When was the last time a user logged in?

Recently, I was asked to look into which users where using our production MSCRM 2011 environment. Prior to MSCRM 2011, you could get a rough idea of which users where accessing CRM by looking through IIS logs. However, this was tedious and it was not very accurate, since the Outlook Client traffic is included in the IIS logs. Luckily, Microsoft made life easier with CRM 2011 and included a column named LastAccessTime in the SystemUserOrganizations table of the MSCRM_CONFIG database. To get the LastAccessTime for your users, you can run the query below from your Organization database, #ORGNAME#_MSCRM.

SELECT
     SU.SystemUserId
     ,SU.DomainName
     ,SU.FullName
     ,SUO.LastAccessTime
FROM SystemUser SU
  INNER JOIN [MSCRM_CONFIG].[dbo].[SystemUserOrganizations] SUO ON SUO.CrmUserId = SU.SystemUserId
  INNER JOIN [MSCRM_CONFIG].[dbo].[SystemUserAuthentication] SUA ON SUA.UserId = SUO.UserId
ORDER BY SU.DomainName

I want to credit Results on Demand who posted the query that inspired mine. You can see their version of the query that runs from the MSCRM_CONFIG database at http://www.resultondemand.nl/support/blog/post/How-to-get-the-last-login-date-and-time-of-a-CRM-user-(MSCRM-2011).aspx

When was the last time a report ran in MSRM?

I was recently asked if it was possible to determine the last time a MSCRM report was run. To get this information you will need read access to the report server db and read access to the Reports table of your CRM instance. You can then run the this query

--NOTE!!! This query is designed to run on SSRS 2008 R2
--Replace #REPORT SERVER DB# with the name of the your SSRS DB 
--Replace #CRM DB NAME# with the name of the your CRM DB
USE #REPORT SERVER DB#

;WITH theExecution AS (
  SELECT
    C.Name as reportid,
    E.TimeEnd,
    ROW_NUMBER() OVER (PARTITION BY C.Name ORDER BY E.TimeEnd DESC) rowNumber
  FROM Executionlog E  
  INNER JOIN Catalog C on C.ItemID = E.ReportID AND C.Type = 2 AND C.Path LIKE '#CRM DB NAME#%'  
  AND E.Format = 'RPL'
), numberTimesRun AS (
  SELECT
  te.reportid,
  COUNT(*) NumberTimesRan
  FROM theExecution TE
  GROUP BY te.reportid
)
SELECT
R.ReportId,
R.Name,
R.FileName,
R.ModifiedOn LastModifiedOn,
TE.TimeEnd LastTimeGenerated,
NTR.NumberTimesRan
FROM [RGA_MSCRM].[dbo].Report R
  LEFT OUTER JOIN theExecution TE ON TE.reportid = r.ReportId AND TE.rowNumber = 1
  LEFT OUTER JOIN numberTimesRun NTR ON NTR.reportid = r.ReportId
WHERE
R.ispersonal = 0 --Exclude Personal reports 
ORDER BY R.Name  

Running this query will return a result set that looks like the below report but with more data.

ReportId	ReportName	FileName	LastModifiedOn	LastTimeGenerated	NumberTimesRan
7AD95C7E-737A-DF11-AB37-00145EED82FA	Account Distribution	Account Distribution.rdl	2011-07-24 02:11:35.000	NULL	80
AAA85E84-737A-DF11-AB37-00145EED82FA	Account Distribution Detail	Account Distribution Detail.rdl	2011-07-24 02:11:35.000	NULL	80
82D95C7E-737A-DF11-AB37-00145EED82FA	Account Overview	Account_Overview.rdl	2011-09-30 20:06:08.000	2011-09-30 15:15:07.290	221
...

On thing to keep in mind when you report is that by default, SSRS log entries are kept 60 days. Entries that exceed this date are removed at 2:00 A.M. every day. On a mature installation, only 60 days of information will be available at any given time. You can read more about the SSRS execution log at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms159110.aspx.

What are the valid RootComponent types in the solution.xml file?

Recently, I needed to add a new RootComponent node to the soltuion.xml file for a Plugin Assembly, but I did not know the correct value for the type attribute. Unfortunately, a look at MSDN and Technet for the SDK didn't turn up any anything for the schema of the solution.xml file and a Google search turned up limited information for a few of the valid values. Well, I was sure that this information was stored somewhere in the CRM database. The query below is the result of my efforts.

SELECT
SM.AttributeValue [type],
SM.Value [Description]
FROM StringMap SM
WHERE
SM.AttributeName = 'componenttype'
AND
SM.ObjectTypeCode = 7103

Running this query against the CRM database will give you a list of all the valid values for the type attribute of RootComponent node. For reference, I have included the results I got when I ran the above query.

