Microsoft Dynamics CRM - Tips, Tricks and Add-ons

Features to be included in the Q2 2012 service update.

2012-02-08T23:18:00.000-08:00

Some very exciting features have been announced that would be made available in the Q2 2012 service update. Here we discuss a few of themCross Browser SupportCRM had been restricted till date to be accessible through Internet Explorer only. However, with this release the user would now have the choice of browser. They can choose from IE v7+, Firefox v6+ and Chrome v13+. Safari v5.1.1+ as a

DynaMaps now available for CRM 2011

2012-02-05T22:41:00.000-08:00

We are happy to announce the availability for DynaMaps for CRM 2011. The new version now supports all 3 CRM deployment models On-Premise, Online as well as IFD.DynaMaps is geo-analysis tool that allows you to view your CRM data on a map as well as allow your Sales Rep on the field to plan their schedule with the aid of DynaMaps.This new release supports Street View. Street View allows you to get

Pass Custom Parameters to an entity form through a URL

2012-02-01T14:53:00.000-08:00

In your applications, you may want to pass custom query string parameters to an entity form.Let me describe the way in which we can define a set of specific parameter names and data types that can be accepted for a specific entity form.Define Allowed Query String Parameters:There are two ways to specify which query string parameters will be accepted by the form:• Edit form properties• Edit form

Update the Parent Silverlight Grid from the CRM form that is spawns.

2012-01-23T02:53:00.000-08:00

We were working on the Silverlight REST Editor sample that is available in SDK.We added a hyperlink to that grid that would open the CRM Contact form for the selected contact. This would allow users to check in further details of the contact. The users can also update the fields on the contact form there. Say the user edits the Phone on the Contact form instead of in the editable grid that we

Dynamically control Form Navigation

2012-01-18T02:09:00.000-08:00

CRM 2011 introduced the feature to design more than one form for an entity and assign form to users based on their role (Role Based Form). It has also included a feature where by it would automatically open the form that was last used by the logged in user for that entity. If you would like the entity to dynamically load a particular form you can use the following piece of

Tip - Hide fields on CRM form without messing up the form layout

2012-01-10T05:22:00.000-08:00

Generally if you hide a field through script, CRM does not redesign the layout to use up the blank space left from the hiding of a field on the form. This makes it very obvious that there must have been some control that is now not visible to the user. To avoid this you can make use of the CRM 2011 ability to add the same field multiple times on a form.Say for example you would like to hide the

Read Form Id or Form XML of a specified entity form

2012-01-06T00:30:00.000-08:00

CRM 2011 now allows multiple forms to be designed for an entity and based on the security roles display the appropriate form.During the development we once came across the need to get the Formid for each of the forms created for an entity. We did not want to hard code the formid in the ribbon button as the id’s may change between test and production environments.We can programmatically retrieve

MVP Awarded!

2012-01-05T01:15:00.000-08:00

2012 starts with a bang for Team Inogic. We take pride in announcing that one of our Team Members known to you all as Sam is now a Dynamics CRM MVP.Well done!!!

Import data now allows you to Create the entities as well

2011-12-27T00:05:00.000-08:00

CRM 4.0 made available the feature to import data into CRM using the Import feature. But this was only restricted to importing data in existing entities.In CRM 2011 this feature has now been extended to go one step further and even create the entity in CRM to hold the data in case an entity for that does not already exist. CRM 2011 also provides us the capability to define the entity attributes

ODATA Properties and Methods Explored…

2011-12-20T01:23:00.000-08:00

Here are some of the ODATA context properties that would help us during debugging and understanding the behavior of the context when performing various operations.1. DataServiceContext.Entities:Gets a list of all the records currently being tracked by the DataServiceContext. While using OData service, we frequently get the error that context already tracking the record. With the "Entities"

Performing CRUD Operations synchronously in CRM 2011 through JSON

2011-12-16T01:21:00.000-08:00

Synchronous methods to create, update and delete the records for the Account entity through JSON. These methods works synchronously.Create Records: To create the record into the CRM, you need to create an object for that record. After that you need to create the object of the XMLHttpRequest and open this request through “POST” method and need to call the send method with this jsonEntity (create

Read records synchronously using JSON in CRM 2011

2011-12-13T00:24:00.000-08:00

Common knowledge is that we can make JSON requests through scripts in CRM 2011 to retrieve data from CRM entities. However, the JSON request works asynchronously i.e it does not return the results immediately and the control moves to the next line of code to be executed.It so happened during one of our development sessions is that we had to write a script to populate the values of some attributes

Where are the List Members of a Dynamic Marketing List?

