More Enhancements for Dynamics CRM Installation Dialog

Keeping up-to-date with all the requests we are receiving asking us to add even more functionality to the dialog, on top of our day jobs, is a challenge but a good one. So we are busy and happily doing them.

In fact, we already finished localizing the dialog to Spanish. To see it, just change the lcid=1033 in the URL to lcid=1034 and you get the Spanish version (or click here).

Here is the list of new requests:

  • Generate documentation of my deployment configuration
    We agree that this is very useful. So we’ll add the possibility to send you a document (in Word format so you can further edit it if you wish) at the end of the installation with all the configuration choices you made in the dialog.
  • Allow Base Languages other than US English
    Only normal, given the extensive non-English fans of Dynamics CRM. We’ll first allow the user to select all the Language Packs they want to add to the deployment. After that, creating a new Org with a different Base Language is simple
  • Allow adding additional Deployment Administrators
    Just adding a user in Deployment Manager is not enough. There are a whole lot of specific permissions that the new user needs to have, to become a CRM Deployment Administrator
  • Do not allow Reserved Words as Org names
    There is a list out there with names that you cannot use as Org names. Dialog will make sure you cannot use these in the Org name field
  • Allow selecting CRM Server Roles per server
    This would permit, for instance, to combine your Back-end/Front-end  and Deployment Servers or any other combination. But this has more consequences that requires plenty of work in the dialog. But we’ll get there!

There was also a bug that has already been fixed and published:

  • Report Server URL field’s validation rule did not allow certain valid URLs

That’s it for now. Happy Installing!!!

 

CRM Installation Wizard Enhancements

Since the release of the CRM Installation dialog/wizard (find it here) to the CRM Community a month ago, we have had hundreds of instances executed and have received a lot very heartening and useful feedback:

This one, we particularly liked (Thanks Jukka) :

Perhaps the coolest dialog I've ever seen: https://t.co/ZO4SSaZkrZ - Full #MSDynCRM server deployment with @AgileXRM — Jukka Niiranen (@jukkan) February 22, 2016

Apart from some minor changes, like allowing Report Server Instance Name to be different to the SQL Server Instance, users have asked for the following enhancements:

  • Include Outlook Client installation
    This is currently being done and will be available soon. Also there will be pages for the installation of Report Authoring Extensions.
  • Translate dialog to other languages
    The Spanish-speaking community asked for this one. The same dialog can be translated to different languages and Spanish is being done right now and will be available soon.
  • Add CRM Upgrade Wizard (from CRM 2013 to 2015 or 2016)
    We will consider this for a future enhancement.
  • SubDialog for NLB Configuration
    We did not originally include this, as from our experience, clients usually have a more powerful load balancing solution in place and we have never seen MS NLB being used. However we will consider it for a future enhancement as it will be useful for setting up non-production environments.
  • Install CRM 2016 on Windows Server 2012 R2 Core
    Theoretically, the dialog as it is, can be used for this purpose, but when we tried it, we hit issues regarding access to Windows installation media, and even with following many suggestions on the internet, we were unable to make it work. So if anyone knows how to make the following PowerShell work remotely on a Windows Server 2012 R2 Core, comment below and we will incorporate it in the dialog:

    Install-WindowsFeature Web-Server -IncludeManagementTools -IncludeAllSubFeature;
  • Execute AD scripts remotely
    Right now, you need to execute the scripts locally. This will be done soon.

Please keep the feedback coming!

Happy installing!!!