Contact Us Today!

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 upgrade checklist

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 upgrade checklist

MicrosoftDynamicsCRM2013 sales dashboard The newest version of CRM has been out for some time and many of you are about to upgrade or are thinking about upgrading to the new version. Below are a few items that you or your partner should add to your Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 upgrade checklist:

1. Are your software and OS components up to date?

Support is being removed for:

  • Windows XP, to run either Microsoft Dynamics CRM for Outlook or the web application
  • Microsoft Office 2003
  • E-mail Router will no longer support:
    • Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 for email routing and tracking.
    • Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 WebDAV protocol for email routing and tracking. (Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Exchange Web Services (EWS) will still be supported.)

Support is being added for:

  • Microsoft Exchange Server 2013
  • Microsoft Outlook 2013
  • Active Directory Federation Services (AD FS) 2.2 (ships with Windows Server 2012 R2)

Below is a list of some of the CRM 2013 requirements for both server side components(CRM On Premise) as well as client side components(CRM On Premise and CRM Online):

CRM On Premise Server side requirements:

  • Windows Server 2008 or Windows Server 2012 64-bit
  • Microsoft SQL Server 2008 or Microsoft SQL Server 2012
  • Internet Information Services (IIS) versions 7, 7.5 or 8.0
  • For IFD, Active Directory Federation Services (AD FS) 2.0, 2.1 or 2.2
  • For SharePoint document management functionality within CRM, Microsoft SharePoint 2013 or Microsoft SharePoint 2010 SP1 (all editions)

CRM On Premise and CRM Online customers client side requirements:

Operating Systems(if the clients use CRM for Outlook):

  • Windows 8 (64-bit and 32-bit versions)
  • Windows 7 (64-bit and 32-bit versions)
  • Windows Vista SP2 (6-bit and 32-bit versions)
  • Windows Server 2012, Windows Server 2008 R2, or Windows Server 2008 when running as a Remote Desktop Services application.

Operating Systems (if the clients only access CRM from Internet Explorer):

  • Windows 8 and Windows RT supported when you use Internet Explorer 10
  • Windows 7 (all versions)
  • Windows Vista (all versions)

Supported versions of Microsoft Office:

  • Microsoft Office 2013
  • Microsoft Office 2010
  • Microsoft Office 2007

2. Is your code up to date?

As one of my earlier blogs stated , your organization may require scripting updates due to the changes MS has applied to allow for multi browser capability.

You can utilize the following CRM 2013 Custom Code Validation Tool as a guide to determine the client side scripts in your organization that will require updates:

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=30151

3. Do you currently utilize Duplicate Detection Rules?

These will continue to exist in CRM 2013, but users will no longer receive a pop up warning when they are creating/updating an individual duplicate record. This feature is no longer possible due to the new auto-save capability on CRM forms. The good news is that you can still create rules and run jobs to find the existing duplicates in your system. The rules will also continue to work when importing data, syncing your data from Outlook offline to online and qualifying a Lead. A custom solution can also easily be implemented which can alert users when they have created a duplicate record on individual records they created/updated.

4. Prepare to update the CRM 2013 Quick Create forms

A new form in CRM 2013 for several of the boxed entities is used when people click the Create button in the navigation bar or when they choose +New when creating a new record from a lookup or sub-grid. As the name implies, they allow for quick creation of new records without the need to open the full form. The quick create forms come with your basic fields, but can be customized with Java Scripting and additional fields. If you have scripting or field requirements on creation of new records, you will want to prepare to update the quick create forms after you have upgraded to CRM 2013. Optionally, you can disable quick create forms within the entity customizations area if your organization does not wish to use them.

5. Prepare to update the Opportunity Products sub grid view

CRM 2013 gives users the ability to add & edit Opportunity products straight from the sub grid on the Opportunity form, without the need to open the Opportunity Product form. While this can save time for some organizations, others may have scripting on the Opportunity Product form which will not run unless the users are opening the form. To get around this issue, you can simply hide/remove the Opportunity Product sub grid that MS has added and create a new one from the form customizations window. Your new sub grid will work similarly as they have been in 2011, forcing the user to open the Opportunity Product form when creating or updating a record.

6. Utilize new features in CRM 2013

Many new features and functionality have been added to CRM 2013, so you should take advantage of them where possible. For example, Business Rules and Real Time workflows, which allow you to apply form logic via a simple declarative interface, can be used in place of some JavaScript code to help improve the speed of your forms and reduce the amount of code needed from a developer. Please refer to some of our previous blogs to learn about other new features of CRM 2013:

Beringer is available to plan and support your upgrade when you are ready to upgrade to Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013. We are a Certified Microsoft Partner providing service to customers for more than 20 years.


theProfessor

theProfessor

Rob is the CTO of Beringer Technology Group, and focuses his efforts on software development, cloud engineering, team mentoring and strategic technical direction. Rob has worked with Beringer since 2005, and has influenced every department from Development, Security, Implementation, Support and Sales. Rob graduated with his MBA from Rowan University in 2012, earned his Bachelors of Computer Science in 1997, and is current with several Microsoft technical certifications. Rob is very active, and loves to mountain bike, weight train, cook and hike with his dog pack.