2011-11-24T04:06:00.000-08:00

In CRM 4.0 there was no concept of Dynamic Marketing List. We could create only static Marketing lists until CRM 2011. Now in CRM 2011 Microsoft has introduced the concept of Dynamic Marketing list. In Dynamic Marketing List the Marketing List Members are selected based on the critieria that is set for the Marketing lists. This means that each time you open a Marketing list the criteria is

CRM 2011 Developer ToolKit

2011-11-18T23:40:00.000-08:00

As mentioned in earlier blog Microsoft Dynamics CRM developers can now write custom code from within Visual Studio by using tools and can automatically deploy that code to the CRM from within the visual studio itself. In this part we walk through the development and deployment of Workflow and Web Resources - Open Visual studio 2010. New Dynamic CRM template will be installed as given in

CRM 2011 Developer ToolKit

2011-11-14T04:24:00.000-08:00

Recently Microsoft has developed Developer Toolkit for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 that is integrated with Visual Studio to accelerate the development of custom code for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 solutions. Microsoft Dynamics CRM developers can now write custom code from within Visual Studio by using tools and can automatically deploy that code to the CRM from within the visual studio

Activity Feeds now available in Dynamics CRM 2011

2011-11-01T04:50:00.000-07:00

Microsoft recently released Activity Feeds in its November update of Dynamics CRM Online 2011. These would however automatically be available to only those CRM organizations that one would subscribe to from this point on. For all existing organizations you need to download it from the pinpoint site http://dynamics.pinpoint.microsoft.com/en-IN/applications/microsoft-dynamics-crm-activity-feeds-

Team Ownership now available in CRM 2011

2011-10-31T04:26:00.000-07:00

In CRM, an entity could be designed to be User Owned or Organization owned. The User Owned ownership setting has now been changed in CRM 2011 to be User or Team Owned. This means that you can now assign a record to either a Team or an individual owner.Let us now explore the behavior of records owned by a Team.Using the Assign option you can now assign to a user or a Team.Earlier you could only

Enable Scripts on Bulk Edit form in CRM 2011

2011-10-18T04:28:00.000-07:00

CRM 2011 includes the feature to enable script on the bulk edit form. By default the scripts are disabled for bulk edit forms.To enable the script for Bulk edit forms check the below syntax<

Different operators used with workflow

2011-10-14T04:32:00.000-07:00

There are six different operators used in e workflow.1. Set to: This operator is used to set value of the field of any data type. 2. Append with: This operator can only be used with text field. It will append specified field's value or the default value to the existing value. This operator has introduced in CRM 5.3. Clear: This operator can be used with all data types. This will clear the field's

Working with CRM 2011 Solutions

2011-10-10T22:09:00.000-07:00

With Dynamics CRM 2011, Microsoft goes one step further in simplifying the process of moving the customizations from one system to another. In the CRM 2011 you can now simply export and import the customizations in the form of solutions. There are two type of solution in the CRM 2011.1. Default Solution: This is the customizations of your entire CRM 2011 Organization. 2. Managed Solution: Managed

Debugging Silverlight Web Resources in CRM2011

2011-09-28T01:14:00.000-07:00

In CRM2011, Silverlight Web resources can be debugged in Microsoft Visual Studio. For this you need to follow below steps:• Build your Silverlight application.• Upload the built version of the .xap file from the Web application project ClientBin folder.• View your Silverlight application in the context it is designed to be used in.• In your Silverlight application project, from the Visual Studio

Working with Charts in CRM 2011

2011-09-21T00:00:00.000-07:00

Dynamics CRM 2011 provides us the Charts, with the help of the Charts we can Graphically represent the Organization data. We can create the System Charts and User Charts in the CRM. The System Chats can be viewed by the All users of the Organization and the User Charts can only be view by those whom the Chart Assigned or Shared.We can create the following different form of charts: • Column • Bar

How to interact with CRM form fields from within the Silverlight page

2011-09-13T04:51:00.000-07:00

At times you may have a need to interact with the CRM form to read/update back the latest information after the processing completes from a custom application. Say we add a button on the Entity form and when user will click on this button then we can read as well as set the value of the entity form fields. Below we have given the example to read the activityparty. When you click on the button

Retrieve related entity records along wih the Primary entity using Retrieve Method

2011-09-06T00:00:00.000-07:00

We have always known the Retrieve request to be able to retrieve the data of the requested entity based on the id provided. However in CRM 2011, the Retrieve request can read not only the properties of the primary entity but also the referenced entity like in a 1-N or N-N or N-1 relationship. Given that it supports all the three types of relationships it could be an advantage over the LinkEntity

Add a button to create a new related record

2011-08-28T00:00:00.000-07:00

To create a new record for a related entity we need to move to that related entity view in the Main form and then use the add button there to actually open a new form for the related entity. At times this is considered time consuming and it would be good to have a button on the main form from where we can add a new related record directly.While it is easy to add a button to call a new form, we

