Create Activities using the Dynamic Entity Way

Friday, December 19, 2008 Darren's CRM Blog

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I haven't touch CRM SDK for a while since I am working on another project not directly related to CRM. One of my old client required us to populate CRM with some more training data so they can use it for their training. So I have to modify the training processor that my teammates wrote to add activities to CRM. It appears to me that everything in the training processor have used Dynamic Entity for create, update, and delete.

To create an activities using dynamic entity is pretty straight forward, however I got stuck when I have to deal with the sender and recipient fields on a phone call, email, appointment and fax activity. Sender and Recipient field are ActivityParty type, I have done some research online and I was not able to find a way to associate the two fields to an activity using the dynamic approach. After going through the SDK and I was able to figure it out. I would like to share it since you might have to do the same in your next project.

Method 1: Not using Dynamic Entity

activityparty actParty = new activityparty();
actParty.partyid = new Lookup();
actParty.partyid.Value = new Guid("ENTER CONTACT GUID");
actParty.partyid.type = "contact";

activityparty actParty2 = new activityparty();
actParty2.partyid = new Lookup();
actParty2.partyid.Value = new Guid("ENTER USER GUID");
actParty2.partyid.type = "systemuser";

phonecall call = new phonecall();
call.from = new activityparty[] { actParty };
call.to = new activityparty[] { actParty2 };
call.description = "Test";

crmService.Create(call);

Method 2: Using Dynamic Entity

Property subject = new StringProperty();
((StringProperty)subject).Name = "subject";
((StringProperty)subject).Value = "Test";

Property description = new StringProperty();
((StringProperty)description).Name = "description";
((StringProperty)description).Value = "Test";

// Create From:
Property party1 = new LookupProperty();
((LookupProperty)party1).Name = "partyid";
((LookupProperty)party1).Value = new Lookup();
((LookupProperty)party1).Value.type = "contact";
((LookupProperty)party1).Value.Value = new Guid("ENTER CONTACT GUID");

DynamicEntity actParty1 = new DynamicEntity();
actParty1.Name = "activityparty";
actParty1.Properties = new Property[] { party1 };

DynamicEntityArrayProperty from = new DynamicEntityArrayProperty();
((DynamicEntityArrayProperty)from).Name = "from";
((DynamicEntityArrayProperty)from).Value = new DynamicEntity[] { actParty1 };

// Create To:
Property party2 = new LookupProperty();
((LookupProperty)party2).Name = "partyid";
((LookupProperty)party2).Value = new Lookup();
((LookupProperty)party2).Value.type = "systemuser";
((LookupProperty)party2).Value.Value = new Guid("ENTER USER GUID");

DynamicEntity actParty2 = new DynamicEntity();
actParty2.Name = "activityparty";
actParty2.Properties = new Property[] { party2 };

DynamicEntityArrayProperty to = new DynamicEntityArrayProperty();
((DynamicEntityArrayProperty)to).Name = "to";
((DynamicEntityArrayProperty)to).Value = new DynamicEntity[] { actParty2 };
 
// Create Phone Call Activity:
DynamicEntity activity = new DynamicEntity();
activity.Name = EntityName.phonecall.ToString();
activity.Properties = new Property[]{subject, description, from, to};

TargetCreateDynamic target = new TargetCreateDynamic();
target.Entity = activity;

CreateRequest request = new CreateRequest();
request.Target = target;

CreateResponse response = (CreateResponse)crmService.Execute(request);

That's it! Hope this will help you in your next project! :)