There seems to be a few bugs with the first release of CRM Mobile Express. Currently, GotDotNet.com is maintaining a list of bugs that users have discovered. As the bugs are fixed they will posting hotfixes on this website for you to download and install. If you ran into a potential bug that is not listed you can report the bug on this website as well.
For those of you that upgraded from CRM 1.2 to CRM 3.0 bug #4 may be of some interest to you. When you upgrade to 3.0 setup renames custom attributes and adds the letters CF to the name of the attribute. With the way the mobile express client handles capital letters this causes issues in the mobile client if any of your entities are actively using one of these fields. Bug #4 addresses that issue.
I recommend checking this site every couple of weeks to see if any new bugs or hotfixes have been posted.
GotDotNet Bug Tracker Website:
http://www.gotdotnet.com/codegallery/bugtracker/home.aspx?id=8e65fc13-4073-406c-879c-442faf78f2c8
In the ideal scenario you can install and get the RSS Connector running in 30-minutes. However, the connector makes some base assumptions about your CRM environment which can throw a few problems into the mix. The purpose here is to run through the steps required get the connector up and running and to identify a few pitfalls with the install that I ran into in a couple of situations.
Installation Requirements:
1. Visual Studio 2003 (the rss connector will not function if VS 2005 is used)
2. CRM Installed on Default Website and using Port 80, accessible by http://localhost. If this is not the case there are 2 steps you must take care of first, the instructions are further down in this post.
Installation and Configuration:
1. Create a folder called RSS under the root of the CRM Website, c:\inetpub\wwwroot for a default website install of CRM. Ensure that the directory is set to inherit folder permissions.
2. Unpack or copy the contents of the connector to this directory
3. From a PC with VS 2003 or from the server if VS 2003 is installed:
- Click Start -> Microsoft Visual Studio -> Tools -> Command Prompt
- Using the command prompt navigate to the rss folder on the CRM server
- In the RSS folder run make.bat
- When it completes it will indicate that 1 file has been copied
- Type exit to get out of the command prompt
4. Restart IIS
5. Test the connector by browsing to: http://<crm_website>/rss
If CRM isn't installed on the Default Website and/or Port 80:
The rss connector assumes that CRM is installed on the default website and that it can be accessed using http://localhost. This assumption is hard-coded into the connector itself. In order to overcome this you'll need to modify 2 files prior to running make.bat. You can perform these steps before or after copying the rss code files to the rss directory but the changes must be made before you run make.bat.
Modify crmservice.cs
1. Open the crmservice.cs file in the rss directory
2. In the line this.Url = "http://localhost/mscrmservices/2006/crmservice.asmx";, change the path to match your CRM deployment.
3. Save the file
Modify metadataservice.cs
4. Open the metadataservice.cs file in the rss directory
5. Modify the line: this.Url = "http://localhost/mscrmservices/2006/metadataservice.asmx"; to match your CRM deployment.
6. Save the file
Hopefully, this will help you get the connector up and running in your environment with little or no problem at all. There is an update of the code coming that will better support non-default installations of CRM.