CRM 2011 messages using SOAP

2011-08-17T00:01:00.000-07:00

Microsoft has provided CRM ODATA service to perform actions on CRM data. However, the ODATA service only allows you to perform basic CRUD operations on CRM entities. If you want to perform other operations like Change state or perhaps read Metadata information, you will need to access the CRM SOAP service. You can add the reference to CRM SOAP service using the following URL. http://Server_name/

Notify the dialog to end

2011-08-08T00:50:00.000-07:00

When you design a Dialog, make sure you explicitly stop the dialog when all the steps of the dialog have completed using the “Stop Dialog” step Failure to do so might result in you receiving the following error when all steps have been processed. The above error is pretty misleading and we spent hours trying to identify which data is missing before we finally managed to get this to work

Fault and Exception Handling in Dynamics CRM 2011

2011-08-01T20:40:00.000-07:00

Microsoft Dynamics CRM Web service can throw a number of exceptions. When we use Microsoft Dynamics CRM Web service in application development we need to handle service related exceptions. All Web service method calls use a communication channel to the server based on the Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) technology. In WCF terms, exceptions returned from the channel are called faults.Here

Json and Silverlight with ODataService in CRM 2011

2011-07-27T06:31:00.000-07:00

Dynamics CRM 2011 now provides the ability to perform data operations on CRM entities using JSON and ODATA service.Here we have tried to explain the various clauses of JSON that is supported by CRM ODATA and how this service can be used in Silverlight as well as in Scripts. Note not all standard ODATA clauses are supported by CRM. To use these clauses in silverlight you need to add a reference to

How to Enable and Disable the most recently used items for lookup field only.

2011-07-01T06:11:00.000-07:00

In CRM 2011, we have found the new feature for the lookup type fields that you have the ability to see the most recently used items for that lookup while creating the records for entity.Also you can disable this feature as well by default it is enable for all lookup types fields. If you like to see those items then, during creation of record, you need to “Double Click” on the lookup field.See the

How to get the Total Results returned Record Count for a given query

2011-05-29T22:58:00.000-07:00

In CRM2011 it is now possible to get the Total count of records returned by a query using Fetch XML.Using Query expression:You can set the ReturnTotalRecordCount property to True.Using FetchXml:You can set the same property as shown below.<

How to remove the default ISV buttons of CRM 4.0 from CRM 2011 after upgrade

2011-05-11T02:51:00.000-07:00

Once you upgrade from CRM 4.0 to CRM 2011, you would find a new menu item ISV showing up in the CRM 2011 menu bar.You never saw them before in CRM 4.0… that’s because by default CRM disables the showing up of these buttons in CRM 4.0. These buttons come along with CRM 4.0 to display the features and functionality of adding custom button.Now you see them in CRM 2011 and you want that taken off…

How to pass field values to Form

2011-05-02T02:44:00.000-07:00

Sometimes you have requirement to open the particular type of new record with some default values already filled. This can be achieved by passing the field values to the query string.To open the new record formhttps:///main.aspx?etn=&pagetype=entityrecordPass field values as query string parametershttp:///main.aspx?etn=&pagetype=

Filtering in Crm 2011

2011-04-27T23:36:00.000-07:00

In Crm 2011 new functionality provided that allows us to filter our views same as Microsoft Excel filtering functionality.We can filter the columns from within the Grid as shown in below screen shot.Click on Filter button that enables filtering for each column as shown in below screen shot.The drop down shows the following options for filtering.Click on Custom filter option and specify the

Group by using FetchXML

2011-04-23T01:41:00.000-07:00

In Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 FetchXML includes grouping and aggregation features which let us to use aggregate functions like sum, count etc.Using Group by we can calculate sum, avg, min, max, count. But, Group by clause is not supported through LINQ in CRM.You can only specify one aggregate attribute in a query and you cannot use the distinct keyword. To create an aggregate attribute, set the

MessageSecurityException when connecting to the Web Services

2011-04-13T05:02:00.000-07:00

When trying to establish connection with the organization service or discovery service in CRM 2011 you may receive the following exception Unhandled Exception: System.ServiceModel.Security.MessageSecurityException: An unsecured or incorrectly secured fault was received from the other party. See the inner FaultException for the fault code and detail. Solution: You need to Delete the device

Differences in Custom Workflow Assembly in CRM 4.0 and CRM 2011

2011-03-28T04:40:00.000-07:00

We have listed the list of changes noticed for designing a custom workflow assembly in CRM 2011 and in CRM 4.0.1. ReferencesCRM 4.0using System.Workflow.Activities;using System.Workflow.ComponentModel;using System.Workflow.ComponentModel.Compiler;using Microsoft.Crm.Sdk;using Microsoft.Crm.Sdk.Query;using Microsoft.Crm.SdkTypeProxy;using Microsoft.Crm.Workflow;CRM 2011using System.Activities;

Reporting through BIDS in CRM Online 2011

2011-03-21T02:38:00.000-07:00

In the CRM 2011 online if you want to create your custom SSRS report then here is the trouble, you cannot create the report directly using the SQL Queries as you do not have access to SQL Server. For this reason MS has provided BIDS tool for Dynamics CRM 2011. You can download this tool from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=64a09b75-8376-4b9d-aea3-8a83a1837c4dUsing the

Use of Web Resources in CRM 2011

2011-03-07T05:33:00.000-08:00

With CRM 2011, you now have the concept of including resources within CRM that can they be used to display on CRM forms in IFRAMES and buttons and other customizable objects in CRM. A web resource in CRM can be any of the following Here we take an example of adding a custom html page that requires supporting javascript and images for it to work. When you would have designed the page, there

Addresses in CRM explained....

