CRM 4.0 Login Fails - CRM Expired Keys

I received reports that users could not login to CRM. They would attempt to open the CRM site and would immediately receive an error. All users, even the Deployment Administrators were not able to open CRM.

The Event View Application log had lots of error with Source: MSCRMKeyGenerator / Event: 18949

Inside these errors I found the following:

Current active key (KeyType : CrmWRPCTokenKey) is expired. This can indicate that a key is not being regenerated properly. Current Active Key : CrmKey......


Quick fix:

Make sure that the "Microsoft CRM Asynchronous Processing Service" is started and then restart IIS.

Basically this service is pretty important for a couple of reasons. Long story short, make sure it's started and if it's not started, you'll need to restart IIS after starting it.

If the Microsoft CRM Asynchronous Processing Service won't start, you either have a locked out user account (hopefully you're running as a domain user account and not Network or Sytem), or you have another problem fixed in the latest cumulative update rollup for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0

Reference - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/949844#appliesto
Cumulative Update - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/949256/

Can't see MOSS Workflows

So I've recently ran into a strange situation. There are workflows created with SharePoint Designer and the Workflows option is not available for some users. After doing some more investigating I found that for certain sites in a site collection, only the Site Collection Administrator could even see the previously created workflows or add new workflows.



The inheritance on the site has been broken and fractioned all throughout the site. I haven't found a link to the SharePoint Designer workflow permissions through the SharePoint Site directly, but I have found a workaround.



1) Open SharePoint Designer > Right Click on Workflows and Select Properties.

2) In the Document Library Properties Windows, Select the Security Tab.































3) Select the "Manage permission using the browser" link
4) You'll need to adjust the permission for the appropriate SharePoint Users/Groups or Domain Users/Groups, depending on what you're using.

I've seen this happen to a couple of sites, and mostly appears to be caused very specific and custom permissions applied, which breaks the inheritance, and then the workflows are created by Site Admins or even Farm Admins.

SoapException. Error: The item '/Organization_MSCRM/4.0' cannot be found.

I ran across a default installation of CRM and found a couple of issues with Reports and more specifically Reporting Services. Users are trying to create a report with the Report Wizard, inside of CRM.

Here is the error in the Application Log of the CRM Server:

Web service request SetItemDataSources to Report Server http://SERVER/reportserver/ReportService2005.asmx failed with SoapException. Error: The item '/"Organization"_MSCRM/4.0/MSCRM_DataSource' cannot be found.

If you are seeing this error message your more than half way there to getting your reports configured. You should verify your Reporting Services URL for CRM. You can do that by going here. What this is telling me that is that you are actually uploading the report but it doesn't see the CRM data connection and is using the default data connection at the root of the folder. If you look at the Report Manager site you should see your report. If you click on Show Details, and edit the report, then click on "Data Sources", you can get some insight to what is going on.

If your data source says "Adventure_Works" you don't have your default data connection setup for Reporting Services. The other possibility is that your folder structure isn't want CRM expects it to be.

Make sure that your folder structure for in Report Manager is "Home > Organization_MSCRM > 4.0" or whatever your CRM installation is complaining about. To resolve the directory structure, simply create new folders with the appropriate names.

Try to create your report again. If you're still having issues, go back to Report Manager and create a Data Connection.

Name: MSCRM_DataSource
Enable: Check
Connection type: Microsoft CRM Data Extension
Connect using: "Credentials supplied by the user running the report"

This data connection should be configured programatically for your, but i've seen cases where it hasn't.

CRM 4.0 and Reporting Services

I've run into some issues recently with CRM 4.0 and Reporting Services. This is a recent installation of CRM 4.0 and this was not an upgrade. I have my CRM and SQL Server 2005 with SSRS all on the same server. I'm using a Host Header for the CRM site and the Server Name for the Reporting Services URL.

My user started reporting this error attached in the screen shot. This isn't a very informational error message, so I needed to do some investigating.

I found errors in my Application logs on my CRM server. That pointed at the Reporting Services URL.

From the application log:

Web service request CreateReport to Report Server http://%22report%20server/ReportService2005.asmx failed. Error: The request failed with HTTP status 400: Bad Request.

This error is because of the Reporting Service URL configuration in CRM.

To resolve this do the following:

1) Start > Programs > Microsofto Dynamics CRM > Deployment Manager.

