Hey, it’s Friday and time for another video tip. In the last week’s video we talked about how to create custom action, add parameters to it, define conditions and steps, etc. This week we continue by demonstrating how to call your custom actions from real-time workflows (or dialogs) without writing any code.
Give us your feedback, all of it: good, bad, and ugly, I’m sure we can take it. Suggest new topics either in comments or by sending your ideas to jar@crmtipoftheday.com.
I said it before and I said it again that presenting at the conferences like eXtremeCRM can be a real eye-opener. You quickly learn, for example, that Bob could not make it and you also learn how much people know about CRM. With all the accumulated knowledge it comes as a surprise that some of the features that has been around for years are misunderstood, and underused.
Take, for example, this menu item:
As it turns out, people are still unsure what it’s there for and what exactly does it do.
Without writing a single line of code it allows registration of an endpoint that is similar to a standard plugin registration so that you can register steps with it, like create for the account entity. The difference is that, instead of executing your plugin code this endpoint will push the data out of CRM to the Azure Service Bus with all the plugin context intact. For example, push it to the queue and then create a listener on the other end and pick up whatever CRM pushed out.
Why would we want to do that? How about:
Of course, there are some additional moving parts to the story like creating an Azure Service Bus, negotiating security between CRM and the service bus, etc, but all steps are documented to death in MSDN and there are some good articles and walkthroughs written about it.
Go and create some goodness.
So you set up a Dynamics CRM Online 30 day trial and you want to also try the document and OneNote integration. Here is how to get a SharePoint Online trial to use with your Dynamics CRM trial. There are two approaches:
In Dynamics CRM 2013 or later, synchronized appointments send meeting invitation emails to meeting attendees when they are created or updated. This is a feature that was commonly requested by CRM users, but there are some scenarios where you may not want this to happen.
Meetings created or updated after the meeting happens
Some users may want to update the appointment attendees to accurately reflect who attended the meeting. Or you may want to create an appointment record after the meeting occurred. In these scenarios, you don’t want the attendees getting a retroactive meeting invitation.
One approach that can help with this is to modify the appointment synchronization filter to only include meetings where the start date is in the future (say the next 500 days or something). Alternatively, you could create a “do not synchronize” flag on the appointment record, then update users synchronization filters to not include records flagged as “do not synchronize.
Gustaf Westerland says that if you don’t want any attendees getting notified, you may want to take more dramatic action, such as breaking appointments out to separate mapping entity and then using precreate/update plugin to prevent the notification email from being sent.
Sensitive meeting notes
Another concern is that if a user updates the body of the appointment with notes from the meeting, the attendees will receive a meeting update email. We addressed this in tip 287. Don’t use the appointment body/description for meeting notes. Replace it with the notes pane (or OneNote if you are online). Set the body to not synchronize between CRM and Exchange. This will prevent embarrassing notes or comments from being sent to your customers.
Most of the people in our small but very proud Dynamics CRM universe are perfectly aware of the very cool integration between Dynamics CRM Online and SharePoint Online. Yes, the one which is required to enable other cool features like OneNote integration unleashed (had to add a cool word for the third link).
As I discovered couple days ago, very few, however, are aware that since CRM Online Update 1 you can integrate with SharePoint on-premises. The dry extract of what you need (besides CRM Online):
For more details and step-by-step instructions, go no further than the official administrator’s source of truth – TechNet.
Hey, it’s Friday and time for another video tip. With Unified Service Desk done and dusted for now, we switch our attention back to least explored Dynamics CRM features. In this week’s video we look at custom actions. Creating a Custom Action can provide a lot of possibilities for composing business logic. Here we talk a bit about that they are, how to use them, and then create one.
Give us your feedback, all of it: good, bad, and ugly, I’m sure we can take it. Suggest new topics either in comments or by sending your ideas to jar@crmtipoftheday.com.
Sometimes you get the same question from multiple people. This week, it was people asking about what to do with personal views owned by users who are no longer active. Consider if you have personal views shared with multiple people, you disable that user, and now nobody can edit or delete those views. What can be done?
I am aware of three approaches to resolve this. Some more supported than others.
As some of you know, with the exception of the podcast where we keep straight face, Joel and I disagree a lot. This time I think he is wrong and I am right (I think that most of the time, to be fair). Without further ado, our most recent squabble.
I’ve had it with first and last names (project I was working on had a list of countries where these names are to be swapped when building the full name o__O). It’s culture dependent and mostly useless except when searching by the surname. So the idea I’m entertaining to use form now on for contacts:
Any issues with this approach? (Apart, of course, from the need to fill in an archaic form that requires separate first and last names)
Kind of funny, I was just having a conversation about this specific idea with a client lately. Their source system only had a single name for contacts, which made moving them into CRM a bit of a challenge.
I can see the attraction of having a single name; however, as I see it, there are two major downsides:
My approach is to have an alternate firstname lastname field that stores the name in the opposite order of the fullname field and make it searchable. That way if I search for “Redlaces, Captain” or “Captain Redlaces” I get a result.
Haven’t thought about 1 but for 2 is exactly what salutation is about. So my name is George Doubinski but I’d prefer if you address me as Dear <salutation>, e.g. Dear Shifu.
The challenge with the first names is that in many countries they have the exactly opposite meaning, e.g. China. I know that for you, being in egocentric North America, it’s a concept that is hard to fathom but I thought after your visit to Japan you’d have a bit more appreciation of what we’re dealing with on a daily basis trying to offload the coal surplus?!
I agree that it is most useful for Asian countries. For North America, you would want the option to use the last name, such as Mr. Doubinski
Oh boy… “How would you like us to address you? Mr Lindstrom? OK” (busily writing “Mr. Lindstrom” in salutation field)
Does it work for you?
What about “Dear first name, we would like to invite you and the rest of the [lastname] family to our event?” Not saying that is everyday, but not unheard of.
Oh man, imagine if the guy is single because his family [insensitive blurb removed]. Who’d be responsible for his suicide then?!
Not saying that is everyday, but not unheard of.
The client is a life insurance company. They would have updated his marital status in CRM
As you can see, we were quickly getting nowhere. Everyone is holding their ground firm. What do YOU think?
The other day the client asked us to verify the field level security settings on the system. The reason, as they explained it, was that one of the lookup controls appeared disabled and wouldn’t become enabled regardless of what they did to FLS settings. Long story short, the control was disabled not because of the FLS but because user did not have Append privilege on the child entity.
In general, lookup control will be disabled if one of the following conditions is true:
The man himself Tanguy “The XRM Toolbox” Touzard has the podium today:
If you are getting the error code -2147089917 while trying to uninstall managed solution and the message reads “[entity] did not have a valid Quickfind query”, verify that the entity is not in the list of entities enabled for multi-entity quick search:
Settings > Administration > System Settings then General tab > Set up Quick Find (heading) > Select entities for search > Select…
of the