Debugging CRM Plug-ins, Stored Procedures & Custom Workflow Activities

by Danny Varghese 02.24.09

Whether it's developing CRM plug-ins, custom workflow activities, or writing stored procedures against the CRM database, the most useful tool I've used is the Microsoft Visual Studio Debugger. The debugger allows developers to step through the code for the above mentioned scenarios and has saved me hours!

Microsoft has phenomenal documentation on how to setup remote debugging:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bt727f1t.aspx

The biggest issues I've had trying to setup the debugger has always been with permissions. I would recommend paying especially close attention to this section. The next biggest issue I had was trying to attach the debugger to a running process: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/c6wf8e4z.aspx

Once you've setup Visual Studio debugger, you can attach the following processes for the following CRM components:

1. For plug-ins, attach the debugger to the w3wp.exe process.
2. For custom workflow activities, attach the debugger to MSCRMAsyncService.exe
3. For stored procedures, attach the debugger to sqlserver.exe

Once the debugger has been attached, you must set a breakpoint in the code (either the .NET or T-SQL code). After the breakpoint is set, to test, do the following:

1. For plug-ins, login to CRM and execute actions that will trigger the plug-in, such as create/update/assign a record.
2. For custom workflow activities, login to CRM and perform actions that will trigger the workflow. With this, being that it's an asynchronous service, you'll have to wait until that service runs, and then Visual Studio will let you step through the code.
3. For the stored procedure, just execute the stored procedure in Visual Studio and it will go right to the breakpoint.

I hope this post will help CRM developers save time and effort. I use the debugger every time I develop now to test and it's saved me tremendous amount of maintenance time and effort after the code has been deployed. Happy debugging!

CRM 4.0 Plug-in Registration Tool Walkthrough

by Danny Varghese 02.21.09

The CRM 4.0 Plug-in registration tool is Microsoft's tool to register any plug-in developed for CRM 4.0 and callouts that were developed for CRM 3.0, but need to be upgraded to 4.0. In this article, I'd like to take a step by step walkthrough of the tool including any interesting facts or issues I've run into during this process. Those will highlighted in the "NOTE" section.

To download the tool, please visit: http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/crmplugin for the latest version. The tool also comes packaged when you download the CRM 4.0 SDK, which you can do from: http://www.microsoft.com/DOWNLOADS/details.aspx?familyid=82E632A7-FAF9-41E0-8EC1-A2662AAE9DFB&displaylang=en.

Building The Plug-in Registration Tool

Either way, the download will contain Visual Studio project files that will need to be built. Mitch Kett in his blog has outlined how to do this: http://www.crowehorwath.com/cs/blogs/crm/archive/2008/03/19/incorporating-custom-entities-into-a-plugin-revised.aspx.

**NOTE: The CRM SDK provides great information on what each service provides for the user:

The CRM Web service provides strongly typed access to all entities in Microsoft Dynamics CRM, including custom entities and attributes. This Web service also allows execution of all supported operations, including those with built-in business logic as well as specialized operations. It provides a valid Web Services Description Language (WSDL) that is dynamically generated on the server to include the latest customizations and provides a single endpoint for your code.

The Discovery Web service is a mechanism to find the correct CrmService endpoint for your organization or to obtain a CRM ticket for Internet-facing deployment (IFD) or for Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online.

The Metadata Web service provides methods to read and write the metadata for an organization. This includes the definitions for entities, attributes, and relationships.**

**NOTE: If you don't place the assembly files mentioned in step (8) of Mitch's instructions, when you go to run the plug-in registration tool, you might get an error: "...Could Not Find Dependency…"**

Using The Plug-in Registration Tool

1. You can launch the tool by either running the executable built from the project mentioned in the steps above, or if you've configured Visual Studio with a shortcut, you can launch it from that menu.

1. Once the screen is loaded, click on Create New Connection. Enter a simple label for the connection, the server in which CRM is installed on, port, domain and user name.

