Category: Dynamics CRM

Event Execution Pipeline in Dataverse/Dynamics 365

When the standard low-code options cannot handle your business logic in an expected manner, as a developer, you can use custom event handlers in Microsoft Dataverse. The Event Framework provides the capability to register custom code to be run in response to specific events.

The custom code options available are Plugins, Azure integrations, virtual table data providers, and Webhooks, etc… When configured correctly using the plugin registration tool, these custom code extensions will respond to events that are provided by the event framework.

When an event occurs a message is sent to the organization Web service to process the event. The message contains information about the event, such as details of the table where the event occurred, dataverse organization details, details of the user who triggered the event, etc… There is a specific message for each event such as create, update, retrieve, retrieve multiple, associate, disassociate, delete, etc… Each message is processed in a series of 4 stages called the event execution pipeline and your custom code extension can be registered at any of these stages based on your business need. See the below table for the details about each stage.

Stage NameDescription
PreValidationThis stage will occur before the main system operation. This provides an opportunity to include logic to cancel the operation before the database transaction.
This stage occurs before any security checks are performed to verify that the calling or logged-on user has the correct permission to perform the intended operation.
PreOperationOccurs before the main system operation and within the database transaction. If you want to change any values for an entity included in the message, you should do it here.

Avoid canceling an operation here. Canceling will trigger a rollback of the transaction and have a significant performance impact.
MainOperationFor internal use only except for Custom API and Custom virtual table data providers.
More information:
Create and use Custom APIs
Custom Virtual table data providers
PostOperationOccurs after the main system operation and within the database transaction. Use this stage to modify any properties of the message before it is returned to the caller.

Avoid applying changes to an entity included in the message because this will trigger a new Update event.

Within the PostOperation stage, you can register steps to use the asynchronous execution mode. These steps will run outside of the database transaction using the asynchronous service. More information Asynchronous service.

Hope this helps.

Use Dynamics 365 WEB API in Azure Functions Version 3

In the previous post, we saw how to authenticate Dynamics 365 in Azure Functions runtime version 3 (.NET Core). Now let’s see how to use Dynamics 365 WEB API after acquiring the bearer token.

The following sample code accepts email as input in the request body, and uses Web api to return the contacts records with the passed email.

using System;
using System.IO;
using System.Threading.Tasks;
using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Mvc;
using Microsoft.Azure.WebJobs;
using Microsoft.Azure.WebJobs.Extensions.Http;
using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Http;
using Microsoft.Extensions.Logging;
using Newtonsoft.Json;
using System.Net.Http;
using Microsoft.IdentityModel.Clients.ActiveDirectory;
using System.Net;
using System.Net.Http.Headers;

namespace SampleFunctionApp
{
   

    public static class D365
    {
        [FunctionName("ConnecttoD365")]
        public static async Task<IActionResult> Run(
            [HttpTrigger(AuthorizationLevel.Function, "get", "post", Route = null)] HttpRequest req,
            ILogger log)
        {
            log.LogInformation("C# HTTP trigger function processed a request.");

            string contactEmail = req.Query["email"];
            string responseMessage = string.Empty;
            string requestBody = await new StreamReader(req.Body).ReadToEndAsync();
            dynamic data = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject(requestBody);
            contactEmail = contactEmail ?? data?.email;
            #region Auth Code
            //
            string cloud = "https://login.microsoftonline.com";

            //This is the Domain!

            string tenantId = "*******";

            string authority = $"{cloud}/{tenantId}";

            // ApplicationID in the new UI

            string clientId = "************";

            //Created from scratch in Keys

            string clientsecret = "*************";

            ClientCredential clientcred = new ClientCredential(clientId, clientsecret);

            // Application ID of the Resource (could also be the Resource URI)

            string resource = "https://*****.crm.dynamics.com/";

            AuthenticationContext ac = new AuthenticationContext(authority);
            AuthenticationResult result = null;
            var bearerToken = string.Empty;
            string ErrorMessege = string.Empty;
            try

            {
                //already having token
                result = await ac.AcquireTokenSilentAsync(resource, clientId);
                if (result != null)
                {
                    bearerToken = result.AccessToken;
                    log.LogInformation("Token Acquired:" );
                }
            }

            catch (AdalException adalException)

