MS CRM 2011 Online Production to Online UAT Environment
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Monday, May 14, 2012 3:28 PM
Good morning.
We have a client that has CRM 2011 with a Customized Solution Set as well as Exact Target bolted together. They have a production environment and a DEV environment (both MS Hosted), that their own IT department created/supported.
We have been brought in to help structure and support this environment, as the IT side of their house has very limited exposure to CRM.
Since both production and UAT are hosted, is their an easy way to recreate the UAT environment on a routine basis that will bring over all the customizations and data? I understand that Exact Target will have issues with this, and wanted to see if any other concerns are glaring.
Thanks
Jon
All Replies
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Monday, May 14, 2012 10:45 PM
Hi Jon,
You can bring over the customisations. This can be done by exporting the customizations to a unmanaged solution and then import this unmanaged solution to your DEV/UAT environment. You can also export the data and import it to your environment. This can be done through exporting data to excel.
You can also use tools, if any, provided by Microsoft for managing the data environment of CRM online.
The best tool available in the market is Scribe. Use that tool (which comes with the Dynamics CRM) adapter.
Scribe Online RS replicates your Microsoft Dynamics CRM data to a SQL database – allowing you to take control of your data in the way you need it, when you want it. Secure and fast, you can replicate your CRM data anywhere your SQL Server is located – cloud, hosted or on premise.
http://www.scribesoft.com/Online
There could be concerns with importing the reference data. I mean the order in which you import your data. The reference data needs to be imported first. This is an issue if you are doing through data templates. In case you use Scribe, this can be automated.
I hope this helps. If my response answered your question, please mark the response as an answer and also vote as helpful.
Ashish Mahajan, CRM Developer, CSG (Melbourne)
My Personal Website: http://www.ashishmahajan.com
My Blogs: http://ashishmahajancrm.blogspot.com.au and http://ashishmahajancrm.wordpress.com
My Youtube Channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/ashishmahajanmscrm
My Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/ashishmahajan74My Linkedin: 
- Proposed As Answer by Ashish Mahajan Australia (Architect) Monday, May 14, 2012 10:45 PM
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Tuesday, May 15, 2012 7:28 PM
Ashish,
Thanks for the guidance. Exporting the solution set is straight forward. The challenge I have is with the vast amount of data. Exporting to excel times out (they have over 100k contacts), and the number of created entities is in the 30's. They are also using a solution set from Dynamics MarketPlace originally created for 4.0 and simply ported over to 2011 Online. I sense that most of the challenges they face are the solution sets focus is 25% of what they wanted but now what they have to live with.... possibly why we are now in as their partner.
I am familiar with Scribe from Dynamics GP. Since I am going from a cloud based production to a cloud based UAT environment, I was hoping a simple solution existed. It seems like most users who have a hosted productin solution, have brought the UAT solution inhouse. My understanding is when they originally deployed, the sending of data (Primarily contacts, address and their custom entities) took about 70 hours. While they do have 2.5 gig of data in production, that seems excessive to an extreme.
Jon
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Thursday, May 17, 2012 11:25 PM
Hi Jon,
I agree with you.
Ashish Mahajan, CRM Developer, CSG (Melbourne)
My Personal Website: http://www.ashishmahajan.com
My Blogs: http://ashishmahajancrm.blogspot.com.au and http://ashishmahajancrm.wordpress.com
My Youtube Channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/ashishmahajanmscrm
My Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/ashishmahajan74My Linkedin:
