My colleague Jeremy Hofmann has been busy at one of our clients providing them valuable solutions to meet their business needs.  Below is another great example of how Jeremy has harnessed the customizability of CRM!

Business Problem:

Do your clients need a way to monitor activity usage as a means to track user adoption?

Solution:

Below is a CRM report we created that looks at activities created or modified over six periods of time, starting with the current date.  It can help spot overall trends for individual users or business units.

Technical Notes:

This is just a standard SRS report.  While I’m not a huge fan of the courier font on reports it was the client standard at the time so feel free to change it.  Also it is currently grouped by branch, which is a custom field.  You would likely need to change it to another grouping level such as business unit, depending on your clients needs.

User Story or Screenshot:

Launch the report from the CRM reports area.  With pre-filtering, you can select specific users to monitor.

Look for the up/down arrows and then drill into specific business units.  Schedule follow up calls with the users’ managers to understand why usage has dropped, stayed at zero, or increased.  Solicit feedback on the application in order to improve specific functionality or determine unmet needs and re-engage Crowe to fill those needs.

My colleague Jeremy Hofmann has been busy at one of our clients providing them valuable solutions to meet their business needs.  Below is a great example of how Jeremy has harnessed the customizability of CRM!

Business Problem:

We’ve given the client a way to add a documents I_FRAME on a contact record, however there was no easy way for their users to browse the folders – they have to type in a path manually.

Solution:

Provide a way for them to browse to a folder.  SharePoint is not currently an option.

Technical Notes:

While IE provides a file browse dialog, there is simply no way to browse folders by themselves.  So you have to write your own ActiveX scripting and html output to provide the functionality.

User Story or Screenshot:

Now the user can click a browse button next to the path field on the contact form which will launch the dialog box below.  Here they can browse to the folder they want and click ok, which will populate the path field on the contact record and update the documents I_FRAME.

Notice it looks very much like Vista so it fits in nicely with their desktop look and feel.

Microsoft has a great article containing tools to help a CRM developer ramp up.  The article includes presentations and labs that will help complement a developer's .NET skills to help build on top of the CRM 4.0 platform.

The article contains links to the following:

• Introduction to concepts for developing with Microsoft CRM 4.0
• New relationship types
• Web services, authentication methods for each installation, multi-tenancy and CRM online
• Integrating custom pages into the user interface, SiteMap customization, IFRAME's, and JavaScript
• Developing plug-ins which can help extend product functionality with custom code, triggered either before or after an event
• Explanations of the new workflow features
• Features of the SDK for working offline
• New reporting features
• Analytics & Business Intelligence
• Explanations on how to write new API for making changes to the metadata
• E-mail setup and new deployment features
• Performance
• Labs to help developers tune their skills

This link can be found here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd393296.aspx

How does Microsoft Dynamics CRM handle multi-tenancy?  What is multi-tenancy?  These are the questions I often get from clients and other developers just interested in the CRM architecture.

Multi-tenancy allows CRM to be deployed on a single server, but allows multiple organizations to be supported.  For example, say a company has two business units like Commercial and Retail.  If there is a need for that company to use CRM differently for each business unit, that's where multi-tenancy can play a key role.  We can create a tenant for each unit, and each business unit can have it's own configurations and customizations.  So how does the CRM architecture handle multi-tenancy?

There are two ways new tenants/organizations can be created.  One way is using the CRM Deployment manager tool.  When setting up CRM for the first time, there is a default organization (tenant) created.  The Deployment Manager creates a new URL each time a new organization/tenant is created.  For example, we can use this to create Commercial and Retail tenants. The url is usually in the format http://<server: port> /tenant/page.aspx.  The Deployment Manager also creates a new database named “<tenant>_MSCRM” on the specified SQL Server, and creates all CRM tables, filtered views, etc.  It then updates the MSCRM_CONFIG database (base CRM database) with the information for the newly created tenant/organization.

