Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Online limitations
May 31, 2011
This is a brief summary of the disadvantages and limitations of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Online:
- Storage Limit 5 GB
- No Full Database Export
- Maximum number of entities is 200
- Maximum number of workflows is 200
- No custom workflow activities
- No custom reports based on .rdl files
- No E-Mail Router
PS: The above informations are supplied without liability.
Especially for CRM Projects having high focus on reporting Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Online is not recommended.
Fetch XML based reports limitations
Fetch-XML based reports have certain limitations. Here is a list of them (taken from http://gtcrm.wordpress.com/2011/03/24/fetch-xml-reports-for-crm-2011-online/ published by Gareth Tucker)
No “Left Outer Joins”
It is not possible to create queries using Left Outer Joins. For example it is not possible to display all open sales opportunities showing information about the potential customer that can be an account or a contact.
An amount of 5000 returned records maximum
Fetch XML requests return a maximum of 5000 records (This has not been proved by proMX and was taken from Gareth Tuckers article)
Aggregate functions
Microsoft promises support for following aggregate functions:
- sum
- avg
- min
- max
- count(*)
- count(attribute name)
(http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg309565.aspx). In my tests I found out that AVG does not work well.
No “UNION Selects”
In SQL Queries the UNION operator is used to combine more than one Select statement and have the result in one dataset. In Fetch XML you don’t have a similar operator. Instead you only can retrieve the data in different datasets.
No complex queries
It is not possible to work with temporary tables or loops as like it is possible at SQL Queries.
Additional Links:
Ankit Malpani lists the possibilities of Fetch XML in “Fetch-Xml based Reports: Bits & Pieces”.
Frank Lee suggests “Custom Report Development” in his article “CRM Online: Reporting Options” by using the Microsoft Dynamics CRM SDK in case of CRM Online. Then the “reporting options” will be “endless”.
published by Carmen Rudolph, proMX GmbH
