A significant difference between the 2 vendor’s offering is Resco has the Resco MobileCRM Studio – “a developer platform fully integrated with Microsoft Visual Studio that includes Resco designers and components and controls”.  If you want to build a Mobile Dynamics CRM app that you can extend with custom UI components and custom business logic then Resco is the only way to go (aside from bespoke custom development).  For the purpose of this article I am not looking at the Resco MobileCRM Studio but rather focussing on Resco’s other configuration-based offering – Resco MobileCRM Woodford – as I suspect many CRM customers out there will not have an appetite for mobile application development but instead prefer a configurable solution.

Home screen:

Resco MobileCRM	CWR Mobile CRM

Mobile Dashboard:

Resco MobileCRM	CWR Mobile CRM
Not available on iPhone. iPad:

Opportunity List View:

Resco MobileCRM	CWR Mobile CRM

Opportunity Form:

Resco MobileCRM	CWR Mobile CRM

The mobile experience is pretty similar on both apps.  CWR Mobility have aligned their app to the look and feel of Microsoft Dynamics 4.0 (which is even more evident in their configuration tools I will talk about later). 

I definitely prefer Resco MobileCRM’s Form layout – e.g. the Opportunity form you see above.  CWR Mobility’s Mobile CRM forms are in desperate need of a face lift. 

For the rest of the UI though I don’t think there is a huge difference that will sway end users negatively one way or the other.

(As at 13 Jan 2012: Resco v5.1.2.0, CWR Mobility v5.0.1.4)

I think the automated background synchronisation feature of CWR Mobility’s app is a big advantage.  As a user I wouldn’t want to have to worry about synchronisation, I would just want it to happen in the background for me. 

Being able to convert Leads might also be a swaying point for CWR Mobility. 

The real time Dashboards offered by CRW Mobility are awesome.  I could see this one feature selling Microsoft CRM to an organisation.  Providing a real time dashboard view to senior management on their iPhone is a compelling selling point.  Resco has something competitive on the iPad.

I found it annoying that Resco’s default view definitions do not filter out inactive records (I would rather not have my closed leads and opportunities and inactive customers showing up in my lists).  You can edit these but definitions though.

CWR clearly spent a lot of time and effort aligning their user experience here to match Microsoft CRM 4.0.  It looks good, its intuitive and feels robust but now that we have CRM 2011 it suffers from looking out dated.

View configuration in CWR is a more familiar and robust experience then it is in Resco with the one exception of defining filters where Resco has a much nicer UI (but the functionality is much the same). 

Resco’s iFrame functionality is very interesting and could push the app ahead of CWR Mobility’s in the right scenario.

In general the CWR configuration application feels more robust, with little quirky events in Resco leaving me feeling cautious about the maturity of the product.

Home Page Editor:

View Designer:

Form Designer:

And here’s CWR Mobility’s configuration tool…

Main menu:

Site Map editor:

View Designer:

Form Designer:

Ok, the mobile apps just get downloaded by end users for free via the App store, the user punches in the connection details you would provide to them and on first synch the mobile app picks up your company’s particular configuration, that bit’s easy.

For Resco, the Woodford configuration tool is supplied as a Silverlight application that you can run locally or if on CRM 2011 you can import into your Microsoft CRM organisation as a managed solution and then run from a new link on your CRM menu:

Resco store’s its configuration information in your CRM database.  There is no middleware for Resco, the mobile app connects directly to your CRM system.  The synchronisation logic sits in the mobile app.  The mobile app reads the MobileCRM configuration definitions from the CRM database via the CRM web services and then synchronises data the same way.

What this means is your CRM system needs to be internet accessible.  Either you need to be running CRM Online or be partner hosted or have IFD / Claims Based Authentication configured on your on premise system.  i.e. if you can’t access your normal Microsoft CRM system from an internet cafe without VPN then you won’t be able to use Resco either.

The CWR Configurator is a standalone web application that CWR Mobility allow you to launch from the CRM menu:

CWR Mobility took a different approach with their application architecture (or more correctly, Resco took the different approach as CWR Mobility were around first).  CWR Mobility have a middleware component – the CWR Mobile CRM Server.  They offer this as an on premise offering or they can host it for you.  The below table explains the configurations they support:

The architectural differencing is interesting.  Resco tout their lack of middleware as an advantage as  it is a simpler architecture and there is no need for an additional server / server component.  But I have heard colleagues talk about CWR Mobility’s middleware as an advantage as it provides better separation of application roles.  I’m not yet sure either way. 

CWR does offer an architecture though that does allow you to open up your CRM system for mobile access without opening up your entire CRM system to the internet.  Not sure whether a customer would ever have that specific requirement though.

I think CWR Mobile CRM wins this showdown.  It is the more functional, more robust, more mature product.  I prefer the look and feel of Resco’s mobile app but I suspect the user experience on CWR Mobile CRM would win in the long run due to it’s increased functionality, especially the automatic sync’ing.

I will add though that Resco as a company seem to be more about custom Mobile CRM application development and the Woodford product they have released probably takes priority 2.  It would short change them to say they are inferior to CWR Mobility as their custom development offering gives them a whole other side where CWR Mobility has no comparative product.  But in the world of easily configurable Mobile CRM solutions, CWR Mobility wins in my opinion.

Of course I haven’t mentioned price at all.  I haven’t yet attempted a price comparison but believe the 2 products are priced competitively against each other.  In the enterprise space RRP can vary significantly from what you  can negotiate so I see no point commenting on RRP.  I’ll leave the price part of the comparison to you to weigh up in conjunction with the product feature comparison I’ve outlined here.

Please share any experiences you have had with either product and correct anything I have wrong.  I will update this post as I learn more and as updates to the products are released.

Update (7 Feb 2012):  Today it has been announced that Microsoft will start offering a Microsoft-labelled CWR Mobility offering from Q2 2012 called Microsoft Dynamics® CRM Mobile.  The solution will be cloud hosted and charged on a per user per month basis.  You will use the CWR Mobile client, it will connect to this new offering which in turn will connect to your CRM system (which will need to be internet accessible).  CWR Mobility had a cloud offering before and this sounds like much the same thing, but Microsoft’s involvement can only be great news.

In this post I will demonstrate this approach but with a more widely applicable scenario – I will add a collection of quick create buttons to the Dashboard ribbon.  And I’ll demonstrate the process using the awesome new Visual Ribbon Editor from Erik Pool (thanks mate, you are a rock star!).

Here’s what we want to end up with:

And then click the 2nd button on the menu, and open the Case entity’s Ribbon definitions:

By default the Case entity’s Form ribbon is displayed to you initially.  I want to look at the definition of the New button and that exists on the ribbon that displays above the Case view so from the menu change the Ribbon Type dropdown to Homepage:

Erik’s tool will now display a simulated version of the Case’s HomePageGrid ribbon (so cool!).  Click on the New button and you will see the definition of that button appear below:

Now, I want to recreate this button so initially I thought I would note the images defined here for the button and set my new button to use those.  But, the image used is the same for all entities so I would end up with a pretty dull looking ribbon if I did this:

So, instead I will find the individual entity images CRM uses and use those.  I will come back to that later.

Here, looking at the Case ribbon definition we want to determine the jscript function called by the button.  Click on the Action tab and then click the small arrows to expand what is displayed:

I originally thought I would see the button calling a CreateNewCase function.  Instead you will see Microsoft have designed a generic function that the new button on each entity can call passing in a unique entity identifier parameter to control which entity form is popped.

