I was editing system views for a customer today and had some issues with the company name field on the lead system views.
It seems that this is a bug which has been reported to Microsoft connect, so please upvote this. https://connect.microsoft.com/dynamicssuggestions/feedbackdetail/view/955886/cannot-add-company-name-column-in-existing-standard-view-in-lead-entity
I found this in CRM 2013 but it seems that it's an issue in CRM 2015 as well. Here's a thread where I found the connect issue; https://community.dynamics.com/crm/f/117/p/122564/405479#405479
Please vote on connect so we get rid of these mighty annoying bugs.
Rickard Norström
Developer at CRM-Konsulterna
www.crmkonsulterna.se
onsdag 8 juli 2015
tisdag 7 juli 2015
Part two of the time zone tombola
So, I did actually keep the "6 months timeframe" that I promised in the last part, just over two months is a bit longer than I planned this though. So how did I go on with our time zone issue?
The main idea is that we use the CRM time fields to keep track of stuff in UTC time. Those fields will always show the user when the meeting takes place in the time zone you have set in CRM.
As you can see in the picture I have set up two time blocks, "local meeting time" and "my time". The local meeting time is the time when the meeting takes place at the actual site. If we woul
d have a meeting in London, and this is my CRM running CET there would be a difference of one hour between the two where "my time" would be one hour ahead.
As you can see I also locked the datetime fields in my time so all editing happens in "local time".
Now on to JS madness.
Onload of the appointment form I fetch the starttime and endtime of the appointmen, if those aren't set I set them as new Date(), which I then make sure is on the hour of half hour. I also fetch the duration field, which is a tricky bastard I might add, and the custom timezone field.
The endtime is set as starttime plus duration if there are no values for start and endtime on the form.
Now things got a bit trickier, and here's why I don't like time zones. I use the same way that CRM uses the timezones for the script part so I set up a timezone setting array which looks something like this:
localSettings = [0, 10, 5, 0, 2, 3, 5, 0, 1, -60];
So, this is slightly greek but this is a settings array for UTC. The first element is timezone bias, which is 0 for UTC. To make it slightly worse it's negative for CET so you take the time i CET and add the bias to end up in UTC.
The second element is standard month, which is the month in which standard time is starting, no worries, well I might mention that January is 0 in JS.
The third element is standard day, which could be a date but it isn't since you change back to standard time on the fourth saturday after the fifth moon after midsommer, ish. That is which number of day this is, in this case the fifth time the day appears in a month.
The fourth element is standard day of week, which means which day we are lookin at, and since 0 is the first day of the week, it's a sunday.
The fifth element, standard hour, is what time of day you return the clock one hour. Which in this case means that in UTC you return the clock one hour at two in the morning.
The following four elements are the same for DST and the final element is daylight bias, which again is negative.
I also fetch the users timezone settings from CRM to calculate UTC time.
With this info I calculate when DST starts and ends using the following code:
var GetDst = function (inyear, month, day, dayofweek, hour,tzBias) {
if (tzBias == 0)
return new Date(2011, 1, 1, 12, 0, 0, 0);
var returnDate = new Date(inyear, (month - 1), 1, hour);
var testDate = new Date(inyear, (month - 1), 1, hour);
var firstDayOfMonth = new Date(inyear, (month - 1), 1);
var firstDay = firstDayOfMonth.getDay();
if (firstDay != dayofweek) {
if (dayofweek == 0)
testDate.setDate(testDate.getDate() + (7 - firstDay));
else
testDate.setDate(testDate.getDate() + (dayofweek - firstDay));
}
testDate.setDate(testDate.getDate() + ((day-1) * 7));
if(testDate.getMonth() != (month - 1))
{
testDate.setDate(testDate.getDate() - 7);
}
return testDate;
}
Here the inputs are the year from the appointment, in the first case I want DST start time for the year the appointment is happening, month, day, dayofweek and tzbias are from the settings array
First I set a date of the year, DST start month, the first day of that month and the hour that stuff happens. I alse set up en exact copy of that date.
I the proceed with finding out which day of the week the first day of the month is and compare that to the daylight saving start day and if the don't match I find when the first "change day" of the month happens (say first sunday).
After this I apply the number of weeks that should be added and check if we're still in the same month, if not, remove one week. SIMPLE
The time presented in "My time" is set up by UTC time plus timezone difference and DST difference so to get UTC time from the form I convert that time with the info about
I then check if the time we get out of CRM is within DST and apply the changes to get to UTC time.