            {//Acquire token
                if (adalException.ErrorCode == AdalError.FailedToAcquireTokenSilently

                || adalException.ErrorCode == AdalError.InteractionRequired)

                {

                    result = await ac.AcquireTokenAsync(resource, clientcred);
                    if (result != null)
                    {
                        bearerToken = result.AccessToken;
                        log.LogInformation("Token Acquired");

                    }
                }
                else
                {
                    log.LogWarning("Failed to acquire Bearer Token :-" + adalException.Message);
                    var AdalException = new { adalexception = "Failed to acquire Bearer Token :-" + adalException.Message };
                    return new BadRequestObjectResult(JsonConvert.SerializeObject(AdalException));
                    throw adalException;

                }

            }

            #endregion

            #region getContact
           


            string outputString = string.Empty;
            //Next use a HttpClient object to connect to specified CRM Web service.
            var httpClient = new HttpClient();
            //Define the Web API base address, the max period of execute time, the 
            // default OData version, and the default response payload format.
            httpClient.BaseAddress = new Uri("https://*********.crm.dynamics.com/api/data/v9.1/");
            httpClient.Timeout = new TimeSpan(0, 2, 0);
            httpClient.DefaultRequestHeaders.Add("OData-MaxVersion", "4.0");
            httpClient.DefaultRequestHeaders.Add("OData-Version", "4.0");
            httpClient.DefaultRequestHeaders.Add("Prefer", "odata.include-annotations=\"*\"");
            httpClient.DefaultRequestHeaders.Accept.Add(new MediaTypeWithQualityHeaderValue("application/json"));
            httpClient.DefaultRequestHeaders.Authorization = new AuthenticationHeaderValue("Bearer", (bearerToken));

            //Query to retrieve contacts
            var queryOptions = "contacts?$select=fullname,mobilephone&$filter=emailaddress1 eq '" + contactEmail + "'";
            HttpResponseMessage retrieveResponse1 = httpClient.GetAsync(queryOptions).Result;


            if (retrieveResponse1.StatusCode == HttpStatusCode.OK)
            {


              

                    responseMessage = retrieveResponse1.Content.ReadAsStringAsync().Result.ToString();
               

            }
            else
            {

                return new BadRequestObjectResult(JsonConvert.SerializeObject("an error occured while retriving contacts"));
            }



            #endregion

            if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(contactEmail) && responseMessage== String.Empty)
            {
                responseMessage = "Pass an email in the query string or in the request body";
            }        

            return new OkObjectResult(responseMessage);
        }
    }
}

Test your function from post man.

Request
Response

Please note, the response in the code is not well formatted, you may format the response as a proper json object based on your business need.

Hope this helps.

Call JavaScript Methods Globally Over Dashboards, Home Grids, and Record Forms.

Recently, I received a strange requirement to show a dialogue to users as soon as they login to Dynamics 365. The dialogue can be an HTML page with company events or a video stream (exact requirement not mentioned here). The pop-up should be shown over dashboards as well as entity home grids. It is easy to show the dialogue on a record form as I can register JavaScript on the record form, or show an application-level notification using addGlobalNotification client API, if it was just a notification only. I was stuck on showing the dialogue on dashboards, as most model driven apps in D365 will land on some dashboard when the user logs-in, and we do not have any event triggers there. I shared the requirement with the community experts and finally Linn Zaw Win, Microsoft Business Application MVP, gave me a lead to try using the application ribbon buttons. Booom!!! It worked.

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio on Pexels.com

Here is what I tried.

  1. Added a hidden button in Global Tab (where the Advanced Find button is located) using Ribbon Workbench.
  2. Added JavaScript function using CustomRule of the button Enable Rule.
  3. Triggered dialogue by adding required logic inside my enable rule JavaScript.
  4. Since the global tab is there on all screens of the model driven app (including dashboard and grids), the button enable rule JavaScript method will be called and so is our dialogue logic.

Add a new button in the global tab.

Create a new solution and add application ribbon and one entity (any entity is fine) to the solution. Now open your solution using ribbon workbench. Select ApplicationRibbon in the entity dropdown as shown below.

Add a new button in the Global Tab by scrolling the Home area to the right until you find the Mscrm.GlobalTab. Drag a button and drop into  Mscrm.GlobalTab.

Add enable rule for the button.