To replicate these buttons on the Dashboard ribbon we can call the same function and explicitly specify the entity identifier.  We are heading into unsupported territory here and there is a risk this solution won’t work after an upgrade but it’s an easy change to undo and if you needed to find an alternative approach in the future it wouldn’t be hard, this way is just the quickest.

Ok, now that we know what to do we need to switch to the Dashboard ribbon.  Click the Open button again and select Application Ribbons:

The Dashboard ribbon is then displayed by default:

So we can start making our edits.  Click the Create New Group button and then assign a unique ID to the new Group:

Click on the Title of the new group that appears on the simulated ribbon and then click the New Button button:

Give your new button a unique ID:

And then repeat to add additional buttons for each CRM record type you want to support.  By default the button group will be displaying your buttons as small buttons stacked vertically.  This is a bit ugly and we have plenty of space on the ribbon so select the button group and then change the Template to one that displays the buttons as large buttons:

And you should end up with a nice list of buttons:

Next step is to add the jscript call to each button.  For this we need to know the unique identifier of each entity.  For this, I downloaded and installed the MetaData Browser from here.  This is provided as a managed CRM solution so you import the file you download into CRM and then access the tool from within CRM.  With this tool you can easily search for your entities and locate their unique identifiers:

Ok, back to the Ribbon editor.  Click on the Case button and then select the Actions tab and add the following:

Repeat for each additional button, entering their unique identifier (Object Type Code from the Meta Data Browser) in as the Integer Parameter value.

Final step is to assign each button an image to pretty things up.  I want to use CRM’s standard images for each entity so I will go looking for those on the CRM Server.   These images can be found in your equivalent of the below folder:

C:\Program Files\Microsoft Dynamics CRM\CRMWeb\_imgs\Ribbon

Microsoft employs a consistent naming convention made up of an “Entity” prefix followed by the image size followed by the unique entity identifier.  So for my 5 entities (1,2,3,112, and 4212) I want the following files:

Now, we could grab these files and load them into CRM as web resources and then reference the web resources in our ribbon definitions but easier still is to just reference the files on the server in the same way that the standard ribbon buttons do (although this might need adjusting after an upgrade if Microsoft renames or moves those files).  Here’s what I entered for my new custom Case button:

Adding the image references for each of my remaining buttons has me ending up with this:

I click Save to update CRM:

And can then immediately see my new buttons appearing on the Dashboard ribbon:

A quick test, and yes they also work:

That’s it.  You could go on and add language translations and display rules for the buttons but I won’t go into that here.  To migrate this customisation to another environment simply include the Application Ribbons component in your Solution file.

If you would like a copy of this customisation I have a solution file available here.

Firstly, we need to get a list of the CRM users, and we need that list formatted a certain way.  Here’s an SQL script you can use:

SELECT 'objectClass','DN','displayName','givenName','sn','samAccountName'

UNION ALL

SELECT 
	'objectClass' = 'user',
	'DN' = '"cn=' + [FullName] + ',OU=GTUsers,DC=GTDOMAIN,DC=COM"',
	'displayName' = [FullName],
	'givenName' = [FirstName],
	'sn' = [LastName],
	'samAccountName' = replace([DomainName],'SITCRM\','')
  FROM [SITCRM_MSCRM].[dbo].[SystemUserBase]
where [FirstName]  ''
and replace([DomainName],'SITCRM\','')  'administrator'

You will need to localise this script to your environments: 

• On line 7 you need to specify an OU in your AD where you want your users created.   My domain is gtdomain.com and I created an OU there called GTusers.  Adjust these parameters as required.
• On lines 11 and 14 I am striping out the domain name ‘SITCRM’ using a replace function.  Adjust this to the domain name of your source system.

Run the script in SQL Management Studio and confirm you get a header row followed by a row per CRM user that looks something like this:

Here’s a quick explanation of the columns:

• objectclass: this should say ‘user’ – this our way of requesting to have users created in AD
• DN: this specifies where in the AD our records should be created
• displayName: this should be the full name of the user
• givenName: first name of the user
• sn: surname of the user
• samAccountNAme: logon for the user

Ok, now we need this result set pushed out to a CSV file.  I do this by going into the Query Options…

… and setting the Output format to Comma delimited and unchecking the option to include column headers in the result set:

Then I switch the Results To setting to File:

Finally, I execute the script again.  Because I asked the results to go to file I am prompted to specify a file location, so I save the file to my desktop under the name “users.csv”.  Run that:

Once generated we need to just a quick correction to the file.  If it got created with a .rpt extension go ahead and remove that, we want the file to have a .csv extension.  Then open the file in Notepad scroll to the bottom and delete the last couple of lines containing the record count at the end:

Ok, now to import this file into the AD.  Make sure you are logged in as a user that can administer the AD.  I’m not sure where you can run this from, I ran mine from the Domain Controller.   I copied my file to the C drive and then ran the following script:

csvde –i –f c:\users.csv

If you have success you will see a message like this:

And over in the AD you will have your users:

Hope this helps someone

• An upgrade to CRM 2011 requires, in addition to the CRM software upgrade, a platform upgrade.  You should expect to be procuring new hardware to run the 64 bit Windows and SQL 2008 platforms.
• The upgrade process requires you to upgrade ‘through’ CRM 4.0.  You don’t have to use CRM 4.0 but you will need to run the CRM 3.0 to CRM 4.0 upgrade and then upgrade to CRM 2011.
• You will need to install CRM 4.0 over your CRM 3.0 instance to upgrade it, that is the only upgrade approach available between those versions.  If ‘losing’ your 3.0 environments is unacceptable then you will need additional environments.
• Your upgrade platform needs to support both 3.0 and 4.0.  Windows 2003 SP2 and SQL 2005 SP3 is the level you need to be at.
• CRM 2011 will be installed fresh on the new hardware platform.  The CRM database, once upgrade to 4.0, can be imported into the CRM 2011 instance to upgrade it to 2011.
• Because of the ‘in-place upgrade’ approach required to upgrade from 3.0 to 4.0 it is worth considering whether you can image or snapshot the server prior to the upgrade so that the process is more easily repeatable.
• You must utilise at least 1 (preferably 2 or more) non-production environments to work through the upgrade process.
• You are upgrading both the data and the customisations to the system.  The upgrade ‘wizard’ provided by Microsoft takes care of the data but the customisations require refactoring and a bunch of testing.
• Once you have completed the upgrade process a couple of times you should be confident with the process for upgrading the data.  You can now focus on the customisations.
• Customisation changes back in the production 3.0 system must be put on strict hold for the duration of the project.  You don’t want to be upgrading in parallel with on going production changes.  And once you start doing an in-place upgrade in your dev and test environments you lose access to those environments for testing on going production changes.
• Customisations should be re-factored and re-tested in your dev/test/uat environments.

The CRM 2011 production environment can be built in advance.  Once your refactored customisations are production ready and you are confident in the upgrade process you can execute the production deployment process:

• Refresh the production database to a test environment (you will need a clean CRM 3.0 environment ready for this)
• Run the in-place upgrade over that database on the test environment (we are deliberately avoiding changes to the production server so we can roll back to it if things go pear shaped)
• Take the upgraded 4.0 version of your production database and import it into the new CRM 2011 production platform.
• Deploy your re-factored customisations
• Test
• Resume production access

Note: I’m avoiding steps here regarding the Outlook Client and Email Router etc. as they are not relevant on my project.

