Jeremy Winchell

CRM Essentials - CRM Online Internet Marketing Best Practices

Jeremy Winchell — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 19:10:00 GMT

CRM Online Internet Marketing Best Practices

Please join us on December 2 as we discuss the Internet Marketing feature exclusive to CRM Online. Learn how to take advantage of:

Search Engine Marketing and how to get noticed when potential customers search the Internet for information
Internet Landing Pages and how to get potential customers to submit their info to your CRM system automatically as a new Lead
Data mining and understanding how to optimize the search engine keyword pricing over time

Join me for a 20 minute introduction to this powerful tool.

This session will be recorded.

Wednesday, December 2, 2009
LiveMeeting Setup/Login: 9:50 - 10:00 AM
Webinar: 10:00 - 10:20 AM
Q&A: 10:20 - 10:30 AM

*Please note that when adding the appointment to Outlook from Click to Attend, a reminder won't be automatically set. If you want a reminder pop up, please remember to set one when saving it. Also please note that the session broadcasts using PC audio.*

Registration:

Click to attend

Contact Information:
If you would like more information about this event or about the CRM Essentials Educational Series, please contact marketing@inetium.com.

Documentation Tools I Can't Live Without

Jeremy Winchell — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 13:09:00 GMT

Documentation plays a vital role in every single project that we're involved in at Inetium, it's also the least fun part of any project as well. However, everyone knows the importance of having clear, concise and of course thorough documentation about every CRM system we implement. The end result of our documentation efforts is a comprehensive guide for our customers and colleagues that highlight how we got from point A to point B with CRM. It allows the customer to know all of the changes, workflows, scripts and other components created so they can better understand the system and what they would need to do in the event of a major crash. Our documentation is important internally because you never know who may be supporting a CRM system you configured 2 or 3 years from now or even tomorrow. With the proper documentation available internally, theoretically anyone should be able to help a customer with any issues they are having.

Now with that rambling done, I want to highlight a few tools that I use to help speed the development of documentation. These are tools that I am constantly using, not just to create documentation at the end of a project but throughout the entire project.

CRM Form Reporter:
This is probably one of my favorite utilities for generating documentation. All you need to do is export your customizations and load them into the Form Reporter tool and let it do it's thing. It creates a very nice looking Word document outlining the form customizations for each entity in the customization file. Once the output has been created you can use Word to quickly generate a click-able table of contents. The only thing it is missing are screen-shots of the form, but the detail generated by the tool can stand on it's own. This tool saves a ton of time and really takes your documentation up a notch.

CRM 4.0 Document Generator:
This is similar to the Form Report except that it provides a little more integration with Microsoft Excel. When you install this tool it actually adds a new add-in in Microsoft Excel. Once the add-in is present all you need to do is load a customization file into the tool. Once your file has been loaded you have 3 options for documenting the customizations. You can choose to document the Forms, Picklists or Scripts associated with your customizations. The output will be generated as individual tabs within Microsoft Excel. The output isn't as clean as the Form Reporter but it is nice for creating a more technical design document for your CRM System.

JS Export Script Tool for CRM:
This tool doesn't generate any word documents, nor is it integrated into Excel but it's a product that everyone who does serious customizations should have at their disposal. What export tool actually does is connect to any CRM environment, loops through the entities and extracts out all JavaScript and creates individual .js files. The files have a nice naming convention, EntityName_Event or EntityName_FieldName_OnChange, so it provides a lot of information. I use this tool not only for documenting my JavaScript code at the end of a project, I"ll use it to extract the files for source control purposes and to make sure that all environments are in sync as well.

Other Tips:
I have a few other tips that will help you in your documentation efforts:

Utilize the description field and notes tab when building and editing workflows in your CRM system. With that information existing in CRM you can use SRS or .NET to build detailed documentation of the workflows. It's another great timesaver during the course of a project and after.
Utilize the description field when creating new entities, attributes or relationships in CRM. Just like everything else we can use a variety of tools to extract that information from CRM to build more detailed documentation as well
Don't necessarily wait until the end of the project to utilize these tools. They can be used to create documentation for version control, customization approval/sign-off, source control etc. These tools should work their way into a weekly routine to keep documentation up to date

More handy little tools like the ones I've highlighted above are popping up everyday on various blog posts, codeplex and msdn. These tools can be great time savers not only from a documentation standpoint but for anything related to Microsoft CRM.

