Action Microsoft.Crm.Setup.Common.Analyzer +CollectAction failed. Fatal error during installation

When installing the Srs Data Connection (Microsoft Dynamics CRM Reporting Extensions), you may have experienced the following error:

"Action Microsoft.Crm.Setup.Common.Analyzer +CollectAction failed. Fatal error during installation OR Action Microsoft.Crm.Setup.Common.Analyzer+CollectAction failed. Fatal error during installation"

There are more than one option that you can use to fix this issue.

Solution 1

1. Check that you don't already have a version of the Srs Data Connector installed, if yes then uninstall, reboot and retry the install.

Solution 2

1. Open RegEdit and navigate to the following (please note that the GUID will vary depending on your CRM version)

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Installer\UserData\S-1-5-18\Components\AA525E7FC7F524344B2B2650A4C6D64

2. Delete the key and Restart the Server.
3. Retry the Srs Data Connector install.

Solution 3

1. Download the latest Microsoft Dynamics CRM Server install files and attempt the install using the Srs Data Connector found within this build. This solution works if the first two did not.

SQL Server Reporting Services Account is a local user and is not supported

When installing the SQL Reporting Extensions for Microsoft Dynamics CRM, you may get the "SQL Server Reporting Services Account is a local user and is not supported" error.

This is easily resolved by changing the service account that the Reporting Service is using.
1. Open the Reporting Services Configuration Manager

2. Set the service account to use a dedicated account rather than the default "Report Server"

3. Shutdown the installer and then re-run, you should now see that it works fine. 

MS CRM 2016 Install - Step by Step Instructions

Step by step instruction on how to install the latest version of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2016 on-premise.

1. Click on the first option to trigger the server installation process. 


2. You can optionally check for updated installation components and then click next.


3. Enter your CRM License Key and click Next


4. You can change the installation directory, however I tend to leave this as the default.


5. Check which roles you want installed, as I am building a single VM I have selected both front end, back end and deployment services.


6. Ensure you have the first option selected and then specify the SQL Server you want to use for this installation. The required version of SQL is 2014 or above.


7. Browse and select the OU you want this system to reside and click next.


8. Set the service account details for each of the services, these will vary depending on which roles you selected in the previous roles selection dialog. You will also note that these are the same services from CRM 2013 and CRM 2015.


9. Specify your Organisation details and click continue.


10. After clicking next, the installation wizard will perform some checks. In most cases if you have not set the correct permissions for the service accounts, you will see something similar to the screen shot below.



It is just stating that the Application and Async service accounts need access to the performance log. To rectify this, just add the accounts to the "Performance Log Users" security group.

11. Then click the back button and then the next button to re-perform the checks. You should now see that the errors have gone. Click Next to continue.


12. Click Next on this screen, it is just to confirm that several services will be restarted.


13. Verify that you are happy with your selections and click next to perform the installation.


Note that you will need to install the reporting extensions, authoring tools and email router independently from the server install.

How to reduce the size of the CRM Database

There are several tables within each CRM Organization database that can become very large. The size of the CRM database shouldn't be an issue within your production environment, as adequate space should be provisioned for this growth. 

These are as follows:

• AsyncOperationBase
• AuditBase
• WorkflowWaitSubscriptionBase
• PrincipleObjectBase

The problems typically occur in QA, UAT or DEV environments where you need to restore a prod like copy in order to work against real life data. Disk space can be a premium in these environments, thus having the ability to trim down the CRM database can be very useful.

You should leave the PrincipleObjectBase table alone as this deals with many aspects of record access, sharing etc.