That’s my plan at this stage.  I will come back and edit this blog as the project progresses.  If you have any experiences to share please post comments.

\\sdk\samplecode\cs\client\ribbon\exportribbonxml\exportedribbonxml\

The latest SDK seems to no longer include these files.  So, now you need to generate these yourself using the utility provided.  It’s not hard to do, here’s the steps:

Go to this location:

\\sdk\samplecode\cs\client\ribbon\exportribbonxml\

Double-click the solution file (exportribbonxml.sln) to open this solution in Visual Studio.

Right-click on the Solution in Visual Studio and select Build:

Wait for that process to complete and make sure Visual Studio doesn’t report any errors.  If that all went ok you will now have an exe you can run, at the following location:

\\sdk\samplecode\cs\client\ribbon\exportribbonxml\bin\Debug\

Double click on the exe (ExportRibbonXml.exe) and then provide the details asked of you:

And that should generate the ribbon definition files that you need:

Takes just 5 minutes to configure this (no coding required).  The Activity Feed Wall is rendered within an iFrame on the Dashboard all you need to know is the URL, which in my case was:

https://nov27demo.crm.dynamics.com//WebResources/msdyn_/PersonalWall.htm

If you are using CRM online simply localise the above URL to your Organisation name.  If running CRM on premise you will need to adjust the web site reference to match your environment – i.e. to something like this:

http://vbox1:5555/PRMDemo/WebResources/msdyn_/PersonalWall.htm

The Dashboard looks like this in the Dashboard Designer:

With the iframe defined as below:

Note: Make sure the Restrict cross-frame scripting option is unchecked.  You will need to create a system dashboard in order to this rather than just a personal dashboard (otherwise this option is checked and cannot be changed).

If you want to show the user profile component of the wall add the following suffix to your URL:

https://nov27demo.crm.dynamics.com//WebResources/msdyn_/PersonalWall.htm?data=HideUserProfile%3D0

This will give you the following Dashboard:

A quick scan of the CRM sitemap revealed the web resource name of the Wall from which I was able to figure out the URL.

I think this is really cool and will become my home page of choice for demos for the next wee while.

Since that first impression I’ve spent a bit more time with the feature and thanks to helpful posts like Richard’s one here I have a better understanding of how we can make it work for us.  I’ve ended up reaching the same conclusion as Richard: 

Activity Feeds can be of value, so long as you create your own posting rules via workflow and turn off the ones that are included out-of-the-box

Let me take you through it…

I created the following workflow to post to the Account wall every time a new Opportunity is created under the Account:

I then logged in as Gareth Tucker, went to the Account “Recreation Supplies (sample)” and clicked the Follow button on the Account’s Record Wall:

I then logged in as Rambo George and created an Opportunity under that Account:

I wait a few minutes for the workflow to run and then check the Account’s Record Wall and can see the Post:

Note: the post reads a lot better than those created by the out of the box rules supplied by Microsoft

Now, when I check Rambo George’s “What’s New” Wall I don’t see any Post:

This is correct, Rambo is not following the Account.  And this is GOOD Rambo does not need to be notified of something he has just done.

Now, I log back in as Gareth Tucker and remember Gareth is following this Account so he wants to know about this Opportunity.  The post appears there on Gareth’s “What’s New” wall:

So that’s activity feeds, a potentially useful self service feature for subscribing to CRM event notifications.

The one limitation I am still uncomfortable with though is the business benefit of Activity Feeds is reliant on end user’s choosing to view their wall.  Some people prefer email.  It’s a shame that when you follow you can’t chose to receive an email notification.  I think there’s an ISV opportunity here to develop maybe an email digest solution so that each day users receive an email from CRM with a consolidated post list.  Another nice solution would be to incorporate the Wall on a Dashboard to combine the news feed with rich data visualisations.  Then I think you have a compelling home page for end users too land on when they launch CRM.

Update 1: check out this post to see how you can easily embed the Activity Feed wall on a Dashboard.

Update 2: here’s an improved approach for writing your workflows that will add hyperlinks into your posts…

Instead of inserting primary attribute fields like Opportunity.Topic insert the new special Post URL(Dynamic) fields now available since Rollup 5.   These will give you the same text value but displayed as a hyperlink. 

Here’s how it looks in the Workflow designer:

And here’s how the resulting post looks:

If you miss some of these steps the common symptoms are:

• Can only access CRM directly on the CRM server
• CRM Reports don’t work
• Outlook Client does not Configure
• Authentication prompts appear as you try and access CRM

Environment: VirtualBox

• Machine 1 = Domain Controller and SQL Server,
• Machine 2 = CRM Server

Steps:

1. Install Windows Server 2008 R2 64-bit on both Machines, create C and D drive partitions (install all application software on the D drive)
2. Promote Machine 1 to be a Domain Controller
3. Create service accounts for SQL Server and SSRS
4. Install SQL and SSRS on Machine 1
5. Add Machine 2 to the domain
6. Create an installer account:  crmadmin
7. Create service accounts:  crmservice, crmdeploy, crmemail, crmasync, crmsandbox
8. Grant minimum permissions per the CRM Implementation Guide’s instructions
9. Logon as the installer account and install CRM Server on Machine 2
10.   Test CRM access over HTTP via Internet Explorer on Machine 2
11.   Install CRM SSRS Data Connector on Machine 1
12.   Install latest rollup packs for CRM Server and SSRS Data Connector
13.   Create a self signed certificate on Machine 2 (in IIS)
14.   Go into CRM Deployment Manager, go to Servers, disable the CRM Server
15.   Go to IIS and edit the Bindings for the CRM Web Site, enable HTTPS, disable HTTP
16.   Back in CRM Deployment Manager, right-click on “Microsoft Dynamics CRM” and select Properties, then on the Web Address tab select HTTPS and enter the URLs
17.   Re-enable the CRM server in Deployment Manager
18.   Test CRM access over HTTPS via Internet Explorer on Machine 2
19.   Create an SPN for the CRM service account (the identity running the CRM app pool)     (e.g. setspn –A HTTP/VBOXCRM gtdomain\crmservice) (command should always be HTTP even when HTTPS is enabled)
20.   In Active Directory Users & Computer grant the Trust for Delegation permission to the CRM service account and the CRM server Computer Name (you need to do a Run As Administrator in order for the Delegation tab to appear when editing the properties of the Computer account)
21.   Shutdown Machine 2, reboot Machine 1, restart Machine 2
22.   Test CRM access over HTTPS via Internet Explorer on Machines 1 and 2
23.   Test CRM Reports on Machines 1 and 2
24.   Test the CRM Async Service by creating and triggering a simple workflow
25.   Test the Deployment Service by creating a second CRM Organisation
26.   Install the CRM Email Router and its Rollup Pack, configure and test
27.   Machine 1, install Outlook, configure an email profile (perhaps connect to a Hotmail account) and then install the CRM Outlook Client and its Rollup Pack, configure and test

Done

UPDATE 1: The configuration of the Outlook Client in the above HTTPS environment failed for us (“Could not establish trust relationship for the SSL/TLS secure channel“)  we think due to the use of the Self Signed Certificate.  Installing an Enterprise Certificate Authority and creating both a Root Certificate and a Certificate for the CRM Web site along with an additional SPN solved that problem for us (setspn –A HOST/VBOXCRM gtdomain\crmservice)

UPDATE 2: If you are not able to run Fetch XML reports or Report Wizard reports (which are Fetch XML reports) then you are likely suffering a firewall issue as described here.  Thanks to my colleague Farooq for finding this post and thanks Jim for writing it!

