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.
Table of Contents (17 chapters)
Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Scripting Cookbook
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Using solutions to package our work


A new concept introduced with Dynamics CRM 2011 is that of solution packages. This allows for code separation, ease of deployment, and cleans up the mess sometimes created in previous version by the large number of possibly unorganized customizations.

Getting ready

In order to follow through with this recipe, log in to your instance of Dynamics CRM 2011 with an account that has either an administrator or system customizer role. These roles have the necessary out-of-the-box permission to allow you to work with solutions.

How to do it...

A solution package is a collection of customizations and configurations that can be generated in an environment and relocated to an additional environment. Creating a new solution is a process that a system administrator or a system customizer can achieve with the following steps:

  1. Navigate to Settings.

  2. Under Customization, click on Solutions.

  3. In the All Solutions view, select New to create a new solution package.

  4. Fill in the mandatory fields, create a new Publisher or use the default value, and click on the Save icon.

Note

When developing a solution for the Marketplace (as an ISV) you will need to fill in most of the provider information.

Removing a solution is also a very simple process. Select the solution to be removed, and click on the Delete icon.

Tip

If this is a managed solution, all solution configurations are cleanly removed from the environment. For an unmanaged solution, the process is not as straight-forward, as the removal of an unmanaged solution will leave behind customizations and trailing components. For additional details on solution see the Solution model section of this recipe.

How it works...

Creating a new solution requires you to assign a publisher. By default, each instance of Dynamics CRM 2011 includes a default publisher for the instance. For environments where a solution is to be published to production, create a publisher that includes the organization details of the customizer.

There's more...

Solutions offer additional features such as versioning, which can be essential in tracking progress and deploying to the production environment.

Solution model

Also, with solutions, we have two very important models, a managed and unmanaged solution model. A managed solution is a restrictive package, which can only be edited by specific users, and can be cleanly rolled back. An unmanaged solution on the other hand is a type of package used mostly for development environments, and it allows various developers to move customizations from one environment to another, while keeping all customizations editable by all users with the proper permissions. Unmanaged solutions, when removed, will not be removed cleanly, and will leave behind traces of customizations. For this reason, they are not the recommended way of deploying to the production environment.

See also