In the EnableRule, add a new step as CustomRule and select the JavaScript web resource in the library and enter the function name. Set default value as False so that button will be hidden (assuming your JavaScript function is not returning “True” value), you can also use display rules to keep the button always hidden.

Create a new Command and add the new enable rule we just created.

Now associate this command with the newly created button.

Publish your button

Once you have published, whenever a Dynamics 365 page is loaded, system will call your enable JavaScript. Below is the sample code I have used for showing a simple alert.

 function  showGlobalMessage()
	{
		 var alertStrings = { confirmButtonLabel: "Yes", text: "Go to Todays Video?", title: "Your Daily Message" };
var alertOptions = { height: 120, width: 260 };
Xrm.Navigation.openAlertDialog(alertStrings, alertOptions)
return false; 
}

Note: As per the above logic, the dialogue shows (enable rule will be triggered) every time the user opens a new tab/window. To show the dialogue only once or with specific intervals, you can use a new custom entity to keep track of the notification setting for each user using Xrm.WebApi, or you can use  localStorage (but using local storage may not be an officially supported D365 customization)

I know this is not a common scenario or ideal use case, but I hope it will save you some time when you come across strange requirements 🙂

Replacing Dialog in Model Driven Apps Part-1: Using Main Form Modal

Since the announcement of dialogue depreciation, I have been trying out different alternatives to replace dialog as I use them extensively in my projects. The first option I tried was using canvas apps as described in this post ,but I was not happy with that approach and tested other options and implemented those in my projects based on customer scenarios. I will be publishing these options as a series. This is the first post and let’s see how we can replace dialog with entity main form.

There are many gaps when we replace dialog with other alternatives, even though these gaps can be filled with workarounds, the maintainability is high when compared to a classic dialog. These issues can be handled to a great extend using main forms.

With the April 2020 preview release of the Unified Interface for model-driven apps in Power Apps you can now open a record in a dialog. The record will open in a modal dialog and users will have access to the command bar, header and tabs that you defined for the records main form.

We can us the above option replace classic dialog.

Scenario:

I have to request HR team to verify certain details about prospects, but HR team is not allowed to access contact details. I also need to capture feedback and remarks from HR team.

So I created an entity called “Requests(nj_dialoguebatchone)” , modified the main form as per my requirements and removed all the unwanted buttons using ribbon-workbench.

Next step is to call this form using JavaScript from contact form.

function loadDialogForm(executionContext) {

    formContext = executionContext.getFormContext();
    var pageInput = {
        pageType: "entityrecord",
        entityName: "nj_dialoguebatchone",
        formType:  2
// formType 2 opens a new record.
    };
    var navigationOptions = {
        target: 2,
        height: {value: 70, unit:"%"},
        width: {value: 35, unit:"%"},
        position: 1
//target: Number. Specify 2 to open the page in a dialog. 
//position:Number. Specify 1 to open the dialog in center.
    };
    Xrm.Navigation.navigateTo(pageInput, navigationOptions).then(
        function success(result) {
               
                // Handle dialog closed
        },
        function error() {
                // Handle errors
        }
    );
    

   

}

I hope the code is self explanatory, more details can be found in the following links.

Now you can bind this script with ribbon button or other form events Boom dialog is ready.

You can also use quick create forms, but main form gives you more flexibility in terms using business rule and other form level formatting and validations. You can also easily configure Workflows, FLOWS, or Plugins based on user input in this as record create and update events are available.

See the dialog in Action

P.S. Am a classic dialog fan 🙂

Aggregate Grid PCF

When you have to see the Sum, Count, AVG of numeric columns in a subgrid, what is the easiest way? Export to Excel right? Now, there is an easier way: Aggregate Grid PCF Control. View Aggregates directly from Subgrid. This PCF control will list all numeric and currency columns in the view at the footer area, you just have to select the required column. This is not a production-ready control(I wanted to give life to an idea that came in during COVID19 lockdown) you can get the source code and unmanaged solution from here.

CSS & Grid design is from hovering list By Danish Naglekar.

