Debajit Dutta (Former 6x Business Solutions MVP, MCT)

Switch Forms in Microsoft Dynamics CRM depending on Business Logic

Recently in our project, we had a requirement where the customer wanted to show different forms of the same entity depending on some business logic. Off-course we could design the form with multiple sections with appropriate fields and show/ hide the sections based on business logic. However if the above approach does not suit you, …

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{Tips &Tricks} Add borders to fields on form in Dynamics CRM 2013

We upgraded recently to Dynamics CRM 2013 and after upgrade one of the feedbacks that came from our customer was that when the form loads for this first time, the fields are clearly not distinguishable. Off course they were talking about the new feature in Dynamics CRM 2013 where the controls are highlighted on the …

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Dashboard Chart Exporter in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013.

Ever faced the requirement where your customer has asked to export the charts in your CRM Dashboard so that they could embed them in their PPTs. Off-course you can ask your customer to enlarge your charts and then take a clip of the chart and save it as file. I have developed a tool that …

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{Scenarios} – Registering plugins when a user is added to Team in Microsoft Dynamics CRM.

Well if you are reading this topic and thinking that there is already a whole lot of information available on how to register a plugin when a user is added to a team, then why this post again. Yes you are right. But I could see there is some incomplete information in many of the …

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Exploring Microsoft Dynamics CRM system Js files

For a long time doing this, however thought of sharing this to all you guys. CRM does a lot of whole lot of functionalities using these javascript files. When do we really need to explore these system files functions. Well as a CRM consultant, frequently i have faced scenarios where the customer is very adamant …

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Close Quick Create Form in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013.

Recently in my project, I came across a requirement where the customer would launch the quick create form and when he clicks on the Save button, our CRM system would perform complex business functions and show a pop-up to the user with a list of available options. If the user selects one of the options …

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Call plugin from Javascript in Microsoft Dynamics CRM.

Wanted to share with you all a very interesting way to call plugins from you client side code in Microsoft Dynamics CRM to perform complex operations.Recently in our project  we had a requirement to determine duplicates for an entity based on some very complex business rules with integration from external system. Surely we can call …

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{Dynamics CRM} How to execute RetrieveMultiple request from Javascript

Frequently in our CRM projects we need to retrieve multiple records for some entity based on some conditions. We have the OrganizationDataService to achieve that. However with the OrganizationDataService we cannot write complex joins and many other stuffs what we can achieve through fetchxml. What if we could utilise the the power of fetchxml from …

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View Personal Views created by other users in Microsoft Dynamics CRM

Frequently in our project, we receive issues from our users complaining that they have created a personal view for their chart. However the chart is not showing any data. The only option we have left then is a screen sharing session with the user to check the filters of his/ her personal views or to …

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User Missing prvReadComplexControl privilege Error in Microsoft Dynamics CRM

Recently in our project we faced this error. Users of our system were getting this whenever they were trying to create/ update a contact. The error seems to talk about some complex control in CRM to which the user does not have read privilege. Perplexed that you never heard of any ComplexControl entity in CRM? …

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Understanding currency field in Microsoft Dynamics CRM

The currency field of CRM is something that we use in almost every project. However I find that there is always some confusion related to this currency field because of the way CRM handles it. Let us see exactly what happens when you create a currency field in CRM. I have a custom entity called …

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Logging in CRM entity in Microsoft Dynamics CRM

The tool is available for download at the codeplex site: https://enterpriselogger.codeplex.com/. The entire documentation of the tool and how to use it can be found in the documentation tab in the codeplex site. In case you want to keep reading this blog, I suggest you go back to the link:  https://debajmecrm.com/enterprise-logger-for-microsoft-dynamics-crm/ and gather an idea …

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Logging in custom database in Microsoft Dynamics CRM

The tool is available for download at the codeplex site: https://enterpriselogger.codeplex.com/. The entire documentation of the tool and how to use it can be found in the documentation tab in the codeplex site. In case you want to keep reading this blog, I suggest you go back to the link:  https://debajmecrm.com/enterprise-logger-for-microsoft-dynamics-crm/ and gather an idea …

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Logging in EventViewer in Microsoft Dynamics CRM

