I am in the process of trying to install CRM 2011 onto a Windows Server 2012 with SQL Server 2012. There are many blogs/posts on the subject so I won’t repeat those here. However, I ran into a problem which will likely be encountered by others. After doing all the front end work recommended by other blogs, I started my install. After accepting the End User Licensing Agreement (EULA) the install just seemed to hang or stall. The EULA window remained and nothing progressed. Looking in the setup log I found that the problem was failure to install the Visual C++ Runtime (Installation of Microsoft Visual C++ Runtime failed. Exit code: 5100. Result: Asia). A web search found the answer, provided by CRM Diva and fellow CRM MVP Donna Edwards. Actually she was addressing another problem but her fix suited my situation as well. The problem is that the CRM installation program tries to install the C++ Runtime because it doesn’t recognize the later version installed by Windows Server 2012. When it tries to install it, it fails. So we must uninstall the existing Visual C++ Runtime so the CRM install can install it. An additional wrinkle is that there are two versions of the Runtime, x86 and 64 bit so be sure to uninstall all existing versions of the Runtime before attempting to install CRM.

Now if I can only resolve the Reporting Server issue that is now preventing the install. I’ll let you know how that works out.

After 1029 days, the much awaited “The CRM Field Guide – How to CRM Like an MVP with Microsoft Dynamics CRM” is released! This 945 page book is the combined efforts of 19 MVP authors and MVP Julie Yack, our editor and publisher. It is comprised of 25 chapters that pretty well cover the CRM landscape. Yours truly authored Chapter 9 – Marketing Automation Best Practices.

The book is available at http://www.CRMFieldGuide.com in both Print and E-Book formats. It is also available at Amazon.com.

CRM 2011 added the feature of Team ownership of records. This was a much asked for addition, but it does present some unexpected issues. Today I was playing with creating a Phone Call in a workflow. One of the fields in a Phone Call is the Sender (I prefer ‘Caller’). In version 4 workflow I would have used the Form Assistant to dynamically insert the record’s Owner in the Sender field. That still works in CRM 2011 UNLESS the owner is a Team! If it is a team, the workflow will experience an error.

Instead select in the Look for dropdown Owning Team (Team) and then select Administrator

You can also select Owning User with the record type in the Look for. If the record is owned by a user that value will be used.

To cover all the bases include both: Select Owning Team(Team) Administrator and then <record type>Owning User. If a team is the owner, the team’s administrator will be used, otherwise it will fall through and use the Owning User instead.

I recently installed the Release Preview of Windows 8 on my notebook computer. Naturally being able to run CRM 2011 on it was a key issue. I installed Office 2010 64bit and attempted to configure the CRM client for Outlook. Installing was no problem but when I attempted to configure it for my organization, I received the error “Cannot connect to Microsoft Dynamics CRM server because we cannot authenticate your credentials…”. After frustrating all other resourses, I posted my dilemma to the MVP list. Murat from the CRM Team came to my rescue with these instructions:

Go to the Legacy Control Panel (not the Metro Control Panel)
  Click Programs
  Under Programs and Features, click “Turn Windows features on or off”
  Navigate to Windows Identity Foundation 3.5 and check the box.
  Click Ok. This will install WIF and enable it
  Auth should work normally now.

This worked! Thanks, Murat.

Next I had a problem with the CRM 2011 web client. It appeared to work at first but as I attempted to use it I found it did not function correctly. First I had to turn off the pop-up blocker, true for any OS or browser. But it still did not function correctly. Then my fellow MVP Scott Sewell suggested I configure it for compatibility mode. That was a little easier said than done. I had to search a bit to find the settings. I configured IE to expose the Menu Bar. From there I was able to access Tools and Compatibility View settings where I added my CRM website. Works great now.

The only remaining issue is using the Metro Internet Explorer browser. I haven’t figured out yet how to set it for compatibility view. When I do, I’ll blog it for you.

