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Caching Tool

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Hello CRM-Friends!

I just made a new version of the caching tool for Microsoft CRM. Instead of an annoying system tray application it now resides in the system as a windows service. It is now running in the background but more important there is now a delay between each ping so the activity of the caching service will not disturb your work or maybe your presentation. For the first roundtrip there will be only small delay (10ms) but for every following roundtrip you can specify the delay between each ping in seconds in the config file.

What is the caching tool?
The caching tool is a small windows service which speeds up Microsoft CRM. Thanx to god, Microsoft CRM is using caching techniques to ensure a perfect user experience and a rapid-responding application. On the other hand it takes a few seconds when starting Microsoft CRM for the first time. But these few seconds could be very long especially when you are doing a presentation. The caching tool pings each relevant URL and as result Microsoft CRM seems to be faster, because some of the data is already loaded into the cache. You can use this tool not only for Microsoft CRM, any web-based application might be used.

How to install: Download the installation file here: CachingTool.zip and execute the setup.exe. During installation you will be prompted to enter the user account the service should run. E.g.: contoso\gerdf. It should be the user which you are using for demoing Microsoft CRM. Enter the password two times and complete the installation. The Service will automatically start after system start up but for the first time, you have to start the service manually by typing “net start cachingservice” into command box.

In the installation folder of the service (“CRMTools/Caching Tool”) you could specify additional settings. The URLList.txt is used to specify all the URLS you would like to ping. For each URL use one line. The URL could be complete like https://contoso/index.aspx or you coudl use a space holder in the URL “{0}” to let the service replace it with the DefaultServer which you could define in the config file.

If you are interested how the service works just download the source code here: SourceCode.zip

Please let me now if you find any errors, even errors in the text of my blog.

Greetings, Joris

Comments

  • Anonymous
    August 10, 2006
    Czym jest Caching Tool?Microsoft Dynamics CRM wykorzystuje mechanizm cache'owania, ale gdy nie jest używany...

  • Anonymous
    August 11, 2006
    Thanks, Joris! This is an awesome update to your very useful tool!-Matt Wittemann, CRM MVP

  • Anonymous
    August 18, 2006
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    August 29, 2006
    I had some problems with the installation when asking for the user and password was allways failing so ...I had to make a small change to the ProjectInstaller.cs and change the serviceProcessInstaller1.Account = LocalSystem and then rebuild, move the files to the same folder location and manually installed the service, after that the service works fine!Thanks this is awesome!

  • Anonymous
    September 08, 2006
    Encontré en el Blog de Joris Kalz un excelente programita (un Servicio),
    que Pre-Cachea las páginas de CRM (y según el autor podría cachear cualquier otra aplicación Web). Esto permite que al ser solicitadas, ya las tenga en memoria

  • Anonymous
    September 17, 2006
    Microsoft CRM Caching Tool

  • Anonymous
    January 10, 2007
    Thanks for the tool to fix Microsoft's goofy design here... However this isn't working for me.  I installed it over 4 hours ago and it's clearly not generating the caching for me.  I've update the config file with the proper server name and have even updated the list of ULR's. I've verified the URL's to make sure they are accurate, which they are. I have tried having the service run both as "LocalSystem" and my personal domain account (since I am an admin in CRM).  Neither seemed to work, am I missing something stupid? Thanks, Ross Carlson

  • Anonymous
    January 16, 2007
    @RossCarlson I would not say goofy design. Using caching techniques is always a good idea when building web apps. You should look into the log files of your IIS to see if there are any request coming from the caching tool.

  • Anonymous
    June 11, 2007
    I can now proudly announce that we will have the new Microsoft Dynamics CRM VPC available for download

  • Anonymous
    July 16, 2007
    We are having a problem running out of space on our CRM/WSS server, was wondering if the caching tool could be the problem.  Where does the caching tool cach the information? Allen Pemberton allen@pembcons.com

  • Anonymous
    July 30, 2007
    This tool is really helpful, so thanks a lot, first of all. The only problem is that business users have to change their AD-passwords every X days, due to security policy. And in my case it is impossible to explain them, how to set up caching service every time, they have their passwords changed. Can the service work under some different crm-account, f.e. system customizer or even administrator, if he has a really strong password?

  • Anonymous
    August 19, 2007
    En el blog de Menno me entero de que por fin ha sido publicada la nueva imagen de Virtual PC 2007 con