I sometimes get emails or phone calls from clients mentioning that they are finding Dynamics CRM seems slow. Despite the raw computing power of the Azure backend, physical limitations still play a role in technology. It may be the overall distance of hundreds or even thousands of miles that data needs to be transmitted. It could also be related to other implications such as bandwidth and speed. For local onprem, it could mean underpowered hardware or other hw/sw issues. Maybe you got a lot of code sorting through a lot of data.
As a first step, I always suggest to load the Dynamics CRM Diagnostics page. This has been documented from Microsoft and various blogs, however this still doesn’t seem to be a well known tool for measuring CRM performance.
Its very easy, all you need to do is navigate to the following URL:
https://<>/tools/diagnostics/diag.aspx
You will need to login with your CRM credentials. Note that you may get an error message, just refresh the page.
When the page appears, hit the “RUN” button for results:
The 2 numbers I will look at is the “Latency Test” and “Bandwidth Test”. You want low latency and high bandwidth.
Microsoft suggests that you ideally should get 150 ms or less. I think for CRM to run well, you would hope for 100 ms or less. (Note that my system showed 200 ms!)
I would suggest running a few tests to see if there is a consistent pattern. Even if CRM is running fine, you may want to capture those details for later comparison. Speeds will vary based on time of day and potentially other activity happening on your network.
If you support multiple Dynamics CRM deployments, you can add a CRM Bookmarklet that will work based on which CRM you are logged into (just paste this into a browser favourite):
javascript: (function () { var form = $("iframe").filter(function () { return $(this).css("visibility") == "visible" })[0].contentWindow; window.open(form.Xrm.Page.context.getClientUrl() + "/tools/diagnostics/diag.aspx"); })();
Sometimes comparing different CRM deployments could help determine if there is an issue or not.
Once you have collected a series of results, you can determine if you need to take further action.
Some basic suggestions:
For CRM Online:
- Do you need to improve your internet speed? (If you are using dial-up, its time to upgrade)
- Are there other actions happening that are taking up bandwidth? (Anyone on the network streaming hi-def Netflix?)
- Is your CRM online in a data center that might not be geographically the “closest”? See my posting on the MSCRM Debug page to determine which data center your CRM system is located.
- Do you have custom code running processes on large amounts of data?
CRM onprem:
- Does your supporting hardware and software support your CRM deployment?
- Are there any heavy processes running?
There may be other reasons, but having the hard data measurements of your CRM speed go along way in diagnosing and resolving the issue.
Cheers
Nick
Related Reading:
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/mt269872.aspx
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