST(s.BatSeq AS CHAR(10)) + s.CustID + s.DocType + s.RefNbr

LEFT OUTER JOIN [SERVER].Infuse.scribe.KeyCrossReferenceTwoWay AS k on k.App_A_Key = s.BatNbr + CAST(s.BatSeq AS CHAR(10)) + s.CustID + s.DocType + s.RefNbr

LEFT OUTER JOIN [SERVER].NITA_MSCRM.dbo.Invoice AS c ON c.Name = s.RefNbr

COLLATE SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS

WHERE s.DocType IN ('IN', 'RC', 'CS','CM') /*, 'DM', 'CM'*/

and s.Rlsed = 1

and ((x.Object = 'ARDoc' and x.SyncStatus1 = 'S') or x.Object IS NULL)

and (k.ObjectLabel = 'Sol2CRM-Invoice' or k.ObjectLabel IS NULL)

ORDER BY s.RefNbr

 

Pierre is currently rockin' to " Holy You Are" By: Cruse Ratcliff, Cindy - on the  Cover the Earth album. 

5 new projects are in the hopper: new customers in Chicago, Phoenix, Toledo, Milwaukee, and Toledo. 

CRM Internal upgrade to CRM 4.0.   No, we have not done it yet.  Remember I work for accountants. We can't do anything on the network till after April 15th.  We are adding 4 new internal CRM applets at the same time.  Our firm uses CRM in the technology practice to manage help desk.  We also use CRM in our Tax, Audit, Marketing, and Accounting departments to track engagements. So we have a lot of work to do to test our customizations with a pilot team, build training manuals, and test the Outlook Clients prior to the actual upgrade.

We also are working to release Infuse support for CRM 4 and SL 6.5 and SL 7.   We are making some adjustments to the out-of-the box dts to improve the efficiencies of the queries for Orders and Invoices. We are releasing 2 patched applications. Infuse Service.exe gets a fix to an issue relative to the Service not starting 100% of the time when the server is rebooted. The Infuse Config Utility gets a fix for dashes in server names.  My suggestion: don't put a dash in your server name. It causes SQL queries to choke sometimes. But we have built into the config utility enhanced support for that issue. 

 

Pierre is currently rockin' to " Willow Weep for Me" By: David Sanborn - on the  Pearls album. 

Help! Pierre, our Integration is crashing today.  What is going on?

First a bit of irony... Our Area Code is 616.

This looks scary but it's actually easy to fix. These DTS's just need to be restarted. That is it. Scribe has a design behavior where they will fail the DTS if it loses connection to the Databases.  Once the DTS fails it stays in that failed state after 3 tries. 

But what causes such an error?   Most of this time is is a SQL time-out.  The SQL box pegs its CPU because of some other issue and Scribe can't connect to either CRM, ScribeInternal, or SL.  Or something happens on the network where physical connectivity is lost, or finally a password changes and the DTS's don't get updated with that new info. 

Anyway it fails the fix is pretty quick and painless.  I just go here and manually run each of the processes. One by one and 99.5% of the time they start right back up.    

 

Pierre is currently rockin' to " Every Time I Think" By: Fred Hammond - on the  Free to Worship [Bonus Track] [Bonus DVD] Disc 1 album. 

Currently most installs are on 6.2.2.   There has been quite a few issues relative to the Resources that are consumed by the Messageprocess.exe service.  They have an auto restart on the service so it is manageable, but it is still a hog.   So this is an exciting development.  Some additional features include:

New, faster installation process
- Significantly improved to be a one-stop-shop for pre-requisites such as .NET framework, SQL Express, MS Installer 3.0, Scribe Adapters, as well as Scribe Insight
- Ability to move the software easily with an uninstall process

New, easier registration process
- Provides registration code upon input of serial number
- Auto-populates customer information once registration number has been input

New, improved product components
- Latest release of Data Direct ODBC drivers including an ODBC driver for MySQL
- Replaced MSDE with SQL Express improving the user experience for administering the Scribe Internal database

New operating systems supported
- Including Microsoft Vista and Windows Server 2008

 

They are holding a seminar on May 1st.  If you want to check it out.  Click to Register

 

 

Pierre is currently rockin' to " Nutville" By: Buddy's Buddies - on the  Steve Smith & Buddy's Buddies album. 

Many of our installations start with a test environment.  When testing and configuration is complete we have to move everything over to the live environment.  I have developed a process and check list to help with the process.   So I provide this as a starting point for anyone.   Your specific steps will vary.

This section assumes that you set up the integration using a test Solomon system and a production CRM system. Effectively redeploying a working Infuse to a new server.