The tool is available for download at the codeplex site: https://enterpriselogger.codeplex.com/. The entire documentation of the tool and how to use it can be found in the documentation tab in the codeplex site. In case you want to keep reading this blog, I suggest you go back to the link: https://debajmecrm.com/enterprise-logger-for-microsoft-dynamics-crm/ and gather an idea …

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Error Logging in Microsoft Dynamics CRM

Would like to share with you all a tool which I have built for logging in Microsoft Dynamics CRM. The tool works for both CRM 2011 and CRM 2013 versions of on-premise/ IFD/ Office 365 environment. It also gives you the option to perform the log operation in File/ Eventviewer/ Custom Database/ CRM entity as …

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{Dynamics CRM} Programatically Assign privilege to security role for an entity in MSCRM

Recently in my project, I had a requirement where I needed to assign security privilege to all the roles in the system to a custom entity Programatically. Let’s see how we can achieve the same. Whenever a custom entity is added in CRM, CRM internally created eight privilige records for the entity for the privileges …

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{Dynamics CRM} Not getting latest Text field value on click of custom ribbon button in CRM 2013

Recently in my project, I was faced with the above problem. The exact scenario is explained below. I have a text field for entering the Device Id in CRM. The user enter a value in the textbox and clicks on the the ‘Determine 54-90’ custom ribbon button without tabbing out from the textbox as shown …

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{Dynamics CRM Web Resources} Show Attachments for an entity in Custom Webresource in Microsoft Dynamics CRM

Recently in our project we had a requirement where we needed the attachments for an entity in a custom webresource so that when the user clicks the attachment it downloads. For that first of all you would need to get the attachmentid by querying the annotations which are of type attachment for the entity. Once …

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Role based view in Microsoft Dynamics CRM

Many of must be having the requirement of configuring role based views in CRM. For e.g – say a person with salesperson security role should have ‘Active contacts’ as the default view for the contact entity. Like wise there might be requirement where you would need to hide views based on security roles. If you …

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{Dynamics CRM – SSRS} Execute custom SSRS report from Microsoft Dynamics CRM using custom code.

Recently we had the requirement in our project where the customer wanted to execute the Export To Excel feature for an editable grid that we implemented. The following in an overview of the requirement. 1. There is a custom jQuery Grid which shows a consolidated view to customer for a custom entity and its related …

{Dynamics CRM – SSRS} Execute custom SSRS report from Microsoft Dynamics CRM using custom code. Read More »

{Dynamics CRM} Get EntityTypeCode of an entity in CRM 2013 using JScript

Recently in my project i was required to get the entity type code of entity. A little bit of searching and I could find multiple ways to get them in jscript. However the main problems were: 1. they were working only on entity forms 2. you would have to make a metadata call to get …

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{Dynamics CRM Scripting} Exploring the Xrm.Internal namespace in CRM 2013

Recently i cam across this library in CRM 2013. And I found a lot of helpful methods which could facilitate you during your development. Please check for the screenshot below which shows some of  the methods. Notable are: 1. Xrm.Internal.getEntityName(<entitytypecode>) – you pass in the entitytypecode and get the logical name for the entity 2. …

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Dynamics Crm 2013 Access Teams – Demysitified

By now many of you might have already explored the concept of Access Teams that has been introduced with CRM 2013. If not then I would suggest to go through it. Personally i kind of liked it as it helped me to escape sufficient amount of coding in my current project. In this post, I …

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"Must specify valid information for parsing in the string. at System.Enum.TryParseEnum" – Error while configuring Outlook with MSCRM

Recently while configuring outlook for our client, we got the above mentioned error. Also strangely it was working prior to one of our deployments that we did in the organization. So we became pretty sure that it has something to do specific with our latest customizations that we deployed to the environment. What we did is …

"Must specify valid information for parsing in the string. at System.Enum.TryParseEnum" – Error while configuring Outlook with MSCRM Read More »

{Dynamics CRM Business Process Flow}Register Business Process Flow StageID and ProcessID in Plugins in CRM 2013

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 introduced the concepts of Business Process Flows. For any entity which have business process flows enabled, CRM creates two fields in the entity 1. stageid 2. processid On Change of process or stage for an entity, CRM allows you to register workflows. However through plugin registration tool, it is not possible …

{Dynamics CRM Business Process Flow}Register Business Process Flow StageID and ProcessID in Plugins in CRM 2013 Read More »

