Thursday 31 July 2014

Free Webinar Azure ADFS domain federation with CRM Online

I'm doing a series of free webinars on Dynamics CRM and starting with how to federate your company domain with Azure and provide single sign-on with an Azure VM and Multi Factor Authentication.

If you interested please register your place here:

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/D6DFWR2

Below you find more information on what will be covered on the day. In a nutshell the webinar session will cover Azure VMs providing domain and ADFS single sign-on authentication for CRM online plus the configuration of Multi Factor authentication. Multi factor authentication is a process which helps protecting organization data enforcing two-factor user authentication.
  • Azure and office 365 portal
  • Session overview configuration steps
  • Adding a domain to Azure portal
  • Verify the domain
  • Overview of ADFS configuration and SSL certifcate configuration
  • Install & Connect to Azure powershell
  • Promote the newly added domain to federated domain.
  • Adding users to CRM online
  • Enable Multi Factor Authentication
  • Question and Answers

    If you have an on-premise Dynamics CRM instance there will be relevant information to on-premise configuration scenarios with ADFS and Azure.
Please leave your feedback, comments or any questions you may have.

If you would like to contact me directly please feel free to drop me an email to: nuno.m.costa@gmail.com

Wednesday 23 July 2014

Dynamics CRM ADFS 3.0 changing HTTPS port

If you run into a situation where you require to change ADFS default HTTPS port from 443 to something else the steps to do this are highlighted below:

1. URL's ACL
The first steps are to reserve the ADFS urls using the new port, run the below commands:

netsh http add urlacl url=https://+:4433/FederationMetadata/2007-06/ user=domain\account listen=yes delegate=yes

netsh http add urlacl url=https://+:4433/adfs/ user=domain\account listen=yes delegate=yes

Then confirmed the above URL's have been added by running the command:
netsh http show urlacl 

to confirm the url's you added are listed.

2. Powershell Set new HTTPS port
The second step you set the ADFS https port via powershell:

Set-ADFSProperties -HttpsPort 4433

Restart the ADFS service

3. Binding IIS to the new port
The last step is to change the default website bindings for the HTTPs port.

Open IIS > Highlight Default Website and click on the right-hand-side Bindings












4. Testing
To test the new port open Internet Explorer and type:

https://myadfs.domain.com/FederationMetadata/2007-06/FederationMetadata.xml 

and you should get a page with XML:












Hope this was helpful, please leave your feedback or let me know if you have any questions.

Thanks

Monday 14 July 2014

Dynamics CRM 2013 Configuring SMTP profiles on port 25

If you just process outgoing email in Dynamics CRM 2013 then you no longer need Email router to do this. Dynamics CRM 2013 introduces Exchange synchronization but also POP3 and SMTP profiles which you can leverage as an SMTP gateway. In this article I'm focusing on SMTP profiles and how to make it work on SMTP port 25.

Why SSL does not matter in this case? it's because we are not storing any credentials we are using Anonymous authentication to relay email.

1. Enabling Port 25
Before we start configuring the SMTP profile in CRM you need to run the following SQL commands to disable SSL for SMTP profiles:

SQL Update

Update DeploymentProperties set BitColumn = 1 where columnname = 'AllowCredentialsEntryViaInsecureChannels'

Update DeploymentProperties set BitColumn = 1 where columnname = 'ECAllowNonSSLEmail'

Via Power Shell

  • To allow the use of credentials when not using SSL, run the following commands.

$itemSetting = new-object 'System.Collections.Generic.KeyValuePair[String,Object]' ("AllowCredentialsEntryViaInsecureChannels",1)$configEntity= new-object "Microsoft.Xrm.Sdk.Deployment.ConfigurationEntity"$configEntity.LogicalName = "Deployment"$configEntity.Attributes=new-object "Microsoft.Xrm.Sdk.Deployment.AttributeCollection"$configEntity.Attributes.Add($itemSetting)set-CrmAdvancedSetting -Entity $configEntity

  • To allow the use of connections to servers that do not use SSL, run the following commands.

$itemSetting = new-object 'System.Collections.Generic.KeyValuePair[String,Object]' ("ECAllowNonSSLEmail",1)$configEntity= new-object "Microsoft.Xrm.Sdk.Deployment.ConfigurationEntity"$configEntity.LogicalName = "Deployment"$configEntity.Attributes=new-object "Microsoft.Xrm.Sdk.Deployment.AttributeCollection"$configEntity.Attributes.Add($itemSetting)set-CrmAdvancedSetting -Entity $configEntity

After the SQL update do an iisreset and refresh the page, then Navigate to Settings > Email Configuration


2. Create The SMTP profle
Click New and select POP3-SMTP Profile











Choose a name and type the FQDN for the email server, if you don't want to use pop3 you can leave it empty:














The Authentication options should be as follows:













Click Advanced and select No on the option that says Use SSL for Outgoing connection














3. Configure User Profiles 
The next step is configuring the user mailbox properties; we want to set the mailbox to use the SMTP profile and disable incoming mail.

















4. Global Settings
If you want these settings applied globally you can use the global Settings under Settings > Administration > System Settings

Email tab:







Hope this was helpful please leave your feedback










Wednesday 2 July 2014

Dynamics CRM 2013 New version of CTRL+SHIFT+Q with SP1

I've blogged a few weeks ago about the great little gem hidden in the CRM 2013 forms the CTRL+SHIFT+Q which provided a new report with performance stats. With the introduction of SP1 (Leo) the new feature had a major re-design and it looks a lot better check my screenshots below:

The first time you load an record and hit CTRL+SHIFT+Q you get first a blank page, click Enable refresh the CRM page and do again CTRL+SHIFT+Q and you now get the full performance stats.