This is done since I can never be sure that the computer's timezone setting is the same as CRM settings so I need to calculate the time in the form based on the CRM settings, yes that made me feel a bit sick too.
After I've calculated what the "my time" times are in UTC time I can then apply the timezone info on that data and I know when the meeting is taking place at the local office.
What I also do is set the submitmode to never if it's anything else than a create form. You will also need onchange scripts that sets the submitmodes to relevant values when you change an appointment.
The duration field isn't really propagated in a way you would think when you change it so that has to be made dirty with code to be sent, very annoying and a source of errors I might add.
I hope this makes some sence. It's a bit tricky and I had to work quite hard to get it right. What started out as a "Oh, we just take whatever time CRM is giving us and add an hour and we're home free" ended up in a couple of hundred lines of scripts and a little less plugin code to handle the saves.
So as my commanding officers said after an order or information speech. Any questions, too late, dismissed!
Seriously, if you would stumble upon this and have similar issues, give me a holler and I'll try to help. I'm thinking of talking about the backend code sometime later, maybe in another two months :)
Rickard Norström
Developer at CRM-Konsulterna
www.crmkonsulterna.se
The main idea is that we use the CRM time fields to keep track of stuff in UTC time. Those fields will always show the user when the meeting takes place in the time zone you have set in CRM.
As you can see in the picture I have set up two time blocks, "local meeting time" and "my time". The local meeting time is the time when the meeting takes place at the actual site. If we woul
d have a meeting in London, and this is my CRM running CET there would be a difference of one hour between the two where "my time" would be one hour ahead.
As you can see I also locked the datetime fields in my time so all editing happens in "local time".
Now on to JS madness.
Onload of the appointment form I fetch the starttime and endtime of the appointmen, if those aren't set I set them as new Date(), which I then make sure is on the hour of half hour. I also fetch the duration field, which is a tricky bastard I might add, and the custom timezone field.
The endtime is set as starttime plus duration if there are no values for start and endtime on the form.
Now things got a bit trickier, and here's why I don't like time zones. I use the same way that CRM uses the timezones for the script part so I set up a timezone setting array which looks something like this:
localSettings = [0, 10, 5, 0, 2, 3, 5, 0, 1, -60];
So, this is slightly greek but this is a settings array for UTC. The first element is timezone bias, which is 0 for UTC. To make it slightly worse it's negative for CET so you take the time i CET and add the bias to end up in UTC.
The second element is standard month, which is the month in which standard time is starting, no worries, well I might mention that January is 0 in JS.
The third element is standard day, which could be a date but it isn't since you change back to standard time on the fourth saturday after the fifth moon after midsommer, ish. That is which number of day this is, in this case the fifth time the day appears in a month.
The fourth element is standard day of week, which means which day we are lookin at, and since 0 is the first day of the week, it's a sunday.
The fifth element, standard hour, is what time of day you return the clock one hour. Which in this case means that in UTC you return the clock one hour at two in the morning.
The following four elements are the same for DST and the final element is daylight bias, which again is negative.
I also fetch the users timezone settings from CRM to calculate UTC time.
With this info I calculate when DST starts and ends using the following code:
var GetDst = function (inyear, month, day, dayofweek, hour,tzBias) {
if (tzBias == 0)
return new Date(2011, 1, 1, 12, 0, 0, 0);
var returnDate = new Date(inyear, (month - 1), 1, hour);
var testDate = new Date(inyear, (month - 1), 1, hour);
var firstDayOfMonth = new Date(inyear, (month - 1), 1);
var firstDay = firstDayOfMonth.getDay();
if (firstDay != dayofweek) {
if (dayofweek == 0)
testDate.setDate(testDate.getDate() + (7 - firstDay));
else
testDate.setDate(testDate.getDate() + (dayofweek - firstDay));
}
testDate.setDate(testDate.getDate() + ((day-1) * 7));
if(testDate.getMonth() != (month - 1))
{
testDate.setDate(testDate.getDate() - 7);
}
return testDate;
}
Here the inputs are the year from the appointment, in the first case I want DST start time for the year the appointment is happening, month, day, dayofweek and tzbias are from the settings array
First I set a date of the year, DST start month, the first day of that month and the hour that stuff happens. I alse set up en exact copy of that date.
I the proceed with finding out which day of the week the first day of the month is and compare that to the daylight saving start day and if the don't match I find when the first "change day" of the month happens (say first sunday).
After this I apply the number of weeks that should be added and check if we're still in the same month, if not, remove one week. SIMPLE
The time presented in "My time" is set up by UTC time plus timezone difference and DST difference so to get UTC time from the form I convert that time with the info about
I then check if the time we get out of CRM is within DST and apply the changes to get to UTC time.