{Dynamics CRM Plugins} Images and Filtering attributes not supported for Plugins for custom Actions in CRM 2013

In CRM 2013, Microsoft has introduced the concept of actions which is a wonderful way to represent you custom business functionality in the form of a request that CRM platform would understand. Also on top of that, you can register plugins for the actions you create. However there are certain limitations when using plugins with …

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{Dynamics CRM Business Process} Change the Active Stage Flag in CRM 2013 Business Process Flows

Recently in our project, we had a customer requirement where the customer asked to change the colour of  image of active stage of a business process flow for Opportunity. Let’s see how this can be achieved. OOB in CRM 2013, the active stage flag for a business process in bluish is colour. Please check for …

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{Dynamics CRM Business Rules} Custom Xrm Script and Business Rules on the same Field in Dynamics CRM 2013

With the advent of Microsoft CRM 2013 in came business rules, a wonderful feature of the new CRM version. However with new implementations, there would be always some new confusions creeping up. Well in many training sessions on CRM 2013, i keep getting the question – “Will my onchange handlers and business rules work at …

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{Dynamics CRM Social Pane} Hide Posts From Social Pane in CRM 2013

In CRM 2013 Microsoft introduced the Social Pane, also known as Record Wall. Recently in our project we had a requirement to disable posts for a particular security role. To do that the first thing we did is to remove the Post Privileges for the security role. Please refer to the screenshot below. As you …

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{Dynamics CRM Business Process Flow} Prevent user from moving to previous stage in CRM 2013 Business Process Flows.

In CRM 2013 Business Process flow, the user can move both forward and backward to next stage and previous stage respectively using the Next/ Previous arrows. However sometimes your requirement might be to have process flows unidirectional. In that case you would not want to show the previous arrow shown to the user. Let’s see …

{Dynamics CRM Business Process Flow} Prevent user from moving to previous stage in CRM 2013 Business Process Flows. Read More »

{Dynamics CRM} Control CRM 2013 Business Process Next Stage and Previous Stage flow using JScript.

Recently in our project we needed to restrict the business process flow from one stage to another depending on certain conditions. The problem was that OOB CRM 2013 does allow you to plugin your custom client side code when the “Next Stage” or the “Previous Stage” icons are clicked. You can obviously register Plugins and …

{Dynamics CRM} Control CRM 2013 Business Process Next Stage and Previous Stage flow using JScript. Read More »

CRM 2013 Solution Import Error – An item with the same key has already been added

In CRM 2013, while importing of solution, we faced the error “An item with the same key has already been added”. A little bit of searching and we found this very good article which describes how to resolve the error – http://nishantrana.wordpress.com/2014/04/15/an-item-with-the-same-key-has-already-been-added-error-while-importing-solution-in-crm-2013/ However as the link suggests, it was not possible for us to delete the …

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{Dynamics CRM} Found More than one RibbonDiff Entity Error- CRM 2013 Solution Import

In CRM 2013, while importing of solution, we faced the above in the Entity Ribbon of the Account Entity. To resolve the same, we unzipped the customization file that we were importing and then opened the customizations.xml file in a xml editor and checked for the RibbonDiff part for the account entity. We found duplicate …

{Dynamics CRM} Found More than one RibbonDiff Entity Error- CRM 2013 Solution Import Read More »

{Dynamics CRM} Default Potential Customer lookup to show only accounts/ Contacts in CRM 2013 Business Process Flows

In the opportunity entity, we have a field “Potential Customer” which is of type “Customer” and it can be both account or contact entity. However sometimes we might need to customize the same to show only contacts or accounts. For this in the form load of the opportunity entity, just add the two lines of …

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Change global optionset mapping for a Entity optionset in Microsoft Dynamics CRM without dropping and recreating the field

Recently I came across a situation where my local optionset was pointing to one global optionset and then I needed to point to another global optionset. In CRM to do this, you would have to drop the field and recreate field. But the problem is if you have a running system which is being actively …

Change global optionset mapping for a Entity optionset in Microsoft Dynamics CRM without dropping and recreating the field Read More »

Change Field data type in MSCRM without dropping and recreating the field

All consultants like me be it in MSCRM or any other technology would surely agree with me – “Change is inevitable”. Every time I implement a project for a client, there is always a huge change in the requirements from the time when we started it and the time when we implemented it. And it …

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