Yet Another MS Dynamics CRM blog

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 – Role Based Forms

2011-07-18T02:54:00.000-07:00

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 – Role Based Forms (Courtesy : http://www.powerobjects.com/blog/2010/12/07/microsoft-dynamics-crm-2011-role-based-forms/)

Another exciting new feature in CRM 2011, is the ability to have different forms for different security roles. For Example: You may want the Account form show different fields, for different security roles to maximize the important information that is displayed for each role.
Each Entity has two forms created by default: A “Main” Form and a “Mobile” Form. (Mobile Express)
By Default, the “Main” form is set so that all security rolls use this form whenever they access the Entity. However, with a few minor changes, additional Forms can be created to Rearrange/Add or Remove Information to maximize productivity for different users in CRM.
Let’s take a look at the Account Form.... Read More

CRM 2011 Useful JavaScript tidbits

2011-06-07T09:19:00.000-07:00

http://www.powerobjects.com/blog/2011/01/14/crm-2011-useful-javascript-tidbits/

Get the value from a CRM field

var varMyValue = Xrm.Page.getAttribute(“CRMFieldSchemaName”).getValue() ;

Set the value of a CRM field

Xrm.Page.getAttribute(“po_CRMFieldSchemaName”).setValue(‘My New Value’);

Hide/Show a tab/section

Xrm.Page.ui.tabs.get(5).SetVisible(false);
Xrm.Page.ui.tabs.get(5).SetVisible(true);

Call the onchange event of a field

Xrm.Page.getAttribute(“CRMFieldSchemaName”).fireOnChange();

Get the selected value of picklist

Xrm.Page.getAttribute(“CRMFieldSchemaName”).getSelectedOption().text;

Set the requirement level

Xrm.Page.getAttribute(“CRMFieldSchemaName”).setRequiredLevel(“none”);
Xrm.Page.getAttribute(“CRMFieldSchemaName”).setRequiredLevel(“required”);
Xrm.Page.getAttribute(“CRMFieldSchemaName”).setRequiredLevel(“recommended”);

Set the focus to a field

Xrm.Page.getControl(“CRMFieldSchemaName”).setFocus(true);

Stop an on save event

event.returnValue = false;

Return array of strings of users security role GUIDs:

Xrm.Page.context.getUserRoles()

Hide/Show Tabs and Sections

function setVisibleTabSection(tabname, sectionname, show)

var tab = Xrm.Page.ui.tabs.get(tabname);

if (tab != null)

if (sectionname == null)

tab.setVisible(show);

else {

var section = tab.sections.get(sectionname);

if (section != null)

section.setVisible(show);

if (show)

tab.setVisible(show);

CRM 2011 VPC FOR PARTNERSOURCE ( HYPER-V 2008 R2 ONLY)

2011-06-01T08:15:00.000-07:00

Microsoft have launched virtual image of CRM 2011 server, it is available for partners from the link below. Please be aware that it will NOT run on Virtual PC 2007 or any of its variants.

https://mbs.microsoft.com/Cms/Templates/document/General.aspx?NRMODE=Published&NRNODEGUID={060C9677-229D-49E1-9F00-95E56D9F1657}&NRORIGINALURL=/partnersource/deployment/methodology/vpc/MSD_CRM2011VirtualMachine&NRCACHEHINT=Guest&w&wa=wsignin1.0

This VHD is made to run on hyper-v server 2008 R2 only so make sure you can setup this version of Hyper-V which requires x64 hardware as one of its requirements amongst others.

Display Order of Left Nav links in entity forms

2011-05-05T16:50:00.000-07:00

Hi,
Ever wanted to change the order in which entity's related links appear in left nav.

For example, in this screen below, Account's related entities (1 to Many / Many to Many) are shown in the order :

Information
More Addresses
Activities
....
Workflows
Customer Engagements
eService Audit ...

It is important to note that you can only change the display order of 1 to many relationships created by users , i.e Custom and not System relationships like Activities, Contacts, Quotes etc.

To change the display order of custom relationships links in our case is

Customer Engagements on top of eService Audit to the other way round.

In order to do this, open the relationship in customizations, change the default Display order value 10000 to a higher value of 10100 or 11000 so that this relation will now look below the other and hence you will be able to change the order.

Save the relationship and publish the entity. Reopen the record and now you will see the display order changed as per our need.

Life and Technology: How to: Create a Custom Entity Using Jscript or .N...

2011-05-03T15:44:00.000-07:00

Life and Technology: How to: Create a Custom Entity Using Jscript or .N...: "Here is a quick demo on how to utilize the CreateEntity message of the CRM 2011 Organization service in both C# and Jscript. This illustra..."

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Launched for On premise and Partner hosted

2011-02-17T02:51:00.000-08:00

[ Source : Microsoft ]

REDMOND, Wash. — Feb. 16, 2011 — Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq “MSFT”) today announced that Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 for on-premises and partner-hosted deployments has been completed and released for customer download. This release complements the latest version of Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online, which delivers Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 as an on-demand service from Microsoft’s datacenters and was launched into 40 markets and 41 languages in January. With a single multitenant code base across cloud and on-premises deployment models, Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 delivers the Power of Productivity to sales, service and marketing organizations worldwide.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 is now globally available and existing customers with active Microsoft Software Assurance agreements can access the new version immediately via the Microsoft Download Center. ( http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=c3f82c6f-c123-4e80-b9b2-ee422a16b91d ).

Read the rest of the press release here: http://www.microsoft.com/Presspass/press/2011/feb11/02-16OnPremisesPR.mspx

What's New in CRM 2011

2010-10-04T03:39:00.001-07:00

From Microsoft Online Resource Center

Improved Microsoft Office interface

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 introduces a new Office 2010 contextual ribbon for the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online and Microsoft Dynamics CRM browser clients and for Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online for Microsoft Office Outlook. The new ribbon delivers a consistent, familiar navigation and user experience that helps you better integrate Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online with your Office 2010 environment.

Advanced user personalization

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 lets you configure a workspace that is personalized to meet your unique role and information needs. Personalizing a workspace means that you can set the default pane and tab that display when you open Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online. You also have control over what links appear in the workplace view, how many records appear in lists, how numbers and dates display, and the language for your user interface. Combine this personalization with the new dashboard feature to create a personalized dashboard for your default view.

Role-based forms and views

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 displays forms and views based on user roles. This role-tailored design ensures that the business professionals in your organization have fast access to the relevant information they need. Role-based forms and views also prevent users from viewing data that they are not authorized to view.

