Remote Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 server administration with PowerShell

When Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 was released, the on-premise installation included a set of PowerShell cmdlets for administering configuration and deployments. While these were incredibly powerful, the out-of-the-box cmdlets only worked on the same server that was running CRM. In CRM 2013, these cmdlets have been updated to run from remote systems, so you can use them to administer your on-premise CRM 2013 deployments without needing to be logged on to the actual application server. »

Working with key-value pair data inside Microsoft Dynamics CRM workflows – part 2

In my last post I discussed how key-value pair data can be used to store configuration-related items in Microsoft Dynamics CRM, and I also showed a design for an entity to store key-value pair data. In today’s post I will show how to retrieve and consume the data inside a workflow using a custom workflow activity. »

Working with key-value pair data inside Microsoft Dynamics CRM workflows

Dynamics CRM workflows are a great way to enable business processes, and with the real-time capabilities introduced in CRM 2013 they can replace plug-ins in many scenarios. One significant drawback that workflows do have, though, is they lack the ability to easily retrieve and work with data from inside Dynamics CRM that is not related to their primary entities. »

Managing Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 access team membership using connections

Dynamics CRM 2013 includes a great new feature called access teams, which makes ad-hoc sharing of records much easier than in previous versions. The basic idea is that an administrator can create one or more team templates for an entity that function sort of like security roles, but for a specific record. »

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 "actions" - a solution in search of a problem? Part 2

In my last post, I talked about what Dynamics CRM 2013 actions are and how I think they’re of limited utility in enterprise deployments. I did suggest two scenarios in which I think actions could be useful, and I’m sure other folks may have come up with some ideas of their own. »