1. Create a maintenance collaboration folder and copy your DTS files to it to serve as a backup.
2. Delete the test data in the CRM system or restore the backup of the CRM system.
3. Set up Solomon Publisher on production Solomon system.

i. Run the Solomon Infuse Solomon Table Creation sql script.

ii. Run the Solomon Infuse Trigger and view sql scripts.

iii. Run the Solomon Infuse Init sql script.

    4.   Connect DTSs to production systems.

i. This is going to require changing the ODBC connector on the dts to point to the Production Solomon database.

    5.  Complete the initial sync process. Use InitialSync.sql to set syncstatus1 in the shadow table to “M”.
         This will move all of the products, accounts, orders, and invoices from Solomon to CRM.

        a. At this point your DTS files should be unit tested and your Integration Processes should be active.

        b. You should run the script one object at time, then resolve any errors you find before running the script
             on the next object.

6.    Do a system test with the production systems.

7.    Re run the InfuseViews.sql script to point to the production Solomon database. This view sits in Infuse database but points across the network to Solomon.

8.    Valitdate the Data views. Each of them point to specific database locations. Each one will have to be open and changed to point to Solomon.

9.    Complete the data review process.

Refers to

Step 5

When you do the initial sync, you can do it as a manual process to open each DTS file and run them individually, resolving errors before running the next DTS file. Alternatively, you could let the Integration Processes run the DTS files for you. Whichever method you choose, you should run the InitialSync.sql one object at a time, run the associated DTS file, and resolve errors before moving on to the next object.

By default, the integration will move all of the products, customers, orders and invoices from the Solomon system. Considerations for limiting the data include:

• Date filter for orders and/or invoices. For example, only move new orders/invoices from the past 12 months instead of all order/invoice history.
• Subset of the product catalog and/or product price lists.
• Subset of accounts. For example, if customers and vendors are in the same table in the Solomon database, only move customers. Be careful if you decide to move a subset of accounts. You need to make sure that you do not later try to move orders/invoices for accounts that you filtered.

 Here are are the specific steps in a table format.  I use this as my starting point.  I will fill in the specific DTS's and who on the team is going to do each step.  Hope this is helpful for you.

  

 

Pierre is currently rockin' to " You Need Love" By: Styx - on the  Come Sail Away: The Styx Anthology Disc 1 album. 

Pound for pound, Quotewerks is the best quoting tool on the market. This app had its genesis in the GoldMine years. It is mature and well thought out.  It has an easy report writer and sends pdf quotes, updates, and opportunities. My only wish, and I would sell a ton more of it, would be that it used the CRM inventory, and it converted a quote to an order.  As it sits, a quote has to be manually entered into any other system.  

We have made this handle dimensional inventory and calculate final sizes for a customer so the SDK is very robust too. 

QuoteWerks sales quoting software enables users to create price quotes for their customers using contact information retrieved from leading contact management software such as ACT!, GoldMine, KnowTia, Maximizer, Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Outlook, salesforce.com, SalesLogix, and TeleMagic. The presentation of the quote can be customized, and emailed to customers. Once the quote becomes an order, the order can be exported to accounting software such as QuickBooks and Peachtree. QuoteWerks is network capable desktop software that runs on Windows 95/98/Me/NT/2000/XP/Vista. A single-user Standard Edition license retails at USD $199, a 5-user Standard Edition license retails at USD $875. QuoteWerks was first released in October 1999.

The primary market strength of QuoteWerks is attributed to its ability to be a useful tool for any industry that has a need to create price quotes containing itemized products or services.  It is important to point out that the generation of price quotes can generally be divided into two markets: line item quoting software and proposal software. Proposal software typically generates a document with many pages describing the needs of a customer followed by an implementation plan and then a single non-itemized price at the bottom. QuoteWerks is designed for the market of selling itemized products or services.

 

Pierre is currently rockin' to " Skylark" By: Grappelli & Menuhin - on the  The Very Best of Grappelli & Menuhin album. 

If you have worked with Scribe, you a aware of a major pain—mapping pick lists. Scribe has you build an .ini file to manage all the relationships. That can be a bit daunting as there about 60 required mappings with 10 - 30 values each.

Here I will show you how Infuse keeps you from having to build an ini file to manage it.  

(Click hyperlink for Screen Cast)

http://screencast.com/t/aOhLG2ZV

Something is missing in the CRM app GAC.  I am not a developer, but from this message is suspect - the installer fails to add a file. After Upgrading CRM from 3.0 to 4.0 and upgrading Scribe from 6.1. to 6.2.2 the Publisher failed.  The message from the Scribe Publisher is: 

“[FileNotFoundException: Could not load file or assembly 'Microsoft.Crm.Platform.Callout.Base, Version=3.0.5300.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35' or one of its dependencies. The system cannot find the file specified.]“

I poked around on the on the server and found that the Microsoft.Dynamics.Platform.Callout.Base.dll is missing or hidden. The assembly needs to be found and added to the GAC in order for Publishing to work. And an  IISRESET reset should be run.