For example, when setting up CRM for the first time, say a user sets up a default organization to be CroweHorwath on the local host, then the url would be: http://localhost:5555/CroweHorwath OR since this is the default organization, one can type http://localhost and it will default to the CroweHorwath tenant.  Then a user can use the Deployment Manager tool to create a new tenant for the Commercial business unit.  When the user is finished, the new url will be http://localhost:5555/Commercial, and a new database Commercial_MSCRM will be created to hold all configurations/data for the Commercial tenant.

One more thing, virtual directories are not created for every organization. CRM implements a virtual path provider that parses the URL to figure out which organization you are accessing and to perform the correct authentication.  CRM uses a web service and the user’s windows credentials to go against active directory and the appropriate organization to authenticate.

The second way tenants can be creates is programmatically using the CRMDeploymentService.asmx (http://<server>/MSCRMServices/2007/CrmDeploymentService.asmx).   One would have to use code to create a new CRM organization object, set the following fields: name, SQL server name, SQL server url, CRM currency information.    Next create a new instance of the CRM Deployment web service and use that to create a new Create response and request objects.

The above is a brief explanation of how multi-tenancy works in Microsoft Dynamics CRM.  I hope this will clarify many of the questions out there!

Upon opening a report with a pre-filter, you expect to be presented with a query builder that will allow you to search for accounts, contacts or other CRM entity by location, owner, or any other field on the respective entity. Something that looks like this:

What do you do then, when instead you see this (and only this. Nothing's loading. It's "Done."): 

The pre-filter is blank and there doesn't seem to be an error anywhere. Attempting to "Edit the default filter..." results in the same empty, blue screen. In this case, the filter was loading correctly in the past, but now something is clearly wrong.

Let's go back to what the pre-filted should look like. It should allow users to filter Accounts by specific Account, Address 1, Category, or a custom attribute called Rating. After minutes of trying to connect the mental dots, I realized that I intentionally deleted one of the Rating attribute because it was no longer needed. Ah ha!

Turns out that, although CRM will not allow you to delete attributes that are on a published form, you are able to delete an attribute that is used on a report pre-filter. However, the fact that the attribute has been deleted keeps the pre-filter from being rendered.

To fix this, there are a couple of options.

If you know the name of the attribute the filter can't find, you can simply create a dummy attribute with that name, publish the entity with your attribute, edit the report's default filter and remove the dummy attribute from the report pre-filtered. Delete the dummy attribute from the entity and all it well again.

If you don't know the name of the attribute or would just like an excuse to dig around in the database, you can also edit the report filter's XML.

In your organization's CRM database, there is a table called ReportBase. Opening that table, you'll find all of the versions of the reports that are available or were available. To figure out which report you're working with, grab the GUID from the URL of the report pre-filter and query the ReportBase table for the record with that ReportId. That record will have a DefaultFilter field, which contains the pre-filter's XML. Once formatted correctly, it should look something like this:

To get the my report pre-filter to render, I can remove the element specifying the deleted attribute as a condition, in this case the line containing "new_rating." Once I've done that I can simply copy the XML back into the DefaultFilter field for that report and the pre-filter will render.

Although this fix is a little in-depth and should only be attempted by those very comfortable with the CRM database, it is a workaround if you're in a bind and do not want to have to re-create a report.

One of the least published example of CRM code is deactivating an entity, probably because it's not used as often as creating, updating or retrieving entities.  Below is an example I've used on several occasions to deactivate an entity:

public void DeactivateEntity(Guid entityId)

{

//variable initialization

            SetStateDynamicEntityRequest deactivateReq = new SetStateDynamicEntityRequest();   

            //deactivate the cloned assignment

            deactivateReq = new SetStateDynamicEntityRequest();

            deactivateReq.State = "Inactive";

            deactivateReq.Status = 2;

            deactivateReq.Entity = new Moniker();

            deactivateReq.Entity.Name = <entity name>

            deactivateReq.Entity.Id = entityId;

//execute the deactivation request

            service.Execute(deactivateReq);

}

I have seen numerous requests on other blogs about sample code to on how to update entities in CRM.  One way is to use the CRM web service to update business entities, however by doing so, you're only limited to out-of-the-box entities with system attributes.  To retrieve anything more "dynamic," you'll have to employ other methods.  Please remember that in order to update any record, you must have the proper permissions on that entity.

