Development Matters Blog

In an effort to keep our web content relevant, up-to-date, and informative, we have recently gone through and updated our Microsoft Dynamics Development Services landing pages.

Below is a brief snapshot of the new content, along with the links to individual pages:

Microsoft Dynamics AX Custom Application Development: With a team of highly-qualified Microsoft Dynamics AX developers, Merit Solutions provides custom application development to both ISVs and Microsoft Dynamics AX clients, extending your team in regards to requirements analysis, technical design and development, and quality assurance testing of all software products. In the end, we measure success by our ability to deliver custom applications that will help organizations optimize performance and reduce costs.

Read more about our Microsoft Dynamics AX Development services.

Microsoft Dynamics GP Migrations: Users migrating to Microsoft Dynamics GP often want to improve the structure of existing processes and line-of-business applications. Typically these businesses have grown and become more complex in their business process needs. Using the migration tools available from Microsoft, Merit Solutions can help organizations plan and implement an efficient migration from systems like QuickBooks, Peachtree, and legacy systems. Our methodology preserves data, enhances security, improves reporting, and minimizes business disruption by designing and following an efficient migration plan.

Read more about our Microsoft Dynamics GP Development services.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM Integrations: For companies interested in integrating front- and back-end business operations, Merit Solutions provides seamless Microsoft Dynamics CRM integration that brings together sales, marketing, accounting, supply chain, and more. We have extensive experience with Microsoft Dynamics CRM integrations to Microsoft Dynamics, SAP, Oracle, and other 3rd party ERP Systems. Merit Solutions also provides cost-effective integrations with external sites, hosted either in-house or at the hosting partner.

Read more about our Microsoft Dynamics CRM Development services.

Microsoft SharePoint Development: Merit Solutions provides Microsoft SharePoint development and deployment services to companies in need of extended portal functionality. Our integration, training, and consulting services help companies through new intranets, workflows, collaboration, document management, and custom portal solutions. We also have extensive experience developing SharePoint-based features and solutions, including 21 CFR Part 11 SharePoint Document Management.

Read more about our Microsoft SharePoint Development services.

We hope you enjoy the new content. Feel free to make suggestions by commenting on this blog article!

Merit Solutions, Inc., a 2009 Microsoft Dynamics President’s Club member and provider of Microsoft Dynamics business applications, is proud to announce the successful go-live of Mid-Continent Instruments’ new Microsoft Dynamics CRM implementation. Based in Wichita, Kansas, Mid-Continent Instruments is an industry leader in the overhaul/exchange, repair and manufacturing of aircraft instruments for the general aviation industry; the company operates on of the world’s largest FAA-authorized instrument overhaul and exchange programs. In an effort to automate business processes and improve customer contact management, the company began to look for an easily deployable customer relationship management (CRM) solution.

Mid-Continent has used the Microsoft stack for its core IT infrastructure for a number of years, and its IT team is very familiar with the Microsoft development and integration products and tools. Their employees are also familiar with the Microsoft Dynamics and Office systems, having used Microsoft Dynamics GP and many Office programs daily. “The capability of Microsoft Dynamics CRM to easily integrate with other Microsoft products, such as Microsoft Dynamics GP, Microsoft SharePoint, and Microsoft Office, was the determining factor in our decision,” says Cindy Highbarger, Chief Financial Officer at Mid-Continent.

Merit Solutions helped Mid-Continent review internal sales, service, and marketing processes to determine a way to automate business processes and improve the company’s responsiveness to changing market trends. Additionally, Mid-Continent wanted real-time access to information about all interactions with customers. Using the Microsoft Dynamics Sure Step implementation methodology, Merit Solutions was able to successfully implement Microsoft Dynamics CRM with real-time, two-way integrations with Microsoft Dynamics GP and Mid-Continent’s phone system. The Microsoft Dynamics CRM solution will provide Mid-Continent employees a more unified way to track customer information and sales data across the entire company.

When asked what she liked about working with Merit Solutions, Cindy appreciates Merit’s ability to implement new solutions in order to improve internal operating procedures. “Merit Solutions has always been able to fit new software systems to our optimized business processes, without making Mid-Continent accept less-than-optimal processes in order to fit any systems.”

Learn more about Mid-Continent Instruments.

A while back, we decided to upgrade our Dynamics CRM 3.0 system to Dynamics CRM 4.0. We had a specific situation, though: moving the CRM server from a 32-bit machine onto a 64-bit machine and upgrade.

Dynamics CRM 4.0 installation is divided into two ways: one for a 32-bit and one for a 64-bit machine. We couldn’t install Dynamics CRM 3.0 on a 64-bit machine, restore the old database, and then upgrade it to Dynamics CRM 4.0. So, we followed the process below to upgrade:

1. Backup CRM 3.0 (Company database)
2. Install CRM 3.0 on virtual machine
3. Restore Company database.
4. Upgrade CRM 3.0 on CRM 4.0
5. Check if all data are restored (including workflows, all customizations).
6. If everything is restored and customizations are all there, Backup Company Database.
7. On production server (in our case, 64-bit machine) we installed CRM 4.0 (64-bit version).
8. Restore Company database (created backup in step 6).
9. Using Deployment Manager tool, we created new Organization and used restored database for source.

We had a few smaller issues with the upgrade. For example, when we added a new organization (the first one was default), we couldn’t change the default organization. Also, we had an issue with sending E-mails from the upgraded CRM (which will be discussed in my next article).

The problem with the default organization in the Deployment Manager Tool for Dynamics CRM 4.0:

During installation of Dynamics CRM 4.0 you can see that there is one organization and it is set as default. When you add a new organization and set it on default, you will have a problem to get the Default Company through a server URL. For example, http://mycrm:5555 will always find the first default organization. This is because the default organization is related to web services but not for the web client. To resolve this issue you need to start Deployment Manager (All Programs -> Microsoft CRM -> Deployment Manager). You need to be a member of the Deployment Administrators group to run this tool. Remove the first organization (data are still on SQL server), set the second organization as the default, and then add a new organization which will get data from the database of the first one.

To hide fields on a Dynamics CRM form you should use the next two statements.

crmForm.all. fieldname_c.style.visibility=’hidden’;
crmForm.all. fieldname _d.style.visibility=’hidden’;

You can put this on filed Change or Form OnLoad/OnSave event script. Also, you can define it visible again:

crmForm.all. fieldname_c.style.visibility=’visible’;
crmForm.all.fieldname _d.style.visibility=’visible’;