- Jeremy

Adding Next and Previous Buttons to an Entity Form

Jeremy Winchell — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 15:08:00 GMT

Jeffrey from CWR Mobility had a great post, "Adding Next/Previous" buttons to Entity Details Form Revisited ", that demonstrated how you can add Previous & Next buttons to quickly navigate within a CRM Grid. Not only did his post address the out of box entities in CRM, his solution worked for custom entities as well. This solution worked great in Dynamics CRM 3.0 but 4.0 introduced a few schema changes to the ISV.Config file that required a few updates to the sample he provided in his post. You can download the update version of the ISV.Config file compatible with CRM 4.0 at the bottom of this blog post.

How To Enable This Functionality For Out-of-Box Entities:
Add the XML below to your ISV.Config file to enable the Next/Previous buttons for the Account entity.

To enable this customization for other out of box entities, change the name of the entity in the fist line from account to whatever entity you like (Ex. <Entity name="contact">).

How To Enable This Functionality for Custom Entities:
In order to get this to work for custom entities, the JavaScript had to be slightly modified. The reason for the change is that the Url of a custom entity is shared by all custom entities. The Url not only contains the 32-digit GUID of the custom entity, it also contains a parameter called etn (Entity Type Name). To properly reference the Url of a custom entity you have to include the GUID and the name of the entity in the Url. Since the XML is almost identical to that for out-of-box entities I won't post the XML here (the XML is included in the ISV.Config download in this post), rather I'll post the line of JavaScript that needs to be updated in order to deploy the buttons for custom entities.

In the XML you will see the following code:

window.location.href=window.location.href.split('?')[0]+'?id='+_cwrRecords[i+1][0]+'&etn=new_customentity';

When you insert the XML for a custom entity, change the bolded item above to the name of your actual custom entity. For each custom entity where you deploy this code you will have to update it 2 times, once in the JavaScript for the Previous button and once for the Next button.

See It In Action:

Image 1: The screen shot below is just before the Next button is clicked inside the CRM Account Form.

Image 2: The next account in the grid is now loaded in the Account detail form and the grid is updated to reflect the new account displayed as well.

Image 3: This is just before the Previous button is clicked to go back to the prior record

Image 4: Now the previous record in the grid has been loaded in the Account detail form and the grid once again has been updated as well

This is definitely a handy little customization that will eliminate a few clicks for your end users. Again, a big thanks to Jeffrey from CWR Mobility for building this customization.

Download ISV.Config file

- Jeremy

Formatting Date/Time Fields in a CRM Mail Merge

Jeremy Winchell — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 16:31:00 GMT

When you execute a Mail Merge in Microsoft CRM and include Date/Fields in the merge, that field exports the data in the following format: "04/29/2009 12:30 PM". The time is always exported as part of the merge even if the attribute in CRM is configured to display the Date only. Well what if you wanted to change the formatting of a date field in your merge? In CRM there are Merge Codes that you can use to format the output of data when performing a mail merge.

Here are a few samples of how you can use Merge Codes to format Date Fields:

Formatting a Date Field to Only Display the Date:

In the Microsoft Word document generated for your mail merge, add the Date Field to the document (for example Created_On date for a record in CRM)
Right-Click the merge field and Click Toggle Field Codes
The display of the field will have changed from <<CREATED_ON>> to {MERGEFIELD CREATED_ON}
Before the }, add the following: \@ "mm/dd/yyyy", now your field should look like this {MERGEFIELD CREATED_ON \@ "mm/dd/yyyy"}
Now when you go to the next step of your Merge and preview the document you will see that the time is no longer displayed.

