Connector for Microsoft Dynamics V3 CU 2 Released

Performance improvements and key suggestions on Connector V3 deployments are the primary new features in Connector for Microsoft Dynamics V3 CU2 (3.2.606.2), which was posted Monday for download.

Additional new features with this release include:

  • Web-based viewer for the Connector's log
    • To access the log via the web-based viewer, you will need to be receiving notifications of the exceptions in the system and click on the link in those notification emails
  • Overall performance and messaging improvement in Connector's log
  • Version information has been moved to an "About" box within Connector

To download this release for your Microsoft Dynamics ERP system, go to Customer Source:

  • Connector for Microsoft Dynamics AX
    • If you have applied Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 R2 CU 6 or later, an XPO is no longer needed.  You can run the ConnectorHelper class that is included in the CU 6 update to accomplish the required setup tasks in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 R2.
    • This release is required for integrations targeting the upcoming Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 R3 release
  • Connector for Microsoft Dynamics GP
    • All previously supported versions of Microsoft Dynamics GP 2010 and GP 2013 are supported as either new or existing integrations
    • The upcoming Microsoft Dynamics GP 2013 R2 release will also be supported with this release, however it is not required for integrations targeting Microsoft Dynamics GP 2013 R2.
  • Connector for Microsoft Dynamics NAV
    • Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2013 R2 is supported with this release, however this release is not required for an integration to Microsoft Dynamics NAV.  Any release after Connector V2 RU1 (2.1.29.1) will support Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2013  R2.
  • Connector for Microsoft Dynamics SL

Would you like to know more?  Check out the User Guide for your ERP system and begin your installation preparation. I know, I know; reading documentation can be arduous. But you know what they say: an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. So read the provided documentation to avoid the common mistakes and save yourself the support call.  The user guides for all of the ERPs have been updated for this release and all include a V3 upgrade sections that you should be familiar with before upgrading your existing integrations.  All of the known issues documents have been updated as well so please have a look at those too, they can all be found on the Connector for Microsoft Dynamics download pages.

Note: This release includes an update to the MSDI database that will mean any custom objects you have added to the database will be dropped, however this update will greatly improve the performance of the overall Connector system.

Comments

  • Anonymous
    February 13, 2014
    When trying to install the Integration Solution for Dynamics AX projects and Microsoft Dynamics CRM, I cannot generate the mapping for the new entities (mbs.microsoft.com/.../MSDCRMAXIntegrationSol). I followed the installation guide, however it seems that the exe file is corrupted. When getting to the stage of installing the mappings for the new services (Step 5 Page 18 of the installation guide), I cannot access the exe file. Has anyone reported this issue? Ahmed ahmednafea.ahmed@gmail.com

  • Anonymous
    February 17, 2014
    Hello Ahmed, Thanks for the feedback, we will look into this. Regards, Pradeep (Program Manager for the Project-CRM integration solution)

  • Anonymous
    February 17, 2014
    @Pradeep GanapathyRaj [MSFT] Thanks for your response. Regarding the Order to Sales Order Service from CRM to AX 2012 R2 CU7, when submitting the order from CRM 2013 the Sales Order Type is defaulted to "Journal" instead of "Sales Order". I checked my settings  under AR Parameters for default Sales Order type and its set to "Sales Order". Furthermore, the Sales Type mapping between CRM to AX is set to "Sales" as per SalesType enum value in the AOT. I tried different options such as Sales Order, Sales, number 3 which is the SalesType EnumValue for Sales or Sales Order. However, no luck. Any advice? Regards Ahmed

  • Anonymous
    February 17, 2014
    @Pradeep GanapathyRaj [MSFT] Thanks for your response. Regarding the Integration Solution for Dynamics AX projects and Microsoft Dynamics CRM: I managed to find a blog post that assist with this issue by debugging the exe file (blogs.msdn.com/.../microsoft-dynamics-crm-2013-is-supported-by-connector-for-microsoft-dynamics.aspx) see the comments section by Mirko. However, still facing issues with installing the maps. After using VS to debug the exe and go through the steps performed by Mikro, I get a message saying Maps installed successfully as per configuration documentation provided. Though when starting the service and the connector, I could not find the services on the connector GUI. I am running AX 2012 R2 CU7, CRM 2013 and latest Connector Version. Any advice? Ahmed

  • Anonymous
    March 20, 2014
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    March 20, 2014
    Hello Ahmed and other readers - we have updated the AX projects-CRM Integration solution mbs.microsoft.com/.../MSDCRMAXIntegrationSol. Please try this, thanks! Regards, Pradeep

  • Anonymous
    March 20, 2014
    @Alan - the user running the Connector install should be in the db creator and security admin roles in SQL server.  Most of the time the user running the MSI is actually a SQL admin which should always work as expected.

