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

Creating a rating gauge field


In this recipe, we will be looking at presenting the status of a record in a pleasant and visual way. We are looking to provide instant feedback on the record based on a calculated or form-defined value. You could be using such an approach when marking accounts based on annual revenue or any other type of status. You could also use a more complex formula to determine an account worth and display that in a rating gauge on the Account form.

Getting ready

For this recipe, we can either reuse the previously created solution in the first two recipes of this chapter, or create a new one. Make sure you have the system customizer or system administrator permissions to the environment.

How to do it...

Let's follow these steps to add a rating gauge to the Account form:

  1. Create three images. Depending on your graphics skills, you could go with something really complex, or just a simple colored dot, like I did in this example.

  2. Load your three images as web resources in your solution...