Accelerators for Dynamics CRM 4.0 Part I - Enterprise Search

The Accelerators for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 are finally available on Codeplex . The purpose of these accelerators is to showcase how the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 platform can be  extended to broaden marketing, sales and service capabilities – with a big focus on integration scenario’s.

One of the most interesting ones for a SharePoint developer is the Enterprise Search Accelerator which contains a Business Data Catalog (BDC) definition file for the different entities in CRM 4.0. This way you can access information about Accounts, Activities, Campaigns, Cases,Contacts,Contracts,Customer Address, Invoices, Leads,Opportunities,Quotes and Sales Orders which are entered in CRM from within your SharePoint environment.

Although the accelerator seems to focus on Enterprise Search you will be able to use BDC data in a number of places:

• Using Business Data web parts such as the Business Data List, Business Data Item, Business Data Item Builder, etc …
• As metadata/column in a SharePoint list or library
• As content source for Search
• As secondary import source to add information to the SharePoint User Profile store

Some things to think about though:

• Business Data Catalog (BDC) is a feature which is only available in SharePoint Server Enterprise Edition – check out Microsoft SharePoint Server edition comparison . So this requires Enterprise CALs.
• The CRM BDC 4.0 definition file is huge – it basically displays all the possible information which is available. So you will need to put in some effort to define which information you actually want to be available.
• Next to the Enterprise CAL you will also need a CRM read access license (aka CRM limited CAL) as a minimum for any users who are going to access this information.

If you want to learn more about BDC – check out SharePoint article series – Business Data Catalog

Technorati Tags: sharepoint,crm,crm4,crm+accelerator,codeplex,microsoft,moss,moss+2007,sharepoint+2007

Installing Microsoft CRM 4.0 – a SharePoint developer perspective

Trying out integrating SharePoint Server 2007 and Microsoft CRM has been on my to-do list for quite a while now. I finally found some time so you can expect some blog posts about this in the coming weeks. First thing to do installing Microsoft CRM 4.0 on my SharePoint developer VPC.

Make sure that you check out the requirements – so download the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Implementation guide – first thing I had to do is installing Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 2. Other warnings are unfortunately only provided after you have completed a number of steps so here are some other things to watch out for:

• Make sure that the Windows Indexing Service is running – you can disable it after installation since it is only used to index help files (Microsoft does not recommend this)
• Make sure that you have SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 2 installed
• Make sure that the SQL Server Agent is running.

Different steps in installation:

• Specify Server Roles: I installed both the CRM Application Server Role (provides the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Web user interface and services) and CRM Platform Server Role (used to deploy the asynchronous services, such as the Workflow and Bulk E-mail services) on the same machine.
• Specify Deployment options: create a new deployment or connect to an existing one and select the SQL Server you will use. You can use SQL Server 2008 together with CRM 4.0 but you will need to install some additional hotfixes – see Microsoft Support KB 957053  - I still used SQL 2005.
• Specify Organization Name and currency options
• Select Web Site – specify web site where you want to host the CRM web user interface
• Specify Reporting Services Server
• Select the Organization Unit in Active Directory – during installation a number of security groups are created – specify where you want them to be created.
• Specify security account – used for the CRM service accounts and the ASP.NET application pool account. I used the domain admin account of the domain in my virtual environment – definitely not a best practice but this is a dev environment so :-) …
• Specify email router settings –  I skipped this one – gave me a warning. If you are not configuring e-mail integration noew, after Microsoft Dynamics CRM Email Router setup is complete, you must add the E-Mail Router server name to the PrivUsersGroup in AD
• System Requirements check – kind of awkward that is does another check at the end – it could have indicated some issues a lot sooner.

Next, you will probably need some test data within your CRM demo environment. First you will need to install Microsoft CRM 4.0 Data Migration Manager – next download the Microsoft CRM 4.0 Sample Data (On-premise Edition) and walk through the CRM Sample Database  readme to perform the import of the data.