  • Anonymous
    April 09, 2014
    Ahmed, did you find any solution to Sales Orders being defaulted as "Journal" in AX rather than "Sales Orders"? We have tried different values, as you did, but we can't get it to work and this is very crucial in sales order integration.

  • Anonymous
    April 10, 2014
    I am facing a critical issue, earlier one of my mapping was working properly  which was in self reference relationship. means it has been created in parent child relationship. for example saleunit which reference with it self, it is growing hierarchy. mumbai=>> maharastra=>>India=>>world. same entity hold the details. and in the above example, mumbai has lookup of maharasta, maharstra has lookup of indaia. my problem is now i am not able to creating mapping(only mapping) and it gets close if i try to create means service gets restart. please help me it has stopped my work.

  • Anonymous
    April 10, 2014
    @Subhash - have you logged a support incident for this?  Check the object provider configuration files to ensure the "IsParentField" attribute is set properly on the parent references in your child entities.  If you have a working object provider config from a previous version you should try using that as well.

  • Anonymous
    April 10, 2014
    @Simon - which version of Connector and AX are you using?

  • Anonymous
    April 10, 2014
    Thanks For your reply. i will check and will update.

  • Anonymous
    April 10, 2014
    Hi, I Have checked in the object file created for that particular crm 2011 entity, and I found that isParentField was had value "TRUE" and tried to changed to "True"(i know would not make any sense), even i replace it with the the old may which i had as backup with me. but as soon as i try to create mapping means (choosing source and target) at that time it is stuck and ti closed the window. even it stops the connector service.

  • Anonymous
    April 21, 2014
    @Subhash - the situation that you describe can occur when the version of the map in the MSDI database holds a different version of the object config file than is on the file system.  Have you logged a support case for this issue?  At this point contacting support would be your best bet for resolving this issue.

  • Anonymous
    April 23, 2014
    I am a MS partner implementing Connector for a customer. I have some questions about mapping fields in Connector for AX 2012. Where can I find documentation about extending the default mappings? Where can I get support for this? I need to be able to map the ABC field on Customer form to Account Classification filed in CRM 2013.

  • Anonymous
    April 24, 2014
    @Pekka - support for Connector is available through the normal Microsoft Dynamics support channel.  For modifying / adding / removing mapping from the default maps you need to go into the Connector client and can view as well as update the maps there.  If the field that you are looking to map together are not exposed in the targeted map already, you will need to run the configuration utilities for Ax and For CRM again and ensure that you select the proper AX service and the proper CRM entity for configuration.  Also ensure that when updating the configuration for CRM that you choose skip the complete configuration process if you have already preformed it once.

  • Anonymous
    April 28, 2014
    Hi, We are trying to connect the Dynamics NAV ERP and CRM by using Dynamics Connector with SSL enable. We follow the official instruction(msdn.microsoft.com/.../ee414240(v=nav.70).aspx) to expose the NAV web services, and they can be visited by IE and 3-party web services test tool. But when we setup NAV adapter with https protocol, we got the certificate error: (but CRM adapter works fine with https.) ““The underlying connection was closed: Could not establish trust relationship for the SSL/TLS secure channel.” Does NAV adapter support SSL web services or not? Can anyone give us some suggestion? Thanks!! We are running the NAV 2013 R2 W1 with no Cumulative Update Regards.

  • Anonymous
    April 28, 2014
    Sorry, we've just now solved the issue by not using self-signed certificate files. :)

  • Anonymous
    April 28, 2014
    @thehetz About Sales Orders only being created as "Journals" in AX 2012 through the Connector; We have found a solution/workaround in AX where there is a setting for all Orders coming from the AIF Service to either create them as Sales Orders or Journals.. Of course, we were lucky to not have anything else coming through AIF service that needs to be defaulted as Journals. We do have another problem with our integration. Price lists. During initial sync of Items Service to Product mapping, all products in CRM ended up with a Default Price List of "SEK" (Swedish Crowns). Now, all new items created in AX are created with the Default Price List of "SEK-inactive" (a second price list for SEK currency that is inactive).   Since there is no mapping for price lists on the Item mapping, where do I begin to investigate this? I need them all to be under the same Price List and newly created items to be created in that same one.. If I delete my inactive price list, will Connector chose the next price list in that same currency, or how is this being matched? There are no integrationkeys for price lists in CRM?

  • Anonymous
    April 28, 2014
    @Simon - price lists are first created when running the exchange rate to currency map.  Then they are populated when running the Item to Product map.  Have you re-run the configuration utility?  That will inactivate all price lists and then if you do not run the currency map again, Item will get added to the inactivate price lists I think.

