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Dynamics 365 Community / Forums / Microsoft Dynamics CRM (Archived) / Links to External Appl...
Microsoft Dynamics CRM (Archived)

Links to External Applications/Web pages

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Posted on by Pat Buskey 1,540

I have a need to bring in some resources from an application/DB outside of CRM.  I would like to customize CRM in a way to make the resource appear to be part of a Contact or Account form.  The best thing I have seen is to add a navigation link to the entity's navigation.

The problem I am having is how do I either pass a custom field (external ID) to the Web page that the navigation link points too or how does the external Web page get informaion about the entity?

It would appear that the entity's form is broken up into frames, but I can't figure out how to navigate them.

Pat B

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  • Jeremy Winchell Profile Picture
    Jeremy Winchell 1,165 on at

    How much information are you looking to bring in?  Is it a single page of records or is it your thought that the users would also navigate around your custom application?

    If it's limited information mainly for read-only purposes you have a couple of options:

    1. Create a Silverlight or HTML web resources to pull in information and display that within the Form itself.

    2. Show your custom page in an IFRAME web resource and that will allow you to pass record ID's & other values.

    I have some code that I'll have to dig up that allows you to change the URL for the Navigation link on the left-hand side.  It's not supported so I would first explore either of the two options above and display the data from within the form itself.

    Jeremy

  • Pat Buskey Profile Picture
    Pat Buskey 1,540 on at

    Basically, I am looking to add a entity left navigation link that would open a page in an external app that would allow users access to additional information that is not stored in CRM.  I was hoping to be able to pass a custom field on the URL, but that doesn't seem possible.  The external application page that would be displayed would have it's own navigation built into so as to not clutter up the CRM form much.

    I did find a way that will allow for general entity information to be passed on the URL which would allow the external application to use the passed entity ID to look up the entity record and get access to the custom fields it needs to work.  I also found that it was not as easy as working with the customization GUI to add a left navigation item AND pass those parameters.

    Basically you need to export a solution which could just be a test solution that contains the entity.  Then edit the customizations.xml file in the left navigation node for the entity.  Look at the other nodes for examples.  The thing you have to add is the "Pass Params" attribute and the Url parameter.  Once added save the customizations.xml back into the solution Zip file, reimport and publish.

    </NavBarByRelationshipItem>
   <NavBarItem Id="navBccContactItegrations" PassParams="1" Area="Info" Sequence="1000" Icon="$webresource:bcc_icon_BH" Url="https://yoururl.com">
      <Titles>
         <Title LCID="1033" Text="BCC Integrations" />
      </Titles>
</NavBarItem>

    Note that I thought a Sequence number of 1000 would put it at the bottom of the left navigation section but it didn't.  The nice part of this is now this navigation link does does up on the entity customization form.  Once added to the XML, you can change the URL, the Icon and by dragging and dropping, the display order.

    Hope this helps others that might find this posting.

  • Suggested answer
    Whatty Profile Picture
    Whatty 50 on at

    Thank you very much - this was exactly what I was looking for and it took me almost a full day to accidentally stumble across this solution.

    BTW, how exactly did you find this?

    I am assuming that it is in the customization schema, did you find it by editing the XML document and basically trial and error based upon what the schema supports?

    Thanks in advance.

    Whatty

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