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Increasing CRM Developer Productivity
Every now and then I find a solution to a problem that I didn’t know I had. Yesterday was a perfect example.
I spend most of my day inside Visual Studio either writing C# or JavaScript. I also use several tools to help me work with CRM. Usually what happens is I open Windows Explorer, navigate to my Utilities folder and launch whatever tool I need.
Yesterday it occurred to me that I was wasting my time.
Visual Studio has a feature on the Tools menu called External Tools:
It allows you to add your own tools so that you can launch them without ever leaving Visual Studio. Simple, I know, but it just never occurred to me to use this feature until I had launched Stunnware Tools for like the one millionth time.
Here is the configuration for Stunnware Tools:
And my very own Export JavaScript utility:
Now I can launch these two tools without ever leaving Visual Studio. A small productivity enhancement, but an enhancement nonetheless.
Development, Dynamics CRM
(1 votes, average: 3.00 out of 5)283 views
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Disabling all fields within a Section
Last week I encountered a need to disable all of the fields within a Section on a CRM Form. While you can set the properties individually, that is a waste of effort and a maintenance nightmare.
After a bit of digging, I found the following post on one of the CRM newsgroups by Kyaw Kyaw Tun, from http://www.pulsesync.com:
var section = crmForm.all.new_attribute_c.parentElement.parentElement.parentElement; for (i = 0; i < section.all.length; i++) { section.all[i].Disabled = true; }
You replace new_attribute with the name of an attribute that resides inside the section you wish to disable.
Note: That _c is not a mistake, that needs to be part of the attribute name. For instance, to hide the section containing accountnumber, you would use accountnumber_c.
Though the magic of the JavaScript Document Object Model ( DOM ), we’ll get a list of all of the fields and set their Disabled property to true.
Customization, Dynamics CRM (2 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)448 views Loading ... -
New Nuts and Bolts Article Released: Outlook Synchronization in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0
The Microsoft CRM E2 team is pleased to announce the release of the Nuts and Bolts article Outlook Synchronization in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0, which is available for download from the Microsoft Download Center at:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=2d497348-0a10-40ce-8edb-b0ee85f1215eOutlook synchronization enables Outlook users to view Dynamics CRM information, including contacts, tasks, phone calls, letters, faxes, appointments, and e-mails, within the Outlook interface. This document describes the client synchronization process that is associated with Update Rollup 7 for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 or later (for on-premise deployments) and with Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online November 2009 Service Update or later (for online deployments).
Dynamics CRM, Outlook Client (No Ratings Yet)255 views Loading ... -
Error message when you try to save a record in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0: "Object reference not set to an instance of an object"
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/954018
I ran into this issue again this week and since it had been so long since I had seen it, it took me a while to remember the solution- which I thought I’d share with you know.
Problem
You receive the following message when attempting to save a record:
Object reference not set to an instance of an object.
Cause
This problem occurs because a money attribute is created for the entity. When you do this, Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 creates an exchangerate attribute to work together with the money attribute. The money attribute is published as part of the entity.
However, if you delete the money attribute, the exchangerate attribute is not removed. Therefore, when you try to run a Microsoft Dynamics CRM plug-in, the plug-in can find the exchangerate attribute. However, the plug-in cannot find the money attribute
Solution
Create a new money attribute on the entity. This attribute will remain unused and does not need to be on the form.
Comments
Seeing this error is rare. It occurred in my instance because another developer originally added a field as a money type then realized it wasn’t actually money, it was a float type. He deleted and recreated the attribute which inadvertently create the problem.
Dynamics CRM (1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)368 views Loading ... -
Using CRM workflow to overcome laziness, I mean, become more efficient
CRM workflow can be used for all sorts of interesting things and can sometimes help you do your job in a surprising number of ways.
Let’s take the following example as a “surprising” way. I have entered some sample data, but after I entered the data, I realize that I really didn’t make most of the records verbose enough to be useful, as you can see from the following screen shot:
I now have two choices: Edit by hand all of the single-word records or come up with some fancy bulk editing technique to get the work done for me.
Let’s go with option number two and see where we end up.
What Won’t Work
I can’t use the bulk edit feature because I want all of my records to be different.
I also don’t want to edit them by hand, as mentioned above.
Finally, I don’t want to write any code because that would be a real waste of my time.
How about a Workflow?
Have you ever considered using workflows for editing? No? Well then, let’s give it a shot.
Step 1: Create the workflow
This is pretty basic workflow at this point. We have given the workflow a name and selected the entity, which is a custom entity called News.
