Today I heard again an urban legend that Microsoft Dynamics CRM was an application that Microsoft had purchased from another company much like it purchased Axapta, Great Plains and Navision.

THIS IS NOT TRUE.

The person who was spouting this should really know better especially as they were presenting themselves as an authority.

If you don’t believe me check out:

Aaron Elder’s MSDN Blog which shows the “About Screens from V1

Or

Wikipedia

Or

Channel 9 Interviewing the Head of Dynamics See 02:33

“Our CRM system was built completely here at Redmond. It wasn’t acquired in.”

Or

Channel 9 Video interviewing the developers see 06:40

Is that enough!

So the next time someone spouts this FUD you can slap them right back down!

I had hoped that this site on enterprise CALS which was pointed out to me might just hold some answers to the licenses and functionality for Sharepoint 2007.

Wrong, WRONG, WRONG!

It is saying that there will be a standard and enterprise version of the product and some bits on what is in each but not in nearly enough detail.

One interesting point is that is says you need an enterprise licence to use Forms Server. I have received information that contradicts this so I will have to follow it up more. This is a critical factor as I am pitching Forms Server in a Sharepoint 2003 environment and they don’t want to upgrade yet.

The worst part is STILL NO PRICES! We are weeks away from launch. I am pitching it as part of solutions as Microsoft want but I cant give any prices!

A couple of weeks ago I unfortunately ran over a badger. The result is that the car is in for repairs and I have been given a Vauxhall Astra as a loan car.

I think that Vauxhall is branded Opel elsewhere.

A couple of months ago I had to hire a car for a business trip and I hired a Vauxhall Zafira.

I will never again drive a Vauxhall car for one reason. They have changed the functionality of the indicator stalk. (And the windscreen washer but that is less noticeable.)

In a normal car the driver has 3 feedback methods as to the status of their indicators.

1. An audible ticking
2. A light flashing on the dashboard
3. The position of the stalk

Now for no good reason Vauxhall have decided that that last form of feedback is no longer necessary. In their cars when you flick the switch it activates the indicator but THEN RETURNS TO ITS REST POSITION!

In addition to this stupidity if you don’t press the stalk enough then it only activates the indicators for 3 flashes, but you have no way of knowing this.

The result is that if the indicators fail to cancel, say you are changing lanes, then you have to manually flick the stalk the other way. But you then end up with them switching to the other way and so on.

I totally fail to understand the mentality of a design team that considered this an improvement. It must be the only case in the history of car design where a conscious decision was taken to REDUCE functionality and HINDER drivability.

In conclusion NEVER drive a Vauxhall they are dangerous!

I have just opened my demo spreadsheet and found that I have lost half of my conditional formatting and graphs that were blue are now green. Yuck. I cant imagine why this would have happened and it is too late to investigate – I suspect changes to the default formats.

Oh well thats what you get for using beta software!

EDIT: WTF The chart formatting seems totally screwed – Now the graph format selections look terrible- live preview seems bust maybe its just me but so far things seem to be going backwards FAST!

Edit.

I shall moderate  my rant. The problem seems to be if you have an Exchange mailbox but are not connected to the network. I just tried it with a VPN connection and it  flew. Take away the VPN connection and its back to the 2 Min + load times. Still not right but not quite as bad.

Ok I have downloaded the Beta 2 refresh and it has made some small UI changes and I am sure there is lots under the hood BUT Outlook is truly painful! Words fail me to describe how bade the user experiance starting this app are!

I have found the Beta 2 version to be a bit slow and tended to just not start and I was praying that this had been fixed but no!

To launch Outlook takes 2 Min 7 Seconds to 2 Mins 30 Secs! Over 2 mins from clicking the icon to getting a view of my inbox. No way can this be acceptable. Whatever the Office team do between now and RTM they need to lock the Outlook team in an office and thwor away the key till they get it right. This is the flagship application for Office and waiting 2 mins for it to launch is not acceptable.

For reference I am running a Dell Latitude D620 with dual processor & 2Gb Ram.

I am running XP Pro, Windows desktop Search (Latest Beta). When I am in the office or on VPN I connect to Exchange.

So in my opinion Office 2007 Rocks BUT Outlook 2007 sucks!

That’s me then!

<RANT>

Last year we ordered a dining room table from Debenhams with the promise that we would have it in time for Christmas. Given that we had a dozen people coming round a proper sized table was going to be needed.

Needless to say despite endless frustrating calls and missed deadlines the table did not arrive till Feb, by which time the turkey had gone a bit cold!

After further arguments we were given a £90 gift voucher.

Six weeks ago we wanted a sofa bed and saw one online at Debenhams. I a triumph of hope over expectation we ordered it using up the gift voucher.

This week we were told that it was ready to be delivered and given a time of 5 PM Thursday. I cleaned out the office, moved all the files etc to make sure it could be got in. At 4:30 PM they called to say that they were not delivering today but it would be at some point tomorrow!