This is done since I can never be sure that the computer's timezone setting is the same as CRM settings so I need to calculate the time in the form based on the CRM settings, yes that made me feel a bit sick too.
After I've calculated what the "my time" times are in UTC time I can then apply the timezone info on that data and I know when the meeting is taking place at the local office.
What I also do is set the submitmode to never if it's anything else than a create form. You will also need onchange scripts that sets the submitmodes to relevant values when you change an appointment.
The duration field isn't really propagated in a way you would think when you change it so that has to be made dirty with code to be sent, very annoying and a source of errors I might add.
I hope this makes some sence. It's a bit tricky and I had to work quite hard to get it right. What started out as a "Oh, we just take whatever time CRM is giving us and add an hour and we're home free" ended up in a couple of hundred lines of scripts and a little less plugin code to handle the saves.
So as my commanding officers said after an order or information speech. Any questions, too late, dismissed!
Seriously, if you would stumble upon this and have similar issues, give me a holler and I'll try to help. I'm thinking of talking about the backend code sometime later, maybe in another two months :)
Rickard Norström
Developer at CRM-Konsulterna
www.crmkonsulterna.se
onsdag 24 juni 2015
Email Configuration button missing
No biggie, and quite documented but I'd like to point this out anyway.
If you're not having any email configuration button in the settings area, then you have probably upgraded from CRM 2011 and the button isn't part of the sitemap. The solution is to add the following to you sitemap right aftert the <SubArea ID="nav_audit"...> tag,
<SubArea Id="nav_social" ResourceId="Social_SubArea_Title" DescriptionResourceId="Social_SubArea_Description" Icon="/_imgs/area/16_social.png" Url="/tools/social/social_area.aspx" AvailableOffline="false" />
It's pretty logic that you should add the social nav to get email configuration. Read more at
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/emeadcrmsupport/archive/2014/03/07/dynamics-crm-2013-email-configuration-tab-is-missing-from-the-settings.aspx
Rickard Norström
Developer at CRM-Konsulterna
www.crmkonsulterna.se
If you're not having any email configuration button in the settings area, then you have probably upgraded from CRM 2011 and the button isn't part of the sitemap. The solution is to add the following to you sitemap right aftert the <SubArea ID="nav_audit"...> tag,
<SubArea Id="nav_social" ResourceId="Social_SubArea_Title" DescriptionResourceId="Social_SubArea_Description" Icon="/_imgs/area/16_social.png" Url="/tools/social/social_area.aspx" AvailableOffline="false" />
It's pretty logic that you should add the social nav to get email configuration. Read more at
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/emeadcrmsupport/archive/2014/03/07/dynamics-crm-2013-email-configuration-tab-is-missing-from-the-settings.aspx
Rickard Norström
Developer at CRM-Konsulterna
www.crmkonsulterna.se
söndag 7 juni 2015
IFD/ADFS setup stumbles when you think you're done
I've been fiddling with IFD and ADFS a bit more than what's healthy the past couple of years and I still face the "What the h*** is wrong now"-moments from time to time. Admittedly they're a bit more rare and not quite as severe as they uses to be, thank god.
One thing I've been running into quite frequently the latest times I've been messing with IFD is that when you think you're done and you try to log on for the first time you get a "I can't connect to the ADFS-server"-message in the browser.
On the ADFS server the logs say "the element 'serviceIdentityToken' was fount to have invalid data", on the CRM server you have a "Exception information:
Exception type: EncryptedTokenDecryptionFailedException
Exception message: ID4036: The key needed to decrypt the encrypted security token could not be resolved from the following security key identifier " and the CRM trace tell you something like "Microsoft.IdentityModel.Tokens.EncryptedTokenDecryptionFailedException: Microsoft Dynamics CRM has experienced an error" (and by the way, yes, that's the coherent part of that error).
You think, probably at least since I have, What happened, I just connected to all these servers.
So, what needs to be done? I can't tell you exactly what makes things work but if you update the metadata in the ADFS server manager, restart ADFS-service, restart the IIS you should be fine.
If that doesn't work, start browsing Chris Cognettas blog.
Rickard Norström
Developer at CRM-Konsulterna
www.crmkonsulterna.se
One thing I've been running into quite frequently the latest times I've been messing with IFD is that when you think you're done and you try to log on for the first time you get a "I can't connect to the ADFS-server"-message in the browser.
