1. Check your computer hardware
We recommend at least a 1.0GHz processor and 1GB of memory to use the CRM web client. (You'll need a higher specification computer if you are using the hosted CRM with the Outlook CRM client).
To check your computer's specification:
- Right-click on My Computer
- Click Properties
Latency and bandwidth are different. Latency is the time it takes for an internet packet to get from your computer to an internet server and back again in milliseconds (ms). Bandwith measures the capacity of the connection to handle a volume of internet packets in a given time, often measured in kilobits, megabits or gigabits per per second (Kbps/Mbps/Gbps).
I don't expect the new lane on the M1 to make any difference to how long it takes me to get from Richmond to Luton. Although the bandwidth of the M1 is increasing, there is still a high latency because of bottlenecks on the A406 North Circular.
One of the main causes of poor CRM performance is the latency of your internet connection. The lower the latency (measured in milliseconds), the better the CRM performance.
To check the latency of your internet connection:
- Click Start > Run
- Type cmd
- Type ping addictivecrm.com
If you experience high latency, you may wish to consider a site-to-site virtual private network connection between your network and our data centre. There is a small additional charge for this service, but the effects can be quite dramatic.
If the latency of your interent connection is low, the bandwidth of your internet connection can become an issue if there are lots of people sharing your internet connection. Other users might be downloading files and sending and receiving emails while you're trying to use hosted CRM (or they might even be using Facebook, or streaming Classic FM or BBC iPlayer instead of working!).
If you are using an ADSL connection, it's likely that you are sharing this connection with other customers nearby. This is called contention and contention rates of 20:1 or even 50:1 are not uncommon, particularly if you are using a residential service. This might affect the performance of your CRM system, but check the latency first.
To check the bandwidth, try using SpeedTest and connecting to the London server. Speedtest will show you the upload and download speeds and the latency. These might be different from the speeds advertised by your ISP, and if so, you shuld have a word with your provider.
At Increase CRM lab in Richmond, we have a 10Mbps leased line connection to the internet and a site-to-site VPN between our firewall and the Rackspace data centre. A leased line means a dedicated line with no contention. Our latency to the hosted CRM platform is 9 to 11ms.
3. Add the CRM web site to your Trusted Sites
We encrypt your CRM communications using SSL (secure socket layer), so you should consider configuring Internet Explorer to recognise your CRM web site as 'trusted site'.
To add your CRM website to your trusted sites in Internet Explorer:
- In Internet Explorer, click Tools > Internet Options
- On the Security tab, click Trusted Sites
- Click on the Sites button
- Type https://*.addictivecrm.com/ in the Add this website to this zone field
- Click Close
- On the Security tab, set the Security level for this zone to Low
- Click OK
The cache in Internet Explorer is where frequently used web content is stored so that your computer displays the content quickly (otherwise the content has to be downloaded again from the web server). You can increase the size of the cache to improve performance.
To increase the size of your Internet Explorer cache:
- In Internet Explorer 7, click Tools > Internet Options
- On the General tab, in the Browsing history section, click Settings
- Set the Disk space to use to 250 and click OK
- Click OK
Some desktop security software is known to cause performance issues with web-based applications such as Microsoft Dynamics CRM.
In particular, we found that lots of McAfee anti-virus and firewall software products have a feature called ScriptScan which scans all web pages for malicious JavaScript. Just like the security gates at Heathrow airport, this causes long, frustrating delays.
We recommend you disable the McAfee Script Scan feature or replace the McAfee product with another security product. But please speak to your IT manager before disabling or removing any security software from your computer!
6. Automatically send CRM error messages to Microsoft
Even now and again there are problem loading a script and an error message pops up. Most of the time it's easier if these error messages are automatically sent to Microsoft.
To automatically send error messages to Microsoft:
- In the CRM 4.0 web client, select Tools > Options
- Click on the Privacy tab
- Select Automatically send an error report to Microsoft without asking me for permission
- Click OK
If you are still using Internet Explorer 6.0, we advise you to upgrade to Internet Explorer 7. (But don't go too far just yet, Internet Explorer 8 is coming soon, but it is still a beta product and there are known issues with IE8.0 beta 2 and Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0.)
So there you have it: seven top tips for improving the performance of hosted Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 web client. If you've got any more tips you'd like to add, please let us know and we'll update the article after we've tested them out.