I had a call the other day from a client who was having some issues with security roles. He had just hired a new inside sales rep and had assigned her the same security role as the other reps. But, she wasn’t able to properly access the data the way the others were. He examined the security roles and was unable to see any differences. So, he called me. As he was showing me the security role settings for the new and existing users, I asked him to show me the Team membership of the new user. She was not assigned to any teams. Then I asked to see the teams the existing users belonged to. Sure enough they were in an inside sales team. I asked him to check the security roles assigned to the team. There was one, the Salesperson role. I recommended he add the new user to the team. Problem solved!

CRM 2011 has added a new wrinkle (feature) of Team Ownership of records. In order to own records, a team must have a security role assigned to it. Members of the team acquire the access privileges provided by the team’s security roles.

When troubleshooting security roles in CRM 2011, be sure to check team membership, and the security roles that might be assigned to those teams as well.

The other day I attempted to open my CRM 2011 and was asked to enter my user name and password. Strange I thought but I entered it nonetheless. It asked me for it again, apparently not liking what I had entered. I tried again, more carefully. And once again I was prompted for my user name and password. A third try resulted in a 401 Unauthorized error. Oh NO!! Had my CRM been hacked? Had someone messed with it? Everything seemed in order on the server.

I am running an Internet Facing Deployment, IFD, using Active Directory Federated Services, ADFS. Perhaps there is a problem with ADFS. I had a look there and it appeared OK as well. So I decided to temporarily disable IFD and Claims Based Authentication and see what happened. Much to my delight I was able to access CRM and found my data intact. So, the problem must be with the authentication.

I did a little digging with my favorite CRM troubleshooting tool, Bing, and eventually found a Knowledge Base article, http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2642530, that recommended setting the anonymous authentication permissions on the CRM 4 service end point (look to the article for the details.) I tried this but it still didn’t work Then, although the article didn’t include this step, I decided to run IISRESET. Yea! That did work and I now have my CRM back and life is good once again.

A nice new, hidden, feature in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 is the option to automatically delete the logs of successfully completed workflow jobs. This option is found at the bottom of the Administration tab of the workflow designer form.

The System Jobs log fills up with a lot of stuff, including workflow logs. This is an easy way to reduce it. However, be aware that you will no longer be able to see a record of a workflow having completed, neither in the System Jobs log, nor in Workflows on the affected records. So you might want to be sure a workflow is performing properly before setting this option. Also, the option is set on the individual workflows. I haven’t seen a global option to do this for all workflows.

Recently I was trying to configure the CRM 2011 E-Mail Router on my SBS 2008 network. No matter what I tried, when I attempted to Test Access at the end, I would get an error. What error I received depended on what variation I was trying at the time. I posted my dilemma to the other CRM MVPs and got all kinds of suggestions, none of which worked

Today, while brushing up to take the CRM 2011 Installation & Deployment certification exam, MB2-867, I noticed the error I was receiving referred to the certificate. That got me thinking. When setting up an SBS 2008 or SBS 2011 server, it is recommended to purchase a commercial security certificate so you can securely access your system remotely. The default external name is in the form of https://remote.yourcompany.com. Typically your certificate will be for that specific server. I had been using my internal server name, like http://sbs2008 or https://sbs2008 and these weren’t working. So I decided to try using the same name as used by the certificate. Eureka! It worked.

So my recommendation, when configuring the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 E-mail Router for use with SBS 2008, for the Incoming profile, specify the Exchange server as https://Remote.mydomain.com/ Hope that helps someone.

I have just spent several days working through getting Claims Based Authentication and Internet Facing Deployment working on my CRM 2011 system. It was a bumpy road and I thought that I might help smooth the road a bit for others by posting a few tips from the lessons I learned in the process. This is not a set of instructions for doing so, those can be found in the CRM 2011 Implementation Guide and specifically in the accompanying Word document “Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 and Claims Based Authentication.doc”. All can be downloaded from here.

ADSF Install

1.  

   The first step is to install and configure ADFS 2.0 (Active Directory Federated Services). This must be installed in the default web site of the server ADFS is installed on. If you are using Small Business Server, as I am, you will need to install this on another server. No problem. I’m running CRM on its own virtual server on port 5555 so I added ADFS on this server. ADFS must be configured to use SSL. The default port for SSL is 443. The SBS server uses port 443. My router points port 443 to my SBS server. Need to use another port. No problem, port 444 is free. You must bind the port to the default web site before you install ADFS.
   2. Tip 1 – Bind your port to the default web site BEFORE you install ADFS. Don’t forget to have your router forward the port to your ADFS server.