We’re using CRM Online so the Scope defaults to Organization.
Finally, we will be executing this workflow manually so we want to clear all of the check boxes except for On demand.
Step 2: Add a workflow step
Now we need to add an Update step to our workflow. In this step, we will be updating both the Headline attribute and the Body attribute, as you can see below:
If you look closely at what we’re updating we are adding new text into each field then we are adding the field to itself. Huh? Will that work? You bet.
Here is what is happening ( using the Headline attribute as an example ). We are actually performing the following calculation:
“This is important news headline number “
+
[the existing contents of Headline]
Which results in something like:
This is important news headline number one.
We then perform a similar calculation on the Body attribute.
After publishing our workflow, we can put it to use.
Step 3: Executing the workflow
After returning to our News View, we need to select all of the News records that need to be updated. When you click run workflow button, the following dialog will appear:
You need to click OK to select the workflow then OK again to run actually it.
Step 4: Viewing our results
After waiting a short amount of time for the workflows to execute, we can then refresh the News view and see the results of our handiwork:
Is that not cool or what?
Conclusion
So what did you think? Does that open up your eyes a little as to the possibility of using workflow to edit data?
And how long did it take? Less than two minutes. And that is with me taking screen shots and pasting them into Windows Live Writer so I could write this article. Since it was only two fields, I could have actually done the whole thing in less than a minute if I was really trying.
Good luck with your own workflow efforts.
Dynamics CRM, Workflow (1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)490 views Loading ... -
New survey posted: What CRM feature interests you the most?
Since it’s the beginning of a new year, I thought I would again check to see what people are interested in this year.
If you have a minute, I’d love to hear what you have to say.
The survey is located on the upper-right side of this blog.
Thanks, Mitch
Dynamics CRM (No Ratings Yet)1,282 views Loading ... -
CWR Mobility Ships Clients for Microsoft Dynamics CRM for BlackBerry, iPhone and Windows Mobile
CWR Mobility has released version 4.2 of its flagship product CWR Mobile CRM which includes a native mobile CRM client for BlackBerry and iPhone.
Read the full article here.
Dynamics CRM, Mobile (No Ratings Yet)307 views Loading ... -
Using Workflow to Create Marketing Lists
One of the more obscure facts when working with the CRM 4.0 workflow engine is the ability to actually create a marketing list. Actually, you can create records for almost any entity, but I always found it interesting that Marketing Lists were on that list.
So why would this be useful and how would you use it?
That’s the question I have been asking myself for quite some time and to be quite honest, I really didn’t have an answer until a couple of weeks ago. Here’s what I’m doing:
The Scenario
I am starting a new venture which involves providing Internet-based training for CRM users. The training will be broken down into courses and lessons – pretty standard stuff.
I decided that I would like to have a marketing list for each course so that I could communicate with each person who had purchased the course.
The Solution
Create a workflow that will automatically create the Marketing List when a new Course is created. Here’s what the main workflow screen looks like:
The workflow needs to fire when the Course is created. I also added On demand so that I could start the workflow manually.
There is only one workflow step involved, which is the actual creation of the Marketing List record, and I’ve supplied the following fields:
The name is the Title from the Course. The Member Type is Contact, since all of my users are Contacts. And finally, the Purpose is just a summary of reason for the Marketing List exists.
Conclusion
While it has always been easy to create new records using CRM workflow, I think the use of automatically created Marketing Lists is pretty unique and I hope this inspires you to rethink the use of CRM workflows.
Finally, you are probably wondering how members of the Marketing List are maintained. This is pretty simple: When you purchase a course, the code-behind the web site automatically adds you to the Marketing List for the specified course. This means there is zero used-intervention in this entire process.
Dynamics CRM, Workflow (No Ratings Yet)483 views Loading ... -
New CRM case study released: Access MediQuip
One of my customers is the subject of a new Microsoft case study which describes how the implementation of Microsoft Dynamics CRM has benefited their company.
I’ve been working with them for almost a year and the amount of “cool stuff” we’ve implemented within Dynamics CRM to help them improve their business is immense and the case study barely scratches the surface.
You can find the case study here:
http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/Case_Study_Detail.aspx?casestudyid=4000006368
Dynamics CRM (No Ratings Yet)305 views Loading ... -
New CRM Case Studies
Girish Raja has pointed out several CRM/xRM-related case studies that you may find interesting:
xRM ISV Case Study: Peak 15 Systems
xRM ISV Case Study: Client Profiles
Dynamics CRM (No Ratings Yet)248 views Loading ...
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