I have a CRM 4.0 solution in production and I would like to make a replica of it so that I can use it as a test server.
What are the alternatives to accomplish this? Cons / Pros?
You can export all of your customizations to a file and then import them into your test system. Ideally you will work the other direction (make changes in test, then move to production).
To Export, go to Settings-Customization. You will see options for Import Customizations and Export Customizations. If you click Export Customizations, you can export selected entity customizations. Also there is a menu option to export all customizations. CRM will create a .zip file which is an XML file that includes the entity definitions, forms, views, relationships, and workflows. You just reverse the process to import your changes into another environment.
Ended up following the process from Microsoft:
"How to move the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 deployment"
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/952934
It looked like there was not another alternative.
Related
I added two values in an option set field on the production system (on premise Dynamics solution). I realized the right way would be to first introduce the two values into the option set on Dev, then export the solution as managed, and import it into production.
Now when I try to import the managed solution, I'm getting an error:
An error has occurred. {1}{0}
I believe it's because I had created those first values before in Dynamics, since Dynamics only does soft deletes.
I'm wondering should I go to the StringMapBase table and force delete those option set values, in order for the import to work.
You added those options as unmanaged customizations, so you should be able to delete them in production using the regular customization tooling.
Playing with managed solution is dangerous. That's why I always work unmanaged. I would suggest you to recreate the component manually with the same name or to copy your production database in dev.
I am on Dynamics CRM 2015 on premise. I export the default solution, and the very strange problem is that some attributes are missing in the exported solution Xml. For example: aging30, businesstypecode in the Account entity.
Any suggestion would be very appreciated.
Not long ago they made a change to the export process that only exports out-of-the-box attributes if they've been customized. It's a good change, since exporting attributes that every single CRM environment has is pointless unless it's been changed. I only know this because we noticed the same thing a while ago and came to this conclusion, I can't find any official announcement about it unfortunately.
I had the same issue when trying to compare solutions from Dev and Test environments using the Customization Comparer tool. For example the OOB attribute "telephone1" for contact entity is only showing up in Test column in Customization comparer and not in Dev column so it is showing as missing in DEV but actually that is not the case. So what i did was open the entity attribute in CRM for both environments and find out that on Test , Auditing for the attribute was enabled but not in Dev. So I enabled Auditing in DEV , export the solution and compare again. IT shows up in both columns and as green. Then i disabled it in DEV and reexport the solution in DEV, it shows up as Yellow now and both columns contain the attribute with the isAuditEnabled as different value.
so my conclusion, as Polshgiant mentioned above, only customized OOB attributes appear in the XML when we export a crm solution.So Sean, Just check one of the attributes that are missing in your case and make sure nothing is touched in prod.
I currently use TFS 2013 with custom work items for bugs, change request, requirements and features. I am wondering if I can migrate them to visual studio cloud 2015? is there a tool within VS or 3rd party that can do this?
If you are meaning the vsts. Possibly duplicate with this question: How to migrate work items from TFS to VS Team Services (VS Online) . There has been perfect answer from jessehouwing, suggest use one of below three ways as he suggested:
Use Excel for import/export - Will work for most work items, you loose attachments and work item links other than parent/child. The
trick is to extract from one Project Collection then copy all fields,
except the ID to an Excel sheet bound to the target project
collection. You will need to fix all Identity fields (works best when
users have the exact same display name on premise as in VSTS) and
you'll have to import once with state new and then past the current
state/reason over the just imported values and sync again. Test
Cases, Plans, Suites and Shared Steps will not be imported with their
relations in tact. The approach would be very similar to this
one.
Use the TFS Integration Tools - Will work for most work item types, though it will loose custom kanban states and tags. Test
cases, Shared steps and their relations will not be imported. This
option will allow you to import import work items and source code
with their relationships in tact.
Use a 3rd party solution - Out of the available options currently OpsHub offers the most complete solution. For test case and
source control link migration you're looking at the commercial
edition, which comes at a steep price. It still has a long list of
known issues and last time I tried it, I ran into numerous
issues which required their support to resolve them. PS: You can aslo try the tool as Dave suggested in the comment: VSTS Sync Migration Tools
We are a distributed development team working on same solution while performing customization for our CRM instance.
At times, it becomes important to know who has done what changes, or which customization has been done by whom. For example, if I would want to know who has added/ modified/ deleted a few fields from a particular entity.
Is there any such provision in Dynamics CRM? And also, if there is approach can follow to track the changes in CRM solution.
Any help on this will be much appreciated.
One option would be the Solution Packager, which will allow you to pack / unpack a CRM solution into / from source control (like TFS)
My team currently works with an on-premises TFS 2012 server. I am migrating everything to Visual Studio Team Services, formerly Visual Studio Online. I am starting with a test project and was able to easily get all the code migrated, but can't figure out how to do the same for the work items.
Are there any good guides out there?
New options as of March 29th 2018:
TFS to VSTS migration - The official import option which will import 1 project collection into 1 VSTS account. It automatically imports everything stored in the backup. At the point of writing this, the TFS must be upgraded to TFS 2018 and some work item template customizations must be removed (there are a few well documented features unavailable on VSTS).
VSTS Sync Migrator - Marting Hinshelwood, the uncrowned king of TFS and VSTS migrations, has built his own little tool that can migrate work items from one server/account to another. It can even do migrations from one Team Project to another and while doing it switch between process templates.
VSTS Work Item Migrator - Microsoft has also open sourced a project that they used internally to migrate work items. It's less powerful, but it was made by Microsoft.
Previous answer:
At the moment there isn't a really good story. Your options are:
Start over - easiest :).
Start over and manually recreate items of value - It's a pain, but it's some teams have done these things in the past. keep the old TFS server available in read-only mode and each time you use a work item in the old system, you manually create it in the new one, set all the fields and upload the attachments. Depending on the number of items it'll take you a few sprints to migrate the most important stuff over.
Wait a while longer - Microsoft is currently working on a full fidelity import option which will allow you to upload a Project Collection and it will be exposed as a new VSTS Account (it's not going to be possible to import a project collection into an existing account).
Use Excel for import/export - Will work for most work items, you loose attachments and work item links other than parent/child. The trick is to extract from one Project Collection then copy all fields, except the ID to an Excel sheet bound to the target project collection. You will need to fix all Identity fields (works best when users have the exact same display name on premise as in VSTS) and you'll have to import once with state new and then past the current state/reason over the just imported values and sync again. Test Cases, Plans, Suites and Shared Steps will not be imported with their relations in tact. The approach would be very similar to this one.
Use the TFS Integration Tools - Will work for most work item types, though it will loose custom kanban states and tags. Test cases, Shared steps and their relations will not be imported. This option will allow you to import import work items and source code with their relationships in tact.
Use a 3rd party solution - Out of the available options currently OpsHub offers the most complete solution. For test case and source control link migration you're looking at the commercial edition, which comes at a steep price. It still has a long list of known issues and last time I tried it, I ran into numerous issues which required their support to resolve them.
There are specialized TFS consultants who live off these kinds of migrations if your current state of the work items is precious to you, then you could reach out to them.
See also:
https://www.visualstudio.com/en-us/articles/adopting-vsts