I need to retrieve a related entity in a plugin going through a many to one relationship

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Posted on by bpoindexter

I am writing a custom workflow / plugin to be fired for a custom entity when a record that is of type custom_entity is deactivated. Custom_entity is related to Account and the relationship is many to one (or looking at it from Account's perspective, Account has a one to many relationship with Custom_entity).

When a record of type Custom_entity is deactivated, I need to check to see if the owning Account can be deactivated. First step in that process is to lay hands on the owning Account, which would you think would be simple.

Apparently it's not. It appears to take herculean effort to accomplish that one minimal thing.

Here is what I have tried:

relatedAccountReference = custom_Entity.GetAttributeValue<EntityReference>("new_Account");
relatedAccount = service.Retrieve("account", relatedAccountReference.Id, columnsAccount);
relatedAccountId = relatedAccountReference.Id;

The plugin is failing on the first line with error: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.

Earlier in the code I'm using the org service to retrieve custom_Entity. Since it's GUID is available through the context, retrieving this record is straight forward. The column set it uses does not contain "new_Account". If I try to add new_Account as a column in the columnset, I get a different error: The given key is not present in the dictionary.

I'm about to pull my hair out. All I need to do is access the related account that an instance of custom_Entity is bound to. The lookup field in CRM for this linkage is called "new_Account".

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Nuno 2,005 on at

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Hi,

To get the related account:

EntityReference accountId = service.Retrieve(context.PrimaryEntityName, context.PrimaryEntityId, new ColumnSet("new_Account"))

.GetAttributeValue<EntityReference>("new_Account");

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Aric Levin - MVP 30,190 Moderator on at

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How are you getting the custom_Entity attributes?

Are you using target, or are your retrieving the custom entity attributes?

I think you might need to retrieve the custom_Entity, and only then you will be able to get the EntityReference of the new_Account field:

Basically:

Entity custom = service.Retrieve("custom_Entity", customEntityId, new ColumnSet(true)(;

EntityReference accountRef = custom.GetAttributeValue<EntityReference>("new_Account");

Entity account = service.Retrieve("account", accountRef.Id, columnsAccount);

// Your additional logic here...

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bpoindexter on at

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Error: 'custom_Entity' entity doesn't contain attribute with Name = 'new_Account'.

Of course, this doesn't make sense. It absolutely does contain an attribute called new_Account. I can see it in field list for custom_Entity in the solution.

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bpoindexter on at

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Aric,

I adjusted my code to match your suggestions. custom_Entity is being retrieved like this:

custom_Entity_Id = context.PrimaryEntityId; <- the custom_Entity is the context of the workflow; workflow fires when custom_Entity is activated or deactivated.

custom_Entity = service.Retrieve("custom_Entity",custom_Entity_Id, new columnSet(true));

Then what follows is my code as posted in my original post. Reposted here:

relatedAccountReference = custom_Entity.GetAttributeValue<EntityReference>("new_Account");
relatedAccount = service.Retrieve("account", relatedAccountReference.Id, columnsAccount);
relatedAccountId = relatedAccount.Id

Error now reads: 'custom_Entity' doesn't contain attribute with Name = 'new_Account'.

I did change all my column sets to include all columns for all entities being retrieved.

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ashlega 34,477 on at

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Hi,

you may need to use lowercase new_account..

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bpoindexter on at

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Thanks to everyone for the input, I did get it working. I was not using correct case to match the Logical name of the entity. Banged my head against the wall for a whole on that one. Thanks everyone for the input, answers will be marked.

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