MOSS 2007 – Error enabling Office SharePoint Server Publishing Infrastructure

Upon trying to enable the feature for publishing in MOSS, I ran across this security error. Access denied. at Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPPersistedObject.Update().

Under site settings logged in as site collection admin, go to Site Collection Administration -> Site Collection Features.

Office SharePoint Server Publishing Infrastructure
Provides centralized libraries, content types, master pages and page layouts and enables page scheduling and other publishing functionality for a site collection.

Click the Activate and this is where the error is happening.

Upon some wide searches I found this great post that provided a great work around. Here are the basic steps and link.
1. Open IIS Admin.
2. Location the Web Site for your WSS web application.
3. Goto to the properties and select the ‘Home Directory’ tab.
4. Change the AppPool to be the same as Central Administration.
5. IISRESET
6. Activate the Publishing Infrastructure feature on your site.
7. Change to AppPool back to the original.
8. IISRESET.

Activating Office SharePoint Server Publishing Infrastructure – Access Denied

Format telephone field in CRM 4.0 using javascript onChange event

Here is a simple javascript to format telephone numbers in CRM. This is to be used in the onChange event at the field level. Throw this in there to format telephone numbers using (XXX) XXX-XXXX. Pretty simple code that I found and slightly modified to meet our clients need.

var oField = event.srcElement;
if (typeof(oField) != “undefined” && oField != null)
{
var sTmp = oField.DataValue.replace(/[^0-9]/g, “”);
switch (sTmp.length)
{
case 10:
oField.DataValue = “(” + sTmp.substr(0, 3) + “) ” + sTmp.substr(3, 3) + “-” + sTmp.substr(6, 4);
break;

default:
alert(’Phone must contain 10 numbers.’);
break;
}
}

I found this code while searching google. It is from Mitch Milam’s blog and the entry is for CRM 3.0 SDK: Phone number format example bug fix. Thanks Mitch!

Auto populate fields in CRM 4.0 using Javascript onChange event

A few enhancements from our clients that have been coming down the pike is to auto-populate fields based on selection criteria from other fields, specifically the picklists. One client has a field that is used to select an ‘English honorific’ for the contact. (Mr., Mrs, Ms, etc.). Based on that selection, they want to pre-populate the salutation field with the last name and the prefix. (Mr. Smith)

Here is the code snippet that we can use to populate the salutation field based on the value of the picklist given via Javascript using switch. This is to be used on the obChange event of your specific attribute.

var MrMrs;
var LastName;

LastName = ”;

if (crmForm.lastname.DataValue != null)
{
LastName = crmForm.lastname.DataValue;
}

MrMrs = crmForm.new_mr_mrs.SelectedText

if (crmForm.salutation.DataValue == null)
{
crmForm.salutation.DataValue = MrMrs + ‘ ‘ + LastName;
}

Granted there are going to be many ways to do this, I just figured this might be the easiest for fellow developers to understand and thus support.

Cheers!

CRM 4.0 Lost Connection Error from Outlook Plugin in Systray

After installing CRM 4.0 and installing the plug-in for Outlook, we have been getting this pop up error message in the system tray stating:

“Unable to Connect. Lost Connection to Microsoft Dynamics CRM. Microsoft Dynamics CRM will restore the connection when possible. To stop retrying, right-click and select Sign Out”.

So of course you’d assume that the plug-in for Outlook wouldn’t work since it doesn’t have a connection right? Well, not so fast. Everything in Outlook (tracking, synching contacts, create and updating tasks, etc, etc.) all worked fine! So the only downside to this error is that is pops up every 5 minutes. No big deal……

So after an hour of this error message I needed to get rid of it ASAP. Luckly I found a great post in the Google Groups Microsoft.Public.CRM forum. So here is the solution to that annoying problem.

Go in IIS -> Microsoft Dynamics CRM -> _imgs.
Right click and get to the properties -> Directory Security
In the Authenticate and Access Control, click the Edit button.
Make sure the Enable Anonymous Access is checked.

Goodbye lost connection error pop-up!

Auto track emails in CRM 4.0 from Outlook

So having successfully synched up contacts from CRM 4.0 into Outlook we know move onto how to automatically track emails into CRM from Outlook. After numerous hours of how to figure this out, I came across a post that helped greatly. It is from the Microsoft CRM Forum. Here was my issue, I was able to synch contacts and track email manually but I wanted the emails to be tracked automatically. I mean, technology is supposed to make your life easier right? So, in order to do this, you need to start out in CRM and modify the user profile.

CRM-> Settings -> Adminstration -> Users
Select the specific user and under the general tab (which whould be the default tab shown) there is a section called E-Mail Access Configuration.
Select the incoming to: Microsoft Dynamics CRM for Outlook.
If you would like CRM to send email outgoing, you can do so under the outgoing property but for my setup, we leave it at None.