2011-03-01T22:40:00.000-08:00

We recently came across a request for data correction where the customer had lost some of their address data. No addresses were displayed on the Account form. One would think all that was corrupt was the address and having them type in the address on the form should do the trick. But no, with the address missing even when they tried to manually re-enter the address in these records, they were

Difference between CRM 4.0 and CRM2011 script for using on form customization

2011-02-19T00:20:00.000-08:00

When working with CRM2011 Java script we found many difference about syntax/methods between CRM2011 and CRM4.0 Please check some of the comparisions we have listed. Please click on the Image below to enlarge view.

Create and Update events for the appointment entity

2011-02-14T04:11:00.000-08:00

You will notice that if you register a plugin on the Create or Update event of an appointment in the Parent Pipeline, the plugins do not fire. When you create an appointment in CRM it is set to the status of “Scheduled” implying an appointment has been scheduled.To trap create and update of Appointment through CRM you need to trap the Book Request and Reschedule request respectively.When you run

Workflows vs Dialogs

2011-02-08T22:12:00.000-08:00

CRM 2011 introduces the new concept of Dialogs. We have discussed this in detail in our earlier blog that can be found at http://inogic.blogspot.com/2010/11/crm-2011-dialogs-explored.html" Here we list out the differences between Processes (Workflows) and Dialogs.

Issue with Pulishing Workflow that use Custom Workflow Assembly

2011-02-03T23:07:00.000-08:00

While there can be many other reasons for this, recently we came across a situation where a simple workflow assembly designed by us could not be used in a Workflow. If we added the reference to this workflow assembly in the Workflow, it wouldn’t publish. We would receive the following message "An error occured when the workflow was being created. Try to save the worflow again". Refer to the image

Use Tracing in CRM 2011 Plugins

2011-01-17T03:19:00.000-08:00

CRM SDK provides way for you to include the debug details about your plug-in in case you need to trace the plug-in execution. For this you will have to initialize the “ITracingService”. The service provides way to trace the details and display it whenever plug-in fails and throws an exception. //Initialize the serviceITracingService tracingService = (ITracingService)serviceProvider.GetService(

Connections Role in CRM 2011

2011-01-12T01:34:00.000-08:00

CRM 4.0 provided the ability to define the relationship between entities using the Relationship feature. However this was only available for defining relations between Account, Contact and Opportunity. This concept has been enhanced further with the introduction of Connections in CRM 2011. Moreover, this has now been extended to include any entities including custom entities that you define.

Sales Area Enhancements in CRM 2011

2011-01-07T03:45:00.000-08:00

There have been considerable improvements in the functionality being offered in the Sales Area in CRM 2011.Changes have been incorporated in the area of Opportunities, Orders and InvoicesCRM 4.0 Opportunities did not support adding of Write-In Products or Price Override. These attributes were present in the Opportunity entity in CRM 4.0 but not included on the forms. Even if you added them

CRM 4 to CRM 2011 Upgrade.

2011-01-04T02:01:00.000-08:00

Recently we tried to upgrade a highly customized CRM 4 install to CRM 2011 and thought it would be worthwhile to list out our findings for the benefit for all.CRM 2011 supports both in-place upgrade as well as a fresh CRM 2011 install with a later CRM 4.0 organization import into CRM 2011. We attempted the second way, that a fresh install of CRM 2011 and then tried to import the customized

Workflows - Behind the scene

2010-11-30T03:09:00.000-08:00

We were recently working on designing a tool that deletes workflow job. We thought it would be easy to just filter out all job that related to a workflow by the workflow id and then delete that’s it.But like always we were in for a surprise. Just thought putting it down would help others in resolving this mystery.Each Workflow has a unique id just like any other entity. But if you search for

Debug script in Microsoft Dynamics CRM

2010-11-23T23:13:00.000-08:00

In Internet Explorer 8 (IE 8 )Microsoft provided a way to debug the scripts. With Internet Explorer 8 and JScript Libraries, debugging scripts has become much easier. To debug the script, Please follow the step below.When working with Microsoft Dynamics CRM try to reproduce the conditions where an error is occurring press F12 to open the Internet Explorer developer tools.On the Script tab, to