I talk about the limitation in this older post.  In a nutshell pre-rollup 5 any duplicate detection rules you defined would match blank fields to blank fields.  For example if you defined a rule that matched on first name + email address and you had a record with a first name of “Adrian” that had a blank email address then any future “Adrian” records who also had a blank email address would be considered a potential duplicate:

Existing record:

New record being entered:

Potential duplicate detected:

What Rollup 5 gives us is nice little check box that addresses this issue:

If you’re making use of CRM’s duplicate detection features you will definitely want to revisit your rules and consider checking this option.   Do remember as you test this that anytime you re-publish your rules CRM has to rebuild its match codes, so the change is not immediate.  There is a system job you can see attached to the Duplicate rule, that might be the one to monitor.

Now, if Microsoft would just tidy up the Duplicate Detection window and make that a bit more user friendly (or give us the ability to customise it) we would have a really nice solution.

Every now again though I want to add a second VM to this environment, either to isolate a CRM Server component like the Asynchronous Service or to add a Windows client machine to the environment.  

Now things get tricky as we have to start understanding VirtualBox networking.   Well that doesn’t appeal to me, so instead here’s a cheat sheet you can follow to network your 2 VMs together and retain internet connectivity. 

Thanks to my Avanade colleague Safiulla MohamedAli for helping me out with this…

On your CRM server you need to have 2 network adaptors defined.   Adaptor 1 should be defined as per below:

(this gives us internet connectivity by piggy backing off of the host machine)

And Adaptor 2 should look like this:

(this adaptor connects the VM to an internal network called “intnet”)

If you already have 2 adaptors defined you can edit these whilst the VM is running via the Devices menu option.  Otherwise you will need to shutdown your VM and then set from the Oracle VM VirtualBox Manager:

Inside the VM we need to do a couple of things. 

1. Open the Network and Sharing Centre
2. Click change adaptor settings
3. Right-click on the second adaptor and select Properties
4. Set the IP addresses as per below:

What we are doing here is assigning the CRM Server a fixed IP address and telling it to use the locally installed DNS server.

Ok, good, we’re done with the CRM Server. 

Switch over to your second machine.  In my case, my second machine is a Windows XP SP3 VM (assigned 1GB RAM and 1 core).

Here again we need to have 2 adaptors.  The first should look like this:

(this gives us internet connectivity by piggy backing off of the host machine)

And the second adaptor should look like this:

(here we are connecting this VM to our “intnet” internal network, where the CRM Server is also connected).

Again, we need to go and tweak the adaptors…

1. Open the Network and Sharing Centre
2. Click change adaptor settings
3. Right-click on the second adaptor and select Properties
4. Set the IP addresses as per below:

What we are doing here is giving this machine a fixed IP address and then telling it to refer to the CRM Server for it’s default gateway and DNS server.

And we’re done.  We should now have both VMs sitting on the same network and both enabled for internet access.

There may well be other ways to do this and this might not be the best way.  But it works for me!  Hope this helps someone.

Firstly, here’s a quick run through on how to apply a Display Rule.

I have added a custom button to the Campaign form’s ribbon, as per below:

To add a display rule to limit when the button should appear I need to do 2 things:

1. Define the Display Rule

2. Assign the Display Rule to the button

To define the Display Rule we need to add the following to our customization.xml file:

This can be read as: 

“I want to define a new display rule called "GT.campaign.Form.Star.FormStateNotCreate.DisplayRule".  The rule is the button should only show if the form is not the Create form”.

And then to assign this rule to our button we simply reference the above ID in the Command Definition of our button:

Here’s a few more common Display Rule examples:

Display only on Create form:

            <DisplayRule Id="GT.campaign.Form.Star.FormStateCreate.DisplayRule">
              <FormStateRule State="Create" />
            </DisplayRule>

Display only on Update or Create form:

            <DisplayRule Id="GT.campaign.Form.Star.FormStateCreateOrUpdate.DisplayRule">
              <OrRule>
                <Or>
                  <FormStateRule State="Existing"/>
                </Or>
                <Or>
                  <FormStateRule State="Create"/>
                </Or>       
              </OrRule>
            </DisplayRule>

Do NOT display when Offline:

            <DisplayRule Id="GT.campaign.Form.Star.IsOffLine.DisplayRule">
            <CrmOfflineAccessStateRule
               Default="true"
               State="Online"  />
            </DisplayRule> 

In this scenario the CTI is going to always pop the Phone Call form.  If the CTI can match the caller the Phone Call will be pre-populated with the CRM Contact.  Otherwise a dummy “Unknown Caller” Contact will be populated.  The Phone Call will be created by custom code and then launched to the user as a saved record.  

Here’s my phone call screen, as the Call Centre Agent would receive when the CTI has successfully matched to a Contact:

And when not matched:

When the caller has been matched to an existing Contact in CRM their Case History is displayed on the form (with the help of an HTML web resource):

The Call Centre Agent greets the caller and determines their identity and the reason for their call.  Here’s what can happen:

Use Case 1:

If the caller has been correctly matched by the CTI and they are calling in regards to an existing Case the Agent will click the Existing Case button on the Ribbon:

This pops a Case lookup window displaying the Cases related to the Caller:

The Agent selects the relevant Case, and the lookup window closes, as does the Phone Call form and then the Case form pops for the user:

Also note the Caller’s phone number and email address are populated directly onto the Case record for ease of access.

The user can then progress the Case with the Customer (add Notes, check the status of open activities, resolve the Case, etc.).

Behind the scenes the Phone Call has been linked to the Case (so that it appears under the Case’s History) and it has been auto-completed.   

This scenario has been completed in 2 clicks.  That’s pretty good!

Use Case 2:

If the caller was not matched by the CTI and they are legitimately a first time caller who is not yet in CRM the Agent will click the New Case button on the Ribbon:

Immediately the Phone Call form closes and a Case form is popped:

Now if we cater for anonymous callers then this Case can be progressed just like any other case.  It is already attached to our “Unknown Caller” Contact.

Otherwise, you will notice the Case form has a Quick Create New Contact section on the form (a customisation I have blogged about previously).  The Agent can easily populate this section…

… and the Contact will be created and the Case re-associated accordingly:

Again, behind the scenes the Phone Call has been linked to the Case and has been auto-completed.

This solution also supports the following use cases:

- The caller is not auto-matched by the CTI as they have called from a different number.  The Agent can simply use the Contact lookup field on the Phone Call form to locate their Contact record.   The process flow then continues as if they were matched by the CTI.

- The caller is matched by the CTI but they are calling in regards to a new issue.  This scenario starts of like Use Case 1 but the user would click the New Case button, and then the scenario follows Use Case 2.

What I like about the solution is:

• Simplicity for the user – the Phone Call pops, they click either the New Case button or the Existing Case button
• Processing speed – this solution has the minimal number of clicks possible and does not require the use of the Contact form at any stage
• Consistent process for emails – this same design could be applied to the Email form for handling inbound customer service emails
• Automatic activity history – every inbound call results in a (saved) Phone Call activity without any risk of the user not creating/saving the record.  And the Phone Calls are auto-completed for the user.
• Distinct Cases for each unique Service Request – we are not creating a Case for every call, only when the Agent identifies the call relates to a new issue.

