dynamics 365 customization

Workaround to get Plugin Profiler from the Unified Interface in D365 CE

priyeshwagh777 CRM with .NET Web Applications, Customizations, Dynamics 365, dynamics 365 administration, Dynamics 365 CE, dynamics 365 customization ,

Developers like me, often need to Profile the Plugin so see what logic you are implementing and this is pretty common in the development lifecycle. But, Let’s say you don’t have the classic UI at your disposal and need to download the Profiler from the Unified Interface itself – Here’s a little detour you’ll need to take to get it right.

Alternatively, using Persist To Entity is also preferred. But example – if you have a plugin on Create and on PreOperation, you won’t want to record to be created, you can go with the below –

Ease of the Classic UI

On the classic UI, you would get the Profiled file correctly just by Download Log File button on the interface itself.

classicProfiler

And the file has correct data starting with –
startingWIth

And ending with
endingWith.png

Profiler Message on the Unified Interface

As of now, the message pop-up for the profiled plugin will give you this –
currentUCIMessage.png

And the file has this –

currentUCIFile

And the Plugin Registration Tool doesn’t understand this! You’ll get this parsing error if you try –
parseError
parseErrorMessage

Turn On Exception Logging

Before that, you can check this post on how you can quickly go to the classic UI’s Settings area here – D365 Quick Tip: Shortcut to Settings from the Unified Interface

To be able to capture these details in the Plugin Profile entity, enable Plug-in and custom workflow activity tracing from the System Settings as shown below
turnOnLogging

You can’t add Plug-in Trace Logs to UCI

  1. Smarter way would be to add the Plug-in Trace Log entity to the UCI App itself and not having to go back to the classic UI. Unfortunately, you can’t do that.
    cantAddToUCI.png
    With that, we will have to go back to the Classic UI’s Settings > Plugin-In Profile Area to get out Profiled Log File.

Plug-In Trace Log

  1. Assuming you are back in the classic UI (maybe keep this open in another tab)
    Open the Trace Log record
    openProfileRecord.png
  2. Scroll down to the very bottom to find the Exception Details
    profiledData.png
  3. Now, copy that to the text file and attach it in the Plugin Registration Tool
    correctProfileFile.png
  4. This should work and you won’t get an error
    attached.png

Phew! I know this is lengthy. But we hope this will soon be eased 🙂

Hope this helps you!

Nested Editable Grids in D365 CE v9 UCI

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Nested Grids – as the name suggests is a grid-within-a-grid (or rather, Grid-ception!). Nested Grids will let you expand a sub-grid entry to look at another grid of the expanded record. This depends on how you configure it.

Be aware, Nested Grids work with Editable Grids and only for Tablet, Phones and Unified Interface. This is not available for the classic Web UI.

Configuring Nested Editable Grid

Here’s my entity structure – I have Account, having multiple Contacts and each Contact, having Opportunities under them. Like in the below diagram –

relationships

Now, I have a Contact grid on my Account form (just like we usually do).

  1. I now will have to choose the grid to be a Editable Grid Control as follows. Also, click on the Nested grid view control as pointed
    editableGridControl
  2. On clicking the Nested grid view pencil, the next dialog box will let you select what entity you want the Nested Grid to be for. Note that this is with respect to the Contact entity and not the Account entity. For this example, I chose Opportunities.
    selectEntity.png
  3. On selecting the entity, I have to make sure my View is also correctly set to show the records
    selectView.png
  4. Now, my dataset will populate from the selected Entity and View. next we will need to select what should be bound as a key. Going back to the Nested grid parent ID pencil this time
    selectNestedGridView
  5. Select what should be the field to bind the data. In this case, I want to show the one that is related to the Contact expanded.
    parentControlIdSelection
  6. Now, click OK for everything and your configuration should look like below.
    Finally save and Publish all customization.
    finalConfig.png

Using Nested Editable Grid

Now, if you look at the Contact grid on the Account form. You’ll see an arrow on each record which indicates that it can be expanded.
collapsed.png
And when you click on it, you’ll see the Nested Grid for Opportunities we configured in the section above
expanded
And yes, Opportunity too is editable in-line!

Hope this helps!!

Solving ‘The record could not be deleted because of an association’ error in D365 CE

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Restricting Delete for child records is something customizers should start paying special attention towards defining 1:N relationships for entity records.

System Customizers often design this on purpose so that you are aware that the record you are deleting has child records associated with it and cannot be deleted.

Let’s consider this scenario  – Account is a parent of Subscription (which is a custom entity)

relationship

 

Error

Assume, Subscription 1 record has Account lookup to record A. Datum Corporation. When you attempt to Delete the Account, you get this error message.

actualError

And when you download the Log File from the button on the error message, you can see at the very bottom on the Log that Cascade Delete failed due to the restriction.

