Yet Another MS Dynamics CRM blog

If you have already dug up too much about trying to capture the event when an entity record in MS CRM is attached ~ linked to a record in many to many relationship. For example, if you have two entities : Supplier and Company in MS CRM where a supplier can do business with many companies and at the same time a Company can order stuff from many suppliers. What if you want to send some notification whenever a new supplier or an existing supplier is linked to a company; similarly you may want to send a notification when a Supplier signs a deal with 2-3 companies and gets linked to those. Some experts from MS CRM fraternity have suggested some ways to over ride this limitation of MS CRM that it does not expose any event for the above mentioned scenario, below is one of the examples:   http://ayazahmad.wordpress.com/2009/07/23/event-on-many-to-many-relationship-nn-in-crm-4/ But making changes to the default plugin model of MS CRM to add Associate or Disassociate event is not so...

You may have noticed when you create email using a sample code like below in a plugin or for that matter any other SDK based assembley for MS CRM. Your line breaks : \n or \r or System.Environment.NewLine will not work.           email Email = new email();                          Email.to = new activityparty[] { toParty };                      Email.from = new activityparty[] { fromParty };                      Email.regardingobjectid = regardingObject;                      Email.subject = "Hello!!";                      Email.description = "Dear, line 1" +                                Syst...

How many times you had to created a workflow on some date like Due date which keeps changing as per client's request. While this may sound simple in business, on CRM you have a workflow that may be waiting till this date and send a reminder exactly a week before. So you need to keep calling this workflow every time the date is updated, to make the matters more complicated, all the previous jobs that had initiated due to past modification will keep running and chasing that date which is never going to occur. What you do now, manually cancel those to save system resources and stop the never ending system jobs. There is a way to do it through SDK, in my case I call this function as a custom workflow activity in the first step of the workflow which Cancels any previous jobs of this workflow.   #region Cancel My WFs             QueryExpression qe = new QueryExpression();             qe.EntityName = EntityName...

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg328399.aspx

In continuation with the last post, you can access Microsoft CRM, for that matter IE from Chrome using this link, it's much better and will work with Mozilla and Safari as well I guess http://app.cloudinternetexplorer.com/

Open MS CRM in Chrome using this chrome app  With this tiny app you can open and use MS CRM in google Chrome, all you need to do is install this app    https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/miedgcmlgpmdagojnnbemlkgidepfjfi Then in new Chrome tab click on the blue IE icon on right side whichi will open site in IE mode from Chrome and then  write your CRM url, enjoy CRM with Chrome, like Browney and Chocolate ! I have also observed though any new  window like a record or customisations views will eventually pop up IE windows but you can still browse the main  page of CRM in Chrome  As you can see below, I have applied some fancy theme to my Chrome to make it more believable that its actually MS CRM in google chrome browser :

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

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...

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.

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 ...

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..."

[ 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...

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 featu...

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.

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 ...

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";

 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.

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 :

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.