All in all everything went quite smoothly although I got a very weird error when I first opened the CRM 4.0 web interface – I resolved this one by making sure the CRM service account was added to the different AD groups which were created during the installation. Next time let’s see how we can integrate SharePoint and CRM.

Technorati Tags: microsoft,crm,crm+4.0,dynamics,crm4,installation+guide

Windows Live Writer 2009 released

Windows Live Writer 2009 is finally available … my two favorite new features:

• Better photo support
• Integrates with YouTube for video support

Technorati Tags: windows+live,microsoft

LOL - Macbook wheel

http://www.theonion.com/content/video/apple_introduces_revolutionary

Why to stay away from the SharePoint External Storage API

I got this question when teaching a class about architecting Document and Records Management solutions with SharePoint - is it possible to store the documents outside of the SQL database and the metadata within SharePoint?

Yes, this is possible - take a look at the External storage option for Binary Large Objects (BLOBS) in Windows SharePoint Services and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007.

However, there are some reasons to stay away from it - at least for now - recently some more information was added to the SDK - External storing of BLOBs -  Operational limits and trade-off analysis - which contains some interesting information:

The external BLOB storage feature in the present release will not remain syntactically consistent with external BLOB storage technology to be released with the next full-version release of Microsoft Office and Windows SharePoint Services. Such compatibility was not a design goal, so you cannot assume that your implementation using the present version will be compatible with future versions of Microsoft Office or Windows SharePoint Services.

There is however at least one vendor which has written it's own implementation using this API - Open Text Storage Services for SharePoint.

Tags van Technorati: sharepoint,microsoft,sharepoint+server,moss+2007,wss,wss3

SharePoint in the Life Science sector and beyond ...

Life science companies are traditionally strongholds for typical ECM vendors such as IBM FileNet and EMC Documentum. But what about SharePoint Server 2007? My guess is that SharePoint is being adopted but not as an alternative to the traditional ECM players but as a complement. Especially the collaboration part is being strongly embraced  but with regards to pure ECM functionality I have my doubts - and trust me I'm a strong believer in SharePoint.

Traditional players seem to draw the "be nice to Microsoft and let's integrate with SharePoint" card.  Interesting quote I recently got from a Documentum guy -  "SharePoint has a good UI - probably better then our own ... but if you really need a safe - read compliant  - environment you probably still want to use our tools." 

This means that pure play ECM vendors are moving into the back-end and  their components will be eventually considered as a pure unstructured data storage layer components - similar to the way that we think about relational databases. Is this really the sweet spot that vendors are looking for?

I'm wondering what the Introduction of Content Management Interoperability Services (CMIS) specification will do to further accelerate this trend?

 Related links:

• Guidance on configuring SharePoint for Part 11 Compliance
• MSDN Industry Center -  Life Sciences
• Explanation of SharePoint/Documentum integration
• How do I know whether *I need* a traditional ECM system with SharePoint?
• SharePoint as a replacement for Enterprise Content Management (ECM) Systems?

Tags van Technorati: sharepoint,documentum,ecm,life+science,healthcare,microsoft,cmis

Google Insight for Search

Something cool to take a look at -  Google Insight for Search

I just tried it out to check out how "SharePoint Server 2007" search usage evolved over time -

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

Presentations BIWUG december 2008

The last BIWUG session was a success with over 60 persons present. Unfortunately I had to send out a mail to some people to tell them that we were overbooked.

I just uploaded the presentations on our BIWUG site:

• Introduction to Silverlight 2
• Silverlight meets SharePoint - Enriching the SharePoint user interface

If you are interested in presenting a session just leave a comment.

Tags van Technorati: biwug,microsoft,sharepoint,silverlight,sharepoint+2007,moss,moss+2007,PKS

Installing Expression Encoder 2.0 on Windows Server 2003 SP1

I had some problems when installing Expression Encoder 2.0 (Available through MSDN or download Expression Encoder 2.0 Trial) on my Windows Server 2003 with Service Pack 1. It kept on nagging about an incorrect version of Windows Installer.