It also mentions what child entity is causing it
highlightError

Reason

The reason being 1:N relationship on the Account entity to Subscription entity.

deleteRestrictionInRelationship

Workaround

Now, since this is a Restriction on Delete, you can either change it if you are allowed to modify the behavior and it should be fine
changeableBehavior
However, some system relationships can’t be changed. Example – Opportunity to Quote relationships
systemRestricted.png

To overcome this, you can remove the Opportunity Lookup value on the Quote entity and save the record.

Then, the parent Opportunity can be deleted.

Hope this helps!

Fix Ribbon icons on the Unified Interface in D365 CE

priyeshwagh777 CRM with .NET Web Applications, Dynamics 365 CE, dynamics 365 customization, Dynamics 365 Unified Interface, Ribbon Workbench ,

So, since adoption of Unified Interface is growing, people are asking – “What happened to the Ribbon icons?”. Well, a simple answer to this is tweaking the implementation a little.

Typically, you have custom icons on your classic Web UI that look like this –
classicIcon

But the same looks like a puzzle piece in the Unified Interface –
puzzlePiece

So, here’s what you need to do. Icons on the Unified Interface take SVG format. You’ll need to take you existing PNG Web Resources

 

Creating SVG Icons

Like most online services or applications, you can easily convert images to SVG. In this example, I’m using this online tool – https://www.online-convert.com/

Or you can try this too which I found quite a few people recommended – https://www.syncfusion.com/downloads/metrostudio

For this example, I used https://convertio.co/png-svg/ And I got my converted SVG document downloaded.
Now, create a new Web Resource in SVG and Upload the same.
svgWebResource

Ribbon Workbench

Once your Web Resource for the SVG format is set, going back to your Ribbon Workbench customization work space, go to the Button where you wan to update the icon and select the SVG Web Resource under Modern Image as shown below

modernImage

Publish Changes and See

Once your customization are published, you can simply refresh and check that your image has been updated

converted
Note: An online converted might not give you an accurate image. However, it is best recommended to create SVGs on an app. I’ve heard recommendations about https://www.syncfusion.com/downloads/metrostudio

Hope this helps!

D365 Quick Tip: Getting layoutXml from DevTools

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Most times when you want to use AddCustomView() method to a Dynamics 365 control, you need to pass layoutXml to the method that will show the view you define.
fromCOde

There’s an easier trick than writing this up.

Select your View

Assuming, you have an Advanced Find view open in the window which you want as a layoutXml of, on the same, press F12 to open Dev Tools. Select the selector.
selector

And on the Advanced Find window, select Body section
andSelectBody
Click on it, and the par will be selected in the Console of the Dev Tools.

Once this is available, search for layoutXml and cycle through the results to go to the last result.
selectFromConsole

select the “value” part. That is your layoutXml. Hope this helps.

Quickly get the right .NET Framework version to work with CoreAssemblies 9.0.2.x

priyeshwagh777 CRM with .NET Web Applications, Dynamics 365 CE, dynamics 365 customization , , , , ,

Plugin development is a hassle if you don’t start of with getting the correct assemblies in place before you start writing your plugin code.

Best way is to get all of that from the NuGet Manager in VS. Preferably, we all pick the latest version from the NuGet Manager and pick Microsoft.CmSdk.CoreAssemblies. With 9.0.2.x version for v9 D365 environments, you might need to be careful with the .NET Framework version too. So, here’s a quick post about that.

Let’s say you pick Microsoft.CmSdk.CoreAssemblies

coreAssemblies

While installing, you get the below error
error

This is because your VS Project might not be on or might not have the correct .NET framework installed. If you go to Project properties, you can check that.

What version do you need?

Nuget.org will tell you about the version of .NET Framework required for that assembly.
correctVersion

Getting .NET 4.6.2

You can download among the different versions of Developer Packs available across your VS versions from the link below –

Link: https://dotnet.microsoft.com/download/visual-studio-sdks?utm_source=getdotnetsdk&utm_medium=referral

Once you have the correct version, 4.6.2 in this case, you can simply select that Developer Pack and download.

Alternatively, you can also click on Install other frameworks… to get to the link (note that 4.6.2 is not yet installed for me)
installOtherFrameworks

Once you see the downloaded Setup in your browser as shown below, simply run it –
downloadedPack

It sets up like a typical Windows application. Once done, you can check your project properties and select the .NET Framework version you installed.
4.6.2NowInstalled

Re-install Assembly

And when you now try to re-install the assembly, it should be successful and you’ll get all the references you need in your plugin.
successfullyInstalled

Hope this will help! 🙂

“Enable Mobile Offline” for D365 for Phones app in D365 v9.x

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Finally! After much await and as April 2019 kicks in, the Mobile Offline capability for D365 Apps is finally setting in. But remember, this is in preview as of April 2019 and is not recommended for Production use.

