Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 for Developers | Web Resources Part 1

Contents

1. Introduction
2. Types of Web Resources
3. Where can Web Resources be Used ?
4. Web Resources Limitations
5. Web Resources Management
6. Using Web Resources on a Form
7. Using Web Resources from the Form Navigation 
8. Using Web Resources on a Dashboard
9. Using Web Resources Direct from SiteMap  
10. Using Web Resources as a Solution Configuration Page
11. Referencing Other Web Resources

Introduction

Web resources are a new feature of Dynamics CRM 2011 that allows storing of client side content in the CRM server database in order to be used for extending the Dynamics CRM web application. That content is then available to be delivered to users as needed during their interaction with the user interface. These resources can be used by URL, which also allows relative path referencing.

Based on that and using the appropriate development tools, a fully functional web site can be created on a development server by using file types that are compatible with web resources. Then, if using a consistent naming convention and relative path references, the web site will function after uploading all the files into Microsoft Dynamics CRM. These web resources can then be exported in a solution and installed on any Microsoft Dynamics CRM deployment (both on-premises and on-line). It will also available to users of Microsoft Dynamics CRM for Microsoft Office Outlook with Offline Access when offline because they are synchronized with the user’s data.

Types of Web Resources

Microsoft Dynamics CRM allows ten types to create web resources which fall into seven type categories. We will explore them here:

• HTML Web Pages You can upload *.htm or *.html files as web resources, or you can use the Text Editor in the CRM interface to create your HTML web resources. Web pages can’t contain any code that must be executed on the server (no ASP.NET support). Web pages can only accept one custom query string parameter called data.
• Images You can upload PNG, JPG, GIF, and ICO files. They can be used as icons for custom ribbon controls or Sitemape subareas, decoration for entity forms and web pages, background images.
• Script Enables uploading JScripts for reuse of many parts in the CRM like web page, ribbon commands, or form and field-level events.
• Style Sheet .css files linked to web page web resources to efficiently manage their appearance.
• Data Enables you to upload some XML files to your system
• Style Sheet enables you to upload *.xsl and *.xslt files to be used by Data and Web Page web resources, so you can apply the style on XML files.
• Silverlight enables you to upload *.xap files which is the output of Silverlight application build process. Silverlight applications can be used on forms to create a more rich and visual components for users.

Where can Web Resources be Used ?

All web resources (except XML, XSL, XSLT, CSS) can be used on forms, on dashboards, from SiteMap, or from the application ribbon. All web resources can be used in the context of Web Page web resources.

Web Resources Management

Web resources can be created in the context of any unmanaged solution inside a CRM organization.

If you will create the web resource in the default solution navigate to Settings > Customizations > Customize the System > click on Web Resources from the left navigation > New. Enter the Name, Display Name, and select the web resource type. If you will create the web resource in a default solution other than the default solution, Settings > Customizations > Solutions > and click your solution and complete in the same steps as above.

After uploading a new or updating web resource, you have to publish the web resource before you use it in the application.

You can remove an unmanaged Web Resource at any time as long as it is not currently being by any component. If you attempt to remove a web resource while it is in use by another component you will get an error message.

Web Page web resources are the container that can host (or link to) all the other web resource types, so we will explain all the ways to incorporate Web Page web resources in Dynamics CRM. Then we will explain how to link and integrate other types of web resources.

In order to proceed, we will create a simple "Hello World" page and upload it as a web resource. Create a simple page.html file like the following:

Now open your browser and navigate to your CRM organization, then navigate to Settings > Customizations > Customize the System > click on Web Resources from the left navigation > New. Enter a Name for our page, Display Name, and select Web Page (HTML) from the Type combo box. Click Save, then click Publish, then close the window.

Now we create a simple web page web resource and ready to explore the different ways to use it in our Dynamics CRM. We will explore just the basic usage scenarios, advanced features will be explained in a future post.

Using Web Resources on a Form

Now let's put use our test HTML page web resource on a Form, e.g. Account. Navigate to Settings > Customizations > Customize the System > from the left navigation expand Entities, then expand Account, then expand Forms, then click on the form named Information which have Main in the Form Type column. The form designer will open. Just to make things easier for you, collapse the regions on the form (called tabs in Dynamics CRM) by clicking the small blue rectangle on the left-top corner of each of them. Then Click on Insert in ribbon

 

Then click One Column on the ribbon.

This will insert a one column region (called Tabs in Dynamics CRM) below the currently selected region.

While your new region is selected, click Web Resource on the ribbon.

This will open the Add Web Resource dialog. In the Web Resource textbox click the look-up icon on the right and select our Web Page web resource from the list (you can also search for it by name). Fill the required Name and Label fields, and click Ok.

This will place our web page web resource on the new region we added previously to the form

Now click Save on the form designer then click Publish to publish your for customizations, then click Save and Close to close the window. Click Publish All to ensure that everything is published fine, then close the solution window. Refresh your browser and navigate to the form you have customized, it will be Account in our case and open any record to check that our HTML page web resource is published on the form correctly.

Using Web Resources from the Form Navigation

Using our web page web resource from the left navigation of a form is much more easier than using it on the form. There are two ways to do accomplish this task; one using the CRM web client interface and the other one is through editing the Entity Navigation via the FormXML directly. Now we will use the web interface and will talk about FormXML in a future post.

Use the same steps we did in the previous example to open the form designer of the entity you want to customize, for example Account. Click on Navigation in the ribbon

This will disable the form controls except the left navigation area. Click on Insert tab on the ribbon. Then click Navigation Link

This will open the Navigation Link Properties dialog. Enter Name of the link which will be the text that will appear on the left navigation, then select our web page web resource from the Web Resource textbox (you can link to external URL which will be rendered inside the form at runtime).

Now If you open any account record, you will see our link added on the left, if you click it our web page web resource will be rendered on the right.

Using Web Resources on a Dashboard

Using Web Page web resource on a CRM dashboard is pretty similar to using it on a form. The first step is to create a new dashboard by navigating to My Work > Dashboards > click New on the ribbon. This will open Select Dashboard Layout dialog, select the layout you want (for example, 3-Column Focused Dashboard), and click Create.

The dashboard designer window opens. Click on the Insert Web Resource icon on any region on the dashboard (indicated by arrows in the image)

This will open the same Add Web Resource dialog we worked with before. Do the same steps to add the web page, then gave a name to your dashboard and click Save and Close. This will close the close the designer window and open the new dashboard in your CRM main window. For example, I added the web page web resource to the left region on the dashboard and named it Test Dashboard, and below what I got.

Using Web Resources Direct From SiteMap

In order to make our web resource accessible directly from Sitemap, we have to edit the SiteMap. Unfortunately there is now way to edit the SiteMap from the Dynamics CRM web interface, you have to export the SiteMap in a temporary unmanaged solution, edit the SiteMap XML, then import the solution back again.

To create a new solution, navigate to Settings > Customizations > Solutions >  New

This will open the New Solution window, enter a Display Name, Name, Version, select a Publisher, and click Save

After you click Save, the window will change to allow you adding your solution components. Click Add Existing > SiteMap

Click on Export Solution icon

In the solution export dialog click Next > Next > ensure that the package type is Unmanaged then click Export. The Dynamics CRM server will package the solution files for you in a zip file and deliver it for you. You will see a file download message from your browser to download the zip file.

Save the zip file, extract its contents, open the customizations.xml file in Visual Studio (or your favorite XML editor). If you collapsed all the nodes in the XML Editor, you will see that the SiteMap parent node have many Area nodes. Each node represents the major parts of CRM web client navigation, which are available on the left bottom part of the window.

 

Now expand the the area node with Id=”Workplace”, which represents the Workplace in the web client. You will see Group nodes for each sub-section of Workplace area

 

Now expand the group node with Id=”MyWork”, which represents MyWork in the web client. You will see SubArea nodes for each sub-section of the MyWork area.

 

Now let’s say we want to add the link to our web page web resource just next to Dashboards under MyWork. Locate the SubArea with Id="nav_dashboards" and insert the following XML after it to make our link

This xml adds two links on the SiteMap, both of them links to our web page web resource. The first one uses the web resource direct URL which can be used to access the web resource even from external systems (vice versa, you can link other URLs directly to your CRM). To get the web resource URL, navigate to Settings > Customizations > Customize the System > click Web Resources from left navigat > double click the desired web resource to open its properties dialog, you will find the URL in the bottom of the form

The second link uses the keyword $webresource to reference the web resource by name. We will talk about $webresource keyword in the “Referencing Other Web Resources” section of this post.

Now its time to get these SiteMap modifications into CRM. Save customizations.xml, Select all the exported solution files and add them to a .Zip file, navigate to Settings > Customization > Solutions > and click Import. In the solution import dialog upload your .Zip file, and click Publish All Customizations at the end. If you navigate to your CRM home page and refreshed the page you will see the links on the left

Using Web Resources as a Solution Configuration Page

Solutions are containers that track customizations and allow it to be moved around from server to server. When building a custom solution you may want to add a page where you provide details about your solution and its features. Configuration pages for solutions can fulfill your requirement for such a page. Let’s see how we can use our web page web resource as a solution configuration page. Navigate to Settings > Customization > Solutions > click your solution > on the Solution dialog click on the Information from the left navigation

Then choose our web page web resource in the Configuration Page textbox

Then Click Save and then Click Publish. Now you will see a new link added on the left navigation after the Information link, it will be called Configuration

if you click it, you will see our web page web resource on the right.

Referencing Other Web Resources

While some web resources can be added directly to a form or a dashboard, others can only be referenced through their relative path. There are many ways you can use to reference Web Resources:

$webresource Directive You should use it when referencing a web resource from XML like from a ribbon control, or a SiteMap sub area (like what we did before). When using the $webresource directive, Microsoft Dynamics CRM will create or update solution dependencies.

Relative URL You can use relative URL when referencing from HTML or other areas that doesn’t support using $webresource. To make this works, it is recommend that you use a consistent naming convention for the web resources that reflect a virtual file structure. The solution publisher’s customization prefix will always be included as a prefix to the name of the web resource. This can represent a virtual ”root” folder for all web resources added by that publisher. You can then use the forward slash character (/) to simulate a folder structure that will be honored by the web server.

From another web resource, you should always use relative URLs to reference each other. For example, for the webpage web resource new_/content/contentpage.htm to reference the CSS web resourcenew_/Styles/styles.css, create the link as follows:

For the webpage web resource new_/content/contentpage.htm to open the webpage web resource isv_/foldername/dialogpage.htm, create the link as follows:

Dialog Page

Full URL As web resources are URL accessible, you can open the information dialog of any web resource and copy the URL in the bottom of the window and use it anywhere you can use a URL (as we did before).

In this post we introduced the web resources feature in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011. We started with exploring the different types of Web Resources, where can Web Resources be Used in our customization scenarios, and what is the limitations we have on using web resources. Because web Page web resources are the containers that can host (or link to) all the other web resource types, we explained all the ways to incorporate Web Page web resources in Dynamics CRM. Then we explained how to link to other types of web resources.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 for Developers | Accessing Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 using WCF

Contents

1. Introduction
2. Creating a client application
3. Using the Discovery Service
4. Using the Organization Service
5. Working with CRM Data
   1. Late Binding Approach
      1. Using RetrieveMultiple method
      2. Using Retrieve method
      3. Using Update method
      4. Using Delete method
      5. Using Create method
   2. Early binding Approach
      1. generating Client Types
      2. Enable ProxyTypeBehavior
      3. Using RetrieveMultiple method
      4. Using Retrieve method
      5. Using Create method

Introduction

Microsoft Dynamics CRM is a Customer Relationship Management software package developed to focus mainly on Sales, Marketing, and Service (help desk) sectors. The Microsoft Dynamics family of business applications includes other related products such as Microsoft Dynamics AX, Microsoft Dynamics GP, Microsoft Dynamics NAV, and Microsoft Dynamics SL.

