Customer Effective Blog

Custom HTML Within an IFRAME using Javascript

On one of my recent projects, the client wanted us to display information about a particular Account or Contact when viewing data from a related record. There are a few tricks that we’ve done to handle this:

• Create an SSRS report and pass the ID of the record we want to summarize and display the report in an IFRAME. This has worked pretty well in the past, but we’ve seen a few issues with regards to how IIS on the SRS box is caching content.
• Utilize an Embedded Form. This is something we came up with several months ago – we have a stripped down version of the standard CRM entity form, but without all the navigation items. We display this in an IFRAME. One issue here is that you are stuck with displaying the same attributes as the form for that entity.
• Create some HTML on the fly and display it in the IFRAME using javascript. I tend to gravitate towards this approach since we have a good bit of flexibility in what we can display.

Here’s how we do the custom HTML trick…

jScript - An Attribute As A Button

Adding a button to a form can come in handy when you want to drive an attribute such as status with a button instead of allowing the user to select the attribute dropdown list.

To do this, create a bit attribute and add it to the form. In the button code, flip the bit value as an indicator of the button getting clicked. Include the button in a section and then make the section/button visible or not based on the click of another button, or the value of other form attributes. In the onLoad code, call the button code and then include the logic to hide/display the button on the button's section.

Hopefully this gives you ideas of how to use a button on a CRM form, and sheds more light on another useful blog. Use the following link to get the button code.

 

http://mscrmblog.net/2009/05/23/add-a-button-to-a-form/

jScript - An Attribute As A Row Header

CRM form attributes can be repurposed to appear as though they are a row label. For example, to build a table that appears Excel like including a header and 3 date columns with a leading column as a label for each row, do the following:

1. Create the table date and nvarchar label attributes on the form;
2. Open the form and create a section with four columns;

3. Place the nvarchar attributes in the 1st column and the date attributes in the last 3 columns (Remember to set the nvarchar attributes Searchable property to "No" ;

4. Change the properties of the nvarchar attributes on the form to "Display label on the form" not checked, and "Field is read-only" checked.

5. In the form onLoad change the nvarchar attributes to labels using the following jScript: crmForm.all.new_attributename.DataValue = 'Label Text'; crmForm.all.new_attributename.style.fontWeight = 'bold'; crmForm.all.aprv_attributename.style.borderColor = "#EAF3FF";

2009 Customer Effective CRM User Conference - Oct 28-30 - Greenville, SC

Customer Effective is proud to welcome customers, partners, and prospects  to our corporate headquarters and the historic Westin Poinsett in Greenville, SC for our 2009 Microsoft Dynamics CRM User Conference.

Sponsor Partners - Microsoft, Scribe, ExactTarget, Hoovers

 

Topics

CRM Development, XRM Solutions, CRM Portals, CRM Workflow, CRM Marketing, CRM Service

Customer Panel and Presentations - Real World CRM Success Stories

CRM Statement of Direction / Version 5 Roadmap (Microsoft)

 

Agenda Overview

Wednesday, October 28th

6pm to 8pm - Registration and Welcome Reception 

Thursday, October 29th 

7:30am - 8:30am - Breakfast

8:30am - 9:30am - Keynote Address 

9:45am - 10:45am - General Sessions
11:00am - 12:30pm - Breakout Sessions  

12:30pm -1:30pm - Lunch 

1:30pm - 2:45pm - Breakout Sessions  

3:00pm - 4:15pm - Breakout Sessions 
6:30pm to 9:30pm - Customer Appreciation Dinner

Friday, October 30th
8:00am - 8:30am - Breakfast

8:30am - 9:45am - General Session 

10:00am - 11:15am - General Session

11:15am - 12:00pm - Closing Remarks

1:00pm - 4:00pm - CRM Overtime

 

                                    REGISTER NOW

 

More CRM Grid Goodies: Detecting Click Events

Lately, we’ve been doing some extensive use of embedded grids in order to streamline the CRM 4.0 interface. One of the things I’ve found myself wanting to do is be able to detect when a record in the grid is clicked and to get the ID of that record. For this article, I’m going to assume you are already familiar with embedded grids and will skip setting one up.

the technique I’m about to demonstrate is very simple and straightforward: we’re going to attach a custom function to one of the embedded grid’s event handlers. Seems easy enough, so let’s get to it…

