Setting the default unit for opportunity, quote and salesorder-product in CRM 2011 using JavaScript

For any product in the product catalog you have to define the default unit in which the product is usually sold. In more than 90% of all cases I guess the default unit is used for opportunities, quotes or salesorder. So quite often there is the requirement, that the unit should be populated with the products default unit after the product is chosen.
Now the approach is quite straight forward: attach to the productid fields onChange event, get the default unit from the product and populate the uomid field.
While in CRM 4.0 you could set the field directly in the onChange event, this approach does no longer work for CRM2011. It seems, Microsoft changed the behaviour here, so that first your custom code is executed and afterwards the uom field (and the amount) is cleared.
What you have to do is adding a slight delay to the event, so that your code is executed after the built-in onChange handler of the product. We found 100ms to be good value, since it’s enough for the built-in logic to execute, but small enough that the user won’t notice a delay.

function ProductOnChange_SetUOM() {
// This is the fields onChange handler. Here we add a delay of 100ms before the actual logic is executed.
window.setTimeout(“SetUomId()”, 100);
}

function SetUomId() {
// Actual logic goes here.
}

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Online limitations

This is a brief summary of the disadvantages and limitations of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Online:

• Storage Limit 5 GB
• No Full Database Export
• Maximum number of entities is 200
• Maximum number of workflows is 200
• No custom workflow activities
• No custom reports based on .rdl files
• No E-Mail Router

PS: The above informations are supplied without liability.

Especially for CRM Projects having high focus on reporting Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Online is not recommended.

Fetch XML based reports limitations

Fetch-XML based reports have certain limitations. Here is a list of them (taken from http://gtcrm.wordpress.com/2011/03/24/fetch-xml-reports-for-crm-2011-online/ published by Gareth Tucker)

No “Left Outer Joins”

It is not possible to create queries using Left Outer Joins. For example  it is not  possible to display all open sales opportunities showing information about the potential customer that can be an account or a contact.

An amount of 5000 returned records maximum

Fetch XML requests return a maximum of 5000 records (This has not been proved by proMX and was taken from Gareth Tuckers article)

Aggregate functions

Microsoft promises support for following aggregate functions:

• sum
• avg
• min
• max
• count(*)
• count(attribute name)

(http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg309565.aspx). In my tests I found out that AVG does not work well.

No “UNION Selects”

In SQL Queries the UNION operator is used to combine more than one Select statement and have the result in one dataset. In Fetch XML you don’t have a similar operator. Instead you only can retrieve the data in different datasets.

No complex queries

It is not possible to work with temporary tables or loops as like it is possible at SQL Queries.

Additional Links:

Ankit Malpani lists the possibilities of Fetch XML in “Fetch-Xml based Reports: Bits & Pieces”.

Frank Lee suggests “Custom Report Development” in his article “CRM Online: Reporting Options” by using the Microsoft Dynamics CRM SDK in case of CRM Online. Then the “reporting options” will be “endless”.

published by Carmen Rudolph, proMX GmbH

Set property “Hide” of report parameter in Report Server 2008 R2

The problem

In SQL Server 2008 Business Intelligence Development Studio there is the navigation pane “Report Data”. Here the parameters can be configured. I have checked “Hidden” for all of the automatically filled parameters with the prefix “CRM_” and the Prompt is filled with the name of the parameter.

Here is the code snippet for the report parameter “CRM_FilterText” in the rdl file:

<ReportParameter Name=“CRM_FilterText“>

  <DataType>String</DataType>

  <Nullable>true</Nullable>

  <DefaultValue>

    <Values>

      <Value xmlns:xsi=“http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance“ xsi:nil=“true“ />

    </Values>

  </DefaultValue>

  <AllowBlank>true</AllowBlank>

  <Prompt>CRM_FilterText</Prompt>

  <Hidden>true</Hidden>
</ReportParameter>

 

Until SQL Server 2008 there hat been no problems during installing the reports in CRM. The report parameters hat been set correctly.
With SQL Server 2008 R2 an error occurred. Every parameter starting with “P” or with “CRM_” is not set correctly. The entry in the event viewer is .This is amazing because other parameters with other names are all stored correctly. Perhaps it is a bug in SQL Server 2008 R2 – I don’t know.
For we have more than one report to install it is not practicable after installing the reports to go to the report server and corrrect every parameter by checking “Hide” for every report. No way. I had to find a better way.