Inline data visualization

In Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011, you can quickly create and share inline charts with drill-down intelligence. Using these charts, you can visually navigate data and uncover new insights that contribute to your organization's success. View the charts you create from the main list of records or from the list of associated records for an individual record. Share your charts with other users or teams in the organization. Import charts created by other users into your records.

Dashboards

Dashboards are a powerful feature in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011. Use a dashboard to see at a glance all the important information you need to make key business decisions every day. Assemble and present information from several places in Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online in a quickly-read format. This means that you do not have to search multiple areas for the information you want. Dashboards are easy to create, and are easy to revise as your changing business needs require.

Better Office Outlook experience

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 improves the integration of Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online into Microsoft Office Outlook with the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online for Microsoft Office Outlook. It takes full advantage of native Outlook functionality, such as previews and conditional formatting, and presents Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online areas as sub-folders in Outlook mail folders. With a few exceptions, these Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online areas in Outlook include all of the same functionality as the browser clients.

Contextual document management

If your organization uses Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010, you can easily manage documents that are related to records within a particular entity. Using Windows SharePoint as your document depository, the seamless interface in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 allows you to quickly add and edit documents that are associated with a particular record. When you set up document management, Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online creates the structure on your Windows SharePoint site that works with the entities and records that you want for document management.

Goal management

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 gives you the ability to define key performance and business health indicators. This way you can track and measure results against your organization's goals or metrics. Easily and quickly define goals for a campaign or fiscal period. Combine smaller goals, such as for specific teams or territories, into the overall goals for your organization. Create a rollup of all the goals into the actuals that show how you are tracking.

Interactuve process dialogs

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 expands its workflow capability by adding interactive dialogs. Dialogs present a consistent message to your customers. Also, dialogs collect and process information by using step-by-step scripts to direct users through every process. At one level, you can use dialogs to guide customer interactions and internal processes. At another level, you can increase dialog performance and versatility by incorporating workflow logic. This logic invokes automated tasks by using the responses a customer or user makes during the dialog script.

Cloud development

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 is at the leading edge of cloud computing. Developers can take advantage of the Windows Azure platform platform to develop and deploy custom code for Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online using powerful tools, such as Microsoft Visual Studio. Using the Microsoft .NET Framework 4.0, developers can also incorporate Microsoft Silverlight, Windows Communication Foundation, and .NET Language Integrated Query (LINQ) into their cloud solutions. Cloud development for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 is a powerful tool for customizing your Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online solution for optimal performance and business results.

Solution management

Solutions in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 are a new way to save customizations and share them with other users. You can create a solution or import a solution created by a developer outside your organization. It is easy to share a solution with other users. A managed solution can be edited only by specific users. An unmanaged solution can be edited by any user with an appropriate user role. A solution can have version numbering, relationships with entities and other components, and security features based on user roles.

Microsoft Dynamics Marketplace

Microsoft Dynamics Marketplace is your online solutions catalog. These solutions help you accelerate and extend your Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online implementation.

Quickly discover and apply industry-specific applications and extensions from Microsoft and its partners. Then, Marketplace distributes your solution directly to you.

Microsoft Dynamics Marketplace is fully integrated with Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011. Find your solution directly from Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online.

Summary

The new and enhanced features in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 offer new levels of user productivity and collaboration. These features help you meet your specific business needs with a low total cost of ownership. Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 delivers familiar, intelligent, and connected experiences to increase the productivity and effectiveness of people inside and outside your organization.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 unlocks new opportunities and provides a single development environment for cloud-based and on-premise deployments. Partners, including independent software vendors, global system integrators, and value-added resellers, can quickly create, package, and distribute Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online extensions and custom solutions.

Recent Pages in CRM 2011 beta, much awaited

2010-09-27T01:48:00.000-07:00

What's been inherent in other conventional CRM software products and missing in feature rich new age MS CRM was an area where you can see what pages/records/links you accessed last, which is now available in CRM 2011 beta.

Using MS CRM Calendar in your custom ASP .NET pages * Not fully Supported Customisations *

2010-05-26T13:47:00.000-07:00

Hi,
Have you been creating custom pages in line with MS CRM for creating , viewing and updating entity records ? Have you placed controls such as Date picker Lookup on your custom page and have tried in vein to make those look like MS CRM ?

I found a way to use the same MS CRM calendar control as it appears in the application...

For getting this calendar on your asp .net page, follow the steps below:

1) Create a copy of the date.js javascript file located in your-server/crmsite-folder/_static/_controls/datetime folder, give the copy some name like date_myapp.js.

2) Open the following .js files from different sub folders in side the your-server/crmsite-folder/_static
folder :

Global.js
encodedecode.js
xmlutil.js
util.js
remotecommand.js

Copy and whole content of each file one by one and keep pasting the same to the end of your date_myapp.js file.

3) Now open any CRM entity record page, for example a new Account create page, view its source and copy all the constant declaration lines :

or, copy the lines as below and paste to the very beginning of your date_myapp.js file
//-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