  • Anonymous
    April 29, 2014
    @thehetz  Okay, this might be our problem, that we dont run the Exchange Rate Service to Currency map after reconfiguring. Haven't read anywhere that we are supposed to do this. If you could answer yet another question for me that would help tremendously. Sometimes, we thought this occured randomly but we are not so sure anymore, the Connector finds a bunch of Sales Orders from AX to write to CRM. Hundreds of orders that have already been written to CRM before.. When this happens, it's usually for one or two customers at a time, and all of that customers Sales Orders in AX gets written to CRM, which clogs up integration for around 1 or 2 hours. We could see, last time this happened, that an address in AX had been modified the minute before this sync started. The Connector log said Account to Customer Service wrote to AX a minute after that change.. (But this can be because it takes around a minute after the change has been written to AX to actually produce the logfile, or?).. We tried to reproduce this for that same customer, by changing an attribute on an adress on that account in CRM and sure enough - it started to write all of its orders from AX to CRM.. But when we tried it for a different customer it did not happen. Do you know what the deal is with updating and adress (or maybe any field) on a Customer in AX and that in turn triggers a change on all its sales orders in AX (rendering the Sales Order mappings useless for hours if that customer has a lot of orders)?

  • Anonymous
    April 29, 2014
    @Simon - I am not aware of anything in the Connector plugin that would be doing this.  Do you have any custom plugins that might be causing this?  one thing that I did think of would be to see if the modified address happened to be the ship to address on the orders that are picked up for syncing?

  • Anonymous
    May 01, 2014
    @Thehetz I don't think this is a Connector plugin on the CRM side thats causing this, rather how the Connector works with modifications on AX records, in this case Sales Orders.. You are correct that the sales orders that are being rewritten in bulk to CRM all have a delivery address that is an address for the customer. Customer A has 3 addresses; Address X, Address Y and Address Z. There are 500 sales orders for this customer, all have one of X,Y or Z as delivery address. Something on Customer A is changed in CRM, be it a change in X,Y or Z or another field on the record, such as "Business Phone", this will trigger all 500 orders writing to CRM. This has to be because when Connector is writing the change, lets say "Business Phone" was changed from 555-111 to 555-222, it takes all the information on the record (Including Addresses X,Y & Z) and writes it to AX. Now heres our problem: Addresses X,Y & Z have now been modified. There was no change, but the Connector still wrote the value once again to the field. Sales Order Service to Order mapping will now pick up 500 sales orders for Customer A as modified and write these to CRM, which will clog up the Connector for about 2 hours in our case. This has my on the ropes and I'm not sure how I can solve this.

  • Anonymous
    May 02, 2014
    @Simon - the issue is that the address change is cascaded down to all of the related entities I think and this is core Microsoft Dynamics CRM functionality.  You could build a plugin that fires after an address is updated that would change the last modified by user to the integration user - that should prevent the orders from being picked up.  

  • Anonymous
    May 04, 2014
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    May 04, 2014
    @thehetz - Building a plugin in CRM can't be a solution to this problem, since the problem is on the AX side. All sales orders in AX gets modified when the address that is set to the delivery address is changed on the Customer record in AX. All addresses on Customer record in AX is changed when Connector writes that record in the Account to Customer Service map. If I would write a CRM plugin that "fires after an address is updated that would change the last modified by user to the integration user" - then all sales orders would still be mass updated from AX whenever Connector writes to a customer record in AX? I need a fix in the Connector or a workaround on the AX/Connector side. This is isolated to "modified on" dates in AX and Connector picking records up, not CRM.

  • Anonymous
    May 05, 2014
    @Simon - sorry I must have misunderstood what your scenario was.  I would suggest opening a support case on this then.

  • Anonymous
    May 05, 2014
    @Smart Chen - if the other maps you listed are working but this particular one is not, then I suspect there is something odd in your data or in the CRM setup.  I would suggest logging a support case for this so that a support engineer can assist you in finding the issue.

  • Anonymous
    May 05, 2014
    @Thehetz Okay we will start a support ticket for this. Strange if nobody else has it though.. We are using Connector v.  3.1.407.1  and upgrading AX 2012 R2 to CU 7. Do we have to update the Connector if we upgrade to CU7? The release notes are not that clear to me.

  • Anonymous
    May 08, 2014
    @Simon - you won't have to update Connector, though I do encourage you to.  Which CU for Ax are you currently on?  Depending on how you got the Connector services in AX (delivered in a CU or imported XPO) you might need to take additional steps in AX after installing CU 7.

  • Anonymous
    September 30, 2014
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    September 30, 2014
    The comment has been removed