1. Do you only want to receive web form submissions from visitors that provide a corporate email address?
2. Do you want to keep competitors from signing up for your newsletters or requesting trials of your software?
3. Do you want to keep visitors from requesting information and access to white papers using ‘free’ email accounts like gmail, hotmail, and from cable companies?

Then you need – Web2CRM Email Blacklist – a new feature we have added to our Web2CRM advanced Internet Lead Capture solution for Dynamics CRM 2011 Online and Onpremise.

The user attempts to submit a form using a domain email address you have blacklisted (in this case gmail.com)

They will get this warning!

Email Blacklist is a new and free feature to our much loved Web2CRM Internet Lead Capture solution.

A special note to users of CRM Online outside of the USA using the CRM4 and CRM5 data centers - this solutions works for you!

How did I report this issue? At the bottom of every Help Screen there is a Did you find the information that you need? section. Just click on No and then fill in the feedback and click Send Feedback. An email will open up on your computer and then just click send.

The Resource Center is evolving into a portal from which you can get to the vast wealth of information about CRM. Recently I was there on another mission but noticed that there are new features and direct links to pages that I would normally have to find via Bing. In the RC they are already book marked for you.

Tell Us What You Think Make a product suggestion – this link takes you directly to the Microsoft Connect site. You can formally suggest improvements to the Dynamics CRM Team. These suggestions are reviewed by a team member and then they will update the suggestion with the status of the review. You can also vote on suggestions made by your peers. Send Feedback about this site – This launches an email to the documentation team who will receive your feedback which will be linked to the page that it was sent from – in this case the highlights page. You will receive an automated response from the Manager of the team acknowledging your feedback. What’s New in this Release? What’s new in Microsoft Dynamics 2011? – this link will open up in a new browser Window a resource center article summarizing the latest product enhancement (as of this post it would be Activity Feeds) and a recap of the major areas of improvement in the initial release vs V4.  Helpful Tips FAQ from other customers – frequently asked questions about Dynamics CRM that other customers like you might ask that are new to the product – for example: what is a support incident?, how to use the core record types, and customizing the system to work the way your business works. Known Issues – a link to the current iteration of the CRM 2011 Readme file available online. Installation Considerations Microsoft Dynamics CRM Implementation Guide – this will take you to the Microsoft TechNet site where you can review the Planning, Installing and Operating and Maintenance Guides online. Get Downloads – stop searching for CRM downloads - this link takes you directly to the Microsoft Download Center already pre-filtered for the CRM resources. Connect Ask the Community – search for CRM community forum for questions posted and perhaps already answered for the issue solution you are currently working to solve. Most Recent CRM Forum Postings – a constantly updating thread of recent postings.

Where the HTTPS://uniquename.domainname.com:444 was known to be correct as we could login via IE.

This error message points to KB2548802 - Configuration of the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Outlook client fails with the error: “The server address (URL) is not valid”

We confirmed issues 1 & 2 in the KB and checked the resolution.

This issue can occur due to the following reasons:
1. Anonymous Access is disabled on the CRM web site.
2. The Web Address URLs specified in the Deployment Manager do not match the CRM URL in IIS.

We were good on #1 and #2. Time to do more research. We then went to  this support article – KB2498357 Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Outlook client configuration fails with “The specified Microsoft Dynamics CRM server address (URL) is not responding”. What caught our eye in this article was the platform trace error example was identical to what we were seeing even though the error message was different. Our trace error looked like this:

Error Exception : Metadata contains a reference that cannot be resolved: ‘https://<ServerName>/<OrgName>/XRMServices/2011/Organization.svc?wsdl’.    at System.ServiceModel.Description.MetadataExchangeClient.MetadataRetriever.Retrieve(TimeoutHelper timeoutHelper)

The resolution in this KB was to check the Site Bindings and ensure thaat you only have on http: and/or one https:// binding type. We checked and we only had one of each. But since we weren’t using the HTTP:5555 url anymore we removed it and then we could connect via Outllook.