Setup requires a minimum Windows Installer version 3.1.4000.2435 and detected version 3.1.4000.1830. Please update your system and run Setup again.

But when you look for the latest version of Windows Installer you will find this one - Windows Installer 3.1 Redistributable (v2) which will not install on Windows Server 2003 SP1. Instead use this one - Update for Windows Server 2003 SP1 Service Pack 1 (KB898715). Restart your server and continue installing Expression Encoder.

Tags van Technorati: expression,expression+encoder,microsoft,windows+server

SharePoint Governance Presentation

Thursday I will be doing a session at the CM Innovation Event about SharePoint Governance.

Session abstract: Because of the viral nature of SharePoint -  without effective governance - SharePoint will only replicate your business’ existing problems at a faster rate and on a larger scale than you thought possible! In this session we will focus on some key principles for developing a SharePoint Governance plan and show you how you can manage risks when deploying or running a SharePoint environment.

Registration is free.

Tags van Technorati: sharepoint,sharepoint+2007,MOSS,MOSS+2007,governance,event

SharePoint - It's all about making the right choices and decisions - Part II - One or multiple site decisions

Part 1 - It's all about making the right choices and decisions: Visual Studio Workflow Extensions vs SharePoint Designer

Site collections allow for your intranet to scale as well as provide for a model where it is easier to delegate control to power users for specific subsets of your portal.

Most people will tell you that you will need to have multiple site collections because of the database size restrictions but this is just a myth. There is no physical restriction on your database size, there's only the constraint of how long your backup/restore might take. For some background info - How large for a single SharePoint database as well as Tips on site collection sizing and How many databases for my x TBs of data? and SharePoint deployment capacity & performance planning 2003 & 2007 - what you need to know

There are however some other reasons for using multiple site collections  - one of the main reasons being a controllable management of security. Security groups are shared at the site collection level so you will have one specific group of owners,members and readers for each division. When you use multiple site collections it will be easier to delegate security settings to the site collection administrator. 

Some more background information:

• SharePoint 2007 - Site Collections and when to use them
• When to use SharePoint site collections? 
•  Decisions About When To Use a Farm, Web Application, Content Database or Site Collection
• Site Collection taxonomy thoughts

Tags van Technorati: sharepoint,moss+2007,moss,sharepoint+2007,information+architecture,ECM

LOL - The Simpsons mock (M)Apple

http://www.engadget.com/2008/12/01/the-simpsons-mocks-m-apple/

SharePoint WCM - Quick start guide

If you walk through the next links you will be up and running with SharePoint WCM development in a couple of hours:

• Customizing the look and feel of SharePoint Sites (Webcast 00:59:21)
• Creating a custom page layout with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (Webcast 00:20:29)
• How to : create a minimal master page (MSDN)
• Customizing and Branding Web Content Management-Enabled SharePoint Sites (Part 1 of 3): Understanding Web Content Management and the Default Features
• Customizing and Branding Web Content Management-Enabled SharePoint Sites (Part 2 of 3): Extending WCM
• Customizing and Branding Web Content Management-Enabled SharePoint Sites (Part 3 of 3): Creating and Configuring WCM-Enabled Sites
• Developing SharePoint Server 2007 Publishing Sites the smart and structured way - also check out Andrew's WCM book - Professional SharePoint 2007 Web Content Management Development: Building Publishing Sites with Office SharePoint Server 2007 (Wrox Programmer to Programmer)  - a must buy if you need to build publishing sites using MOSS 2007

You might also want to check my blog series about WCM:

• WCM with MOSS 2007 - Introduction (Part I)
• WCM with MOSS 2007 - Getting started with Web Content Management (Part II)
• WCM with MOSS 2007 - The inner workings of web content management in SharePoint 2007 (Part III)

Tags van Technorati: sharepoint,wcm,publishing,sharepoint+2007,moss,moss+2007,microsoft

Dynamics AX 2009 - Enterprise Portal link bonanza

It has been a while since I wrote about Dynamics AX 2009 and SharePoint and I don't seem to find the time anymore to play around with it but here's a collection of links which might of interest to people who need to work with it as their daily job :-) ...

• AX 2009 Workflows: A Quick overview
• Enterprise Portal in Microsoft Dynamics Ax 2009
• Role Centers in Microsoft Dynamics Ax
• Microsofty Dynamics AX 2009 Enterprise Portal / Role Centers - Deployment Tips-n-Tricks - 1
• EP/Role Centers in WSS vs MOSS
• Using Microsoft Dynamics Ax 2009 Workflow controls in EP
• EP Visual Studio Add-In
• AX 2009 Documents
• Microsofty Dynamics AX 2009 Enterprise Portal / Role Centers - Deployment Tips-n-Tricks - 2
• Setting up EP in NLB Cluster
• Microsoft Dynamics Snap for Dynamics AX 2009
• Documentation on Role centers
• Service Pack 1 for Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009

Happy Ax-ing :-)

Tags van Technorati: microsoft,dynamics+ax,axapta+2009,enterprise+portal

Shift Happens

I just stumbled upon another YouTube video (based on the original Did you know video) about the change we will be facing - this time in Dutch - Shift Happens.

The message is quite clear - change is omnipresent and it's pace will only accelerate. This message is very powerfull but still lots of organizations don't seem to grasp it's impact. This is my favourite quote out of the vid:

We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.

Albert Einstein

The original Did you know video was based upon a presentation given by Karl Fisch. There's another update called -  Did you know 2.0. For some more background take a look at http://shifthappens.wikispaces.com/ 

PS The music on the original Did you know video was taken from The last of the Mohicans soundtrack - great movie.

Related posts:

• Enterprise 2.0 and organizational culture
• Knowledge management 2.0
• Knowledge is power! So why share your knowledge?

Tags van Technorati: did+you+know,web2.0,change,shift+happens

December 8th - BIWUG on SharePoint, Silverlight and e-ID

We are ready to restart BIWUG so expect a number of planned sessions in the coming months. We start off by organizing another BIWUG meeting on December 8th:

18:00-18:30 - Registration and welcome

18:30-18:45 - Introduction

18:45-19u45 - Silverlight and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007

Microsoft recently released Silverlight 2.0 - it's latest version of the framework to build Rich Internet Applications. This session will start off with looking at how Silverlight works and how you can use it as a developer. In the second part we will explore some examples of how you can integrate SharePoint and Silverlight.

Speakers: Gill Cleeren (http://www.snowball.be/) and Joris Poelmans (http://jopx.blogspot.com )

19:45-20:00 - Break

20:00 -21:00 - Integrating e-ID and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007

More than ever, applications will use eID for securing online transactions, spreading and obtaining information and for the signing of documents. eID will be available for every Belgian citizen in 2009.

In our presentation we will talk about:

• What is eID? What are the business benefits?
• What are the pitfalls of eID implementations?
• How can we integrate eID with SharePoint in an efficient way?

Speakers: Michiel Scharpé and Benny Glassée

Event location:

Microsoft België
Corporate Village
Da Vincilaan 3
1935 Zaventem

Win Free versions of Visual Studio 2008

We will give away a number of free versions of Visual Studio 2008 to the attendees of this BIWUG event.

Register for this event

Tags van Technorati: silverlight,sharepoint,e-Id,microsoft,biwug

SharePoint - it's all about making the right choices and decisions - Part I

The key to a succesfull SharePoint implementation is making the right choices. Not only about choosing which functionality to implement first - see Leveraging the SharePoint platform - what capabilities to start with - but also about making the right choices when you try to extend the platform. This blog series will focus on making the correct customization/design choices.

Let's explore one of the choices you have when looking at workflows in SharePoint.

SharePoint Designer for workflows vs Visual Studio Workflow Extensions

One of the most telling statements about this you can find on the SharePoint blog -  "SPD is geared toward the Web Designer/Business admin.  It's easy to learn, and you don't have to write any code.  You can put together a lot of workflows with just sequence of actions and conditions."

One of the limitations of SharePoint Designer for workflow development is the fact that you need to design your workflows directly on your production server. There is no "easy way" to export a SharePoint workflow from your development environment and deploy it later on your production environment. If you want to do this you are up for some ugly hacking of the XOML code.

If you build your workflows using Visual Studio - you can quite easily build a SharePoint solution package containing the workflow and pass it from test to acceptance and finally to production.

You might also want to take a look at Workflow Development Tools Comparison

Related links:

• Guide to SharePoint workflow development
• SharePoint workflow link wrap up
• Creating a SharePoint state machine workflow

Next up in this blog series - creating one or more multiple site collections.

Tags van Technorati: sharepoint,moss+2007,moss,microsoft,sharepoint+designer,workflow+foundation,visual+studio

Guidance about InfoPath Forms Services

InfoPath Forms Services is like one of those hidden gems in SharePoint Server 2007 (SharePoint Server 2007 Enterprise Edition only). It still is a little rough on the edges but if you know it's limitations and take a look at some good documentation it will get you going quite quickly. Great  place to start is the blog series on the InfoPath blog - these guys have been busy during the summer season - some nice reads  for those long winter nights:

• Designing browser-enabled forms for performance in InfoPath Forms Services (Part 1)
• Designing browser-enabled forms for performance in InfoPath Forms Services (Part 2)
• Designing browser-enabled forms for performance in InfoPath Forms Services (Part 3)
• Designing browser-enabled forms for performance in InfoPath Forms Services (Part 4)
• Designing browser-enabled forms for performance in InfoPath Forms Services (Part 5)
• Designing browser-enabled forms for performance in InfoPath Forms Services (Part 6)

Some other interesting stuff out there:

• InfoPath Forms Services 2007 Web Testing Toolkit [Codeplex]
• Best practices for Deploying InfoPath 2007 Form Templates to a production environment
• Estimate performance and capacity requirements for InfoPath Forms Services environments (Office SharePoint Server)

Tags van Technorati: infopath+2007,infopath,forms+services,sharepoint,microsoft

SharePoint Guidance and best practices

If you are an architect who is new to SharePoint development - you should start of by looking at the latest updated version of SharePoint guidance - SharePoint Guidance - Patterns & Practices [MSDN]. Definitely take a look at  SharePoint Guidance on Codeplex and download SharePoint guidance for November 2008.

This guidance helps architects and developers build SharePoint intranet applications. A reference implementation (RI) demonstrates solutions to common architectural, development and lifecycle management challenges.

This guidance discusses the following:

• Architectural decisions about patterns, feature factoring and packaging.
• Design tradeoffs for common decisions many developers encounter.
• Implementation examples demonstrated in the RI and in the QuickStarts.
• How to design for testability, create unit tests, and run continuous integration.
• Set up of development, build, test, staging, and production environments.
• Managing the application life cycle including upgrade.
• Team-based intranet application development.

The following areas are not discussed in this version of the guidance:

• Content-oriented sites that use Web content management
• Internet and enterprise-scale SharePoint applications
• Multilingual SharePoint applications
• Scale or security testing of SharePoint applications

Next step -  Best Practices Resource Center for SharePoint Center 2007 :

To avoid common pitfalls and keep your Office SharePoint Server 2007 environment available and performing well, follow these best practices based on real-world experience from Microsoft Consulting Services and the product team.

Tags van Technorati: sharepoint,guidance,best+practices,patterns+practices,moss,sharepoint+2007