New version of Network Visualisations for Dynamics CRM

ScottDurow

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Many of you will have seen (and possibly used) my previous version of NetworkView. Thank you for all the feedback you've given. The top 5 points of feedback were:

Can I show connections on the graph?
Can I show custom entities on the graph?
I have very large graphs which makes it hard to understand what is going on.
I have records owned by Teams but I cannot see that on my graph.
How do I know which node is the one that I've opened the graph from?

With version 1.6 I've addressed these points as follows:

Showing Connections

You can now show connections between entities! The connection roles that are discovered (e.g. Partner, Influencer etc.) are listed so that you can then highlight all the connections of a particular role on the graph by selecting the role. Loading connections may be turned on or off on a per-entity basis in the configuration.

Connections shown on graph

Activity Overflow

Since most of the time folks are only interested in the links between records via activities rather than the actual activities themselves, the graph now loads the first 10 records and then shows an overflow node that you can double click to load the next 5 activities. Under the covers, all that activities that match the FetchXml filter are loaded and the links worked out but the links are shown to and from the 'overflow' node rather than the individual activities until you expand the node.

Iteration Limit

Network graphs can often grow to a large size if you have many connections, the graph will now pause loading after a set number of iterations and ask if you want to load more. The most frequent cause of graph growth is where there are connections that are also users – for this reason, the graph will supress connections that have the same email domain as any of your users.

Loading Paused

Team Ownership

In addition to showing users who own records and participate on activities the graph now shows Teams in same list and allows highlighting records that are associated with that team.

Team Ownership on Graph

Root Node identification

You can now see which record you started the graph from highlighted in green.

Cycle Mode

When you first load the Network view, the users and connection are cycled through so that the various cohorts on your graph are highlighted for your viewing pleasure! This can be turned off by clicking the cycle button and the configuration controls if it is on by default.

Configurable

The graph is now configured using a customisable web-resource named:

dev1_/js/NetworkViewConfig_1033.js

To add your custom configuration you simply need to edit this web resource and publish the changes. You can use the following options:

iterationCountPerLoad	The number of iterations of the load mechanism before prompting the 'Load More' option. Default:10
trace	Output trace to F12 console whilst loading. This is good for working out why your graph looks the way it does Default: false
demoModeInitialState	Turn on the demo cycle when the graph first loads. Default: false
connectionFetchXml	The query to fetch connections. The placeholder {0} must be inserted where the ID filter should be added.
acitvityFetchXml	The query to fetch activities. The placeholder {0} must be inserted where the ID filter should be added.
entities	Array of Entities to load (including custom entities)

Each Entity configuration has the following fields:

displayName	The name of the entity used in messages.
logicalName	The logical name of the entity to load
nameAttribute	The logical name of the attribute that holds the display name of the record.
idAttribute	The logical name of the attribute that holds the unique ID of the record
parentAttributeId	The logical name of the parent Record ID when hierarchical loading is enabled.
loadActivities	True when the graph should show activities for this entity
loadConnections	True when the graph should show connections for this entity (connections must be supported by this entity)
hierarchical	True when the parent/child relationships should be traversed using the hierarchical operators.
fetchXml	The query to get the records. The placeholder {0} must be inserted where the filter conditions should be added.
joins	Holds an array of joins to other entities.

Installation

To install or upgrade from the previous version :

Install SparkleXRM v7.2.8 or later
Install the NetworkView managed solution

The usual disclaimer & license applies.

Special thanks goes to @dynamiccrmcat for help with testing this version.

@ScottDurow

This was originally posted here.

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