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.

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 🙂