Ayaz Ahmad - [MVP - MSCRM]

Auto Complete Recursive/Waiting Workflows – Microsoft CRM 4

2009-12-30T05:03:46Z

Microsoft Dynamics CRM provides very powerful workflow designer tools to create workflows for various business scenarios. Waiting workflows are one of them. Very often, it is required to create waiting workflow on dates. So if a date is changed the waiting workflow remains in waiting state and date change executes another waiting workflow. So this [...]...(read more)

HTML Content Editor in CRM4

2009-09-15T09:08:24Z

It is often required to format and validate HTML contents in CRM 4. Here is a quick way of integrating a JavaScript WYSIWYG Editor. You can find many open source as well as 3rd part JavaScript WYSIWYG Editors. The editor I have used in my post is from TinyMCE – Javascript WYSIWYG Editor. TinyMCE is a [...]...(read more)

xRM – Designing Survey Applications in Dynamics CRM

2009-07-29T08:59:17Z

I have seen many people talking about designing survey applications in Dynamics CRM. I have analysed different approaches to design survey application and their integration with Dynamics CRM 4.0. Using WSS/MOSS 2007 WSS 3.0/MOSS 2007 provides a very comprehensive tool for planning, designing. Executing and analysing surveys. Following feature are provided out of the box in WSS/MOSS: • Planning/Designing [...]...(read more)

Event on Many to Many Relationship (N:N) in CRM 4

2009-07-23T22:24:52Z

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4 does not expose any event when records are associated through N:N relationship. So if you want to perform some function when a record is associated to another record in N:N relationship, CRM simply excuses and you have to look into hacks and unsupported solutions. Hack 1: There is a cool hack by Aaron [...]...(read more)

Announcing 2nd Microsoft Dynamics CRM Incubation Week

2009-03-25T21:38:31Z

Microsoft Dynamics CRM Incubation Week is designed to offer following assistance to entrepreneurs. - Learning and building next generation business solution on Microsoft Dynamics CRM Platform (a rapid application development platform to reduce the cost and Go-To-Market time) with help of on-site advisors (Microsoft Dynamics CRM experts). - Getting entrepreneurs coaching from a panel of industry experts [...]...(read more)

Asynchronous Matchcode Generation - Forced Duplicate Detection in Dynamics CRM 4

2009-03-17T23:44:44Z

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 provides a Duplicate Detection feature to protect the quality of your data. Duplicate Detection rules can be defined for different record types, including custom entities, and can be defined across record types as well. In background a matchcode service is running and creating/updating matchcode for new/existing records. This matchcode will be matched [...]...(read more)

Synchronous Matchcode Generation - Forced Duplicate Detection in Dynamics CRM 4

2009-03-17T23:44:44Z

Waiting/Timed Workflow VS Windows Service

2008-10-06T22:11:54Z

Developing some service or workflow to handle some periodic tasks is natural to CRM solutions. Last week, I have been looking for the best way to handle periodic tasks like sending reminders, creating tasks based on date/time, birthday notifies etc. So I have an entity project schedule and I have thousands of records of this entity where I have to send email reminders. For each record I can have a waiting workflow. So I can have thousands of waiting workflows. While, I can develop a windows service...(read more)

File Attachment to Notes - Dynamics CRM 4.0

2008-06-11T06:16:24Z

In Dynamics CRM 4.0, file attachment to entities is pretty simple as compared to CRM 3.0. UploadFromBase64DataAnnotationRequest and UploadFromBase64DataAnnotationResponse object are both deprecated. Instead a new attribute has been introduces in annotation object with documentbody that accepts string in base64 encoding. Please find the below sample: Reading file data into Byte array and then converting it to base64. Since I am using in memory object of StringBuilder class so I have just used str...(read more)

Auto Numbers in MSCRM

2008-05-02T03:23:30Z

Last week I have been looking for the best approach to use auto numbers in Microsoft Dynamics CRM. After discussion with my peers I have come to the following possible options that can be used for auto numbering. Although these may not be the efficient techniques to get auto number work in CRM but they are all workable solutions. Option 1: Very simple, supported and mostly acceptable way of auto numbering is to read the attribute Max value and then add 1 to get next auto number. For example you have...(read more)

Proximity Search in MapPoint – Drawing Microsoft Dynamics CRM data on Maps

2008-02-14T08:27:29Z

Proximity Search allows you to find businesses located around a reference point you provide. For example, hotels or restaurants can provide the nearest location of all automatic teller machines (ATMs). Or a manufacturing company can list all gas stations within a short drive from a supply center. Or a retail outlet can allow website visitors to search for stores that are open early or stores that handle return items. Or you can locate your potential customers nearby an existing customer. Proximity...(read more)

Generate Excel 2007 Sheets from MSCRM Data – OpenXML Show

2007-08-23T18:41:21Z

Office Open XML is an XML-based file format specification for electronic documents such as memos, reports, books, spreadsheets, charts, presentations and word processing documents. The specification has been developed by Microsoft as a successor of its binary office file formats and was published by Ecma International as the Ecma 376 standard in December 2006. The format specification is available for free at Ecma International. Let me introduce you the technique I have used to generate the Excel...(read more)

MSCRM and MapPoint Integration - A picture is worth a thousand words.

2007-06-12T17:48:45Z

Microsoft Provides MapPoint Web Service to enrich application with mapping functionality. It allows you to integrate maps, driving directions, order tracking and proximity searches into a wide range of solutions. For those of you who want to start using MapPoint for test and development purposes you can sign up for a free developer account here: htt ps://ma ppoi nt-css.partners.extranet.microsoft.com/MwsSignup/Eval.aspx With a developer account, you get full access to the MapPoint Web Service APIs...(read more)

MS CRM and SharePoint 2007 Integration

2007-05-08T04:45:07Z

Here is a very nice article by one of my colleagues, Rehman Gul, on MS CRM and MOSS 2007 integration. I thought to share this with all of you….you can also find the article on his blog @ http://rehmangul.wordpress.com/2007/05/08/ms-crm-and-sharepoint-2007-integration/ SharePoint 2007 provides integration with quite a few Microsoft products including Dynamics, SQL Server Reporting Services, PerformancePoint, etc. Today, we will specifically talk about SharePoint’s integration with MS CRM. Here...(read more)

VPC Development Environment for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 Projects

2007-05-04T17:17:07Z

After collapse of my QA server, I have been searching for various developments environment options for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 projects. As per my findings and discussion with other peer developers, most of them are using Virtual PC images for their development tasks. This is also recommended by Microsoft and a download at Microsoft website regarding VPC image is also available. This will benefit in various ways: Developers will not be dependant on other developers in performing their Customization...(read more)

Setting Default View for Account Activities???

2007-04-23T18:13:25Z

I have been searching a lot in Newsgroups and forums to find this issue. Issue is “How can I set the default view when I open certain Account Activities”. The default view set is “Next 30 Days” as given in the picture below. I want to set this to “All Activities”. I am looking for any supported and unsupported way of doing this task. I have been told my some MSCRM experts that it is a common issue and I will not be able to set this as this is all set by managed code. Anyone doing some tricky JavaScript...(read more)

Snap-ins for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0

2007-04-16T22:18:49Z

Snap-in applications enable you and your people to work within the familiar environments of Microsoft Office applications, such as Microsoft Office Outlook, Word, Excel, and SharePoint Server. Microsoft Dynamics Snap is a collection of products for Microsoft Office 2003/2007 users to work with certain Microsoft Dynamics applications. Snap-ins allow Microsoft Office users to interact with data and business processes from Microsoft Dynamics applications as they create documents, collaborate and manage...(read more)