Wednesday, March 6, 2013

Aggregate and Grouping functions using LINQ in CRM


As you know, QueryExpression are built as an Object Model. They support all the features of FetchXML except for grouping & aggregates.

FetchXML supports all the features of QueryExpression including grouping & aggregates. Queries here are built as XML statements.

LINQ queries are built using standard language similar to SQL, but internally it uses QueryExpression and hence it is limited to the features of QueryExppression



The QueryExpression class supports complex queries.
The QueryByAttribute class is a simple means to search for entities where attributes matches specified values.

When using LINQ, it returns IQueryable<Entity> which is not a collection & hence we can’t do group-by or aggregate.

IQueryable<Entity> queryDemo = from a in orgServiceContext.AccountSet

                                                              where a.Address1_City.Contains("a")
                   select a; 
 
However, LINQ supports group by in following way.
 

Write a simple LINQ Query

var lnqQuery = from o in orgServiceContext.OpportunitySet

where o.EstimatedValue.Value >= 10000

select new

   {

OpportunityTopic = o.Name,

PotentialCustomer = o.CustomerId,

Rating = o.OpportunityRatingCode

};
 

In another query pass your created query as a list. You can either do a ToList() or you can make your own List like List<Groups> estList = new List<Groups>() where Groups is your custom class with set & get.


Here, we are using ToList() & grouping the collection by Rating.
 

var lnqQuery2 = (from f in lnqQuery.ToList()
 
//Pass the lnqQuery as a list using ToList() & then group by
 

group f by f.Rating into queryGrp
 

let first = queryGrp.First()
 

//selecting only the first record of all grouped record
 

select new

{

Name = first.OpportunityTopic,
 

Rating = first.Rating.Value

});
 

Now if we want to retrieve all the records from the Query Group, then we can simply create a list of query Group using ToList() & iterate through it as shown in below example

var lnqQuery2 = (from f in lnqQuery.ToList()
 

//Pass the lnqQuery as a list using ToList() & then group by
 

group f by f.Rating into queryGrp
 

//Make a list of queryGrp using ToList()
 

select queryGrp.ToList());
 

//Create a DataTable
 

DataTable table = new DataTable();
 

//Add some columns
 

table.Columns.Add("Topic");
 

table.Columns.Add("Cust");
 

table.Columns.Add("Rating");
 

foreach (var e1 in lnqQuery2)
 

{

//iterate through each record grouped with rating
 

foreach (var e2 in e1)

{

//iterate through each individual record that belongs in a rating
 

DataRow dataRow = table.NewRow();
 
dataRow["Topic"] = e2.OpportunityTopic;
 

dataRow["Cust"] = e2.PotentialCustomer.Name;
 

dataRow["Rating"] = e2.Rating;
 

table.Rows.Add(dataRow);

 }

}

//here you have your list in your dataGridView
 

dataGridView1.DataSource = table;

 

Note- Here we are just showing the rating value. You can get the rating by using FormattedValues["opportunityratingcode"]

For more details you can visit here


Hope this article helps!
                                                                                     
 

Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Issue regarding service activities resolved in UR 12


A while ago, we had requirement of sending an email to the users to whom service activity is scheduled. We had created a workflow which would send an email to the resources whenever they have be scheduled in for a service activity. The workflow was supposed to be triggered on create of service activity and on change of the resources field on service activity.

We were facing issues with this workflow that it was getting triggered on update of any and every field on the activity whereas the triggers defined were “on change of the resources field” and “create of SA”.

To check this issue we enabled the audit log for service activity, then updated some other field from the service activity and checked the audit log. In the audit log we came to know that the “Scheduling” event was getting triggered whenever the service activity is updated for any field.

As you can also see in the below given screen shot, the changed fields shows resource field with the same value in Old as well as New values, but actually we had updated the location field.





The service activity was getting re-scheduled (see above screen) even if the resources were not changed. As the Reschedule event was getting triggered and setting the same resource again in the resources field, the workflow was getting triggered again and again.

We have tried this on different MS CRM updates which had roll ups installed on it. There we came to know that this is the Roll up 8 and 11 issue.

To resolve the workflow issue we have written a script on the “on change” event of the “Resources” field. This script would set the pipe separated resource names in a custom field and the workflow will be triggered on the change of that particular custom field. It means when the resources are changed the script will be triggered and set the names in the custom field. And when the name is changed in the custom field our workflow of sending email would be triggered. So that whenever any other field of the service activity is updated the workflow will not be triggered.

