Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Scripting Cookbook

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Scripting Cookbook

By : NICOLAE TARLA, Nicolae Tarla

Buy this Book

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Scripting Cookbook

By: NICOLAE TARLA, Nicolae Tarla

Buy this Book

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.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Scripting Cookbook

Credits

About the Author

About the Reviewers

www.PacktPub.com

Preface

Free Chapter

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

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

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

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

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

Debugging

Introduction

Debug messages

Using IE for tracing and debugging

Debugging using Visual Studio

Error logging

Using Fiddler with CRM

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

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

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

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

Customer Reviews

5 star

4 star

3 star

2 star

1 star

Starting a workflow from a dialog

We have looked at workflows and dialogs. But they can function together to achieve a result. For example, we can start from a dialog, capture specific information, and then kick off a workflow as part of the same process to process the information and generate a result.

Getting ready

Using the same solution package, we will be creating two new processes. One is a workflow that sends an e-mail when a field value changes, which we will mark as a child process. The other is a dialog that will call this workflow.

How to do it...

Create the child workflow by performing the following steps:

Create a new workflow, on the Account entity this time. Mark it to run as a child process.
Add a send e-mail step to the workflow, and configure the email properties as described in a previous recipe.
Activate the workflow.

Create the parent dialog that will kick-of this workflow by performing the following steps:

Create the parent dialog on the same entity, as a dialog.
Create a new page, then a question with a Yes/No option set. Create a new check condition step, in which if the value selected in the dialog is Yes, then create a Start Child Workflow step. Look up the child workflow we created earlier and select it.
Save and activate this dialog.

How it works...

The dialog we have created, as simple as it is, prompts the user to decide whether they want to run a workflow or not. When the user selects Yes, the workflow is started.

We can easily test this functionality by going to a new account, and selecting from the ribbon the Start Dialog button. A window prompts us to select the dialog we will run.

We can easily check the execution status of both the dialog and the workflow by navigating on the account to the Processes section.

These two views will give us details about the processes that run against the current account, and the status of each.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Scripting Cookbook

By : NICOLAE TARLA, Nicolae Tarla

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Scripting Cookbook

By: NICOLAE TARLA, Nicolae Tarla

Overview of this book

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Current Title:

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Scripting Cookbook

Starting a workflow from a dialog

Getting ready

How to do it...

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