Nishant Rana's Weblog

Good resource for SQL Server Reporting Services

Hi,

Please check out this wonderful article.

http://www.ssw.com.au/ssw/standards/rules/rulesToBetterSQLReportingServices.aspx

Bye..

Understanding PrimaryEntityImage, PrimaryEntityPreImage and PrimaryEntityPostImage for Custom Workfow Activity in CRM 4.

Suppose we have written a simple workflow activity that references values for the above Images and have registered it on create of lead record.

The attributes included within the images would be following

Record is created	Lead

PrimaryEntityImage	fullname
	leadid
	owningbusinessunit

PrimaryEntityPreImage	null

PrimaryEntityPostImage	leadid
	owningbusinessunit
	ownerid

Now suppose we register it on Record attribute change and select city and description for lead.

Now suppose we specify value for those fields and save the record. Here the values for the images would be

Record attributes change	Lead

PrimaryEntityImage	fullname
	leadid
	owningbusinessunit

PrimaryEntityPreImage	fullname
	leadid
	owningbusinessunit
	ownerid

PrimaryEntityPostImage	leadid
	owningbusinessunit
	ownerid

Except for values in PrimaryEntityPreImage there is hardly any change in the Images.

Now lets modify the workflow and add a check condition step that would check if both the city and description field contains data for lead.

Now after modifying the values for city and description field for a lead ,these are the values we get in the images.

Record attributes change (after check condition)	Lead

PrimaryEntityImage	fullname
	leadid
	owningbusinessunit
	*address1_city*
	*description*

PrimaryEntityPreImage	fullname
	leadid
	owningbusinessunit
	ownerid
	*address1_city*
	*description*

PrimaryEntityPostImage	leadid
	owningbusinessunit
	ownerid

Address1_city and Description field has got added for PrimaryEntityImage and PrimaryEntityPreImage.

Now if we remove check condition for city field for lead,

Record attributes change (after check condition)	Lead

PrimaryEntityImage	fullname
	leadid
	owningbusinessunit
	*description*

PrimaryEntityPreImage	fullname
	leadid
	owningbusinessunit
	ownerid
	*description*

PrimaryEntityPostImage	leadid
	owningbusinessunit
	ownerid

We could see that address1_city is not there in the images.

Now lets further modify our workflow, remove the check condition and add a step to create an account record and set dynamic values for fields in account using the industrycode and emailaddress1 field of the lead record.

Record attributes change (Step for Creating Record)	Lead

PrimaryEntityImage	fullname
	leadid
	owningbusinessunit
	*industrycode*
	*emailaddress1*

PrimaryEntityPreImage	fullname
	leadid
	owningbusinessunit
	ownerid
	*industrycode*
	*emailaddress1*

PrimaryEntityPostImage	leadid
	owningbusinessunit
	ownerid

We can see that both these fields are added to images.

And here PrimaryEntityPreImage would contain the values for the field before they were modified and and PrimaryEntityImages would contain the modified values for those field. The PrimaryEntityPostImage would not have these attributes inside it.

So it proves that an attribute would be included in the entity images if we are referencing that property in our Check Condition or as a dynamic value within the workflow.

Bye.

IPluginExecutionContext and IWorkflowContext properties.

Hi,

Check out this link

Context Properties

Bye..

Understanding TargetRelatedLeadToAccount class in CRM

Hi,

I saw one question in Microsoft CRM Development forum, it was regarding the TargetRelatedLeadToAccount class. The user was using this class to update the originatinglead attribute in the account record.

This is how we would be using that class

CrmService service = new CrmService();
service.Credentials = System.Net.CredentialCache.DefaultCredentials;
service.CrmAuthenticationTokenValue = new CrmAuthenticationToken();
service.CrmAuthenticationTokenValue.AuthenticationType = 0;
service.CrmAuthenticationTokenValue.OrganizationName = “orgName”;

TargetRelatedLeadToAccount targetRlTA = new TargetRelatedLeadToAccount();
targetRlTA.AccountId = new Guid(“accountGuid”);
targetRlTA.LeadId = new Guid(“leadGuid”);

SetRelatedRequest srelReq = new SetRelatedRequest();
srelReq.Target = targetRlTA;
SetRelatedResponse srelRes = (SetRelatedResponse)service.Execute(srelReq);

However as it turned out, this class associates an account record to a particular lead record. It doesn’t update the originatinglead attribute in the account record.

We can find a N:N relationships defined between lead and account named “accountleads_association”. Every time we use the above message a particular account record gets associated to the lead.

We can check for it in the following filtered view “FilteredAccountLeads”.

Bye..

Accessing CrmService live or online

This are some of the best articles for this

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb955360.aspx

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd548517.aspx

http://blogs.msdn.com/crm/archive/2008/03/10/accessing-crm-live-web-services.aspx

http://blog.philiprichardson.org/2007/12/17/part-3-applications-which-connect-to-crm/

The important thing to remember is that here we need to use the organization’s unique name.

