Welcome to our first CRM Team Blog “Guest Star” post. You’ve heard a bunch from people from the product team; we thought it might be interesting to ask some of the CRM experts outside our team to give us their perspective. Ben Vollmer is a Microsoft Solutions Specialist and runs one of the best CRM blogs out there, an invaluable resource for CRM partners – he was an obvious choice for our first Guest Star. – JaAG
So you want to demo Microsoft CRM Mobile? In the past this could be a difficult thing to do since VPC’s don’t recognize USB and then getting a physical environment setup and configured is a complete pain in the backside.
Does the thought of reading all 140 pages of the manual turns you off? Then here is the cliff notes version for DEMO installs for Microsoft CRM. And in case you really don’t want to read, at the bottom of the page there is a link to a VPC differencing disk. (Which involves NO reading. J)
DO NOT Follow these directions for a production environment as they are not secure enough for production. These short cuts are not supported by technical support. J
Here are steps required to demo Microsoft CRM in a standalone VPC environment. For the sake of this blog post, I am going to assume that you have the latest VPC.
2. Download Windows Mobile 5.0 Emulator Images (You need the efp.msi file, not the exe, as it is already installed on the image. )
3. Download Virtual Network Device Driver
5. Install Network Device Driver
6. Install Windows Mobile 5.0 Emulator Images
7. Install ActiveSync 4.1 (And Reboot.)
Once you have the environment installed, the fun part begins. J
1. Create the certificate. Browse using the command prompt to C:\Program Files\IIS Resources\SelfSSL
2. Run SelfSLL with the following line: “selfssl /T /N:cn=DanubeCRM /V:365 /S:3”
3. More instructions and the meanings of each of those command prompts can be found in Appendix 5 of the Microsoft CRM Mobile Implementation Guide
4. Export the Certificate using the instructions in Appendix A9 under “Exporting a Server Certificate to a .cer file for use with Mobile Deployment Manager”
Once you have the certificate created and exported, you now need to create the Microsoft CRM Mobile Installation Item.
1. Read and follow the directions found in Section 8-5 under the sub title “Creating a Microsoft CRM Mobile Installation Item
2. For the sake of this example, we will be using Windows Mobile 2005 devices as our selection
3. On Settings tabs 1 and 2 look for all of the URL’s. Make sure they all read; https://DanubeCRM/ NOT https://danubecrm.crmdomain.com/. If they do, change them to take out the .crmdomain.com while leaving the rest of the URL in tack.
4. If you have the same bad case of ADD (attention deficit disorder) that I have, ignore everything past bullet #10 in the manual for this demo setup.
So now that you have these steps done and accounted for, you now need to create a deployment package to actually get this over to your mobile device. This is handled on Section 8-8. (Yeah, all of the first 15 pages.) Since I am a bit on the lazy side, drop this off as a CAB file.
Now all of the hard work is done, all you have to do now do is start the Emulator.
So go Start / Programs / Microsoft Windows 5.0 MSFP Emulator Images
The Select Device Emulator Manager
Go back to Start / Programs / Microsoft Windows 5.0 MSFP Emulator Images
Select Pocket PC – Coldboot
From the Menu of the Pocket PC Emulator Window, select File | Configure
Under Shared Folder, point to the location where you dropped off the CAB file while creating your deployment package.
On the Pocket PC, Select Programs then File Explorer.
Once in File Explorer, select the Storage Card.
Double click on your CAB file. Install will now run.
You are ALMOST there. I promise.
Once the Pocket PC has rebooted (Mid way through setup), go down to the bottom of the Device Emulator Manager and select the device that has the little play button next to it. Right click on it and select Cradle. This will allow the Emulator to act just like a “real” Pocket PC connected via ActiveSync.
Once setup has finished, select CRM Mobile. You will be prompted for a username and password. Type in the VPC Username of Administrator and password of “pass@word1”
From there you now have a fully functioning copy of Microsoft CRM Mobile to demo to prospects. A cool trick is that once you have a device fully registered, if you copy the database files off the device, you can place them on a physical device with data for demos if you want.
The differencing disk will be available on http://blogs.msdn.com/MidAtlanticCRM VERY soon, so check there and happy demo’ing.
Ben Vollmer