Read Form Id or Form XML of a specified entity form

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 the FormId of an entity through Jscript.

The schema name for the entity that stores the information about the various forms is SystemForm. The code below retrieves the id for the specified form based on the form name.


function RetrieveGetFormIDRecord(formName)
{
var cols="";
try
{
var xml = "<soapenv:Envelope xmlns:soapenv='http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/'>"+
" <soapenv:Body>"+
" <RetrieveMultiple xmlns='http://schemas.microsoft.com/xrm/2011/Contracts/Services' xmlns:i='http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance'>"+
" <query i:type='a:QueryExpression' xmlns:a='http://schemas.microsoft.com/xrm/2011/Contracts'>"+
" <a:ColumnSet>"+
" <a:AllColumns>false</a:AllColumns>"+
" <a:Columns xmlns:b='http://schemas.microsoft.com/2003/10/Serialization/Arrays'>"+
" <b:string>formid</b:string>"+
" </a:Columns>"+
" </a:ColumnSet>"+
" <a:Criteria>"+
" <a:Conditions>"+
" <a:ConditionExpression>"+
" <a:AttributeName>name</a:AttributeName>"+
" <a:Operator>Equal</a:Operator>"+
" <a:Values xmlns:b='http://schemas.microsoft.com/2003/10/Serialization/Arrays'>"+
" <b:anyType i:type='c:string' xmlns:c='http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema'>"+formName+"</b:anyType>"+
" </a:Values>"+
" </a:ConditionExpression>"+
" </a:Conditions>"+
" <a:FilterOperator>And</a:FilterOperator>"+
" <a:Filters />"+
" </a:Criteria>"+
" <a:Distinct>false</a:Distinct>"+
" <a:EntityName>systemform</a:EntityName>"+
" <a:LinkEntities />"+
" <a:Orders />"+
" <a:PageInfo>"+
" <a:Count>0</a:Count>"+
" <a:PageNumber>0</a:PageNumber>"+
" <a:PagingCookie i:nil='true' />"+
" <a:ReturnTotalRecordCount>true</a:ReturnTotalRecordCount>"+
" </a:PageInfo>"+
" <a:NoLock>false</a:NoLock>"+
" </query>"+
" </RetrieveMultiple>"+
" </soapenv:Body>"+
"</soapenv:Envelope>";


// Prepare the xmlHttpObject and send the request.
var xHReq = new ActiveXObject("Msxml2.XMLHTTP");
xHReq.Open("POST", Xrm.Page.context.getServerUrl() + "/XRMServices/2011/organization.svc/web", false);
xHReq.setRequestHeader("SOAPAction", "http://schemas.microsoft.com/xrm/2011/Contracts/Services/IOrganizationService/RetrieveMultiple");
xHReq.setRequestHeader("Content-type", "text/xml; charset=utf-8");
xHReq.setRequestHeader("Content-Length", xml.length);
xHReq.send(xml);

// Capture the result.
var resultXml = xHReq.responseXML;

var errorCount = resultXml.selectNodes('//error').length;
if (errorCount != 0)
{
var msg = resultXml.selectSingleNode('//description').nodeTypedValue;
alert(msg);
return;
}

// Parse and display the results.
var results = resultXml.getElementsByTagName('a:Entity');
//if only one zip code records found
if (results.length != 0 )
{
//alert("Lenght: "+results.length);
var attribs = results[0].getElementsByTagName('a:Attributes/a:KeyValuePairOfstringanyType');
if (attribs.length == 0)
{
alert("No data found in enitty.");
return;
}

if(attribs[0].selectSingleNode('./b:key').nodeTypedValue =="formid" )
{
//set the field values
var value= attribs[0].selectSingleNode('./b:value').nodeTypedValue;
alert("FormID:"+value);
}
}

}//end of try
catch(e)
{
alert("RetrieveGetFormIDRecordErr: "+e.description);
}
}//end of RetrieveGetFormIDRecord

</Snip>

In the above code, we just need to pass the form name and it will return the form id. In the above query we can add the condition to filter by an entity like account forms as well by setting the “objecttypecode”.

Once you have the formid you can open the form using the following url

var accountPage= Xrm.Page.context.getServerUrl()+ "/main.aspx?etn=account&extraqs=formid%3D"+value+"%0D%0A&pagetype=entityrecord";
window.open(accountPage);

Multiple Form Layouts for a single entity in CRM 2011

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, this is now available in CRM 2011 as a feature. You can create multiple forms and then assign a particular form to a certain security role.

You can create a new form by choosing the Main Form option


Design the form as required and then assign security role to the form


Note: You can notice the checkbox shown on this form at bottom “Enabled for fallback”. This notifies that the form will be shown to the users with roles which did not have any form explicitly assigned for them. There will always be one form that has this option enabled.


If a user has different roles as a result of which there are multiple forms for an entity that can be used by the user, the form that gets displayed by defult depends on the order provided for the forms.



The default form displayed can be changed by the user who has access to more than one form layout by choosing the appropriate form from the Form Navigator. The form last chosen is recorded as the form to be used by the user for the next time.


Note each individual form supports its layout and is independent of the other form layouts. Changes done to the form like left navigation, header, footer, body changes will get applied to individual form only.

Check back with us soon for more features to be explained…