Announcing the AgileXRM Community Edition

person hand reaching body of water

“You’ve got the Holy Grail of Process Management Tools”

— Microsoft Program Manager


AgileXRM has been around for quite a while now and has been fully tried and tested, out there in many clients around the globe, including many hard-to-convince enterprise and public sector customers, helping them manage their Business-critical processes.

AgileXRM started life back in 2006, in the Dynamics CRM 3.0 era, and has since grown and matured through the amazing evolution of Dynamics CRM On-Premise to Dynamics 365 Online and on to the remarkable Power Platform (Dataverse), Microsoft’s Business Application Platform.

All these years, we have been happily occupied with evolving the product through all the feedback we received from our customers, to cater for their ever-changing and increasingly demanding real-world business scenarios. Our customer base was growing just through word-of-mouth!

It is now time to make AgileXRM available to a much larger audience, and what better way to make our product more reachable in the market, than by offering a Free-Forever version of it. With AgileXRM Community Edition you can verify for yourself, the value it brings to your Digital Transformation strategy and how it complements the Power Platform.

Recruitment Process Example

Below we try to answer some questions you may have:

What is the value of AgileXRM for me?

In short, you will be receiving the following:

  • A Microsoft Visio-based Modeler to let you model processes and dialogs
  • Powerful dialog functionality for creating guided interactions for any type of user
  • A Business Process Engine (BPM) to manage the lifecycle of your processes end-to-end
  • A Process Monitor to let you visually see and manage running processes

The answer also depends on you background:

  • If you are new to Power Platform and just starting
    Power Platform is many things to many people. You may be looking at Canvas Apps in conjunction with data sources like SharePoint to create your Apps. Or maybe you have already recognized the need for Dataverse as your data repository and want to create more solid and manageable Model-driven Apps. If it is the latter, then AgileXRM would add great value.

    AgileXRM Value: AgileXRM keeps Model-driven process-apps Low-Code (mostly No-Code). Because with AgileXRM, you avoid having to use javascript in your Dataverse Forms and avoid needing to write custom C# code (Plugins etc.). Also being a BPM tool, you will be modelling and configuring your business processes and your User Interfaces/Interactions explicitly with Microsoft Visio, a visual tool that is designed to be understood by business users. Anyone can create very complex process-apps easily and cleanly without extensive knowledge of Dataverse customization.
  • If you are already using Power Platform to some extent and want to do more
    Having delved into the platform already, you probably have recognized how some requirements are harder to implement, either needing resources with expert knowledge or requirements that need too much effort to implement.

    AgileXRM Value: AgileXRM allows you to reach much further and quicker without requiring a higher level of Dataverse knowledge.
  • If you are already deep into Power Platform and have created many complex solutions
    There is no better person than you to know exactly where the pain-points are:

    • Difficulty in correctly capturing the business process requirements
      Business users usually use a flowchart diagram to describe their process requirements, but they will never see it again in the produced apps

      AgileXRM Value: From requirements capture to creation to execution, everyone uses the same Process Model. Everyone sees the same model at design-time and at runtime and it is understandable by everyone.

    • Cost/effort in creating the solutions
      Good expert resources are hard to find in the market and certain requirements demand excessive amounts of code leading to over-customization of the platform

      AgileXRM Value: Implement complex business requirements much faster and by non-developers. Avoid over-customization of the platform by keeping everything truly Low-Code.

    • Cost/effort of maintaining the solutions
      The business logic is split in many parts and hard to see the overall picture, especially when project resources leave or when business requirements change once in production, and how those changes affect existing processes that are mid-flight

      AgileXRM Value: The process logic is being documented with the end-to-end process model as What You Model Is What You Execute, and it is easy to see what needs to be changed and where in the model. You can even compare different versions of the process to see exactly what changed and where.

