Using Custom Dialogs in CRM 4.0 with Offline Client and CRM Online Support

Andrew Zimmer — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 12:41:00 GMT

When you think of CRM Online or clients that use the Offline Client, you may think that custom forms are off limits, at least without a lot of deployment hastles. I wanted to show a simple JScript snippet that can help provide more user-friendly forms when an ASP.Net website isn't an option... ...

The Problem
When the user clicks the button on a parent record for "Reject All":

Prompt the user for a rejection reason
Set the rejection reason on the parent record
Update a rejected flag on the parent record
Set the rejection reason on all child records
Deactivate all child records

NOTE: The forms must support the Offline Client (indirectly this would support CRM Online).

Since the code needed to support the offline client, I developed the entire solution in JScript. When the user clicks the toolbar button, a modal dialog will prompt for the cancellation reason and JScript will do all the work of updating the parent and child records. No external ASP.Net forms are necessary.

Click Toolbar Button for Reject All

Enter Reject Reason

Before I talk about how I implemented it, I wanted to go over the less desirable options:

When the user clicks the "Reject All" button, make the Cancel Reason field required on the form and prompt the user to enter it and click save. While this will accomplish the goals, it isn't as user friendly.
Use a JScript prompt to retrieve the cancel reason from the user and then use JScript to update the parent and child record (i.e. var reply = prompt("Please enter a reject comment.", "")). As with the previous solution, this will accomplish the goals, but it isn't as user friendly.
Use ASP.Net web forms to retrieve the cancel reason. This will also accomplish the goal but it presents some deployment challenges for the offline client and CRM Online.

The Solution
Begin by adding the ISV button to the toolbar.

First, ensure that your installation is configured to allow ISV buttons for web, Outlook Client, and Offline Client. This is done from Settings --> System Settings.

Second, import the following XML to add the button.

Notice that the JScript attached to the button simply calls a function. I like to use functions, so I don't have to re-import the ISV Config customization every time I want to make a simple JScript change. I can just update the On Load for the form.

Next, add the following code to OnLoad to handle the button click event. It begins by opening a modal dialog by using some hard-coded HTML. As opposed to deploying an ASP.Net web page to your ISV folder on the CRM Server (as well as Offline Client user's machine), you are able to deploy your entire solution by importing/exporting your CRM customizations.

document.RejectAll = function()
{

var childWindow = window.open('','','menubar=no,statusbar=no,toolbar=no,width=285,height=175');

// If its already been rejected before, take the reject comment from the form
var currentRejectComment = "";
if(crmForm.all.inet_rejectcomment.DataValue != null)
currentRejectComment = crmForm.all.inet_rejectcomment.DataValue;

var htmlText = "<html>";
htmlText += "<body background-color='#6693CF'>";
htmlText += "    <table width='265' height='135' cellpadding='0' cellspacing='0'>";
htmlText += "        <tr align='left' bgcolor='#6693CF'>";
htmlText += "            <td align='left' colspan='2'>";
htmlText += "                <font size='2' color='#FFFFFF'><b>Please Enter Reject Reason</font></b>";
htmlText += "            </td>";
htmlText += "        </tr>";
htmlText += "        <tr align='left' bgcolor='#E3EFFF'>";
htmlText += "            <td align='left'>";
htmlText += "                <font size='2'>Reason:</font>";
htmlText += "            </td>";
htmlText += "            <td align='left'>";
htmlText += "                <textarea cols='25' rows='4' id='txtRejectReason' textmode='multiline'>" + currentRejectComment + "</textarea>";
htmlText += "            </td>";
htmlText += "        </tr>";
htmlText += "        <tr width='100%' align='left' bgcolor='#E3EFFF'>";
htmlText += "            <td colspan='2' align='center'>";
htmlText += "                <button style='width:50px' id='btnOk' title='Ok' onclick='BLOCKED SCRIPTwindow.opener.document.RejectAllWithReason(txtRejectReason.value);window.close();'>";
htmlText += "                    Ok</button> <button style='width:50px' id='btnCancel' title='Cancel' onclick='BLOCKED SCRIPTwindow.close();'>";
htmlText += "                    Cancel</button>";
htmlText += "            </td>";
htmlText += "        </tr>";
htmlText += "    </table>";
htmlText += "</body>";
htmlText += "</html>";
childWindow.document.write(htmlText);

}

The HTML includes a text box for the cancel reason. If you were to click cancel, it would simply give control back to the CRM Form. If you click OK, it calls another function on the form to complete the rest of the save.

On "OK" click, call this function which updates the cancel reason on the parent record along with the cancelled flag. Update the cancel reason on all child records and deactivate the child records, all using JScript.

document.RejectAllWithReason = function(rejectReason)
{

// OMITTED - updating child entity fields and deactivating in JScript

// Update parent record fields and save
crmForm.all.inet_rejectcomment.DataValue = rejectReason+ " ";
crmForm.all.inet_rejectallflag.ForceSubmit = true;
crmForm.all.inet_rejectallflag.DataValue = true;
crmForm.Save();
}

You now have a solution that works in the Offline Client and CRM Online without introducing complex deployment scenarios!

Enjoy,
Andrew

Andrew Zimmer : CRM Offline Client, CRM 4.0

Using Custom Dialogs in CRM 4.0 with Offline Client and CRM Online Support