CRM Developer ‘Must Know’ #2: Web Resource Caching

With the introduction of Web Resources in CRM 2011 the task of adding custom user interface functionality (beyond simple JavaScript) has become a whole lot easier to build and deploy. The fact that web resource are part of the solution means that there is no need to have custom deployment routines t... [More]

Early bound Entity Types in Silverlight

One of the drawbacks of using Silverlight clients for CRM2011, is that there is no built in support for early bound entity types since you cannot use the Microsoft SDK assemblies. Really, there isn't anything that special going on with early bound support in the SDK assemblies – a behaviour is added... [More]

Silverlight Theme for CRM2011

Develop1 have a Silverlight 4 CRM 2011 theme available for the following user interface components: Label Style Text Box Style Date Picker Style Radio Button Style Data Grid Style Lookup Style (Coming soon) Please contact us for more information.

How to change the default Lookup type on ‘Customer’ fields

In CRM 4, this used to be a very popular request: "Please change the default lookup type on the customer field to contact" Also… "Please limit the lookup type on the customer field to only allow selection of contacts" In CRM 2011, there still doesn't seem to be an easy way of doing this, ... [More]

How to clear options without leaving an empty entry

Using the clearOptions method on PickLists, can leave an empty entry because Drop Down lists in HTML must have at least one entry. To work around use the following code that removes all options other than the current value to avoid the empty entry.

var attribute = Xrm.Page.getAttribute(“attri... [More]

View un-encrypted SOAP xml when calling CRM2011 WCF end point

If you've ever used an HTTP Proxy (like Fiddler) to debug web service calls to ASMX endpoints, you'll probably try the same with the CRM2011 WCF web services only to be greeted with an encrypted soap packet. If you want to see the plain soap xml calls your client application or web application is ma... [More]

Automatically Generate CRM2011 Entity Data Model Documentation

I am a firm believer in using a tool to generate documentation; it makes it more accurate and ultimately more useful. With CRM 4.0 we used a tool that parsed the Customizations.xml to produce the documentation. A significant difference between CRM2011 and CRM4.0 is the managed solutions approach to ... [More]

Speed up JavaScript Web Resource development time

Don't waste time re-publishing JavaScript web resources during development The new solution framework in Dynamics CRM 2011 is a fantastic addition to the Xrm platform – especially with the new Web Resources functionality. The ability to include JavaScript files rather than including the script in t... [More]