CRM 2011 - Dialogs Explored

2010-11-19T00:58:00.000-08:00

Dialogs are the new feature addition to CRM 2011.Just like we had the ability to extend CRM using plugins and workflows, we now have the option of Dialogs as well.What is different in Dialog?Dialog runs synchronously like the Plugins but they have the option of providing user interface to accept custom information required for processing.I took an example of a situation where, you want to add

Displaying CRM emails using SSRS 2008

2010-11-03T22:26:00.000-07:00

Email body in Dynamics CRM is stored in HTML format and when we try to display the data as is in the SRS report, it shows up with all the HTML tags.Microsoft Dynamics CRM reports strip the HTML content and display it in Plain text format.Now with SSRS 2008, you can display them with part of the HTML formatting. It does not support all the HTML tags as yet, but some basic tags are supported that

Field Level Security in CRM 2011

2010-10-26T23:09:00.000-07:00

CRM 2011 will now allow to decide permissions not just at the record level but also “Field Level”. This means that you can decide if a user has the permission to that attribute at the time of Create or Update or simply view the data for that attribute.Currently, this feature is only available for the custom attributes that you add. They are not available for the system attributes. When you create

Issues with class level declaration in CRM 4 Plugins and Workflows

2010-10-22T00:28:00.000-07:00

It is important that you avoid class level declaration and initialization of variables in Plugins and Workflows.Let us discuss the issues that one can face with Plugins. Plugins as you know is executed synchronously. But if there happen to be multiple calls made to the same plugin assembly and class, a new object for the Plugin is not always created. Instead the same object is reused. So if you

Multiple Form Layouts for a single entity in CRM 2011

2010-10-20T04:26:00.000-07:00

Another of CRM 4 shortcomings covered in CRM 2011.There is often a request to have certain fields available/shown to only a certain set of users based on their security role. CRM 2011 have brought in field level security but it has also added the concept of designing multiple forms for a single entity.While in CRM 4.0 requests for hiding or displaying a field was taken care of through scripting,

How to Show address using Bing Map in CRM 2011?

2010-10-18T03:30:00.000-07:00

CRM 2011 provides a different feature to use java script as compared to CRM 4. In CRM 2011 you cannot write script directly in form event. Here they have provided a facility to create form library where you can write your own java script function. Only after creating a form library user will be able to call the function on form or field event.To use the script on field or form event you will need

Unveiling CRM 2011 features

2010-10-06T05:24:00.000-07:00

Blog – 2: CRM 2011 features continued…Welcome back! and we are pleased again to share some more CRM 2011 features with you.Document ManagementThis provides the ability to integrate SharePoint site with CRM. By using this feature you can store the documents related to CRM in SharePoint and to manage this documents from within CRM itself. It also provides ability to create folder automatically but

Exploring the new CRM 2011

2010-10-04T03:20:00.001-07:00

Finally! We are rolling into the much awaited beta version of CRM 2011.While we are still exploring its new features; we are pleased to share some great features. You can find some of these new useful features of CRM 2011 listed below.- Ability to create a custom Activity type- Dynamic Marketing List- Bulk Delete feature- Recurring Appointment- Auditing feature- Document management feature that

Odd/Even Page Header/Footer using SRS Reports

2010-08-06T02:31:00.000-07:00

There have been times where you need to provide a different header on one page and another on the second page or say every alternate page. This concept has been provided in MS Word, where you are allowed to setup a Odd Page Header and an Even Page Header. Should you want to incorporate this same feature in your Reports designed using SRS Reports, there is no easy way out as setting up a odd page

XRM sdk de-mystified

2010-07-28T02:37:00.000-07:00

Well, it has been a while now since the XRM sdk is out and we have been exploring it.XRM sdk does make programming a lot more easier and most certainly there are a lot fewer lines of code that need to be written.With the CrmSvUtil tool you can generate the classes for all the custom entities and customizations that you may have added to you CRM system and this allows you to use strongly typed

Pre-Image & Post Image Explained !

2010-07-26T09:00:00.000-07:00

Plugins in Dynamics CRM, allow you to register images against the steps of a plugin assembly. Images are a way to pass the image of the record that is currently being worked upon prior or after the action has been performed. In general it could be said, it is the image of the record as is available in the SQL backend.Two types of Images are supported, Pre-Image and Post Image.In case of Pre-image

How to display fixed number of rows in a table using SRS Report

2010-07-22T06:57:00.000-07:00

There are times when you would like to restrict the number of rows that are being displayed on one page in a table. By default if you add a table to a report and set the datasource to a dataset, it will list out all the rows of the dataset in there and if the table data exceeds the report page then it moves to the next page. Suppose now you want to make sure that there should be note more than 3

