Where's my settings button?

I do not attach to my companies CRM Server through outlook, I just keep a shortcut to it on my desktop and access it that way. In outlook I access my test server, since as a developer this is where I do most of my work. I keep task specific information in there and run a lot of backups, since I'm frequently breaking the intallation through trial and error.

I also connect to it via the web client to do cusomizations, and this triggers one of my least favorite "Features" in Dynamics CRM. Because the outlook client does not have the settings tab in in the navigation pane, explorer use the cookies left over from the Outlook Client and therefore my web client will not have a settings tab either.

If you clear your cookies you can get around this, but I loathe clearing my cookies, because I like to use "remember me" features whenever possible. Time is money afterall, and the less time I spend trying to remember credentials for the various webs sites, news groups, discussion groups, and even this blog, the better.

So after I did some digging I found KB Article 910050. This beauty solves the problem quite easily. All you need to do is find the IP address of the web server hosting your CRM app, and switch that out in three urls in the registry editor.

Browse to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\MSCRMClient
and switch the machine name to the ip address (make sure to keep the port :8080 or whatever you use) in the values for WebAppUrl, PlatformRoot, and ServerUrl.

Now you can use both clients interchangably and not worry about the cookies.

Experlogix MPCpe 4.6 is available

Today I will be upgrading the Experlogix MPCpe to version 4.6. I'm looking forward to some of the improvements. They've streamlined the installation process and and moved their files from the administrators directory to the %ALLUSERSPROFILE% which should make it much easier for me to delegate the maintenance of the system to non-administrative users. Which is a beg deal for me, because I have the sales manager adding new parts as need by her sales folks.

The new release seems to be focused on reducing adminstrative overhead on my part. Of course I'm all for that. But some goodies have been tossed in to helps the users as well. Being able to copy a configuration is a nice feature some of my users will love. I can't wait to see the custom model selector, if it's what I think it is, it could reduce some entry time for our users.

After the install I'll report what I've found and give you my impressions.