For example the friendly name here is Bliss

the unique name is org582c8 which could be found at

settings—>customization—> Download web service description files.

We need to make use of idcrlwrapper.dll and msidcrl40.dll which needs to placed in our project’s bin\debug folder.

To get idcrlwrapper.dll we need to do the following

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb955358.aspx

And lastly we need to add a cs file named windowsliveidticketacquirer.cs in our project. It could be found at the following location

SDK\server\helpers\cs\CrmOnlineAuth.

// Login information For authentication through the Windows Live service.
Static Private String _username = "username@hotmail.com";
Static Private String _password = "password";
Static Private String _partner = "crm.dynamics.com";
Static Private String _environment = "Production";
// Set the name And TCP port Of the server hosting Microsoft Dynamics CRM Live.
Static Private String _hostname = "dev.crm.dynamics.com";
//Set the friendly name Of the target organization.
Static Private String _orgFriendlyName = "Bliss";
// Define an expired authentication ticket Error code.
Static Private String EXPIRED_AUTH_TICKET = "8004A101";
//Passport ticket required To recover from a CrmTicket time out.
Static Private String _passportTicket;
//Attempt a service Call a maximum number Of times before failing.
Static Private int MAX_RETRIES = 5;
Private void Form1_Load(Object sender, EventArgs e)
{
// Step 1,2: Retrieve a policy from the Discovery Web service.
CrmDiscoveryService discoveryService = New CrmDiscoveryService();
discoveryService.Url = String.Format(
"https://{0}/MSCRMServices/2007/{1}/CrmDiscoveryService.asmx",
_hostname, "Passport");
RetrievePolicyRequest policyRequest = New RetrievePolicyRequest();
RetrievePolicyResponse policyResponse =
(RetrievePolicyResponse)discoveryService.Execute(policyRequest);
// Retrieve a Passport ticket from the Windows Live service.
LogonManager lm = New LogonManager();
_passportTicket = lm.Logon(_username, _password, _partner, policyResponse.Policy,
_environment);
// Dispose Of the LogonManager Object To avoid a FileNotOpen exception.
lm.Dispose();

String orgUniqueName = "org582c8";

// Retrieve the CrmTicket.
RetrieveCrmTicketRequest crmTicketRequest = New RetrieveCrmTicketRequest();
crmTicketRequest.OrganizationName = orgUniqueName;
crmTicketRequest.PassportTicket = _passportTicket;
RetrieveCrmTicketResponse crmTicketResponse =(RetrieveCrmTicketResponse)discoveryService.Execute(crmTicketRequest);

//Create And configure an instance Of the CrmService Web service.
CrmAuthenticationToken token = New CrmAuthenticationToken();
// For CRM live Set authentication type To 1
token.AuthenticationType = AuthenticationType.Passport;
// We will need CRM Ticket To Get authenticated
token.CrmTicket = crmTicketResponse.CrmTicket;
token.OrganizationName = crmTicketResponse.OrganizationDetail.OrganizationName;

CrmService crmService = New CrmService();
crmService.Url = crmTicketResponse.OrganizationDetail.CrmServiceUrl;
crmService.CrmAuthenticationTokenValue = token;
// Invoke the desired CrmService Web service methods.
lead myLead = New lead();
myLead.lastname = "Rana";
myLead.firstname = "Nishant";
crmService.Create(myLead);


Bye..
Share  It -

				Email a link to a friend (Opens in new window)
				Email
			
Tweet

				Share on WhatsApp (Opens in new window)
				WhatsApp
			

				Share on Reddit (Opens in new window)
				Reddit
			

				Share on Telegram (Opens in new window)
				Telegram
			
Share on Tumblr

				Print (Opens in new window)
				Print
			

				Share on Mastodon (Opens in new window)
				Mastodon
			

				Share on Threads (Opens in new window)
				Threads
			

				Share on Nextdoor (Opens in new window)
				Nextdoor
			
Post

				Share on Bluesky (Opens in new window)
				Bluesky
			
Like Loading...

Getting the error messages for custom workflow activity.

Normally if there are any errors in our custom workflow activity for a given workflow instance, its status reason would be set as “waiting” and we would see the following message

"An error has occurred. Try this action again. If the problem continues, check the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Community for solutions or contact your organization’s Microsoft Dynamics CRM Administrator. Finally, you can contact Microsoft Support."

Obviously the above message doesn’t help us much.

So to find the exact reason for the error, we can do the following,

Go to Advanced Find View
Click on New
Select “System Jobs” for look for drop down.
Set condition as
Status equals Suspended
SystemJobType equals Workflow

And also click on “edit columns”, and using “add columns” add Message (Display Name) column.

And the results of the advanced find view.

Here we can also do this one more thing,

We can customize the system job (asyncoperation) entity’s form to include the message field in it.

However this cannot be done in supported manner. To enable system job entity for customization we need to run the following query against our Org_MSCRM database.

update entity
set iscustomizable=’1′
where name=’Asyncoperation’

And then customize the “System Job” entity’s form to include the Message attribute in it.

This is how it would look like !