**NOTE: There are security restrictions on the user that can register plug-ins. According to the SDK, the user account registering the plug-ins must exist in the Deployment Administrators group or must be a System Administrator. If the user is not part of at least one of those groups, you will get an error along the lines of "…Not have enough privilege to complete Create operation for an SDK entity…"**

**NOTE: If you don't enter a username and password, it will use the windows default credentials you used to login.**

1. Click on Connect. Once connected, you will see a new screen with various menu options. Let's dive deeper into each of these options.

1. Register
   1. Register New Assembly - you can register a new assembly that contains the plug-in execution code.
   2. Register New Step - allows you to configure the event that triggers the execution of the code. For example, this is where you can configure to fire a specific code after/before a record is created, updated, etc. This is equivalent to specifying a "PostUpdate," "PostCreate," in an xml configuration file for CRM 3.0 callouts.
   3. Register New Image - you can register an xml image of an entity. This can be used to find out what the values of a record is before and/or after the record is created, updated, etc. You can also specify which attributes of that record you want to pass into the execution context.

1. Import/Export
   1. Export Solution Xml - allows a user to export an xml file that contains the assembly names, steps and/or images registered previously. This allows for configuration of the plug-ins to be setup once and then migrated to other environments.
   2. Import Solution Xml - allows user to import the xml file mentioned above in (3bi).

NOTE: According to a document walking through the registration tool published by Ajith Gande the "Import Export has some limitations and design assumptions

• If a plug-in is impersonated on user MyDomain\crmUser and imported in an organization with different domain, it tries to map the user bases on the domain user name (crmuser)
• Plug-in assembly DLL’s are not exported in the Xml. When Import is in progress, you need to copy the assemblies to the same location as the .xml file
• Import overwrites the assemblies, plug-in, steps, images in the target organization if any other entity exists with same Guid, else it creates them
• It is recommended to import assemblies, plug-in, and a step all at once to avoid a lot of overwrites. So delete any existing assemblies with same name on target org. But the tool supports updating or adding a step to the existing plug-in using the import."

This was referenced from:

http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/Project/Download/FileDownload.aspx?ProjectName=crmplugin&DownloadId=320**

1. View
   1. Display By Assembly - this is the default view, showing all registered plug-ins by assembly name.
   2. Display By Entity - shows all registered plug-ins filtered by the entities they're registered for.
   3. Display By Message - organizes the plug-ins registered by messages or events such as Create, Update, etc.

1. Unregister, Refresh & Search (all self-explanatory)

1. Click on Register --> Register New Assembly --> Complete the steps below and press Register Selected Plugins --> Click on Close

1. Step 1- Allows you to browse to a location and select the assembly you want to upload.
2. Step 2 - This is not shown on the screenshot, but you now have to click Load Assembly
3. Step 3 - Select where the assembly should be stored for execution
   1. Database - Storing the files on the database allows users to update the assembly file through this wizard as many times as they want without having to perform an "iisreset," as you had to in CRM 3.0. Advantage #2 is now the server\bin\assembly folder will not become cluttered if you have numerous plug-ins. Finally, this makes migration from different environments much easier because there are less files to move.

**NOTE: If you want to debug the assembly files, you will need to place the symbols file (.pdb) in <crm installation directory>\Server\bin\assembly folder. **

1. Disk - This option allows you to store the assembly file as you did in CRM 3.0 under the <crm installation directory>\Server\bin\assembly directory. For debugging purposes, the symbols file (.pdb) must also be in this directory. If you store files here, an "iisreset" will be needed anytime any changes are made to the assembly.
2. GAC - (Global Assembly Cache), for more information on this, please see my other post: http://www.crowehorwath.com/cs/blogs/crm/archive/2008/03/05/gac-it-developing-portable-code-for-microsoft-crm.aspx