Basically, Dynamics CRM is a client-server web application that supports extensive web services interfaces. Dynamics CRM 2011 introduces a new WCF interface for working with data, services and metadata.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM supports two kinds of deployments: Online, on-premises. You can signup for 30 days free trial at http://crm.dynamics.com/en-us/trial-overview. This will provide you with 30 days full functioning online version of Dynamics CRM. We will you this version in this post and the upcoming posts.

There is a lot of situations where organizations want to gain more benefit of its Dynamics CRM deployment than what Dynamics CRM can offer through its built-in customization tools. Based on the situation, you as a developer may be required to develop applications that interact with Dynamics CRM through its web services interfaces or develop applications that run within Dynamics CRM itself.

In this post we will explore one of the techniques of interacting with Dynamics CRM through its web services interfaces. We will build a windows forms application that connects to the online version of Dynamics CRM 2011, retrieve data from it, and manipulate its data. To continue with this post you need to signup for an online trial version and to install Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Software Development Kit (SDK) ( download from http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=24004 )

Step 1: Create a client application

Simply create a new windows forms application. Right click your project in the solution explorer and select properties, locate the Target Framework drop down and change it from .Net Framework 4 Client Profile to .Net Framework 4. Add references to System.Runtime.Serialization.dll and System.ServiceModel.dll and System.Security. Add references to Microsoft.Xrm.Sdk.dll and Microsoft.Crm.Sdk.Proxy.dll (both files located in the Bin folder in your CRM SDK installation directory). Right click on the project in the solution explorer and click Add existing, browse to %CRMSDK%\samplecode\cs\helpercode\deviceidmanager.cs

The DeviceIdManager class is included in the Dynamics CRM SDK to register a computing device with Windows Live ID through the generation of a Device ID and password. Then it optionally stores that information in an encrypted format on the local disk for later use. This functionality is required when authenticating with Microsoft Dynamics CRM online. The device registration is stored in %USERPROFILE%\LiveDeviceID\LiveDevice.xml. It looks like:

<?xml version="1.0"?>

  
AQAAANCMnd8BFdERjHoAwE/Cl+sBAAAAooZFtct7dEyyPUNu1eZujgAAAAACAAAAAAADZgAAqAAAABAAAAD0860vIxbs57z9CgRRPAtTAAAAAASAAACgAAAAEAAAAFL9eqV3G5WLFhHYAkX1/z8gAAAAZjBYCltk8cNwuydeQK70t9/txdmoJhIGeN2StJbyx9EUAAAAY10YU7QprX0EO5Fq43A/S2Wer2I=
  

The CRM SDK team is separating the more CRM specific types from the xRM Application Framework related types.  The Microsoft.Xrm.Sdk assembly will provide all the low-level types necessary for basic operation against the xRM Application Framework. The Microsoft.Crm.Sdk.Proxy.dll  assembly will abstract away much of the complexity of dealing with the WCF services directly.

Now, try to make your application interface like the one in the image below.

Now we created the application interface, added the required references, and ready for the real thing :)

Step 2: Using the Discovery Service

The discovery service allows you to explore and enumerate the organizations on a certain CRM server and the web services endpoint URL needed to access the Organization Services web service for each of these organizations (The CRM server can contain multiple organizations). We will use this information later to configure the organization web service proxy and call web service methods to access the organization’s data and metadata. The service respects security such that it will only return those organizations to which a user has access. The discovery service is accessed using methods on the IDiscoveryService interface. The DiscoveryServiceProxy class is a helper class to make it easier to get instances of IDiscoveryService without having to deal with all the WCF low-level details.

Now on the forms designer surface double click on the Discover button to add event handler and open the MainWindow.xaml.cs code behind file. In the code behind, add the following using statements:

using Microsoft.Xrm.Sdk;
using Microsoft.Xrm.Sdk.Client;
using Microsoft.Xrm.Sdk.Discovery;
using System.ServiceModel.Description;
using Microsoft.Crm.Services.Utility;
using Microsoft.Xrm.Sdk.Query;
using Microsoft.Xrm.Sdk.Messages;

Inside the frmMain class, add the following private properties to hold references to the organization details (the Discovery service and the Organization service).

private OrganizationDetail CurrentOrganizationDetail { get; set; }
private IDiscoveryService DiscoveryService { get; set; }
private OrganizationServiceProxy OrgService { get; set; }
private ClientCredentials _ClientCreds { get; set; }
private ClientCredentials _DeviceCreds { get; set; }
private bool IsLiveID { get; set; }

Now, let's add to frmMain class a helper method to builds the full Uri of the discovery service.

        public Uri GetDiscoveryServiceUri(string serverName)
        {
            string discoSuffix = @"/XRMServices/2011/Discovery.svc";

            return new Uri(string.Format("{0}{1}", serverName, discoSuffix));
        }

Next, In the event handler for the Discover button, add the following code to use the ServiceConfigurationFactory helper class to get an instance of the Discovery service configuration. This returned as an IServiceConfiguration<IDiscoveryService> type that hides and simplifies some of the lower level WCF configuration.

var discoUri = GetDiscoveryServiceUri(ServerURL.Text);
IServiceConfiguration dinfo =               	ServiceConfigurationFactory.CreateConfiguration(discoUri);

Different credentials are needed for CRM online vs. on premises. To differentiate between them we will add the following GetServerType helper method.

public AuthenticationProviderType GetServerType(Uri uri)
{
   return ServiceConfigurationFactory.CreateConfiguration(uri).AuthenticationType;
}

Now, we will return to the Discover button handler. The follwoing code will create a DiscoveryServiceProxy instance based on the server type we connecting to (on-line or on-premises). Note that DeviceIdManager class have been used only in the on-line scenario. Then we use this instance (DiscoveryServiceProxy) to connect to the server, authenticate, and execute our RetrieveOrganizationsRequest to get RetrieveOrganizationResponse. This response has a property OrganizationDetails that is an array of OrganizationDetail objects which we will use to fill the oragnizations combo box. Add the following code to the couple of lines that you are added to btnDiscover_click handler.