Hopefully this gives you an idea of what Microsoft CRM is capable of.  Out of the box Microsoft CRM like any CRM system can be a little clunky but the power of Microsoft CRM is its rich (and upgrade friendly!) extensibility.  Don’t be scared of this sort of customisation, Microsoft have designed Microsoft CRM expecting us to configure this types of solutions, and it is more configuration then it is customisation.  After all, I was able to build this out and I’ve never compiled a piece of code in my life.

If you are not seeing the sort of rich user experience I have described here in your CRM system, well, it’s probably time you found yourself a decent CRM vendor.

This example solution is available for download here. 

To deploy, import the Solution and publish.  Then edit the Configuration entity definition so that it appears in the Settings area (this is meant to appear but didn’t for me when I tested this), create a Contact called “Unknown Caller” and create a Configuration record like the below:

The “Value” you need is the GUID of the Active Contacts view which you can get by opening that view to customise it and then selecting Copy Link from the Actions menu.

Technical Notes

For those that are curious here’s how I’ve achieved the above.  It’s all real apart from the Case History view which I didn’t bother to build out.

Phone Call Java Script

• Change the lookup view of the Sender field to search against Contacts rather than Accounts by default
• Custom “Existing Case” lookup field added
• The 2 ribbon buttons were added
• The “Existing Case” button pops the lookup view of the “Existing Case” lookup field (by firing it’s Click event)
• Once the “Existing Case” field is populated it is replicated into the “Regarding” field.  Then the SaveAsCompleted function behind the Mark Complete ribbon button is fired.  Then the Case form is launched for the Case GUID specified in the “Existing Case” field.
• The “New Case” button calls the CRM REST service and creates a new Case record for the Contact specified in the Sender field.  It then populates this Case GUID into the “Regarding” field, fires the SaveAsCompleted function and then launches the Case form.

Case Java Script

• Change the lookup view of the Customer field to search against Contacts rather than Accounts by default
• Hide the Quick Create section unless the Customer field is blank or “Unknown Contact”
• Once all Quick Create fields are populated the CRM REST service is called to create the new Contact and then that new Contact is populated into the Customer field and the Quick Create section is then hidden
• Whenever the Customer field changes the CRM REST service is called to retrieve the Contact’s Email Address and Phone Number and these are then populated onto the CRM form

I have provided sample code for these components in my previous posts. 

Today I wanted to save an Activity record as completed and close the form all via java script.  i.e. I wanted to be able to do the same thing that clicking this button does:

I wondered whether the CRM ribbon definition would reveal what this button does.  Sure enough it does.   Looking in…

\sdk\samplecode\cs\client\ribbon\exportribbonxml\exportedribbonxml\phonecallribbon.xml

… I found that the “Mark Complete” button calls a command called:

"Mscrm.SavePrimaryActivityAsComplete"

As you can see below:

This Command is a Ribbon Command and a quick ctrl-F in that same file quickly located the definition of the Command:

As you can see the button calls a Function called “SaveAsCompleted” which resides in a java script library called activity.js.

I wondered whether I could call this function from my java script.   Sure enough I can:

Works exactly as I hoped.

Does this mean I have java script access to lots of additional functionality?  I hope so!

p.s. Another approach that might work here and may be a little more supported is to programmatically click the Ribbon button.  I haven’t tried that.

p.p.s  If you are curious as to what the code behind this function is you can locate it on your CRM server under:  \CRMWeb\_static\Activities

Here it is:

function SaveAsCompleted(){if(!crmForm.IsValid())return;crmForm.SubmitCrmForm(58,true,true,false)}

Regards,

Gareth

This first example shows how to pop an existing record, in this case a Case record.  In this scenario I have a field called Existing Case (new_existingcase) on the Phone Call form which is a lookup field to the Case entity.   This function reads the GUID and name value of that Case and then pops that record using a window.open command:

function PopCase() {
    //Get the value of the ExistingCase field
    var ExistingCase = Xrm.Page.data.entity.attributes.get("new_existingcase");
    if (ExistingCase.getValue() != null) {

        //Split out the GUID and Name from the ExistingCase field
        var ExistingCaseGUID = ExistingCase.getValue()[0].id;
        var ExistingCaseName = ExistingCase.getValue()[0].name;

        //Set features for how the Case form window will appear
        var features = "location=no,menubar=no,status=no,toolbar=no";

        //Pop the Case record
        window.open("/main.aspx?etn=incident&pagetype=entityrecord&id=" + encodeURIComponent(ExistingCaseGUID), "_blank", features, false);
    }
}

This second example shows how to create a new record, again let’s look at the Case entity.  In this scenario my code sits on the Phone Call form and want to create a new Case for the Customer specified on the Phone Call.  First I retrieve the details of the Customer from the CRM form (from the “from” field).  Then in a variable called extraqs I define the parameter values I want to pass across to the form so that some of the field values default, including the Customer field.   Note that to populate a Customer lookup field I have to provide 3 parameter values (for simpler lookup fields you supply just the first 2 values).  Then, to pop the form, it’s a simple window.open with the parameters variable included:

//Collect values from the existing CRM form that you want to default onto your new record
var CallerGUID = Xrm.Page.data.entity.attributes.get("from").getValue()[0].id;
var CallerName = Xrm.Page.data.entity.attributes.get("from").getValue()[0].name; 

//Set the parameter values
var extraqs = "&title=New Case";
extraqs += "&customerid=" + CallerGUID;
extraqs += "&customeridname=" + CallerName;
extraqs += "&customeridtype=contact"; 

//Set features for how the window will appear
var features = "location=no,menubar=no,status=no,toolbar=no"; 

//Pop the window
window.open("/main.aspx?etn=incident&pagetype=entityrecord&extraqs=" + encodeURIComponent(extraqs), "_blank", features, false);

Hope this is helpful.

Retrieving Records

When querying for existing records the result provided by the oData query is an array of CRM records.  You can access that by referring to data.d.results[0] as illustrated below:

success: function (data, textStatus, XmlHttpRequest) {
	var Contact = data.d.results[0];
	if (Contact.Telephone1 != null) {
		Xrm.Page.data.entity.attributes.get("new_phonenumber2").setValue(Contact.Telephone1);
		alert("phone set");
	}

I’m placing the first CRM object in that array into a variable called Contact.  In the above example my query (which I haven’t included) was performing a top1 selection so I am only expecting one record and therefore only interested in the first record (array value 0). 

I then retrieve the Contact’s phone number by referring to Contact.Telephone1 where Contact is my object variable and Telephone1 is one of it’s attributes.  To know the attribute name and the correct case to use make sure you test your REST query in IE or using the oData Query Designer.

Creating Records

When creating a new record you will be returned the object that was created.  This will be just a single CRM object rather than an array of objects.  You can access that by referring to data.[“d”] as illustrated below:

success: function (data, textStatus, XmlHttpRequest) {
	var NewCRMRecordCreated = data["d"];
	alert(NewCRMRecordCreated.IncidentId);

Hope this helps. 

Here’s what my screen looks like:

The “Quick Create New Citizen” fields are enabled so long as a “Citizen” has not yet been specified on the Case (note: I have renamed Contact to Citizen).   Once you key into one of the Quick Create fields the other Quick Create fields become mandatory.  Once they are all populated a new Citizen/Contact is created and the Case is updated to link to that record.

