Developers with MSDN Subscriptions will be able to download Windows 7 RTM in English on August 6th and remaining languages by October 1st.

 

Able to download Windows 7 RTM from Microsoft Connect or MSDN on August 6th 2009.

 

IT Professionals with TechNet Subscriptions will be able to download Windows 7 RTM in English on August 6th 2009.

 

Windows 7 will be in retail stores and shipping on new PCs from October 22nd 2009. Like always, if demand is high you may have to wait longer.

News .... "Family Pack"
There will be a "Family Pack" licensing option.  A "Family pack" of Windows 7 Home Premium (in select markets) which will allow installation on up to 3 PC's.

Stay Tuned.

Greg Olsen
Yellow Duck Guy

Below outlines the steps required to change the organisation within the CRM Outlook client. This is valid for Microsoft CRM 4.0.

 

You can also download the steps including screenshots (Office Word 2007 file): Change Organisation in Outlook Client for CRM 4.0.docx

 

1. Select option CRM | Change Organisation, from the menu within Microsoft Outlook.

 

You will be presented with the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Configuration Wizard

2. Select Change your configuration. Click Next

3. Select My Company. Click Next

4. Enter the URL of the CRM Server as the Intranet address. Note: do not enter the organisation name in this URL.  For example, for the Microsoft CRM 4.0 VPC 2009 this would be (Note: this is not an actual link) http://crm

5. External Web Address will need to be set to the correct URL for external connections over the internet. Or simply check the option Use the same Web address when the system connects over the internet to use the same address as the Intranet address. Click Next.

 

If the wizard connects successfully to your CRM Server you will be presented with a list of current organisations existing in the CRM database.  Note: If you are presented with an error message then it is most likely the URL entered in step 4 is incorrect. Re-check this URL and try again.

6. Select the organisation you wish to connect to from the list. Click Next.

 

The Verification Descriptions and Results will be displayed. You will need to review the results and fix any error(s) presented.

7. Click Next.

 

The Configuration Wizard will begin reconfiguring Microsoft Dynamics CRM for Outlook.

 

Once complete, you will be presented with the Configuration Complete screen.

8. Click Finish.

 

You’re done!

The following with illustrate how to create a new organisation so you can take advantage of the Multi-Tenancy feature with Microsoft CRM 4.0.  I have done these steps on the latest Microsoft CRM 4.0 VPC 2009 released by Microsoft. 

 

You can also download the steps including screenshots (Office Word 2007 file): Create a CRM 4 Organisation.docx

 

1. Firstly check that the SQL Server Agent is running on the CRM 4.0 SQL Server. Open Start | All Programs | Administration Tools | Services. You will get a list of Services.

2. Locate the service SQL Server Agent (MSSQLSERVER), right-click and select Start (if this service is not started already). This is required to be running to complete the new organisation wizard.

3. Close the Services window.

4. Next, open the deployment manager, Start | All Programs | Microsoft Dynamics CRM | Deployment Manager.

5. With the left menu, select Deployment Manager | Organizations.

6. Right-click on Organizations and select New Organisation.

7. Enter Display Name as Yellow Duck Guy.

8. Enter Name as YellowDuckGuy. Note: This should be filled in automatically for you.

9. Click Browse.  Select the Base Currency of your country. Warning: Once this is set and saved you cannot change the Base Currency of your organisation.  I will select New Zealand.

10. Select SQL Collation applicable to your country or current SQL Server collation. I will select Latin_General_CI_Al.

11. Click Next.

 

You will be shown the screen Help Us Improve the Customer Exprience. Here you can select to participate in the experience of your creation of the organisation. For this example, I will not select the option.

12. Click Next.

13. Select the SQL Server you would like the CRM Organisation created. I selected the Microsoft CRM VPC 2009 database of CRM-SRV-01.

14. Click Next.

 

You will be shown Specify Reporting Services Server screen. You will need to enter the URL of the SQL Reporting Services Server which was setup before you installed CRM 4.0. I will use the local URL for the Microsoft CRM VPC 2009 SQL Reporting Services Server which is http://localhost/ReportServer

15.  Click Next.

 

You should see the results of the verification tasks. This means the organisation has not been created yet.

16.  Click Next.

 

Now you will be displayed with the screen titled, Ready to Create.

17.  Review your selections and click Create.

 

The process will begin to create your new organisation. This will take a few moments.  Be patient and wait for the wizard to create your organisation. You can select the link to view the log if you want to see what actions were processed.

 

You’re done!

 

18. Click Finish to complete.

19. Type in the URL with your new organisation name. Example (not a valid link from this blog): http://crm/yellowduckguy/loader.aspx

 

Your Microsoft CRM 4.0 instance now will be accessible.

 

Greg Olsen
Yellow Duck Guy

Worldwide Partner Conference 2009 (WPC09) is delivered from New Orleans.  To keep this short, I thought the slide shown below summaries the lastest products from Microsoft really well and should be posted up on this blog. This was presented within the Keynote while Steve Ballmer was talking. You can see the Keynote delivered via Silverlight here: http://digitalwpc.com/Videos/KeynoteVideos

 

 

 

Yellow Duck Guy