   3.  

   4. Tip 2 – If you miss Tip 1 and install it to port 443 and need to change it, you will have to uninstall ADFS to do so. ADFS does not show up in Control Panel/Programs and Features unless you click on “View installed updates” and look under Microsoft Windows.

DNS

You will need several DNS entries pointing to your server, assuming CRM and ADFS are on the same server. If not, you will still need several pointing to ADFS and CRM. These are external names pointing to your internal addresses. For instance You’ll need one for crm.mycompany.com with an address of 192.168.1.5 and another for sts1.mycompany.com with an address of 192.168.1.5. If you are running SBS, your internal domain name is likely mycompany.local so you will need to create a new zone in DNS for mycompany.com. You also probably also have an separate zone for remote.mycompany.com pointing to your SBS server. Be sure your external DNS points appropriately as well. In my case everything goes to my one public IP and the router sorts it out.

Tip 3 – Create a separate zone for mycompany.com to put your addresses in. Don’t bother adding entries in the .local zone.

Firewall

Before you get too far in trying to make things work, especially from a browser on another computer, such as your workstation, be sure to open the firewall on the ADFS server for your SSL port. Hopefully you’ve already done so for your CRM port.

Tip 4 – Use Windows Firewall with Advanced Security to permit your SSL port (443 or 444 or whatever).

Timeout

When you run CRM with Claims Based Authentication, you will find that it will periodically log you off! Even while you are in the middle of updating a record! Especially if you have configured IFD! This is not fun. The default timeout is 60 minutes but it will start messing with you after just 20 minutes. You can extend this time out period by following these instructions and using PowerShell.

Tip 5 – Check out the Technet article “Claims Based Authentication and security token expiration” and proceed accordingly.

This is by no means an exhaustive list but I think I could have saved myself a lot of time if I’d only written this before I started trying to configure IFD on my system. I hope it helps you. Be sure to also check out my article on how to reconfigure your Outlook client to use the newly configured IFD.

When I first upgraded my CRM 4.0 to CRM 2011 I didn’t set it up with access via SSL and I only had it for internal use. So, when I configured my Outlook client I used the URL http://myCRM:5555 and used the organization MyOrg. I have just reconfigured my CRM 2011 to now use Claims Based Authentication and an Internet Facing Deployment. More on how to do that in another post. My IFD is working fine with the web client but I needed to reconfigure my Outlook client accordingly. Unfortunately, one cannot edit the configuration other than to chance the display name. That doesn’t help much. I tried adding a new configuration for the new URL but it told me there weren’t any organizations there. I suppose that is because my one and only organization was already configured.

After much head scratching and Bing/Googling I decided to check the Registry. There I found what I was looking for. Before making any changes to the Registry be sure to make a backup. I did am was glad I had! The Registry entry of interest is HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\MSCRMClient. There you will find several references to the CRM URL. I changed all these to reflect my new https URL. I then brought up the CRM Configuration Wizard and still had the same problem. Remember that backup?? Then I looked a bit further and saw another key under the MSCRMClient with a GUID for a name. Selecting that presented me with another selection of the CRM URL. I changed all those to the new https URL and opened up the CRM Configuration Wizard once again. Much to my delight all the values were changed to the new values. Even better my Outlook was once again able to connect to my server and sync up all the changes I’d made to it while off-line.

The other day I blogged about Installing CRM 2011 RC On-Premise. Last night I decided to add some data to my initial test installation by importing my production CRM 4.0 data into my test CRM 2011 deployment. I was also curious as to how easy it would be to add version 4.0 data to 2011. In version 4.0 one is able to Import Organization and add a CRM organization from another deployment to an existing deployment (best to be running the Enterprise edition to do this). This is done using the Deployment Manager on the CRM server. CRM 2011 also has the Deployment Manager.

