RSS in Microsoft CRM's Demo Environment

I am in Seattle this week learning the latest and greatest around the technical stuff @ Microsoft. It is refreshing to be able to devote a week to just forgetting about partners and customers and everybody and focusing on learning some new things. :-) I am actually doing a presentation this week on Office 2007, Vista and Microsoft CRM. So I have been playing with a bunch of cool things and in the next couple of weeks should have some posts up of some new toys for you to play with. :-)

One of the things I enjoy in Vista is the SideBar and Gadgets. One of the ones i enjoy the most is the RSS feed gadget, which allows you to read RSS feeds with out opening up a web browser.

Michaeljon Miller wrote a cool application on extracting information from CRM and exposing it via RSS. You can find this application here. In talking with him, there are a few changes you need to make if you want to be able to demo. So if you want to demo this, and I recommend you do, here are some easy to follow steps to get this up and running.

• Download the application from here.
• Unzip the files into C:\Program Files\Microsoft CRM\CRMWeb\RSS
• Open the Make.Bat File in NotePad
• Replace the test to read as follows:

c:\windows\microsoft.net\framework\v1.1.4322\csc /out:RSSServices.dll /target:library MetadataCache.cs MetadataService.cs CrmService.cs
copy /y RSSServices.dll ..\bin

• Save and Close the Make.Bat File

• Open CRMService.cs file. Around line 20 or so look for:

  /// <remarks/>
  public CrmService() {
  this.Url = "https://localhost/mscrmservices/2006/crmservice.asmx"
  }

• Change that to read:

/// <remarks/>
public CrmService() {
this.Url = https://localhost:5555/mscrmservices/2006/crmservice.asmx
}

• Save and close the CRMService.cs file
• Open metadataservice.cs file. Around line 20 or so look for:

/// <remarks/>
public MetadataService() {
this.Url = "https://localhost/mscrmservices/2006/metadataservice.asmx"
}

• Change that to read:

/// <remarks/>
public MetadataService() {
this.Url = https://localhost:5555/mscrmservices/2006/metadataservice.asmx
}

• Save and close the metadataservice.cs file
• Double Click on the make.bat file to launch it. It should create a DLL which is located in both the RSS directory and the C:\Program Files\Microsoft CRM\CRMWeb\bin Directory
• Browse to https://localhost:5555/rss/rss.aspx

You how have the ability to subscribe to data feeds from CRM in Outlook 2007 and Vista as well as any other news readers such as NewsGator or RSSBandit. Happy Demo'ing. Thanks MJM for the tips in helping us get this running in a demo environment.

Comments

• Anonymous
  February 06, 2007
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  February 06, 2007
  Could you post the changes to your .cs files?

• Anonymous
  February 08, 2007
  I can't tell that I did anything differently, but it works now. My .cs file changes are: crmservice.cs: @@ -29,7 +29,7 @@         /// <remarks/>         public CrmService() {

•            this.Url = "http://localhost:5555/mscrmservices/2006/crmservice.asmx";

•            this.Url = "http://localhost/mscrmservices/2006/crmservice.asmx";         }         /// <remarks/> metadataservice.cs: @@ -28,7 +28,7 @@         /// <remarks/>         public MetadataService() {

•            this.Url = "http://localhost:5555/mscrmservices/2006/metadataservice.asmx";

•            this.Url = "http://localhost/mscrmservices/2006/metadataservice.asmx";         }         /// <remarks/> Thanks!

• Anonymous
  February 20, 2007
  I am running in to a very similar issue as described above. The changes have been made in the crmservice.cs and metadataservice.cs files as described, and the make.bat file is run successfully, creating 2 RSSServices.dll files (1 in bin and 1 in rss folder) I am getting a "Microsoft CRM Unhandled Error Details:" error with NO descriptions. Occasionanlly I will get he error with the Same Stack describe above. Any ideas?