Microsoft Dynamics Snap

(For Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0)

Phase 2 Pre-Release 2 - Release Notes

 

August 2006

(c) 2006 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

 

 

PRE-RELEASE SOFTWARE:  This software is a pre-release version.  It may not work the way a final version of the software will.  We may change it for the final, commercial version.  We also may not release a commercial version. 


This document provides important, late-breaking information about this release of Microsoft Dynamics Snap for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0, which supplements the Microsoft Dynamics Snap documentation. The snap-ins included in phase 2 are created to work with Microsoft Office 2007 (beta) and Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0. Phase 2 pre-release 2 consists of a snap-in called the Customer Journal Snap-in for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0.

For the latest set of issues and information, please check the documentation, news items and message board at Dynamics Snap site on GotDotNet.com.

Contents

Getting Started

Prerequisites

Installation:

Known Issues

Error and warning messages

Getting Started

For an overview of what Microsoft Dynamics Snap for Microsoft Dynamics CRM does, see the white paper Whitepaper – Microsoft Dynamics Snap for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 – Phase 2 Pre-release 2 in the docs folder.

Prerequisites

 

·         At least 5 MB of disk space must be available on the local machine installation location.

·         The user must have permissions and access to the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 server.

·         Microsoft Office 2007 beta 2 should be installed. Make sure InfoPath 2007 (beta) is installed and working normally.

·         The installation files, including setup.exe, must be copied on your local machine. Do not install them from the download site.

 

Note: This release has been tested to work with Windows XP, Windows 2003 Server (Enterprise/Standard/R2) and Windows SBS 2003 Operating systems.

Installation:

For a description of the installation process, see Implementation Guide - Microsoft Dynamics Snap for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 – Phase 2 Pre-release 2 in the docs folder.

Known Issues

The following list contains the set of known issues regarding the installation and the application:

The Customer Journal form cannot be opened on a machine where Customer Journal snap-in is not installed.

Make sure Microsoft Dynamics Snap for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 Phase 2 Pre-release 2 is installed on the machine where the form is opened. Also, make sure the user has appropriate permissions in CRM to access various information elements displayed in the Customer Journal form. If the user does not have permission to some of the information elements, a warning message would popup when the form tries to fill the sections pertaining to those.

 

There is no provision to remove rows from any section

Currently this provision is not provided. Trying to delete rows by selecting them manually and deleting by pressing DELETE key might lead to errors.

 

One should not try to remove either a Opportunity or Opportunity product from Sales Quotation Summary section as this does not actually remove the row from Microsoft Dynamics CRM.

We have used the Master/detail control to display Active Opportunities and their corresponding opportunity products in the Opportunity Summary section. This is because the Master/detail control best suites this requirement and provides a neat view of active opportunities in the Master table and their respective opportunity products in the details table. But as a side effect of using this control, there is a side menu which appears along with this control that allows the user to remove rows from the two tables. The rows can also be removed by manually selecting them and pressing DELETE key. Please note that although the rows appear to be removed from the Customer Journal form, they don’t really get removed in Microsoft Dynamics CRM. We are trying to fix this problem by disallowing the remove functionality which has come up as a weed.

 

The sections Order Summary, Quotes summary, Service case summary and Activities summary show only recent 5 records and there is no provision to view more.

We are planning to make this configurable so that the user can fetch and see the recent ‘n’ payments, where ‘n’ is configurable.

 

Notes section shows only recent 5 previous meeting notes. There is no provision to see all the meeting notes.

We are planning to make this configurable so that the user can fetch and see the recent ‘n’ notes, where ‘n’ is configurable.

 

The Customer Journal InfoPath form allows storing the current meeting notes with a past date.

We would fix this issue in the final version.

 

Date field under Notes section takes text value also.

The Date picker control in InfoPath allows the user to enter text in the date field. To avoid any date format errors, it is advisable to not enter the date values manually but to choose them from the date picker calendar.

 

Changes to the Current meeting notes are not displayed in the screen which asks the user to confirm changes on clicking the Update button.

We intend to fix this in the final release version.

 

Label names on the Customer Journal form are currently not same as their counterparts in Microsoft Dynamics CRM forms.

We intend to pick them from Microsoft Dynamics CRM labels in the final version to aid in Localization.

 

Customer Journal Snap-in throws an error during installation if both Microsoft Office 2003 and Microsoft Office 2007 beta are installed on a Windows 2003 Server machine

The error does not appear in case of a Windows XP machine and also does not appear on Windows 2003 if Microsoft Office 2007 beta is installed after installing Microsoft Office 2003.

Currently there is no work-around found for this problem. We’ll try to resolve this in the final version.

 

“Error in section: Active Products. Data found in some of the fields are either invalid or empty.”

This error occurs in some very specific cases, one of which is described here. The user populates the Customer Journal form with a particular customer’s data, saves and closes the form. He later reopens the form and overwrites the earlier data with data about another Customer, adds an opportunity and an opportunity product and then tries to update the form. We are finding a fix for this problem.

 

“View more details” button appears in empty records

If any section on the Customer Journal form has no data to display, it still has an empty record that gets displayed and thus the View more details button is visible and throws an error when clicked. We’ll fix this issue in the final release.

 

Performance of the Customer Journal form in terms of time taken to connect, refresh and update is low

We are yet to do performance tuning for this snap-in. We plan to do it before the final release.

 

Security testing is yet to be performed

This would be done before the final release.

Error and warning messages

 

Following errors and warnings appear during various stages while working with the Customer Journal Snap-in:

 

1. Error: Occurs when the user does not have login permission into CRM or CRM server is not accessible while refreshing the data.

 

 

2. Error: Occurs when the user has login permission in CRM but does not have roles to access some entities. An error message similar to the one shown below would be displayed with the appropriate entity name.

 

 

3. Error: The error box displayed below pops up in the following situations:

a)      User does not have permission to write back into the MSCRM.

b)      Some sections in General Profile are blank.

c)      If the user makes any picklist type field or credit limit or Annual revenue blank.

d)     CRM server is not accessible when update is clicked.

 

 

4. Error: The error box displayed below pops up in the following situations:

a)      User does not have write permissions into contact and tries to modify the contact information.

b)      CRM server is not accessible when update is clicked.

 

 

5. Error: The error box displayed below pops up in the following situations:

a)      User tries to add opportunities and does not have permission to add opportunities.

b)      CRM server is not accessible when update is clicked.

 

 

 

6. Warning: The following message is displayed after update when some changes have been updated back to CRM while others have not been made due to problems. For e.g. user makes some changes in General section and adds an opportunity although he does not have permission to add opportunity in CRM. When he clicks Update, the changes made in the general section are updated back while the newly created opportunity is not added back in Microsoft Dynamics CRM.

 

 

 

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