_ClientCreds = new ClientCredentials();
DiscoveryServiceProxy dsp;

if (GetServerType(discoUri) == AuthenticationProviderType.LiveId)
{
    _ClientCreds.UserName.UserName = username.Text;
    _ClientCreds.UserName.Password = password.Text;

    _DeviceCreds = DeviceIdManager.LoadOrRegisterDevice();

    dsp = new DiscoveryServiceProxy(discoUri, null, _ClientCreds, _DeviceCreds);
    IsLiveID = true;
}
else
{
    _ClientCreds.Windows.ClientCredential.UserName = username.Text;
    _ClientCreds.Windows.ClientCredential.Password = password.Text;
    _ClientCreds.Windows.ClientCredential.Domain = domain.Text;

    dsp = new DiscoveryServiceProxy(dinfo, _ClientCreds);
    IsLiveID = false;
}

dsp.Authenticate();
var orgRequest = new RetrieveOrganizationsRequest();
var orgResponse = dsp.Execute(orgRequest) as RetrieveOrganizationsResponse;
comboOrgs.ItemsSource = orgResponse.Details;

You can now check your frmMain.cs aginst the below code. If everything is Ok, hit F5, enter the user name/password you used in your 30-days free trial signup (or your active directory credentials, if you test against your on-premises deployment), click Discover button. You will see the organizations combo box filled with the available organizations on this server that you have access to.

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.ComponentModel;
using System.Data;
using System.Drawing;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.Windows.Forms;
using System.Collections;

using Microsoft.Xrm.Sdk;
using Microsoft.Xrm.Sdk.Client;
using Microsoft.Xrm.Sdk.Discovery;
using System.ServiceModel.Description;
using Microsoft.Crm.Services.Utility;

using Microsoft.Xrm.Sdk.Query;
using Microsoft.Xrm.Sdk.Messages;

namespace xRM_Demo01
{
    public partial class frmMain : Form
    {
        private OrganizationDetail CurrentOrganizationDetail { get; set; }
        private IDiscoveryService DiscoveryService { get; set; }
        private IOrganizationService OrgService { get; set; }
        private ClientCredentials _ClientCreds { get; set; }
        private ClientCredentials _DeviceCreds { get; set; }
        private bool IsLiveID { get; set; }
        public frmMain()
        {
            InitializeComponent();
        }

        private void btnDiscover_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            var discoUri = GetDiscoveryServiceUri(txtServer.Text);

            IServiceConfiguration dinfo =
                ServiceConfigurationFactory.CreateConfiguration(discoUri);
            _ClientCreds = new ClientCredentials();
            DiscoveryServiceProxy dsp;

            if (GetServerType(discoUri) == AuthenticationProviderType.LiveId)
            {
                _ClientCreds.UserName.UserName = txtUserName.Text;
                _ClientCreds.UserName.Password = txtPassword.Text;

                _DeviceCreds = DeviceIdManager.LoadOrRegisterDevice();

                dsp = new DiscoveryServiceProxy(discoUri, null, _ClientCreds, _DeviceCreds);
                IsLiveID = true;
            }
            else
            {
                MessageBox.Show("This is not a valid Microsoft Dynamics CRM online URL");
                return;
            }

            dsp.Authenticate();
            var orgRequest = new RetrieveOrganizationsRequest();
            var orgResponse = dsp.Execute(orgRequest) as RetrieveOrganizationsResponse;
            comboOrgs.DataSource = orgResponse.Details;
            comboOrgs.DisplayMember = "FriendlyName";
            comboOrgs.ValueMember = "UrlName";
        }
        public Uri GetDiscoveryServiceUri(string serverName)
        {
            string discoSuffix = @"/XRMServices/2011/Discovery.svc";

            return new Uri(string.Format("{0}{1}", serverName, discoSuffix));
        }
        public AuthenticationProviderType GetServerType(Uri uri)
        {
            return ServiceConfigurationFactory.CreateConfiguration(uri).AuthenticationType;
        }

Step 3: Using the Organization Service

The organization service is the endpoint that you will use to interact with an individual organization's data and metadata services. It accessed using the methods on the IOrganizationService interface. The OrganizationServiceProxy helper class is used to make it easier to get instance of IOrganizationService without dealing with the WCF low-level details. Double click on the Connect button to add an event handler for it and add the following code.

            if (comboOrgs.SelectedItem == null)
            {
                MessageBox.Show("You must select an organization before connecting");
                return;
            }
            this.CurrentOrganizationDetail = comboOrgs.SelectedItem as OrganizationDetail;
            Uri orgServiceUri = new Uri(CurrentOrganizationDetail.Endpoints[EndpointType.OrganizationService]);
            if (IsLiveID)
            {
                OrgService = new OrganizationServiceProxy(orgServiceUri, null, _ClientCreds, _DeviceCreds);
            }
            else
            {
                IServiceConfiguration orgConfigInfo =
                    ServiceConfigurationFactory.CreateConfiguration(orgServiceUri);
                OrgService = new OrganizationServiceProxy(orgConfigInfo, _ClientCreds);
            }

The added code checks that you selected an organization, get the select organization as an OrganizationDetail object, use the EndPoints of this object to get the Uri of the Organization Service. Then use this information and the client credentials and the device credentials to create an object of OrganizationServiceProxy.

Now we are ready to start interacting with the organization service through this proxy (which will be the next step). If you want to ensure that you did everything right, you can try send a simple request to the organization service and see the result. To do so, we can send the WhoAmI message to the service and receive the response (the ID of the logged in used). Add a using statement for Microsoft.Crm.Sdk.Messages. Add the following code to the end of btnConnect_click to test your connectivity.

WhoAmIRequest req = new WhoAmIRequest();
var response = OrgService.Execute(req) as WhoAmIResponse;
MessageBox.Show("You are connected as userid " + response.UserId.ToString());

Run, put your credentials an server, click Discover, choose your organization from the combo box and click connect. You will get something like the below image.