So the answer at least in this situation was that if you don’t need the legacy binding any longer – remove it and it could solve the Outlook configuration issue.

With one click you can create a standalone window that will display all the activity feed action without taking up a lot of space on your desktop. You can even close the primary CRM browser Window to give you one less IE tab to manage.

First go to the What’s new form -

Then click on the expansion icon to the right of the what’s new page heading .

This will open up the What’s new Window in a new chrome-less browser window.

If you want you can now close the original tab for CRM. With the What’s new Window you can monitor posts and even interact with them.

Since this is a chrome-less window you can’t re-size it but you can move it around your desktop. If you have dual monitors just drag it over to the second monitor to keep in your peripheral vision.

Here is a nice trick if you just want to go to the What’s new only window and also be able to re-size it. Create a bookmark directly to the URL.

Use the format below – just substitute your unique company name in the string. If this doesn’t work for you then capture your URL from the process you used first to open it in its own window.

https://YOURUNIQUENAMEHERE.crm.dynamics.com/main.aspx?page=Workplace&area=nav_personalwall&_hc=true

When you use this approach the re-size feature will be available.

In CRM 4 you could just browse to the Metadata browser in your on premise environment. In support of the new cloud world we live in the Entity Metadata Browser is now a managed solution that you can import into your CRM environment regardless of where it lives.

The browser provides significant insight into the underpinnings of all 238 entities that are built into the out of the box solution. This insight gives the developer much needed information on all the parameters of every entity.

To get access to the Metadata Browser you need to first download and install the SDK onto your local drive. It is totally free. You don’t need to be a CRM partner either to get it. http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=24004

After you download and extract it, navigate to SDK\SampleCode\JS\SOAPForJScript\Script\SDK.Metadata.js in the folder you extracted it to.

After you have done that just go to CRM and import and publish the managed solution – metadatabrowser_1_0_0_3_managed.zip. Not to be snippy but if you need help doing this the information in the browser won’t be meaningful to you.

Then you can get access to the browser in one of two ways:

1. Navigate directly to it by this url:
<your organization URL>/WebResources/sample_/MetaDataBrowser/MetaDataBrowser.htm

2. Go to Customizations, Solutions, double click on the Metadata Browser solution in the grid view and it will open up in a new Window.

There is also a read-me document in the same folder on your drive with the managed solution.

Have a great coding day!

This is the notification bar you would normally see if an email is pending delivery.

This is the corresponding form view when in ROF mode. No alert is displayed.

1. Enable Read-optimized forms system wide by going to System Settings, Customization and selecting the checkbox.

2. Then go to Settings, Administration and then Users.

3. Select one or more users.

4. Then in the Ribbon Bar Form group select Edit to change their default setting to the ‘old way’.

When I Binged the error message it sent me to: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2600640

After looking at the client’s computer I discovered that the CRM Outlook integration was only at Update Rollup 5. I then decided that I should probably read the KB article for Update Rollup 7 rather than just download and install. It wasn’t even in the fine print. Right in the System Requirements were two bulleted items and clearly not having Update Rollup 6 already installed was the culprit.

So I installed UR 6 and then UR 7 went in smooth as silk.

Hi, this year I volunteered to support the Microsoft CRM Booth at Convergence. It is one of my responsibilities as a CRM MVP to give back and I am looking forward to contributing to the community in this manner for the first time.

This year the demo focus is on Navigational Business Intelligence – drilling down from the Charts into the records and then back up in the other direction from a really nifty Excel spreadsheet embedded in SharePoint back to the CRM records. Social of course is a big question that comes up and there is a lot to talk about there along with the new Mobile experience.

You can also see a demo of the free CRM Portal, Sharepoint integration and of course all the other wonderful features of CRM 2011.

Today (Sunday) I did 2.5 hours in the booth and tomorrow (Monday) I will be there from 12-3 and then again from 6-9. See you on the show floor.