New Home For The CRM Diagnostic Tool (CrmDiagTool4)

I was looking to download the CrmDiagTool4 recently and was unable to find it at the original location.

This is appears to be the new home of the CRM Tool:
http://blogs.msdn.com/emeadcrmsupport/archive/2010/03/04/crmdiagtool4-for-microsoft-crm-4-0-available-now-on-the-emea-dynamics-crm-support-blog.aspx

Download it from the attachment section of the post.

CRM 4.0 Customizations Comparison Tool

The Customization Comparison Tool

"...tools that help you analyze the impact of customizations on the system and maintain consistent configuration data across multiple Microsoft Dynamics CRM systems."

The Data Migration Tool

...lets you export custom configuration data from a source Microsoft Dynamics CRM system and import it to a target Microsoft Dynamics CRM system.

http://blogs.msdn.com/crm/archive/2010/01/14/isv-utilities-for-comparing-customizations-and-transferring-configuration-data.aspx

Another tool to go into my tool belt.

SharePoint 2010 Developer Environment Requirements

Checklist for setting up a SharePoint 2010 developer environment.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee554869%28office.14%29.aspx

I'm filing it away for future reference.

Dynamics CRM SDK 4.0.12 Released

http://blogs.msdn.com/crm/archive/2010/05/06/microsoft-dynamics-crm-sdk-4-0-12-available.aspx

The new Advanced Developer Extensions samples and walkthroughs look interesting.

Best Practices on Building Sharepoint 2010 Web Parts

http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/funkyonex/Best-Practices-on-Building-SharePoint-2010-Web-Parts-with-Visual-Studio-2010/
....

Death Metal Rooster!

Oh man!

http://www.thechickentest.com/2010/05/how-could-i-not-repost-this-death-metal-rooster/

CRM 4.0 Plug-in Filtering Attributes Limitation

I ran across this error while setting up the Filtering Attributes for a custom plug-in today :

Error Code: 0x80044331
A validation error occurred. The length of the 'filteringattributes' attribute of the 'sdkmessageprocessingstep' entity exceeded the maximum allowed length of '100'.

The the Filtering Attributes property basically tells the plug-in which specific field changes it should respond to.

Investigating the issue it looks like its a limitation in the CRM web service. The web service limits the length of the field to 100 characters. Its strange that its not even the number of attributes that is the limitation but rather the concatenated length all the attribute names!

Interestingly enough the creation of Image Attributes support a total of 4615 characters: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd904023.aspx

Hopefully with CRM 5.0 around the corner this will all be addressed.

CRM 4.0 Plug-in Development Best Practices

I found this excellent post on best practices for CRM Plug-In development. Its a must read for anyone considering plug-in development.

http://blogs.inetium.com/blogs/azimmer/archive/2010/01/25/plugin-best-practices-in-crm-4-0.aspx