How to activate contract in CRM

2010-07-15T10:00:00.001-07:00

When a new contract is created in CRM, it is in the Draft state and cannot be utilized to assign a case against it.For a contract to be available, it must be activated. A contract is automatically activated by CRM if the following conditions have been met.1. There must be contract lines added to the contract. 2. The contract should be invoiced. You can invoice a contract from the actions menu as

Working of Announcement

2010-07-12T05:26:00.000-07:00

Dynamics CRM provides feature to create announcement that can be broadcast to the entire organization. it can be viewable by the entire organization if the users have been given the permission to read the Announcements.How to create the announcements1. In the Navigation Pane, click Settings, click Administration, and then click Announcements.2. On the Actions toolbar, click New.3. On the

How to Resolve time-out issues in Dynamics CRM

2010-06-29T00:55:00.000-07:00

There have been times when you received the service timed out error when performing operations that take a long time to complete.Apart from the keys in the web.config found in the CRM web root folderhttpruntime executiontimeout="300" maxrequestlength="8192"Where you can change the execution timeout to wait for a longer duration, another option that developers can use to take care of this issue in

How to allow a single resource to be scheduled for multiple activities at the same time

2010-06-24T22:42:00.000-07:00

CRM has this great scheduling feature that lets you schedule resources for a job based on the availability as well as the skill set (service) being required to perform the job.You can associate a user with a particular service through the Required Resources Tab. Once you have the user selected in the selection rule for a service, they become eligible for selection in the scheduling process.The

How to send email through email template which contains image links in email body

2010-06-08T02:21:00.000-07:00

Once we observed that creating a new email activity using an email template with some images in its body does not come through properly and only image links appear in the body.During our research, we found another way to send an email with the above same email template in it. The steps to perform this are as follows:· Instead of creating new email from Activity -> New -> Email, create the

Permissions to users for closing opportunities

2010-05-31T05:47:00.000-07:00

In our organization, we wanted that some of our users should not be allowed to close an opportunity. In the user roles we didn’t find this specific privilege. Hence, we removed the “AppendTo” privilege from the opportunity entity for the role of those users who are not allowed to close opportunities. Thereafter, whenever that user tries to close an opportunity for which he does not have

Call an Update on the Post Update event of an entity

2010-05-26T01:00:00.000-07:00

Now everyone knows, this would result in a recursive loop. It is always preferred that in such cases, the attribute that needs to be updated should be added to the property bag in the Pre-Update event itself.However, if you do come across a situation where you need to update an attribute on the successful update of another attribute of the same entity, you might want to check the “Depth” property

How to change top(n) rows command in sql server 2008

2010-05-18T01:00:00.000-07:00

By default SQL allows editing of only 200 records at a time. In case you want to we edit more than 200 rows you can edit the setting for the count of rows to be edited. Here are the steps to make this change.Goto Tools -->OptionsIn the commands tab,

User Mapping Error while Importing Organization

2010-05-10T01:00:00.000-07:00

While importing an organization into CRM, one may come across the following error message “At least the setup user needs to be mapped before this organization can be imported”.For this issue follow these steps:- Update “Accessmode” , “Setupuser” and “IsDisabled values in systemuser table.Query to update:Update SystemUser Set Accessmode=’0’, Setupuser=’0’, IsDisabled=’0- Click Start, All Programs,

Append v/s append to

2010-05-03T01:00:00.000-07:00

Append and Append To are two privileges that most user are not very clear about regarding their functionality. In this article we try to explain the difference between “Append” and “Append To” Privileges and how it affects the user access.Append and Append To basically deal with the entities that are parties to a 1:N relationship or N:1 relationship.Append: When an entity has the lookup of

How to restrict attachment file type and file size in Dynamics CRM

2010-04-28T01:00:00.000-07:00

CRM allows you to control the file types of the attachments that enter your CRM.If you want to restrict/allow a particular file type to be added as an attachment you would need to edit the list in the System Settings --> General tab. If you ever happen to come across the following screen while attaching a file, its probably because the file type or file size has been restricted.To control the

Attribute Missing in Advanced Find Filters

2010-04-22T05:00:00.000-07:00

It is possible that you may find one of the system attributes or perhaps one of the custom attribute that you have just added missing when you try to create an Advanced find view and try to filter by providing the filter attribute.Advanced Find appears to list out only those attributes that have the Searchable property set to “Yes”. To fix the above problem, edit the missing attribute and set its

Lost the only System Administrator User defined in the System :(

2010-04-14T06:29:00.000-07:00

The story goes, the system had only one user that was assigned the System Administrator Role, to avoid giving blanket rights to many in the organization.Unfortunately, this user (the only System Administrator) goes ahead and takes the role off their user. Cool… Now we are left with no System administrator user in our CRM system.System Administrator happens to be the only user with the privileges