Step 4: Working with the CRM data

Early versus Late-Bounding In Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011, you can choose from several programming styles to find the model that best fits your situation.

In Early-Bound style, you create a class for each business entity in your CRM deployment. You will use these classes to access business data in your CRM deployment. There is a code generation tool included in the %CRMSDK%\bin called crmsvcutil.exe that will generate early-bound entity classes for you. It works with on-premises and online deployments. Every time you make customizations to your entities, you have to run this tool to regenerate these classes again. The advantages of using early-bound entity classes is that all type references are checked at compile time. You will also enjoy the intellisense support.

In Late-Bound style, you can work with the data in CRM without having classes representing each data entity in the organization. Most Probably, you will use this style when working with entities (or customizations) that you can’t anticipate at the development time.

In this step we will work with the CRM data using late-bound style to retrieve all accounts data in our CRM, update it, save it, and add new records also.

Method : RetrieveMultiple

To retrieve multiple records from Dynamics CRM, we use the RetrieveMultiple of the organization service and pass a QueryExpression object to it. QueryExpression holds all the information required to get the desired data from Dynamics CRM. To construct the Query expression you need:

• ColumnSet object to specify the columns we need to retrieve.



• ConditionExpression object to hold any conditions we will use to filter the returned rows.



• FilterExpression object to hold all the ConditionExpression objects we use in our query. This enables us to make complex queries.



• EntityName a string property used to specify the entity the query runs against.



• You can also order the returned data through method AddOrder(“columnName”, OrderType). OrderType is an enumeration have the values Ascending and Descending.

For Simplicity we will retrieve columns name and accountid of all account type records in CRM. Because we using late-bound style, we get the results into EntityCollection collection. We enumerate through the returned collection, and put the entities into a list of custom objects of type Item. Then we bind our accounts combobox to this list.

            ColumnSet cs = new ColumnSet();
            cs.AddColumns("name", "accountid");

            QueryExpression qe = new QueryExpression();
            qe.ColumnSet = cs;
            qe.EntityName = "account";

            EntityCollection accountList = OrgService.RetrieveMultiple(qe);
            List accounts = new List();
            comboAccounts.ValueMember = "Value";
            comboAccounts.DisplayMember = "Name";
            for (int i = 0; i < accountList.Entities.Count; i++ )
            {
                accounts.Add(new Item(accountList[i].Attributes["name"].ToString(),
                    accountList[i].Attributes["accountid"].ToString()));
            }
            comboAccounts.DataSource = accounts;
}

Also add the following class into your solution namespace, which holds the acounts name and accountid to bind it to the combobox.

    class Item
    {
        private string _name;
        private string _value;
        public string Name
        {
            get { return _name; }
            set { _name = value; }
        }
        public string Value
        {
            get { return _value; }
            set { _value = value; }
        }
        public Item(string p_name, string p_value)
        {
            Name = p_name; 
            Value = p_value;
        }
    }

Now you can run the application, connect to your organization, and check that the combobox is filled of your accounts data.

Method : Retrieve

Now we will use the accountid of the selected account in the combobox to get the rest of the account data. In this case we will use the Retrieve method of the organization service. This method retrieves just one record of the type specified in the first argument, designated by the key passed in the second argument. Double click on the accounts combobox to add an event handler for the SelectedIndexChanged event. Add the following code to this event handler to fill the form with the account data.

            ColumnSet cs2 = new ColumnSet(new string[] {"address1_city","address1_line1","address1_stateorprovince",
                "name","industrycode"});
            try
            {
                var account = OrgService.Retrieve("account", new Guid(comboAccounts.SelectedValue.ToString()), cs2);
                txtName.Text = account.Attributes["name"].ToString();
                txtCity.Text = account.Attributes["address1_city"].ToString();
                txtAddress.Text = account.Attributes["address1_line1"].ToString();
                txtState.Text = account.Attributes["address1_stateorprovince"].ToString();
            }
            catch (Exception ex)
            {
                MessageBox.Show("An error happened: " + ex.Message);
            }

Method : Update

Now we can go farther and modify the current displayed account data and try to save it. To save any entity data into CRM, create an Entity object and pass the entity type into the constructor (it will be "account" in our case). Then set the attribute values you want and pass the updated entity to the organization service Update method. Add the following code the save button click event handler to realize the update operation.

 
try
            {
                Entity account = new Entity("account");
                account.Attributes["accountid"] = new Guid(comboAccounts.SelectedValue.ToString());
                account.Attributes["name"] = txtName.Text;
                account.Attributes["address1_line1"] = txtAddress.Text;
                account.Attributes["address1_city"] = txtCity.Text;
                account.Attributes["address1_stateorprovince"] = txtState.Text;
                OrgService.Update(account);
                MessageBox.Show("Account updated successfully");
                // TODO: reload the accounts combobox.
            }
            catch (Exception ex)
            {
                MessageBox.Show("An error occurred : " + ex.Message);
            }         

Method : Delete

To delete a record you use the Delete method of the organization service, pass the entity type name and its key like the following.

try
            {
                OrgService.Delete("account", new Guid(comboAccounts.SelectedValue.ToString()));
                MessageBox.Show("Account deleted successfully");
                // TODO: reload the accounts combobox
            }
            catch (Exception ex)
            {
                MessageBox.Show("An error occurred : " + ex.Message);
            }

Now let's add code to clear the form in the clear button click event handler.

            txtName.Text = "";
            txtCity.Text = "";
            txtAddress.Text = "";
            txtState.Text = "";

Method : Create

To insert a new record to CRM, we create an Entity object passing the entity name to its constructor, set its attributes, and pass it to the organization service Create method. Add the following code to the save new button click event handler.

try
            {
                Entity account = new Entity("account");
                account.Attributes["name"] = txtName.Text;
                account.Attributes["address1_line1"] = txtAddress.Text;
                account.Attributes["address1_city"] = txtCity.Text;
                account.Attributes["address1_stateorprovince"] = txtState.Text;
                OrgService.Create(account);
                MessageBox.Show("Account created successfully");
            }
            catch (Exception ex)
            {
                MessageBox.Show("An error occurred : " + ex.Message);
            }

No we have examined almost all basic data operations on the CRM data using late-bounding style: RetrieveMultiple, Retrieve, Update, Delete, and Create new record.

