Stupid Salesforce Tricks

In Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2015 Online with Exchange Online, you have the option for the Outlook client to work over “Server-Side Synchronization” or “CRM for Outlook.” Which one should you choose? Server-side sync uses server-to-server communication and the Outlook client basically runs everything through the user’s desktop computer. Things to keep in mind: If you use the Outlook version, and a tracked event occurs such as sending an email from the web client, it won’t be processed unless, or until, Outlook is open and connected on the user’s desktop . If you user Server-Side Sync, tracking activities in Outlook can take some time. You can adjust the sync interval in Settings -> Administration -> System Settings -> Outlook to as little as one minute. This may not be a problem, but if you are planning to use the “Convert To” or “Add Connection” functions in any meaningful fashion, you’re going to have to wa...

We recently ran across an issue when setting up CRM Online 2015 Update 1 with Office 365 Exchange Online. A user installed the Outlook plugin, and could click the Track and Set Regarding functions – even select which record it should be Regarding – but the record never made it to CRM. The original symptom wasthe “Convert To” function was grayed out no matter what we did. The issue is that in some cases, the Email Server Profile defaults to a value that doesn’t work. Both Incoming Server Location and Outgoing Server Location need to be set to [code] https://outlook.office365.com/EWS/Exchange.asmx [/code] But how? The field disappears almost immediately, and you can’t create a new form against this entity, nor can you create workflows. So I forced it to reopen by using the F12 debugger and setting the field to be editable. For example, incomingserverlocation can be edited by opening the F12 debugger and removing the applicable clause. For example, here,...

When using the new CRM For Phones and CRM for Tablets apps against Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2015 Online Update 1, I was getting the following error. “Sorry, something went wrong while initializing the app. Please try again, or restart the app.” I looked into some of the standard troubleshooting steps for this one and none of them applied. So I enabled tracing . It was a big PITA to install all 150mb of iTunes and wait for sync, but it was worth it because I found the following error in the logs. [code] Error Message:Microsoft.Crm.CrmInvalidOperationException: Unable to process the following entities – contact. Please try disabling the entities and try again. —> Microsoft.Crm.CrmException: A primary entity column cannot have a dot in its name [/code] The key being A primary entity column cannot have a dot in its name . Because “having a dot in its name” alludes to an aliased field, I checked that my custom code didn’t contain anything odd ...