In our earlier post Now
Store Images in CRM 2013 we discussed at length about the new Image
attribute added to CRM 2013. It included steps to programmatically read/write
to this field. The next step being the ability to include the image attribute in
the reports.
This seemingly appears a simple task to include images just
as the images were picked up earlier from the notes entity and displayed on the
report. But when we tried to do the same with the image attribute, we found
that the image attribute is actually not stored the same way as the
attachments.
We could use the following code to read the image data using
the CRM SDK
string binaryImageQuery =
"<fetch mapping='logical'><entity name='lead'>
<attribute name='fullname' />
<attribute name='entityimage' />
</entity>
</fetch>"
EntityCollection binaryImageResults = _serviceProxy.RetrieveMultiple(new FetchExpression(binaryImageQuery));
This would return the image data in binary format that we
could then read in a byte array.
But when you execute the same fetch query using BIDS for
report designing, you receive the following results
This appears all good but when you set the control source of
the image control on the form to the entityimage attribute, it returns an error
about the data in the field not being in correct format.
Upon further review of the results we found that the
System.Byte[] did not mean the binary data but only the string “System.Byte[]”.
The Fetch query when executed using the RetrieveMultipe API as shown above returns binary data. But when the same query is executed using the ExecuteFetch API call, the results are returned in xml format and therefore the image attribute returns only a string “System.Byte[]” not the actual image binary data in Base64 string.
ExecuteFetchRequest fetch = new ExecuteFetchRequest();
fetch.FetchXml = binaryImageQuery;
_service.Execute(fetch);
As a result of this, reports designed using FetchXML (reports in CRM Online) would not be able to include images on the report.
On-Premise installs can still add the images in the report using SQL queries.
select con.FullName, con.Parentcustomeridname,con.entityimage from
FilteredContact con
Bind the image control in the report to entityimage attribute