Generating Client Types for Early Binding

Now we will use a different style than the one we used above. We will use the SDK tool crmsvcutil.exe to generate the typed classes for our CRM entities bsed on the metadata service of our CRM organization. These generated typed classes will inherit from the Entity class we worked with earlier in this post. Now follow the following steps to generate your typed classes:

1. Open the project included in the SDK at %SDK%\tools\deviceregistration folder and build it.



2. Open the command prompt cmd.exe and change directories to %SDK%\tools\deviceregistration\bin\Debug and run the command DeviceRegistration.exe /operation:Register This will generate a Device ID and Device Password for you (similar to the ones created by deviceidmanager.cs class).



3. Copy the Deviceid and Device Password to a notepad. (if you are not familiar with cmd, right click the inside the window and click highlight, then highlight the desired text, then right click the cmd window title bar and click Edit>> copy.)



4. In the command window, change the directories to %SDK%\bin and create a command like the following:

crmsvcutil.exe /url:<CRM Online Organization service URL> /out:<Output file name> /servicecontextName:<Organization name> /username:<LiveID> /password:<LiveIDPassword>


/deviceid:<Deviceid> /devicepassword:<DevicePassword> /namespace:<Namespace>

<CRM Online Organization service URL> will be like https://xrmdemo5.api.crm.dynamics.com/XRMServices/2011/Organization.svc? . You can find your URL by going to Settings >> Customizations >> Developer Resources, your URL will be there.

<Output file name> is the file name of the generated code (like GeneratedEntities.cs)

<Organization name> is your organization name.

<LiveID>, <LiveIDPassword> are your live credentials used for this organization.

<Deviceid>, <DevicePassword> are provided from step 3.

<Namespace> is the name space of the generated classes (may be YourCompanyname.YourOrganizationName)

the complete command may look like

crmsvcutil.exe /url:https://xrmdemo5.api.crm.dynamics.com/XRMServices/2011/Organization.svc /out:GeneratedEntities.cs /servicecontextName:xrmdemo5 /username:ebeid_soliman@hotmail.com /password:mypassword

/deviceid:11denl276oo3fgxbakccnnq2x4 /devicepassword:bH.iaG?c3rRi-`L,nKC0S4^^ /namespace:xRMDemo.Entities

Now we created our early bound entity classes. Let’s modify our application to use the early-bound entity classes that we generated.

Step 1: Add the generated types to the project

Right click on the project in the solution explorer and click Add existing, browse to %CRMSDK%\bin and add your generated file (its GeneratedEntities.cs in my above command).

Step 2: Enable proxy types

In order to use the generated types when dealing with the organization service, you have to add the ProxyTypesBehavior to the endpoint Behaviors collection. This instructs the OrganizationServiceProxy to look in the assembly for classes with certain attributes to use. The generated classes are already attributed with these attributes. Simply, this makes all interactions with the organization service to be done using the generated typed classes for each entity instead of the generic Entity class we used earlier.

Open the frmMain.cs, locate btnConnect_Click event handler and add the following line of code after the last section line that creates the new instance of our OrganizationServiceProxy.

OrgService.ServiceConfiguration.CurrentServiceEndpoint.Behaviors.Add(new ProxyTypesBehavior());

Method : RetrieveMultiple

It’s the same before. Now, let's modify the accounts combobox filling section to use the generated Account class instead of the Item class (you can get ride of it) that we created earlier. Modify the last section in btnConnect_Click event handler to look like the following.

List accounts = new List();
            comboAccounts.ValueMember = "accountid";
            comboAccounts.DisplayMember = "name";
            for (int i = 0; i < accountList.Entities.Count; i++)
            {
                accounts.Add((Account)accountList[i]);
            }
            comboAccounts.DataSource = accounts;

Method : Retrieve

It almost the same, except we will use Account class and its properties instead of the Entity class and its attributes. Modify the comboAccounts_SelectedIndexChanged event handler to look like:

ColumnSet cs2 = new ColumnSet(new string[] {"address1_city","address1_line1","address1_stateorprovince",
                "name","industrycode"});
            try
            {
                Account account = (Account)OrgService.Retrieve("account", new Guid(comboAccounts.SelectedValue.ToString()), cs2);
                txtName.Text = account.Name;
                txtCity.Text = account.Address1_City;
                txtAddress.Text = account.Address1_Line1;
                txtState.Text = account.Address1_StateOrProvince;
            }
            catch (Exception ex)
            {
                MessageBox.Show("An error happened: " + ex.Message);
            }

Delete method is solely done by the organization service, so it didn't change due the style we use.

Method : Create

It almost the same, except we will use Account class and its properties instead of the Entity class and its attributes. Modify the btnSaveNew_Click event handler to look like:

try
            {
                Account account = new Account();
                account.Name = txtName.Text;
                account.Address1_Line1 = txtAddress.Text;
                account.Address1_City = txtCity.Text;
                account.Address1_StateOrProvince = txtState.Text;
                OrgService.Create(account);
                MessageBox.Show("Account created successfully");
            }
            catch (Exception ex)
            {
                MessageBox.Show("An error occurred : " + ex.Message);
            }

This post is one of multiple posts to come under the same topic, Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 for Developers. Basicly we will deal with Dynamics CRM from the developer point of view. In this post we have tried to cover the basics of accessing Microsoft Dynamics CRM data using WCF. We tried the basic data operations: retrieve multiple records, retrieve one record, update, delete, and insert. We tried to cover both early-bounding and late-bounding approaches in our implementations.

JSON–yet another tutorial :)

What is JSON?

JSON (or JavaScript Object Notation) is a highly portable data interchange format. While its structure is recognized natively by Javascript (as it is Javascript), its formatting conventions are easily recognized by other C-like languages.