var LOCID_SELECTBOX_BUTTON_ALT = "Display list of options";
var LOCID_CLOSE_BUTTON_LABEL = "Close";
var LOCID_POPUP_MENU_LABEL = "\x7b0\x7d Menu";
var LOCID_DEVERROR_BADTYPE_STRING = "This control only accepts strings or null as an input.";
var LOCID_DEVERROR_TOO_LONG = "The text entered exceeds the maximum length.";
var LOCID_LU_SELECT_VALUE_FOR = "Click to select a value for \x7b0\x7d.";
var LOCID_LU_SELECT_VALUE = "Click to select a value.";
var LOCID_LU_ERROR_RESOLVED = "There was an error while trying to resolve the typed in text. Please use the lookup dialog to set the value.";
var LOCID_LU_MSG_HASUNRESOLVEDITEMS = "The Lookup could not be resolved to a record in the system. You must select the record for the system to use before you can save.";
var LOCID_LU_LOOKUPUNRESOLVEDTOOLTIP = "No matches were found";
var LOCID_LU_LOOKUPAMBIGUOUSTOOLTIP = "More than one match was found";
var LOCID_DEVERROR_BADTYPE_PICKLIST = "This control only accepts strings, integers, or null as an input.";
var LOCID_DATE_SELECT_DATE = "Select date";
var LOCID_BOOL_SUPPORTED_VALUES = "This control only supports true, false, or null as an input.";
var LOCID_EXCEEDED_MAX_CHARS_MASK = "You have exceeded the maximum number of \x7b0\x7d characters in this field\x3b it will be truncated.";
var LOCID_LOADING_NOTES_DATA = "Loading...";
var LOCID_NOTEAREA_TITLE = "Note";
var LOCID_FORM_REQUIRED_BKG_COLOR = "";
var LOCID_FORM_REQUIRED_ALT = "Required";
var LOCID_COPY_SHORTCUT_ERROR = "The shortcut could not be copied to the clipboard.";
var LOCID_UI_DIR = "LTR";
var LOCID_AM_DESIGNATOR = "AM";
var LOCID_PM_DESIGNATOR = "PM";
var LOCID_FIRST_WEEK_SELECT = "FirstDay";
var LOCID_NO_SELECTION = "You must select at least one time slot from the calendar.";
var LOCID_TREE_PLUS = "Collapsed, click to expand";
var LOCID_TREE_MINUS = "Expanded, click to collapse";
var LOCID_RELATEDINFO_DATALOADING = "Loading...";
var LOCID_RELATEDINFO_NORESULTS = "No results found.";
var LOCID_RELATEDINFO_FLWUP_OK = "Successfully created \x7b0\x7d \x7b1\x7d";
var LOCID_RELATEDINFO_FLWUP_SUBJ = "Follow Up\x3a \x7b0\x7d";
var LOCID_RELATEDINFO_EXPAND = "Click to open Form Assistant \x28CTRL-SHIFT-F\x29";
var LOCID_RELATEDINFO_COLLAPSE = "Click to close Form Assistant \x28CTRL-SHIFT-F\x29";
var LOCID_RELATEDINFO_ENDSTARTERR = "You must specify an end time that happens after the start time.";
var LOCID_RELATEDINFO_TASKNOTREGOBJ = "Quick Campaigns cannot have Task as a Follow up activity";
var LOCID_UNRECOGNIZE_DOTC = "\x7b0\x7d is not a recognized Object type.";
var LOCID_XML_PROCESS_ERROR = "There was an error processing your request. Please wait and try again later.";
var LOCID_POPUP_BLOCKER_ERROR = "A Microsoft Dynamics CRM window was unable to open, and may have been blocked by a pop-up blocker. Please add this Microsoft Dynamics CRM server to the list of sites your pop-up blocker allows to open new windows\x3a";
var LOCID_BU_CANNOTDISABLE = "It has been detected that this operation would deactivate all remaining business units and cannot proceed.";
var LOCID_DIALOG_OFFSET_WIDTH = "0";
var LOCID_DIALOG_OFFSET_HEIGHT = "0";
var LOCID_ERROR_DIALOG_WIDTH = "550";
var LOCID_ERROR_DIALOG_HEIGHT = "260";
var LOCID_CONTRACTS_TDIALOG_WIDTH = "350";
var LOCID_CONTRACTS_TDIALOG_HEIGHT = "350";
var LOCID_MAX_RECORDS_ERROR = "The maximum number of records that can be selected for this action is 10.";
var LOCID_ERROR_INVALID_VIEW = "Shortcut for the selected view is not available.";
var LOCID_ARRAY_SHORT_MONTHS = "Jan,Feb,Mar,Apr,May,Jun,Jul,Aug,Sep,Oct,Nov,Dec,";
var LOCID_ARRAY_LONG_MONTHS = "January,February,March,April,May,June,July,August,September,October,November,December,";
var LOCID_ARRAY_SHORT_DAYS = "Sun,Mon,Tue,Wed,Thu,Fri,Sat";
var LOCID_ARRAY_SHORTEST_DAYS = "Su,Mo,Tu,We,Th,Fr,Sa";
var LOCID_ARRAY_LONG_DAYS = "Sunday,Monday,Tuesday,Wednesday,Thursday,Friday,Saturday";
var LOCID_SHOW_WEEK_CAL_WIDTH = "170";
var LOCID_NO_WEEK_CAL_WIDTH = "150";
var LOCID_CALENDAR_HEIGHT = "163";
var LOCID_TODAY_DATE_FORMAT_MASK = "Today\x3a \x7b0\x7d";
var LOCID_ALERT_ENTER_VALID_DATE = "The specified date format is invalid or the date is out of valid range. Enter a valid date in the format\x3a \x7b0\x7d";
var LOCID_ALERT_CALDATE_FAIL = "An error has happened in getting the date";
var LOCID_ALERT_ACTUAL_DATE_FAIL = "An error has happened getting the date";
var LOCID_YEAR_DISPLAYFORMAT = "\x7b0\x7d\x7b1\x7d";
var LOCID_SINGULAR_MINUTE = "minute";
var LOCID_PLURAL_MINUTE = "minutes";
var LOCID_SINGULAR_HOUR = "hour";
var LOCID_PLURAL_HOUR = "hours";
var LOCID_SINGULAR_DAY = "day";
var LOCID_PLURAL_DAY = "days";
var LOCID_VALID_DURATION = "You must enter a valid duration.";
var LOCID_ERROR_SAVE_DURATION = "Microsoft Dynamics CRM was unable to save the change to duration. Try changing the duration value again.";
var LOCID_1_MINUTE = "1 minute";
var LOCID_5_MINUTES = "5 minutes";
var LOCID_15_MINUTES = "15 minutes";
var LOCID_30_MINUTES = "30 minutes";
var LOCID_45_MINUTES = "45 minutes";
var LOCID_1_HOUR = "1 hour";
var LOCID_1_5_HOURS = "1.5 hours";
var LOCID_2_HOURS = "2 hours";
var LOCID_2_5_HOURS = "2.5 hours";
var LOCID_3_HOURS = "3 hours";
var LOCID_3_5_HOURS = "3.5 hours";
var LOCID_4_HOURS = "4 hours";
var LOCID_4_5_HOURS = "4.5 hours";
var LOCID_5_HOURS = "5 hours";
var LOCID_5_5_HOURS = "5.5 hours";
var LOCID_6_HOURS = "6 hours";
var LOCID_6_5_HOURS = "6.5 hours";
var LOCID_7_HOURS = "7 hours";
var LOCID_7_5_HOURS = "7.5 hours";
var LOCID_8_HOURS = "8 hours";
var LOCID_1_DAY = "1 day";
var LOCID_2_DAYS = "2 days";
var LOCID_3_DAYS = "3 days";
var LOCID_DURATION_BADTYPE = "This control only accepts integers between \x7b0\x7d and \x7b1\x7d or null as input.";
var LOCID_DURATION_NOSAVE = "Microsoft Dynamics CRM was unable to save the change to duration. Try changing the duration value again.";
var LOCID_ONE_MINUTE_MASK = "\x7b0\x7d minute";
var LOCID_N_MINUTES_MASK = "\x7b0\x7d minutes";
var LOCID_1_HOUR_MASK = "\x7b0\x7d hour";
var LOCID_N_HOURS_MASK = "\x7b0\x7d hours";
var LOCID_1_DAY_MASK = "\x7b0\x7d day";
var LOCID_N_DAYS_MASK = "\x7b0\x7d days";
var LOCID_DTM_BLANK_DATE_ERROR = "You must provide a date.";
var LOCID_DTM_BLANK_TIME_ERROR = "Enter a valid time.";
var LOCID_TIME_SEPARATOR = "\x3a";
var LOCID_LCID = "1033";
var LOCID_DATEPATTERN = "\x5e\x5cd\x5cd\x3f.\x5cd\x5cd\x3f.\x5cd\x5cd\x5cd\x5cd\x5cd\x3f";
var LOCID_FORMS_SAVE_CONFIRM_TITLE = "Your changes have not been saved. To stay on the page so that you can save your changes, click Cancel.";
var LOCID_FORM_PROIVE_VALUE_MASK = "You must provide a value for \x7b0\x7d.";
var LOCID_FORM_PRINT_DIRTY_MESSAGE = "This form has been changed and must be saved before printing.";
var LOCID_PLEASE_ENTER_SEARCH = "Please enter search criteria.";
var LOCID_NO_ASTERISK = "The search field cannot contain the asterisk \x28\x2a\x29 character. Remove any that are used and try again.";
var LOCID_NO_FULL_TEXT_SEARCH_OFFLIN = "This type of search is unavailable while Outlook is offline. Try browsing by subject or go online.";
var LOCID_LOOKUPSTYLE_NOT_SET = "Unknown lookup style. Check that your properties XML is set properly.";
var LOCID_LOOKMORERECORDS_AMBIGUOUS = "Look Up More Records";
var LOCID_LOOKUPAMBIGUOUSTITLE = "More than one match was found\x3a";
var LOCID_ENTER_VALID_NUMBER = "You must enter a valid number.";
var LOCID_SCHEDDLG_RSQUANTITYALL = "All";
var LOCID_SCHEDDLG_RSLEASTBUSY = "Least Busy";
var LOCID_SCHEDDLG_RSMOSTBUSY = "Most Busy";
var LOCID_SCHEDDLG_RSSITESAME = "The same site";
var LOCID_SCHEDDLG_RSSITEANY = "Any site";
var LOCID_SCHEDDLG_RSCUSTOM = "Custom";
var LOCID_SCHEDDLG_DISABLED_RES = "\x7b0\x7d \x28Disabled\x29";
var LOCID_SCHEDDLG_FMTNMCS = "Choose \x7b0\x7d \x28\x7b1\x7d\x29 From \x7b2\x7d";
var LOCID_SCHEDDLG_FMTNM_S = "Choose \x7b0\x7d From \x7b2\x7d";
var LOCID_SCHEDDLG_FMTNMC_ = "Choose \x7b0\x7d \x28\x7b1\x7d\x29";
var LOCID_SCHEDDLG_FMTNM__ = "Choose \x7b0\x7d";
var LOCID_REMOTECOMMAND_ERROR = "An error has occurred. Try this action again. If the problem continues, check the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Community for solutions or contact your organization\x27s Microsoft Dynamics CRM Administrator. Finally, you can contact Microsoft Support.";

