Tips on using Mail Merge Functionality in Dynamics CRM

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 area

1. 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 available through the Web interface.

2. When the Mail merge process opens the Microsoft Word window to allow for designing of the Template make sure of the following

a. Enable Macros

b. Make sure the CRM addin is enabled and you have to click on this for the CRM mail merge to begin.
3. Though Mail merge can be used from Web interface as well, having Outlook client installed brings up some additional features like ability to “Upload” the mail merge template directly to CRM.

4. There are two ways to upload Mail Merge templates to CRM, one being design the template using the “Create Mailmerge template” button in MS word.

Save the Template file in Microsoft Word XML format.
Attach this document to CRM.
If you had the CRM Outlook client installed and Outlook running, the Word Mail merge wizard would display the “Upload Template” option.

Choosing this would automatically upload the document to CRM.

5. Mail Merge functionality is available for only selected System entities like
· Quote
· Lead
· Opportunity
· Account
but all custom entities are available for selection for Mail Merge

6. Only for the Quote entity would you find the “Related Products” entity in the data fields selection window.

No other one-to-many relations of any entity would be available for mail merge. However all lookup attributes would have their related entities available for selection in the data fields.

7. To design a mail merge template that lists out all the exported entries in a single document instead of creating one document per exported line of data choose the Mail Merge type to be “Directory”.

After you insert the mail merge fields and click on preview, it would still display each record on a separate page. To check the results as a list in a document, complete the merge and export the merge to another document to see the entire list in a single document.

Issues with deleting a picklist option from a Picklist attribute

CRM allows you to add/update/delete the picklist options of a picklist attribute. However, like most other contact managers that store the text/reference of the deleted picklist option in the records where it had been used, CRM does not store the reference. It differs in this regard. Once a picklist option has been deleted, all existing records that had used this value would be reset to “Default Value”.

While checking out the picklist option sequencing in detail to explain it to our customer we found that CRM by default will always bring back the value of the deleted option.

Here we take an example of Contact record and “Lead Source” picklist attribute.

1. We have added a pick list value with name “Test” in lead source picklist.

2. Now we have selected the test option in a contact record.

3. Now we go ahead and delete the “Test” option from “Lead Source”..

4. If you go back to the contact record that had this value assigned to it, it would now have been reset to “Default Value”


Now unless you save this record, it would automatically get the next option that you add with the same “Value”.

Another point worth mentioning is that if you had deleted one of the picklist options and published the customizations, the next time you add a new option to this picklist it would bring back the value of the deleted option. The value is editable in CRM 4.0 so make sure you change this value unless you were adding this as a replacement to the earlier deleted option.

Now we have deleted the test and publish the entity.

In below screen shot we are adding a another picklist option “Test123”, it will bring up the same value as that of “Test” the deleted option.

Now even if we edit the value and set it to say 200002, any further options that you add do not increment automatically to use the next sequence number i.e 200003 but rather would still bring up 200000 as the value by default for every new option that you add hence forth.

I am not sure if this is a feature or a bug, but I would rather have preferred it remember the last sequence number assigned and increment it from there on.

How to Increase the Tab limit in CRM Forms

By default the max number of tabs allowed in CRM Form is 8.

The max tab limit is defined in JavaScript of formeditor.aspx. This page can be found at the following location “\Microsoft Dynamics CRM\CRMWeb\Tools\FormEditor”.

You can change the count specified in the _iMaxTabs to increase the count as shown in the below screenshot.

Note: This is an unsupported change and it could be overwritten if you install Rollups for CRM.

Global Functions/Variables available in Dynamics CRM

Global Functions:
There are various global functions which provide information about the client system.

IsOnline: This will return if the form has been opened from an Online or Offline system. This could be helpful if you would want a particular feature to be made available in a specific mode only.

Example:
if (IsOnline())
{
alert("You are working online");
}

These above are available through scripting. If you would like to check this in your server side app, you need to add reference to the Microsoft.Crm.Outlook.Sdk assembly. The assembly contains a class named CrmOutlookService that can be used to check the status of the Outlook client.

IsCrmClientLoaded: This will return if the Microsoft Dynamics CRM for Outlook client has been loaded by Microsoft Outlook

IsCrmClientOffline: This will return true if Microsoft Dynamics CRM for Outlook with offline Access is currently in offline mode

GenerateAuthenticationHeader:
When you call webservice through scripting, you need to pass the authentication information along with the SOAP header. This function returns the appropriate Microsoft Dynamics CRM authentication header based on each deployment type: on-premise, Internet-facing deployment (IFD), or Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online.

Example:
var soapBody = "<soap:Body>"+
"<Execute xmlns='http://schemas.microsoft.com/crm/2007/"+
"WebServices'>"+
"<Request xsi:type='WhoAmIRequest' />"+
"</Execute> </soap:Body>";
var soapXml = "<soap:Envelope " +
"xmlns:soap='http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/' "+
"xmlns:xsi='http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance' "+
"xmlns:xsd='http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema'>";
soapXml += GenerateAuthenticationHeader();
soapXml += soapBody;
soapXml += "</soap:Envelope>";

PrependOrgName: The CRM URL by default adds the CRM Organization name when you browse CRM. It is important that if you are displaying a custom page in an IFRAME, the path to the page should also include the current Organization name. This function automatically determines the current organization name and adds it to generate the URL specific to the current organization.

Example:
var url = prependOrgName("/isv/app/myapp.aspx");
results: If you were logged into Contoso organization “/Contoso/isv/app/myapp.aspx”

Global Variables:
Some of the Global variables that can really come in handy are
1. SERVER_URL: This will return the base Server URL.
2. ORG_UNIQUE_NAME: This will return the unique text value of the organizations name. This is the same value to you also receive in custom forms if you set the PassParams to be true.

How to edit the list of entities displayed in the Look for picklist in Lookup window

The regarding lookup windows generally displays a list of all entities that can be associated with an activity. Quite often this feature becomes quite an issue with the users always having to select the appropriate entity from the list before applying the search. The longer the list of entities the more time consuming it is to search using the lookup window.

It would be a boon to have only a selected few listed that you use and do away with the rest. Well this is not available for customization through the CRM customization area. But it could be done with a couple of lines of script added to the onload of the form to manipulate the default properties of a lookup control to get the desired results.

For better understanding of how this works, it would be good to check the source of one of the CRM form that has a lookup control. In our example we are using the source of the Email form. Here when you search for regardingobjectid, you will find the “Lookup Types”, “Lookup Type names” ,”Lookup Type Icons” and “default type” properties of the Lookup control being set.

This provides the list of the entities that shall be displayed in the Look for entity list. To edit this to set your specific list of entities to show up in the Look for section you need to set these properties appropriately through scripting.

//Give the entity type code that you want in below script we want to show account, contact, contract and order in the list //codes
crmForm.all.regardingobjectid.lookuptypes = "1,2,1010,1088";

//Make sure you set the path of the entity images correctly for the list specified above. If you notice it is generally in the form of /imgs_ico_16_
crmForm.all.regardingobjectid.lookuptypeIcons = "/_imgs/ico_16_1.gif:/_imgs/ico_16_2.gif: :/_imgs/ico_16_1010.gif : :/_imgs/ico_16_1088.gif ";

//The below script is to set default entity in the multiple entity lookup. Here we set the default entity to be contact. If you want contract then write 1010 in place of 2 in //below script
crmForm.all.regardingobjectid.defaulttype = "2";

You need to add the above 3 lines of code in the onload event of the email form and publish it. Next time the lookup window for regarding will only list the 4 entities listed above.