Microsoft Dynamics: Unable to load plug-in assembly

Recently I have been working on Microsoft Dynamics 365 on-premise install for a project, and I came across an odd error when trying to assign roles to a user: Unable to load plug-in assembly.

The blog thief

Shame on you, Intergen! You read about this sort of stuff but you never think it will happen to you — until it does. Just found out that a company in Wellington, New Zealand named Intergen has been using images and other content from my blog into the own presentations. They even call it “Diving into the Sales Pipeline”, which is the title of my blog series from when I used to be a Dynamics CRM consultant, where the content has been copied without my consent.

You can find my original blog post here. Where I come from, we call this thievery.

UPDATE: A digital marketing representative from Intergen got in touch with me. At first he was trying to “understand the basis of my claim” as he was looking an update post from 2013 that uses the same image. However the same image has been originally used in a post from 2011. I was pretty enraged at this point, since the representative was wondering “if the two images [I] refer too [sic] came from Microsoft”. Once we established that the images were mine, I got a response that the file has been removed. I got no apology whatsoever, but I did get an entire paragraph devoted to deflecting responsibility for the theft, and a request for this post to be removed. Since you are still reading this post, I am sure that you can guess what I think of their request.

A new beginning

I’ve been postponing the writing of this post long enough, but I think I owe the readers of my blog an explanation as to why there is so little updates on Dynamics CRM coming from me. So here is my long and overdue update.

Dynamics CRM 2015: My light at the end of the tunnel

While I have been busy working on other projects which are not related to Dynamics CRM, I have been eagerly following the development of Dynamics CRM 2015, which is scheduled for release this fall (Q4/2014).

When version 2015 was initially announced, I was not as enthusiastic as I were as in previous versions due to some recent disappointments, which I have ranted on about before. However, Microsoft has made some announcements for this upcoming version that really made me see the light at the end of the tunnel.

In this short post I would like to share with you my feelings about some of these features that have been announced. Read more >>

Dynamics CRM 2013: Diving into the sales pipeline – Part 3

In my previous post of this series, we discussed how to implement ACME’s sales pipeline through the creation of a business process flow (BPF) considering both the Lead and Opportunity entities. We created two business processes, one for opportunities that originated from leads, and another for opportunities that did not originated from leads.

In this post we will discuss how to implement ACME’s opportunity probability matrix through the creation of business rules.

Microsoft acquires Parature

If there is one module of Microsoft Dynamics CRM that always leave me with the bitter taste of I wish I could, is the service module.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I reckon the service module provides good value, and I have deployed Dynamics CRM solution around this module in past which clients were happy with; but Dynamics CRM isn’t a full fledged service management system such like Remedy or Peregrine. The problem is that it doesn’t have much space for growth, particularly for organisations willing to provide service level agreements (SLAs) slightly more complicated than the default, over-simplistic examples.

The good news is that Microsoft announced today the acquisition of Parature; a customer self-service company based in Virginia, USA. Parature provides a bunch of products and services around service and support including a customer self-service platform, multi-channel customer service and social customer service.

Dynamics CRM 2013: Diving into the sales pipeline – Part 2

In my previous post of this series, we discussed some fundamental concepts of the sales pipeline and how Dynamics CRM handles the sales process. While considering the requirements of ACME (a fictitious company), we defined the stages of their sales pipeline, and started to outline the functional specification of the opportunity entity, including the elaboration of an opportunity probability matrix.

In this post we will discuss how to implement ACME’s sales pipeline through the creation of a business process flow. Read more >>

Dynamics CRM 2013: Diving into the sales pipeline – Part 1

No matter how orthodox and customisation-free you want your Dynamics CRM implementation to be, there is always one aspect of Dynamics CRM that must be customised: The Sales Pipeline. Such customisation is required if you want the default sales pipeline to work properly, as well the sales pipeline report.

The issue at hand is, how can we set-up a functional sales pipeline with charts and reports, yet keeping Dynamics CRM as close as possible to its out-of-the-box functionality?

In this series of posts, we will be covering the implementation of a sales pipeline based on the requirements of a fictional organisation, called ACME. Dynamics CRM 2013 provides new tools and functionality that enable us to create a streamlined business processes, including a sales pipeline.

Because there’s so much to discuss here, I’m going to break this up into multiple parts. And in this first part of the series, I’d like to address the fundamental concepts of the sales pipeline and introduce some key points on how to conduct a requirement assessment.

Opportunity entity changes in Dynamics CRM 2013

Last week I wrote a post about the changes in the Lead entity introduced by Dynamics CRM 2013. Following the course of the traditional Dynamics CRM sales process, the next entity to tackle is the opportunity entity.

Lead entity changes in Dynamics CRM 2013

In Dynamics CRM, no entity tends to cause more confusion to like the Lead entity. I do get that newcomers to CRM might be confused, and after many training sessions and constructive feedback I reckon I came up with a nice approach to explain the importance of this entity. Most people get it, but some companies still decide not to use the lead entity. Sometimes they genuinely don’t need to use it; but quite often then don’t use it because they don’t understand the true potential of leads.

For Dynamics CRM 2013, Microsoft has performed some significant changes in the Lead entity with the intuit to address those issues, which I will be covering in this post.