Here’s the java script:

function SetLookupValue(fieldName, id, name, entityType) { 
    if (fieldName != null) { 
        var lookupValue = new Array(); 
        lookupValue[0] = new Object(); 
        lookupValue[0].id = id; 
        lookupValue[0].name = name; 
        lookupValue[0].entityType = entityType; 
        Xrm.Page.getAttribute(fieldName).setValue(lookupValue); 
    } 
} 

function DisableFields() { 
    Xrm.Page.ui.controls.get("new_firstname").setDisabled(true); 
    Xrm.Page.ui.controls.get("new_lastname").setDisabled(true); 
    Xrm.Page.ui.controls.get("new_phonenumber").setDisabled(true); 
} 

function MakeFieldsMandatory() { 
    Xrm.Page.data.entity.attributes.get("new_firstname").setRequiredLevel("required"); 
    Xrm.Page.data.entity.attributes.get("new_lastname").setRequiredLevel("required"); 
    Xrm.Page.data.entity.attributes.get("new_phonenumber").setRequiredLevel("required"); 
} 

function MakeFieldsNonMandatory() { 
    Xrm.Page.data.entity.attributes.get("new_firstname").setRequiredLevel("none"); 
    Xrm.Page.data.entity.attributes.get("new_lastname").setRequiredLevel("none"); 
    Xrm.Page.data.entity.attributes.get("new_phonenumber").setRequiredLevel("none"); 
} 

function OnLoad() { 
    if (Xrm.Page.ui.getFormType() == 1) { 
    } 
    else if (Xrm.Page.ui.getFormType() != 1) { 
        DisableFields(); 
    } 
} 

function NewContact() { 
    if ( 
            Xrm.Page.getAttribute("new_firstname").getValue() == null && 
            Xrm.Page.getAttribute("new_lastname").getValue() == null && 
            Xrm.Page.getAttribute("new_phonenumber").getValue() == null) { 
        MakeFieldsNonMandatory(); 
    } 
    else if ( 
                Xrm.Page.getAttribute("new_firstname").getValue() != null && 
                Xrm.Page.getAttribute("new_lastname").getValue() != null && 
                Xrm.Page.getAttribute("new_phonenumber").getValue() != null && 
                Xrm.Page.data.entity.attributes.get("customerid").getValue() == null) { 
        CreateContact(); 
        Xrm.Page.getAttribute("new_phonenumber2").setValue(Xrm.Page.getAttribute("new_phonenumber").getValue()); 
        DisableFields(); 
    } 
    else { 
        MakeFieldsMandatory(); 
        //Xrm.Page.ui.controls.get("from").setVisible(false); 
    } 
} 

function CreateContact() { 
    // Get the CRM URL 
    var serverUrl = Xrm.Page.context.getServerUrl(); 

    // Cater for URL differences between on premise and online 
    if (serverUrl.match(/\/$/)) { 
        serverUrl = serverUrl.substring(0, serverUrl.length - 1); 
    } 

    // Specify the ODATA end point (this is the same for all CRM 2011 implementations) 
    var ODATA_ENDPOINT = "/XRMServices/2011/OrganizationData.svc"; 

    // Specify the ODATA entity collection 
    var ODATA_EntityCollection = "/ContactSet"; 

    // Define an object for the CRM record you want created 
    var CRMObject = new Object(); 

    // Define attribute values for the CRM object 
    CRMObject.FirstName = Xrm.Page.getAttribute("new_firstname").getValue(); 
    CRMObject.LastName = Xrm.Page.getAttribute("new_lastname").getValue(); 
    CRMObject.Telephone1 = Xrm.Page.getAttribute("new_phonenumber").getValue(); 

    //Parse the entity object into JSON 
    var jsonEntity = window.JSON.stringify(CRMObject); 

    //Asynchronous AJAX function to Create a CRM record using OData 
    $.ajax({ 
        type: "POST", 
        contentType: "application/json; charset=utf-8", 
        datatype: "json", 
        url: serverUrl + ODATA_ENDPOINT + ODATA_EntityCollection, 
        data: jsonEntity, 
        beforeSend: function (XMLHttpRequest) { 
            //Specifying this header ensures that the results will be returned as JSON.      
            XMLHttpRequest.setRequestHeader("Accept", "application/json"); 
        }, 
        success: function (data, textStatus, XmlHttpRequest) { 
            //This function will trigger asynchronously if the Retrieve was successful 
            //alert("ajax call successful"); 
            var NewCRMRecordCreated = data["d"]; 
            var FullName = Xrm.Page.getAttribute("new_firstname").getValue() + " " + Xrm.Page.getAttribute("new_lastname").getValue(); 
            SetLookupValue("customerid", NewCRMRecordCreated.ContactId, FullName, "contact"); 
        }, 
        error: function (XmlHttpRequest, textStatus, errorThrown) { 
            //This function will trigger asynchronously if the Retrieve returned an error 
            alert("ajax call failed"); 
        } 
    }); 
}

The new fields are called new_firstname, new_lastname and new_phonenumber.

You’ll need to add the following libraries and event handler to the Case form’s OnLoad event (I provide a download link to these at the end of this post):

And you will need this event handler added to each of the Quick Create field’s OnChange events:

The 4 web resources employed are available here.

Cheers,

Gareth.

Here’s the end result that will be achieved:

In this scenario we are customising the Phone Call entity’s Form ribbon.  In particular the Main Tab of that ribbon (the tab that carries the name of the Entity).

To implement this change we need to customise the Phone Call entity.  At present CRM does not provide a UI for Ribbon customisations but the customisation XML does support these changes.  So we need the Phone Call entity’s customization xml.   Create a Solution, add the Phone Call entity, export the solution, unzip and then open the customization.xml file in Visual Studio.

Collapse the EntityInfo and FormXml nodes and you should see the RibbonDiffXml node, this is where we specify changes to the Ribbon.  Replace the CustomActions line with the following XML:

<CustomActions> 
  <CustomAction Id="Mscrm.Form.phonecall.CustomGroup.CustomAction" 
                Location="Mscrm.Form.phonecall.MainTab.Groups._children" 
                Sequence="110"> 
    <CommandUIDefinition> 
      <Group Id="Mscrm.Form.phonecall.CustomGroup.Group" 
              Command="Mscrm.Form.phonecall.CustomGroup.Command" 
              Title="Gareths Group" 
              Sequence="51" 
              Template="Mscrm.Templates.Flexible2"> 
        <Controls Id="Mscrm.Form.phonecall.CustomGroup.Controls"> 
          <Button Id="Mscrm.Form.phonecall.CustomGroup.Button.A" 
                  Command="Mscrm.Form.phonecall.CustomGroup.Button.A.Command" 
                  Sequence="10" 
                  LabelText="Button 1" 
                  ToolTipTitle="TipTitle" 
                  ToolTipDescription="TipDescription" 
                  TemplateAlias="o1" 
                  Image16by16="/_imgs/ribbon/newchart16.png"  
                  Image32by32="/_imgs/ribbon/newchart32.png"  /> 
          <Button Id="Mscrm.Form.phonecall.CustomGroup.Button.B" 
                  Command="Mscrm.Form.phonecall.CustomGroup.Button.B.Command" 
                  Sequence="20" 
                  LabelText="Button 2" 
                  ToolTipTitle="TipTitle" 
                  ToolTipDescription="TipDescription" 
                  TemplateAlias="o1" 
                  Image16by16="/_imgs/ribbon/CustomEntity_16.png"  
                  Image32by32="/_imgs/ribbon/CustomEntity_32.png"   /> 
        </Controls> 
      </Group> 
    </CommandUIDefinition> 
  </CustomAction> 
  <CustomAction Id="Mscrm.Form.phonecall.CustomGroup.MaxSize.CustomAction" 
                Location="Mscrm.Form.phonecall.MainTab.Scaling._children" 
                Sequence="120"> 
    <CommandUIDefinition> 
      <MaxSize  Id="Mscrm.Form.phonecall.CustomGroup.MaxSize" 
                GroupId="Mscrm.Form.phonecall.CustomGroup.Group" 
                Sequence="21" 
                Size="LargeLarge" /> 
    </CommandUIDefinition> 
  </CustomAction> 
  <CustomAction Id="Mscrm.Form.phonecall.CustomGroup.Popup.CustomAction" 
                Location="Mscrm.Form.phonecall.MainTab.Scaling._children" 
                Sequence="140"> 
    <CommandUIDefinition> 
      <Scale    Id="Mscrm.Form.phonecall.CustomGroup.Popup.1" 
                GroupId="Mscrm.Form.phonecall.CustomGroup.Group" 
                Sequence="85" 
                Size="Popup" /> 
    </CommandUIDefinition> 
  </CustomAction> 
</CustomActions>

