NOTE! This feature is still considered BETA and is used at own risk!

Overview

Starting with AE version 2017.26, AE is offering a new feature, allowing you to remove the email body text from within CRM and replace it with a text-only and line break conserving representation of the former email body. The complete email body content is moved to an azure blob storage and streamed into CRM on accessing the email.

CRM Timeline and CRM Activity overview will per default only show the shortened text to allow for more information in less space. 

Why?

Emails are often consisting of mostly HTML formatting information. Inlcuding header, footer and maybe an embedded company logo, the content of an EMPTY email can be up to 30 kilobytes in size. In most companies, an email conversation usually consists of several replies and each reply will replicate the full HTML content of the previous emails, adding those 30 kilobytes AGAIN on every answer you write and possibly the same sized formatting information from the recipient of the email.

Asuming the above, a conversation, that contains an email being answered 4 times is generating a total overhead of 550kb. Still not much, but it adds up.

If you have 100.000 emails in your system and only half of them would be part of a conversation as sketched above, those emails add up to 10.000 conversations at 5 emails, occupying up to 5 Gb of space in the ActivityPointerBase table without containing any information yet. Also the actual email text is being replicated in each answer, growing the size even further. Not to mention that nearly all of the one-direction emails will contain a certain amount of HTML information on their own.

Remember, as of Q2 2019, the maximum table size of the WHOLE CRM database (excluding attachments) is 10 GB without additional cost.

How?

AttachmentExtractor is inspecting each email in CRM and looks for known seperators of emails. If any is found, the email is cut and then all HTML tags except linebreaks are removed from the email body. The original body is stored in an AzureBlobStorage and the plaintext representation of the email body is left in CRM. When you are opening an email, a plugin will retrieve the unchanged emailbody from the AzureBlobStorage and replace the stripped down version with the full content.

What is not  supported?

AttachmentExtractor preserves both, the original modified by and modified on, therefore not all emails might be processed.

• The email must habe a valid state/status combination
  (e.g. you cannot have a completed (state) draft (status) email, as CRM does not support this combination
  NOTE! As email state/status code pairs can be customized, AttachmentExtractor will only process emails, where those are still defined in CRM!
• All activityparties of the email (from, to, cc, bcc) must be resolved to an existing entity in CRM
• All activityparties of the email (from, to, cc, bcc) must have the "allow email" property set to allow.
• Alternative email body storage options are NOT supported (due to accesstime) (Only AzureBlobStorage)

AttachmentExtractor v.2017.21 and newer support redirecting the SharePoint access to a different server.

All Attachments moved to Sharepoint are saved as a link in Dynamics CRM. If you are moving to a new Sharepoint, AE can redirect the Sharepoint access for its AccessOnDemand-plugins to a different server.

To enable this behavior, you need to manually create a setting for the AttachmentExtractor product as described here (Link)

Name: SharepointRedirects

Value: A pipe (|) separated pair of strings defining the original Sharepoint location and the replacement one.

Example:  https://old_sharepoint|https:/new_sharepoint

 If required, multiple redirects can be defined, separated by semicolons (;)

Example:  https://old_sharepoint/account|https:/new_sharepoint/account;https://old_sharepoint/contact|https:/new_sharepoint/other_contact

​IMPORTANT:

• This does NOT move the actual files on SharePoint, but only redirects the links saved in CRM, when using the retrieve plugins of AttachmentExtractor.

• Multiple redirects are evaluated in order of definition and will stop on the first match

That’s it! We appreciate your feedback! Please share your thoughts by sending an email to support@mscrm-addons.com.​​

If you are manually updating the latest versions of the AutomergeOnPremise Solution for Dynamics CRM 365 or installing a servicebased DocumentsCorePack for an IFD environment based on Dynamics CRM 365,  your server is required to have .net Framework version 4.6.2 installed.

(Using any of our installers will prompt you for the .net framework requirement, if not found on the target machine.)

If you only have .net 4.5.2 your workflows will terminate with the following error :

Unhandled Exception: System.MissingMethodException: Method not found: '!!0[] System.Array.Empty()'. 

