Category: Onpremise

Deep insight – All about adding Indexes and monitoring performance in Dynamics CRM

Hello,

Have you had a situation in Dynamics CRM where you need to delete some particular entity records satisfying some conditions using advanced find.

We have experienced a similar issue where in we were unable to delete records created in a Custom entity added into system created few mins. back. Even we were unable to find much complex relationships with other entities too. However the new records created were too not getting deleted using advanced find, even deletes from form also.

Verified and came to know that there weren’t any indexes available on that particular table. We added indexes on the columns on which we were retrieving data in advanced find and this solved our problem to delete the records created.

So here are few more tips about adding indexes in MS CRM. Don’t worry adding indexes on tables, columns or views is completely supported customization. However removing OOB indexes is not supported.

See this for more info.

Please check the below link to verify the system jobs which would run on a timely basis in Ms CRM on premise versions. These are configured during installation and are designed to optimize the database and reduce fragmentation. It’s good practice to re-configure these jobs to run out-of-hours.

Check the job editor available for versions starting with 2011 till 2016.

This job goes directly to the MSCRM_CONFIG database to update ScaleGroupOrganizationMaintenanceJobs table.

OOB jobs in Onpremise 

Check by running below queries

Verify if you need these jobs to run more often, you can monitor fragmentation with the following queries:

SELECT OBJECT_NAME(OBJECT_ID), index_id,index_type_desc,index_level,
avg_fragmentation_in_percent,avg_page_space_used_in_percent,page_count
FROM sys.dm_db_index_physical_stats
(DB_ID(N'ORG_MSCRM'), NULL, NULL, NULL , 'SAMPLED')
ORDER BY avg_fragmentation_in_percent DESC

Or you can be more specific at the table level

SELECT avg_fragmentation_in_percent,* FROM
sys.dm_db_index_physical_stats ( db_id('ORG_MSCRM'),
OBJECT_ID('PrincipalObjectAccess'), NULL, NULL, 'DETAILED')

Utilize DMV(Data Management views):

Dynamic management views store SQL transactional information which can be used to monitor health, performance and diagnose problems. There are a number of DMV’s to retrieve a different number of metrics for different purposes; we will be looking in particular at the Index related and Execution DMV’s:

  • Index
    • sys.dm_db_index_operational_stats
    • sys.dm_db_index_physical_stats
    • sys.dm_db_index_usage_stats
    • sys.dm_db_missing_index_columns
    • sys.dm_db_missing_index_details
    • sys.dm_db_missing_index_group_stats
    • sys.dm_db_missing_index_groups
  • Execution
    • sys.dm_exec_query_stats
    • sys.dm_exec_requests

Index Usage
It’s important you check for Index usage because indexes consume memory and disk I/O resources when they need to be rebuild to keep the most up to date data.

To check for index usage run the following query, it’s important you check for Index usage because indexes consume memory and disk I/O resources when they need to be rebuild to keep the most up to date data.

select OBJECT_NAME(a.object_id),b.name,a.user_seeks,a.user_scans,a.*
from sys.dm_db_index_usage_stats a join ORG_MSCRM.sys.indexes b on
a.object_id = b.object_id
and a.index_id = b.index_id
where
a.database_id = DB_ID('ORG_MSCRM')
and b.name like 'myIndex%'
order by
b.name asc

The output of this query would be something like:

Jump

From the above screenshot is clear that _DMV_09 has not been used since it was created and therefore should be deleted.

Finding missing indexes:

Below a nice script you could use with references to missing indexes DMV’s

SELECT   migs.avg_total_user_cost * (migs.avg_user_impact / 100.0) * (migs.user_seeks + migs.user_scans) AS improvement_measure,   'CREATE INDEX [myIndex_' + CONVERT (varchar, mig.index_group_handle) + '_' + CONVERT (varchar, mid.index_handle)   + '_' + LEFT (PARSENAME(mid.statement, 1), 32) + ']'   + ' ON ' + mid.statement   + ' (' + ISNULL (mid.equality_columns,'')     + CASE WHEN mid.equality_columns IS NOT NULL AND mid.inequality_columns IS NOT NULL THEN ',' ELSE '' END     + ISNULL (mid.inequality_columns, '')   + ')'   + ISNULL (' INCLUDE (' + mid.included_columns + ')', '') AS create_index_statement,   migs.*, mid.database_id, mid.[object_id] FROM sys.dm_db_missing_index_groups mig INNER JOIN sys.dm_db_missing_index_group_stats migs ON migs.group_handle = mig.index_group_handle INNER JOIN sys.dm_db_missing_index_details mid ON mig.index_handle = mid.index_handle WHERE migs.avg_total_user_cost * (migs.avg_user_impact / 100.0) * (migs.user_seeks + migs.user_scans) > 10 ORDER BY migs.avg_total_user_cost * migs.avg_user_impact * (migs.user_seeks + migs.user_scans) DESC
Hope this helps someone figuring out to add indexes into their MS CRM table to improve the performance.
That’s it for today…hope you had enjoyed reading the blog…please share feedback on this…will come up with another interesting article next time.
Cheers,
PMDY

Change tracking solution for Dynamics 365

 Lets take a look at recently released feature for Dynamics 365 – Change tracking solution for Dynamics 365!!!

Large Microsoft Dynamics 365 organizations that synchronizes data with external systems uses change tracking. This feature was used to keep the integration system/data warehouse in Sync with CRM data.

Till now it would be difficult to find which System Administrators/System Customizers had made change to the system. It was difficult to track these details. However with this solution, which was built on Dynamics 365 and as works well on Dynamics CRM 2016 (Online/ On premises). Released to track data changes in a more efficient way.

This feature can track changes like who updated an entity, JavaScript, assemblies and processes along with the time of update. Changes made by System Adminstraors and Customizers will also be recorded.

How does Change tracking solution work?

This uses two plugins and batch job namely captures

  • Publish – User who had published the component, name and time of publish
  • Publish All – Captures when a set of components or solution was published
  • Assemblies & Workflows – This job runs every hour, capturing these changes and update in the change tracking entity.

Downloadable solution available at Change tracking solution for Developers. Please do note that this change tracking solution works for Dynamics 365 On Premise and Online Version both. However there is also an add on that can be installed on your instance using this link.

User guide for Admins

Change tracking user guide

Hope this helps…!!!