We are adding 3 Custom Actions here: 

• The first Custom Action adds the new Group and the 2 Buttons inside that Group.
• The second Custom Action adds the MaxSize definition for the Group to the Scaling definition of the Ribbon.  This tells CRM how to display the buttons when the screen size does not require any collapsing of the buttons.
• The third Custom Action adds the Scale definition for the Group to the Scaling definition of the Ribbon. This tells CRM how to display the buttons when the screen size is insufficient.

To adjust my sample code for your scenario do the following:

Do a Find and Replace on “phonecall”, replacing with the name of your entity.

Change the Location value on line 3 to the relevant Group ID of your entity’s Ribbon definition.  I’ll explain.  In my scenario I wanted to add a Button Group to the Phone Call form’s Main tab so I went and found the Phone Call ribbon definition in the SDK here:

  \sdk\samplecode\cs\client\ribbon\exportribbonxml\exportedribbonxml\phonecallribbon.xml

[UPDATE: 14 Dec 2011 – The latest SDK did not include the ribbon definition XML files forcing you to build and run an app from source code provided in order to generate them for your self. I provide instructions on this process here]

And looked for my Tab in that file, finding it here (see the yellow highlight below):

I wanted to add a new Group under the Groups section of the Ribbon so the Location value in our customization file needs to be that Groups Id (highlighted in green above) – appended with ._children.  i.e.:

That’s all you need to change at this stage.  We’ll come back and personalise other settings in a sec, let’s just try and get the button group to appear first.

Ok, now we need to add some commands to our customization file.  Replace the CommandDefinitions line with the following XML:

<CommandDefinitions> 
  <CommandDefinition Id="Mscrm.Form.phonecall.CustomGroup.Button.A.Command"> 
    <EnableRules /> 
    <DisplayRules /> 
    <Actions> 
      <Url Address="http://www.google.com" /> 
    </Actions> 
  </CommandDefinition> 
  <CommandDefinition Id="Mscrm.Form.phonecall.CustomGroup.Button.B.Command"> 
    <EnableRules /> 
    <DisplayRules /> 
    <Actions> 
      <Url Address="http://www.google.com" /> 
    </Actions> 
  </CommandDefinition> 
  <CommandDefinition Id="Mscrm.Form.phonecall.CustomGroup.Command"> 
    <EnableRules> 
      <EnableRule Id="Mscrm.ConvertActivity" /> 
    </EnableRules> 
    <DisplayRules> 
      <DisplayRule Id="Mscrm.ConvertActivity" /> 
    </DisplayRules> 
    <Actions /> 
  </CommandDefinition> 
</CommandDefinitions>

Here again we have 3 bits, 3 Command Definition’s:

• The first Command Definition defines what should happen when the first button is clicked.  I just have a hardcoded URL being launched. 
• The second Command Definition defines the 2nd button’s action.
• And the third Command Definition defines when the Group of buttons should be enabled and visible.  You can alternatively set these rules per button.  You’ll see I am referring to a rule called “Mscrm.ConvertActivity”.   I got this from the phonecallribbon.xml.  This is the rule used for the Convert to Case button.  I find it’s handy to just steal the rule of another button who’s behaviour you want to mimic.

To adjust my sample code for your scenario do the following:

Change the URL being launched by each button or replace s jscript function call like the below:

And find a Display Rule and Enable Rule in your entity’s ribbon.xml that you can use.  You can’t just use my “Mscrm.ConvertActivity” rule as it may not exist on your entity.

Ok, that should be enough to get our buttons to appear.  To deploy, zip back up the customization.xml file along with it’s other solution files and then import that solution zip file back into CRM and Publish.  Pop your form and you should now see the new Button group and it’s 2 buttons:

To adjust the appearance you can now go back and tweak some of the XML attributes (after which you would re-zip, import and publish).

To change where the Group appears on the Ribbon change the Sequence value under the Group node:

Refer back to the entity’s ribbon.xml to see what sequence each existing Group has to figure out what value you need to slot your in between:

Change the Button Group label and the label of the individual buttons here:

Change the Button icon here:

You have 2 approaches for setting the button icons.  You can browse the entity’s ribbon.xml (or any entity’s ribbon.xml for that matter, or even applicationribbon.xml) and steal the path and filename of a button you want to use.   Or, you can upload your own button icons as web resources and then reference the web resource, which is done in this manner:

Image16by16="$webresource:new_star16x16"  
Image32by32="$webresource:new_star32x32"

That should be enough to get you going.  Hope this helps someone.

Gareth.

Let’s start by framing an example.  On the Phone Call form we have Ribbon buttons for both “Convert to Case” and “Convert to Opportunity”:

You’ll note the poor Convert to Case button got the short straw and is presented as a small button, whilst the Convert to Opportunity button appears in full and with a text label.    But what if we are implementing CRM for Customer Service?  In that scenario we are unlikely to care about Opportunities and would likely prefer these buttons switched around.   Here’s how we do that…

As described in my previous posts customising the ribbon involves a bit of initial research and then some manual editing of an exported customization XML file.   For the research component what we need to do is have a look at the ribbon definition for the Phone Call form.  We find that in the SDK here:

\sdk\samplecode\cs\client\ribbon\exportribbonxml\exportedribbonxml\phonecallribbon.xml

[UPDATE: 14 Dec 2011 – The latest SDK did not include the ribbon definition XML files forcing you to build and run an app from source code provided in order to generate them for your self. I provide instructions on this process here]

Open that file in Visual Studio and locate the XML that represents these buttons we want to change.  In this case we want to find the form ribbon’s Main tab:

Always make sure you are looking at the right Tab as similarly named button may appear on the SubGrid tab and HomepageGrid tabs as well.

The lesson for first timers I want to reiterate here is DO NOT change this XML file.  It will have no effect.   This file is essentially documentation of the out-of-the-box CRM ribbons it is no way used by CRM to render the ribbons.   To change the ribbon we need to make entries into an exported customization.xml file that contains the definition of the Entity involved.