Due to microsofts mandatory TLS 1.2 communication starting  July 2017 for 3rd party applications, all of our products have been moved to use .net 4.6.2

Following the european unions GDPR requirements, AttachmentExtractor version 2017.5 and later are introducing a new plugin/workflow tracing note and email deletion, allowing for removal of the files moved to sharepoint with AttachmentExtractor, when the note or email containting the link file in CRM is being deleted.

 Please note, that the deletion tracking is disabled per default.

How to enable the deletion of Sharepoint items:

 Download and import AttachmentExtractorCore solution version 2017.5 or later ( Download AttachmentExtractorCore 2017.5)

Create two settings as described in this article : Link

"EnableCascadeDelete"

A value of "true" enables the plugin/workflow in general.

A value of "false" will not remove any file on sharepoint.​

  ​

"ThrowOnCascadeDeleteFailure" 

Value of "true" means, that you will not be able to delete the item in CRM, if the plugin fails to remove the linked file(s) on Sharepoint

Value of "false" means, that the item in CRM will be deleted, regardless if the plugin fails to remove the linked file(s) on Sharepoint​. 

​ 

​

 ​

When using our products, the CRM discovery service is contacted to retrieve the service URLs for accessing the CRM WebServices.

In some cases the URL returned by the discovery service is not usable to contact the CRM WebService. 

If you have physical access to the server, first check the WebAddress setup of CRM:

1. Go to your CRM server
2. Open the Deployment Manager (You need to be deployment administrator to be able to do this)
3. Select the Microsoft CRM Dynamics node in the tree
4. Bring up the context menu and select properties
5. Go to the tab WebAddress

Figure 1: Microsoft Dynamics CRM Deployment Manager

For example, if you changed the CRM port on the IIS, it would not automatically change the web-deployment addresses.

If you do not have server access or cannot change the WebAddresses for another reason please follow our advice below.

For CRM 2011 & CRM 2013:

Our software offers a way to bypass the DiscoveryServices organisation URL by enabling the following option:

Switch to the advanced tab on the connection dialog and enable the Override Organization URL option. 

That’s it! We appreciate your feedback! Please share your thoughts by sending an email to support@mscrm-addons.com.

Synopsis:

This article explains the steps required to synchronize the actual call duration as recorded in the TelephoneIntegration history with actual phone calls in CRM.

Prerequisite:

This will only work for phone calls, that are created with the always store option enabled in the CTI clients options.

Procedure:

You will need to create a workflow and to trigger the required plugin. You can import the attached workflow to your CRM.

SynchronizationTemplate.zip (4.76 kb)

Or you can create a new workflow as follows:

Start with creating a new workflow and attach it to the entity MSCRM-ADDONS.com CTI CALL History.

Figure 1: Create new workflow

On the next page make sure, the start when-option is set to Record is created.

Add a new step of the type Wait Condition.

Figure 2: Specify the conditions of the process

Make sure all values are set as above BEFORE selecting the Created On-attribute (highlighted in gray).

The timeout suggested with 2 hours should be adapted to your needs. If your processing time for a phonecall is exceeding two hours, you should increase this timeout to a more appropriate value.

Figure 3: Process Information window

Your workflow is now containing a wait condition. You will have to add another step to update the record and trigger the workflow now.

Click on the highlighted row and add an Update Record-step.

Figure 4: Add record

Click on the [Save and Close]-button, then activate the workflow. The duration will be synced to the phonecalls after the set period of timeout.

Please note: The timeout must be sufficiently long to ensure the users are no longer editing the record, as the users saving the record would overwrite the duration again, if the sync has already taken place.

That’s it! We appreciate your feedback! Please share your thoughts by sending an email to support@mscrm-addons.com.

Issue:

AttachmentExtractor fails to upload files exeeding two megabytes of size (The actual size being blockes depends on various parameters and might actually be lower than the set value).

Check, if you see a message similar to the following in the event log or the log overview of the service configuration:

The request message is to big. The server does not allow messages larger than 2097152 bytes.

This is indicating, that the default upload method is not working due to server side message size restrictions.

Solution:

• Note your servicename, as you have entered it, when creating the service. (e.g. MyService)

• Open the registry editor on the machine, where the AttachmentExtractor service is installed.

• Open the following key : HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\PTM EDV-Systeme\AttachmentExtractorserver\Configurations

• Find the key, named euqal to your servicename (e.g. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\PTM EDV-Systeme\AttachmentExtractorserver\Configurations\MyService)

• Find the following StringValue UseSP15Upload
   
• Change the value to true (Do NOT include the quotes)
• Stop and Restart the service

That’s it! We appreciate your feedback! Please share your thoughts by sending an email to support@mscrm-addons.com.

When you launch an upgrade installation of our products, the setup will update existing files and solutions in CRM. The default behaviour of upgrading a product installation has changed with all releases after 1st of March, 2013.

Running an upgrade of our products updates existing solutions in CRM according to the following rules:

When you start an upgrade, you will be prompted with the Connection Dialog. When you select a specific organisation on the Connection Dialog, like alist in the below example (see figure 1), the installer will update the mscrmaddons.com general solution for the selected organization. As this solution is shared between all our products, this update will affect all of our installed products. 

Figure 1: CRM connection dialog, opening when running an upgrade
 

All product-specific solutions will be upgraded for the selected organization only. This behaviour has changed compared to versions built before 1st of March 2013.

Exceptions to the update-behaviour on the selected organization (valid for GroupCalendar and ActivityTools)

• In case of an OnPremise- or a Hosted (IFD)-installation, the installer will update all organisations to which the installing user has access to, using the latest versions of the solutions distributed via the release.

This behaviour is mandatory, as the WebApplication is shared between organisations and therefore requires all organizations to use the same solution version.

For all other products, or in case an organisation was not reachable during the installation, you can update specific organisations. You can start the update from within the Installation States-overview (see Figure 2), which has also changed slightly regarding its user interface and functionality as described below: 

• Per default, the InstallStatus only analyzes the organisation selected in the connection dialog, as analyzing is a rather time consuming process.
• Other available organisations have been moved to a dropdown box. Selecting an organization from this menu will start the analysis of the current install-state for the selected organisation only.

Figure 2: Installation States-overview

When you select , the full list of available organizations will be displayed.

Figure 3: Installation States-overview, list of all available organisations displayed

Additional information available in the Install States-overview

We also added three new columns which will be populated during the installation (or when you update an existing installation).

These columns show:

• the current product version installed and used by that organization
• the version of the currently installed mscrmaddons.com general-solution used by that organization
• The product-specific CoreSolution used by that organization.

Please note: Existing installations will not display data in these columns.

To simplify the process of upgrading existing installations, we have added an option to multi-select installed organisations and to run an upgrade on all of them (see Figure 4).

Figure 4: Installation States-overview, multiple organisations selected for upgrade

As of now, only updating is supported for multi-selection.

That’s it! We appreciate your feedback! Please share your thoughts by sending an email to support@mscrm-addons.com.

Introduction:

The following article outlines, how TelephoneIntegration Client is installed unattended. This enables installing the CTI client via policy or automatic install scripts.

Procedure:

This procedure basically requires four steps. Please follow each of them carefully!

1) Download necessary files

• TelephoneIntegration client Versions 5.46 and above: available in the Download area on www.mscrm-addons.com

• Batch/Reg-Files: attached to this article

2) Configure tiuai.reg- file:

This file contains the whole registry-setting of TelephoneIntegration Client.

Please note: you need to replace the placeholder values/dummy values of the registry file with your real values.

1. Path of the Telephone Integration-client installation package
2. Path of the tiuaix(64/86).reg file

ti_uai.zip (3.40 kb)

That’s it! We appreciate your feedback! Please share your thoughts by sending an email to support@mscrm-addons.com.

Windows 8 has the WIF Framework built in, therefore our installers will fail for now trying to update the WIF on windows 8 clients.

To activate WIF on Widnows 8 run Control Panel > Programs and Features > Turn Windows Features on or off. 


Then check the Windows Identity Foundation 3.5 check box in the Windows Features dialogue box and click on the [OK]-button:

Figure 1: Windows features - Windows Identity Foundation 3.5

That’s it! We appreciate your feedback! Please share your thoughts by sending an email to support@mscrm-addons.com.