When To Use Which Microsoft Dynamics CRM Web Service

thiking kid

Meet Jerry, he is wondering about dynamics crm services, In this blog I am helping him to understand when he should use which dynamics CRM web service.

Let’s first understand how many services dynamics crm offers post which will discuss which service to be used when:

  1. Web API
  2. Organization Service
  3. Organization Data Service
  4. Discovery Service
  5. Deployment Service

Web API

WebAPI is fairly new for dynamics CRM and i see many developers havent touched upon it. You should be using WebAPI Service while doing Client side development(preferably) such as Javascript, HTML etc. At this point its not easy to use WebAPI on server side but i am sure it will be possible in coming updates. Web API uses ODATA (Open data protocol). It also doesnt need any dynamics CRM related libraries or assemblies. You perform CRUD operation using XmlHttpRequests.  

Organization service

Organization service is basically a SOAP endpoint of dynamics crm and have been available since dynamics crm version 2011.  This Service has to be used with .Net Framework and for Business logic that runs in plug-ins or workflow assemblies on the server expect to use the Organization service.( So nothing client side). To work with Organization you have to use microsoft dynamics crm SDK i,e provided libabries and assemblies to interact with dynamics crm.

Organization Data service

It is also known as Odata service for dynamics crm which is Infact nothing but a “REST” Endpoint. You can utilise Odata endpoint in C# code( a server side code as well) but it is widely used for for client side scripting using javascript. However this has been deprecated with the release of dynamics crm 365 which means it is no longer supported. and completely replace with WebAPI.

 

Discovery web services

As the name suggest, this service should be used when you have mutiple CRM instances of dynamics crm in single deployment. You would use this service in your plugins ( the server side code) to get the current instance obtain the context.

 

Deployment web service

This service is barely used by developer as UI options are available. Such as Deployment manager etc. Use this service if you have create , delete or edit a dynamics crm organization/instance. Again its all server side.

 

I hope this clears your doubt as to when you would use which service and with what programming language.

Cheers!

 

 

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Open Lookup Dialog Programmatically using Xrm.Utility–Dynamics V9.0

Thanks Debajit.

Debajit's Dynamic CRM Blog

This one feature that I am going to pen down here, personally I have longing for it quite sometime now.

So before going into the HOW part of it, let’s understand the why part of it? When do I need show a Lookup dialog Programmatically? Well the answer is, numerous occasions. Like if you need to throw up a lookup dialog on change of field on the form OR you needed to throw the lookup dialog on click of a button on a web-resource.

All this time, we have achieved this but not in a supported way. Probably we may have ended up using or some method of rnal namespace. But all these are unsupported and mere workaround to this perennial problem.

Well, no more messing around. Microsoft has finally brought in the

So let’s see how it works.

Let’s take a not so good example here. Let’s say whenever…

View original post 296 more words

———- is not a valid status code for state code entity

Often you see this error in your plugin or Webapi actions when you trying to play with the status and status reasons in microsoft dyamics crm.

so, lets understand this.

Suppose i have below status and status reasons:

status

as you can see there is a set of status reason you can only combine with and “Active” Statecode and some with “Inactive” statecode.

So ,if you have a status reason which belongs to an active statecode but you use it with an inactive statecode and vice versa, you will be presented with this error.

and in the error first line you can actually see what optionset value it is talking about.

i hope this helps.

Cheers!

How to set PartyList in Microsoft Dynamics CRM using Javascript

Let make it a smallest blog possible.

below code i have been using without any issue when it comes to setting a partylist or multi lookup in CRM. In the below code i am retrieving the contact id or the id of entity which is there in the regarding field & setting it on the “From” field.

function setCallFrom() 
{
 var lookup = new Array();
 lookup = Xrm.Page.getAttribute("regardingobjectid").getValue();
 if (lookup != null) {
 var name = lookup[0].name;
 var id = lookup[0].id;
 var entityType = lookup[0].entityType;
 if (entityType == "contact") {

var value = new Array();
 value[0] = new Object();
 value[0].id = id;
 value[0].name = name;
 value[0].entityType = "contact";

Xrm.Page.getAttribute("from").setValue(value);
 }

}
}

With slight modifications you can use the code on any other activity if you need to set partylist.

Call this function on Onload of the record or on onchange of the regarding field.

hope this helps!

Cheers!

Get lookup value from other entity and set it on the form using Web API in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2016

In this blog i am going to show you , how you can retrieve a lookup value from other entity in CRM 2016 using web api and set it on the form.

we know how its done in Odata but its time for some Web API action.

let see how its done here 🙂

function yourFunctionName() {

var lookup= Xrm.Page.getAttribute("fieldname").getValue();  //you will get the id with exxtra double quotes or square brackets by doing get value hence you to make it readable by CRM , you must slice it. i have use the below method:
var newid = lookup[0].id.slice(1, -1);  // you will get perfect id like "EDCJDKDJDKJDJDKJDJKD" here.
var req = new XMLHttpRequest(); //once you have the id , you have frame to make a webapi GET call by proving the newid we got.

req.open("GET", Xrm.Page.context.getClientUrl() + "/api/data/v8.1/entitypluralname(" + newid + ")?$select=_prefix_fieldname_value", true);
req.setRequestHeader("OData-MaxVersion", "4.0");
req.setRequestHeader("OData-Version", "4.0");
req.setRequestHeader("Accept", "application/json");
req.setRequestHeader("Content-Type", "application/json; charset=utf-8");
req.setRequestHeader("Prefer", "odata.include-annotations=\"*\"");
req.onreadystatechange = function () {
if (this.readyState === 4) {
req.onreadystatechange = null;
if (this.status === 200) {
var result = JSON.parse(this.response); // you will get the retrieved value in object we stored in result var.
var retrivedvalue= result._prefix_fieldname_value; //get the id of the field
var retrivedformatedvalue= result["_prefix_fieldname_value@OData.Community.Display.V1.FormattedValue"]; //get the formatted name of the field
if (retrivedvalue!= null) {
var value = new Array();
value[0] = new Object();
value[0].id = retrivedvalue;
value[0].name = retrivedformatedvalue;
value[0].entityType = "entityname";
Xrm.Page.getAttribute("fieldname").setValue(value); //set the lookup value finally
}
else
alert("some textt!!!!!!") // optional
} else {
Xrm.Utility.alertDialog(this.statusText);
}
}
};
req.send();

you can call this function on change of the field.

i hope this helps!!  🙂

cheers