Other Field Codes for Formatting Dates in a CRM Mail Merge:
- \@ "MMMM DD, YYYY" - Formats the Date as: April 29, 2009

CheatSheet for Date Formatting Codes:

dd - day as two numbers e.g. 01
d - single figures drop the zero e.g. 1.
dddd - day of the week e.g. Tuesday
ddd - day of the week in three letters e.g. Tue
MM - month as two figures e.g. 04
M - single figures drop the zero e.g. 4
MMMM - month in words e.g. April
MMM - month as three letters e.g. Apr
yy - year in two figures e.g. 05
yyyy - year in four figures e.g. 2005

There are Merge Codes available to format data of all types, Numbers, Money fields etc.

Jeremy

Cloning Records In Microsoft CRM 4.0 Using AJAX Controls

Jeremy Winchell — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 17:47:00 GMT

One of my favorite features of CRM 4.0 is the ability to extend the application using .NET, specifically interacting with other websites through the use of buttons, menu options, and other ISV configuration points. This has allowed me to develop “Wizards” and other pieces of functionality inside of CRM to help users accomplish certain tasks and enter in more accurate information in CRM. There are a lot of posts on the Internet about how to clone records in CRM.

I’ve found a pretty simple way of cloning records as well and it really just requires a few lines of .NET code and an .aspx webpage. Essentially, if you want to clone an exact copy of a record all you need to do is retrieve the Entity from CRM, loop through the properties and remove all references to KeyProperties. Once you remove all the Keys from the Entity you can call the Create method of the web service. It will generate a new key and you have a cloned record in CRM.

In the rest of the post, I will walk through setting up the .aspx web page, the required .NET code and how to tie it into CRM with the ISV.Config file. For another little twist to the project, I used AJAX controls to give a visual indication to the end user that the cloning process is executing.

Step 1: Setup your web project in Visual Studio 2005 or 2008 (this code was written in VS 2005)
In Visual Studio create a new Web Site project. One of the options you will have is to setup an AJAX Enabled Web Site. This ensures that all of the necessary web.config entries are included in your Website in order for the AJAX functionality to work properly.

*If you don’t see this option, then you need to install the AJAX Toolkit for Visual Studio 2005. The following URL provides information on where to download it and how to install it.
http://naveedmazhar.wordpress.com/2008/01/10/install-ajax-on-machines-running-visual-studio-2005/

Step 2: Setup your .aspx web page to use the AJAX Controls
1. Add a new .aspx page to your website solution, call it: Clone.aspx
2. Add references to the following .dll files included in the SDK
      a. Microsoft.Crm.Sdk
      b. Microsoft.Crm.SdkTypeProxy
3. At the top of the code behind page add:
      a. Using Microsoft.Crm.Sdk;
      b. Using Microsoft.Crm.Sdk.Query;
      c. Using Microsoft.Crm.SdkTypeProxy;
4. From the Design Editor of the page, add the following AJAX controls to the page (in this order)
      a. ScriptManager
      b. UpdatePanel
      c. UpdateProgress
5. Drag the following .NET Controls inside of the UpdatePanel object
      a. .NET Button
            i. Enabled = true
            ii. Visible = false
            iii. Name = Button1
      b. .NET Hyperlink
            i. Enabled = true
            ii. Visible = false
            iii. Name = Hyperlink1
6. Ascentium created a handy animated .gif for CRM 4.0, it looks great and works very well
      a. http://www.ascentium.com/blog/crm/Post189.aspx
7. Drag the animated_2.gif file into the UpdateProgress section of the web page
8. Underneath the animated .gif, type Please Wait…Cloning
9. Your page should now look like the following:

Step 3: Add the necessary code behind for the Clone button functionality
1. Add the following code to the Button1_OnClick()
protected void Button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
  //Parse Query String Variables
  if(Request.QueryString.Count > 0)
  {
  string _org = Request["orgname"].ToString();
  Guid _entityid = new Guid(Request["id"].ToString());
  string _entitytypename = Request["typename"].ToString();