2) Select Organization, then Select your Organization.

*Note: This next step will cause an interruption for your users.

3)Select Disable your Organization and then select Properties

4) Under the Microsoft Dynamics CRM SRS Data Connection URL, Change the URL to http://SERVER/reportserver

*Note: "SERVER" should be the web server where reporting services is being served from.

5) Click Ok, and Enable your Organization again.

6) Restart Reporting Services Application Pool

You can test your changes by hitting http://SERVER/reportserver and you should see basically a blank page that says Reporting Services.

Microsoft Office has identified a potential security concern

I'm sure that I'm not the only one that has been prompted with this wonderful Warning. Unfortunately I did some searching and nobody out there seems to care. Everything I found pointed to "don't worry, it doesn't hurt anything".

I had issue with just accepting that was good enough. I've also had users complain that this was misleading.

I tried to add urls to Internet Explorer's Trusted Sites and still had no luck. What I ended up discovering was that office was actually checking for this warning and completely ignored the trusted site. Some of it was the content is simply handled different by Office, such as .WMV files. Trying to link to a .WMV file from Outlook or a Power Point presentation was prompting for this warning.

To resolve it, this is what I found:

HKU\"user account"\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Common\Security\DisableHyperLinkWarning = 0



Setting the key "DisableHyperLinkWarning" to "0" will prompt with the Security Warning. Setting the same key to "1" will suppress the prompt and make everyone happy.

There are a couple of issues to be aware of. If the content is disabled, like macros or blocked file extends, they will still be blocked. This will also apply to Word, Excel, Power Point, Outlook and Access. This won't fix InfoPath, and I haven't had a chance to test the other Office related products.

Update:

I don't think i posted the registry clearly enough.

HKEY_USERS\"User Account SID" \Software\Policies\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Common\Security\

You'll probably need to create the Red_DWORD called "DisableHyperLinkWarning". It will have a value of 1.

Customizing SharePoint Top Navigation Menu and Quick Launch Bar

Customizing SharePoint Top Navigation Menu and Quick Launch Bar has been a request from a couple of different sources. So I've decided to finally post on the logic, step and simply value changes to accomplish this. You will need a text editor for editing the master page and/or pages. For this I'll be using SharePoint Designer.

Goal:

Essentially you want to keep your main portal page clean and you want the "fly-away menu" look and feel. This is a major advantage with SharePoint 2007 and the Security Trimming. Depending on how many levels you want to show will determine your overall look and feel. Remember that you can look under your Manage Content and Structure under Site Actions to look at this tree and understand your levels. 0 (zero) is Home, and everything incrementing from 0 (zero) will allow for additional sub sites to be displayed.

Prep Work:

Under Site Action > Site Settings > Modify All Site Settings you'll see "Look and Feel". From here you're looking for Navigation. Under Navigation make sure that "Show Subsites" is checked.

NOTE: It is VERY important to make a copy of this original file > Default.Master . Changing the master pages can cause a lot of headaches for you and your portal, if not done correctly. I'd recommend even downloading a copy to another location for safe keeping. You can use version control, but I'm still recommending.

Use the breadcrumb to get back to Site Settings and under "Galleries" you are looking for Master Pages and Page Layouts > default.master.

Editing:

Find default.master and select "edit in Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer" or which ever editor you have installed.

First you're going to be looking for : "TopNav"

And more specifically 2 separate lines for editing:

StaticDisplayLevels="2"

MaximumDynamicDisplayLevels="1"

This is where the values determine the depth and width of your menus. The StaticDisplayLevels will determine how many levels in your site collection you wish display on the top ribbon and how wide you want it to be. For example, if you have "Home > Sites > Team Sites > Sub Team Sites > Sub Sub Team Sites" and your StaticDisplayLevels was set to 3 you would show everything up to "Team Sites" across the top. If you set your StaticDisplayLevels to 1, you would only show "Home". You can play with your changes and test. Just make your value change, save and then refresh your browser.

Second you're looking for: "QuickLaunch"

Same rules apply here but you're working on the horizontal expansion rather than vertical. You still have your same fields but your default values are a little different.