Do these people have any idea how frustrating and disruptive it is to arrange a family life around a delivery only for it not to arrive!

So the morals of the story are:

1. Think twice before ordering from Debenhams
2. Work on the probability that any delivery date they give you is pure fiction created by the warehouse man throwing a dart at a calendar.
3. Never do it more than once!

Here endeth the lesson!

</RANT>

Today I had a really painful session with SQL Server Analysis Services 2005 (SSAS)!

A client had sent me a back up of their Analysis Database as they were getting incorrect data in their Reporting Services Reports.

I restored the database and tried to browse it. I got the following error:

The query could not be processed:
o Errors in the OLE DB provider. Could not connect to the redirector. Ensure that the SQLBrowser service is running on the 'XXX' server.
o Errors in the OLE DB provider. An error occurred while named instance information was being retrieved from the SQLBrowser service on the 'XXX' server.

Puzzled I did the usual things restarting services, trying Excel etc but to no avail. Nothing would let me look at the data in the cube. I tried restoring the data with every combination of options I could think of but nothing.

At last my hunt took me to the Windows Application Event Log where I saw the following error each time I tried to connect:

"The description for Event ID ( 22 ) in Source ( MSOLAP$CHARLESM2005 ) cannot be found. The local computer may not have the necessary registry information or message DLL files to display messages from a remote computer. You may be able to use the /AUXSOURCE= flag to retrieve this description; see Help and Support for details. The following information is part of the event: Internal error: An unexpected exception occured.." Gee thanks!

However, scrolling down I saw this event earlier in the day:

"Automatic certificate enrollment for DOMAIN\charles.maitland failed to contact the active directory (0×8007054b). The specified domain either does not exist or could not be contacted.
Enrollment will not be performed.

For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp."

Now as I was working from home and not connected to the VPN that could make sense.

In a blinding flash I connected the 2 errors! I made a connection to my work VPN and Lo and Behold my cube was accessible again.

In conclusion. For some reason SQL Server Analysis Services will sometimes throw a fit and not let you browse your data if you cannot be authenticated AT the time against your domain controller.

If anyone can shed any light on why such an authentication process is required I would be delighted to hear it! As it stands I have just wasted over 4 hours chasing down an undocumented screw up – Sorry not a happy bunny at this end!

Sorry Ian you are catching my posts tonight!

It is very frustrating when authors pull posts. I know there may be reasons but please can you just delete the words and replace them with some explanation. That way links still work and the concept of transparency is maintained.

A simple "its all gone pear shaped" will suffice, we do understand but don’t try and pretend that it never happened. RSS does not give you that luxury!

Unfortunately I still cant get it to do anything! Maybe I am missing a trick.

The thing that this has raised for me is that if I am still not seeing any results how will my clients? One of the WOW factors for clients is how easy BSM is to use, but now we have an add-on that will require the services of a specialist to get running.

The product may be great but it is currently massively let down by the install experience.

I am sorry but for an application that is targeted at moderate level users having an install file that runs as a self extracting zip file, requires reading of the install document and hand crafting the install is not in keeping.

This is even worse when the Install document tells users

"You need to place this file into the assembly directory (GAC).".

85% + of users would not know the GAC if it came and slapped them round the head with a wet herring!

To follow this statement with:"

Configuration – WinForms

To plug-in Diagram Viewer, PmBuilder.exe.config must be placed in the folder where PmBuilder.exe is installed.

" is lunacy and it gets worse!.

The product may be good and such installation acceptable for a closed Alpha but for a released product targeted at moderate IT departments it falls far short.

Please Ian pull this till it is ready for me to be able to stand up in front of a customer and be proud of it!

PS. The documentation calls the product KPIDraw Tool but all the file names refer to Strategy Map Tool. Please!!!

EDIT: It seems that Ian's Post has been pulled!?! But as at 22:00 UK Time the download is still up
PPS Ian and team keep up the good work. It is going in the right direction, and the punters love it!

Sorry I have done this rant to death but..

<Rant>

What sort of error message is this:

Unable to cast COM object of type 'Microsoft.SqlServer.Dts.Runtime.Wrapper.PackageNeutralClass' to interface type 'Microsoft.SqlServer.Dts.Runtime.IObjectWithSite'. This operation failed because the QueryInterface call on the COM component for the interface with IID '{FC4801A3-2BA9-11CF-A229-00AA003D7352}' failed due to the following error: The application called an interface that was marshalled for a different thread. (Exception from HRESULT: 0×8001010E (RPC_E_WRONG_THREAD)).

I get this when I open my SSIS project. After this everything works fine!

</Rant>

I am left with no idea where the problem is or how to fix it.

It is as bad as a generic "An Error Has Occoured"!

</Rant>