February 2006 - Posts

• Working with CRM 3.0 Sample Chapter Available

  Mike Snyder and Jim Steger of Sonoma Partners have announced the availability of the sample chaper on Workflow from their upcomming new book titled “Working with Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0”. Just awesome! Read more Posted Feb 28 2006, 08:51 AM by Ryan Farley with 1 comment(s) Tags: Microsoft CRM, Workflow

• Easier Navigation with Browser Tabs

  A common complaint I hear those who are more used to the modality of Windows-based CRM applications is the ability to loose yourself in the possibly many open MSCRM windows at a given time. The complaint stems from MSCRM’s web-based architecture which uses popup windows instead of reusing a common framed area. You could find yourself with many open windows as you click from the main CRM window, to an account, and then contact, and then some other sub entity... Read more Posted Feb 24 2006, 12:52 PM by Ryan Farley with 5 comment(s) Tags: Microsoft CRM

• Removing Toolbars & Menus at Runtime

  Mike Boysen posted a while ago about using Global Functions to remove toolbar and menu items at runtime based on the currect user's security. A worth while post to read on using global functions (because it's not like you'll find that many other places that document how to use global functions). Read more Posted Feb 20 2006, 11:05 AM by Ryan Farley with 2 comment(s) Tags: Development, General, New Finds

• Getting XSD Schema for CRM Entities

  I posted before about the CRM Metadata Browser that can be used to see and document the various CRM entities. Another similar thing available is the ability to get the XSD schema for the CRM entities. Read more Posted Feb 17 2006, 02:22 PM by Ryan Farley with 6 comment(s) Tags: Microsoft CRM, SDK Development

• Changing Label Text at Runtime

  Along the same lines as showing/hiding form fields and labels at runtime, it is often useful to change the text of field labels based on other events. This is an easy enough task which isn't really all that different than showing or hiding the label. Read more Posted Feb 16 2006, 02:47 PM by Ryan Farley with 11 comment(s) Tags: Client Scripting, Microsoft CRM

• CRM Metadata Browser

  Mitch Milam posted about the metadata browser that comes with CRM 3.0. This thing is just awesome. It gives you a more or less complete view of the schema for your MSCRM implementation. This is a great way to produce some quick and easy documentation about the metadata for your system. Read more Posted Feb 15 2006, 12:42 PM by Ryan Farley with 6 comment(s) Tags: Microsoft CRM, SDK Development

• Accessing Web Services from CRM Forms

  Arash Sichanie has an excellent post on using Javascript to access a web service from a CRM form. Great stuff. His example shows accessing a web service to get the exchange rate between USD and the selected currency type. Read more Posted Feb 07 2006, 02:25 PM by Ryan Farley with 1 comment(s) Tags: Client Scripting, Microsoft CRM

• Funny Lemonade Stand Case Study

  If you haven't yet seen the spoof case study for MSCRM "Lemonade Stand", it is definitely worth checking out. Read more Posted Feb 06 2006, 02:30 PM by Ryan Farley with no comments Tags: Microsoft CRM

• Hiding and Showing Fields at Runtime

  Something that makes any web application a great one IMO is making it behave like a windows app as much as possible. Making a web application behave the way you'd expect a windows app to behave is what will get you a huge buy-in from end-users. The MSCRM client is no different. I think it is important to take every opportunity to make things happen the same way you would in a windows application. Read more Posted Feb 03 2006, 02:09 PM by Ryan Farley with 9 comment(s) Tags: Client Scripting, Microsoft CRM

• Determining the Form Type at Runtime

  There are many times that you might want to determine the form type at runtime. This can be a fairly common task since many actions on a form might need to behave differently depending on whether the form is in “Create” more or “Update” mode. Read more Posted Feb 02 2006, 03:12 PM by Ryan Farley with 1 comment(s) Tags: Client Scripting, Microsoft CRM