Here’s you can enable Mobile Offline for any Dynamics 365 App

  1. You can see that you can now turn on Enable Mobile Offline for a certain app.
    beforeEnable
  2. Once you select it to tick, you’ll need to select a Mobile Offline Profile. Out-of-the-box, I have selected Sales Sample.
    selectedProfile
  3. These profiles are available for creation and edit in your Default Solution if you go and see
    profileInSolution
  4. And, they specify what properties should the offline mode have. Also, make sure the Users who should have this capability should be added to Users grid as shown below in the Offline Profiles.
    insideProfile
  5. Once done, save and Publish your Unified Interface app in the App Designer. Make sure the Profile is Published too!

Running Mobile Offline

When you open the Mobile App for that user, there’ll be a notification pop-up saying that changes on the org were made and you’ll need to update the same.

And when the update is complete, you’ll see the entities which are enabled for offline like the ones marked below (by a wifi signal icon)

 

So, let’s assume you are offline, you won’t be able to view records that are not enabled for Offline and will see the below error instead.

 

And the entities like Accounts, which is enabled for Offline, you’ll see the record as below

To summarize, that was the Offline for Mobile which is in preview as of April 2019. Hope this helps!

Show specific entities in Activity Party List Lookup in D365 Activity entity

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Out-of-the-box, D365 Activity Party List field, say, Appointment’s Required/Optional Attendees fields lets you choose among multiple Activity Party enabled entities when you want to select records. And perhaps you don’t even want users to select what’s not relevant.

default

Let’s look at how we can show only the required entities in the selection list.

Before that, if you want to check how you can enable custom entities for the Activity Party, you can refer this post of mine – Enable entity for Party List selection in Appointment

Hide entities from the Activity Party List field

This can be achieved by writing a simple JS code and calling it onLoad of the Appointment form where the Party List field exists.

  1. Let’s say you only want to show the entities Lead and Contact in the Required Attendees Party List field
  2. Here’s the JS code that goes on the onLoad function of the Appointment form 
    // JavaScript source code
oAppointmentFormCustomization =
{
filterRequiredAttendees: function () {
Xrm.Page.getAttribute("requiredattendees").setLookupTypes(["lead","contact"]);
}
};

     

  3. And call the method filterRequiredAttendees onLoad as below
    onLoad
  4. The Appointment’s Required Attendees field will show only the entities you provided in the setLookupTypes([“lead”,”contact”]);
    filtered

Hope this helps!

Use Read-Only grid among Editable Grid enabled entities in D365

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When you enable Editable Grid for an entity, all the public views become Editable Grids, correct?

And if you wonder if you can keep certain grids as Read-Only and the rest as Editable, your assumption is correct. Here’s what this blog is about.

You can still go back and select a particular grid which you want to keep as a classic Read-Only grid

  1. Let’s say you have added the Editable Grid under Controls. This will apply Editable Grids for all the Views on that entity.
    enabledEditable
  2. And you want Vendors view, for example, to show the classic Read-Only grid, open it up.
    vendorView
  3. Select Custom Controls.
    customControls
  4. And force-add another Read only grid even if it says the Default one is already selected.
    forceAddRead-Only
  5. Save and Publish you changed and check
    classicGrid
  6. And the rest of the grids will continue to be Editable Grids
    editableOthers

Note: I tried this on the Unified Interface and this works. Somehow, it didn’t work on the Classic Web UI.

 

Hope this helps!

Get SharePoint Document Location link on field on create in D365

priyeshwagh777 Customizations, D365 Admin Center, Dynamics 365, dynamics 365 administration, Dynamics 365 CE, dynamics 365 customization , , ,

I’ve been working on getting the SharePoint Document’s link to get back into D365 but looks like it can’t come back and get tagged to the record it was created from.

I tried to fire off a plugin on SharePoint Document record create, but in vain. Flow didn’t do justice since SharePoint Document entity doesn’t support Change Tracking.

So, I retrieved the Absolute URL of the “SharePoint Document Location” entity on it’s create itself so that I have the link once the record is created. And click that link to open the folder in SharePoint.

Workflow to wait and then fetch

So if you immediately make a call to retrieve the Absolute URL in the plugin code you’ve written on Create won’t work because Absolute URL gets created moments after the actual Location record is created unlike being passed in the execution context.

My approach is to fire the workflow on the create of the SharePoint Document Location record and Wait for 1 minute.

wfBody

After 1 minute, set off the flag to call the plugin and fetch the Absolute URL as shown below –

updateFlag

Retrieve Absolute URL in Plugin

You can use RetrieveAbsoluteAndSiteCollectionUrlRequest message to retrieve the SiteCollection URL and the Absolute URL of the document folder of the record

retrieveAbsolute

 

Working

  1. When you open the Document sub-grid on the record for the first time, a Document Location record is created –
    openForFirst
  2. The workflow designed above will run and fire off the plugin after 1 minute. The plugin will then make the message request go through to get you the Absolute URL as below –
    link2
  3. And probably you can use that link to open up the folder by clicking on the field that has this URL or send it across in email to internal users (whatever suits your requirements)
    linkInField
  4. It will open up the SP folder for that record and will have all the documents you attach in the Document sub-grid on the record.
    spFolder

Hope this helps!