What’s up with CRM not working in latest version of Chrome?

You might have noticed that some features of CRM are no longer working after updating to Chrome 37. This posts provides some insight into work-arounds and possible solutions

All of the sudden seems like the CRM 2011 application is broken for Chrome for some features such as editing workflow send email steps. This is because CRM relies on a web API called showModalDialog() which Google Chrome is no longer supporting as of version 37, you can read more about it here. Note that it was deprecated since version 35 and Firefox has also deprecated that API.

So what can we do about it? Well, the easiest work around for now is to use Internet Explorer while you can find a more permanent solution. Microsoft has also published another temporary work-around so that you can continue to use Chrome: KB3000002. However, there are three bad news with that workaround. The first is that it requires each user to apply the work-around. The second is that users must have a highly privileged account on their work station in order to be able to apply the workaround, and we know that in the enterprise world, very few users will be given enough privileges or access to make the changes suggested by Microsoft. Finally the third bad news is that the work-around is only valid until May 2015!

Microsoft had quite a job to do in order to fix the entire CRM application to remove all the usage of showModalDialog(). This will probably take some time before we are able to apply a patch at the server level which will automatically fix the problem for all users. Perhaps before that happens there will be an easier work-around solution that Microsoft can come up with but don’t get your hopes up.

I guess this article is no good news for those who refuse to give IE a try, it’s one of the consequences of multi-browser support and Microsoft having little control on when other browsers drop support for API's that CRM relies on.

CRM Online and Canadian Privacy Law

CRM Online is usually my preferred CRM deployment for most projects; but recently I have encountered a number of legal barriers due to the geographical location of the Microsoft data centers. For cloud deployments of Dynamics CRM in North America, the data is physically hosted in USA which triggers a long discussion with legal departments with our customers.

For our Canadian customers, we are bound to comply with the Canada Privacy Law (http://laws.justice.gc.ca/en/P-21/index.html) which clearly prohibits the export of sensitive or government data. Furthermore, The Patriot Act in the USA poses additional threats to Canadian privacy law:

The Act permits U.S. law enforcement officials, for the purpose of an anti-terrorism investigation, to seek a court order that allows access to the personal records of any person without that person’s knowledge (http://www.tbs-sct.gc.ca/pubs_pol/gospubs/TBM_128/usapa/faq-eng.asp#Q1)

We must be very diligently evaluating the kind of Data that would be hosted in a CRM Online organization and where this data is to physycally reside. I wouldn't imagine Microsoft opening data centers in every country but I also imagine this to be a very common problem. It would be interesting to know what strategy does Microsoft envision or offer to deal with this kind of restrictions (if any).