Jonas Deibe - Dynamics CRM, C#, JS : Visual Studio

Mission-critical workload of 50,000 concurrent users

Jonas Deibe — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 21:56:00 GMT

Feels great! Checkout press release on http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2009/jun09/06-03IntelMSBenchmarkPR.mspx

All business transactions were based on extensive customer research and defined using the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Performance and Stress Testing Toolkit.

CRM developer toolkit v1

Jonas Deibe — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 00:47:00 GMT

A new toolkit to make customizations to CRM 4.0 has been released. Download bits from http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/E2DevTkt

View All CRM Entities - Displays a listing of CRM entities that are dynamically available from the CRM Explorer within Visual Studio 2008
Create and Update CRM Entities - Allows for creating new entities and updating existing entities from within the CRM Explorer experience
Create a Wrapper Class - Provides the ability to auto-generate wrapper classes for entities, which exposes the CRM entities and their corresponding attributes as classes and properties respectively to enable development of code to interact with the entities
Generate Plug-in Code - Enumerates the available Plug-ins for an entity and generates the code necessary to jumpstart the plug-in development process
Integrate the Build and Deploy Process - Simplifies the process of building and deploying a CRM solution
Deploy Across Multiple Servers - Assists in deployment and maintenance of Windows installer packages across multiple environments

The E2 team would also like to encourage Toolkit users to submit comments, suggestions, or other general thoughts about extending Toolkit functionality to better support the efforts of developers in planning, developing, customizing, and maintaining on-premise deployments of Microsoft Dynamics CRM. To initiate or participate in Toolkit discussions, In Code Gallery, please see visit the Toolkit Discussions tab at http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/E2DevTkt/Thread/List.aspx

My current suggestion list looks something like this

Suggestions for more features
Automatics SDK generation (.chm or other formats)
Plug-in registration (automatic)
Entity relations ship generation (similar as the SDK app to generate Visio ERD schema)
CRM settings from visual studio add-in (link or properties)
All possible deployments (CRM online, partner hosted)
Storage of Javascript customizations and automatic process to remove blank CHARS ect in file to minimize size (minimizer)
Storage for database tunings (custom index ect)
Storage for modified or custom SSRS reports

Enterprise Library 4.0 - May 2008

Jonas Deibe — Mon, 19 May 2008 11:09:00 GMT

Collection of libraries for faster .NET development. Some parts you already have by using the CRM plattform but if your project requires extensions it might be worth looking at before doing investments on building stuff yourself.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=90DE37E0-7B42-4044-99BE-F8ECFBBC5B65&displaylang=en

Works on visual studio 2008

Lambda expressions and anonymous methods on Metadata service in CRM 4.0

Jonas Deibe — Thu, 08 May 2008 12:44:00 GMT

In C# 3.0 Microsoft has added lambda expression. This is not a new feature in computer languages originally designed on a conceptualized level way back in time by an American called Alonzo Church.

Lamda expressions provide shorthand syntax for algorithms.

I have played around with this and below is a simple example where I retrieve all entities from the CRM metadata service. I call my filter method and provide my delegate with the filter expression. I have also an example on using anonym’s method, in previous versions before 2.0 you had to write a named method and pass that name where the delegate was required. The syntax for C# operator is => and lambda expression. Example is simple and I'm only using one param1 (filter) and checks if entity is customizable.

static void Main(string[] args)

{

//Login and retrive all entities from metadataservice (change name to your org)

RetrieveAllEntitiesResponse allEntitiesResponse = Metadata.RetriveAll("mydemo");

//Lambda expression

EntityMetadata[] filterEntities = Common.FilterMetadata(allEntitiesResponse,

filter => (filter.IsCustomizable.Value == true)

);

//Anonymous method

EntityMetadata[] filterEntities = Common.FilterMetadata(allEntitiesResponse,

delegate(EntityMetadata filter)

{

return (filter.IsCustomizable.Value == false);

});

//Write result to console

int total = 0;

foreach (EntityMetadata item in filterEntities)

{

Console.WriteLine(item.SchemaName);

total++;

}

Console.WriteLine("Return of record(s) {0}", total);

Console.ReadKey();

}

If your filter is complex you might consider to create a named method. I have attached Visual Studio 2008 project for you to play around with.

Lambda on MSDN

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

Playing around with filters on queues using a plug-in (C#)

Jonas Deibe — Fri, 02 May 2008 14:09:00 GMT

Quite common I get questions regarding modifications on queues. What can be changed in the main GUI and how do I only display queues in context of the actual logged in user. The main GUI is not possible to change since it's none customized page but the content is possible to change by modifying the queue filters. Another possibility is of course to build your own aspx page to render the GUI and using SDK web services to render the information stored in the queues. This is the most advanced and code required solution I would say. I will focus on the simple and pluggable version!

The solution is simple and easy to plug-in using a simple .NET assembly. The trick is to register it on multiple retrieve on queue entity and from there replace the filter expression. I have seen a earlier blog post about this from my UK colleague Simon Hutson but that was based on none supported messages and the code was in VB.NET

Once I have registered plug-in I verify it's functionality by debugging my assembly. Above I'm just about to remove the existing filter expression and replace it with my own filter.

The final result logged in as a CRM administrator. If I'm logged in as service support engineer belonging to business unit C I would not see the second line support queue since it's associated to another business unit B.

Logged in as Admin in a business unit above B and C

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

Cache Tool source code

Jonas Deibe — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 13:00:00 GMT

Console.WriteLine("Cache tool source code as attachment...");

Visual Studio 2005 project

Learn how Visual Studio implements intellisense for ISV, Sitemap ect in CRM 4.0

Jonas Deibe — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 11:57:00 GMT

Intellisense your isv, sitemap or customizations in Visual Studio 2008 (2005)? Well it's really easy and makes modifications safe and controlled compared to manually/none intellisense. The example also works with other products and is not specific to CRM 4.0.

ISV.Config example

Example of modification to isv.config xml file

Start by downloading latest Microsoft CRM 4.0 SDK http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=82E632A7-FAF9-41E0-8EC1-A2662AAE9DFB&displaylang=en. Extract files and copy Schemas folder files to C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Xml\Schemas

Export isv.config from your CRM system and open in Visual Studio
Show properties window and associate the Schemas property to in this example isv.config.xsd

Show properties window

Next you need to remove/copy some elements to make intellisense work (copy them to a separate file you will need them later when importing back to CRM system)

Remove tags don’t forget to remove the closing tags as well

Once this is done... Voila!! You have now full intellisense and 100% control of any attributes and elements added to isv.config

Happy XML coding

ps.

If you are real hardcore you make all customizations in Visual Studio :-)