Copy a record

For some records it can be very usefull to copy it. This avoids repetive entry of the same data. If you have a relation on the entity which references itself you can do this using a mapping. But if you do not have a relation and do not whish to create on you can copy the values using the following sample.

CRM Form scripting reference

Below are the links to the references for the CRM form scripting object model on MSDN

CRM Form and form control methods: 
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc150872(v=MSDN.10).aspx

Global variables and functions: 
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc150875(v=MSDN.10).aspx

Web service access from javascript

To make full use of the CRM Form scripting capabilities it can some times be useful to be able to access the CRM webservice from the form. You can build your own requests and parse the results but the library created by Daniel Cai does all this for you and provides simple method to perform the calls: http://danielcai.blogspot.com/2010/01/crm-web-service-javascript-toolkit.html.

Using External Scripts

Usually when you are working with CRM and doing scripting you have to work in the small text box with no real coding support. Also you have the restrictions that you cannot create reusable functions etc. There allready are several examples and approaches to solve this problem but for completion I have added these examples. This contains two different approaches one using files location on the CRM server the other using resources files.

Customization Manager

A new tool for Microsoft Dynamics CRM is available. This tools allows source controls system such as subversion to work with the CRM customization file with beter control that is normally possible.

For more information click here.

Event Listner

A new tool is available which allows you to view CRM plug-in events as they occur, including all details available from the IPluginExectionContext.

For more information click here.

Tracing and Debugging error in CRM 4.0

If errors in Microsoft CRM occur there can be a user friendly or otherwise limited message presented. To find out what actually is the problem is not difficult you just have to know where to look.

Wether it is an authentication issue or a SoapException 'Server was unable to process request'. This article offers some pointers on where to look for additional details.

Microsoft CRM Date values

CRM support user working in multiple time zones by storing alle date time values as UTC. This way the time can be easily adjusted to the users time zone setting. This article explains this in a bit more detail.

As for date values, some dates such as a birth date can be fixed regardless of time zone. CRM will still adjust these to the time zone, this may show as a full day difference in the interface. This article contains a plugin to allow you to use dates without timezone dependecies in CRM.

CRM 4: Waiting workflows

In CRM 4 workflows can have the status waiting when an they are waiting for an event such as a timer or they will also have this status if an error has occured. To find out which take the following steps.

Translation assistant

With version 4.0 Microsoft CRM the option to have multiple languages in a single interface became available. To translate the various available labels CRM offers an option to export all labels to an excel file.

The problem I found with this file is that it lacks context of the text you are translating. For instance the text "Address 1: Line 1" this appears for each entity, form and view that uses this fields. So if you want to change only one label it will take you a lot of trial and error to find out which field you want to change.

You can download this tool here.