  //Setup Target Retrieve Request
  TargetRetrieveDynamic _entitytoclone = new TargetRetrieveDynamic();
  _entitytoclone.EntityName = _entitytypename;
  _entitytoclone.EntityId = _entityid;


  //Execute Retrieve and Clone Entity
  try
  {
   DynamicEntity _entity;
   RetrieveResponse _response;
   RetrieveRequest _request = new RetrieveRequest();

//We want all columns that contain data, so use AllColumns()
_request.ColumnSet = new AllColumns();

//We want to use the Dynamic Entity object
   _request.ReturnDynamicEntities = true;
   _request.Target = _entitytoclone;

   //Retrieve our Entity To Clone
   CrmAuthenticationToken _token = new CrmAuthenticationToken();
   _token.OrganizationName = _org;
   _token.AuthenticationType = 0;

   CrmService _service = new CrmService();
   _service.PreAuthenticate = false;
   _service.CrmAuthenticationTokenValue = _token;
   _service.Credentials = new System.Net.NetworkCredential("administrator", "pass@word1");
   _service.Url = "http://MOSS:5555/mscrmservices/2007/crmservice.asmx";

   _response = (RetrieveResponse)_service.Execute(_request);
   _entity = (DynamicEntity)_response.BusinessEntity;


   //Remove The Key Properties (CustomerAddressID etc)
   //Otherwise, it will throw an error about a PK Violation in SQL
   foreach(Property p in _entity.Properties)
   {
    if(p is KeyProperty)
    {
     _entity.Properties.Remove(p.Name);
    }
   }

   //Create Our Cloned Entity
   Guid _newguid = (Guid)_service.Create(_entity);
   string _url = "";
   HyperLink1.Text = "Record Cloned Successfully! Click Here To Open";
   _url = SetLinkButtonProperties(_entityid.ToString(),_entitytypename,_org);
   HyperLink1.Attributes.Add("onclick","window.open('" + _url + "');window.close();");
   HyperLink1.Visible = true;
_service.Dispose();
  }
  catch(Exception x)
  {
   //Handle the Exception
  }
  }
}

Step 4: Add the following function to the code behind as well, this will get the URL of our newly created record.

private string SetLinkButtonProperties(string id,string name,string org)
{
  string path = "../../../";
   switch(name)
   {
    case "account":
     path += org + "/sfa/accts/edit.aspx?id=" + id;
    break;
    case "contact":
     path += "/sfa/conts/edit.aspx?id=" + id;
    break;
    case "opportunity":
     path += "/sfa/conts/edit.aspx?id=" +id;
    break;
    case "lead":
     path += "/sfa/lead/edit.aspx?id=" + id;
    break;
    case "incident":
     path += "/cs/cases/edit.aspx?id=" + id;
    break;
    default:
     path += "/userdefined/edit.aspx?id=" + id + "&etn=" + name;
    break;
   }
   return path;
}

Step 5: Add the following Script block to the .aspx page. This will cause our Clone button to automatically trigger a postback when the page is loaded.

Step 6: Deploy your custom web project to the ISV Folder or to its own individual website.
In this example, I’ve deployed it to the ISV folder underneath the CRM Website. I added a new folder underneath the ISV folder called: CRMExtensions and copied my code files to that location. I then converted the CRMExtensions folder to a Virtual Directory.

Step 7: Update the ISV.Config File
Deploy the following XML to every entity where the cloning button should be enabled in the ISV.Config file; in this sample it’s deployed to the Account Entity.

Step 8: Testing
Now we’re ready to test. Browse to an Account in CRM and you should see the Clone Account button on the Account screen.

When you click on the Button, it should open up our Clone Window, complete with the Progress information.

Once the cloning process has completed, our Hyperlink now appears and the user can open the cloned Account record.

Also, if we look in our list of Accounts, we will see our Account Listed twice now as well.

While this method only does a basic clone, you can extend this functionality further to allow for users to enter in a new Name or other details as well. This cloning method also works well for cloning related entities along with the main entity. That may come in a later post however as it’s a little more involved. You can also download the solution files and the ISV.Config sample.