Below is a code example of how to update a record:

public void UpdateEntity(ICrmService service)

{

//variable initialization

            DynamicEntity entity = new DynamicEntity();                                                     //target entity to update

            TargetUpdateDynamic targetUpdate = new TargetUpdateDynamic();      //used to update entity

            UpdateRequest updateRequest = new UpdateRequest();                            //request to update entity

entity.Name = <entity name>

//add the properties you want to update on the entity

entity.Properties.Add(<property1>);

entity.Properties.Add(<property2>);

entity.Properties.Add(<property3>);

//set the target to update, and the request to update for

targetUpdate.Entity = entity;

updateRequest.Target = targetUpdate;

//execute the update request

service.Execute(updateRequest);

}

Here's a simple JavaScript customization to enable an e-mail field, once filled in, have a user double-click it and open your default e-mail client with the address in the "To" field.

if(crmForm.FormType == 1 || crmForm.FormType == 2)

{

                crmForm.all.emailaddress1.ondblclick = function()

                {

                                var email = crmForm.all.emailaddress1.DataValue;

                                if ((email != null) && (email.length > 0))

                                {

                                     window.navigate("mailto:" + email);

                                }

                }

}

Now if you want to make CRM open an e-mail activity instead of the default e-mail client, you can use the following code (when sending the email, CRM will use email address 1 regardless of what field was dobule clicked):

if(crmForm.FormType == 1 || crmForm.FormType == 2)

{

                crmForm.all.emailaddress1.ondblclick = function()

                {

                                var email = crmForm.all.emailaddress1.DataValue;

                                if ((email != null) && (email.length > 0))

                                {

                                     window.execScript(locAddActTo(4202))

                                }

                }

}

There have been numerous requests on other blogs about sample code to on how to create entities in CRM.  One way is to use the CRM web service to create business entities, however by doing so, you're only limited to out-of-the-box entities with system attributes.  To retrieve anything more "dynamic," you'll have to employ other methods.  Please remember that in order to create any record, you must have the proper permissions on that entity.

Below is a code example of how to create a record using dynamic entities:

public void CreateEntity(ICrmService service)

{

//variable initialization

DynamicEntity entity = new DynamicEntity();                                                 //target entity to update

TargetCreateDynamic targetCreate = new TargetCreateDynamic();          //used to update entity

CreateRequest createRequest = new CreateRequest();                                //request to create entity

entity.Name = <entity name>

//add the properties                   

entity.Properties.Add(<property>);

Entity.Properties.Add(<property>);

//set the target to update, and the request to update for

targetCreate.Entity = entity;

createRequest.Target = targetCreate;

//execute the update request

service.Execute(createRequest);

}

Hope this helps, happy coding!

Whether it's developing CRM plug-ins, custom workflow activities, or writing stored procedures against the CRM database, the most useful tool I've used is the Microsoft Visual Studio Debugger.  The debugger allows developers to step through the code for the above mentioned scenarios and has saved me hours! 

Microsoft has phenomenal documentation on how to setup remote debugging:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bt727f1t.aspx

The biggest issues I've had trying to setup the debugger has always been with permissions.   I would recommend paying especially close attention to this section.  The next biggest issue I had was trying to attach the debugger to a running process: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/c6wf8e4z.aspx

Once you've setup Visual Studio debugger, you can attach the following processes for the following CRM components:

1. For plug-ins, attach the debugger to the w3wp.exe process.
2. For custom workflow activities, attach the debugger to MSCRMAsyncService.exe
3. For stored procedures, attach the debugger to sqlserver.exe

Once the debugger has been attached, you must set a breakpoint in the code (either the .NET or T-SQL code).  After the breakpoint is set, to test, do the following:

1. For plug-ins, login to CRM and execute actions that will trigger the plug-in, such as create/update/assign a record.
2. For custom workflow activities, login to CRM and perform actions that will trigger the workflow.  With this, being that it's an asynchronous service, you'll have to wait until that service runs, and then Visual Studio will let you step through the code.
3. For the stored procedure, just execute the stored procedure in Visual Studio and it will go right to the breakpoint.