JSON is built on two structures:

• A collection of name/value pairs. In various languages, this is realized as an object, record, struct, dictionary, hash table, keyed list, or associative array. Example:

var jason = {
 "age" : "28",
 "hometown" : "Cairo, Egypt",
 "gender" : "male"
 };

The object created in the example could be accessed like any other object.

• An ordered list of values. In most languages, this is realized as an array, vector, list, or sequence. Example,

var family = [{
 "name" : "Jason",
 "age" : "24",
 "gender" : "male"
 },
 {
 "name" : "Kyle",
 "age" : "21",
 "gender" : "male"
 }];

This array could be accessed like any array of objects.

Since JSON and XML are both used for data exchange, you may find yourself in the middle of deciding which format to use.

Reasons to choose JSON over XML

1. JSON is easier to read than XML (especially of large amounts of data)
2. JSON requires less tags than XML – XML items must be wrapped in open and close tags whereas JSON you just name the tag once
3. Because JSON is transportation-independent, you can just bypass the XMLHttpRequest object for getting your data.
4. JavaScript is not just data – you can also put methods and all sorts of goodies in JSON format.
5. JSON is better at helping procedural decisions in your JavaScript based on objects and their values (or methods).
6. You can get JSON data from anywhere, not just your own domain.

Reasons to choose XML over JSON

1. Easy to take XML and apply XSLT to make XHTML.
2. XML is supported by many more desktop applications than JSON.
3. XML can put JSON in it on the way back to the client.
4. AJAX includes XML in it and not JSON.

.Net Support for JSON

.Net framework provides System.Web.Script.Serialization.JavaScriptSerializer to serialize and deserialize objects. Here is a simple example:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Web;
using System.Web.UI;
using System.Web.UI.WebControls;
namespace JSON_Demo1
{
  public partial class Page1 : System.Web.UI.Page
  {
      protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
      {
          Employee oEmployee1 = new Employee { Name = "Emp1", ID = "11", Age = "30" };
          Employee oEmployee2 = new Employee { Name = "Emp2", ID = "22", Age = "31" };
          Employee oEmployee3 = new Employee { Name = "Emp3", ID = "33", Age = "20" };
          List oList = new List() { oEmployee1, oEmployee2, oEmployee3 };
          System.Web.Script.Serialization.JavaScriptSerializer oSerializer = new System.Web.Script.Serialization.JavaScriptSerializer();
          string sJSON = oSerializer.Serialize(oList);
          Response.Write(sJSON);
      }
  }
  public class Employee
  {
      public string Name { get; set; }
      public string Age { get; set; }
      public string ID { get; set; }
  }
}

When you run the above application, you will see the JSON array on the response like so:

Now let’s change this example a little bit so we can make Ajax call to get the JSON data and parse it using javaScript. Change the code-behind to look like:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Web;
using System.Web.UI;
using System.Web.UI.WebControls;
using System.Web.Services;

namespace JSON_Demo1
{
  public partial class Page1 : System.Web.UI.Page
  {
      protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
      {
          Response.Write(GetJSONData());
      }

      [WebMethod()]
      public static string GetJSONData()
      {
          Employee oEmployee1 = new Employee { Name = "Emp1", ID = "11", Age = "30" };
          Employee oEmployee2 = new Employee { Name = "Emp2", ID = "22", Age = "31" };
          Employee oEmployee3 = new Employee { Name = "Emp3", ID = "33", Age = "20" };
          List oList = new List() { oEmployee1, oEmployee2, oEmployee3 };
          System.Web.Script.Serialization.JavaScriptSerializer oSerializer = new System.Web.Script.Serialization.JavaScriptSerializer();
          return oSerializer.Serialize(oList);
      }
  }
  public class Employee
  {
      public string Name { get; set; }
      public string Age { get; set; }
      public string ID { get; set; }
  }

}

now change the .aspx page to look like:

<%@ Page Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeBehind="Page1.aspx.cs" Inherits="JSON_Demo1.Page1" %>

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head runat="server">
  <title></title>
  <script src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.7.1/jquery.min.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
  <script type="text/javascript">
      $(document).ready(function () {
          $.ajax({
              type: "POST",
              url: "Page1.aspx/GetJSONData",
              contentType: "application/json; charset=utf-8",
              dataType: "json",
              success: function (msg) {
                  BuildTable(msg.d);
                  }
          });
      });
    
      function BuildTable(msg) {
          var table = '<table> <thead> <tr> <th>Name</th> <th>ID</th> <th>Age</th> </thead> <tbody>';
          var myJSONObject = eval( msg );
          for (var i = 0; i < 3; i++) {              
              var row = '<tr>';
              row += '<td>' + myJSONObject[i].Name + '</td>';
              row += '<td>' + myJSONObject[i].ID + '</td>';
              row += '<td>' + myJSONObject[i].Age + '</td>';
              row += '</tr>';
              table += row;
          }
          table += '</tbody></table>';
          $('#Container').html(table);
      }
      </script>
</head>
<body>
  <div id="Container">
  </div>
</body>
</html>

Now let’s run the application and see the output:

In the previous example, we created a WebMethod, then call it from jQuery and pass the output of it to JavaScript method BuildTable(msg). This method convert the string msg into a JSON array of objects and then loop on that array to build the shown simple data table. We also rendered the JSON data to the browser directly from server-side code, just to show the original data and how it transformed using JSON.

In this post we gave a brief background about JSON, when use it and when use XML to send data, how .Net provides native serializer for JSON, and how to deserialize it using JavaScript. We may look into more advanced topics regarding JSON in future posts.

Good Luck

An introduction to Microsoft Message Queuing–Part 2

In the previous post, we explored very basic concepts of MSMQ. We used non-transactional queue to send and receive a message. In this post we will try to dive more into Message Queuing Queues.

Simply, queues are logical containers that Message Queuing uses to store and later forward messages, providing the bases for the loosely coupled aspects of Message Queuing. Queues can be created by applications and by Message Queuing. Queues created by applications or by users in an MMC snap-in are referred to as application queues. Queues created by Message Queuing are referred to as system-generated queues (we will talk about system- generated queues in another post).