Jeremy

** This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

Accelerators for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Posted On CodePlex

Jeremy Winchell — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 15:44:00 GMT

On Friday, Microsoft posted 3 of the 8 accelerators on CodePlex. I've listed all of the accelerators below and provided a direct link to the download for the ones that have been released. As more of these are released for download I will update these links below for quick and easy access.

- CRM Notifications
- Event Management
- Extended Sales Forecasting
- eService Portal
- Enterprise Search
- Sales Methodologies
- Business Productivity
- Analytics

To access the main Codeplex website for the accelerators, click here.

- Jeremy

Triggering a Workflow with JavaScript in CRM 4.0

Jeremy Winchell — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 02:18:00 GMT

Even though the workflow engine in CRM 4.0 supports a ton of new ways to trigger the exection of a workflow there may be cases where a button on the Form is more useful. The following example shows how you can provide an button that allows user's to escalate a case to

Scenario:
When a new case is created the case is assigned to queue monitored by Tier 1 support. As they work they case they may need to escalate to the Tier 2 support team. As part of the escalation process the case is routed to a Tier 2 Support Queue in CRM and an e-mail is sent out to the corresponding team informing them a case had been escalated.

Option 1: Create a Workflow and use the Run Workflow Button
You could create a workflow that would have 2 steps. The first step is to assign the case to the Tier 2 Support Queue. The second step would create an e-mail and send it to the Tier 2 Distribution Group. Tier 1 support representatives could then use the Run Workflow button inside of the case to trigger this action. While this would accomplish the task at hand, if there are a lot of workflows tied to cases it may be cumbersome to scroll the list of workflows in order to choose the right one. It would also take Tier 1 support a minimum of 3 clicks to escalate this case.

Option 2: Add A Button on the Case Form To Escalate the Case
The same scenario in Option 1 still applies, however this time the entire process can be automated by just 1 click of a button.

Step 1: Create the Tier 2 Support Queue in CRM

In CRM click on Settings in the Wunderbar
Click Business Managment and then select Queues
Click New to create a New Queue
Name the Queue Tier 2 Support
Click Save & Close to create the Queue

Step 2: Create the necessary workflow rule
Our workflow rule will have 2 steps, one to assign the case to the Tier 2 Support Queue and a second step to send the e-mail.

In CRM Navigate to the Settings section of CRM
Click Workflows
Click New Workflow
Give it a name like: Tier 2 Support Escalation
In the Entity drop-down box choose Case and click Ok
Set the workflow to be On-Demand and clear the other triggering events (Create/Update/Status Change etc)
Build your workflow logic using the editor
Save the workflow
Publish the workflow

Step 3: Find the GUID of the Workflow

Press Ctrl + N, to open the Workflow in a new IE Window.
Look in the URL and find the ID of the workflow, copy the GUID (do not copy the { or }
Close both workflow windows.

Step 4: Update the ISV.Config to add the button to the Case Form

  <Button JavaScript="
var _return = window.confirm('Are you sure you want to escalate this case to Tier 2 Support?');
if(_return)
{
var caseid = crmForm.ObjectId;
var authenticationHeader = GenerateAuthenticationHeader();
//Prepare the SOAP message.
var xml = "<?xml version='1.0' encoding='utf-8'?>"+
"<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'>"+
authenticationHeader+
"<soap:Body>"+
"<Execute xmlns='http://schemas.microsoft.com/crm/2007/WebServices'>" +
"<Request xsi:type='ExecuteWorkflowRequest'>" +
"<EntityId>" + caseid + "</EntityId>" +
"<WorkflowId>F52FD830-1E30-4E9C-B8D6-F05CEB65EEDE</WorkflowId>" +
"</Request>" +
"</Execute>" +
"</soap:Body>" +
"</soap:Envelope>"
var xHReq = new ActiveXObject("Msxml2.XMLHTTP");
xHReq.Open("POST", "/mscrmservices/2007/CrmService.asmx", false);
xHReq.setRequestHeader("SOAPAction","http://schemas.microsoft.com/crm/2007/WebServices/Execute");
xHReq.setRequestHeader("Content-Type", "text/xml; charset=utf-8");
xHReq.setRequestHeader("Content-Length", xml.length);
xHReq.send(xml);
window.alert('The Case Has Been Escalated To Tier 2 Support');
}
" ValidForCreate="0" ValidForUpdate="1">
   <Titles>
    <Title LCID="1033" Text="Escalate the Case To Tier 2 Support"/>
   </Titles>
  </Button>