I looked on the installation DVD in \server\i386\GAC (unless it’s a 64-bit machine) for missing .dlls that need to be added to the GAC.  The version number surprised me, but that’s the one on the 4.0 DVD. 

  

 

Pierre is currently rockin' to " Not Forgotten [Radio Version][*]" By: Israel & New Breed - on the  Alive in South Africa Disc 2 album. 

I just bought a new Keyboard to replace my Roland XP 80.  I played it for the Easter program, and I have done several other songs with it.  "Be Lifted High" I played with the Nylon Acoustic Guitar / synth patch, with many positive comments from the congregation.  




It fits nicely on top of my piano, and it's small enough to carry back and forth. This board has about 20 workable sounds for me to use, with great piano, EP, and acoustic sounds. It has some great drum loops. I have spent many hours in practice with it, better than "Band in a Box" for random personal jamming.  It does have a few Funky Jazz Drum and Bass loops that work real well, I can really play in the pocket, something I am usually only able to do with a live drummer.   It can be pulled off with this baby.  



 

My phrase is an evocative way to describe a good keyboard, and the MM6 is all that and a bag of chips too.  When you play with it you come away a little different, it responds to your touch and one receives some real positive feedback from that instrument, a lot to say about a $600 piece of plastic. But it works for me......

I promise to record something and post it so you can all see how I really feel. But until then, here are some of my friends' reactions. 

Amazingly we are running in to several situations where folks assume that EVERYTHING is supported by a 64 bit OS...  well it isn't true.

• Scribe does not support 64 bit
• SL client does not support 64 bit
• SL Business Objects do not support 64 bit
• CRM 3 does not support 64 bit

"So we cannot support Infuse in a 64 bit environment" 

From my testing, the ironic thing is the Infuse service runs without a problem.  Great job team!  But sadly all the things we orchestrate do not support that platform yet. 

You will get an error in the Infuse Config Util, and event log relative to SL DMG business Objects.  Error Initializing Solomon Business Objects: Retrieving the COM class factory for component with CLSID {F9FB58D6-8531-41B6-9F3B-E427A5C07822} failed due to the following error: 80040154

 

"Let me prefix this article by saying that I have been doing a lot of installation planning sessions over the past few weeks.  I am constantly surprised by how often the deployment teams underestimate the complexity of this or any integration project.  They often view this as a pure product installation project and do not discuss the finer points of the integration.  Project success is all about details.  With that said I would like to give you my personal work sheet for deploying a solution.  Many of the projects I do involve test environments so there is extra time in the project plan for cutting over to and from test environments.  Additionally, we slot time for data migration.  The migration of 5 years worth of Sales history takes hours to run, so don't forget you have to add time to get the data into the test and out of the test some way.  I would like to point out 2 features of this approach.  First, orient the client to what they are and are not getting.  Everything is discussed and field mappings are documented BEFORE we install anything.  Secondly, we present to the end user community a 20 minute vision of what the system should be doing for them when we are all done. This practice helps encourage discussion about obstacles and concerns that the management have hidden from us during during the discovery.  You may feel that this approach is too long,  expensive, or resource-intensive.  I will just say that from my experience of doing this about 30 times you will never regret thorough planning.  Someone smart once said, "Vision without action is a dream, action without vision is a nightmare."   Again this is the approach we have found to be successful and hope that it helps set the expectation that success on this kind of project is as much about the planning, people, and methodology as it is about the technology.  Ok.... I am off my soap box now.   

 

Pre-Work  By Customer / Partner

1.     Complete the table/relationship section of the Integration Requirements Survey.

2.     Complete the majority of the Infuse Field Survey.

3.     Review Testing Protocol Document – Add customer specific processes to test.

4.     Determine what the environment will be and make sure the resources are available and that the setup is complete.

 

Visit with Customer to Review the Pre-Work and give overview of solution, get orientation on company and discovery.