    • Cost/effort in troubleshooting when things go wrong
      Given the end-to-end business process is split across many components (Flows, Workflows, Actions/Custom API, Business Rules, Business Process Flows, Plugins, Custom Pages and client-side javascript), it is hard to identify what failed and what needs to be fixed. And even when it is identified and fixed, it is hard to evaluate how the changes affect existing processes which are still in progress

      AgileXRM Value: Firstly, you can model error-handling in your business process using alternative paths. Then, there is also a Retry mechanism, but if eventually a step in the process fails, the process is Suspended, and the error is made visually visible in the Process Monitor and recorded in Dataverse against the Process record (and admins are notified). If it is an external issue and it is fixed, Resuming the process is enough to continue. If it is a logic error in the process model, you can correct it, publish it and then Migrate existing running processes to the new corrected version.

    • Handling high volumes and business-critical processes
      When the correct running of the processes is of paramount importance to the business because it touches the organization’s bottom-line, you are aware of the pressure for all of it to work correctly

      AgileXRM Value: Our customers, in both private and public sectors, run Business-Critical Processes with millions of process instances per month. AgileXRM JUST WORKS!

What can I do with AgileXRM Community Edition (CE)?

You can use the full functionality of the Licensed Edition, for up to 25 Users for Free and Forever. You get the Visio-based Process Modeler, the Process Engine, the Process Manager and AgileDialogs.

  • Model and configure end-to-end Business Processes for any of your Dataverse or Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement Apps
  • Visually monitor where you are in the process
  • Handle unforeseen situations by managing the running processes
    Things like jumping from any step of the process to another step. Or even migrating a running process to another version
  • Model and run powerful dialogs (screen flows, agent scripts, wizard-like self-service guides etc.) for internal and external users (Contacts or anonymous users do not need a license)

AgileXRM CE is single-server. If you require High Availability, Archiving or more than 25 Users, you would need to get a License.

How do I get my copy of AgileXRM CE?

Simple: Go through this dialog(Powered By AgileXRM) on our web site and just follow the steps to register.

How is AgileXRM CE deployed to my environment?

AgileXRM CE will be deployed to your chosen Azure tenant and your chosen Dataverse Environment (or Dynamics 365 Org). Everything is done via another nice dialog(Powered By AgileXRM) that will guide you through the steps of the deployment process automatically. You’ll receive a link to this dialog once you register.

AgileXRM CE Deployment dialog

You are going to need the following:

  • Azure Global Administrator credentials for the Consents
  • Azure Subscription Owner credentials (usually same as above) for deploying the Process Modeler and Process Engine VMs to your Azure Tenant
  • Dataverse Environment with System Administrator credentials for deploying the AgileXRM Solution and Consent
    If you do not have one, create a Trial Dataverse Environment here, clicking Start free button
  • Visio Plan 2 License as the Process Modeler uses Microsoft Visio
    If you do not have one, get a 30-day Visio Trial here
    NOTE: You can also use a Visio 2019 Product Key (Standard or Professional Editions), if you have one

What if I do not want to (or cannot) deploy anything to our Azure tenant?

You have two options:

  1. If you just want to try AgileXRM CE, you can create a new Azure Trial here
    You get US $200 of credit and you can deploy everything there, which gives you 30 days to try everything

  2. Let us know when going through the registration dialog and we can provide you with one of our AgileXRM Online Trial tenants. This way, nothing is deployed to your Azure tenant.
    You are still going to need a Dataverse Environment (or Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement Org) and an Azure Global Administrator credentials for the Consents.

What is the best way I can try the capabilities of AgileXRM CE?

We do Free PoC’s. We highly recommend that you let us help you to implement your first process-app. That way, you quickly get up to speed and will be able to realize the value that AgileXRM brings to your Power Platform projects.

CRM 2016 Service Pack 1 (Update 1.0) and Outlook Client added

Hi CRMers!

It’s been a while since the last update to the Dynamics CRM Installation dialog but we were busy tuning AgileXRM for the Cloud (more about that later).

For those of you new to the concept of this dialog, it is a step-by-step wizard that helps you install Dynamics CRM on your servers the correct way. You can install CRM on one machine or on a number of distributed servers. All of the steps are done through PowerShell remotely.

There have been thousands of executions of this dialog so far by members of the CRM Community, and we are happy to provide some more improvements:

  • Support CRM 2016 SP1 Update
  • Outlook CRM Client installation
  • Allow creating the OU for CRM in any path
  • Execute DNS scripts remotely
  • Execute AD scripts remotely
  • Optionally Enable CRM Tracing
  • Remove HTTP binding after HTTPS binding is set up
  • Fix bugs of course

 

Happy installing and don’t forget to share if you like it!

 

Dynamics CRM Installation Guide now documents it for you

Hi CRMers!!!

More jazzy stuff packed into the dialog.

A new version was just published which has these enhancements incorporated:

  •  Generate Implementation Documentation
    Saves you time documenting your installation. It puts all the configuration settings and values of your particular deployment into a nicely formatted Word document and sends it to you via email
  • Language Packs and non-English Org Base Languages
    User-selected Lang Packs are downloaded and installed with a PowerShell. Then it allows you to create new Orgs with non-English Base Languages
  • Apply Rollup Updates (if applicable)
    Before, it just pointed you to the download page for the RU. You had to know what to install where. Now it takes care of it for you, including the MUI updates for the Lang Packs
  • Do not allow Reserved Words as Org names
    Avoids installation errors, because some words are just not allowed
  • Get Report Server URL PowerShell bug fixed
    This was not working if there were more than one instance of RS on same machine. Now it does.

And here is a complete list of all the pending enhancements, in no particular order:

  • Include Outlook Client installation and configuration (Work in Progress)
  • Include BIDS installation
  • Allow adding additional Deployment Administrators
  • Allow selecting CRM Server Roles per server
  • Add CRM Upgrade Wizard (from CRM 2013 to 2015 or 2016)
  • SubDialog for NLB Configuration
  • Execute AD scripts remotely
  • Optionally Enable Tracing
  • Remove HTTP binding after HTTPS binding is set up
  • Install with all Firewalls On (set Firewall Rules)
  • Extend or Disable ADFS Certificate Rollover
  • Automate USD 2.0 installation
  • Install and configure Dynamics CRM List Component for SharePoint

Keep the feedback coming and Happy Installing!!!

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!!!

 

Dynamics CRM Installations for everyone!

Just type How to install Dynamics CRM in your search engine and you get back a huge number of hits. And another massive set of pages if you search for CRM issues that are installation-related.

When we arrive at a client, Dynamics CRM is usually already installed there. We just need to connect to it to add our business process functionality. However nearly every time, there are issues. To make it worst client would say “Look, I navigate to CRM and it is working, so the issue is on your side”. Just because CRM Web app is working, does not mean CRM is properly installed and everything else in CRM is also working.

We are yet to find a 100% clean CRM installation (I am sure yours is one of the 100% ones 🙂 ). So we ended up troubleshooting their CRM installation and fixing them until it became clear that if we could find a way to help clients install their CRM properly in the first place, everyone would benefit. No more finger-pointing and joy for all.

So we thought why not use our own dog-food and create a wizard (a dialog) that guides the user with installing CRM in any type of deployment.

The first person we approached (no names) to ask his opinion, if this was doable, told us “It is impossible. Don’t waste your time”. He became our first beta-tester, and an avid fan.

So judge for yourself. Try the dialog and install a fully working environment:

  • Production-ready
  • All best practices incorporated
  • Muti-Server set ups (from 1 to up to 26 servers)
  • Automated through Remote PowerShell
  • Separation of Roles
  • Proper Kerberos
  • Right Service Principal Names
  • DNS
  • HTTP/HTTPS/Calims/IFD
  • Optimizations
  • more…

Of course, do send your feedback (in the dialog itself) for enhancements or bug fixes.

We will try to keep this dialog up-to-date for upcoming version/rollups of the best CRM out there in the market: Dynamics CRM.

Happy installing!