FetchXML v/s QueryExpression

2010-04-09T05:55:00.000-07:00

These are the two distinct ways that you can query CRM using CRM SDK to retrieve the required information.QueryExpression is the mostly commonly used way for querying information in CRM. Probably because it uses the object oriented style of coding and so you have distinct classes for query, condition, columns etc. Youhave intellisense to support you when writing a query using

The finalizer for the LogonManager instance should not be called directly, use a “using” statement instead. At LogonManager.Finalize()

2010-04-05T04:08:00.000-07:00

The finalizer for the LogonManager instance should not be called directly, use a “using” statement instead. At LogonManager.Finalize()If you are writing code for CRM Online install, chances are that you would receive the above error when trying to execute your code.Currently you would have used a similar code block// Retrieve a Windows Live ticket from the Live service.LogonManager lm = new

Create Related Entity Records in Dynamics CRM using SDK

2010-03-24T04:22:00.000-07:00

In Dynamics CRM, if you were to create a related entity from within the Parent entity, take for example you create a new contact from within the Account form, the account address and other related information is automatically copied over to the new Contact as well.If CRM does this, there sure must be a way to get this done programmatically as well, and yes there is a message that helps you do

Active Directory integration for Users in Dynamics CRM

2010-03-14T23:01:00.000-07:00

It is common knowledge that Dynamics CRM is based on Windows authentication. This means that for the users to be able to access Dynamics CRM, they should exist in Active Directory (AD) before they can be added as Users in Dynamics CRM.At the time of adding a System User in CRM, it asks you to enter the windows logon id, with that entered, it automatically auto populates the other information for

How to check the actual error reported for a Workflow failure

2010-03-07T22:42:00.000-08:00

When a workflow fails, all it shows in CRM is a window similar to the following. This is very vague and does not help you in any way to identify the cause of the failure, especially if you were using a workflow assembly in the workflow.To check the actual error reported during the execution workflow, you can search for the error code and message column of the System Job.You can create an advanced

How to add scroll bar to CRM Dashboard accelerator

2010-03-02T04:31:00.001-08:00

The CRM Dashboard accelerator released displays Dashboards in its Workplace. However there is one issue with it, that being that it does not provide scrollbars to scroll through the page to view all the available charts on the screen. In this blog we have describe how to add the scrollbar for this report page.For this we need to do some changes in the “sitemap” file and add one custom page with

How to Sort CRM views by more than one attribute

2010-02-25T05:54:00.000-08:00

Quite often there stems a need to have the CRM views sorted by more than one column being displayed. Say you would first like to sort accounts by Type followed by City and then by the account name.Using the CRM view designer, we can only provide the sorting for one column.You can however achieve this by using CRM shortcut key combination of Ctrl+Shift+Mouse Click on the selected columns of the

Experience with recovering a CRM database marked as SUSPECT

2010-02-11T04:40:00.000-08:00

Unfortunately we had our CRM down because the CRM database was marked suspect in SQL. Had a tough time getting it back. Here we share our experience and the steps/commands that helped us get our system back up and running. These may not be the only way of fixing it and perhaps not everyone’s problem would be solved by following these but I hope some of the points below would perhaps get you

InoLink: QuickBooks - Dynamics CRM Integration Version 2.0 Released

2010-02-09T04:37:00.000-08:00

We have come up with the next version of InoLink: QuickBooks - Dynamics CRM IntegrationInoLink: QuickBooks is an integration link developed to integrate QuickBooks with Dynamics CRM. After detailed evaluation of the feedback received over a period of time we have come up with this version.What’s new in this version?1. The general look and feel has been vastly improved for seamless integration

Sharing access in Dynamics CRM

2010-02-04T05:30:00.000-08:00

Dynamics CRM has the concept of record ownership. A record can only be owned by single user and not by a team or more than one users. Depending on the security roles defined it is possible to restrict a user to have access to only records owned by them. However in most practical situation where people work in teams it would be required to allow a group of persons to have access to certain records

CRM Relationship Behavior (contd) - Cascading rule for Relationship Behavior

2010-02-01T22:51:00.000-08:00

We had written on CRM Entity Relationships in one of our earlier post on this blog. To take this further today we would like to discuss the way the settings for the Cascading Rules affect the related entities when an action is performed on the main entity.Cascading Rules:Following action can be taken on the parent entity- Assign- Delete- Merge- Reparent- Share- UnshareThe cascading rules let you

InoDashboard – Dynamics CRM Business Intelligence Dashboard released

2010-01-25T03:31:00.000-08:00

Dynamics CRM requires a comprehensive tool for monitoring the KPI in a visual/dashboard format. Inogic labs has come up with InoDashboard, a Business Intelligence Dashboard designed for Microsoft Dynamics CRM to fill in this gap. This tool will allow the CRM users at each level to design a dashboard specific to them and include the reports and monitor areas specific to their interest.It comes

