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NuGet Simple sharing of Visual studio resources

NuGet is an open source initiative that 'Makes it easy to install and update open source libraries in Visual Studio' or so it says on the website. Basically its a Visual Studio plugin that allows you to add packages to individual projects. These packages can contain different things such as assemblies, commonly source files etc. With support for both an online public repository as well as the ability to use local repositories it makes it a good way to save your libraries, even if it is only for your self or your team.

Customization Assistant

Consider the following cases:

For most projects in CRM you have to build an entity model sometimes just a few entities but depending on your project this can be a very large number. Most consultants first create an inventory of what to create using excel, next this has to be transferred to CRM. This is a very time consuming process which requires a huge amounts of copy pasting and clicking.

Then when you have it all setup the customer asks you to make some simple changes, “Could you change this decimal field to a money field?” Simple enough, no? You have to delete the field from the form and views delete the field create a new one, add it back to the forms and views again, now where was it exactly?

Tough the CRM entity model provides you with rich abilities for the end user creating and modifying the entity model can be time consuming. All this time cannot be spend on providing the business logical and rules the entity model is built for.

CRM snippets

When working with CRM you end up doing a lot of things over and over again. To help you with this the visual studio snippets feature can help you. This site http://crm2011snippets.codeplex.com contains a set of scripts for common actions in both JavaScript and C#.

Thu April 14

CRM 2011: Solution Development

One of the new features in CRM 2011 is called Solutions. This feature allows developers to group customizations into predefined packages and import/export these to different organizations. This basically is an improvement of the CRM 4.0 customization import/export. On top of simple grouped import/export solutions can be defined as managed, limiting the abilities to change the solution once import into a different organization. A managed solution can also be deleted.

I have been working with the CRM 2011 solutions and these are some pointers which I think are useful.

CRM 2011: Get attribute names from proxy types

When coding with early bound entities you still need the attribute names in some cases, for instance when you are building a query expression. You can just add the name as a string but then you run the risk of mistyping the name. I have created a solution for this problem.

CRM 2011: IntelliSense for Xrm.Page

In CRM 2011 Javascript is no longer embedded in forms but now has build in feature to use external resource files. You can edit these files using the web browser or in an external editor. Visual studio supports Intellisense for JavaScript, this explains how enable the support for the CRM provided objects such as the Xrm.Page object to be shown.

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

Fri April 30

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.

Fri April 30

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.

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Technical Home Microsoft CRM Crm Developers Tool ISV.Config & Sitemap Periodic workflows Translation assistant CRM Event Listener Customization Manager Deployment Helper Developers Tool 2011 Dynamics CRM Javascript .Net Links Stay up to date Search this site Powered by Google Something completely diferent my Photo album	NuGet Simple sharing of Visual studio resources NuGet is an open source initiative that 'Makes it easy to install and update open source libraries in Visual Studio' or so it says on the website. Basically its a Visual Studio plugin that allows you to add packages to individual projects. These packages can contain different things such as assemblies, commonly source files etc. With support for both an online public repository as well as the ability to use local repositories it makes it a good way to save your libraries, even if it is only for your self or your team. Read more Thu January 12 Customization Assistant Consider the following cases: For most projects in CRM you have to build an entity model sometimes just a few entities but depending on your project this can be a very large number. Most consultants first create an inventory of what to create using excel, next this has to be transferred to CRM. This is a very time consuming process which requires a huge amounts of copy pasting and clicking. Then when you have it all setup the customer asks you to make some simple changes, “Could you change this decimal field to a money field?” Simple enough, no? You have to delete the field from the form and views delete the field create a new one, add it back to the forms and views again, now where was it exactly? Tough the CRM entity model provides you with rich abilities for the end user creating and modifying the entity model can be time consuming. All this time cannot be spend on providing the business logical and rules the entity model is built for. Read more Fri June 03 CRM snippets When working with CRM you end up doing a lot of things over and over again. To help you with this the visual studio snippets feature can help you. This site http://crm2011snippets.codeplex.com contains a set of scripts for common actions in both JavaScript and C#. Thu April 14 CRM 2011: Solution Development One of the new features in CRM 2011 is called Solutions. This feature allows developers to group customizations into predefined packages and import/export these to different organizations. This basically is an improvement of the CRM 4.0 customization import/export. On top of simple grouped import/export solutions can be defined as managed, limiting the abilities to change the solution once import into a different organization. A managed solution can also be deleted. I have been working with the CRM 2011 solutions and these are some pointers which I think are useful. Read more Sat January 15 CRM 2011: Get attribute names from proxy types When coding with early bound entities you still need the attribute names in some cases, for instance when you are building a query expression. You can just add the name as a string but then you run the risk of mistyping the name. I have created a solution for this problem. Read more Thu November 25 CRM 2011: IntelliSense for Xrm.Page In CRM 2011 Javascript is no longer embedded in forms but now has build in feature to use external resource files. You can edit these files using the web browser or in an external editor. Visual studio supports Intellisense for JavaScript, this explains how enable the support for the CRM provided objects such as the Xrm.Page object to be shown. Read more Sat September 25 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. Read more Fri April 30 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 Fri April 30 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. Fri April 30 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. Read more Fri April 30 Goto Page: 1 2 3 4 ©2012 Patrick Verbeeten, Disclaimer, Privacy Policy