• <RootComponent type="1" is for a Entity
• <RootComponent type="2" is for a Attribute
• <RootComponent type="3" is for a Relationship
• <RootComponent type="4" is for a Attribute Picklist Value
• <RootComponent type="5" is for a Attribute Lookup Value
• <RootComponent type="6" is for a View Attribute
• <RootComponent type="7" is for a Localized Label
• <RootComponent type="8" is for a Relationship Extra Condition
• <RootComponent type="9" is for a Option Set
• <RootComponent type="10" is for a Entity Relationship
• <RootComponent type="11" is for a Entity Relationship Role
• <RootComponent type="12" is for a Entity Relationship Relationships
• <RootComponent type="13" is for a Managed Property
• <RootComponent type="20" is for a Role
• <RootComponent type="21" is for a Role Privilege
• <RootComponent type="22" is for a Display String
• <RootComponent type="23" is for a Display String Map
• <RootComponent type="24" is for a Form
• <RootComponent type="25" is for a Organization
• <RootComponent type="26" is for a Saved Query
• <RootComponent type="29" is for a Workflow
• <RootComponent type="31" is for a Report
• <RootComponent type="32" is for a Report Entity
• <RootComponent type="33" is for a Report Category
• <RootComponent type="34" is for a Report Visibility
• <RootComponent type="35" is for a Attachment
• <RootComponent type="36" is for a Email Template
• <RootComponent type="37" is for a Contract Template
• <RootComponent type="38" is for a KB Article Template
• <RootComponent type="39" is for a Mail Merge Template
• <RootComponent type="44" is for a Duplicate Rule
• <RootComponent type="45" is for a Duplicate Rule Condition
• <RootComponent type="46" is for a Entity Map
• <RootComponent type="47" is for a Attribute Map
• <RootComponent type="48" is for a Ribbon Command
• <RootComponent type="49" is for a Ribbon Context Group
• <RootComponent type="50" is for a Ribbon Customization
• <RootComponent type="52" is for a Ribbon Rule
• <RootComponent type="53" is for a Ribbon Tab To Command Map
• <RootComponent type="55" is for a Ribbon Diff
• <RootComponent type="59" is for a Saved Query Visualization
• <RootComponent type="60" is for a System Form
• <RootComponent type="61" is for a Web Resource
• <RootComponent type="62" is for a Site Map
• <RootComponent type="63" is for a Connection Role
• <RootComponent type="70" is for a Field Security Profile
• <RootComponent type="71" is for a Field Permission
• <RootComponent type="90" is for a Plugin Type
• <RootComponent type="91" is for a Plugin Assembly
• <RootComponent type="92" is for a SDK Message Processing Step
• <RootComponent type="93" is for a SDK Message Processing Step Image
• <RootComponent type="95" is for a Service Endpoint

CRM 2011 - Caller is not an owner for SubscriptionID Error

Over the past few weeks my team has been working on reviewing and revising our CRM environment in preparation to migrate to CRM 2011. As part of the preparation we have been testing the offline client and in doing so one of my devs ran into the error message of "Caller 2222222-2222-2222-2222-22222222 is not an owner for SubscriptionID 00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000" when attempting to go offline.

Now this odd as my devs CallerId\SystemUserId was 11111111-1111-1111-1111-111111111111 and not 2222222-2222-2222-2222-22222222, which is the SystemUserId for our TestUser1. So why was the outlook client making a call as another user? Well I after doing some initial investigation I conclude that it would just be faster to reconfigured the Outlook client, so we started the configuration wizard and typed in our server URL and hit the ‘Test Connection …’ button.  However, when it finished it showed that my dev authenticated as DOMAIN\TestUser1.

What! How is this happening? So I ask my dev, "Are you logged in as DOMAIN\TestUser1?" To which he replies, "No."  Okay, so how was the Outlook client getting another user’s credentials when it authenticates against the CRM server. Well it turned out that my dev had told IE to store the user name and password for Domain\TestUser1 when he was testing the CRM 2011 web client. We found this by going to Control Panel > User Accounts

And then clicking the ‘Manage Passwords’ button on the Advanced tab, which displays after clicking ‘User Account’

Clicking the ‘Manage Passwords’ button displays a form that lists sites that have user name and passwords saved.

When I clicked on the entry for crm.domain.com I saw the following

So to remove the entry we just selected the row for crm.domain.com and clicked the ‘Remove’ button. Once this was done we were able to reconfigure the CRM Outlook client and have it authenticate as my dev.  He wa then was able to go offline with the CRM 2011 Outlook client.

Decreasing 401 Responses

Did you know that Microsoft's CRM services team has a blog that has a wealth of information about CRM performance and other odds and ends? Hopefully you did and you saw their post titled How to Decrease 401 Responses in CRM Web Traffic. I read through it and applied their suggestions and my IIS logs now reflect about a 35% reduction in requests. That is huge considering that my user base is global and traffic is at a premium on our network. I recommend you check out the Dynamics CRM in the Field blog at https://community.dynamics.com/product/crm/crmtechnical/b/crminthefield/default.aspx and also take a look at their How to Decrease 401 Responses in CRM Web Traffic post.

Holly Cow Batman it's a Wiki

Do you have great information about MSCRM that you want to share with the world?  Then you should go to the CRM Wiki, which was just released by CRM MVPs, and add a page.  You can find the Wiki at

https://community.dynamics.com/product/crm/crmtechnical/b/crmteamblog/archive/2011/04/04/crm-mvps-introduce-the-microsoft-dynamics-crm-wiki.aspx?sms_ss=typepad&at_xt=4db7045bbb11d576%2C0

What's New in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011

Microsoft has published a marketing guide with shiny pictures and loads of information.

What's New in MS CRM 2011

Bit field events

Are you struggling to get the onchange event to fire on a checkbox or radio button? Are you clearing your cache and refreshing your page and seeing no results? Well just the other day one of the other members on my team was having this issue and he came to me for some help. He had something like this

crmForm.all.new_bit.onchange = function() {
  alert(“I changed”);
};

and could not understand why he was not getting the alert when he clicked on the radio buttons for the bit field.

It only took me a second to see what was happening. First the onchange event will not fire until the radio button group looses focus or the blur() event is called on the radio button. After explaining this to my teammate I got the next logical question of, “Well how do you make the event fire when the user clicks on the radio button?” This was an easy one to answer, I said, “Replace onchange with onclick.” So he changed his to code to look like this

crmForm.all.new_bit.onclick = function() {
  alert(“I changed”);
};

So to recap for a checkbox or radio button

1. onchange does not fire until radio button looses focus or blur() is called
2. Use onclick if you want an event to fire as soon as a radio button is clicked.