Steps to Reduce your CRM Database size:

1. Execute the following SQL statement to remove redundant records from the AsyncOperationBase table:

IF EXISTS (SELECT name from sys.indexes
WHERE name = N'CRM_AsyncOperation_CleanupCompleted')
      DROP Index AsyncOperationBase.CRM_AsyncOperation_CleanupCompleted
GO
CREATE NONCLUSTERED INDEX CRM_AsyncOperation_CleanupCompleted
ON [dbo].[AsyncOperationBase] ([StatusCode],[StateCode],[OperationType])
GO

while(1=1)
begin
declare @DeleteRowCount int = 10000
declare @rowsAffected int
declare @DeletedAsyncRowsTable table (AsyncOperationId uniqueidentifier not null primary key)
insert into @DeletedAsyncRowsTable(AsyncOperationId)
Select top (@DeleteRowCount) AsyncOperationId from AsyncOperationBase
where 
  OperationType in (1, 9, 12, 25, 27, 10) 
  AND StateCode = 3 
  AND StatusCode in (30, 32)

 select @rowsAffected = @@rowcount 
 delete poa from PrincipalObjectAccess poa 
   join WorkflowLogBase wlb on
    poa.ObjectId = wlb.WorkflowLogId
   join @DeletedAsyncRowsTable dart on
    wlb.AsyncOperationId = dart.AsyncOperationId
delete WorkflowLogBase from WorkflowLogBase W, @DeletedAsyncRowsTable d
where 
  W.AsyncOperationId = d.AsyncOperationId             
 delete BulkDeleteFailureBase From BulkDeleteFailureBase B, @DeletedAsyncRowsTable d
where 
  B.AsyncOperationId = d.AsyncOperationId
delete BulkDeleteOperationBase From BulkDeleteOperationBase O, @DeletedAsyncRowsTable d
where 
  O.AsyncOperationId = d.AsyncOperationId
delete WorkflowWaitSubscriptionBase from WorkflowWaitSubscriptionBase WS, @DeletedAsyncRowsTable d
where 
  WS.AsyncOperationId = d.AsyncOperationID 
 delete AsyncOperationBase From AsyncOperationBase A, @DeletedAsyncRowsTable d
where 
  A.AsyncOperationId = d.AsyncOperationId
/*If not calling from a SQL job, use the WAITFOR DELAY*/
if(@DeleteRowCount > @rowsAffected)
  return
else
  WAITFOR DELAY '00:00:02.000'

end

2. Execute the following SQL statement to remove redundant records from the WorkflowWaitSubscriptionBase table:

Delete from workflowwaitsubscriptionbase 
where asyncoperationid in(Select asyncoperationidfrom AsyncOperationBase
where OperationType in (1, 9, 12, 25, 27, 10) 

AND StateCode = 3 AND StatusCode IN (30,32))

3. Delete the Audit Log partitions from within the CRM User Interface. 

Go to Settings>Auditing and then click on Audit Log Management

Select and delete each partition, the larger ones are indicated by the number of rows.

3. Finally you need to Shrink the CRM Organization SQL Database itself from within SQL Management Studio. This will recover all available space within the database file and reduce it's footprint on disk.

The summary screen will indicate how much available space will be recovered, by which the database file size also being reduced by the same amount. Then click OK and wait for the process to finish.

RetrievePrivilegeForUser failed - no roles are assigned to user

Hopefully you are fortunate enough to never experience this in the field, however when some smart aleck decides to add the CRM App Pool service account as an actual CRM System User. You will get an error similar to this:

Exception information: 
    Exception type: CrmException 
    Exception message: SecLib::RetrievePrivilegeForUser failed - no roles are assigned to user. Returned hr = -2147209463, User: b1eda2c8-dbbd-e511-b14d-0050569b5b86
   at Microsoft.Crm.Application.Platform.ServiceCommands.PlatformCommand.XrmExecuteInternal()
   at Microsoft.Crm.Application.Platform.ServiceCommands.RetrieveMultipleCommand.Execute()
   at Microsoft.Crm.Application.Caching.CustomResourceLoader.GetCustomResources(IOrganizationContext context, Int32 cacheKey)
   at Microsoft.Crm.Application.Caching.CustomResourceLoader.LoadCacheData(Int32 key, IOrganizationContext context)
   at Microsoft.Crm.Caching.CrmMultiOrgCacheBase`2.LookupEntry(TKey key, IOrganizationContext context)
   at Microsoft.Crm.Application.ResourceManager.CustomResourceManager.TryGetCultureString(String name, CultureInfo culture, Boolean getSystemString, IOrganizationContext context)
   at Microsoft.Crm.Application.ResourceManager.CustomResourceManager.TryGetCultureString(String name, CultureInfo culture, IOrganizationContext context)
   at Microsoft.Crm.Application.ResourceManager.BasicResourceManager.GetCultureString(String name, CultureInfo culture, IOrganizationContext context)
   at Microsoft.Crm.Controls.Header..ctor(Boolean isControlHeader)
   at Microsoft.Crm.Controls.BasicHeader..ctor()
   at Microsoft.Crm.Application.Controls.AppHeader..ctor()
   at ASP.dynamicsqa_default_aspx.__BuildControlcrmHeader()
   at ASP.dynamicsqa_default_aspx.__BuildControlTree(dynamicsqa_default_aspx __ctrl)
   at ASP.dynamicsqa_default_aspx.FrameworkInitialize()
   at System.Web.UI.Page.ProcessRequest(Boolean includeStagesBeforeAsyncPoint, Boolean includeStagesAfterAsyncPoint)
   at System.Web.UI.Page.ProcessRequest()
   at System.Web.UI.Page.ProcessRequest(HttpContext context)
   at System.Web.HttpApplication.CallHandlerExecutionStep.System.Web.HttpApplication.IExecutionStep.Execute()

   at System.Web.HttpApplication.ExecuteStep(IExecutionStep step, Boolean& completedSynchronously)

The cause is due to the service account now existing as a CRM user. The service account is responsible for running and acting as the service identity for the CRM web application within IIS. This can have severe security implications, in this specific scenario users could no longer log into Dynamics CRM.

According to https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/2593042 there are other issues that this can also introduce.

• Data Import may fail
• CRM Outlook Clients may not configure
• Async Operations may have unexpected behavior including Workflows stopping with a Failed status
• No users can access CRM
• IFD access may fail for some or all users
• Date/Time fields may not display correct timezone offset

The Fix

1. Change the CRM service account, which will further involve creating new SPN's etc
2. Remove the user from the CRM Sql Database, which is unsupported and will be very tricky to perform.
3. In our case we resolved this by marking the specific accounts record as "IsDeleted" within the MSCRM_CONFIG.SystemUserAuthentication table

How to get the Object Type Code of an Entity?

Each system and custom entity within Dynamics CRM comes with an array of unique attributes. These include an Entity ID, Logical Name and Object Type Code. Identifying the logical name is pretty easy, however tracking down the rest can be a little tricky.

• Custom entities will have a Object Type Code greater than 10000. You should also note that the OTC of a custom entity can change when importing the entity to a different system. This is likely when an existing entity on the target system is already using the OTC number.
• Any system entities will use a Object Type Code less than 10000. This range is reserved for all built in entities.

Using SQL
Execute the following statement against the target CRM Organization database.

SELECT ObjectTypeCode,* FROM ENTITYVIEW 

Using JScript
You can access the "etc" query string parameter from the open entity window within CRM.

Xrm.Page.context.getQueryStringParameters().etc

MS CRM 2013 - Reporting Extensions Setup (Blank/Empty SSRS Instance)

When installing CRM 2013 Reporting Extensions, you may experience the "Empty SSRS Instance" dropdown on the second install wizard screen as displayed below:

This can be caused by any of the following reasons:

• You are trying to install "Reporting Extensions" on the incorrect server, you should be running the installer on the SQL Server not the CRM Server.
• SSRS is incorrectly configured, it is not configured or pointing to a Report Server database, a permisions or virtual directory issue. Try loading the Reports web page using IE to check that the Reporting URL can be reached.
• You have installed an unsupported version of SQL Server

In my experience, the 3rd is the most likely cause where by an x86 version of SQL has been installed. Once you have resolved the cause, you should now see the SSRS instance within the dropdown: