Paul Rausch

CRM QueryExpression Grouping Conditions

prausch — Tue, 06 May 2008 17:37:00 GMT

I had a scenario the other day where I need to use the CRM SDK to do a query simlar to this 'WHERE column1 = value AND (column2=value1 OR column2=value2)' , this was pretty easy to accomplish once I understood difference between Filters and Conditions on the QueryExpression object. Here is how the previous query maps out to Conditions and Filters.

column1 = value //is a condition
(column2=value1 OR column2=value2) //is a filter

So basically the way to build it is to create a condition expression for (column2=value1 OR column2=value2) and add that as a filter expression to the top level expression. The following code demonstrates.

        Dim column1Condition As New CRMService.ConditionExpression
        column1Condition.AttributeName = "column1"
        column1Condition.Operator = CRMService.ConditionOperator.Equal
        column1Condition.Values = New Object() {value}

        Dim column2Value1Condition As New CRMService.ConditionExpression
        column2Value1Condition.AttributeName = "column2"
        column2Value1Condition.Operator = CRMService.ConditionOperator.Equal
        column2Value1Condition.Values = New Object() {value1}

        Dim column2Value2Condition As New CRMService.ConditionExpression
        column2Value2Condition.AttributeName = "column2"
        column2Value2Condition.Operator = CRMService.ConditionOperator.Equal
        column2Value2Condition.Values = New Object() {value2}

        Dim qe As New CRMService.QueryExpression

        Dim secondLevelFilter As CRMService.FilterExpression = New CRMService.FilterExpression
        secondLevelFilter.FilterOperator = CRMService.LogicalOperator.Or
        secondLevelFilter.Conditions = New CRMService.ConditionExpression {column2Value1Condition, column2Value2Condition}

        Dim topLevelFilter As CRMService.FilterExpression = New CRMService.FilterExpression
        topLevelFilter.FilterOperator = CRMService.LogicalOperator.And
        topLevelFilter.Conditions = New CRMService.ConditionExpression {column1Condition}
        topLevelFilter.Filters = New CRMService.FilterExpression {secondLevelFilter}

        qe.Criteria = topLevelFilter

Embedding a CRM view in a form using an IFrame

prausch — Thu, 01 May 2008 15:32:00 GMT

I recently created a custom child entity that I wanted to show both on the left side navigation and on the parent entity form itself in an Iframe. Here are the steps I took to accomplish that. This will also work for non-custom entity views that you would like to embed into a form. This will display a full view in the contained Iframe with all the same button navigation as if you went the view directly in a new window.

Step 1 :
Add an IFrame to your form and set the source to about:blank.

Step 2:
Open a parent entity in a detail view. Select Ctl-N to open the detail view in a new browser, now view the source and find the view you want to embed in the left hand navigation. Once you locate that in the HTML source grab the contentarea references in the loadArea("") function.

Step 3:
Add the following script to the onload event for the form that contains the Iframe(parent entity). Replace the 'contentarea' with the value from Step 2.

document.all.IFRAME_PartsFrame.src="/sfa/conts/areas.aspx?oId=" + crmForm.ObjectId + "&oType=" + crmForm.ObjectTypeCode + "&security=852023&tabSet=contentarea";

Overriding the default generated WSDL on a service

prausch — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 18:06:00 GMT

I recently came across a scenario where I needed to use a flash component that consumed a web service on a project. I had no control over the flash as it was written by a 3rd party. Anyway the problem was the application was hosted on a load balanced configuration and when the flash would pull the WSDL definition (within the same application no less) an internal port number was appended to the service location( http://www.sitedomain.com:xxxx/app/service.asmx). The problem was the client flash could not access that url, so what I ended up doing was overriding the wsdl generation and manually stripping out the port number. The following code needs to be built into the web service application. Imports System
Imports System.Web.Services.Description

Public Class WSDLCustomGenerator Inherits SoapExtensionReflector

Public Overrides Sub ReflectMethod()

Dim description As ServiceDescription = ReflectionContext.ServiceDescription
Dim serv As System.Web.Services.Description.Service

For Each serv In description.Services
Dim pt As Port

            For Each pt In serv.Ports
                 Dim ext As ServiceDescriptionFormatExtension

                 For Each ext In pt.Extensions
                      Dim binding As SoapAddressBinding
                      binding = CType(ext, SoapAddressBinding)

