Saratoga Technologies Microsoft CRM Blog

So today i was experimenting with the Crystal Reports built-in components in the Visual Studio.Net 2008 IDE. I must admit that i imagined that the .Net crystal report datasource control and report viewer control would be easier to use. I am familiar with the SQL RS report desinger and i thought that they would be somewhat similar in creating reports, but i was very wrong.

It ended up with me spending a bit of time today cramming into a Crystal Reports 10 for Dummies book before i understood the differences between sql expression fields, parameter fields, and formula fields. I did find the book easy to read and i also realized that alot of the functionality of the built-in VS.Net control differed from the full application of CR.

I guess that some CRM customers will still have legacy Crystal Reports hanging around that have to be converted. And some customers that still love the CR interface. Now that business objects has been purchased by SAP i would imagine that most MS Consultants would write their reports in SQL Reporting services since the application is installed along with CRM.

Anyway, just my rant for the day and i am sure that i am not the Consultant out there that has dealt with legacy reporting in CRM 3.0 or just application development in general.

We recently had an incounter with a system that was having major issues with their SRS 2005 implementation. CRM would randomly run reports and more often than not simply halt the process of running the report.

This process was extremely frustrating and not alot more helpful from the output from the event logs. An internal error has occurred on the report server. See the error log for more details (rsInternalError).

 There are a few things that you can try to validate that you have the same issue.

1. Make sure that you can actually manually load both your report manager and reportserver. This can be accomplished by visiting http://SRSServername/reports and http://SRSServername/reportserver
2. Also, can you run a report sucessfully from the report manager? Or, does it give you the same message you are recieving in Microsoft CRM?
3. Are your SQL and SRS Servers members of the CRM OU PrivUserGroup and SQLAccessgroup?
4. If you have your SRS installation on another server do you have trust deligation setup in active directory for the SRS Server?
5. Does your server have multiple processors installed? yes, this applies
6. Are your processors equipped with AMD Cool N Quiet Technology? if so, disable

My problem turned out to be because of a SQL Reporting Services timing error from the multiple processors installed on the machine. The reports where being generated based on the processor timing and died out from there.

 The solution of this is something at the time of this writing isn’t out quite yet but it is going to be covered in SQL Server Reporting Services SP3 update, which by now may be available. The KB article is available about it here.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/943656

Also, you can contact Microsoft to aquire the cumulative update package 5 for SQL Server 2005 SP2. This fixed my issues, and hopefully SP3 will be released to the masses soon.

Take Care!

A client came to us with a problem that their reports would not work in CRM. They requested help getting the reporting services to work properly and needed some custom reports built into Microsoft CRM. I thought this might make for a quick article on the re-deployment process of SQL Reporting Services for Microsoft CRM 3.0.

First, it is a good idea to take a backup of your published reports to Microsoft CRM. There is a great tool to do this that is provided along with the application. You can find it in your Microsoft CRM install directory in the \reports folder. In this folder you should see the following applications.

• DownloadReports.exe - App for downloading reports from server.
• PublishReports.exe - App for publishing reports to server.

You should also have a folder named MSCRM. This should contain a copy of all the reports in your CRM Installation. The files are normally named with *.rdl extensions. Ok now to use these files lets download all of our existing reports from our reporting services server. The syntax is as follows:

downloadreports.exe “CRM_Organization_Name” c:\FolderName

This will now download your reports into the designated folder you have named above. It should take just a few seconds to a few minutes to complete depending on how many new reports that you have created in the installation.

After you have a backup copy of the reports then you are ready to repair the Installation of Microsoft CRM. Before anything else make sure that you have a good backup of your Microsoft CRM MSCRM and METABASE databases in case you need them.

Next, Run the repair Microsoft CRM Process in add/remove programs. Now it is important to note that the repair process for CRM performs the following actions.

1. Restores all Microsoft CRM Program Files
2. Re-registers components within the Windows OS
3. Removes Custom Reports
4. Republishes all the default Microsoft CRM reports
5. Replaces Registry Keys as needed.

Important NOTE: This process must be completed while logged into the crmserver. Also, you must be logged in on the server as the original user who installed the Microsoft CRM server initially. 

It is also important to note that you make a backup copy of your \Microsoft CRM directory especially if you have some 3rd party applications that have been added to CRM. This process will overwrite your isv.config files so be safe and make a backup.

Next, simply run the Microsoft CRM Server Repair Process. Go to the control panel double click on add/remove programs. Then click in Microsoft CRM Server and click on change/remove. On the Microsoft CRM Server Maintenance page select repair, and then click next. The Microsoft CRM Repair Process will complete as shown below. 

Restore your .config files from your backup copy of your microsoft crm directory.

go to the command prompt and type iisreset to reset the IIS services. Then try to load your reports in Microsoft CRM. They should now work properly as they did as a fresh install.

 If you have reports that you need to re-publish this can be accomplished by using the publishreports.exe application in the following syntax.

publishreports.exe “CRM_Organization_Name” “Domain/ReportingGroup {GUID OF REPORTING GROUP}”

or for example:

publishreports.exe “Saratoga_Technologies” “SaratogaTech/ReportingGroup {57c58b84-da09-4589-s54d-602e0486174d}”

This will then re-publish all of your created reports on the server.