Update Rollup 3 for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Released

It seems like only yesterday we finished updating servers and clients to Update Rollup 2. I guess that’s because it pretty much was yesterday.  So, here we go again. Looking at the content of this rollup, a couple of things jump out at me:

1. Very few hotfixes that were released as individual hotfixes
2. The issues are getting more minor and unlikely to affect you

Type of Fix	Count
Hotfixes and updates that were released as individual fixes	6
Issues that were not previously documented in a Knowledge Base article	65
Hotfixes and updates that you have to enable or configure manually	17 *

* Some of the updates that need to be configured manually are repeats from UR2.

Now that Microsoft has gone with a short, 2 month cycle for rollups, we are seeing far fewer individual hotfixes being released.  I think that is the new strategy.  With a 2 month cycle, there’s no reason to publish minor hotfixes that will be included in the rollup in a few weeks.  The issues & fixes are pretty minor.  CRM 4.0 has become a solid and stable product. And well it should after 14 months in market.

Get it here:

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ISV Hosting Toolkit for Microsoft Dynamics CRM – Part 2

The Free Trial

A potential customer found your web site somehow.  Now is your chance so you better catch their attention before they leave.  So, put a link to a free trial or demo of your software where they’ll see it.

Get CourseMax or Try it Today!

On the CourseMax site, we show a link prominently everywhere someone might think about trying the software.  The experts say a graphical link on the top-right of the page works best.  The first option we offer them is a free trial but, if they are ready to buy it now, we give them that option too.

Once they click on one of these links, they are taken to a form where they fill out the minimum info we need to set them up with a free trial:

Buy CourseMax CRM or Get a Free 30-Day Trial

First Name:
Last Name:
Email:
Company:
CRM Organization Name:

We ask them for other pieces of information (phone, web site, etc.) but the above fields are the required fields on the form. Once this prospect submits the web form the application checks to see if the Organization Name is available (the CRM Org name must be unique), then creates an Account and Contact record in our CRM system and links the Contact as the Primary Contact for the account.

The Provisioning Workflow

There are some custom fields we added to the account record to deal with provisioning and billing.  The workflow triggers on an update of a field called “CreateOrganization”.  The Account record is actually created and saved first after the Primary Contact is created and linked then this field is updated and the record is saved again.

Each organization takes about 10 minutes to provision in the production environment.  The provisioning steps include:

• Check to see if another Org is Being Provisioned (<1 sec)
• Create CRM Organization (~4 minutes)
• Import & Publish Customizations (~4 minutes)
• Load & Register Plug-Ins (~1 minute)
• Import & Publish Security Roles (~30 sec)
• Create CRM User (~5 sec)
• Create CRM Queue, POP Account, & Configure Email Router (~ 2 sec)
• Update Account Provisioning Status to Completed (< 1 sec)
• Send Prospect an Email Confirmation (< 1 sec)
• Create a Bulk Delete Job in CRM Org (~14 sec)
• Import Configuration Entity Records (~3 sec)

I left out a bunch of small steps that are specific to CourseMax but this is the bulk of the workflow.  As you can see, the majority of the work and time is in creating the CRM organization and loading the customizations.  Both of these tasks run for 4 minutes. Loading and registering plug-in assemblies takes another minute.

Lessons Learned

One lesson we learned is that the deployment service is prone to timing out.  You can try adjusting the timout periods but that can lead to more problems.  If more than one organization was provisioned at a one time, the deployment service inevitably timed out.  We had to implement a sort of a FIFO queue to make sure one provisioning task was sent to the deployment service at a time.

We also had to execute several of these tasks locally on the server where the deployment or CRM web services are running.  That meant that we had to create our own web services on each of the servers which then ran a local process to call the CRM web services. So our workflow actually makes calls to our custom provisioning web services rather than calling the deployment service and CRM web services directly.

These steps eliminated the timeout problems we experienced initially and optimized the process.  If CourseMax becomes so popular that dozens of people are requesting free trials every hour and the queue length becomes an issue, we’ll have to look at intelligently scaling out across multiple deployment servers.  But that will be a good problem to have.

Next up…more details on the provisioning and customer conversion workflows.

2nd Incubation Week for Microsoft Dynamics CRM Platform Startups

Sanjay Jain, Microsoft ISV Architect Evangelist, announced the 2nd CRM incubation week event.

On popular demand after very successful 1st CRM Incubation Week, we are pleased to announce 2nd CRM Incubation Week (Boston, week of 20th, April)…

Check out Sanjay’s blog for details and to nominate your company to participate in the event.

I’m excited to be an advisor to the startup teams again.  Jim Steger, CRM Development expert from Sonoma Partners and co-author of the popular books Programming Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0, Working with Microsoft Dynamics(TM) CRM 4.0, and Microsoft® Dynamics(TM) CRM 4.0 Step by Step, and Ross Lotharius, CRM Expert from the award-winning CRM consultancy, Ascentium, will also be there as advisors.  There will also be a panel of investors and industry experts there to give advice.  Microsoft team members will also be there providing great advice, technical expertise, and giving you the opportunity to make great connections.

Sanjay and the rest of the Microsoft team orchestrated a fantastic event back in mid-December 2008 and I expect the 2nd event to be even better.  If you are a startup looking to build a vertical industry application on a PaaS platform, this event is an unbelievable way to kickstart your business.

For the first event, five startups were selected from a field of 50 applicants.  Each of those five startups were able to build a working, compelling prototype, get great advice on technology and business planning, make great connections and friendships, and generate buzz about their venture.  That’s a lot of value for the cost of a plane ticket and 4 nights at a hotel.  So hurry up and get your nomination in.  You don’t want to miss out on this opportunity.