Enterprise Search for CRM

I just installed the new CRM Accelerator for Enterprise Search onto the standard VPC image for CRM. It was easy to do, and I learned a bit more about MOSS.

This functionality is immediately useful to a client of ours. The client has Dynamics GP and Dynamics CRM. We were either going to customize a search routine, or create our own Business Data Catalog. But now we'll just use this. Perfect.

This accelerator offers these basic functions:

• View and edit any Microsoft Dynamics CRM data such as accounts, contacts, opportunities, sales orders, invoices, service cases and any custom entity data through MOSS.
• Launch a MOSS search which can return documents, emails, web content and Microsoft Dynamics CRM data.

I think the Enterprise Search functionality in MOSS is undervalued. It is huge! It will save your employees hours of time.

The accelerator is available here:

http://www.codeplex.com/crmaccelerators/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=21449

I did have some trouble importing the BDC into a non-standard VPC image because the image has a different server name, database name, and CRM site name. The documentation has directions on how to modify the XML file to handle this, but I could not get it to work. However, I have very little knowledge of XML, so it's not a big surprise.

The documentation is very good for implementing on the standard CRM VPC image.

Try it out. You will be able to set it up in less than 20 minutes.

Analytics Accelerator

I just installed the Analytics Accelerator for CRM 4.0. I installed it on the standard VPC image from Microsoft.

The documentation to do the initial install is excellent.

There are some good reports that show off some SSRS functionality. The Analysis Cube is simple but functional; and a good start. The documentation includes steps on adding a custom entity to the cube. Haven't tried it yet.

Check it out: http://www.codeplex.com/crmaccelerators/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=20449

Steps to Set Up Outlook to Use the CRM Address Book / Contacts

This came from an internal source (Neil Harman, who's too shy to blog) and I thought I'd pass it along:

You might find this useful to resolve CRM to Outlook sync issues. The objective is to see the CRM contacts when you click on the ‘To: button’ in an email. When it works, in the Address book drop down, select CRM Contacts and you should see the CRM list, as below.

To set up -

1. In Outlook, click on the 'CRM' button on the Menu bar 2. Select 'Options'

3. Click on the 'Address Book' tab

4. Select 'Match all contacts in Microsoft Dynamics CRM'

5. Select 'Match all items in Microsoft Dynamics CRM'

6. Click 'OK'

7. Synchronize Outlook.

8. Go into the modify local data groups in the Outlook toolbar under CRM. Make my contacts inactivate by clicking on the red button then select the inactive tab and click the green button to re-enable it. Click OK.

If this fails –

Verify that the address book check box is selected to synch by doing the following

1. Click start Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Diagnostics.

2. Click support mode

3. Make sure that there is a check mark in address book synchronization.

4. Click save.

If it still does not work, apply KB957703, uninstall the outlook CRM client and reinstall – this sets up all the above correctly.