After the release of UR 12, we have checked this on CRM with Update Roll up 12 installed on it. There we noticed that this issue has been fixed. As you can in below screen shot, instead of scheduling the service activity every time, only update event has been triggered on change of any field of the service activity.






Hope this article helps!

Tuesday, February 5, 2013

Use ExecuteMultipleRequest for performance improvement in bulk data load and other operations


 A new request called ExecuteMultipleRequest has been added to the Update rollup 12 for the Bulk Data Load. Using this request, multiple request can be executed with the single server call. The main advantage of this request is that it will definitely improve the performance since in one round trip to the server, it actually posts more than 1 message to be executed. With reduced round trips for each individual request the performance improvement is exponential.

ExecuteMultipleRequest accepts the collection of different request and executes each request in a order they appear in the collection. This request will optionally returns the response of each request or error occurred while executing the request. Each message request in the input collection is processed in a separate database transaction.

Members of ExecuteMultipleRequest:

1.    Requests: It is a collection of message requests to execute.

2.    Settings: It contains settings that define whether execution should continue if an error occurs executing a request and if responses for each message request processed are to be returned.
Below is the example, where different requests like Create/Update are added to ExecuteMultipleRequest collection and submit it for processing in a single round trip.
                    // Create an ExecuteMultipleRequest object.
                    ExecuteMultipleRequest requestWithResults = new ExecuteMultipleRequest()
                    {
                        // Assign settings that define execution behavior: continue on error, return responses.
                        Settings = new ExecuteMultipleSettings()
                        {
                            ContinueOnError = true,
                            ReturnResponses = true
                        },
                        // Create an empty organization request collection.
                        Requests = new OrganizationRequestCollection()
                    };
                   //create account entity
                   Entity accountEntity=new Entity("account");
                   //set name for the account
                   accountEntity.Attributes["name"] = "New Account "+new DateTime();
                   //create CreateRequest object
                   CreateRequest createRequest = new CreateRequest { Target = accountEntity };
                   //add to ExecuteMultipleRequest Collection
                   requestWithResults.Requests.Add(createRequest);
                   //retrieve contact entity
                   Entity contactEntity = _service.Retrieve("contact", new Guid("FC298C3B-2E4F-     E211-9DED-1CC1DE6DAA3E"),                                      new Microsoft.Xrm.Sdk.Query.ColumnSet());
                   //set Business Phone for the contact
                   contactEntity.Attributes["telephone1"]="1234567";
                   //create UpdateRequest
                   UpdateRequest updateRequest = new UpdateRequest { Target = contactEntity };
                   //add to ExecuteMultipleRequest Collection
                   requestWithResults.Requests.Add(updateRequest);
                   // Execute all the requests in the request collection using a single web method call.
                   ExecuteMultipleResponse responseWithResults = (ExecuteMultipleResponse)_service.Execute(requestWithResults);
                        if (responseWithResults.IsFaulted)
                        {
                            // Display the results returned in the responses.
                            foreach (var responseItem in responseWithResults.Responses)
                            {
                                // A valid response.
                                if (responseItem.Response != null) { }
                               
                                // An error has occurred.
                                if (responseItem.Fault != null) { }
                              
                            }
                        }

Members of ExecuteMultpleResponse:

1.    IsFaulted: It can be used  to identify if any of the messages submitted failed. Once you have identified an error you can loop through the response item to read the error description per message failure.

2.    Responses: Indicates the collection of responses.

Note: This request will only work on organizations that have UR12 applied or on Online organizations that have been upgraded to Polaris.



For further read on this, you can also refer to Microsoft CRM SDK documentation on ExceuteMultiple here.



Wednesday, January 30, 2013

Supported ways of accessing URL addressable Forms/Reports Scripts.

While using CRM there may be conditions in which user wants to open forms and reports programmatically. For this we can write the scripts which will open the forms and reports.
Open CRM forms using script:
The form can be open using openEntityForm(); method.
          Syntax :  Xrm.Utility.openEntityForm(name,id,parameter);
 
Parameters :
 
Ø  name: (Required ) The logical name of an entity.
 
Ø  id: (Optional) The string representation of a unique identifier or the record to open in the form. If not set, a form to create a new record is opened.
 
Ø  parameters: (Optional) A dictionary object that passes extra query string parameters to the form. Invalid query string parameters will cause an error.
 