Record count limits when Exporting from CRM to Excel (and a special case for Marketing Lists)

When a user exports to Excel from Advanced find there is a setting in the database that determines the maximum number of records that can be exported. –

The default setting is to allow export of a maximum of 10,000 records, this limits the impact of the export on database performance.  – If your organization needs to, the value can be changed to allow more records to be exported at a time.- In CRM 4.0 it’s the value in the MaxRecordsForExportToExcel in the organizationbase table. -I’d suggest working with a certified Dynamics CRM partner or Microsoft Support before making any changes to the organization base – since a mistake in the organizationbase table can really ruin your day.

 

Special case for Marketing Lists…

Currently, (August 2009), there is a known bug associated with exporting members of a Marketing List when you export from the Marketing List Members view, (not from advanced find) – The maximum is based on 10x the number of records displayed per page. - In other words, if you have 50 records displayed on a page, 1000 records can be exported; if you have 250 records displayed on a page, 5000 records can be exported.  (The workaround is to export the same records by building an advanced find which shows records associated with that marketing list - and exporting from there.- There is a fix in development for this, contact Microsoft Support for more information/status/availability of this patch.)

IE Toolbars and Microsoft Dynamics CRM

Having problems with Internet Explorer?  Are CRM forms opening slowly?  Do you get script errors on CRM forms?  One of the first things I typically check if a user is having issues on their PC running CRM is if they have any third party toolbars running.  The Google, Yahoo, or one of the many Microsoft toolbars can cause interfere with CRM performance.  Even if you disable their pop-up blockers, I have still seen them cause problems with CRM forms opening.

My most recent experience with toolbars interfering with CRM happened two weeks ago.  When I would open a record from CRM for Outlook, I would get an error message saying “"A Microsoft Dynamics CRM window was unable to open, and may have been blocked by a pop-up blocker.”

I had pop-up blocker in IE turned off, and had followed the advice in this knowledge base article and also Julie Yack's blog post, but they didn’t seem to help.

Also, CRM forms seemed to open much more slowly for me than on other PC’s.

I was starting to blame Internet Explorer 8, but then I realized that I had unintentionally installed the Windows LIve toolbar when I installed Windows Messanger.  I uninstalled the toolbar, and after that, CRM forms opened without issues from Outlook and they loaded much faster.

Lessons learned:

1. Toolbars can affect CRM performance, even in Outlook.

2.  For best results with Microsoft CRM, eliminate third-party toolbars from Internet Explorer, even Microsoft created toolbars.

Technorati Tags: toolbars,CRM,Microsoft Dynamics CRM,Outlook,Internet Explorer

Customer Effective Earns Exclusive Appointment to the Microsoft Dynamics Inner Circle and President’s Club

Microsoft Honors Customer Effective for Outstanding Customer Commitment and Sales Accomplishments

 

Greenville, SC - - August 12, 2009 - - Customer Effective Inc., a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner and value-added reseller of Microsoft Dynamics CRM, has been named to the 2009 Microsoft Dynamics Inner Circle and President’s Club for the 2^nd consecutive year.  This is Customer Effective’s third Inner Circle and fourth President’s Club achievement.

 

In acknowledgment of exceptional service and sales performance, Customer Effective received this recognition during Microsoft Corporation’s 2009 Worldwide Partner Conference in New Orleans.  This elite group represents the most outstanding partners whose sales achievement ranks them at the top echelon of the Microsoft Dynamics global network of partners.  In addition, these top partners have demonstrated exceptional overall company performance by delivering valuable solutions that help Microsoft Dynamics customers drive their business forward.

 

“We’re thrilled to acknowledge the dedication Customer Effective has shown to providing an unsurpassed level of service and commitment to Microsoft Dynamics customers,” said Doug Kennedy, vice president of the Microsoft Dynamics Partners team. “As a result of its continuous dedication and contributions to the overall success of Microsoft Dynamics and companies worldwide, we’re proud to congratulate the company on being named to this year’s Microsoft Dynamics Inner Circle.”

 

“This has been very good year for our partnership with Microsoft and our customers,” said Scott Millwood, President of Customer Effective.  “Making it to Inner Circle is the elite of the Microsoft Partner Awards and we are thrilled to be here again. Our whole team is appreciative of Microsoft’s recognition of our achievements over the last year. Now we are ramping up to do it again in 2010!”

