What’s not supported in the next major release of Microsoft Dynamics CRM (2013?)

Removal of the 2007 Endpoint and Legacy Features

The 2007 service endpoint was deprecated in the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 release. Extensions that use the 2007 endpoint will not be supported and will not work in the next major release of Microsoft Dynamics CRM. Note the following more detailed information:

• Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online customers using the Microsoft account identity provider can continue to use extensions that require the 2007 endpoint after upgrade. However, prior to the transition of your organization to Microsoft online services (MOS), you will need to upgrade or remove those extensions that require the 2007 endpoint.
• Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online customers using the Microsoft online services (MOS) identity provider will see no change in service. The 2007 endpoint has not been supported in organizations using the MOS identity provider.
• When Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 on-premises and IFD customers try to upgrade their server to the next major release of Microsoft Dynamics CRM, the upgrade process will detect extensions that are using the 2007 endpoint or legacy Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 features. If any of these extensions are found, the Environmental Diagnostic Wizard will report an error and you will not be able to continue the upgrade until those extensions are removed or upgraded to use the 2011 endpoint.

The following legacy Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 features will be removed or will no longer be supported in the next major product release:

How to improve CRMAsyncService.exe memory and CPU usage.

The Microsoft CRM web site if hosted on a multi-processor/core server will automatically be using server Garbage Collection mode, but for managed Microsoft .Net programs like the CRMAsyncService.exe, they will default to the workstation garbage collection mode. Note that this resolution will only apply if Microsoft Dynamics CRM is installed on a multi-processor or multi-core server since the crmasyncservice will aways be forced to use the Microsoft .Net workstation garbage collection mode on a single CPU (non multi-core) server.

In order to allow the CRMAsyncService.exe to take advantage of all the processors/cores on a server, you can add the following element to a CRMAsyncService.exe.config file and place it in the same directory as the CRMAsyncService.exe program, typically in the “C:\Program Files\Microsoft Dynamics CRM\Server\bin” directory if you haven’t changed the default installation location for the Microsoft CRM Server.

Note that these changes will take effect the next time that you restart the Microsoft CRM Async Service.  Also note that if you already have a crmasyncservice.exe.config file, to place this information for the <gcServer enabled=”true”/> into the Runtime and configuration tags as seen below.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<configuration>
   <runtime>
      <gcServer enabled="true"/>
   </runtime>
</configuration>

As with any changes, although this can give much better throughput for the Microsoft CRM Async Service and workflows able to be executed in a given time frame, it is best to measure the changes before and after implementing this change.  The CRM Async Service perfmon counters can be used for this as well as counters for Memory, .Net CLR Memory, and Processor.  There are also other factors such as customizations, workflows, and SQL Server performance that plays a factor in overall Microsoft CRM Async Service performance, but enabling gcServer mode is a great way to improve performance on multi-processor servers with minimal effort.

Microsoft CRM 2011 Solution backups with help of Plugins.

     This small plugin can save a lot of time and put things under control. Each time somebody press on Publish All button, it creates a backup of all user solutions (system solution is ignored) and creates a task in the system with attached backups. So you can easily find a right task with right backups of solutions.

Optimizing Microsoft .NET ThreadPool Settings for Microsoft CRM 2011

    You can modify parameters in the Machine.config file to accommodate a specific environment. However, if each .aspx page makes a Web service call to a single IP address, it is recommended to adjust these parameters as shown in the following table:

Some useful functions for MS CRM 2011 Reports

Here is a couple of useful functions for MS CRM 2011 reports:

Function that used to remove the duplicate records

Public Shared Function RemoveDups(ByVal items As String) As String

         Dim noDups As New System.Collections.ArrayList()

        

         Dim SpStr

         SpStr = Split(items ,",")

         For i As Integer=0 To Ubound(Spstr)

                   If Not noDups.Contains(SpStr(i).Trim()) Then

                            noDups.Add(SpStr(i).Trim())                       

                   End If

         Next

         Dim uniqueItems As String() = New String(noDups.Count-1){}

         noDups.CopyTo(uniqueItems)

        

         Return String.Join(",", uniqueItems)

End Function

SharePoint 2010 Form Based authentication for MS CRM 2011 Plugins

Some time you need to add, delete, or update custom items in a list on the SharePoint 2010 when plugins in MS CRM is fired up. This simple function can save your time :)

Passing MS CRM 2011 CRMParameter from ribbon button to Silverlight application

It’s pretty cool when you can pass CRMParameters to Silverlight application. To do that we need to get “location” :

public static string GetCRMParametr()
{
     if (HtmlPage.IsEnabled)
    {
        dynamic location = (ScriptObject)HtmlPage.Window.GetProperty("location");
        string crmParametr = location.search;
        if(!string.IsNullOrEmpty(crmParametr))
       {
           return crmParametr
        }
    }

return null;
}

You can add some kind of dummy parser to extract guid’s from passed parameters: