Phil Edry’s Dynamics CRM Blog

Some folks have posted on this blog about using pass4sure to help them pass the CRM 4.0 Applications Exam (MB2-631). Everything I’ve heard about the Applications Exam is that it’s very difficult to pass not because the material is difficult, but because the test is poorly written. I cannot verify this first hand since I’ve yet to take the exam myself. Given an unjust exam, I could understand why folks would be looking for a brain dump.

I did a bit of research on pass4sure, and according to CertGUARD, using pass4sure to pass a test is illegal and could get you “decertified,” whatever that entails. So if it really is illegal, which it appears to be, let’s try to keep brain-dump-related content out of the comments from now on. If you’re upset about the exam, drop Microsoft an email asking them to revise it. Folks over there want the tests to be fair, so let your voice be heard if you feel it’s unfair.

I came upon this blog entry when attempting to configure CRM 4.0 Client for Outlook. I kept getting: “The configuration wizard cannot connect to the Microsoft CRM server. This might indicate that the server is down.”

Luckily, rmaclean has found a few ways to fix this. I’ve never seen so many positive replies to a blog post!

http://www.sadev.co.za/node/155

Thanks rmaclean!

p

Did this sneak up on anyone else? 

“Registration for the Second Shot offer has expired. However, if you registered for exam vouchers prior to May 31, 2008, you can use the vouchers for a second shot at any IT professional, developer, project manager, or Microsoft Dynamics certification exam through June 30, 2008.”

I guess I’ll have to study extra hard for the customization exam to try and pass it on my first shot!

 -p

Here are a few CRM blog posts that I’ve found helpful or interesting lately:

A quick intro comparing Workflows and Plugins: http://mscrmuk.blogspot.com/2008/06/differences-between-workflow-and.html

A description of how workflows are different in 4.0: http://crowechizek.com/cs/blogs/crm/archive/2008/03/26/differences-between-the-workflow-functionality-from-crm-3-0-to-crm-4-0.aspx

Internet Facing Deployment Lessons Learned: http://blog.customereffective.com/blog/2008/04/lessons-learned.html 

 Suggested steps for upgrading to CRM 4.0: http://blogs.msdn.com/crm/archive/2008/05/01/upgrading-to-crm-4-0.aspx

-p

I put in about four hours of quality time with the courseware and got nine more questions right than last time for a score of 72%, which was cutting it a bit close for my comfort.

When I clicked “End Test,” I thought I was comfortably in the mid-80’s, so this leads me to believe that some of the questions are trickier than they seem. My advice would be to study the courseware a little harder than you think you need to pass.

Given the comments on my last post, I think I’ll move onto the Customization exam before attempting the Applications exam.

But first, I’m off to Italy for a wedding. See everyone in two weeks!

-p

To follow up on my last post, New CRM 4.0 Certification Exams Available Tomorrow …

I just took the 30-633: Installation and Deployment for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 (AKA MB2-633) exam. I studied the implementation guide for about five mintues and just walked right up and took it. I got a 54%, 16 points off of passing. Thanks to Second Shot, this served as a good practice exam. So, be advised, this exam takes more than five mintues of studying!

I noticed very few questions in common with the 3.0 installation exam. I’d say the exam focussed on features and gotchas new to 4.0.

So since I got 27 out of 50 questions correct, and I need 8 more to pass, I’d say picking up the Microsoft E-Learning materials and going through all of the practice questions should get me over 70% next time.

I’ll write again when I take my Second Shot.

-p

According to PartnerSource, the following CRM 4.0 exams release tomorrow: 

Don’t forget to get a Second Shot voucher before you register for the exam. My plan is to take the exams without much studying, and then retake them if necessary. I’m already 3.0 certified, and I took the beta training at Microsoft on 30-631 and 30-633, so who knows, I might pass the first time. I’ll write back with how I do.

The tests are listed as MB2-631, MB2-632, and MB2-633 on the Prometric website.

Thanks to Menno te Koppele for pointing it out: http://www.tekoppele.com/Blog/post/2008/04/Get-certified!.aspx

UPDATE: Hey Everyone — I no longer have access to this code and actually I no longer recommend this approach. Over the last two years as I’ve gotten better at this, I’ve found straight C# is a better practice. Thanks for all of your interest and good luck…

According to the Data Migration Manager help documentation, “You cannot migrate attachments to e-mail messages, sales literature items, or to any record type that does not support notes.”

So what do you do when you’re doing a data conversion and you need to migrate email attachments?

Well, there’s got to be an more elegant way than this out there, but the first thing that came to mind for me was to migrate the attachments as notes by following the instructions here: http://blogs.msdn.com/crm/archive/2008/03/11/migrating-notes-and-attachments-using-data-migration-manager.aspx

For the csv file, I had three columns. The GUID of the email’s ActivityID, the filepath+filename of the attachment relative to the “Attachments” folder, and the name of the file. I then mapped the ActivityID guid to “Title”  the filepath+filename to “Document” and the file name to “File Name”.

Then, all you need to do is go into the database and INSERT INTO ActivityMimeAttachment FROM AnnotationBase where applicable and you’re good to go! Reply to this message if you want more details or code snippets on the specifics of this hack. Fair warning, this is very unsupported.

The StringMap table is a handy source for selecting picklist values — but it’s essentially readonly. Picklist values are stored in the FieldXml field of the OrganiationUIBase table, as well as in the StringMap table. So if you insert into the StringMap alone, your values will be overwritten when you republish.

WARNING: The following is unsupported.

If you need to add a large number of picklist values, you’ll have to keep the two sources synchronized by doing the following:

1. Export the entity containing the picklist attribute to which you want to add the values.
2. Take a copy of the exported customizations to keep as a backup in case this breaks everything (always a risk with unsupported customizations… better yet, back up the CRM databases just in case.)
3. Open the exported XML file in your favorite XML editor.
4. Search for the attribute you want to update.
5. Carefully add the attribute values following the formatting of the existing picklist values. (Should look something like the below XML.)
6. Re-import the customizations.
7. Publish the imported entity. (If this doesn’t work, publish all entities.)

              <options>
                <option value=”1″>
                  <labels>
                    <label description=”Sample Value 1″ languagecode=”1033″ />
                  </labels>
                </option>
                <option value=”2″>
                  <labels>
                    <label description=”Sample Value 2″ languagecode=”1033″ />
                  </labels>
                </option>
              </options>

-p

A quick lunch break “gotcha” post before I forget:

Have you ever tried to create a new instance of a crm entity via the SDK only to find that none of your custom attributes (or custom entities for that matter) are showing up in your intellisense? What’s worse, you get a compiler error when try to build because your “new_” prefixed attribute isn’t a recognized member of the class (something like: ’<CrmSdk>.<entity>’ does not contain a definition for ‘new_<custom_attribute>’)?

Well, if you added the web reference to the SDK before you added/published your customizations in CRM, you’ll need to “Update Web References” in Visual Studio before it will compile.

To do this:

1. Go to the Solution Explorer in Visual Studio and expand your project.
2. Right-click your “App_WebReferences” or your specific web reference to the CRM SDK and select “Update Web References.”

 -p