The Deployment Manager is installed on the CRM server when CRM is installed. The Active Directory user who installs CRM is automatically made a Deployment Administrator. There must be at least one Deployment Administrator and you can add others as you require. Deployment Administrators typically do not need to be users in the CRM. They can be any network user in your Active Directory. I’ve highlighted typically for a reason as you’ll see as we progress. If you are running the Enterprise version of CRM 4.0 you can have multiple organizations. In CRM 2011 this is available in the standard server version, but not the Workgroup Edition. New organizations can be created using the Deployment Manager, or existing organization databases can be imported. My goal was to see if I could import my CRM 4.0 data into a new organization in CRM 2011.

The first step was to make a backup of my CRM 4.0 SQL data using the SQL Server Management Studio. I won’t go into details of that process here but leave that up to you. Then I copied the backup file (only the OrganizationName_MSCRM database is needed) over to my CRM 2011 server and used Restore Database add the database to the new server.

On the CRM server I started Deployment Manager, selected Organizations from the navigation pane, and selected Import Organization. I was prompted for the SQL server and the CRM database to import. Actually my deployment was smart enough to default to the SQL server for my CRM 2011 test deployment and the CRM database I’d just restored. I’ll not detail the steps necessary to run the import. The wizard walks you through everything. I did get a few warnings from the Environment Diagnostic Wizard though, mainly having to do with, I believe, the differences between my v4.0 and 2011 environments. One had to do with the language packs. Perhaps it would be best to disable or even uninstall any language packs before making your CRM 4.0 SQL backup.

Part of the import process links users in the imported database with users in your Active Directory. This allows one to import an organization from a completely foreign domain. I kept receiving an error that at least one user had to be assigned the System Administrator role (“You must map your Active Directory user account to at least one enabled Microsoft Dynamics CRM user who has the System Administrator role before the organization can be imported”). Long story made short, the Administrator account in my CRM 4.0 deployment was a System Administrator but was assigned the Restricted Access Mode. I changed this to remove the Restricted Access Mode (actually a hold over from v3.0) and made sure the license Access Mode was set to Full. I then backed up my CRM 4.0 SQL data and restored it again on my CRM 2011 server. This time the import process sailed through the user phase.

After getting my users to match, I figured it would be a quick process to complete the importation. Not so! The process took an amazing amount of time preparing the database for import and appeared to hang on the ‘Delete completed old asyncoperation records’ stage. This alone took almost 3 hours! I received a tip via Twitter from @ccellar suggesting I clean up the asyncoperationbase table before doing an import and supplied a link to a KB on the process. Thanks, Christoph. I’ll blog about that when I do my next test import.

Once the asyncoperation phase was completed, the import went along much quicker, though it did still take a while and I went to bed way before it finished.  But it did complete and now I have my CRM 4.0 database nicely restored and running in my test CRM 2011 deployment. I’ll go though this again for practice, removing the language packs (well at least disabling), and taking care of the asyncoperationbase table. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Today was the Release To Web (RTW) of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 On Line. The Global Launch will be this Thursday with a keynote by Steve Ballmer. I took this occasion to install the CRM 2011 On-Premise (meaning you get a CD or whatever and load it on your own server) Release Candidate (RC) on my test machine. Actually it took me most of the weekend, not to just install CRM, but to set up my server. I’m using a swap out hard drive on my day to day notebook, a Dell Latitude D830, as my test machine. I’ve loaded Windows Server 2008 R2 as the base operating system and have created a Hyper-V virtual machine for CRM. This is the same environment I used to work with the pre-beta releases for the last year or so.

The Hyper-V virtual machine is also loaded with Windows Server 2008 R2. My original version of SQL 2008 that I had used with the earlier betas didn’t work when I decided to reconfigure the virtual machine from being its own domain controller and make it a member of my production domain. When I did this, I wasn’t able to access the SQL server as the Administrator (from the old domain) no longer existed. So I had to uninstall and reinstall SQL. I had major problems trying to install SQL 2008 and eventually downloaded and installed SQL 2008 R2 which went much better.

