Use of Web Resources in CRM 2011

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 are chances that you have created a directory structure where the htm page would be in the root directory but the images would be in a folder called _img and scripts in a folder called scripts within the root directory.

To upload this entire application as resource within CRM, you will need to individually upload all of the files related to the application. However, what you need to take care is the way you name these resources in CRM while uploading. You can create a virtual directory structure by including the path in the name of the resource.

In case of our above example, the resources would be named as follows to represent the same directory structure

Suppose if you have created the following web resources.
1. New_/IMG/My.GIF
2. New_/Script/My.js

Now if you are going to use these webresources in the html web resource and the html web resource name is “new_/Pages/TestHtmlPage.html”.
Then you need to give the name as follows, because CRM takes the name as the virtual folder. Hence your script files exist in the Script folder and Html page exist in the Pages folder hence when you add the resources in your html page then first you come out from the “Pages” folder and then you give the path for the js file hence the src will be “../Script/My.js”.
< SCRIPT src=” ../Script/My.js” type =text/javascript>

Say you are developing an htm page from which you are going to create an account in CRM or need to access the controls placed on the CRM entity form, you will need to add the reference to the following script library and also ensure that you have uploaded this as a resource in CRM as well.
Once the resources have been added in CRM, you can now access them in CRM through IFRAME.

Addresses in CRM explained....

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 unable to, it would throw an error. That’s when we found out the following

When you open an Account, you are presented with a set of fields for storing address. If you check the CRM account entity details, you will find there are actually two sets of address fields available. By default only address_1 set of fields are placed on the form, but you can also add the second set of address_2 fields.

Besides this we are also provided with the option to add multiple other addresses under the More Addresses section on the account form.

Common perception of this design would be that 2 default set of address fields have been added on the account entity for ease of access and use. They have the Customer Address entity to store the more addresses associated with the Account.

We just happened to find out that this is not really the case. All addresses are only stored in the Customer Address entity.

When you create a new account/contact, it would by default in the background add 2 entries in the Customer Address entity for the 2 set of address fields available on the Account form. CRM distinguishes these entries from the rest of the entries to be displayed in More addresses using the Address number column. Address number 1 and 2 are reserved for the 2 set of address fields available on the account form.

The reference to these is stored in the Account entity schema using the address1_addressid and address2_addressid.

Hope this would help someone out there understand the technical concept of addresses much better from now on

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

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

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 the diagnostic tool you would find that the Book Request is fired. It will show up the following xml.

Workflows vs Dialogs

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.