Now, go into the dropdown option in Outlook

Outlook -> CRM -> Options
Go under the Email tab
Select the Check incoming email in Outlook….. (to auto track emails)
Select E-mail messages from CRM Leads, Contacts and Account under the Select the email messages to track section.

And that is it!

To run a test, I created a test account from an outside email account (hotmail, gmail, yahoo, etc) in CRM. Then went to my Outlook and synched up so now that new account in in my address book. Then I just sent an email from my outside account and it comes through all tracked!

Auto Synch Address Book into Outlook from CRM 4.0

One of the great features that CRM 4.0 posseses is the intergration to Outlook. However, setting up this quality integration of CRM 4.0 to Outlook (2007 in my case) isn’t really that apparent. For instance, the ability to automatically synch all CRM leads, contacts and accounts in your Outlook address book. To achieve this you have to do a few things…..

• Set up your CRM options to do so.
Go into Outlook, pull down menu ‘CRM’, then ‘Options’ (this will bring up your personal options in CRM (not Outlook!).
Go into the ‘Address Book’ tab
Check ‘Match all contacts in Microsoft Dynamics CRM’ under Contacts.
Check ‘Match all items in Microsoft Dynamics CRM’ under Contacts.

Now to the best of my knowledge (which is limited I admit), this sets up CRM to look to synch all contacts. In order for Outlook to actually perform the synch, you must go into your Outlook settings (which is provided by a seperate CRM Diagnostics tool) and enable the synch process. Kinda sounds like Microsoft right hand hasn’t met it’s left hand quite yet……

• Set up your Outlooks options to enable the synch.
Go to ‘Start Menu’, ‘All Programs’, ‘Microsoft CRM 4.0′, ‘Diagnostics’.
Click the ‘Support Mode’ (default tab that is brought up should be ‘Synchronization troubleshooting’)
Check ‘Address Book Synchronization’.
Check ‘Outlook Synchronization’.

This will now synch up your Outlook address book with your CRM Leads, Contacts & Accounts. Oh, you might want to close out of Outlook for the synch to take place.

For more info on the diagnostic tool and it’s functions, see the informative post about it at the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Team Blog

Happy CRM’ing…..

Customizing Marketing List View in Microsoft CRM 4.0

Upon trying to customize the view of the “Marketing List Members” in the Marketing List entity, I hit a road block (typical in CRM 4.0 I have come to realize..). My first instinct was to go under the Contact entity, look for the associated view and modify the view from there. Much to my surpirse, the view didn’t match what I was seeing in the Marketing List. Hmm….

After a short while on Google, I found that the Marketing List Members does not use a view that is available from the Contact entity. Of course it doesn’t! It uses a built in view call “All Members”. In order to modify this, you must use the Advance Find feature, pull up the “All Members” view and modify it there. See the details at Customizing Marketing List from the Microsoft CRM Team Blog site.

Good Luck!!

Deletion Service in Microsoft CRM 4.0

When performing a bulk load using the Data Migration tool in CRM 4.0, I ran across a huge issue on how the data is backed out. I am working on a large ACT! to CRM 4.0 migration which include 73 mapping for the Contact entity and of course, it is a trial and error process. Using the Data Migration tool is perfect since you can back out the successful records until you get a clean upload. The only problem is that the deletion process sets a flag on the entity level (DeletionStatusCode = 2) rather than actually deleting the records from the database. Then the Sync service will pick up the records for deletion and physically delete them. Now the limitation to this process is that the service will only run once a day and can not be run on demand…. until yesterday afternoon.

Welcome ScaleGroup Job Editor! Simply install on the CRM 4.0 server and now you can actually set when the delete service runs!!

Thank you to the East Region Microsoft CRM blog. I recommend checking this blog weekly for other very useful updates to all things CRM 4.0.

Break the Cycle

Recently, I received an email from a client as to whether an email warning about a virus was valid. A quick search on a key line, “e-mail with a Power Point presentation ‘Life is Beautiful’”, yielded enough results to confirm its uselessness: 

http://www.snopes.com/computer/virus/life.asp

http://www.hoax-slayer.com/life-is-beautiful-virus-hoax.html

Apparently this particular chain email has been circulating since 2002 freaking people out along the way. Fantastic. Clog up the internet with even more useless garbage. Thanks. But you can’t blame the sender, really, considering you probably know the person it came from, and they had your best interests in mind, but were unfortunately unknowing. On a positive note, you can BREAK THE CYCLE! 

Take a look at this page to get an idea of what to look for that will help you identify what they tend to look like and contain. Knowledge is power, or in this case, less garbage in your friend’s inboxes. 

If you want to check into whether a particular email is a hoax, check www.hoax-slayer.com and www.snopes.com. The second one is great for all sorts of things, especially urban legends (actually, it is interesting enough to browse for a while, so make some time for it ).

So, if you get some sort of email warning about a virus or whatever, especially if it’s a forward, look into it before you panic. It’s probably nothing at all. 

-g