Book Image

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Scripting Cookbook

By : NICOLAE TARLA, Nicolae Tarla
Book Image

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Scripting Cookbook

By: NICOLAE TARLA, Nicolae Tarla

Overview of this book

With the increased adoption of Dynamics CRM 2011, more people are faced with various tasks including administering and customizing the environment. Microsoft Dynamics CRM is a Customer Relationship Management software package from Microsoft. It offers solutions to help companies with Sales, Customer Services, and Marketing. Microsoft Dynamics CRM is increasingly being used by businesses of all kinds and all sizes to reach audiences in new ways. Microsoft Dynamics CRM scripting extends system customization through the use of client-side scripting. It builds on the standard customization options offered by Dynamics CRM."Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Scripting Cookbook" walks the reader through the process of customizing an environment, from the most basic topics such as working with specific fields and types, working with the forms, and then moves on to the more advanced topics of scripting and debugging your scripts, designing new form and ribbon elements, and using additional well known public scripting libraries, as well as integrating external data sources into your environment.The first chapters of this book cover the basics of using the wizard-driven customization approach, packaging your customization into solutions, and adding basic scripts to interact with all the form elements. Further down the road we start introducing concepts around debugging your scripts, working with ribbon elements and navigation, taking advantage of other public scripting libraries and integrating them into your solutions, as well as light ways to bring social information in front of your users.Later chapters will assume knowledge of some of the most basic customizations presented at the beginning of the book. After completing the recipes in "Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Scripting Cookbook", you will have gained a new perspective on how far can you take the customization in Dynamics CRM. The additional details presented around using other public scripting libraries and integrating other data sources into your environment should serve as a start into investigating additional sources.

Related Content you might be interested in

Current Title:

Small book image
Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Scripting Cookbook
NICOLAE TARLA | Nicolae Tarla
Mar, 2013 | 268 pages
No titles found
Table of Contents (17 chapters)
Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Scripting Cookbook
Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Scripting Cookbook
Credits
Credits
About the Author
About the Author
About the Reviewers
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Preface
Free Chapter
1
Overview of Dynamics CRM 2011 Customization
Overview of Dynamics CRM 2011 Customization
Introduction
Opening a free 30-day trial of Dynamics CRM 2011 Online
Using solutions to package our work
Creating and managing entities
Creating and managing fields
Creating and managing forms
Creating and managing scripts
Creating and managing other resources
Creating and managing workflows
Creating and managing dialogs
Starting a workflow from a dialog
Working with security roles and permissions
2
Scripting Form Fields
Scripting Form Fields
Introduction
Working with text fields
Working with number fields
Working with currency
Working with date and time
Working with option sets
Working with lookups
3
Field Validation
Field Validation
Introduction
Custom e-mail field validation
Custom web address field validation
Validating the ticker symbol field
Formatting phone numbers
Formatting postal codes
Replacing the Country and Province fields with lookups
4
Rules and Events
Rules and Events
Introduction
Form load event usage
Form save event usage
Field change event usage
Working with tabs and sections
Combining events
Enforcing business rules
5
Error Handling
Error Handling
Introduction
Handling unexpected user input
Handling unexpected processing
Blocking events
Handling UI events
Advanced error handling
Adding a new account and contact with validation
6
Debugging
Debugging
Introduction
Debug messages
Using IE for tracing and debugging
Debugging using Visual Studio
Error logging
Using Fiddler with CRM
7
Extended UI Manipulation
Extended UI Manipulation
Introduction
Showing or hiding form elements
Formatting fields
Creating a rating gauge field
Flagging a section for the user
Adding a contact picture
Adding an account logo
Marking accounts for review
Dynamic form elements
8
Working with Ribbon Elements
Working with Ribbon Elements
Introduction
Adding a new ribbon button
Removing ribbon artefacts
Starting a dialog/workflow from a ribbon button
Pre-populating form elements with a button click
Creating other ribbon artefacts
Security trimmed ribbon elements
Using the ribbon for displaying information
9
Extending CRM Using Community JavaScript Libraries
Extending CRM Using Community JavaScript Libraries
Introduction
Using jQuery with Dynamics CRM for page element selection
Using jQuery and CSS
Animating form elements with jQuery
Using jQuery UI for user interaction
Using jQuery UI for customizations
Integrating jQuery UI widgets
Using LiveValidation for input validation as you type
Using Datejs for date manipulation
10
Light Social Media Integration
Light Social Media Integration
Introduction
Integrating with Facebook
Integrating accounts with LinkedIn
Integrating contacts with LinkedIn
Adding Twitter feeds
Working with Del.icio.us data
Index
Index

Debug messages

All modern browsers will prompt you when your scripts are not correct. The problem is, sometimes, these messages are not necessarily the most accurate or correct. For that reason we create debug messages at certain key points in our code that can be returned. This way we can easily identify what part of our code has executed, and where we are getting stuck.

JavaScript makes a few methods available to us, some more helpful than the others in certain situations, to insert our own custom debug messages.

One option we have seen before in some of the scripts we worked on already is using an alert. This brings up a pop-up message for the user. This approach, while easy to follow, is quite disruptive if we are testing a longer script, as we will have to click on OK on each message individually. By the time we have our fifteenth message up, we can safely say it's not the preferred approach. Especially if we run the same script multiple times until we can finally figure out what causes...

Previous Section
End of Section 3
Next Section