I'm so glad to see Redemption has survived into the 2020s! I used to use redemption many many years ago & LOVED it. I'm curious, how does it go with profile creation on Win11 / Outlook 365?
I need to push new profiles to a bunch of machines (multiple profiles per machine). Would Redemption be able to do this?
Thanks for the good code!
Tony.
Related
I wonder if the community out there can help with this.
We are using Microsoft Dynamics 365 v8.2.2.112, on-premises (not cloud).
The problem is this: millions – yes, literally millions – of Contacts are being created for no apparent reason.
Our users access CRM via an intranet page, but also using the CRM Outlook Plugin.
Since upgrading to v8.2 in January, something in CRM is creating millions of CRM Contacts.
The same Contact is being repeatedly re-created hundreds and thousands of times for the same user. And this happens for multiple Contacts and for multiple users. The end result is that millions of Contacts are being generated. The contact gets created every 5 minutes (approx).
You can easily see the Contacts being created. If you run an “Advanced Search” on Contact order by “created_on” descending order, you can see the same new Contact being generated every five minutes or so, and whose details exactly match the one created 5 minutes ago.
We’ve got about 20 users who seem to be particularly prolific Contact creators. Possibly because of the nature of their role, they add lots (ie dozens) of Contacts to Outlook (but they definitely don’t add hundreds of thousands of the same person!)
I'm absolutely baffled as to why this should happen.
The prevailing view at my company is that CRM Outlook synchronisation is to blame. We use the Outlook plugin widely. We use version 8.2.3.8 of the Outlook CRM plugin. When users sync their Outlook Contacts, maybe it doesn't recognise that the Contact is already in CRM, so regenerates it? We think it's a bug of that nature.
We can’t turn off Outlook synchronisation, because users require it in order to do their jobs. They need to be able to sync Activities, Emails, Contacts and so on.
We've checked all our custom code (C# plugins) to ensure that no Contacts are being create anywhere. We've especially checked the "on create" of Contacts to ensure it’s not creating an additional Contact. No code generates Contacts.
I understand that I am able to turn off users' Outlook Synchronisation filters. But I don’t want to do so as they do need to be able to sync with Outlook. It’s one of the reasons we use Dynamics CRM.
Does anybody know what’s causing this? Has anybody come across this before? What’s the solution to stop this happening? I'm after a root-cause if possible!
Just wanted to keep this post up to date, for the benefit of any other poor souls who encounter this ghastly problem.
We were in touch with Microsoft who have been very helpful (although weren’t able to provide a “silver bullet” solution). The case is ongoing.
The first suggestion was that the problem was down to a customisation, integration or homemade plugin that had got itself into an endless loop, creating CRM Contacts ad infinitum. After searching absolutely every line of code and custom logic, I was able to confirm that the problem is not down to any of our customisations.
What we then did was to examine the Contacts being created on mass. We identified one Contact that was being generated over and over again. We checked its owner, let’s call this owner “John Smith”, and found that John Smith was the one creating this contact over and over. So we checked John Smith’s “Appointments, Contacts, and Tasks” syncing. We did this by “Settings -> Email Configuration -> Mailboxes”, then searched for John Smith’s mailbox. From John Smith’s mailbox, under the “Synchronization Method”, we set “Appointments, Contacts, and Tasks” from “Server-Side Synchronization” to “None”.
After doing this, the mass Contact generation immediately stopped. I’m not suggestion this is the solution to the problem (because we need to use syncing), but I am suggesting that this proves that the problem is down to a CRM bug in synchronisation (and not caused one of our customisations).
So if you’re getting this issue, and you want to rule out your customisations, I would follow these steps (above) to prove that it’s not your code that is responsible. If you turn off syncing for a user, and it stops generating millions of the same contacts owned by that user, I’d say you’ve got the same bug as me.
