tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-86157905200705271712012-02-16T04:18:45.017-06:00Lucas Alexanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16218461365473077308noreply@blogger.comBlogger111100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8615790520070527171.post-57135918819720902352011-04-01T09:27:00.001-05:002011-04-01T09:35:48.748-05:00

If you're developing code that runs against Dynamics CRM, you know you should be testing it, right? As a developer first and foremost, I always believed that tests and documentation got in the way of the important - and more fun - stuff, but as I transitioned into a management role with responsibility for my company's Dynamics CRM system, I began to appreciate the value of the less-fun stuff. In

Lucas Alexanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16218461365473077308noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8615790520070527171.post-9574351790845811742011-03-21T08:40:00.000-05:002011-03-21T08:40:28.389-05:00

In Dynamics CRM you may have a field you want to be required some of the time, but not required, or maybe not even enabled, the rest of the time. In this post I'll show you how to dynamically enable/disable and set/unset the required attribute of CRM form fields using JavaScript. Let's say you have a delivery restaurant that sells pizza and wings. You could store the order attributes in CRM on a

Lucas Alexanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16218461365473077308noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8615790520070527171.post-22238129394711723752011-03-17T23:00:00.003-05:002011-03-18T09:15:18.365-05:00

In my last post, I shared a few observations on the problems that result from trying to complete an information systems project without good requirements. In this post I'm going to talk about how to avoid that problem. I'm not going to presume to tell you how to put together the perfect requirements documentation in a single blog post, but I have a few real-world tips to point you in the right

Lucas Alexanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16218461365473077308noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8615790520070527171.post-35736360078176655492011-03-17T17:19:00.004-05:002011-03-17T17:20:49.673-05:00

I've seen lots of information systems projects fail for lots of reasons, but the reason that trumps all others is a lack of clear requirements established at the beginning of the project. Yes, that's right, more important than technology, people, scheduling or even process, is for stakeholders to initially agree on the set of conditions that have to be met for the project to be considered

Lucas Alexanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16218461365473077308noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8615790520070527171.post-55540490964171060792011-03-17T14:36:00.000-05:002011-03-17T14:36:57.567-05:00

One of the most basic and most important functions of technology management is to evaluate projects to determine whether your organization should invest time and resources in them. As fundamental as this function is, too many people do it the wrong way. I initially wrote a draft version of this post that outlined a variety of wrong ways to evaluate projects, but I gave up on it because it was too

Lucas Alexanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16218461365473077308noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8615790520070527171.post-72039852315507463032011-03-15T14:24:00.002-05:002011-03-17T16:53:16.733-05:00

At a previous job, we had used GoldMine (version 6.7 was where we parted ways) as our CRM system before moving to Dynamics CRM. At the time - maybe it's still done this way - GoldMine allowed you to code activities with a hierarchy of references, codes and results. We used reference to separate activities either by department or broad functional grouping (e.g. "service" was a separate reference

Lucas Alexanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16218461365473077308noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8615790520070527171.post-10355683500365993422010-06-02T09:00:00.004-05:002011-03-15T14:14:19.699-05:00

In part one of this series, I explained the basic idea behind a macros system for Dynamics CRM and a situation in which you'd want to use it instead of a workflow for process automation. I explained the structure of the macros system and showed the CRM entity form customizations that are required to implement it in part two. In this final part I'll show the ASP.Net code that does the heavy

Lucas Alexanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16218461365473077308noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8615790520070527171.post-45617464541854465752010-05-24T09:00:00.003-05:002010-05-24T09:09:18.532-05:00

In part one of this series, I explained the basic idea of what a macros system for Dynamics CRM is and a situation in which you'd want to use it instead of a workflow for process automation. In this post I'll explain the structure of the macros system and show the CRM entity form customizations that will be required to implement it. As I mentioned in part one, the idea underlying the macros

Lucas Alexanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16218461365473077308noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8615790520070527171.post-37670901967615066732010-05-20T08:53:00.001-05:002010-05-20T08:56:35.647-05:00

Workflows in Dynamics CRM can do a lot, but a significant limitation is that they're asynchronous. If you need to automate server-side code execution and interact with the user at the same time, you're out of luck. This is where you can use something that I call a macros system. This is the first of a three-post series in which I will: outline a business problem that a macros system can solve

Lucas Alexanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16218461365473077308noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8615790520070527171.post-27391206341757953712010-05-17T14:24:00.001-05:002010-05-17T14:26:47.612-05:00

For the past year or so, I've been hearing the Microsoft Dynamics CRM community talking about the concept of xRM. Supposedly xRM is the idea that you can do all sorts of custom development on top of the MS CRM platform instead of using it just for traditional CRM kinds of tasks. To that I say, "big deal." To clarify, I think that using MS CRM as a platform for custom development is generally a

Lucas Alexanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16218461365473077308noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8615790520070527171.post-14973032636363754602010-05-17T10:30:00.005-05:002011-03-17T17:17:47.154-05:00

I was going to kick off my new blog with an inspiring post about who I am and what I believe and why you should care about what I have to say. Then I realized that was lame. You'll decide whether you want to be here based on the utility and/or entertainment value of what I share, not some rambling manifesto. So, without further adieu, let's jump right into things . . . As a young, and admittedly

Lucas Alexanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16218461365473077308noreply@blogger.com0