The solution

After a while I found a hint how to set the hide propety of report parameter using RS API (many thanks to Jin Chen and his answer ).
For the installation of the reports in CRM I have written a small console application using the CRM and the RS API. The RS API is referenced by webservice, the CRM API is referenced by DLLs.
I have discovered setting the property hide of the report parameter is differently when you have a report server 2008 or a report server 2008 R2.

If you have the report server 2008 you have to use SetReportDefintion. The Prompt property can have the name of the report parameter, but it can set to string.empty too.The PromptUser property is set to false.

Below is the code snippet for report server 2008: 

string reportname=“/”+organizationName+“_MSCRM”+“/4.0/{“+rptGuid+“}”;
try

{

    //Append prompt user value “false” and prompt empty value

    byte[] reportDefinition = null;

    Warning[] warnings;

    System.Xml.XmlDocument doc = new System.Xml.XmlDocument();

    //Get report definition.

    reportDefinition = rs.GetReportDefinition(reportname);

    MemoryStream stream = new MemoryStream(reportDefinition);

    doc.Load(stream);

    //Get report parameters’ list

    XmlNodeList nodeList = doc.GetElementsByTagName(“ReportParameter”);

    //Create a new node for prompt user.

    XmlElement elem = doc.CreateElement(“PromptUser”);

    elem.InnerText = “false”;

 

    //Iterate through nodes of type report parameter

    foreach (XmlNode nodeTemp in nodeList)

    {

        if (nodeTemp.Attributes["Name"].Value.StartsWith(“CRM_”) ||

            nodeTemp.Attributes["Name"].Value.StartsWith(“P”))

        {

            bool bPromptUserExisting = false;

            //bool bPromptUserSpecified = false;

            //string promptName = nodeTemp.Attributes["Name"].Value;

            foreach (XmlNode childNode in nodeTemp.ChildNodes)

            {

                if (childNode.Name == “Prompt”)

                    childNode.InnerText = string.Empty;

 

                if (childNode.Name == “PromptUser”)

                {

                    childNode.InnerText = “false”;

                    bPromptUserExisting = true;

                }

            }

            //If node does not exist, add the promptuser node.

            if (!bPromptUserExisting)

            {

                //Add the node to the document.

                nodeTemp.AppendChild(elem);

            }

        }

    }

 

    MemoryStream streamSave = new MemoryStream();

    doc.Save(streamSave);

    reportDefinition = streamSave.ToArray();

    //Update the report definition.

    warnings = rs.SetReportDefinition(reportname, reportDefinition);

    if (warnings != null)

    {

        foreach (Warning warning in warnings)

        {

            Console.WriteLine(warning.Message);

            AppendTextToLogFile(warning.Message);

        }

    }

 

}

catch (SoapException e)

{

    Console.WriteLine(e.Detail.InnerXml.ToString());

    AppendTextToLogFile(e.Detail.InnerXml.ToString());

} 

In case of report server 2008 R2 you only can change the property using SetReportParameters. SetReportDefintion do not change anything. The Prompt property must be empty and the PromptUser property is set to true!

Below is the code snippet for report server 2008 R2:

string reportname = “/”+organizationName+“_MSCRM”+“/4.0/{“+rptGuid+“}”;
ReportParameter[] parameters = null;
string historyID = null;
bool forRendering = true;
ParameterValue[] values = null;
DataSourceCredentials[] credentials = null;

parameters = rs.GetReportParameters

    (

        reportname,

        historyID,

        forRendering,

        values,

        credentials

    );

 

foreach (ReportParameter parameter in parameters)

{

    if (parameter.Name.StartsWith(“CRM_”) ||

        parameter.Name.StartsWith(“P”)

        )

    {

        //PromptUser = true AND Prompt =

        parameter.PromptUser = true;

        parameter.Prompt = string.Empty;

    }

}

rs.SetReportParameters(reportname, parameters);