I think this bug is described in 2 possible places:
“Duplicate contacts are created if the rebuild of ID mapping fails after a test and enable.”: https://support.microsoft.com/en-in/help/4046463/service-update-9-for-microsoft-dynamics-365-8-2-1
OR
“Contact synchronization that uses server-side synchronization causes infinite updates.”: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/3203310/update-0-1-for-microsoft-dynamics-crm-2016-service-pack-1
The suggestion is that we’re getting this problem because we’ve not installed cumulative updates before installing a major version. I can’t agree that we were meant to. We installed the latest version as directed on-line. Obviously we can’t now install the updates which allegedly fix this bug, because we’re on a later version. We went from CRM 8.1.1.1005 to 8.2.2.0112 by skipping 2 cumulative versions (i.e. 8.2.0.0749 and 8.2.1.0176). It is alleged that these skipped versions had a bug fix for this issue in it (see link above), and by not installing them, this issue happened. I can’t really agree that it says anywhere to do this (install cumulative updates before installing a major version). Anyway, that’s the suggested cause of the issue.
Anyway, we’re still busy with the Microsoft guys. I’ll get back to you when there’s a definite course of action we can take. So it’s still work in progress.
We’re planning on deleting the millions of instances of that Contact from the user’s Outlook, then deleting the millions of that Contact from CRM (which has taken a week in a bulk delete), then we’re going to turn on “platform traces” (requiring a registry change), then we’re going to reactivate syncing, and gather the logs, and send them to Microsoft.
I’ll be back when there’s a definite solution.
Updated with a definite solution:
For the sake of completeness and in order to help anybody else who experiences this...
This nightmare was resolved by installing CRM patch v8.2.13.21. [NB We had been on v8.2.2.112] As soon as the patch was installed, the system ceased generated all these Contacts. They stopped being generated to the second!
We're still cleaning up the mess of the unwanted 20 million Contacts which shouldn't be there. But at least the issue is fixed.
I think the lesson is to keep your CRM system up to date in terms of patching!
I faced similar issue in OnLine when we enabled outlook synchronization for Dynamics.
Even we had contacts been created randomly. If you look in advanced find for contacts Created randomly it should be created by System user.
There is user setting in CRM as below and I think in your case Automatically create records in Microsoft Dynamics 365 is set to YES
You will have to change this to No.
For other users you can use XRMToolBox plugin called User Setting Utility and there in you can see every user's personal setting as below
with the same XRM Tool Plugin you can bulk edit user personal setting as well
I am looking to automate the deployment process for CRM between different Environments eg.Development Env, Test Env and UAT.
I am wondering if there is existing tools(s) available on market to automate the deployment for me?
If NO, Is it possible to automate the CRM deployment between different environments and what is the best practics for doing that?
Thanks
Where I work we are currently working with the exact same issue. I spend quite some time initially looking for of-the-shelves products that could help us, but I have not found anything promising. Therefore we have undertaken the task ourselves.
Some guys from Microsoft made a short "whitepaper" on the subject which I found quite helpful. It can be found here at Deploying Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 and CRM Online Solutions from Development through Test and Production Environments.
I will not claim that we are using "best" practices, but we have chosen to try and script everything in PowerShell or through .net based CmdLets in our own PS-module. CRM server comes with a PowerShell snap-in that sports some basic functionality for creating/removing organizations, but you are more or less on your own when it comes to actually "deploying" CRM-customization, configuration data, users etc.
It would be interesting to know, which approach you choose (if any)? And if you have any specific question, please don't hesitate to ask!
How about this?
The xRM CI Framework is a set of tools that allows you to quickly and easily implement Continuous Integration for your Dynamics CRM solutions.
PowerShell and the XRMCI framework will serve you well for solution deployments, the downside being that for Standing or configuration data that cant be added to a solution (or for solution items that are currently buggy in CRM 2015 e.g. Case Creation Rules, SLA Items etc.). In this case, my client and I have created powershell C# CmdLets that use the SDK and API to create standing data such as Users, Teams, Memberships, Queue's, Case Creation Rules (although its unsupported, the API does allow it), and to configure mailboxes etc.