var WEB_APP_URL = "";
var HELP_SKU = "OP";
var IS_LIVE = false;
var IS_PATHBASEDURLS = true;
var ORG_UNIQUE_NAME = "contoso";
var _ErrorCodesIsvAborted = "0x80040265";
var ScriptErrorReportingPreference = 1;
var ScriptErrorStatusBar = "Error on page.";
var _bPresenceEnabled = true;
var ORG_DATE_FORMATSTRING = "M\x2fd\x2fyyyy";
var ORG_IS_GREGORIANCALENDAR = false;
var ORG_DATE_SEPARATOR = "\x2f";
var ORG_DATE_START_DAY = 0;
var ORG_LANGUAGE_CODE = 1033;
var ORG_NUMBER_FORMAT_MASK = "\x23,\x23\x230.\x2a\x3b\x7e\x23,\x23\x230.\x2a";
var ORG_TIME_FORMAT = 0;
var ORG_SHOW_WEEK_NUMBER = false;
var ORG_NUMBER_DECIMAL_SEPARATOR = ".";
var ORG_NUMBER_GROUP_SEPARATOR = ",";
var SERVER_URL = "http\x3a\x2f\x2fcrmdev\x2fcontoso";
var AUTHENTICATION_TYPE = 0;
var CRM2007_WEBSERVICE_NS = "http\x3a\x2f\x2fschemas.microsoft.com\x2fcrm\x2f2007\x2fWebServices";
var CRM2007_CORETYPES_NS = "http\x3a\x2f\x2fschemas.microsoft.com\x2fcrm\x2f2007\x2fCoreTypes";
var ORG_TIMEZONE_OFFSET = 60;
var USER_DATE_FORMATSTRING = "M\x2fd\x2fyyyy";
var USER_IS_GREGORIANCALENDAR = true;
var USER_DATE_SEPARATOR = "\x2f";
var USER_DATE_FORMATTED_FORMATSTRING = "M\x2fd\x2fyyyy";
var DEFAULT_USER_NUMBER_FORMAT_MASK = "\x23,\x23\x230.\x2a\x3b\x7e\x23,\x23\x230.\x2a";
var USER_LANGUAGE_CODE = 1033;
var USER_HELP_LCID = "1033";
var USER_NUMBER_FORMAT_MASK = "\x23,\x23\x230.\x2a\x3b\x7e\x23,\x23\x230.\x2a";
var USER_TIME_FORMAT = "h\x3amm tt";
var USER_SHOW_WEEK_NUMBER = false;
var USER_NUMBER_DECIMAL_SEPARATOR = ".";
var USER_NUMBER_GROUP_SEPARATOR = ",";
var HELP_SERVER_URL = "";
//-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

4) Out of these lines, observer the 2 variables : ORG_UNIQUE_NAME and SERVER_URL , and you can see in the above case, the organisation name is contoso you will have to hard code the values of these 2 variables by your organisation name.