 

Fun with the CRM Grid Object

I’ve posted before on some snippets for working with grids in CRM. I’ve done a ton of grid work since then and have come up with some more goodies for your enjoyment.

We know that the following code will let you get an array containing the guid of the selected records in a grid:

//    get array of selected records
var a = document.all['crmGrid'].InnerGrid.SelectedRecords;
var selectedItems = new Array(a.length);
for (var i=0; i < a.length; i++)
{
    selectedItems[i] = a[i][0];
}
alert(selectedItems);

In the above code, the variable a stores the SelectedRecords, but notice that a is a nested array and we are only grabbing the first element of each array (ie. a[i][0]). If you’re the inquisitive type, you may wonder what all of the available elements in the a[i] array are. Well, here they are:

• a[i][0] = returns the guid of the record.
• a[i][1] = returns the object type code of the record. Although you can also get the object type code from the grid object, it’s useful here for when the grid contains activities – you can use this one to distinguish between tasks, emails, etc.
• a[i][2] = returns the zero-based index of the record. if you selected the first record, then this returns a “0”. if you select the second record, then it returns a “1”, and so on.
• a[i][3] = returns the actual row element of the grid table. This is pretty neat because we can use this to grab values from the different columns in the grid.

We’ll do some fun things with the row element after the jump…

Configuring Microsoft CRM Auto-Updates Directly from Microsoft

This is an update to a prior post, Pushing Updates and Patches to CRM Outlook Client.  This post described how deploy updates automatically from a crm patches folder on your CRM server.

This approach works, but it can be a hassle because it requires adding a registry key to every user’s PC.

The good news is that you can also have users download updates directly from the Microsoft download center, as long as you have the Microsoft linkid.  Starting with Rollup Update 4 Microsoft began publishing the linkid and the patchid in the knowledge base article for the update.  This makes life much easier as you no longer have to extract the update .exe file to find the id, and you don’t have to maintain a local crmpatches folder or update user’s registries.

Considerations

If you elect to use the Microsoft linkid in lieu of a local crmpatches folder, one thing you need to consider is how ampersands are treated in XML.  For example, the Microsoft linkid of Rollup Update 5 is 157191&clcid=0x409; however, if you use that as your linkid in you update.xml file, publishing will fail with an error like “An error occurred parsing EntityName.”

The solution is to replace any ampersands in the linkid with “&amp;”   For example, change 157191&clcid=0x409 to 157191&amp;clcid=0x409.  Then it will work.

Additional considerations:

When you run the patch configuration tool, if it gives you a message “Usage: Microsoft.Crm.Tools.ClientPatchConfigurator [XML Config file],” the patch has not been deployed successfully.  I have found that deploying the patch works best when the update.xml file is stored on the root of the c drive.  For example, microsoft.crm.tools.clientpatchconfigurator.exe c:\crmupdates\update.xml does not work, but microsoft.crm.tools.clientpatchconfigurator.exe c:\update.xml does.  If anybody knows a way to make the xml file work from a folder other than root, please leave a comment.

Auto Updates require users have local admin rights to install updates.  If your users do not have local administrator rights, I recommend using group policy to push out updates.

There was a problem with rollup 4 that prevented it from being installed from auto update under certain circumstances.  This problem has been remedied with rollup 5.

Here is an example of my update .xml file to get rollup 5 from the Microsoft download center

<ClientPatches>

<Create>

    <ClientPatchInfo>

        <PatchId>{592DDF5E-D0D7-46FE-81C3-A3BCAC5E8F22}</PatchId>

        <Title>CRM Rollup Update 5</Title>

        <Description>Microsoft has released Update Rollup 5. This is a tested, cumulative set of updates for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0. It includes performance enhancements that are packaged together for easy deployment.
</Description>

        <IsMandatory>false</IsMandatory>

        <IsEnabled>true</IsEnabled>

        <ClientType>OutlookDesktop,OutlookLaptop</ClientType>

        <LinkId>157191&amp;clcid=0x409</LinkId>

    </ClientPatchInfo>

</Create>

</ClientPatches>

Technorati Tags: CRM,Microsoft Dynamics CRM,CRM Outlook,auto updates