Once SQL was reinstalled I was finally ready to install CRM 2011. I had previously downloaded all the installation files. Of course CRM 2011 requires a 64 bit server as well as 64 bit SQL so the only server install files are 64 bit. The downloaded install file, when run, expands to provide all the installation folders, etc. I then found and ran the ServerSetup.exe which started the install process. The install was pretty straight forward. I did encounter some issues with IIS not properly restarting a couple of times though. I manually restarted the IISAdmin service and clicked Ignore on the installation dialog box. The installation continued to completion.

The actual install of CRM, once all the installation dialog boxes had been responded to, took about an hour. So don’t be in a big hurry when you do yours. Once CRM was installed, I was then prompted to run the SSRS Reporting Extensions which basically published all the CRM reports to the SQL Reporting Services. I was then prompted to restart my server.

Once installed CRM took a bit to come up the first time. Also, I had to make adjustments to the security settings of Internet Explorer to accommodate CRM, just like in previous versions.

Once I had the initial Release Candidate installed, I went to Windows Update. Much to my delight (but not surprise since I’d already heard about it) the CRM RC1 update was available to me to download and install. It was a 60+ MB file but downloaded and installed without a hitch. Another reboot was required and I was up and running.

I’m looking forward to playing with this test environment prior to upgrading my production system to CRM 2011.

By the end of the year, Microsoft will launch their newest version of the customer relationship management program, Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011. This is being seen as a true game changer in the industry. There are many new features in CRM 2011, most of which have been asked for by users for some time. At first I was going to title this article something like Larry’s Top 10 Features in CRM 2011 but it would be hard to pick the best. So I’m just going to describe a few of the goodies included in this upcoming release. I’ll try not to make it too ‘salesy’ and will focus it on the user. There are lots of goodies for developers as well.

Field Level Security – this gives administrators the ability to restrict access to certain fields in records. Previously security was only controlled at the record level. A user could either access a certain record, or they could not.

Role Based Forms – in previous versions there was only one form per record type for viewing and updating data. In 2011 multiple forms can be configured and assigned to users based on their job functions.

Ribbon – Microsoft’s latest Office versions now use a ‘ribbon’ menu at the top of the screen to present options and features. CRM 2011 uses a ribbon as well to make the look and feel of CRM like that of Microsoft Office so the users will feel they are already familiar with the program.

Dialogs – these are interactive workflows that can step a user through a process. These will be especially valuable in call centers where the user will ask a series of questions and be guided to the next step or question depending on the answers.

Outlook Integration – CRM 2011 will have native integration with Microsoft Office Outlook. This gives the user great flexibility in customizing how Outlook presents and handles CRM data to include previews, conditional formatting, charts, and dashboards.

Flexible Goal Management – Provides the ability to set and measure actual performance against goals and key performance indicators.

Solutions and the Marketplace – OK, this one is kind of a developer and administrator goodie. CRM 2011 allows developers to create packages of customizations and enhancements to CRM which can be quickly and easily added to a CRM installation. These customization packages will be available on the newly created ‘Marketplace’. Independent software vendors (ISV) can publish their packages for organizations to download, install, try and if they like them, buy. If they decide the package does not meet their needs, they can quickly and easily uninstall the package. This is a concept similar to ‘Apps’ on iPhone and other smartphone brands. This will be HUGE in my opinion.

Auditing – In previous versions of Microsoft Dynamics CRM there was no native auditing of changes to the data. Customizers could add the functionality but it took an extra effort and was usually targeted at a specific record type and data field. With 2011 auditing is built in. The system can (it’s an option) keep track of all changes to data including what the change was, when it was made, and who made the change. This has been a much asked for feature for many years.

SharePoint Integration – CRM 2011 now includes out of the box integration with SharePoint. This provides many advantages including dynamic document management.

CRM 2011 will be available in both ‘on-premise’ (where you get a CD and load it on your own server) and CRM Online (where Microsoft hosts it for you on their servers). I view the Online offering as the way to go in the future, especially for small businesses that don’t want to invest in the network infrastructure to support CRM.

There is a lot more that’s new with CRM 2011. This article briefly covered only a few of them. Many of the other enhancements will delight developers and system administrators, and ultimately the end users. For more information, visit the CRM 2011 Beta site at http://www.crm2011beta.com. Look for the Online to be released by year end and the on-premise in early 2011.