Increasing the length of address1_line1 attribute does not work - FIX

2010-01-13T04:05:00.000-08:00

We once happened to increase the length of the adress1_line1 attribute of account to 200. We had done this before with other attributes and it had worked just fine. So we were surprised when even after publishing the account entity after make the above change, we still received an error. To Fix this Error we had to instead increase the length of line1 attribute of the “customeraddress” entity and

Change left navigation lable ,display order on custom entity

2010-01-11T22:00:00.000-08:00

This blog will help you to customize your left navigation pane settings found on entity record. Like shown in below screen shot. You can change the order as well as label shown over here but note that this functionality will only apply on custom entity and not on system entity.This is CRM functionality where you can change the display label and order of the list on the left navigation. Following

Debugging Script with CRM events

2010-01-07T21:43:00.000-08:00

Writing JavaScript in CRM is a tedious job and finding the error in your script is even more difficult. The best way to find the error cause is to debug it. The blog will give you the steps to debug the scripts added on form events in CRM.Steps to enable debugging script:- Go to Internet Explorer settings.- Click on Tools and select Internet Options. You will we see following screen.- On the

How to change the properties of the Primary Attribute of an Entity

2010-01-04T21:19:00.000-08:00

The blog will help you change the properties of primary attribute of an entity. Modifying properties of primary attribute is disabled when you try to do it from “Primary Attribute” tab. However you can change the properties if you opened the attribute from Attributes left navigation instead.Follow the steps below to change the requirement level for account entities primary attribute “name”. (Note

CRM Relationship Behavior

2009-12-28T04:07:00.000-08:00

The blog will help you in the scenarios when you requires to move records from one user to another user with some conditions. Like in scenario one of your sales rep leave the organization and you need to assign his records to the newly joined rep but you also need to keep the history of this old rep (completed work like activities etc) in such scenario you need to check what type relationship

Send bulk mails from campaign and quick campaign using Mail Merge feature

2009-12-18T04:15:00.000-08:00

The blog will cover the process on how to send bulk emails using Quick Campaign as well as Campaigns with the help of Mail merge document. The Mail merge document allows ability to create your own word document in which you can format the mail content as per your requirement easily. The most useful feature of using mail merge is you can add images in the mail which you can not directly add in CRM

CRM data dictionary

2009-12-09T00:00:00.000-08:00

To check the CRM data dictionary you can browse tohttp://servername:port/OrganizationName/sdk/list.aspxwhereServerName: Name of the server with port number.OrganizationName: Name of the organization.The data dictionary lists out both system and custom entities and attributes defined for the organization.If you click on the icon in the Definition column, you can view all the attributes in the

How to purge Log file of CRM database

2009-12-07T01:06:00.000-08:00

Over a period of time, you will notice that the size of the transaction log file has grown exponentially and it has now used up most of the free disk space available on the drive.Transaction log keep a track of all updates being made to the database tables and is required for recovery or restore of the database. So it is important that we do not lose the transaction logs. However we can safely

How to Create "My views" for custom entities

2009-12-03T00:51:00.000-08:00

The Account entity in CRM comes along with pre-defined views for My Active Accounts. However, when you create a custom entity you will notice that by default only two views are created “Active” and “Inactive”. If you would like to add “My Active” and “My Inactive” views for custom entities, you would need to create them yourself by customizing the entity.To create a “My Active” view in custom

Unable to connect to the remote server Error

2009-11-30T04:13:00.000-08:00

“Unable to connect to the remote server Error”, this error occurs because the connection is lost with the server. When you make authenticated calls, the client opens the connection and then closes it as well. The connection is not re-used. If you make such calls repeatedly to the server, all available connections get exhausted. This can be fixed by modifying one of the TCP/IP parameters to

How to Track the Next Action and Last Touch dates on Account

2009-11-29T22:09:00.000-08:00

Quite often you need to monitor and have workflows designed based on the "Last Touch Date" or the "Next Action" date. While the former should reflect the last interaction made with the customer, the later is to keep track of the next upcoming interaction with the customer.End users often believe the Modified date reflected on the Account form, is the "Last Touch Date". Well, that is not true. The

You receive an Sql Error when Importing Customizations

2009-11-29T20:27:00.000-08:00

You may come across the following error when you try to import the customizations for an entity that already exists in the system. This error is often a result of data type mismatch between the attributes in the new customization file being imported and the entity attributes already defined in CRM. Say for example an entity has an attirbute of the type picklist in CRM. However the same attribute

Tips on using Mail Merge Functionality in Dynamics CRM

2009-11-18T00:54:00.000-08:00

Like most Contact Managers, Dynamics CRM too provides the Mail Merge ability. Recently we spent quite some time trying this out and we would like to share some of the findings that I am sure would assist other beginners in this area1. Mail Merge functionality has been added as a privilege and so only users with the necessary privileges would be allowed to perform a mail merge. Mail merge is also