Manually Repairing a Sitemap. Part 1

As I mentioned a couple of week ago, my upgrade from CRM 2013 to CRM 2015 did not go well. One of the issues is my SiteMap was totally broken and I had to replace it with the “default.”

The only problem was I wiped out the custom entries for my marketing package, Click Dimensions.

No problem, I thought, I’ll just add the solution back.  Except that did not work.  I ran into ghost SiteMap entries from a previously remove solution. This required a call to Microsoft Support to get them corrected.

Once corrected, I was successfully able to import the solution.  Except there were no custom SiteMap entries.

Only only solution in this case is to manually add them, which involves this process:

The Process

1. Create a new solution.

2. Add the SiteMap to the solution.

3. Export the solution as unmanaged.

4. Unzip the solution files.

5. Take the solution file from the package you are attempting to import and unzip it as well.

6. Open the customization.xml file from step 4 in an editor like Visual Studio or Notepad++.

7. Open the customization.xml file from step 5 in an editor like Visual Studio or Notepad++.

8. Copy the information from the step 7 SiteMap and paste it into the proper location within the step 6 SiteMap.

9. You will need to remove some XML attributes that are specific to the Solution Import process. Here is an example:

<Group Id="Extensions" ResourceId="Group_Extensions" ordinalvalue="5" solutionaction="Added" />

You need to remove the any reference to ordianvalue and solutionaction.

10. Save the step 6 customization.xml file.

11. Re-Zip the files from step 4.

12. Import the solution back into CRM.

13. Refresh your browser and see if the SiteMap changes worked.

Things to Know

I did not get into great detail about the SiteMap itself because you really have to understand how it is organized and all of the components that are involved. If you do not understand these things, you can damage the SiteMap and render your CRM system inaccessible.

Before you start anything like this, please know and understand what you are doing.  See the references below.

If all else fails, open a case with Microsoft.

References

Edit the site map

SiteMap XML reference