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!

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.

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;

  }

 

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]”

Process - Driven UI Explored

CRM in Cross-Browser has been one of the best improvements. CRM works much faster in Chrome and Fire Fox. So the forms that would take a few seconds to load prior to this update now is like click and its open :)
 

Some of it may have to do with the new Process-Driven UI made available for the Sales and Service Process.
 

What’s with the Process-Driven UI?

The idea is to make the UI more intuitive and process-driven rather than requiring users to create records manually through the sales process as well as reduce the number of clicks and popup forms required.

The top panel includes the milestones defined for the entire lead qualification process. This panel will let you know the progress made and stage at which the current lead is in the sales process.

The process steps are configurable. You can configure the process steps using the Edit Sales Process option in the … menu

The social section of the form has the activities, feeds and notes section incorporated in a single section that can be easily switched between without popups. Ability to quickly add Phone call and Task has been included just like we had the notes section in earlier version where we could just type in to add a new note.

 

Qualifying a lead is now just a click without any popups again. There is a button added separately for Qualify and Disqualify. Upon qualify it will auto-create Account and Contact depending on the information included in the Lead along with the Opportunity.

Using the Navigation panel you can navigate to the other associated entity grids included in the form. But note you can no longer create a new record for these associated entities from this view. It is just a listing of the associated records that you can click to view but cannot add a new record for that entity like it was in the traditional UI.

Is the Process Driven UI customizable?

Yes. The process-driven form is available under the specific entity. While the earlier forms were called Information, the process-driven form is named by the entity name.

You are open to edit and customize this form to include additional fields/controls. 

New addition is you can now include web resources in the process-driven UI as well as the classic UI and still have the forms open in Read-Optimized mode.

One observation made is, though you are allowed to add script libraries, but if you include one of those you lose the process driven top panel and it is replaced with the ribbon associated with classic form.
 

How to Enable Process Driven UI?

In existing organizations that are being upgraded, Process-Driven UI needs to be manually enabled by the user.
 

This section provides you with the feature to migrate the existing forms to the new UI & enable the new forms

Note: Once the new forms are enabled, it cannot be rolled back or disabled. However the new forms do have an option in the menu to “Switch to Classic forms”.

How to update to polaris ?

Follow the below steps

Step1

Go to the Administration Tab and click on "Product Updates"

Step2

Click on Update button to Update your system to Process-Driven UI. Remember once you Updated to Polaris the changes cannot be rollback.

Step3

Step4

Click on  " Yes "

Step5

Step6    

when you will click on " Migrate customization to the new forms " then the below page appears in new window

Step7

After reading the above page click on Enable the new forms

 

Simply click on YES and you are ready to explore Polaris ….!

 

Thanks!