I hope this post will help CRM developers save time and effort.  I use the debugger every time I develop now to test and it's saved me tremendous amount of maintenance time and effort after the code has been deployed.  Happy debugging!

The CRM 4.0 Plug-in registration tool is Microsoft's tool to register any plug-in developed for CRM 4.0 and callouts that were developed for CRM 3.0, but need to be upgraded to 4.0.  In this article, I'd like to take a step by step walkthrough of the tool including any interesting facts or issues I've run into during this process.  Those will highlighted in the "NOTE" section.

To download the tool, please visit: http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/crmplugin for the latest version.  The tool also comes packaged when you download the CRM 4.0 SDK, which you can do from: http://www.microsoft.com/DOWNLOADS/details.aspx?familyid=82E632A7-FAF9-41E0-8EC1-A2662AAE9DFB&displaylang=en. 

Building The Plug-in Registration Tool

Either way, the download will contain Visual Studio project files that will need to be built.  Mitch Kett in his blog has outlined how to do this: http://www.crowehorwath.com/cs/blogs/crm/archive/2008/03/19/incorporating-custom-entities-into-a-plugin-revised.aspx. 

**NOTE:  The CRM SDK provides great information on what each service provides for the user:

The CRM Web service provides strongly typed access to all entities in Microsoft Dynamics CRM, including custom entities and attributes. This Web service also allows execution of all supported operations, including those with built-in business logic as well as specialized operations. It provides a valid Web Services Description Language (WSDL) that is dynamically generated on the server to include the latest customizations and provides a single endpoint for your code.

The Discovery Web service is a mechanism to find the correct CrmService endpoint for your organization or to obtain a CRM ticket for Internet-facing deployment (IFD) or for Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online.

The Metadata Web service provides methods to read and write the metadata for an organization. This includes the definitions for entities, attributes, and relationships.**

**NOTE:  If you don't place the assembly files mentioned in step (8) of Mitch's instructions, when you go to run the plug-in registration tool, you might get an error: "...Could Not Find Dependency…"**

Using The Plug-in Registration Tool

1. You can launch the tool by either running the executable built from the project mentioned in the steps above, or if you've configured Visual Studio with a shortcut, you can launch it from that menu.

Here is a great article that illustrates how to publish Microsoft CRM 4.0 through ISA Server 2006: http://blogs.technet.com/isablog/archive/2008/07/23/publishing-microsoft-crm-4-0-through-isa-server-2006.aspx

The article is broken up into the following sections:

1. Adjusting CRM Server For External Publishing
1. General Considerations
2. IFD Configuraiton

1. Configuring ISA Server 2006 Web publishing rule
2. Troubleshooting Tips

For those who need some information on Microsoft ISA Server: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISA_Server

Below are some very useful links on standards for Microsoft CRM and SQL Server Reporting Services:

http://www.ssw.com.au/ssw/Standards/Rules/RulestoBetterMicrosoftCRM.aspx

http://www.ssw.com.au/ssw/Standards/Rules/RulesToBetterSQLReportingServices.aspx

Enjoy!

Another common question I see in blogs from users are is there a way to add filtered lookups?  That is only allow users to "lookup" certain records that related to that particular one.  Here's a real life example:

Say you have an account that has a 1:N parental relationship with entity A.  Now let's say there's another entity B that has N:1 referential relationships with both account, and entity A.  There is a way on entity B so that after you select, on the lookup, a record of the account you want to relate to it, to filter the second lookup of entity A to only those related to the account you just selected.  i.e.

