Compare previous field values in CRM 4 using Javascript

A customer asked me to have a pull-down field populate a "comment" field (it was actually a large varchar field) with the text the user selected in the pull-down (this was to support a legacy data integration issue). That seemed easy enough, but there was a catch: if the user changes the pull-down to another value, then they wanted the previously selected text to be removed from the comment field.

I am not going into the details of how to add JS to CRM code, but I can recommend looking at http://blogs.inetium.com/blogs/azimmer/archive/2009/03/08/five-tips-for-productive-form-scripting-in-crm-4-0.aspx


First, I needed a function that would add and remove text from the "comment" field. I loaded this in the form OnLoad event:

function updateComment1 (tf, cComment){
try {
 if (tf == true) {
     if(crmForm.all.new_comments.DataValue != null && crmForm.all.new_comments.DataValue.length > 0){
         crmForm.all.new_comments.DataValue =  crmForm.all.new_comments.DataValue + Chr(13)+ cComment;
     }else{
         crmForm.all.new_comments.DataValue = cComment;
     }
 }else{
     crmForm.all.new_comments.DataValue =  crmForm.all.new_comments.DataValue.replace(cComment,"");
     crmForm.all.new_comments.DataValue =  crmForm.all.new_comments.DataValue.replace(/\r\n\r\n/m,"\r\n");
 }

}catch(err){
 // do nothing - the comments are empty and we dont care
}
}

This code will take two arguments: one will tell it what to do, and the second is the string to either insert or remove from the faux comment field. If the first argument is true, then the string is inserted into the comment field, otherwise the string is removed (if it exists). The caveat to this is that if the user changes the spelling of the string, then this will not remove it.

Next I created a function to accept the pull-down field as an argument and handle sending the update to the first function:

function updateComment2 (oField) {
 updateComment1(false, oField.prev_value) // this will remove the old text from comments
 if(oField.SelectedText.substr(0,7)!="No Pref"){
     updateComment1(true, oField.SelectedText) // this will put the new text in the field
 }
 oField.prev_value = oField.SelectedText;    // reest the previous value for the next time around
 
}

In this system, the pull-down has a default value of "No Pref" which means the user did not have a preference for this item, and the reference to this should be removed from the comment field. Notice that there is also a property of the field called "prev_value" which is not normally part of MS CRM form fields. When the form loads, I added a couple lines of code to capture the current state of these controls:

crmForm.all.new_preference1.prev_value = crmForm.all.new_preference1.SelectedText;
crmForm.all.new_preference2.prev_value = crmForm.all.new_preference2.SelectedText;

Using this trick will allow you to add any number of new properties to a form field.

Then in each of the fields OnChange events, I added a call to my updateComment2 function. For example, the OnChange event of the new_preference1 field would look like:

updateComment2(crmForm.all.new_preference1);

When the user changes the pull-down, it calls my custom function updateComment2 and passes a reference to itself which I will use to inspect its previous value and remove the old the string from the comment field before adding the new selected text back in.

I could have combined some of this code, but have it broken down this way because I am using these functions in other places in the form by checkboxes, radio buttons and such and this gives me some flexibility to re-use code.

SSRS Select permission was denied on the object

Note to self: When I create a SSRS report for CRM, always use "filtered" views in the query for the report - never use the other tables or views. Here is the situation:

I had created a report for use in an Iframe of CRM, and it was getting the error "Select permission was denied on the object ..." and it named one of my tables in CRM. The query ran just fine when I was logged in as the administrator, but when the users got it, it gave me that error. Permissions for objects (entities) in MS CRM are applied to the filtered views in order to enforce access controls to the data. When you view a CRM entity form and the browser tries to render your report in the Iframe, SSRS is using your network credentials to determine which records you are allowed to see.

Dont try to take a shortcut and use base entities or non-filtered views when creating a report - you will be wasting your time. If your database is optimized properly, the report should run just as fast when using the filtered views.

SSRS query execution failed for dataset

I had written a nifty new report that I was implementing for a client in CRM 4.0 to be displayed in an Iframe in the Account entity form. After uploading the report using SSRS report manager (http://server_name/reports) and customizing the account form, it worked great for me, but the users got the error "Reporting Services Error...An error has occured during report processing. Query Execution failed for dataset 'DataSource1' "

The first thing to do is turn on the "Enable Remote Errors" feature of SSRS.
1. Open SQL Management Studio and connect to your instance of Reporting Services
2. Right click on the server name in the object explorer and choose properties
3. Click on the Advanced option (on left side) then change EnableRemoteErrors to True

Open your browser and re-run the report to see the actual error you are getting.

SSRS security with CRM 4.0

So I am knocking my brans out trying to add a couple security groups to a custom report folder I created on SSRS and the answer is deceivingly simple.

The problem was that after I created the folder, it needed permissions for a couple additional groups: ReportingGroup and SQLAccessGroup. when I typed one of those names in the New Role Assignment for my folder security, it said the group did not exist. The solution is to copy the group name _and_ the GUID that follows it and paste it into the new group name field.

CRM Auto Filtering

I have been reading up on MS CRM auto filtering which allows you to create a report that you can associate with an entity and then use it on a view or a single record (http://blogs.javista.com/2009/03/18/microsoft-dynamics-crm-pre-filtering-tips/). I started creating some reports this way, but then decided that I also wanted to call the reports programatically and for that I would need parameters. My solution is to make my actual report work with parameters, then create a 'wrapper' report that uses the auto filtering capability, then calls the real report as a sub-report.

Adobe Flex Grid Column Sort

Lately I have been doing some work with Adobe Flex because it has some very nice data manipulation features, such as the DataGrid. One item that came to my attention was that when I sorted a column, I wanted the grid to jump to the top of the data set.

Here is my solution:

1. add a "headerRelase" attribute to the DataGrid tag that will call an event handler

<mx:DataGrid id="ratesGrid" headerRelease="ratesGrid_headerRelease(event)" >

2. create the new event handler

private function ratesGrid_headerRelease(evt:DataGridEvent):void {
ratesGrid.validateNow(); // allow sort to occur
ratesGrid.selectedIndex=-1; // turn off selected/highlighted row
ratesGrid.scrollToIndex(0); // move to top of data set
}

Need more women in IT management roles

When someone told me a few years ago that Microsoft SharePoint and CRM were disruptive technologies, I was a bit hesitant to believe it, but I can see it now.

Historically many computer jobs grew out of the engineering fields dominated by men such as computer science. According to some recent polls (http://www.ncwit.org/pdf/BytheNumbers09.pdf), women only occupy 24% of jobs in the IT sector. I believe that this statistic will be changing for the better.

The "disruptive" part of these technologies is that it is changing how IT departments (and consultants like me) will be supporting the clients. In order to make implementations work, it now requires people to have good business process and people skills as compared with the “days of yore” when programming skills were central to an implementation. If you think of an IT worker as just a programmer, then you need to re-think how you are managing your IT services.

Since I have been working with clients on implementing Microsoft CRM and SharePoint technologies, the majority of people I have worked with were women, and all of their implementations have been successful. In the end, my clients were able to extend the usefulness of the product without having to engage other IT resources.

The pre-registration statistics at the June 2009 SUGDC.ORG SharePoint conference indicates the workforce is changing with over 40% of the attendees to be women. I believe this is because these two products (and others like them) give the client the ability to customize the product to fit a particular business process without the help of typical IT staff, and thus giving women more opportunities to engage in the implementation process and join the ranks of IT professionals.