So in combination, the XRMCI framework, C#, and PowerShell can be used to automate a deployment of one environment to the next. The key is to take it slow, manually execute the scripts to begin with and build trust in the process, tweak and add more elements. Once that trust is achieved, move onto integrating it with TFS in as a CI/CD process.
As for best practice, my own research suggests that this is still a "he/she who dares" area with no real "best practice", in time the players such as Chef, Puppet, Octopus and Microsoft (with DSC) will contribute, but for now....
I'm working on a web application that allows users to create a calendar of events, then download those events into their calendar program of choice (e.g., Outlook, Lotus Notes, iCal, Google Calendar, etc.)
The web app outputs the event data as an attachment in iCalendar (ics) format.
I'm running into a variety of problems...
If I use "VERSION:1.0", Outlook 2003 will recognize and import the attachment. However, Apple iCal will not. If it's "VERSION:2.0", iCal works, but Outlook 2003 will not.
If the attachment has more than one event (VEVENT), then Outlook 2003 only imports the first event, unless the user uses Outlook's import function.
I don't have Lotus Notes, or multiple versions of Outlook (2007, 2010), so I can't how those behave easily.
I don't mind having to implement a little dialog that asks the user what calendar program they use so I can customize the output accordingly. However, I don't know what each of the major programs supports or requires.
Has anyone found a resource that lists, by calendar program, what works and what doesn't? E.g., does Outlook 2007 or 2010 support "VERSION:1.0"? Is there a way to get Outlook 2003 to support "VERSION:2.0", or handle multiple events? What does Lotus Notes support? What about Yahoo and Google?
I don't need to support EVERY program, but I'd like to support as many of the major ones as possible.
Many thanks in advance!
Regarding Lotus Notes, you can download a trial version of the Notes client software from the IBM site, which may be all you really need to test your application. Notes can import ical entries through an Import menu, or dragging and dropping the iCal file into the Notes client. (If you need to do further Notes-specific development, you can also download a free version of the "Domino Designer" software from the IBM web site - IBM makes the Designer software available free for single machine use - no server access.)
There is a KBase article on the IBM site with some details of iCal support in the latest version of Notes (8.5) - http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/lotus/library/notes85-icalendar/index.html
At our company we offer a CRM platform for leasing companies and it includes task management. Some of our clients would like to sync those tasks with outlook so they do not have to switch between applications.
I do not have lots of experience with outlook, so I don't know about its extensibility features.
What options do we have?
Live syncing possible with some uri? (.ics, .xml?)
Writing some kind of extension?
What do you guys suggest is the most simple solution to this problem. Remember it's just syncing simple tasks, nothing more, nothing less.
Thanks!
I guess this depends on how your CRM system works. At my company we develop a webbased CRM system which means that the client can't really access the database outside of the web application. Our customers also wanted the ability to sync appointments with our activity calendar, so what I did was to write a simple web service from which data could be downloaded to the client. I then created an Outlook add-in using VSTO (Visual Studio Tools for Office) that took this data and created/updated Outlook appointments.
But as I said it all depends on how your system works.
both Outlook and Thunderbird are able to find contacts in a LDAP server, but none of them are able to modify contacts data.
Is there a plug-in or anything else to allow such thing?
Regards, Cédric
I don't know of any. But this guy seems to have managed doing it with VBScript which with some further work you should be able to nicely integrate into Outlook
Add/Modify/Delete Exchange Contact with VBScript
Yes, you can't, even nowadays - late 2011 (TB is not supporting it, and also Outlook 2007). Anyhow, some mail clients are allowing this, in example Evolution.
I have not tested Outlook 2010, but i feel this is the same.
To check: if you can modify an ActiveDirectory directory. AD is LDAP, although the schema is specific to microsoft.