I was upgrading a Dynamics CRM 2011 system last week and ran into an issue when attempting to import a solution that contained my Entity, Form, and JavaScript changes.
Invalid column name 'EntityName'
After looking around and finally asking for help from my fellow MVPs, Joel Lindstrom suggested the CRM community forum thread:
CRM 2015: Generic SQL error – Invalid column name 'EntityName'. Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Which pointed to this thread as well:
CRM 2015 – Error after update 0.1
Root Cause
It turns out that the .01 update was “possibly” partially applied to the organization that I was attempting to upgrade. That first forum thread started off discussing the importation of a solution, which was my issue, but also mentioned that the available upgrade for the organization was available, but could not be applied. The options seemed to be:
- Wait for the .02 release, which fixes the problem.
- Call Microsoft and ask for the hotfix.
- Run a very scary set of manual steps to correct the issue.
Solution
The solution to the issue is the modification of an XML file that ships with the Dynamics CRM software and the manual creation of some databases indexes.
I performed these very scary set of steps, successfully updated the organization database, and then was able to successfully import my solution.
Final Thoughts
I encountered the error performing a trial-run of the upgrade process on Friday. When I performed the actual upgrade process itself, on Saturday, I did not encounter the issue at all. Looking at the organization database within the Deployment Manager, I see that the second organization import upgraded the database to 7.0.1.xxxx as expected.
I have no idea what would cause it to fail one time and succeed the other.
Image may be NSFW.Clik here to view.