5)  Find this line in the entire date_myapp.js

       <  Something >   = LocalDateTimeNow();
and replace the function call ,
         <  Something >   =  new Date(); //LocalDateTimeNow();

PS : Just a little note on common sense, while searching just search "LocalDateTimeNow();"

6)  
         search for this line or a part of it in your date related javascript file : date_.js
             var sCommandNamespace = _sWebServicesNamespace;
         comment this line and add this line ;
            var sCommandNamespace = "http://schemas.microsoft.com/crm/2006/WebServices"; //_sWebServicesNamespace;

7)  Also ,you may get another error related to _awrpc token not found, let me know if that happens, if so, simply go to your js file, search 
     1) function SetCrmWrpcToken(sUrl, sToken, sTimestamp) {
         and comment whole of tihs function's contents,
     2)  in this function :
        function GetCrmWrpcToken(sUrl) {
        add return null; as the first line of this function body.
8)

  Now Add a Textbox and an Image in your application,

   Write the following javascript function onclick of the image.

function showCRMCalendar() {     
                  InitCalendar("M/d/yyyy", "/", 0, null, null);             LaunchCalendar(document.getElementById('TextBox1'), new Date(), 1, false, null, null, 1, new Date());        
 }

9)

       One final note on security context, your custom file , default.aspx or mypage.html must be           in ISV folder and must be accessed with the notion :  http://crmserver/isv/folder/default.aspx

and that's it, you will see the same MSCRM style calendar in your app !!

YOU HAVE MORE REASON TO BE HAPPY THAT WE HAVE ADDED THE SOURCE CODE NOW, FIND HERE AT :

Get MSCRM Calendar in your custom application

Change Section name at runtime using Javascript

2010-05-18T15:27:00.000-07:00

How many times you wanted to show/hide fields based on some load/save/change event in CRM and you did that with ease. Now I wonder you would have thought of changing the name of a Section as well that appears with a separator bar on top of each block of fields.

In order to do that, here is a sample code :

crmForm.all..parentElement.parentElement.parentElement.children[0].childNodes[0].innerText="Your text";

Add more than 8 tabs on CRM form : * Unsupported Customization **

2010-03-12T03:26:00.000-08:00

Hi,
Everyone of us who have used MS CRM would have noticed that you can't create more than 8 tabs on a form.
There is a way to overcome this and add more tabs or limit that to less tabs.

As suggested in Microsoft CRM Resource center tips, this is how you do it :

In: C:\Program Files\Microsoft CRM Server\CRMWeb\Tools\FormEditor find your formeditor.aspx and select edit. Find the JavaScript variable _iMaxTabs and notice that it is set to 8. Change the value to your desired limitation, save and close, reset IIS and you should then be able to create the additional tabs needed from within the forms customization area.

Remember you are editing MS CRM code page hence it is NOT a supported customization.

Microsoft reuse windows media player toolbar in Windows 7

2010-03-05T06:27:00.000-08:00

Those who have been using Windows Media Player would have experienced one thing over time, when you click on the little up-down arrow heads on the right, you could see a thumbnail live view of the current movie you were playing.

This had been since Window XP and now Microsoft have copy-pasted this code to show live preview of each taskbar window like a folder, browser session, office documents and every possible item you can open and appear in task bar.

Those of you who haven't seen Windows 7, this is how taskbar preview looks like :

Vista Sidebar Gadget for MS CRM

2010-03-01T04:53:00.000-08:00

Hi,
Recently I was looking for any Vista sidebar gadgets that would show MS CRM elements or list of data like Accounts, Contacts or Activites.

I found an MSDN article (Monitoring Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Queues with a Windows Sidebar Gadget) on the same that explains creating a MS CRM Gadget for Vista sidebar and also a couple of gadgets on Vista gadget library and tried CRM Watchman, which is really good.

http://gallery.live.com/liveItemDetail.aspx?li=fc9cedb3-6339-4333-8a96-e5624bcafd74&bt=1&pl=1
Download the gadget by following the above link

Enter CRM Server name or IP address and your credentials.

You will see a list of all Activites in CRM, clicking on them takes you to the activity view in browser.

Import MS CRM Product Catalog : Step by Step Part 1

2010-02-25T06:34:00.000-08:00

Hi,

Imagine you are working on a project where the client's business has hundreds of products such as a Telecommunication company. When you ask for a list of products they deal with, they give you lengthy brocures with rates, tariffs etc. How would you go about transforming those flashy brochures into MS CRM Products with different categories, product lines, price bundles etc.

Here I describe a step by step technique to import your whole Product Catalog that includes Units, Unit Groups, Products and Pricelists.

> Gather a list of all possible categories, types, map those into one or more MS CRM fields on Product entity : example Product Type, Subject etc.

* Subject can be really useful in terms of grouping products for Knowledge base articles and Cases are you would generate Cases for select Product; and Sales Literature categoriazation.

> List down those categories in a CSV file, import Sujbects, refer to one of my previous posts on this.

> List all the Unit groups and individual Units for each unit group and transfer those into MS CRM Unit Groups and Units using Import tool.

> Create a list of Product names, codes etc. organize the details into a single CSV file and Import it.

> Create Price lists for different currencies and special occasions like Christmas, Thanks giving day and Customer classes : Gold, Premium etc.

> Now comes a tricky part, you have the Subjects, Units and Products linked to those and different Price lists, how do you generate Price list items ??

> For this create a CSV file with fields similar to those shown below :

Product Name (lookup) | Price Amount | Price list
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Product 1 | 45.56 | Rs.
Product 1 | 1 | US Dollars
Product 1 | 0.64 | Pound Sterling
Product 1 | 0.8 | US Dollars Thanks giving day Special

As you can see, you have to replicate rows for each different combination of Price amount, Price list type for the same Product.

> Once you have build this CSV file in the above format, Import it and your product catalogue is complete.

Drop a line if you need to contribute more to this, I will be posting a detailed article with screenshots and sample CSV files for you to try.

