If your javascript code is peppered with alerts and confirms, it’s time to stock up on the invigorating drink of your choice and rewrite. The reason is very simple – CRM for tablets does not like anything that blocks execution. New stablemates are alertDialog and confirmDialog – use them to display messages to users and set code to execute based on their response. Because of the asynchronous nature, the signature of the functions is different and involves callbacks:

    Xrm.Utility.alertDialog(message, onCloseCallback)

    Xrm.Utility.confirmDialog(message, yesCloseCallback, noCloseCallback)

On tablets any use of alert in the existing code will be automatically overwritten to use alertDialog function. So why all the fuss then? alertDialog is asynchronous on the tablets and code execution will continue, something that 99% of the existing code probably does not expect. That, and a little thing called backward compatibility. According to SDK, “This mapping of window.alert to Xrm.Utility.alertDialog in CRM for tablets is deprecated and will be removed in the next major release.”

The following sample demonstrate use of the both functions by prompting user if they want to set the description automatically and then does the job (we assume that the form has a field called description).

    FormOnLoad = function () {
        var description = null;

        Xrm.Utility.confirmDialog("Set meaningless description?",
            function () {
                description = "Meaningless description";
            },
            function () { }
        );

        Xrm.Utility.alertDialog(
            "Your wish is my command",
            function () {
                if (description) {
                    Xrm.Page.getAttribute("description")
                    .setValue(description);
                }
            }
        );
    }

And this sample clearly demonstrates asynchronous nature of the code – it simply does not work as expected on tablets – on iPad alert is displayed first followed by confirmation dialog. Working version of the code:

    FormOnLoad = function () {
        Xrm.Utility.confirmDialog("Set meaningless description?",
            function () {
                Xrm.Utility.alertDialog(
                    "Your wish is my command",
                    function () {
                        Xrm.Page.getAttribute("description")
                        .setValue("Meaningless description");
                    }
                );
            },
            function () {}
        );
    }