Manual Labor: Best practices and CRM rollups

If things stay on schedule, Microsoft CRM Rollup Update #10 will be out in a little bit and I am reminded that each rollup includes many fixes that are only enabled if you elect to do so.  This is typically done via a registry key tweak, or executable.  There are approximately 40 fixes that need to be enabled manually.  Many of them change default CRM behavior / add features and as such may not be desired by all users.

Of the list, there are some that we enabled by default as part of our Best Practices.

Here is the list:

Improve the performance of an organization import:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/977867/
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\MSCRM
DWORD: OptimizeOrgImport
Value: 1

Fix Email Templates not displaying formatted HTML correctly:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/975770/
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\MSCRM
DWORD: EmailTemplateBodyHTMLNoEncode
Value: 1

Async Table gets large over time:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/974896/
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\MSCRM
DWORD: AsyncRemoveCompletedJobs
Value: 1

Old workflows are not cleaned, resulting in poor performance:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/968755/
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\MSCRM
DWORD: AsyncRemoveCompletedWorkflows
Value: 1

Line feeds in email templates are not respected:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/955452
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\MSCRM
DWORD: SDKEmailTemplateHTMLLineBreak
Value: 1

There are many others, that included fixes for non-English installations, time zones, lookup behavior, permission behavior and more.  It is best to review the KB of the latest rollup and read through the list of fixes to see if there is something that might be of use to you.

Why not enable them all by default?  The answer is risk.  Some of these fixes are deep and as such Microsoft only wanted them enabled if customers are experiencing problems.  Microsoft generally codes these fixes such that they only address the specific issue at hand, the benefit is a reduction in regressions.  The items I selected above, seem to be ones that will be a problem for most people, or will be a problem over time and as such, we preemptively “fix” them. 

Cheers,

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

posted at: 12:14 PM by Aaron Elder