Plugin Registration Tool Crashes

My Plugin registration was working perfectly not until it decided not to when I needed it most.

This happened to Plugin Reg. Tool V9. Basically, I just cleared the files in the folder

C:\<your username>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\PluginRegistration

Below is my source of the solution.

Quick Fix to Plugin Registration Tool crashing by Yawer.

Quick Fix: Visual Studio 2017 displaying NAV Report Layout as XML

My colleague tried to open a report from NAV 2018 on VS2017 and he had issues because the report only showed the XML view.
He was not expecting this and could not make sense out of it.
We searched for answers and saw

A great article from Kushal Pillay
Quick fix: VS 2017 displaying NAV Report Layout as XML

and also Shashangka Shekhar
Enable RDLC Reporting in Visual Studio 2017

The steps were followed and the issue was resolved

Authentication Issue with Web App for Dynamics 356 v9

I was unable to connect to Dynamics 356 Customer Engagement through a web application.
There were different errors I got based on the method used to connect to CRM

For Xrm.Tooling.Connector
Error message: OrganizationServiceProxy is null
LastCrmError: "Unable to Login to CRM OrganizationServiceProxy is null"

For Web service OrganizationService
Error: Metadata contains a reference that cannot be resolved: ‘https://***.api.crm4.dynamics.com/XRMServices/2011/Organization.svc?wsdl&sdkversion=9

During my search for a resolve, which took me days, I stumbled upon this blog
Abhinav Ranjan

Following this link by Microsoft New features of Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement. It explained the possible ways to resolve it.

Adding this piece of code before authentication resolves the issue

ServicePointManager.SecurityProtocol = SecurityProtocolType.Tls12

ADAL .NET v3: Authenticate without popping up a login form

After successfully working with OrganizationService endpoint for CRM, performing the CRUD operations I decided to move to WEB API because it is the future.

During my learning process, I had issues

1.  I wanted the silent login: a situation where I provide the user credentials directly in the code. The sample code on MSDN didn't provide that scenario. It always popped up the login form.

ADAL v2 had a UserCredential Class that takes 0 or 2 arguments (username, password), which allows us to pass the credentials without a pop-up login form.

ADAL v3 UserCredential Class now takes 0 or 1 argument(username) which makes the scenario a bit different. In case you are using ADAL v3, the UserPasswordCredential Class should be used: It takes the username and password.

ADAL v2

 var authContext = new AuthenticationContext(Authority);
 var userCredential = new UserCredential(username, password);
 string accesstoken = authContext.AcquireToken(ResourceUrl, ClientId, userCredential);

Instead use

ADAL v3

  var authContext = new AuthenticationContext(Authority);

 var userCredential = new UserPasswordCredential(username, password);
 string accesstoken = authContext.AcquireTokenAsync(ResourceUrl, ClientId, userCredential).Result;

Retrieve values from GridView on SelectedIndex_changed

This is very different from rowindex_changed

For C#

Find the control, probably a label, of the data you want to retrieve.

    //Accessing BoundField Column

    string name = GridView1.SelectedRow.Cells[0].Text;

 

    //Accessing TemplateField Column controls

    string country =       (GridView1.SelectedRow.FindControl("lblCountry") as Label).Text;

 

    lblValues.Text = "<b>Name:</b> " + name + " <b>Country:</b> " + country;

Reference: https://www.aspsnippets.com/Articles/How-to-get-Selected-Row-cell-value-from-GridView-in-ASPNet.aspx

An error occurred during local report processing in RDLC

I had this issue during the week and I have decided to put this as an article in my personal knowledge bank.

I tried to convert RDLC to PDF: it worked on my local machine but on getting to Azure I got this error: "An error occurred during local report processing in RDLC".

I didn’t  achieve this on Azure but I was able to resolve the issue using these instructions

1. Add Microsoft Report Viewer dll to your solution( ReportViewer.common, ReportViewer.webform and ReportViewer.project object model)
2. The dll must be of the same version.
3. Set the “copy to local” property to true for all DLLs. (this is done so that the DLLs will be published with the solution).
4. Install Microsoft Report Viewer Runtime same or higher version.
5. Set the “BuildAction” property to content and make sure the name of the Report is the same as the name of the Report you want to use
6. Set the “Copy to Output Director” property to “copy always” or “copy if newer”

Build and publish your project, the Report appears in the bin folder. I used another Host for the project and all was fine.

CRM 2016 and SQL Issues

I woke this morning feeling good and it became awesome when I was told to install CRM 2016 on my company's server. As usual, I pulled my favorite web-link from my browser as a guide. All went well until little issues popped and it dawned on me I would spend much time than expected.


 The list of issues in a jiffy.

 I faced SQL related issues

Issue 1: I mistakenly "deleted my administrator's account in SQL Server 2012"
I thought of re-installing SQL, the process of copying my MDF and log files was going to be tedious for me. But I didn't do all that. I found this:
How I Resolved: SQL server itself provides a disaster recovery option. Members of Windows Administrator group now have access to SQL server when SQL server is started in a single-user mode known as maintenance mode.

I had to start SQL server in a single user mode through the SQL Server Configuration Manager tool

1. Open SQL Server Configuration Manager tool, 
2. Stop the SQL Server service, Right-click to select properties, 
3. On the startup parameters tab add "-m" without the quotes click on add, apply and restart the SQL service Service.

With that, I was able to login to SSMS to create an Admin account in the security

Issue 2: Upon installation of CRM 2016, "My reporting service wasn't connecting to the database", it took a while to figure out I had to open Reporting Services Configuration Manager to adjust my servername and instance.

The third on the list "the instance name must be the same as computer name"
I knew I changed my computer name after I installed SQL Server 2012, but didn't expect an error during installation of CRM.
Name of Instance
before: WIN-IT8745;  after :SOFTCUB

How I Resolved it: I ran this code
SELECT @SERVERNAME AS [Server Name] to know my server name.

sp_dropserver 'WIN-IT8745'
sp_addserver 'SOFTCUB', local

Then I restarted my SQL Server Service and that resolved the issue.

Issue 4: I tried installing CRM again and I got this error " The Full-text component is not installed on SQL Server, Word Breaker Not Installed".
How I Resolved it:
This is a feature missing during my initial SQL Server installation.

1. Run SQL server setup
2. Choose the feature "Full-text component" and that resolved it.
3.  Don't forget to restart your SQL Service so to remove any warning like "Word breaker is not installed"

Issue 5: The  SQL Server Reporting service is a local account and it is not supported."
Reason: The SQL server reporting service was installed using default settings,  and SrsDataConnector won't install while SSRS is running under default settings account.
How I Resolved it:

1. Open Reporting Services Config Manager
2. Update the Service Account to something like "local system"
3. Click apply and complete the wizard by specifying the Location, password for the Encryption Key.