                      If Not binding Is Nothing Then
                          'Nice hacky way of testing for the :xxxx port after the url I'm assuming is 10 characters long, and shouldn't have a port number ever
                          If binding.Location.IndexOf(":", 10) > 0 Then

'Replace port number
binding.Location = binding.Location.Remove(binding.Location.IndexOf(":", 10), 5)

                     End If
                 End If
               Next
           Next
        Next
End Sub
End Class

Sorting Collections

prausch — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 15:17:00 GMT

With the new language features in the .Net framework this has become much simpler. I had to implement sorting on a custom collection in two projects last week, one being .net 1.1 and one being .net 3.5. Let me tell you it was much easier in 3.5 and much more flexible as you can order by multiple fields without doing multiple IComparers.

In .net 1.1 I had to implement a custom IComparer class to do the comparison, which involves creating a whole new class and adding logic to do the sorting.

In .net 3.5 all I had to do was this:

myCollection = myCollection.OrderBy(obj => obj.FieldToSort).ToList()

myCollection = (from obj in myCollection orderby obj.FieldOne, obj.FieldTwo select obj).ToList()

Disabling a CRM User service error

prausch — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 15:11:00 GMT

I recently had a problem where a user account on our test CRM installation was disabled without my knowledge. The problem is I started getting authentication errors updating any records through CRM web services that had that user as the owner. I could logon to CRM itself with the same credentials being used to call the web services and update record with that same disabled user as the owner, it would only cause problems udpating through the web services. The error messages was just the generic authentication error which didn't help much. So moral of the story is if you disable a user account change ownership to an active user on CRM entities.

PS - What I had to do to figure it out since I didn't know that user had been disabled is take a record that worked and one that didn't and go field by field in the database to figure out what was different.

Close an Opportunity in CRM 3.0 via web services

prausch — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 15:02:00 GMT

It took me a little time to figure out how set the state/status of a Opportunity to a win. Other times I've had to set states/status on a CRM object I've only had to use the corresponding SetStateRequest object which does exist for Opportunity but fails to do what I needed. The following code shows how to close an Opportunity. I apologize its in VB.

CRMService is the web reference to the CRM service URL.

Dim oppClose As CRMService.opportunityclose = New CRMService.opportunityclose
oppClose.opportunityid = New CRMService.Lookup
oppClose.opportunityid.type = CRMService.EntityName.opportunity.ToString()
oppClose.opportunityid.Value = opportunity.opportunityid.Value

'Set fields related to the win
oppClose.actualrevenue = CrmTypes.CreateCrmMoney(0)
oppClose.actualend = CrmTypes.CreateCrmDateTime(DateTime.Today.ToShortDateString())

Dim woReq As CRMService.WinOpportunityRequest = New CRMService.WinOpportunityRequest
woReq.OpportunityClose = oppClose
woReq.Status = 3

Dim service As CRMService.CrmService = CrmServiceManager.GetService() 'Custom service reference factory
Dim woResp As CRMService.WinOpportunityResponse = CType(service.Execute(close), CRMService.WinOpportunityResponse)

Rich Text Editing Made Easy

prausch — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 14:43:00 GMT

I came across a new rich text editor in a project recently where I just needed some simple lists/bolding/color capabilities. Its super easy to use, you just reference the .dll and add it like any other server control to your page. The nice part is everything is compiled into the .dll, you don't have to add images or scripts to your project to support actions or tool bars. I didn't get into the adding of images or the more complex stuff though. You can also specify the tool bar look and feel from a few different office type looks. Oh, and its cheap!

Anyway, here is the link.

http://freetextbox.com/default.aspx

FetchXML Rocks!!

prausch — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 21:19:00 GMT

Just kidding.

For anyone who had the pleasure of coding against the Microsoft CRM 1.0 web services you probably remember that cumbersome FetchXML you had to write to query against the CRM object model. Well with CRM 3.0 and the strongly typed object model it exposes I thought I was in the clear from writing anymore of that crazy stuff until the other day. I basically needed to create a join and retrieve fields from two related CRM objects, after some research trying to use the typed object model I fame to realize Mr. FetchXML was back in town. After an hour or so of searching trying to find the correct syntax to pass into the Fetch() method on the web service I came across this tool and 10 minutes later I was back in business. Give it a look, its pretty sweet, you just point it to your CRM server and it will pull in all the meta data then its just a matter of selecting the entities and fields you want.

http://www.jamesdowney.net/fetchxml.aspx