Step 5: Import the Updated ISV.Config File

Now you should be able to open up an existing case. In the Toolbar you will see the Custom Button. When you click the button you will get prompted as to whether or not you really want to escalate the case. Once you click Ok the workflow will be triggered via the SOAP call in the button code. When the SOAP call has executed the last prompt will indicate that the workflow was triggered. If you check the workflow section of the case you should see that the workflow has now fired.

This works great not only for Cases but for any entity where you may want an easier way to trigger an On-Demand workflow.

Jeremy

Hiding the Add Existing Button in a CRM 4.0 Grid

Jeremy Winchell — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 18:33:00 GMT

This is a great post from Dave Hawes that shows you how you can hide the Add Existing button in CRM 4.0. You can use the same piece of code to hide almost any of the buttons on a Grid.

Click Here To Read The Article

- Jeremy

Embedding a Direct Link In An E-Mail - CRM 4.0 Version

Jeremy Winchell — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 15:03:00 GMT

This post demonstrates how you can leverage the Plug-In framework to quickly and easily embed a URL inside of a workflow e-mail in CRM 4.0....(read more)

Exporting more than 10,000 records to Excel in CRM 3.0/CRM 4.0

Jeremy Winchell — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 18:47:00 GMT

When you export records from CRM 3.0 to Microsoft Excel only the first 10,000 rows are exported. Unless you scroll to the end of the spreadsheet there isn't any kind of indication that a limit has been reached. The following post from Microsoft walks you through the steps necessary to increase the limit.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/911395/enus$

To change this in CRM 4.0:

1. Log-in to the SQL Server where the <Organization_Name>_MSCRM database is stored
2. Open the OrganizationBase table
3. FInd the Column: MaxRecordsForExportToExcel
4. Change the value from 10,000 to the desired value
5. Committ the change to the database

- Jeremy

** This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

Embedding Direct Links To CRM In A Workflow Email - Take 2

Jeremy Winchell — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 01:43:00 GMT

A while back I wrote a post about how you can use JavaScript and workflow to include an e-mail link for a newly created or updated record. While the method works, it was less than efficient and opened the door to more problems than solutions. There is a much better solution and it can be implemented rather quickly. It utilizes the .Net framework and the CRM 3.0 workflow engine to build the Url and update the record itself, plus it's more flexible and can be used in a variety of situations.

A few benefits of using the comination of CRM 3.0 Workflows and .Net:

- The .Net assembly created can be used in a manual workflow rule in order to update a bunch of records with the Url. The original method only allowed you to populate the Url on a record by record basis.

- It eliminates the user having to save the record twice to make sure the Url is populated on the entity

Step 1 - Create A Custom Attribute To Hold The URL
For this example we'll just call our attribute: new_urllink with datatype varchar or Url

Step 2 – Create the Custom .Net Workflow Assembly
Create a new class library project in Visual Studio 2003

namespace MicrosoftCRM.Examples.Workflow

{

public class UrlBuilder()

{

}

public void UpdateCaseWithUrl(Guid ticketid)

{

//Create CRM Service Reference

CrmService myService;

myService = new CrmService();

myService.Credentials = System.Net.DefaultCredentials;

myService.Url = "http://<crm_url>/mscrmservices/2006/crmservice.asmx";

incident myIncident = null;

//Retrieve Case From CRM

myIncident = (incident)myService.Retrieve(EntityName.incident,ticketid,new AllColumns());

//Populate the Custom Url Field

myIncident.new_urllink = “http://<crm_url>/cs/cases/edit.aspx?id=" + ticketid;

//Update the Case in CRM

myService.Update(myIncident);

myService.Dispose();

}

Step 3 – Deploy Code and Update the Workflow.config File
In order to use your custom .Net assembly within the CRM 3.0 workflow engine you need to first deploy the code and update the workflow.config file. Stop the Microsoft CRM Workflow service on the CRM Server. Copy and paste your compiled .dll to the folder below.