Setting up Service Scheduling in MS CRM

2010-02-21T18:07:00.000-08:00

The default MSCRM doesn't provide service scheduling by default, it needs to be set up and there are a number of steps involved as described below:

1) Create a Service, i.e. define a Service or a Job to be done
Go to MS CRM > Settings tab > Business Management > Services ( 3rd from top in the right side)

Click New to Create a new service, you can see existing services in the list below

Give name to the Service, choose how the time will appear in Calendar against that Service when scheduled,

Default duration is usual time take to perform the service which is editable at the time of booking the Service
Start activities every ... lets you define time slots for the entire day for the Service , for example : for a service with default duration of 30 mins and start activities every hour starting from 9 AM will have time slots such as : 9-9:30 , 10-10:10 like wise, hence it wont be possible to choose a 9:30-10 slot which may be the norm as per organization standards.

Once you have entered the Service details, create a Resource Selection rule which is used to specify :

How many people are required to perform this task, ex. 2 or 3 engineers
Whether they need to belong the same geographic region

Click on one of the parameters : Site , Resource, Resource Group etc, which will give the following pop up

After choosing number of people and location details, choose a group of workforce - users who can work to perform this Service

If you have not created a Resource group, you can create one while creating the resource selection rule, this will help to make it easy to add or remove users from the group

2) Set work hours and break timings for the workforce, i.e. CRM users.
Go to : Settings > Administration > Users > Select and open a user >
Click on "Work Hours" from the left nav link

Click on Set weekly schedule, choose What days the person works,

Add Start and Finish timings routine, add break time in between

Specify any restriction this staff has on the service jobs they can perform, ex. in this case, Darshana Goswami can not do TV Delivery.

3) After setting up workforce - user's working hours and Service & Resource rules, create a service activity and Schedule it

Go to MS CRM Workplace > Activities > New > Service Activity

Choose the Service, Customer, Resources ( will appear as per resource selection rule for the service on the right side on form assistant)

Click on Schedule button to schedule this Service Activity

Select one more resources based on the resource selection rule, clicking in find available time will automatically show all the possible time slots and un-booked resources

Choose one of the time slots, Save the Service Activity

The service activity will appear in Service Calendar for the booked resource -staff.

hope this helps, let me know of any questions.

MS Excel 2010 Beta limitations

2010-01-19T03:49:00.000-08:00

Hi, I was copying the result of a query on a large table in SQL database and on pasting those in Excel 2010 Beta, this is the message I found :

This message can appear due to one of the following:
The file contains more than 1,048,576 rows or 16,384 columns. To fix this problem, open the source file in a text editor such as Microsoft Word. Save the source file as several smaller files that conform to this row and column limit, and then open the smaller files in Microsoft Excel. If the source data cannot be opened in a text editor, try importing the data into Microsoft Access, and then exporting subsets of the data from Access to Excel.
The area that you are trying to paste the tab-delineated data into is too small. To fix this problem, select an area in the worksheet large enough to accommodate every delimited item.

• Excel cannot exceed the limit of 1,048,576 rows and 16,384 columns.
• By default, Excel places three worksheets in a workbook file. Each worksheet can contain 1,048,576 rows and 16,384 columns of data, and workbooks can contain more than three worksheets if your computer has enough memory to support the additional data.

Write In Products in Opportunity

2009-10-22T20:50:00.000-07:00

If you know the typical MS CRM sales module flow, it starts from Lead and Customers and flows through Opportunity, Quote, Order and Invoice, You might have noticed there are Existing and WriteIn products in Quote/Order/Invoice but no so in Opportunity.

This means we can not define write in products at the opportunity which can be pulled across when quote is generated out of it, and then this quote is subsequently converted to order and then invoice.

There is a supported way to implement WriteIn products functionality in MS CRM, here is the technical approach;

1) Create a custom opportunity-writein-products entity just like quoteproducts,orderproducts entities (The basic difference I found between opportunityproduct and quoteproduct or orderproduct is that the relationship with products is a system required in case of the former while no constraint in the later two.
2) One you have created that custom opportunity-writein-products entity, it shall appear as link in left nav of opportunity entity form, you can create records for this custom entity.
3) After that, when you click on create quote out of the opportunity, a plug-in would read all the records of opportunity-writein-products entity and will create appropriate quote-write-in products which is an existing entity quoteproducts.
4) Once we have got the write-in products from opportunity to quote with the help of such plugin, you can then carry on the normal operation of converting quote to order and the default functionality will pull those quote writein products into order as well.

Resolve case programmatically

2009-09-04T04:48:00.001-07:00

You have to create incidentresolution entity object and also then execute a CloseIncidentRequest, sample code looks like this:

incidentresolution objJobResolution = new incidentresolution();
objJobResolution.incidentid = new Lookup();
objJobResolution.incidentid.type = "incident";
objJobResolution.incidentid.Value = ; // Job id
objJobResolution.subject = "subject";

try
{
objCrmService.Create(objJobResolution);

CloseIncidentRequest closeJob = new CloseIncidentRequest();
closeJob.IncidentResolution = objJobResolution;
closeJob.Status = 5;

CloseIncidentResponse resp = (CloseIncidentResponse)objCrmService.Execute(closeJob);

}
catch (System.Web.Services.Protocols.SoapException soapEx)
{
continue;
}

Place Queue on other tabs

2009-07-02T04:26:00.000-07:00

By default, Queue area is only available on the Workplace tab in MS CRM, sometimes it becomes a pain to go to workplace tab click on queue and then go back to the tab where you were.

Here is a simple way to add Queue area on any tab or elsewhere, just update the sitemap or isv config and add the Queue area link to it, which is :

http:// your server / organization name //workplace/home_workplace.aspx

Call MS CRM Service through Javascript to retrieve records

2009-05-20T06:29:00.001-07:00

debugger;var gidLocationID = event.srcElement.DataValue[0].id;
var xml = "" + "" + "http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/\" xmlns:xsi=\"http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance\" xmlns:xsd=\"http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema\">" + " " + " http://schemas.microsoft.com/crm/2007/WebServices\">" + " 00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000http://schemas.microsoft.com/crm/2007/CoreTypes\">00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000>" + " " + " " + " " + " http://schemas.microsoft.com/crm/2007/WebServices\">" + " http://schemas.microsoft.com/crm/2006/Query\" xsi:type=\"q1:QueryExpression\">" + " **EntitySchemaname** " + " " + " " + " ** Attrbute Name 1**" + " >** Attrbute Name 2**" + " " + " " + " " + " " + " " + " new_locationid" + " Equal" + " " + " http://microsoft.com/wsdl/types/\" xsi:type=\"q2:guid\">" + requiredGUID + " " + " " + " " + " " + " " + " " + " " +
" " +
"" +
"";

var xmlHttpRequest = new ActiveXObject("Msxml2.XMLHTTP");

xmlHttpRequest.Open("POST", "/mscrmservices/2007/CrmService.asmx", false); xmlHttpRequest.setRequestHeader("SOAPAction","http://schemas.microsoft.com/crm/2007/WebServices/RetrieveMultiple");

xmlHttpRequest.setRequestHeader("Content-Type", "text/xml; charset=utf-8");
xmlHttpRequest.setRequestHeader("Content-Length", xml.length);
xmlHttpRequest.send(xml);
var resultXml = xmlHttpRequest.responseXML;

var entityNodes = resultXml.selectNodes("//RetrieveMultipleResult/BusinessEntities/BusinessEntity");

if(entityNodes.length>0)
{

var entityNode = entityNodes[0];
var att1Value = entityNode.selectSingleNode('q1:attribute1schemaname').text;
...
}