Let’s Learn PCF Together

After adding Aggregate Grid Control to PCF gallery, I received many LinkedIn messages saying they love to build PCFs but they cannot as they are not pro UI developers. Trust me, I am not a pro UI developer just know the basics only :(, with the help of Awsome Microsoftcommunity, I managed to build a couple of PCF controls and for the last 6 months, every month am adding a new control to the PCF gallery. So now I have started a short video series of PCF control tutorial for beginners. these are 5 mins videos released once in every 3 days covering only one point per video. Hope this will be helpful for beginners. This is my first YouTube video series so am sure there is a huge scope for improvement 😅

Activity Summary Pro

So busy with year ending and 2020 plans. AsvI promised “The pro version will be released in two months”, I have to release the pro version today. Really sorry for the poor CSS, am actually bad at styling stuffs 😦 . But you can always improve the style and features in the Github, any updates are appreciated. Here is the github repo link.

New features added.

  • Click on Activity Name to Expand the list.
  • View activities as a chart
  1. Get the unmanaged solution file  Here
  2. Import the solution to your organization.
  3. Create a view with the required filters. If you do not require the control to consider certain activity types, you can exclude them in your view filter. The control will consider only the records returned by the view selected.
  4. Add sub-grid to the form with the created view.
  5. Add Activity Summary control to the sub-grid.
alt text
alt text

Note: If you need to exclude certain activity types, apply the same logic in the view filter.

Special mentions

Hari Narayanan Kumar for his Activity Analyzer which helped me to include the chart easily.

Andrew Butenko for his quick repleys and answers in the power users community 🙂

Happy New Year, let this be the year of Power Users

Dynamics 365 V9.0 – First Look. It is here..

Dynamics 365 V9.0 MutliSelect Optionset is here say goodbye to custom HTML MutliSelect Optionsets

CRM Indian

Finally, the expected next version of Dynamics 365, V9.0 is available from today. I’ve been so excited about the V9.0 new features and finally got a chance to play with it today.

I have been playing around with the entities, grids, new controls, settings etc. This will be the first blog post of this ‘First Look’ series, I have added the things I found interesting in the new version so far, I will be writing more about the features of V9.0 in next posts.

Unified Interface:

Alright, let’s start with the Unified Interface (UI) introduced, the UI looks pretty clean and organized now with the borders for the containers, word wraps, etc.

As mentioned in the below image,

  1. Unnecessary white spaces are reduced.
  2. Word wrap, borders for the containers – it gives a clean look
  3. Empty fields have a pretext line now.
  4. Social pane has a bold look now (I’m…

View original post 269 more words

Microsoft Dynamics CRM is behaving weird!!! (Common troubleshooting tips)

Sometimes your on-premise CRM system will show, some weird behaviors like workflows are not executing / plugins are not working / data imports are failing without any data issues etc…

I have faced certain issues like the entire system is not working , system will  show error messages without any logs, the only message it  displays is “an error has occurred”.

Following are the common issues you can check in such situations.

Ensure CRM Asynchronous services are running

From the server Administrative Tools select Services, and if the CRM Asynchronous services are not running ensure to start the services (if the Asynchronous  services are not running CRM will stop working).

Ensure CRM Sandbox services are running

From the server Administrative Tools select Services, and if the CRM Sandbox services are not running ,please start the services. If the Sandbox services are not running CRM will stop working or the normal system jobs will fail without showing any valid errors .

Check IIS

Ensure the following in IIS

CRM application pool and CRM  website are up. Try browsing the CRM website from IIS.

Make sure your SQL server and Reporting services are up

Ensure your local machine time is in sync with the server time 

This may sound funny but trust me this simple point can save your many productive hours.

Recently my system failed to  perform certain operations and I wasn’t able to connect the Xrm tools too. When I debugged I got the keyword “past time” , then I identified that the server time was different from my local machine.

If you have tried all the above steps and still you are not able to identify the issue,please check the server event viewer this may give you some details regarding the failure.

Hope this helps!!!…  🙂

 

 

 

 

 

On demand backups for CRM Online instance

With on demand backups, you can make your own backup before making some significant customization change or applying a version update.

CRM Online Administrator Center

About CRM managed on demand backups:

  • You can back up Production and Sandbox instances.
  • You can only restore to a Sandbox instance. To restore to a Production instance, first switch it to a Sandbox instance. See Switch an instance.
  • Only CRM Online 2016 Update 1 or later versions are supported for backup.
  • On demand backups are retained for up to three days. Check your expiration date.
  • On demand backups are identified as created by someone other than System and by the presence of Edit | Delete | Restore in the details section. System backups only have Restore.

Backup and restore CRM online instance