So jump back to CRM, create a Solution called PhoneCall and add the Phone Call entity into that Solution.  Export that Solution, unzip the file and then open customization.xml file in Visual Studio.  Collapse the EntityInfo and FormXml nodes and you should see the RibbonDiffXml node, this is where we specify changes to the Ribbon:

Replace the CustomActions line with the following XML:

<CustomActions> 
  <CustomAction Id="GT.switch.button.sequence1" 
                Location="Mscrm.Form.phonecall.MainTab.Convert.Controls._children" 
                Sequence="1"> 
    <CommandUIDefinition> 
      <Button Id="Mscrm.Form.phonecall.Convert.Opportunity"  
              Command="Mscrm.Form.ConvertToOpportunity"  
              Sequence="21"  
              Alt="$Resources:MenuItem_ToolTip_ConvertToOpportunity"  
              LabelText="$Resources:MenuItem_Label_ConvertToOpportunity"  
              Image16by16="/_imgs/ribbon/ConvertOpportunity_16.png"  
              Image32by32="/_imgs/ribbon/ConvertOpportunity_32.png"  
              ToolTipTitle="$Resources:Mscrm_Form_Other_MainTab_Actions_Convert_Opportunity_ToolTipTitle"  
              ToolTipDescription="$Resources:Mscrm_Form_Other_MainTab_Actions_Convert_Opportunity_ToolTipDescription"  
              TemplateAlias="o2"  
              /> 
    </CommandUIDefinition> 
  </CustomAction> 
  <CustomAction Id="GT.switch.button.sequence2" 
                Location="Mscrm.Form.phonecall.MainTab.Convert.Controls._children" 
                Sequence="2"> 
    <CommandUIDefinition>           
      <Button Id="Mscrm.Form.phonecall.Convert.Case"  
              Command="Mscrm.Form.ConvertToCase"  
              Sequence="9"  
              Alt="$Resources:MenuItem_ToolTip_ConvertToCase"  
              LabelText="$Resources:MenuItem_Label_ConvertToCase"  
              Image16by16="/_imgs/ribbon/ConvertCase_16.png"  
              Image32by32="/_imgs/ribbon/ConvertCase_32.png"  
              ToolTipTitle="$Resources:Mscrm_Form_Other_MainTab_Actions_Convert_Case_ToolTipTitle"  
              ToolTipDescription="$Resources:Mscrm_Form_Other_MainTab_Actions_Convert_Case_ToolTipDescription"  
              TemplateAlias="o1"  
              /> 
    </CommandUIDefinition> 
  </CustomAction> 
</CustomActions>

Here’s a breakdown of the XML…

This first bit:

Reads as:  “I want to perform a Custom Action, lets call my action GT.switch.button.sequence1.  I want to change one of the child nodes in the ribbon definition under the node that has the Id: “Mscrm.Form.phonecall.MainTab.Convert.Controls”.

Then we have:

Here we are defining a button.   Now what I did here was I copy and pasted the definition of the Convert to Opportunity button from phonecallribbon.xml into this customization.xml file.  I then changed the properties that I wanted changed.  Specifically I changed the Sequence so that this button would be rendered after the Convert to Case button (which has Sequence 20) and I changed the TemplateAlias to o2 so that this button will be rendered as a little button.   I think this is important as this button group has been defined as 1 big + 2 small button group and I don’t want to defy that.   Those are the only 2 items I have changed.  Because the Id I have specified for this button matches an existing button CRM knows to merge my definition with its existing definition and overwrite it’s definition with mine, rather than creating a new button.

In my XML snippet in addition to the above I have a second Custom Action containing a second button definition where I specify the overrides I want to the Convert to Case button.   Each button definition needs to sit under it’s own Custom Action header, hence this structure.

That’s it.  To deploy we simply zip back up the customization.xml file along with it’s other solution files and then import that solution zip file back into CRM and Publish.  

Here’s the end result:

You can follow this same approach to change buttons icons, button labels, etc.

Note: to retain both buttons as large buttons simply set TemplateAlias="o1" on each:

Here’s a scenario to provide some context.  In this post Rhett Clinton provides a jscript solution for defaulting a Customer Lookup to Contact rather than Account.

i.e. when you click on the Phone Number form’s “Sender” field the lookup that appears has “Look for” set to Contact rather than Account:

The line of code that does this is highlighted below:

The second line above is there to overcome a problem.  Without that 2nd line what you find is the lookup window switches to Contact but the default view in the lookup defers to whatever the default public view for the entity is – for Contact this is typically “My Active Contacts” – and this isn’t typically what we want.  

The second line of code changes the default view to “All Actives Contact” but a hardcoded value is being used.  For you to use this code you will need to determine the GUID of your “All Actives Contact” view (it will be different in each CRM installation) and change the code.   And this approach is no good if you are operating DEV and TEST environments (which you should be!) as the code will not transport without adjustment.

So here we have a good example of the need for configuration data that can be retrieved via CRM jscript.  Here’s my solution.

Firstly, the best place for this configuration data is CRM.  It’s an easy data store for us to query, it is fully securable and if required we can leverage CRM’s audit, field level security, and data import functionality.  Here’s my entity:

I have implemented a simple data model.  A record consists of an identifying name and then the configuration value.  The Value field is a multi-line text field which means it can support a simple single text field or numeric value or a more complicated XML value.

Now to utilise the configuration data we need a jscript function that can perform a REST query.   Here’s my function:

function GetConfigValue(ConfigParamName) { 
    // Get the CRM URL 
    var serverUrl = Xrm.Page.context.getServerUrl(); 

    // Cater for URL differences between on premise and online 
    if (serverUrl.match(/\/$/)) { 
        serverUrl = serverUrl.substring(0, serverUrl.length - 1); 
    } 

    // Specify the ODATA end point (this is the same for all CRM 2011 implementations) 
    var ODATA_ENDPOINT = "/XRMServices/2011/OrganizationData.svc"; 

    // Specify the ODATA entity collection (this needs to be specific to your entity) 
    var ODATA_EntityCollection = "/new_configurationSet"; 

    // Specify the ODATA filter 
    var ODATA_Query = "?$select=new_Value&$filter=new_name%20eq%20\'" + ConfigParamName + "\'&$top=1";    

    // Build the URL 
    var ODATA_Final_url = serverUrl + ODATA_ENDPOINT + ODATA_EntityCollection + ODATA_Query; 

    //Call the REST endpoint 
    $.ajax({ 
        type: "GET", 
        contentType: "application/json; charset=utf-8", 
        datatype: "json", 
        url: ODATA_Final_url, 
        beforeSend: function (XMLHttpRequest) { 
            //Specifying this header ensures that the results will be returned as JSON.      
            XMLHttpRequest.setRequestHeader("Accept", "application/json"); 
        }, 
        success: function (data, textStatus, XmlHttpRequest) { 
            //This function will trigger asynchronously if the Retrieve was successful 
            return (data.d.results[0].new_Value); 
        }, 
        error: function (XmlHttpRequest, textStatus, errorThrown) { 
            //This function will trigger asynchronously if the Retrieve returned an error 
            alert("ajax call failed"); 
        } 
    }); 
}

To call the function from a CRM form you need to reference the web resource that contains this function and web resources that contain json and jquery libraries:

Then you can simply use this syntax to translate configuration parameter names into their respective values:

function ChangeLookup() { 
    document.getElementById("from").setAttribute("defaulttype", "2"); 
    var ConfigValue = GetConfigValue("ActiveContactsViewGUID"); 
    Xrm.Page.getControl("from").setDefaultView(ConfigValue); 
}

The relevant piece there being…

… where I call the “GetConfigValue” function, passing in the configuration parameter name "ActiveContactsViewGUID" which returns the configuration value into the variable “ConfigValue”.

There you have it, a nice little configuration framework for your client side scripting.  Solution file containing the entity and web resource is available here.