Some useful URLs in MS CRM web client

2009-05-18T03:22:00.000-07:00

Hi,
These are some urls or paths you can make use of while creating custom applications integrated with Microsoft CRM

New Note, related entity field is mandatory
http://mscrm:5555/SaurinTestBase/notes/edit.aspx?pType=1

New Attachment
http://mscrm:5555/SaurinTestBase/notes/edit.aspx?hideDesc=1&pType=1

Advanced Find
http://mscrm:5555/SaurinTestBase/AdvancedFind/AdvFind.aspx

Import Subjects in MS CRM using Import tool

2009-05-13T05:52:00.000-07:00

I got this problem of import of subject being successful but not appearing in the subject list, I googled to find out an important technique to do it:

Original reference: http://rc.crm.dynamics.com/rc/regcont/en_us/live/help/ts_import.htm

When I import subjects, why don't they appear in the list of subjects?

For imported subjects ( Categories used in a hierarchical list to correlate and organize information. Subjects are used in the subject tree to organize products, sales literature, and knowledge base articles. ) to be visible, the import source file must contain a column that maps to the Feature Mask attribute. The Feature Mask attribute determines whether the subject will be displayed in the subject tree. If Feature Mask is set to 1, the subject will be displayed. If it is empty or set to 0, the subject will not be displayed.
To build the subject hierarchy in the subject tree, you map the column in the source file that contains the title of the parent subject to the Parent Subject attribute. If no parent subject is provided, the subject will appear at the top level of the hierarchy.

Last included in a Campaign field

2009-03-02T08:33:00.000-08:00

Lead, Account and Contact entities have a field in the Administration tab of their entity forms which says : "Last Included in a campaign", this read-only Datetime field autopopulates itself with the date when the lead/account/contact was last a part of any campaign.

Abort event through plugins

2009-02-24T08:16:00.000-08:00

Suppose you are writing a pre -event plugin in which you compare to

old and new values and on certain condition would like to cancel the Save or

Update and stop the execution, it was simple in CRM 3 with an Abort() method

while in CRM 4, you have to manually raise and throw a

Invalid-Plugin-Exception, while this gives a dirty error message on your MSCRM screen,

you can make it better by entering you own Message explaining why the record could

not be saved:

throw new InvalidPluginExecutionException("Execution has been stopped due to this reason");

IME Mode in MSCRM attribute settings

2009-02-19T08:04:00.000-08:00

When you create a new attribute for a MSCRM entity or open an exisitng one to see it's characteristics like data type, min-max values and schema name, you would have seen a property called IME mode, if you would've wondered what it is like me, here is what is got from the MSCRM Online resources:

An Input Method Editor (IME) lets you to enter and edit Chinese, Japanese, and Korean characters. These Asian writing systems have more characters than can be encoded for a regular keyboard. The IMEs for these languages use sequences of base characters that describe an individual character or group of characters to enter a larger set of characters. Base characters can be component letters from Hangul syllables, phonetic components for Japanese kanji characters, or various combinations for Chinese characters. You can use the IME mode option to quickly enter these characters and symbols into text boxes, avoiding the manual switch to IME mode that would otherwise be required.

Input Method Editors have two principle states, inactive and active. The inactive mode behaves like a regular keyboard and uses a limited set of characters. The active mode accepts Chinese, Japanese, or Korean characters.

The following IME modes are available:

auto (default)
The IME mode is not affected with this choice.
active
All characters are entered in the IME mode, but you can still deactivate it. For name-related fields and addresses, the default is active for detailed forms.
inactive
All characters are entered without using the IME mode, but you can still activate it. For datetime type fields, the default is inactive for detailed forms.
disabled
The IME mode is disabled, and you cannot activate it. For number type fields (money, int, float), the default is inactive for detailed forms.

Mail merge fields limit in MSCRM

2009-02-13T09:02:00.000-08:00

The maximum number of fields that can be added

to a mail merge document in MS CRM is 62

Retrieve custom entity and attributes by Microsoft.Crm 4 Sdk

2009-02-13T05:19:00.000-08:00

CrmAuthenticationToken token = new CrmAuthenticationToken();

token.OrganizationName = "";

token.AuthenticationType = 0;

Microsoft.Crm.SdkTypeProxy.CrmService service = new Microsoft.Crm.SdkTypeProxy.CrmService();

service.Url= "http://localhost:5555/mscrmservices/2007/crmservice.asmx";

service.CrmAuthenticationTokenValue = token;

service.Credentials = System.Net.CredentialCache.DefaultCredentials;

service.UnsafeAuthenticatedConnectionSharing = true;

Microsoft.Crm.Sdk.Query.QueryExpression query = new Microsoft.Crm.Sdk.Query.QueryExpression("mycustomentity");

query.ColumnSet.AddColumn("mycustomentityid");

query.ColumnSet.AddColumn("name");

query.ColumnSet.AddColumn("number");

query.Criteria.AddCondition("name", ConditionOperator.Equal, "Chandresh");

RetrieveMultipleRequest requestAccount = new RetrieveMultipleRequest();

requestAccount.Query = query;

requestAccount.ReturnDynamicEntities = true;

RetrieveMultipleResponse result = (RetrieveMultipleResponse)_crmService.Execute(requestAccount);

if (result.BusinessEntityCollection.BusinessEntities.Count > 0)

{

DynamicEntity myEntity = (DynamicEntity)result.BusinessEntityCollection.BusinessEntities[0];

string strName = "";

string intNumber = 0;

if (myEntity.Properties.Contains("number"))

intNumber = ((CrmNumber)myEntity.Properties["number"]).Value;

if (myEntity.Properties.Contains("name"))

intNumber = myEntity.Properties["name"]).ToString();

}

Extra events in MS CRM entity form

2009-02-03T06:29:00.000-08:00

When you want to make some updates in CRM on the entity form like set certain values

or do some computation, two events you can rely on is onLoad and onSave.

