Each CRM organization has two names associated with it:
The Friendly Name
This is the name that is displayed in the user interface:
The Unique Name
This is the name of the database and can be found on the Developer Resources page, under Settings, Customization:
The CRM Discover Service contains a message called: RetrieveOrganizationsRequest which allows you to retrieve all of the CRM organizations to which you have access.
Many developers, myself included, use this feature to allow a user to select and connect to a specific CRM organization.
The Problem
This week I noticed that the information found on the Developer Resources page did not match up to the information returned in the RetrieveOrganizationResponse object.
So, if you provide instructions to your end-users on how to retrieve their Organization Unique Name, there is a possibility that the information they provide and the information your application has access to will not be the same.
In my case, I use the unique name for licensing purposes and such a mismatch would cause a licensing failure which would limit or disable product functionality.
The Solution
It is my guess that a change was made recently to CRM Online so that the unique name actually matches the URL name, as you can see below:
As of today, that is the unique name being returned when I query my organization.
An article for CRM Online 4.0 talks about a similar circumstance back in 2009:
I am not sure if a similar scenario with CRM 2011 applies, but it sure looks like it to me.
Over the past couple of years, we’ve seen the following possible values returned:
- The unique name as shown in the user interface
- The URL name
- The Friendly Name ( rare but occasional cases )
Note: this does not seem to be an issue with CRM On-premise.
So, if you are a developer and you are retrieving organizational information, keep in mind that the information you receive may or may not be what you expect.
