Microsoft CRM "du jour"

Following yesterday Powershell article on infinite loop settings, there's a brand new post on the Dynamics CRM in the Field blog (which is one of, if not the most interesting deep technical dive blog out there) explaining how to adjust the Odata maximum number of records.

I got an issue today where a customer action triggered this error message "This workflow job was canceled because the workflow that started it included an infinite loop..."
The weird thing being that only plugins were involved in the action; so I did a quick trace of the plugins execution depth and sure it went up to 8; which is the maximum default depth authorized for workflows in a one hour period; just before the exception triggered.

This particular customer scenario needed more than a depth of 8 cascading calls (not much more, but a bit more nevertheless). The documentation was silent about the platform plugin infinite loop settings but as the error message stated 'workflows',  I did a quick check with reflector in the Microsoft.Crm.dll and the same error message is triggered on the Plugin Execute method when the maximum depth is reached.
Now, the good news is that the workflows default setting seems to be also used for the plugins pipeline and this setting is well documented.

So I just had to increment the maximum depth setting for workflows to solve the issue; unfortunately this only works on a on premise deployment as those settings are not updatable for online deployment (which makes sense when you think of it)

For CRM 2011
On the CRM Deployment Server, start Powershell and then run the following commands :
Add-PSSnapin Microsoft.Crm.PowerShell
$setting = Get-CrmSetting WorkflowSettings
$setting.MaxDepth=n   (n being the new Maximum Depth you want to set)
Set-CrmSetting $setting

You can find more information on PowerShell for MSCRM at this link http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg328563.aspx

For CRM 4.0
Download the deployment config tools from http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg328563.aspx (direct link here)
Run the following statement:
microsoft.crm.deploymentconfigtool.exe workflowsettings update -maximumdepth:n   (n being the new Maximum Depth you want to set)

Until now, the SQL 2012 support was slated for the next rollup update, but following  this new KB Article : http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2686619; SQL 2012 is now supported on both CRM 4.0 and CRM 2011.
There's still some issues reported with some linked hotfixes, so just don't rush it in production ;)

Ps: Thanks to Jamie Miley for the info 

I got the query today to remove formulas in a Excel export of a current sql reporting service report.
I first wanted to add a link in the report itself with the '&rc:OmitFormulas=true' suffix, but I found out there's a lot better way by adding a new renderer in the report server list as described in this MSDN article.

Just go to \program files\Microsoft SQL server\<SSRS instance>\Reporting Services\ReportServer and open the rsreportserver.config file with a text editor.
Go to the <Render> Section, you should have a subsection called <Extension Name="Excel" ...
Copy that line with a new name so you have something like :

<Extension Name="EXCEL"
Type="Microsoft.ReportingServices.Rendering.ExcelRenderer.ExcelRenderer,Microsoft.ReportingServices.ExcelRendering"/>
<Extension Name="EXCEL (No Formula)"
Type="Microsoft.ReportingServices.Rendering.ExcelRenderer.ExcelRenderer,Microsoft.ReportingServices.ExcelRendering"/>

then add the specific option(s) you want in the renderer, (here's the link to the excel renderer options), which gives

<Extension Name="EXCEL" Type="Microsoft.ReportingServices.Rendering.ExcelRenderer.ExcelRenderer,Microsoft.ReportingServices.ExcelRendering"/>
 <Extension Name="EXCEL (No Formula)" Type="Microsoft.ReportingServices.Rendering.ExcelRenderer.ExcelRenderer,Microsoft.ReportingServices.ExcelRendering">
<Configuration>
 <DeviceInfo><OmitFormulas>True</OmitFormulas>
</DeviceInfo>
</Configuration>
</Extension>

Stop start the SQL Server Reporting Services to reload the .config file.
Now, this did work but the names were both "Excel"; after rereading the MSDN article, you have to force a culture specific name; so the final file was (three culture as we are in Belgium) :

<Extension Name="EXCEL (No Formulas)" Type="Microsoft.ReportingServices.Rendering.ExcelRenderer.ExcelRenderer,Microsoft.ReportingServices.ExcelRendering">
    <OverrideNames>
        <Name Language="en-US">Excel (No Formulas)</Name>
        <Name Language="fr-BE">Excel (Sans Formules)</Name>
        <Name Language="nl-BE">Excel (Geen Formulas)</Name>
    </OverrideNames>
    <Configuration>
        <DeviceInfo>
            <OmitFormulas>True</OmitFormulas>
        </DeviceInfo>
    </Configuration>
</Extension>

Quite easy to do really and a very nice option to have at disposal, at least on premise.