What if users don't want to press a button, say Save, especially in the case of a record of a related entity being added or created with the entity of which form you have opened, there is no way to track the updated in number of records being added or removed from the related entity, what you do then other than OnSave ?

Classic javascript has the answer, like any other webform, you get standard window events like onload, onunload: which is the event to be called when you close the window, i.e click on the rightmost cross button [X] at anytime, and also onblur: which is when you move on the another window or just go to desktop loosing the focus of the active window which is the MS CRM form.

So you can run some javascript code on these events by defining a custom handler function for these events which would not be handled by default and have the value null.

This is done in the onLoad event of the MSCRM form:

Error in importing customizations when absolute path is long

2008-09-30T07:29:00.000-07:00

Hi,
This is one strange error I have encountered, when you browse a customization file to import to dynamics CRM, it obviously gives an error when the total path is more than 100 characters long, (i.e.
C:/somefolder/inside1/inside2/inside3/my_customizations_backup/year/month/customizations.zip)

but, even when the path is close to 100 characters, Import may fail without any visible reasons, in that case, if you copy the file directly under drive, say C:/customizations.zip, it gets imported successfully.

Disable/Enable all fields on CRM entity form

2008-09-10T03:31:00.000-07:00

While disabling fields from 1st method, some lookups, radio buttons and date fields may not get disabled, you have to disable them separately

// This loops through all elements of CRMForm, faster and consumes less memory

function disableFields(disableenable)
{
var CRMObjects = new Array(CF.,CF.,CF.,CF.);
for (i=0;i < CRMObjects.length;i++)
{
CRMObjects[i].Disabled=disableenable;
}

/*now disable all active form elements*/
for (i=0; i<>0)
{
if(crmForm.elements[i].Disabled==false)
{
crmForm.elements[i].Disabled=disableenable;

}
}
}

Another way................. this takes more memory as it takes all elements of the HTML of CRM form

//---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

var iLen = crmForm.all.length;
for (i = 0; i < iLen; i++)
{ o = crmForm.all[i];
switch (o.tagName.toLowerCase())
{ case "input":
case "select":
case "textarea":
case "img":
case "iframe":
case “div”:
o.Disabled= true;
break

default:
break;
}

}

//---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

What 'Extra' you would like to see in MS CRM ?

2008-07-24T09:45:00.000-07:00

hi,

what is that you feel Titan still lacks,
any particular feature that you think will enhance
MS CRM's usability, will make it more popular,
more powerful compared to other CRM products?

Compare modified values on Save

2008-07-24T07:34:00.000-07:00

Hi,

What if you want know whether a field is modified when you click on Save in CRM entity record form, it is simple, check the IsDirty property of the field, as in

if( crmForm.all.field.IsDirty == true) ...

what if you wanted to compare the modified value with the original value that was on Load when you click on Save, a pre-update callout/plugin seems to emerge as a candidate, but you can also do it through clientscript, all you need to do it so find a way to store the value of the original value of the field on Load and use it in your On Save script.

An obvious choice would be to use a hidden field, but for that we have to keep a spare attribute in the entity schema which means it will add an extra column to the entityExtensionbase table in CRM database, just to store a temporary value, doesn't sound good.

What we can do as an alternative is save it in a temporary html element that can be generated on-the-fly just when the form Loads, see how it is done:

On Load script:

initial_value = crmForm.all.field.DataValue;

var new_element = document.createElement('INPUT');

var outertext =
" < input type='hidden' " +
" id='temp_tag' value=' " +
initial_value +
"' />";

var idval = "temp_tag";
var typ = "hidden";

var tagId = document.createAttribute('id');
var tagType = document.createAttribute('type');

var outerHtml = document.createAttribute('outerHTML');

new_element.setAttribute(tagType,typ);
new_element.setAttribute(tagId,idval);
new_element.setAttribute(outerHtml,outertext);

document.getElementsByTagName('body')[0].appendChild(new_element);

This will add a new hidden element on the form when it loads, and it contains the value of your field, once you are done modifying it, you click on Save, you check whether it has been edited and compare it with the old value:

On Save script

if(crmForm.all.field.IsDirty==true)
{
var new_value = crmForm.all.field.DataValue;

//And you get the old value from the element you created on load
//Apparently, the element that you added is the last to be added to the form, hence you can retrieve it as the last element in the document's tag list

var element_array = document.getElementsById('input').length
var count = document.getElementsById('input').length;
var your_element = element_array[count-1];

//Now you have your element, read it's outerHTML property that contains your old value

var old_value = your_element.outerHTML;

//Please note that you get a tag and not the actual value in this outerHTML, so you have to do some string operation to retrieve it in its purest, non-adulterated form

// In my case, I split the tag string with single quote, returning an array of strings, just find out which place is your value, it was at position 5 in my case.

old_value = old_value.split("'")[5];

}

Now you have the new value as well as the old value, use it for any validation logic you want.

Assign values to Readonly fields

2008-07-23T04:22:00.000-07:00

Hi,

When you set a field to be read only in entity form editor, it is not possible to set any values to it even through Javascript apart from front-end, in such cases we may consider an option not to keep it Read Only and just enable-disable it in Form Load and Form Save scripts.

But going for a temporary solution has its cons, the way a field appears when it is Readonly and when it is disabled are different, disabled field looks grey, while readonly looks white, just like another editable field.

But there is a way to keep it read only and still able to set value to it, just after you set value to the readonly field in your script, turn the ForceSubmit property on:

crmForm.all.field.DataValue = "some value";

crmForm.all.field.ForceSubmit = true;

Timestamp for each entity custmization

2008-07-11T03:47:00.000-07:00

Hi Friends,
Is there any way by which we can find out when an entity was
last custmized, yes there is...

One way is to access the MS CRM database through a safe and secure way, find out the modified date of entitybase tables and display them on a custom page, this way you can keep track of when entity in customized that gives you better idea of who and when customized an entity in a shared development environment,
I am still finding a way to do the same using SDK or through Javascript.

Welcome everyone

2008-07-11T03:45:00.001-07:00

Hello friends,
so you are here to read some dynamics crm stuff,
be assured then, you've landed in the right place