News & updates

Orbit One helps you improve collaboration and communication using Internet-based solutions.

We specialise in websites, information portals and custom applications, making the Internet work for you.

Result: your business runs better − today, and for the years to come.

Archives July 2008 (3)
November 2008 (4)
September 2008 (1)
October 2008 (1)
May 2009 (2)
February 2009 (5)
March 2009 (2)
September 2009 (6)
June 2009 (1)
August 2009 (2)
October 2009 (3)
November 2009 (1)
March 2010 (5)
April 2010 (2)
May 2010 (7)
June 2010 (4)
Tag Cloud

Feb

Dynamics CRM 4.0 tool - Bulk update / export to csv

One of our customers recently asked to do an update on their instance of the microsoft CRM 4.0 platform.

The goal was to change the current Country Picklist to a lookup field which points to a new_country entity.

The new_country entity contains a few translations of the countries in different languages like english, dutch and french, and the ISO codes for each country.

Try to update that in CRM 4.0. So we start looking. The first thing I came across was the MSCRM 4.0 Bulk Data Export Tool

This tool allows you to export data generated by an advanced find view to a CSV file which you can later on import in CRM 4.0 trhough an update job. So I started playing around with it.

The major issue for me is that with that tool I couldn’t get the lookup field to be populated. I tried a bunch of different things like “account,E52B43A8-5FC6-4934-A5A3-96B2983EE140″ or just the “E52B43A8-5FC6-4934-A5A3-96B2983EE140″ but nothing seemed to work.

So I decided to create a new tool that basically does what i want, without creating an import job. Everything is done through the CRM SDK.

A few things I thought are very cool:

You can save your connection. We are a hosting company and we have 6 different CRM instances on 3 different servers, so this is quite nice.
One of our clients has 15.000+ records in their contacts. Because CRM returns only 5.000 records for each request, I can’t update them all in one go. This was changed by making multiple requests if necessary.
Access all the records and all the fields. In the MSCRM 4.0 Bulk Data Export Tool you can only use the tool on Advanced find views. I allow you to use the tool on the main entity. Which is really helpfull in some cases.
It allows you to choose the Authentication type. You can connect to CRM with Active Directory, SPLA, Passport (this last one I haven’t been able to test so if anybody has a CRM with passport please let me know)

It is still a work in progress but it does the job quite nice already so try it out.
The CRM Bulk Update / Export Tool

I hope it helps some of you in your daily (or not so daily) tasks.
I know it saved a colleague of mine about 80% of his time for only one case, and I consider that a big improvement.

Posted by Wim De Coninck | 29 Comments

Feb

Public website for EU Issue Tracker

Today we have launched the new website for EU Issue Tracker, the online service to anticipate, monitor and manage EU Legislation & Policy.

The site is completely developed using Microsoft SharePoint, and integrates with data from the back-end databases.

Have a look!

Posted by Olivier Mangelschots | Leave your feedback

Feb

Microsoft TechDays in Belgium, 10-12 March 2009

Almost there... As a yearly habit, we are going to TechDays to meet friends, enjoy the food and shape our knowledge.

During 3 days, in 60 technical sessions, Microsoft promises a deep-dive on existing and future technologies.

Mel, Tom, Voicu, Wim DC, Wim R, Lieven, Arne and Olivier will be there. See you in Antwerp!

http://www.microsoft.com/belux/techdays

Posted by Olivier Mangelschots | 1 Comment

Feb

Orbit One @ European SharePoint Best Practices Conference

From 6 to 8 April there is a very interesting conference in London.

Some very known speakers will be there: Joel Oleson, Andrew Connell, Ben Curry, Bob Fox, Eric Schupps, John Timney, …

The same conference was organized in San Diego, California begin February 2009.

They promise it's not a typical "blabla" conference, the point is to go beyond introductions and focus on best practices gathered by on-the-field experience.

Agenda http://www.sharepointbestpractices.co.uk/Agenda.html

From Joel's blog:

Joel Oleson

"I think the main difference that really stands out to me on this conference vs other SharePoint conferences is the prescriptive nature of the content, with the real world, case study and experience based emphasis. Speakers are grilled on making sure you cover the true WHY and not focus so much on HOW TO. The content is scrubbed to encourage depth and thought in WHY something should be done or not done."

Orbit One will be there!

Viktor, Mel, Rik, Bart and Olivier will join the conference in London. Are you coming too?
Let us know so we can have a beer!

Posted by Olivier Mangelschots | Leave your feedback

Feb

New portal www.iec-iab.be has been launched

On February 3rd, 2009 we have proudly launched a new website portal for the Institute of Accountants and Tax Consultants.

This large SharePoint portal has a public section and a password protected zone with information for the Institute members and internships.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 is used as the central members' directory. It's integrated with SharePoint to provide an automated user account and permission management service.

Check it out!

Posted by Olivier Mangelschots | Leave your feedback