In the CRM Customization class I teach there is a chapter about changing entity names. Perhaps your company doesn’t like the term ‘Account’ and you’d prefer to use ‘Company’ instead. The sales pitches for CRM often show how easy it is to change the name. Simply go into the Entity Editor for the entity and change it. Unfortunately, as the course chapter describes, it’s not really that simple. The entity name is used in many places: on the form, views, reports, other entities, messages, and so on. The name should be changed on each of these for consistency. You don’t want to refer to Company one place and Account elsewhere. It can be confusing. I generally impress upon my students that changing an entity name can be a tedious process if you want to do a thorough job of it.

In the same chapter is a discussion of how to translate customizations you may have made to CRM to another language if you have a language pack installed. The process is to use the Export Labels for Translation, manually update the file in Excel to add the proper strings in the added language(s) for your customizations, and then Import Labels for Translation the modified file.

In my last class a bright student asked whether this translation process couldn’t be used to help do global changes for entity names. I didn’t know. Hadn’t thought of it. So I gave it a try.

First I had to install a Multilingual User Interface (MUI) language pack. These are free to download from Microsoft. The Export Labels for Translation process won’t export without at least one language pack. Then I changed the name of an Entity (Account to Company), published,  and exported the labels for translation. I opened the resultant export file, unprotected it so I could modify it, then did a global Find and Replace. I had to do several of these, one for Account to Company, Accounts to Companies, account to company, & accounts to companies. Care must be taken not to change the ‘Display String Key’ column as this will stop the import. I then imported the file and it worked! This process changed Account to Company (etc.) pretty much everywhere.

Now, don’t tell your boss about this shortcut. If he wants an entity name changed, show him how much work in entails, using the normal method, then use this shortcut and go home early.

I am currently on vacation but wanted to check out the latest Microsoft Dynamics CRM Update Rollup 11 since it has some great enhancements for the CRM Client for Outlook. The Sonoma Partners have posted a great and concise article on the enhancements to the Outlook Client in their blog at http://blog.sonomapartners.com/2010/06/microsoft-crm-outlook-client-and-update-rollup-11-ur11.html

Since I am currently ‘Away from the Office’ and therefore running CRM in Offline mode, I was curious to see what would happen if I attempted to install the upgrade in this state. It went perfectly! And having the CRM stuff in the Home tab instead of the ‘Add Ins’ is wonderful! I’ll let you know if I have any problems when I return home and synch up.

Recently a client’s SBS 2008 server crashed! Never a good thing. For some reason we were unable to recover the System (C:) drive by regenerating the mirror. As a final resort I decided to recover the server from the backup. SBS 2008 has a somewhat different backup than previous versions and I had never had the misfortune, until now, to need to restore from one. As with any server restore, I was filled with apprehension. A failed restore can have a major impact on a client.

The restore process is actually pretty easy with SBS 2008. I did a little research first (do a Bing search on SBS 2008 Restore) so I had an idea of the process. The first main tricky thing was after booting from the SBS 2008 installation DVD to select to Repair the Computer, which is in the lower left of the screen, instead of selecting Install. Next I had to provide the RAID drivers on a USB flash drive. Once done, I had the option of wiping out the existing drives (reformatting) and whether to leave the data drive alone. I chose to restore both drives.

The actual restore took about 35 minutes for both the System and Data drives. A reboot was required and then it was back up and running. I was VERY impressed with the restore process of SBS 2008. It is so much better than in the old days.

Later I’ll blog how we were able to function while the server was out of service.

This past week I attended Microsoft Dynamics Convergence 2010 in Atlanta. Convergence is the annual Microsoft conference for the Dynamics products. MS CRM is a prominent member of this product group. The conference was held in the Georgia World Congress Center (GWCC), a huge convention center in downtown Atlanta. LOTS of walking. Anne Stanton reported putting 24,000 clicks on her CRMUG pedometer the first couple of days!