Parental Relationship

Account --> Entity A

Referential Relationship

Entity B -- Account

Entity B -- Entity A

With simple JavaScript, when a user selects the lookup value for the account, the lookup for Entity A can be filtered to point to only those entity A's that are related to the account you just chose.  Here's the code to place on the form of Entity B:

crmForm.all.<lookup field for entity A>.additionalparams = 'search=' + encodeURIComponent(crmForm.all.<lookup field for account>.DataValue[0].name);

That's it!  Simple, yet effective.

There have been numerous requests on other blogs about sample code to on how to retrieve entities in CRM.  One way is to use the CRM web service to retrieve business entities, however by doing so, you're only limited to out-of-the-box entities with system attributes.  To retrieve anything more "dynamic," you'll have to employ other methods.  Please remember that in order to retrieve any record, you must have the proper permissions on that entity.

Below is a code example of how to retrieve a record with an id using dynamic entity retrieve:

 public DynamicEntity RetrieveEntity()

{

            //variable initialization    

            TargetRetrieveDynamic target = new TargetRetrieveDynamic();        

            RetrieveRequest retrieveRequest = new RetrieveRequest();           

            RetrieveResponse retrieveResponse = null;                                      

DynamicEntity entity = null;                                     

            target.EntityName = <name of entity here>

            target.EntityId = <id of entity here>

            //initialize request parameters

            retrieveRequest.ColumnSet = new AllColumns();

            retrieveRequest.ReturnDynamicEntities = true;

            retrieveRequest.Target = target;

            //build the response object

            retrieveResponse = (RetrieveResponse)GetCrmService().Execute(retrieveRequest);

            //retrieve the service order item from the response

            entity = (DynamicEntity)retrieveResponse.BusinessEntity;

            return entity;

}

The above example is a simple one, but the example below retrieves all contacts that have an account id = some id, and also retrieve the records with only a certain attributes.  This is probably a more robust example encompassing many retrieval options:

private ArrayList RetrieveMultipleContacts(ICrmService crmService, Guid parentAccountId)

{

//variable initialization

ConditionExpression condition = new ConditionBLOCKED EXPRESSION;

FilterExpression filter = new FilterBLOCKED EXPRESSION;

QueryExpression query = new QueryBLOCKED EXPRESSION;

RetrieveMultipleRequest request = new RetrieveMultipleRequest();

ColumnSet cols = new ColumnSet();

RetrieveMultipleResponse response = null;

ArrayList contacts = new ArrayList();

//Set the condition for retrieval

condition.AttributeName = "parentcustomerid";

condition.Operator = ConditionOperator.Equal;

condition.Values = new string[] { parentAccountId.ToString() };

//Set the properties of the filter.

filter.FilterOperator = LogicalOperator.And;

filter.AddCondition(condition);

//Set the attributes needed to be returned.  NOTE: The CRM Sdk has an erroneous example

//of how to set the attributes for retrieval.

cols.Attributes.Add("address1_line1");

cols.Attributes.Add("address1_line2");

cols.Attributes.Add("address1_line3");

cols.Attributes.Add("address1_city");

cols.Attributes.Add("address1_stateorprovince");

cols.Attributes.Add("address1_postalcode");

cols.Attributes.Add("address1_country");

cols.Attributes.Add("telephone1");

cols.Attributes.Add("fax");

//Set the properties of the QueryExpression object.

query.EntityName = EntityName.contact.ToString();

query.ColumnSet = cols;

query.Criteria = filter;

//Set the query for the request and set the flag to return

//dynamic entities

request.Query = query;

//retrieve the contacts

response = (RetrieveMultipleResponse)crmService.Execute(request);

foreach (BusinessEntity cont in response.BusinessEntityCollection.BusinessEntities)

{

contacts.Add(cont);

}

return contacts;

}

I hope these examples help someone, happy coding!