	Morning	Afternoon
Day 1	·         Orientation on CRM / Infuse Environment	·         Orientation and Q/A regarding current and desired Sales Processes ·         Discuss Prelaunch Presentation
Day 2	·         Review Sales Output ·         Desired Reports ·         Quote Formats ·         Sales Deliverables ·         Review CRM layout and Screen Customizations Needed	·         Deliver Prelaunch Presentation to entire user group ·         Gather User Input & Concerns
Day 3	·         Install Infuse	·         Install Infuse

 

Week 1 – Configure Infuse remotely

 

	Morning	Afternoon
Day 4	·         Configure* ProductToCRM.dts ·         Configure UOM ·         Create owner/user mapping for accounts and contacts ·         Configure AccountToCRM.dts ·         Install Custom fields and Labels on accounts	·         Create domain value mappings in Infuse ·         Finish ProductToCRM.dts configuration ·         Finish UOM.DTS ·         Data Migration on Accounts and SO addresses
Day 5	·         Install Custom fields and labels on Orders and Invoices	·         Configure OrderToCRM.dts and InvoiceToCRM.dts ·         Data Migration on Orders

 

 

Week 2 Testing – Repeat as needed

	Morning	Afternoon
Day 1	·         Customer to Begin Testing	Infuse Team Make Corrections

 

Go Live

Go live week time will depend on how much data there is to migrate. 

 

Day 2	·         Deploy Product DTS’s ·         Deploy UOM DTS	·         Deploy Accounts ·         Data Migration on Accounts ·         Validate
Day 3	·         Deploy OrderToCRM.dts	·         Data Migration ·         Validate
Day 4	·         Deploy InvoiceToCRM.dts	·         Data Migration ·         Validate
Day 5	·         Set up notification groups and operators ·         Customize Monitors and Views	·         Orientation Care and Feeding Training.

 

This is a new Blog feature. If you know anything about keyboard players, you know that we all want to be guitar players. So I have a love for great guitar players. I learn so much from these guys.  Mostly how to wear your hair.  

This weeks most delicious tasty track is from the master himself.... Mr. Jeff (Nigel) Beck.

• Album: You had it coming
• Track:  Nadia
• Year: 2001

This track takes us to the fretboard with Mr. Jeff Beck as he dishes out some Eastern Indian
cuisine upon our ear drums...... inspired by the Indian composer Nitin Sawhney (www.nitinsawhney.com).

So, sit back...order a plate of Khuskhus Aloo and let your mind soar to new heights.

When seen live, this type of fretology elicits 2 responses:

1. How can anyone come up with this stuff?
2. What planet did this guy come from?

This video proves my Spinal Tap theory. All great Rock and Roll references Spinal Tap.

Rumor has it that Beck is the inspiration for Nigel from Spinal Tap.

Thanks To Jeff T for his nomination of Beck.               

Panic by a customer this week: they were looking to find all the details on invoices and who the sales people are. 

Running this query, they found a whole bunch of seemingly duplicate invoice detail lines. So I got a flaming e-mail back from the controller worried that we were not able to tie out the invoice totals in CRM and SL. 

 

SELECT DISTINCT

A.OwnerIdName AS [Salesperson],

A.name AS [Acct Name],

A.accountnumber AS [Solomon Acct #],

A.statuscode as [Acct Status],

I.name AS [Invoice #],

I.InvoiceId AS [Invoice Id],

ID.invoicedetailid AS [Invoice Detail ID],

ID.productidname AS [Product],

ID.Quantity AS [Quantity],

ID.extendedamount AS [Extended Amt],

I.totalamount AS [Total Amt Billed]

FROM Account as A

inner join SalesOrder AS SO

ON A.AccountId = SO.AccountId

inner join Invoice AS I

ON SO.SalesOrderId = I.SalesOrderId

inner join InvoiceDetail AS ID

ON I.InvoiceId = ID.InvoiceId

ORDER BY A.OwnerIdName, A.name, I.InvoiceId, ID.invoicedetailid

After reviewing the query I noticed they were missing filtering out for the deletion state code. 

By just adding Where id.DeletionStateCode =0, the results tied out. It worked just fine. The CRM deletion process happens every 2 hours. So when we are looking at Sales and Invoice Detail, we will often see deleted lines that have not been cleaned out by the actual Deletion service yet.  

Why are there so many deleted lines you may ask?  When an invoice or Order is updated in SL, the update job in CRM actually deletes all the existing line items on the invoice or order and adds in what is in SL. This way we assure that CRM contains exactly what is in SL, because sometimes the actual line items change along the way.  It also keeps us from having to manage Xref for every AR or SO Line Items to CRM line items.  That may change with CRM 4.0 as they now seem to have added Line ID numbers to the schema.  

The application filters these line items out automatically when it fetches the active line items, so the invoice or order does not actually show these deleted items when it shows on the screen.  It applies the filter automatically.

There are 3 different values for deletion state code

DeletionStateCode

Field	Value	Description
Active	0	Specifies that the object is live in the database.
HardDelete	2	Specifies that the object is marked for removal on the next sweep.
SoftDelete	1	Not supported in this version.