Interesting article: Microsoft CRM 2011 Multiple Forms basics
I’ve just found out this very nice post on multiple forms basics in Microsoft CRM 2011, so I wanted to share it with you all…
Microsoft CRM 2011: Multiple Forms basics.
How-to series: Send SMS messages from CRM 2011 (part 3)
Finally! This is the final part of my how-to series on how to send and track SMS messages in Microsoft CRM 2011.
The first post explained how to prepare the solution.
The second post talked about the Web front-end customization.
This last post will explain how to communicate with Clickatell’s gateway to send your SMS messages.
How-to series: Send SMS messages from CRM 2011 (part 2)
In the first part (see part 1), I explained how a SMS could be better to communicate with your customers and contacts, since it is instantly dispatched on the cell phone.
In this part, I’ll deal with customizing the CRM as to enable this kind of communication.
How-to series: Send SMS messages from CRM 2011 (part 1)
In a time where the information must be available quickly, there is an alternative to feeds, tweets, walls and emails….this alternative is called SMS, for Short Message Service.
Of course, one can always say that an SMS is the same thing as a tweet with roughly the same text length but who can say that its cell phone is always connected to the Internet? Not me, it is way too expensive here in Belgium!
On the same note, all cell phones can receive basic text SMS messages so this is an interesting alternative to emails and so on.
So in this series, I wanted to focus on a small plugin that would allow any of your customers to be alerted by SMS instead of by email, SMS that should be sent from Microsoft CRM of course 
This first part will focus on customizing Microsoft CRM to prepare for the plug-in that I’ll develop on the second part.
Pre-requisites to this series
For this SMS integration to work, you should consider using a Clickatell account (www.clickatell.com) and their set of APIs to connect to their SMS gateway (APIs available through HTTP, SMTP, SOAP, XML, COM, …)
This company offers 10 free SMS to test your code, then you can buy credits for sending ‘real’ messages throughout the world (I don’t have any acquaintance with them but I find that their site is clear and easy to understand; on the other hand, there are no real C# code samples).
If you need help signing-up with them, please contact me and I’ll try to help you.
How is this series divided?
This series will be divided in 3 parts:
- Part 1 of 3: Expressing the requirements and creating the CRM solution
- Part 2 of 3: Customizing the CRM for the new SMS activity
- Part 3 of 3: Developing the CRM plugin for sending the SMS
Expressing the business needs
Ok, down on the needs now
Let’s assume you want to be able to send SMS to your customers just like you would send an email from Microsoft CRM, how would you that?
Well thankfully, Microsoft CRM 2011 allows you to create new activity types (see previous post New activity types for dummies) so I’ll use this new awesome feature.
Creating the CRM solution
Ok, in this first post I’ll show you how to properly prepare a solution for your SMS implementation but you are free to do as you wish.
- Make sure you have a backup of your original CRM customizations before you start customizing your system
- Within Microsoft CRM, create a new solution called SMSMessaging; this solution will host our customizations for the new SMS functionality
- Open your new solution and add the following entities for now:
- Account
- Activity
- Contact
- Lead
- User
OK you’re ready to go…..it’s very easy for now but stay tuned and watch for the second part of this series, where I’ll show you some cool stuff! 
CRM 2011: New activity types for dummies® – Part 1
After a couple of days without posting anything, I thought about explaining a real case scenario where your client would like to deal with meeting minutes inside Microsoft CRM.
CRM 2011: Show-off your icons!
One of the noteworthy feature available now in Microsoft CRM 2011 is the ability to define ‘Web Resources’ which are a set of ‘virtual’ files that can be accessed from a URL (think: virtual folder holding the files on the CRM server).
How-to series: Generate auto-numbers on custom entities (part 2)
In the first post of the series (see Part 1), I was dealing with the creation of a new entity which can be used to store the autonumbering parameters such as: which entity must get a number, which attribute must store the number, the number length, the prefix & suffix, etc.
CRM 2011: Finally a way to alter the ‘queue items’ view!
Yes, now it’s nearly official: you CAN alter the queue items views and set the columns you want to display!
Before:
After:
This was a long awaited need for my clients, thanks Microsoft! 
CRM 2011: New ‘helpers’ for system customizers! (Part 1)
PREVIEW – Here is an overview of the new ‘helpers’ customizers have at their disposal while customizing Microsoft CRM 2011:
Deploy plugins in an IFD+OnPremise environment
If you are stuck with the Plugin Registration Tool (PRT) in an IFD environment, one test to make is this one:
- Compile the Visual Studio solution using VS 2008 or 2010
- Deploy the debug or release files PRT on the server, wherever you want, in its own folder
- On the server, launch the PluginRegistration.exe file with administrator privileges
- When you configure a CRM environment for IFD, it is recommended to configure it with IFD + OnPremise, meaning that on the server, you can access (theoretically
) the CRM by using the local address (http://localhost); therefore, if you connect to the server with a login that has access to the CRM with administrator privileges, you don’t need to enter the credentials in the PRT connection:
- This way, the PRT will use the current user’s credentials, using AD authentication, which will work; you will therefore be able to deploy your plugins by using the following addresses in the “Organization URLs” fields (you need to ensure that these URLs are the same for each OU in your CRM):
Woohoo, now I can deploy my plugins in our secured IFD environment!