On the ADFS server the logs say "the element 'serviceIdentityToken' was fount to have invalid data", on the CRM server you have a "Exception information:
Exception type: EncryptedTokenDecryptionFailedException
Exception message: ID4036: The key needed to decrypt the encrypted security token could not be resolved from the following security key identifier " and the CRM trace tell you something like "Microsoft.IdentityModel.Tokens.EncryptedTokenDecryptionFailedException: Microsoft Dynamics CRM has experienced an error" (and by the way, yes, that's the coherent part of that error).
You think, probably at least since I have, What happened, I just connected to all these servers.
So, what needs to be done? I can't tell you exactly what makes things work but if you update the metadata in the ADFS server manager, restart ADFS-service, restart the IIS you should be fine.
If that doesn't work, start browsing Chris Cognettas blog.
Rickard Norström
Developer at CRM-Konsulterna
www.crmkonsulterna.se
söndag 31 maj 2015
Which version of ADFS are you running?
When you are setting up an Internet Facing CRM you need to use an STS service which often means ADFS. So which version are you running?
Now, CRM of different verisons supports different versions of ADFS and the complete list is in your implementation guide. But how do you check for which version you are running. It turns out you don't. But have no fear, Jorge is your man here. This blog https://jorgequestforknowledge.wordpress.com/2014/02/23/gathering-architectural-details-from-your-adfs-infrastructure-adfs-version/#comment-17198 helped me to determine which verison that was installed on a system. Really, you have to look at how the GUI looks and see if there are files available.
This feels so 2015.
Have fun and thanks Jorge!
Rickard Norström
Developer at CRM-Konsulterna
www.crmkonsulterna.se
Now, CRM of different verisons supports different versions of ADFS and the complete list is in your implementation guide. But how do you check for which version you are running. It turns out you don't. But have no fear, Jorge is your man here. This blog https://jorgequestforknowledge.wordpress.com/2014/02/23/gathering-architectural-details-from-your-adfs-infrastructure-adfs-version/#comment-17198 helped me to determine which verison that was installed on a system. Really, you have to look at how the GUI looks and see if there are files available.
This feels so 2015.
Have fun and thanks Jorge!
Rickard Norström
Developer at CRM-Konsulterna
www.crmkonsulterna.se
torsdag 28 maj 2015
SQL Server instance name must be the same as computer name
I was installing a CRM 2011 server the other day to do an upgrade for a customer and, yes I know this sounds impossible but I ended up with an error I haven't seen before.
It really was my own fault but still. I had installed the SQL server on the machine and then renamed it which made the SQL server behave in a bit interesting way. My CRM installation whined a bit about the server name not being the same as the SQL instance name which made no sence at all to me but when the reporting services complained too I ran the reporting services setup tool and this showed me that it was looking for an SQL server with a different name than what I expected.
This blog article shows how to deal with it https://zhongchenzhou.wordpress.com/2012/04/29/dynamics-crm-2011-installation-error-the-instance-name-must-be-the-same-as-computer-name/ .You will have to re-point the reporting services too, but that's a bit more intuitive.
Someone else would probably say something along the lines of "my eight year old can do this".
Rickard Norström
Developer at CRM-Konsulterna
www.crmkonsulterna.se
It really was my own fault but still. I had installed the SQL server on the machine and then renamed it which made the SQL server behave in a bit interesting way. My CRM installation whined a bit about the server name not being the same as the SQL instance name which made no sence at all to me but when the reporting services complained too I ran the reporting services setup tool and this showed me that it was looking for an SQL server with a different name than what I expected.
This blog article shows how to deal with it https://zhongchenzhou.wordpress.com/2012/04/29/dynamics-crm-2011-installation-error-the-instance-name-must-be-the-same-as-computer-name/ .You will have to re-point the reporting services too, but that's a bit more intuitive.
Someone else would probably say something along the lines of "my eight year old can do this".
Rickard Norström
Developer at CRM-Konsulterna
www.crmkonsulterna.se
onsdag 27 maj 2015
CRM 2015 Online spring update and Outlook client
The CRM Online 2015 spring update... Experience, or something (version 7.1) is out.
I was looking for the updates for the Outlook client and had some problems finding it so I thought I would post the link here. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=46908
Thats it, happy CRMing
Rickard Norström
Developer at CRM-Konsulterna
www.crmkonsulterna.se
I was looking for the updates for the Outlook client and had some problems finding it so I thought I would post the link here. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=46908
Thats it, happy CRMing
Rickard Norström
Developer at CRM-Konsulterna
www.crmkonsulterna.se
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