I arrived Friday evening and was very excited to be invited to dinner with Erik von Hoof, CEO of CWR Mobility of The Netherlands. It was an extremely enjoyable evening where I got to meet and get to know a couple of his primary sales staff, including Mark Corley for the US. Mark was with Microsoft’s CRM team for quite some time and it was very interesting learning about the history of the product.

DayONE of Convergence was sponsored mainly by the CRM User Group, CRMUG. It started off at 1:30 with a general session run by CRMUG’s Mark Rhodes. This was an overview of the CRMUG and the benefits of membership and an explanation of activities. Following that were Interactive Sessions where attendees got to discuss various CRM topics. I facilitated the Managing CRM Data along with John Johnston of Volvo Construction Equipment. We had a large crowd of over 75 folks. Still I managed to get them to rearrange their chairs into a large circle so everyone could see who was making a comment. The discussion was very lively. That evening culminated in a Convergence Reception which was held in a LARGE hall of the CWCC. The food and company were great and I made many new contacts. One of the most memorable moments was as I was leaving and encountered a giant walking TREE!

I’ll follow up with part II for the kickoff of the main conference. Stay tuned.

I’m getting ready to attend Microsoft’s Convergence, it’s annual conference for its Dynamics division. This is one of the largest conferences that Microsoft holds, hosting around 10,000 folks. Unlike a lot of Microsoft conferences, this one is largely focused on end users/customers as well as Microsoft partners.

The conference starts this Saturday in Atlanta and goes through Tuesday. Each day is crammed full of break-out sessions and interactive discussions. I’ll be facilitating a couple of those sessions, “Managing Your Microsoft Dynamics CRM Data” and “Accelerating Your Business”. These are CRMUG sponsored sessions. I’ll also be helping out CRMUG as I can.

It should be a great conference with a full schedules of sessions all day and receptions and parties all night. I’m anticipating being a pretty pooped puppy by the time it’s over. I’ll blog my experiences as I can.

The Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, & Arkansas (TOLA) Regional Chapter of the CRM User Group (www.CRMUG.com) held its inaugural meeting on Thursday, April 8^th, at the Microsoft Office in Irving, Texas. We had a great turn out for our first meeting with approximately 20 joining in. The attendees mainly represented user organizations as opposed to Microsoft partners selling CRM. Although partners are welcome (I’m one), being mainly users allows the members to more freely share their experiences and learn from each other.

Lunch was sponsored by Sean Myers, President and CEO of Endeavor Commerce, www.SmartCatalog.com, a local Dallas area partner. Sean presented a great overview of his product, SmartCatalog (www.SmartCatalog.net). His presentation was pretty much a deep dive into SmartCatalog rather than a sales pitch. It showed a good example of what can be done with Microsoft CRM and how versatile it can be. I think this kind of presentation from other vendors (and lunch sponsors) will be of great benefit and interest to the group moving forward.

James Johnston with the Microsoft Dynamics CRM UX team gave a presentation via LiveMeeting. I’m not at liberty to discuss it as it was under NDA. But he gave the attendees a glimpse into the upcoming CRM 5. One of the advantages of belonging to a group like this is access to such information.

Yours truly wrapped up the meeting with a presentation on various resources that are available on line for users, developers, & implementers to seek and share information about CRM with their peers.

The prime-mover of the group is Syed Ali with PrintPlace.com in Arlington, Texas. He is the visionary who conceived of the group, coordinated with the national organization, and organized the meeting. Please contact Syed at Sali@printplace.com for information on future meetings and how you can be involved. We hope to have meetings in other locations such as Oklahoma City, Houston, Austin, and of course, San Antonio. Thanks also to our sponsors at Microsoft, Brett Bergman and Tom Pertzborn who made the facilities at Microsoft available.

Involvement in user groups such as CRMUG and our TOLA Chapter are a great way to more about a product like Microsoft Dynamics CRM and take better advantage of its capabilities. I hope you will join us at a future meeting.

Larry’s Taco Talk has moved to the MS MVP blog site, http://www.msmvps.com/blogs/larrylentz. Of course, if you are reading this you already know that. This is my first post directly to the site so this is my somewhat quiet kick-off.

Many thank yous to Susan Bradley, the SBS Diva and owner of this blog site for setting me up.