1. Once you've registered your plug-in, click on Register --> fill in the steps outline below --> Register New Step

1. Message - In CRM 3.0, you had to configure the callout.xml file to specify if the plug-in was to be triggered via and update, create, assign, etc. Now you can configure this at this step.
2. Primary Entity - The entity that will trigger the plug-in
3. Secondary Entity - You should enter this only when the plug-in should be triggered for an event requiring two entities like the "SetRelated" message.
4. Filtering Attributes - This allows you to filter which attributes of the entity will allow the triggering of the plug-in. For example if on the account you want the plug-in to fire only when the name gets updated, but not the account type, then you in your filter you can remove the account type. By default, all attributes are selected.
5. Plugin - Select the assembly, and class you wish to associate to this step.
6. Run In Users Context - By default it's set to calling user, which means the plug-in will be fired with the current users credentials. This is to control security so a user w/o the proper permissions won't have a plug-in fire to create/update/etc. any records. You can specify other users to run the context in. The list will pre-populate with all account names from the CRM installation.
7. Execution order - Sometimes asynchronous operations on dependant on others asynchronous operations to complete. The execution order allows you to specify when this plug-in is supposed to fire.
8. Event Sate - Specifies if the plug-in should be fired before or after an event. In CRM 3.0, this is similar to configuring a "PostUpdate," "PostCreate," "PreUpdate," etc.
9. Execution Mode - A new feature which allows the plug-in to execute asynchronously or synchronously.
10. Step Deployment - If you want the plug-in to be deployed (not registered) on the server and/or offline (Outlook client).
11. Triggering Pipeline - For example, if you have an account with activities and you re-assign that account. If the plug-in was registered an activity, then it does not get fired because the activity is getting updated as part of another operation. To trigger the plug-in in that case you have to set the pipeline to "Child Pipeline"

**NOTE: According to the SDK, If you want your plug-in to run regardless of whether a Web service call or an (internal) platform call initiated the pipeline, register your plug-in in a child pipeline. However, do not use the IPluginExecutionContext.CreateCrmService or IPluginExecutionContext.CreateMetatdataService methods if you are writing code for a plug-in in that is used in a child pipeline. In a child pipeline, you must instantiate the CrmService or MetadataService manually.**

1. Unsecure Configuration - if you don't want to hardcode any values and the plug-in needs certain configuration values (that may change based on deployment environments) you can specify the values here. For example, the CRM server url.
2. Secure Configuration - same concept as above, but you could place more secure configurations like user credentials.

1. (Optional) Click on Register New Image. I say this step is optional because you may not need this step at all times. This is equivalent to the pre and post image entity xml's in CRM 3.0. You can register an xml image of what the entity attributes were before and after an event. For example, if you've registered a post-update event on an account and you want to check what the value of a field was before the update, you could register a pre-update image. Furthermore, on this image, you can select which attributes you want the xml to contain. This allows users to help performance (all be it, just a tiny bit) but cutting down unnecessary fields.

**NOTE: You can not register a pre-create image since there were no attributes for a specific record because it hasn't been created yet. You will get an error if you try this.**

This concludes my in-depth look at the plug-in registration tool. All the notes I've added have been experiences I've had registering plug-ins. I hope this was informative and helps save you some time developing! Happy coding

Publishing Microsoft CRM 4.0 through ISA Server 2006

by Danny Varghese 02.21.09

Here is a great article that illustrates how to publish Microsoft CRM 4.0 through ISA Server 2006: http://blogs.technet.com/isablog/archive/2008/07/23/publishing-microsoft-crm-4-0-through-isa-server-2006.aspx

The article is broken up into the following sections:

1. Adjusting CRM Server For External Publishing
   1. General Considerations
   2. IFD Configuraiton

1. Configuring ISA Server 2006 Web publishing rule
2. Troubleshooting Tips

For those who need some information on Microsoft ISA Server: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISA_Server

Rules To Better Microsoft CRM & SSRS

by Danny Varghese 02.21.09

Below are some very useful links on standards for Microsoft CRM and SQL Server Reporting Services:

http://www.ssw.com.au/ssw/Standards/Rules/RulestoBetterMicrosoftCRM.aspx

http://www.ssw.com.au/ssw/Standards/Rules/RulesToBetterSQLReportingServices.aspx

Enjoy!

