Filtering Custom CRM reports

Hi Guys

I have had much fun over recent days producing custom reports for our clients and as I am learning and making the reports flashier, I have finally learnt what you need to do to add a filter to your reports.

Firstly, you must alias the tables that you are retrieving data from with CRMAF_, for example

select *
from filteredaccount as CRMAF_filteredaccount

Secondly, if you want to specify which columns you wish to select you include the CRMAF reference in your select query

select CRMAF_FilteredAccount.name
from filteredaccount as CRMAF_filteredaccount

It is very basic I know, but if like me you have spent time creating reports in CRM then editing them in Visual Studio, just to have the filter, this saves a lot of time!

Happy Reporting!

Vista Business, Pre-release .Net Framework and the Outlook Client - Part 3

So after a weekend of banging my head against a wall, I have finally put to bed the issue of CRM Client not installing on a Vista Business laptop that has had a pre-released version of .Net installed on it... and to be honest it was a simple fix in the end!

Once I had got the .net uninstalled, it was still telling me that it could not install the client, so I took a backup of the registry and started messing around with the .net and ASP keys, which did provide fruition in the end, however if you are going to do this please, please please take a backup other wise you could be in a whole world of trouble!

So once finished experimenting, i simply deleted the entire ASP key from HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft

Then rebooted the machine and carried out the install/config and guess what, it all worked!

So good luck if you have this issue and hope that this helps!

Event Management Accelerator Part 2

Hi Guys



For a while I had struggled to find a way of displaying who had actually registered for the event, without actually going into the particular campaign.
However after much experimentation with the advanced find, a solution is with us!


What you need to do is:

Create an advanced find on Contacts with the following criteria



Activity Parties (Party)
Activity (Campaign Response)
Response Code Equals Registered
Parent Campaign(Campaign)
Campaign Equals "your event name"




all you then need to do is setup one for each campaign!

CRM Client 4.0, Vista Business & Hosted CRM

Hi Guys

I have had a very trying day involving the CRM client, Vista Business and a number of firewall applications!

I have seen that a lot of people out there have had some issues with this setup, and there a number of registry hacks etc out there that people have tried.

However upon installing a fresh copy of Vista and Office on a test machine and enabling full blocking and tracking in Mcaffe firewall I found that there are three components of the CRM Client install that require external access, they are:

C:\Program Files\Microsoft Dynamics CRM\Client\ConfigWizard\Microsoft.Crm.Client.Config.exe

C:\Program Files\Microsoft Dynamics CRM\Client\ConfigWizard\Microsoft.Crm.Client.AutoUpdate.exe

C:\Program Files\Microsoft Dynamics CRM\Client\res\web\bin\ Microsoft.Crm.Application.Hoster.exe

I found once I had gone back through my clients personal firewall settings (which there were several) and enabled these three programs full access to the net, the install completed and they were able to use CRM, which meant that I could go home, Happy Days!

Custom Reporting in CRM 4.0

So after my relatively successful installation of the Event Management Accelerator, I have yet to test out how it actually works! But there is a reason for this... I have been thrust head first into writing Custom Reports for a particular client of ours... not one of my favorite subjects, but one that surprisingly I am finding quite enjoyable!

I have been playing around with Visual Studio and it is very good at making the reporting minefield relatively trouble free... and if I ever do run into any issues there is always the trusty geniuses on http://forums.microsoft.com/Dynamics/default.aspx?siteid=27 to help you out!

My major triumph today, however was a small piece of SQL code that enabled me to display the months to close a particular opportunity on this said report, now it may not seem much, but for me, it was like almost reaching the top of Everest!

anyways here is the code for months

=sum(DateDiff(DateInterval.Day, Fields!createdon.Value, Fields!actualclosedate.Value)/28)

However, the pièce de résistance has to be the average time that it takes to close opportunities and this code took a little while to get my head around the logic... but here it is...

=AVG(DateDiff(DateInterval.Day, Fields!createdon.Value, Fields!actualclosedate.Value)/28)

As you can probably tell, I'm rather pleased with myself so I think it is now time to go for coffee!