StaticDisplayLevels="1"
MaximumDynamicDisplayLevels="0"

Things to be aware of:

Security trimming does still apply here. If you can't navigate through a site you don't have access to. This translates to if you have access to sites #1, #2 and #4, your navigation will only show #1 and #2. You can't traverse through #3 to get to #4 so the menus will not show #4.

MOSS - This List not returning Search Results

Symptoms:

You can't search lists or libraries in MOSS 2007. Or some older lists return results but nothing new. Essentially "This List:" doesn't return results while searching, but "This Site:" does return results.

There are a couple of possibilities here for the cause and I've read some ridiculous theories on this. Most of them point as your SSP being corrupt and you need to create it. Or you've corrupted your databases and need to restore them.

Really the first place I thought to check was Authentication. I found that there 2 different types of content in Sharepoint / MOSS 2007. Long story short, you can search the .aspx pages, separately from List and Library items. I've found this to be reflected in your indexes also.

What actually triggered this for me was resetting SPN's for Sharepoint. I found that some of the SPN's were throwing errors on the Domain controllers so I deleted and recreated them. In another case I changed from Kerberos to NTLM authentication to resolve some immediate issues but didn't update my search service account.


Fixing "This List" search issues:

1) Login to your SSP
2) Under Search, select Search Settings.

You will see the following:

Indexing status: "if you're in error it will probably say something other than IDLE"
Items in index: "# of items"
Errors in log: "# of errors"
Content sources: "Local Office SharePoint Server sites"
Crawl rules: "will be different depending on what you've defined"
Default content access account: "Should be a Domain account
Managed properties: Default is 130 defined properties
Search alerts status: "Alert status"
Propagation status: Idle

3) Click on on "Manage Crawl Rules"
Note: You should have the URL of your Site configured here.
4) Click on the URL of the site with the issue(s).
5) Select "Include all items in this path" and check Crawl complex URLs (URLs that contain a question mark (?)).
6) Then select "Specify a different content access account"
7) Enter in the Search User account and password.
8) Use the Breadcrumb and select "Search Settings".
9) Click on "Content Sources and Crawl Schedules".
10) Select your content source ("Local Office SharePoint Server Sites" is the default).
11) Make sure that the URL for your SharePoint site is listed in the "Type Start Address Below" box.
12) Under Crawl Settings, select "Crawl everything under the hostname for each start address".
13) Then set your crawl schedules. Usually you do a Full Crawl outside of your business day and hourly for your incremental crawls.
14) Check the box for "Start Full Crawl"

You can monitory the status of the crawl at the "Search Settings" page. Depending on how much content you have, will determine how long it will take to index. Also it will go through and delete old indexes for deleted content at the sametime. This will add time for the full crawl to complete.

Checking in Files / Removing Locks in TFS

I've found this to be an issue on multiple occasions. Essentially you're using Team Foundation Server with Visual Studio and a member of your team leaves with code checked out or locked.

There are a couple of ways to fix this but the easiest I've found is with TF.exe. If you have Visual Studio installed and priviledges you can use this tool to fix you problem.

Note: You can find the TF.exe tool in:

C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\Common7\IDE\TF.exe (VS2005)

or

C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE\TF.exe (VS2008)


Get a list of workspaces for a user:

tf workspaces /owner:UserName /server:ServerName

eg. if my user name was JDoe and my TFS web server name MyTFS then the command would be:

tf workspaces /owner:JDoe /server:MyTFS

Note: Use the Host Name of the server you're attaching to. If you have a multiple server configuration, you need to use the Server Name of the web server where your TFS client connects to. Don't use the host header (if applicable) or the http address and you don't need to use the Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN).

To remove a workspace for a user, you need to know the workspace and the username. The default workspace name is their development machine name. Occassionally developers have multiple machines, maybe a laptop and a desktop for development. It's not uncommon to have multiple workspaces associated to the same usere.

Delete a workspace for user:

tf workspace /delete /server:ServerName "workspace";"workspaceusername"

eg. if my username was JDoe and my workspace was JDoe2003, and my TFS web server was MyTFS, the command would be:

tf workspace /delete server:MyTFS JDoe2003;JDoe



Get a list of directories in a workspace for a user and display the GUI (Graphical User Interface):

tf workspace "workspacename";"workspaceusername" /server:ServerName

eg. if my user name was JDoe and my TFS web server name MyTFS then the command would be:

tf workspace JDoe2003;JDoe /server:MyTFS