Nishant Rana's Weblog

Important urls in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4 for quick reference

Hi,

While browsing got this information, so thought better share it

Services – http://server:port/orgname/_root/homepage.aspx?etc=4001
Advanced Find – http://server:port/orgname/AdvancedFind/AdvFind.aspx

CRM Help – http://server:port/orgname/help/default.aspx

Customization Menu – http://server:port/orgname/tools/systemcustomization/systemcustomization.aspx
Entity Customization DataGrid – http://server:port/orgname/tools/systemcustomization/systemcustomization.aspx?PID=01
Import Customizations – http://server:port/orgname/tools/systemcustomization/systemcustomization.aspx?PID=03
Export Customizations – http://server:port/orgname/tools/systemcustomization/systemcustomization.aspx?PID=03

Thanks to Douglas Leung !

http://sharepointsix.blogspot.com/2007/06/microsoft-crm-30-integrating-crm-into.html

Bye…

Dynamic Values in Workflow in CRM 4

We were facing an issue today; the issue was something like this

We were sending mail in one of our workflow, in the to field of the workflow we had set multiple users name as dynamic values. But we found that mail was being sent to only one user, i.e. the first user only.

Than we found out that if we add multiple values in Look For dialog box and click on ok to add all those together, only the first field having value would be picked by workflow.

For e.g. if I add (created by), (manager of the user field) in the look for dialog box and click on ok to add them together, the workflow would only pick the value for first field i.e. (created by) field for which value exists. It would ignore the manager of the user field.

However if we add them separately i.e. first add (created by) field and then look for (manager of the user field) and add that field than we could have values for both the field.

Bye…

File not found error in NewDwp.aspx SharePoint

Hi,

I was getting this error while trying to all a new custom web part to the site.

Searching for the same found out the reason for that

It happens when you install smart part

http://www.codeplex.com/smartpart

But haven’t installed asp.net ajax 1.0 version !

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=ca9d90fa-e8c9-42e3-aa19-08e2c027f5d6&displaylang=en

Follow it with an iis reset !!

Bye ..

Read Only Tab in CRM

Hi,

This is something i tried for setting all the fields within a tab as read only or disabled !

// get the div element corresponding to tab, first tab would have index Tab0, second as Tab1 and so on ..

var el=document.getElementById(‘Tab2’);

// create a recursive function

function toggleDisabled(el) {

try {

el.disabled = el.disabled ? false : true;

}

catch(E){}

if (el.childNodes && el.childNodes.length > 0) {

for (var x = 0; x < el.childNodes.length; x++) {

toggleDisabled(el.childNodes[x]);

}

// call the function

toggleDisabled(el);

To hide and setting a parituclar tab as default

http://mscrm4ever.blogspot.com/2008/09/crm-40-tab-how-to-tips.html

Bye…

Custom pages and Relative URL’s in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4

As suggested my Microsoft we would be deploying our custom pages in ISV folder within CRM’s virtual directory i.e. CRMWEB.

Now within our site map or isv.config if we are referring to the page using relative url

i.e. /ISV/HelloWorld.aspx, what CRM would do is append Organization Name to the url.

Now as long it is an aspx page, things would be fine. However if it is an html page we would get “Page not found error”. And for html page we need to use Absolute url, for them to work fine!

Check out this url as well

Using Microsoft Dynamics CRM URLs

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc905759.aspx

And this thread as well

http://social.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/crmdevelopment/thread/1e882967-002f-4621-ba14-0f7e3744c323

Bye…

Understanding Application Pages and Site Pages

Pages that support user customization are known as site pages. E.g. the page that we could see inside our SharePoint designer like default.aspx (home page), NewForm, EditForm,DispForm.aspx etc. The site pages could easily be customized without making any changes to the local file system of the front-end web server and without any need of developer involved for that. This is possible by storing the customized version of the aspx and master page files inside the content database. The saving and retrievig of content from the database is provided using SPVirutalPathProvider class.

More on SPVirtualPathProvider

http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2005/11/27/431650.aspx

Site pages could exist either in customized(unghosted) or uncustomized(ghosted) state.

For e.g. when we create a new site using one of the default templates, the site as well as pages therin are in uncustomized state i.e. they are based on page templates that live on the file system of the front-end web server. Page template are used for provisioning (creating) page intances. As long as the page is not customized using SharePoint designer or through the Site Settings option the copy of the page is not stored in the content database and the pages are loaded from the file system of the web server. A single page template is compiled into an assembly and loaded into memory of IIS worker process one per web application.

However when page is customized, SPVirtualPathProvider retrieves the customized version of the page from the content database and passes it to ASP.NET parser. Now these pages aren’t compiled into assembly. They are processed by ASP.NET parser in no-compile mode.

No-comiple pages provide higher levels of scalability compared to compiled pages. Compiled pages offer following benefits

· Performance Compiled code is much faster than scripting languages such as ECMAScript or VBScript because it is a closer representation to machine code and does not require additional parsing.

· Security Compiled code is more difficult to reverse engineer than non-compiled source code because it lacks the readability and abstraction of a high-level language. Additionally, there are obfuscation tools that make compiled code even more resistant to reverse engineering.

However these compiled pages cannot be loaded into memory and unloaded in a manner similar to no-compile pages. .NET framework doesn’t support concept of unloading an assembly DLL from memory. By recycling the current Windows process or AppDomain it is possible to unload the dll, the issues is that it would unload all dll’s from memory, not any specific as desired. And moreover there is limit associated with number of assemblies that could be loaded in a .NET AppDomain.

With no compiled pages there is no requirement of loading assemblies into the memory. Processing for compiled pages is done by loading control trees into memory. Once the processing is finished for a customized page, the page’s control tree is unloaded to free up memory resources. And also as the pages are not compiled, it provides faster response time for pages upon first access.

No Compile Pages enables improved scaling for large sites with 1000s of pages, as windows has limit on number of DLLs loaded into an app and perf degrades as you hit this limit.

Application pages are pages that don’t support customization. They cannot be customized using SharePoint designer. E.g. settings.aspx, create.aspx etc.

These pages are deployed at \Layouts directory of 12 hive and are available to all the sites. They are compiled into a single dll and loaded into memory once per web application. They are used extensively for provisioning and administrating sites as well as elements inside the sites. Application pages links to application.master.

So main differences between these two types of pages could be summarized as

1) Site pages support customization whereas application pages don’t.

2) Site pages once customized run in no-compile mode whereas application pages are always compiled.

3) Now as site pages support customization it involves risk so under default security policy enforced by WSS we couldn’t write inline code in it whereas it is allowed to write in-line code in case of application page.

4) Application page scale better than site page.

Bye..