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

Handling unexpected user input


In this recipe we will be looking at how to handle unexpected user input. While this is already in place for some specific field types, we can easily enhance the system functionality through very simple validation scripts and user feedback messages.

Getting ready

Using one of the previously created solutions or creating a new solution, add the Contact entity to the solution. We will focus our attention on the Contact fields, but the same code can be applied to any standard or custom entities created in Dynamics CRM.

Some standard field formats in CRM include elements of user input validation. Upon data entry, users are prompted if their input is invalid, and the focus returns to the field, while the incorrect input is cleared. Take the date field as an example. Enter in a date field a string of abc123 to observe the behavior. The following prompt gets displayed:

Once you click on OK, your input is cleared, and the focus is returned to the field you were trying...