Example of Dynamic Entity Retrieval

by Danny Varghese 01.31.09

---

There have been numerous requests on other blogs about sample code to on how to retrieve entities in CRM. One way is to use the CRM web service to retrieve business entities, however by doing so, you're only limited to out-of-the-box entities with system attributes. To retrieve anything more "dynamic," you'll have to employ other methods.  Please remember that in order to retrieve any record, you must have the proper permissions on that entity.

Below is a code example of how to retrieve a record with an id using dynamic entity retrieve:

   1: public DynamicEntity RetrieveEntity()

   2: {

   3: //variable initialization

   4: TargetRetrieveDynamic target = new TargetRetrieveDynamic();

   5: RetrieveRequest retrieveRequest = new RetrieveRequest();

   6: RetrieveResponse retrieveResponse = null;

   7: DynamicEntity entity = null;

   8: target.EntityName = <name of entity here>

   9: target.EntityId = <id of entity here>

  10: //initialize request parameters

  11: retrieveRequest.ColumnSet = new AllColumns();

  12: retrieveRequest.ReturnDynamicEntities = true;

  13: retrieveRequest.Target = target;

  14: //build the response object

  15: retrieveResponse = 

  16: (RetrieveResponse)GetCrmService().Execute(retrieveRequest);

  17: //retrieve the service order item from the response

  18: entity = (DynamicEntity)retrieveResponse.BusinessEntity;

  19: return entity;

  20: }

The above example is a simple one, but the example below retrieves all contacts that have an account id = some id, and also retrieve the records with only a certain attributes. This is probably a more robust example encompassing many retrieval options:

   1:  

   2: private ArrayList RetrieveMultipleContacts(ICrmService crmService, Guid 

   3: parentAccountId) 

   4: { 

   5: //variable initialization 

   6: ConditionExpression condition = new ConditionBLOCKED EXPRESSION; 

   7: FilterExpression filter = new FilterBLOCKED EXPRESSION; 

   8: QueryExpression query = new QueryBLOCKED EXPRESSION; 

   9: RetrieveMultipleRequest request = new RetrieveMultipleRequest(); 

  10: ColumnSet cols = new ColumnSet(); 

  11: RetrieveMultipleResponse response = null; 

  12: ArrayList contacts = new ArrayList(); 

  13: //Set the condition for retrieval 

  14: condition.AttributeName = "parentcustomerid"; 

  15: condition.Operator = ConditionOperator.Equal; 

  16: condition.Values = new string[] { parentAccountId.ToString() }; 

  17: //Set the properties of the filter. 

  18: filter.FilterOperator = LogicalOperator.And; 

  19: filter.AddCondition(condition); 

  20: //Set the attributes needed to be returned. NOTE: The CRM 

  21: Sdk has an erroneous example 

  22: //of how to set the attributes for retrieval. 

  23: cols.Attributes.Add("address1_line1"); 

  24: cols.Attributes.Add("address1_line2"); 

  25: cols.Attributes.Add("address1_line3"); 

  26: cols.Attributes.Add("address1_city"); 

  27: cols.Attributes.Add("address1_stateorprovince"); 

  28: cols.Attributes.Add("address1_postalcode"); 

  29: cols.Attributes.Add("address1_country"); 

  30: cols.Attributes.Add("telephone1"); 

  31: cols.Attributes.Add("fax"); 

  32: //Set the properties of the QueryExpression object. 

  33: query.EntityName = EntityName.contact.ToString(); 

  34: query.ColumnSet = cols; 

  35: query.Criteria = filter; 

  36: //Set the query for the request and set the flag to return 

  37: //dynamic entities 

  38: request.Query = query; 

  39: //retrieve the contacts 

  40: response = (RetrieveMultipleResponse)crmService.Execute(request); 

  41: foreach (BusinessEntity cont in 

  42: response.BusinessEntityCollection.BusinessEntities) 

  43: { 

  44: contacts.Add(cont); 

  45: } 

  46: return contacts; 

  47: } 

I hope these examples help someone, happy coding!