Depending on the service provided by the queue, application queues can be public or private, and they can be transactional or nontransactional.

Application queues can play any of the following roles:

• Destination queues : any queue used to send/receive messages between applications.
• Administration queues : used for acknowledgment messages returned by Message Queuing or connector applications.
• Response queues : used by receiving applications to return response messages to the sending application.
• Report queues : used to store report messages returned by Message Queuing.

Destination Queues

Destination queues are any queue used to send/receive messages between applications. The sending application on computer 1 sends the messages to the queue and the receiving application on computer 2 reads the messages from the queue. Typically, destination queues are located on the same computer as the receiving application in order to minimize network traffic.

Public Versus Private Queues The decision to use public or private destination queues depends primarily on whether you want other applications to be able to locate the queues or not. Message Queuing registers private queues locally by storing a description of each queue in a separate file in the local queue storage (LQS) folder on the local computer (the default Lqs folder is %windir%\System32\MSMQ\Storage\Lqs). Also a description of each public queue created on the local computer is also stored locally in a separate file in the Lqs folder.

Adv. of Public Queues:

• Registered in the directory service, so it can be located by other Message Queuing applications.
• Persistent and its registration information can be backed up.

Adv. of Private Queues:

• Requires minimal directory service overhead(faster to create, no latency, and no replication)
• Can be created and deleted when the directory service is not working
• Can be accessed directly by name without query the directory service.

Div. of Private Queues:

• It is registered on local computer, so it is properties cannot be obtained by Message Queuing applications running on remote computers. Private queues can be exposed to other applications by making the location of the private queue known to the applications. To distribute the location of a private queue, an application can send the format name of the private queue as the response queue property of a message.

Transactional Versus Nontransactional Queues The decision to use transactional or nontransactional queues is based on whether the applications accessing the queue will be sending and receiving messages within the context of a transaction. So, what is a transaction ? a transaction is to execute a multiple-steps process such that either all or none of the steps will complete. In reality, transactions are handled by rolling back any steps that have already occurred if the entire transaction is not completed successfully.

When sending messages, only transactional queues can accept messages sent in the context of a transaction. These messages are also referred to as transactional messages. In a similar way, nontransactional queues can only accept messages sent outside the context of a transaction. Note that only transactional messages are delivered with exactly-once-delivery (EOD) guarantees.

When receiving messages, only local transactional queues can be accessed within the context of a transaction. The transactional queue must be local to the receiving application. On the other hand, nontransactional queues can be accessed within or outside of a transaction. Also, transactional queues, local or remote, can be accessed outside of a transaction (because we ask it to do less than what it can do).

If you just want to be able to recover lost messages, don’t use transactional queues. You can set the Recoverable property of a every message you sent. Or you can sent the queue property DefaultPropertiesToSend.Recoverable to true.

Creating a Transactional Queue

• Through the snap in : just check the check-box Transactional below the queue name textbox.
• Programmatically : just like privateQueue = MessageQueue.Create(".\\Private$\\privateQueue", true);

MessageQueue have a property called Transactional that you can check to ensure that the queue is transactional

MSMQ supports two types of transactions: Internal and External.

Internal Transactions

Class MessageQueueTransaction can be used to Begin(), Commit(), Abort() the transaction. It also can be passed through Send() and Receive() methods to that operation falls under a transaction. The class also exposes a Status property to give the transaction status. Transaction status can be one of:

• Initialized : The transaction has been initialized but not yet started.
• Pending : The transaction has been began but not committed or aborted yet.
• Committed : The transaction has been committed.
• Aborted : The transaction has been aborted.

Transaction Types when sending or receiving using MessageQueue class through transactional queues, you could pass one of the values in MessageQueueTransactionType enumeration. This specifies how you would like to interact with the queue. These values are:

• Single : each queue operation will be doine in a separate internal transaction.
• None : enable you to receive a message from a transactional queue, but outside a transaction. It also enables us to send a transactional message to a non-transactional queue.
• Automatic : used with external transactions to direct the send or receive operations to use an already existing transaction context.

Now lets compile these pieces into one example to get sense of what internal transactional queues means.

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.Messaging;

namespace MSMQ_Demo3
{
 class Program
 {
     static void Main(string[] args)
     {
         MessageQueueTransaction mqTran = new MessageQueueTransaction();
         MessageQueue queueA = MessageQueue.Create(".\\Private$\\TranQueueA", true);
         MessageQueue queueB = MessageQueue.Create(".\\Private$\\TranQueueB", true);
         mqTran.Begin();
         try
         {
             queueA.Send("Message A", "Label A", mqTran );
             queueB.Send("Message B", "Label B", mqTran );
             mqTran.Commit();
         }
         catch(Exception ex)
         {
             mqTran.Abort();
             Console.WriteLine(ex.Message);
         }             

         MessageQueue queueC = new MessageQueue(".\\Private$\\TranQueueA");
         MessageQueue queueD = new MessageQueue(".\\Private$\\TranQueueB");
         string strMsg = "";
         mqTran.Begin();
         try
         {
             Message msg = queueC.Receive(mqTran);
             msg.Formatter = new XmlMessageFormatter(new Type[1] { typeof(string) });
             strMsg = msg.Body.ToString();
             msg = queueD.Receive(mqTran);
             msg.Formatter = new XmlMessageFormatter(new Type[1] { typeof(string) });
             strMsg += " \n ";
             strMsg += msg.Body.ToString();
             Console.WriteLine(strMsg);
             mqTran.Commit();
         }
         catch (Exception ex)
         {
             mqTran.Abort();
             Console.WriteLine(ex.Message);
         }
         Console.WriteLine();
     }
  
 }
}

In this example we created two transactional queues, send two messages to them. Then we received these messages. Both the sending and receiving done in a transaction that commits only after the success of all operations. If any errors happened, we abort the whole transaction and rollback all operations done in it.

In future posts we will talk more about MSQM details.