Create Multi-Tenancy Organizations in CRM 4.0
After some basic checking of CRM 4.0 system, it’s now time to import some sample data and test further. As I am working in Japan, besides using the original English contents for testing, also would like to have the sample data to show to my colleagues as well as some Chinese data for self-testing. as I installed only one CRM 4 Server in my dev vm, should consider a way that can make those sample data working in the same time without install / restoring the database. so i think that should be the time for the new CRM 4.0 feature “Multi-Tenancy Support” to on stage.
Multi-Tenancy support means that 1 CRM 4.0 server can host multiple organizations at the same time, so that I can just create 3 organizations for each sample data (English, Japanese, Traditional Chinese).
Although the Implementation Guide did say that it had this new multi-tenancy feature, actually I didn’t see how to do it by reading through the whole documents. found that MSDN CRM Team blog had the post about how to do it, would also leave a note here.
The Administration Console way:
Use Deployment manager to create a new organization (All Programs -> Microsoft CRM -> Deployment Manager). You need to be a member of Deployment Administrators group to run this tool. The user who installed CRM is added as a member of this group automatically. Deployment manager will collect information such as name of the organization, currency settings, sql server etc and create a new organization.
refer to the team blog for SDK way of creating multi-tenancy organizations.
by the way, not all the CRM 4 SKUs support multi-tenancy, I installed Enterprise version and it’s ok. also, before install those multi-language sample data, install the related Language Packs first (also remember to download the Read Me for install steps). the CRM Implementation Guide also states the steps to install language packs.
Also notice that the sample data for each language all trying to create the same organization name “AdventureWorksCycle”, in order to seperate the different languages to different organizations, create the AD OUs and CRM Organizations with different names, also remember to change the sample data’s organization name to match the created OU name before importing to each database using Data Migration Manager.
FYI.