<install_drive>\Program Files\Microsoft CRM\Server\Bin\Assembly

Add the following entry at the end of the workflow.config file which you will find in the same directory that you deployed your .NET assembly. This entry will allow you to utilize your .NET assembly inside of the workflow designer.

Restart the Microsoft CRM Workflow service. If everything starts up ok, then you are in good shape.

Step 4 - Create The Associated Workflow(s)
To fully complete this you need to create 2 workflows. The reason I suggest 2 workflows is so the one that actual updates the entity and assigns the link can be run on demand in order to bulk-update multiple CRM records with the link.

Workflow #1: Create a manual workflow rule for Cases that simply calls the Custom .Net assembly method.

Workflow #2: Create the workflow that is going to send the e-mail notification. The first step should either be a call to the previous workflow that builds the Url or you can call the custom .Net workflow function from here as well.

Step 5 - Your Done!

A List of Common Url's For CRM Entities:
You can find the paths for CRM Entities rather easily by browsing to the home directory of the CRM Website, if it's installed on the default website the path would be <drive>\inetpub\wwwroot. Once you have access to the CRM Website files find the folders that contain the edit pages for the various entities:

SFA - Sales Force Automation (accounts,contacts etc)
CS - Customer Service (cases,contracts etc)
MA - Marketing Automation (campaigns, marketing lists etc)

Sales Force Automation:
Accounts: http://<crm-url>/sfa/accts/edit.aspx
Contacts: http://<crm-url>/sfa/conts/edit.aspx
Leads: http://<crm-url>/sfa/leads/edit.aspx
Opportunities: http://<crm-url>/sfa/opps/edit.aspx

Marketing Automation
Campaigns: http://<crm-url>/ma/camps/edit.aspx
Marketing Lists: http://<crm-url>/ma/lists/edit.aspx
Campaign Response: http://<crm-url>/ma/campaignresponse/edit.aspx

Case Management:
Cases: http://<crm-url>/cs/cases/edit.aspx
Contracts: http://<crm-url>/cs/contracts/edit.aspx
KB Articles: http://<crm-url>cs/articles/edit.aspx

Custom Entities:
Custom: http://<crm-url>/userdefined/edit.aspx

*Please substitute the actual url of the CRM Implementation you are working with where you see <crm-url> in the links above.

Good Luck. I will be following up with a similiar post for Microsoft CRM 4.0 as well.

- Jeremy

** This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

Hiding System Views in CRM 4.0

Jeremy Winchell — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 17:43:00 GMT

If you wanted to hide a System View in CRM 3.0 it was easy, all you had to do was use the sharing feature of CRM. However, in 4.0 you can no longer do this with the System Views. The post below demonstrates how to use the plug-in framework to hide System Views in a supported way through the 4.0 SDK.

Hiding Views in CRM 4.0

It's a great article.

- Jeremy

Great Tool for Managing Plug-Ins

Jeremy Winchell — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 14:31:00 GMT

For those of you starting to develop Plug-Ins in CRM 4.0, there is a great tool that was developed to ease the deployment and management of CRM 4.0 Plug-Ins. The developers of the tool built a very nice GUI around the plug-in registration process which makes things much easier than using the command line interface.