Adding A Filtered Lookup In CRM

by Danny Varghese 02.03.09

Another common question I see in blogs from users are is there a way to add filtered lookups? That is only allow users to "lookup" certain records that related to that particular one. Here's a real life example:

Say you have an account that has a 1:N parental relationship with entity A. Now let's say there's another entity B that has N:1 referential relationships with both account, and entity A. There is a way on entity B so that after you select, on the lookup, a record of the account you want to relate to it, to filter the second lookup of entity A to only those related to the account you just selected. i.e.

Parental Relationship

Account --> Entity A

Referential Relationship

Entity B -- Account

Entity B -- Entity A

With simple JavaScript, when a user selects the lookup value for the account, the lookup for Entity A can be filtered to point to only those entity A's that are related to the account you just chose. Here's the code to place on the form of Entity B:

crmForm.all.<lookup field for entity A>.additionalparams = 'search=' + encodeURIComponent(crmForm.all.<lookup field for account>.DataValue[0].name);

That's it! Simple, yet effective.

Example of Dynamic Entity Retrieval

by Danny Varghese 01.31.09

---

There have been numerous requests on other blogs about sample code to on how to retrieve entities in CRM. One way is to use the CRM web service to retrieve business entities, however by doing so, you're only limited to out-of-the-box entities with system attributes. To retrieve anything more "dynamic," you'll have to employ other methods.  Please remember that in order to retrieve any record, you must have the proper permissions on that entity.

Below is a code example of how to retrieve a record with an id using dynamic entity retrieve:

public DynamicEntity RetrieveEntity()

{

//variable initialization

TargetRetrieveDynamic target = new TargetRetrieveDynamic();

RetrieveRequest retrieveRequest = new RetrieveRequest();

RetrieveResponse retrieveResponse = null;

DynamicEntity entity = null;

target.EntityName = <name of entity here>

target.EntityId = <id of entity here>

//initialize request parameters

retrieveRequest.ColumnSet = new AllColumns();

retrieveRequest.ReturnDynamicEntities = true;

retrieveRequest.Target = target;

//build the response object

retrieveResponse = 

(RetrieveResponse)GetCrmService().Execute(retrieveRequest);

//retrieve the service order item from the response

entity = (DynamicEntity)retrieveResponse.BusinessEntity;

return entity;

}

The above example is a simple one, but the example below retrieves all contacts that have an account id = some id, and also retrieve the records with only a certain attributes. This is probably a more robust example encompassing many retrieval options:

private ArrayList RetrieveMultipleContacts(ICrmService crmService, Guid parentAccountId)

{

//variable initialization

ConditionExpression condition = new ConditionBLOCKED EXPRESSION;

FilterExpression filter = new FilterBLOCKED EXPRESSION;

QueryExpression query = new QueryBLOCKED EXPRESSION;

RetrieveMultipleRequest request = new RetrieveMultipleRequest();

ColumnSet cols = new ColumnSet();

RetrieveMultipleResponse response = null;

ArrayList contacts = new ArrayList();

//Set the condition for retrieval

condition.AttributeName = "parentcustomerid";

condition.Operator = ConditionOperator.Equal;

condition.Values = new string[] { parentAccountId.ToString() };

//Set the properties of the filter.

filter.FilterOperator = LogicalOperator.And;

filter.AddCondition(condition);

//Set the attributes needed to be returned. NOTE: The CRM Sdk has an erroneous example

//of how to set the attributes for retrieval.

cols.Attributes.Add("address1_line1");

cols.Attributes.Add("address1_line2");

cols.Attributes.Add("address1_line3");

cols.Attributes.Add("address1_city");

cols.Attributes.Add("address1_stateorprovince");

cols.Attributes.Add("address1_postalcode");

cols.Attributes.Add("address1_country");

cols.Attributes.Add("telephone1");

cols.Attributes.Add("fax");

//Set the properties of the QueryExpression object.

query.EntityName = EntityName.contact.ToString();

query.ColumnSet = cols;

query.Criteria = filter;

//Set the query for the request and set the flag to return

//dynamic entities

request.Query = query;

//retrieve the contacts

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

foreach (BusinessEntity cont in response.BusinessEntityCollection.BusinessEntities)

{

contacts.Add(cont);

}

return contacts;

}

I hope these examples help someone, happy coding!