Dirty fields causing headaches on form close / print preview.

I can’t even count the number of times that I’ve run into form issues where each and every time it's open/closed, even without changing data, it gives an alert that data has changed. This time, one of our clients was unable to use CRM's print preview feature due to this problem.

This is typically caused by something in the OnLoad event changing some data, but it can be a serious pain to track down, especially when it's not your original code! Here’s a nifty function that you can drop in at the end of your OnLoad event (or anywhere else) that will tell you exactly which fields are dirty:

function CheckDirtyFields() {

    var message = "The following fields are dirty:\n";

    Xrm.Page.data.entity.attributes.forEach(function (attribute, index) {

        if (attribute.getIsDirty() == true) {

            message += "  \u2219 " + attribute.getName() + "\n";

        }

    });

    alert(message);

}

The next question is how to remove that dirty field alert. The best option in general is to dig into the code and find out why that field is dirty in the first place and fix it, but if this can't (or shouldn't!) be fixed, refer to this blog post written by my colleague Caleb Skinner to clear up that dirty flag:

http://rockstarbits.blogspot.com/2011/05/crm-2011-and-getisdirty-javascript.html

Hopefully this saves you some time when debugging dirty field issues!

Activity Party in Emails & Unresolved Email Addresses

Adjusting emails through custom code is a bit of a pain, but I managed to figure out how to modify the recipients of an email as well as force unresolved email addresses in there.

First, for unresolved emails, enable them in the CRM settings. Settings -> Administration -> System Settings -> Email Tab -> Allow messages with unresolved e-mail recipients to set -> Set to yes.

Now, onto the some code snippets. I know I learn best by looking at working code!

EntityCollection ec = new EntityCollection();
EntityCollection ccEC = new EntityCollection();

// Send to a CONTACT
Entity party = new Entity("activityparty");
party["partyid"] = new EntityReference("contact", contactId);                        party["participationtypemask"] = new OptionSetValue(2); // 2 for TO
ec.Entities.Add(party);

// Send to an EMAIL ADDRESS BY STRING
Entity ccParty = new Entity("activityparty");
ccParty["addressused"] = ccEmail.Trim(); // Raw email address string
ccParty["participationtypemask"] = new OptionSetValue(3); // 3 for CC
ccEC.Entities.Add(ccParty);

email["to"] = ec;
email["cc"] = ccEC;
crmService.Update(email); // I already had my email entity object prior to this

// Send the email!
SendEmailRequest ser = new SendEmailRequest();
ser.EmailId = email.Id;
ser.TrackingToken = "";
ser.IssueSend = true;
crmService.Execute(ser);

Hope this saves someone out there some pain! I know I beat my head against this for awhile before getting it all rolling.

Disabling Lookup View Selector via Javascript

Sometimes you need to disable the View Selector after the fact via Javascript. In my case, I needed to add a custom view, set to to default, then disable the view picker. If you try to set the view picker as disabled from the form editor, it'll fail to change to the new view that you specify! Therefore, you *have* to disable it after the fact. Luckily, this can be done with one quick & effective line:

document.getElementById("new_product").disableViewPicker = 1;

In my case, new_product is the name of the lookup that I wanted to disable views for. In the bigger context, here is a working example of how to create a custom view then disable the view selector:

var viewId = "{00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000001}";
    var entityName = "new_quoteproduct";
    var viewDisplayName = "Filtered Products";
    var viewIsDefault = true;

    fetchXml = "<fetch version='1.0' output-format='xml-platform' mapping='logical' distinct='false'>" +
                   "<entity name='new_quoteproduct'>" +
                   "<attribute name='new_quoteproductid' />" +
                   "<attribute name='new_name' />" +
                   "<attribute name='new_category' />" +
                   "<attribute name='new_systemset' />" +
                   "<attribute name='new_productnumber' />" +
                   "<order attribute='new_category' descending='false' />" +
                   "<filter type='and'>" +
                   "<condition attribute='statecode' operator='eq' value='0' />";
    if (systemSet) {
        fetchXml += "<condition attribute='new_systemset' operator='eq' value='100000002' />";
    }
    if(categoryID != null) {
        fetchXml += "<condition attribute='new_category' operator='eq' value='" + categoryID + "' />";
    }
    fetchXml += "</filter>" +
                "</entity>" +
                "</fetch>";

    var layoutXml = "<grid name='resultset' object='1' jump='new_name' select='1' icon='1' preview='1'>" +
                    "<row name='result' id='new_quoteproductid'>" +
                    "<cell name='new_category' width='150' />" +
                    "<cell name='new_productnumber' width='150' />" +
                    "<cell name='new_systemset' width='75' />" +
                    "<cell name='new_name' width='200' />" +
                    "</row>" +
                    "</grid>";