Example:
1.     To Open Blank new entity record :
          Xrm.Utility.openEntityForm("contact");
2.     To Open Existing CRM Form :
    Xrm.Utility.openEntityForm("contact","A85C0252-DF8B-E111-997C-00155D8E4810");
3.  To open Form with default value set using parameter  
 
function OpenNewContact() {
 var parameters = {};
 
//Set the first name of contact to “Scott”
parameters["firstname"] = "Scott";
 
 //Set text in the Description field.
 parameters["description"] = "Description  for this record";
 
//Set the Parent Customer field value to “John”.
 parameters["parentcustomerid"] = "2E862A5A-7D0F-E211-8090-00155D000501";
 parameters["parentcustomeridname"] = " John ";
 parameters["parentcustomeridtype"] = "account";
 
 //Set Do not allow phone to "Do Not Allow".
 parameters["donotphone"] = "1";
 
 // Open the window.
 Xrm.Utility.openEntityForm("contact", null, parameters);
}
 
Open Report using script:
We can also run the report using script. We just have to pass the url to window.open(); method. Below example shows how to open the report.
Syntax : window.open(url);
url need the following parameters:
Ø  action: Two possible values for this parameter are run or filter.
 
·         When run is used, the report will be displayed using the default filters.
·         When filter is used, the report will display a filter that the user can edit before clicking the Run Report button to view the report.
 
Ø  helped:(optional) The value should correspond to the report FileName attribute value.
 
Ø  Id :This parameter is the report ReportId attribute value.
 
Example:
function OpenReport() {
try {
//call function which will return encoded url
var url=getReportURL(filter,AllContacts,'35F560E6-1606-E211-A8FC-00155D000501');
window.open(url);
}
catch(e){
alert("OpenReport  Error >> "+e.description);
}
}
 
//function to create and encode url
function getReportURL(action,fileName,id) {
   var orgUrl = Xrm.Page.context.getClientUrl();
   var reportUrl = orgUrl +
    "/crmreports/viewer/viewer.aspx?action=" +
    encodeURIComponent(action) +
    "&helpID=" +
    encodeURIComponent(fileName) +
    "&id=%7b" +
    encodeURIComponent(id) +
    "%7d";
   return reportUrl;
  }
 

Monday, January 28, 2013

Custom Workflow Activities for Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online

With Polaris it is now possible to register Custom workflow assembly for CRM Online as well. In continuation of our earlier series here where we provided the steps to use the Developer Kit, we have now added the steps to create Workflow activities for CRM Online using the new version of the developer toolkit that is available in the latest SDK and can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/en-in/download/details.aspx?id=24004

To register the workflow in CRM Online follow below steps:

Open the Visual Studio; go to File → New Project → Dynamics CRM → Dynamics CRM 2011 Package and Click Ok. 





After that Connect to Dynamics CRM Server


 

On click of Ok button the package will open then add a new project to this package. Right click on solution → Add → New Project.




The below window will be pop up to select the project type. Select Dynamics CRM 2011 Workflow Library, give the project name and click Ok.




Once the project is loaded add a Class file for the workflow. To do this right click on project click “Add New Item”.

 

Select the Class type as Workflow Activity Class. This will generate the Class with the Execute method




You can implement your logic indicated by // TODO: as given in the below screen shot.



Once the logic has been implemented double click on “RegisterFile.crmregister” see below screen.



This will open the below file, here change the IsolationMode to “Sandbox”.



Build the solution and deploy. After that go to CRM and create a Workflow as per your requirement and add the Custom workflow assembly to this workflow as shown in below screen shot.



After adding the assembly activate the workflow. This will activate your workflow and you can check your workflow is running successfully.

Possible Errors during deploying the package:


1.      You may get an error “Plug-in assembly does not contain the required types or assembly content cannot be updated” this is because you may have changed the Class name or assembly name or Default Namespace and this class name or assembly or Default Namespace name has not been updated in the “RegisterFile.crmregister” file. You must update the changes in the “RegisterFile.crmregister” file.
2.      You may also get an error “Error registering plugins and/or workflows. Description name must be specified Parameter name: description”. This is because when we add a new Workflw Activity Class file in the project it will ask for the below assembly information.

 
All the above information are required, if you miss any of the above information you may get an error “Error registering plugins and/or workflows. [Parameter Name] name must be specified Parameter name: [Parameter Name]”