Some of the features of the plug-in registration tool are:

- Deploy/Manage Plug-Ins for multiple CRM 4.0 implementations and Organizations (multi-tenancy)
- Register/Unregister Plug-Ins
- Register/Unregister Plug-In Steps (Create,Update,Delete)

For more information about the Plug-In Registration Tool check out the blog post below.
Blog: Plug-In Registration Tool

If you'd rather just hit the ground running, here is a direct link to the download package.
Download: Plug-In Registration Tool

- Jeremy

Locking Down Lookup Fields

Jeremy Winchell — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 02:16:00 GMT

I've encountered many situations during a CRM Deployment where we want to restrict the type of record that can be selected in a Lookup Field. In most cases it's been situations dealing with Opportunities and Cases in CRM. The Potential Customer & Customer fields can accept either an Account or a Contact as a value. What if we only want users to select Accounts? The Javascript below gives an example of how you can force users to only be able to select an Account when creating a new case in CRM.

When a user triggers the OnChange() event for the Customer Lookup field on a Case the JavaScript checks to make sure it has an Object Type value of 1, which is the Object Type Code for an Account. If it isn't an Account an alert message appears and the lookup field is cleared out.

try
{
if(crmForm.all.customerid.DataValue[0].type != 1)
{
window.alert("You must choose an Account for the Customer Field.");
crmForm.all.customerid.DataValue = null;
}

catch(err)
{
//window.alert("Display Error Message Here");
}

If you wanted to change this code so that only Contacts could be selected, then you would check for a Object Type Code of 2, which stands for a Contact. It is some short and simple JavaScript that will help control how information is recorded in your CRM system.

Field Level Security With CRM 3.0 - Part I

Jeremy Winchell — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 15:34:00 GMT

One thing that CRM 3.0 lacks is the ability to lock down fields, buttons, forms etc based on the security role of the user logged in. Ronald Lemmen has a great blog post that allows you to call out-of-the box Javascript code to accomplish this task. You can find the URL here. I've taken his original post that allows you to check for User's roles and went a step further and starting enabling/disabling fields, hiding fields, hiding buttons and other things that we'd like to lock down for certain users.

Javascript Function #1: getUserId()

This function executes a WhoAmI request in order to retrieve the GUID of the currently logged in user.

function getUserId()

{

try

{

var command = new RemoteCommand("SystemUser", "WhoAmI", "/MSCRMServices/");

var oResult = command.Execute();

if (oResult.Success)

{

return oResult.ReturnValue.UserId;

}

catch(e)

{

alert("Error while retrieving userid.");

}

return null;

}

Javascript Function #2: getUserRoles(userid)

This function takes the GUID of the user from the first script and it gets the list of all roles assigned to that user.

function getUserRoles(userId)

{

try

{

var command = new RemoteCommand("UserManager", "GetUserRoles");

command.SetParameter("userIds", "<guid>" + userId + "</guid>");

var oResult = command.Execute();

if (oResult.Success)

{

return oResult.ReturnValue;

}

catch(e)

{

alert("Error while retrieving roles.");

}

return null;

}

Javascript Function #3: userHasRole(userid,roleName)

This function takes takes the GUID of the logged in user and a string parameter where you specify the name of the role that you are looking for. It calls teh getUserRoles() function to retrieve the list of roles. Once the list of roles has been retrieved it loops through the array of user roles checking for the specific role passed to this function.

function userHasRole(userId, roleName)

{

result = getUserRoles(userId);

if (result != null)

{

var oXml = new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLDOM");

oXml.resolveExternals = false;

oXml.async = false;

oXml.loadXML(result);

roleNode = oXml.selectSingleNode("/roles/role[name='" + roleName + "']");

if (roleNode != null)

{

if (roleNode.selectSingleNode("roleid[@checked='true']") != null)

return true;

}

return false;

}

Javascript Function #4: currentUserHasRole(rolename)

This is the function that you would call from you Javascript to determine whether or not the user has the role that you are looking for. This calls the other functions and will return true if the user has the role otherwise it will return false/null if they don't.

function currentUserHasRole(roleName)

{

userId = getUserId();

return userHasRole(userId, roleName);

}

Now that we have the primary functions involved in accomplishing field-level security in Microsoft CRM, we can put these scripts to the test.

Part II - Locking Down Fields

Part III - Showing/HIding Fields

Part IV - Hiding Buttons/Navigation

Hopefully, Part II will be published by the end of this week.