    Xrm.Page.getControl("new_product").addCustomView(viewId, entityName, viewDisplayName, fetchXml, layoutXml, viewIsDefault);
    document.getElementById("new_product").disableViewPicker = 1;

Now, if only MS would fix the bug where custom lookup views don't respect your sorting, and we'd have a perfect solution! Hopefully this helps some of you out there.

CRM 2011 Boolean OnChange event not working properly

If you've used CRM 2011 bit fields with OnChange events, you've probably noticed some very annoying behavior: The event is only fired when you leave the checkbox, not when the box itself is checked. That is, you have to check the box then click elsewhere for the Javascript to fire.

A blogger over at PowerObjects.com has a great CRM4 solution:
http://www.powerobjects.com/blog/2009/09/10/crm-bit-field-onchange-event-not-firing-as-expected/

The idea is that, instead of firing on the onchange event, we fire on onclick such as:

crmForm.all.checkbox.onclick = functionName;

This works great, and the function will fire the moment the checkbox is interacted with. However, we need to make sure that we use the old-style CRM4 method of accessing the bit rather than the new CRM2011 Xrm model. For whatever reason, attempting to access the Xrm model during onclick returns very erratic values -- in my experience, it would report false for several straight clicks, then true when the box was unchecked at one point! So, be sure to access the field in your function as such:

if(crmForm.all.checkbox.DataValue) {
  // Do something if true
} else {
  // Do something if false / null
}

Hopefully this helps you avoid the confusion I ran into!

CRM error when opening a form due to invalid role

One of my clients was running into a particularly nasty issue earlier this week. They were unable to open any kinds of forms related to contacts, opportunities, or accounts. Trying to do so gave a generic error - it wouldn't even start to open.

After some investigation, it turns out they had deleted a role which had been assigned access to several forms. For whatever reason, CRM did not clean this up, and it left a bad reference in the customizations. This led to an odd error; anyone who had access to the form was able to open their forms without issue. Anyone who did *not* have access to the form would be given a generic error when opening any other form for the same entity. Unfortunately, attempting to reassign the security for the form or import a copy with the role stripped out generates errors - it appears that we have a circular error!

Luckily there is still a way to fix this. Simply perform the following:

1. Open up the form with the bad assignment and save a copy.
2. On the copy, set up assignment as normal.
3. Delete the old form.
4. Rename the copied form to be the same as the old form.

This will forcibly remove all references to the bad role, and allow users access to the system again! Note that if a dev/QA system is in place, the next push to the live server will create another copy of the form due to a GUID mismatch. In this case, be sure to delete the correct form.

Javascript inconsistency with Xrm.Page model

While doing ribbon customization today I found an interesting issue with how the new Xrm.Page model introducted in CRM 2011.

I have a ribbon button which simply fires a javascript function:

function lookup_form() {
    alert(Xrm.Page.getAttribute("dc_openform").getValue());
    alert(crmForm.all.dc_openform.DataValue);
}

I would type a value into my dc_openform field, and click the ribbon button. The first alert would show what was *previously* in the field, while the second alert showed what is *currently* in the field. If I clicked off the field then click the button again, the values match up.

Thus, it appears the the Xrm.Page model is only updated onChange, and that onChange is not fired between typing into a field and clicking the Ribbon button.

Odd Currency Symbols returned from FetchXML

While working with CRM2011 FetchXML, I came across a nasty issue when retrieving a currency field. I have done this successfully many times before, but for some reason this time I was getting multiple currency symbols in my raw XML result, ie:

$‎5,000

instead of the desired:

$5,000

Adding transactioncurrencyid to the fetch did not help, and replacing "$‎" with "$" directly also did not work. However, after toying about with the string in unicode for a bit, I came up with:

value = Regex.Replace(value, "\u200e", "");

This properly removed the funky symbols, leaving me with "$5,000". Likely something under the hood is causing an issue elsewhere, but this is a great workaround if you just need to get a properly formatted currency field without hacking deeper into the CRM platform.