Bradley M. Law

Great article on compatibility between II6 and II7 b y ActiveXperts.

http://www.activexperts.com/support/activmonitor/online/ii6metabase/

How to install the IIS 6 Metabase Compatibility components on IIS 7
The ActiveXperts Network Monitor Web Configurator requires that the Windows Server 2008-based or Windows Vista-based computer where you are configuring a Virtual Directory has the IIS 6 Metabase Compatibility components installed.

To install the IIS 6.0 Management Compatibility Components by using the Windows Server 2008 Server Manager

Click Start, click Administrative Tools and then Server Manager.
In the left navigation pane, expand Roles, and then right-click Web Server (IIS) and select Add Role Services.
On the Select Role Services pane, scroll down to IIS 6 Management Compatibility.
Select the check boxes for IIS 6 Metabase Compatibility and IIS 6 Management Console.
Click Next from the Select Role Services pane, and then click Install at the Confirm Installations Selections pane.
Click Close to leave the Add Role Services wizard.
To install the IIS 6.0 Management Compatibility Components by using the Windows Vista Control Panel

Click Start, click Control Panel, click Programs and Features, and then click Turn Windows features on or off.
Open Internet Information Services.
Open Web Management Tools.
Open IIS 6.0 Management Compatibility.
Select the check boxes for IIS 6 Metabase and IIS 6 configuration compatibility and IIS 6 Management Console.
Click OK.

Just had a strange issue on a development server where I was not able to add a new custom entity? After a little research I found the following two articles on this topic. It seems that an old rollup was the cause, in my case a simple IISRESET did the trick however here are the two dated links.

Techreplies Blog
Sonoma Partners Blog

Hi,

I have a CRM client with the pockets to polish the applications to their needs. I, being the semi coder that I am and having little experience with plug-ins searched high and low for a tool to hide the annoying system views that cannot be removed from CRM 4.0. By pur chance I am certain the CRM team does not allow CRM 4.0 system views to be unshared as could be done in 3.0.

After locating a few other posts out there in the web I stumbled across the “lightly documented” Codeplex Plug-in by David Jennaway completed with source code and compiled code. After annoying the MS Forums (Even David himself jumped in) looking for help I finally got it working and decided to give back by giving some instructions as to the configuration of this Plug-in.

Let’s begin…

What makes David Jennaway’s plug-in simply amazing is that it can handle just about any system view you throw at it because a non coder doesn’t have to configure it with much more than the actual view name. From beginning to end here is how to to get this plug-in working on your CRM server.

1. Download the following files from Codeplex:
   1. David Jennaway’s Compiled “Hide System Views in CRM 4.0″ Plug-in here. Alternate here.

   

   1. Download the Plug-in Registration Tool from Codeplex found here. Alternate version as of this writing here. Installation should be easy, I installed it on my CRM server however a walkthrough is available in the ReadMe file in the zip download.
2. Install both parts items:
   1. Install the Plug-in registration tool
   2. Unzip the Plug-in (step 1a) into a folder, something like C:\(YOUR DESIRED PATH)\Plug-ins\HideSystemViews
3. Register the “Hide System Views in CRM 4.0″ Plug-in
   1. Open the Plug-in registration tool and connect to your CRM server
   2. Once connected select the “Register” button which opens another box, select “Register New Assembly“
   3. Within the registration tool select Step #1 and select the path to the “Hide System Views in CRM 4.0″ Plug-in you chose in my step 2b above.
   4. Within the registration tool Step #2 you should see the Plug-in with a check box to its left.
   5. Within the registration tool Step #3 I chose “Database” (not based on any reason other that I like databases)
   6. Within the registration tool click the button at the bottom “Register Selected Plug-ins”
   7. It should look like this

      

1. If you noticed when you downloaded the compiled plug-in there is a XML files called SampleConfig.xml, this is the excellent method David J. used to tell the plug-in what Views to hide!
   1. The key here is that your specifying the entity otc number as in <entity otc=”1″>, the “1″ representing the “Account” entity. If you need to hide the view for other items you can get the otc# from your servers SDK by connecting to http:/<crmserver>/sdk/list.aspx and clicking the button for the entity in question. Adjust your xml as necessary then proceed.

  <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<entities>
<!- Sample configuration data. Entities are identified by the otc attribute, and views by name
  -->
<entity otc="1">
  <view>Inactive Accounts</view>
  <view>Accounts: No Orders in Last 6 Months</view>
  </entity>
<entity otc="4">
  <view>Leads Opened Last Week</view>
  <view>Leads Opened This Week</view>
  </entity>
  </entities>

1. Select/Highlight the (Assmbly) Plug-inHideSystemView node
2. Select the “Register” button you used above in my step 3b.
3. This time select “Register New Step”
4. Fill out the form as follows:
   1. Message: RetreiveMultiple
   2. Primary Entity: savedquery
   3. Event Pipeline Stage of Execution: Post Stage
   4. Execution Mode: Synchronous

   Note: the other options can be changes per your wishes…

5. Enter your adjusted XML into the top right pane “Unsecured Configuration (like the SampleConfig.xm file)
6. Click Update
7. It should look like this

   

1. Add a step with that looks just like this screen shot:
2. Now the magic, if you noticed when you downloaded the compiled plug-in there is a XML files called SampleConfig.xml, this is the excellent method David J. used to tell the plug-in what Views to hide!
   1. The key here is that your specifying the entity otc number as in <entity otc=”1″>, the “1″ representing the “Account” entity. If you need to hide the view for other items you can get the otc# from your servers SDK by connecting to http:/<crmserver>/sdk/list.aspx and clicking the button for the entity in question. You final Step should look something like this!

      

   2. Verify and your done, your client is happy and you are happier than I was when I needed to use this great plug-in!
3. Alternate method below! I have not done this one!

More »

Great videos on Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 development. found here.

Most appear to be large wmv downloads.

Microsoft Corporation

July 2008
Summary

This article contains links to presentations and labs to help developers use their existing .NET skills to build on top of the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 platform.
Applies To

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0
Introduction

This kit is for .NET-based developers who want to ramp up and build on top of the Microsoft Dynamics CRM platform. Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 uses familiar components such as Web Service endpoints, Windows Workflow Foundation, SSRS reporting, and more; making it a general purpose platform for any line-of-business applications. Developers can use their existing .NET skills to take advantage of various features of the Microsoft Dynamics CRM platform. This kit drills into the details of such development and explains how developers can connect, extend, and embed with the Microsoft Dynamics CRM platform. It includes presentations, hands-on labs and a VPC environment for practicing. This content was delivered earlier as part of the Metro Early Adopter initiative and the video recordings of the ramp-up presentations are included as well. Familiarity with the .NET Framework, Microsoft Visual C#, Microsoft JScript, Microsoft SQL Server and general Web development is recommended.

Great script for hiding buttons on forms, this can be used for both custom buttons or out of the box buttons. Code is from DMCRM and can be found here.

onload

//Get all of the List Elements
var lis = document.getElementsByTagName('LI');

var i = 0;
//Loop through the list items
while (i < lis.length) {
//Don't worry about any list item that doesn't have the title you are looking for.
if (lis[i].getAttribute('title') == 'Qualify or disqualify the lead')
{
//Replace the DHTML with blank tags to hide the button
lis[i].outerHTML='<SPAN></SPAN>'
}
i = i + 1;
}

Update: The “Messages” associated with an entity control the tags, be sure you make these updates after updating the messages.

I did this once a while back for a client and may need to do it soon again on my current client. I found this blog entry while looking at another entry on the MSCRMBLOG.net site.

A very interesting method of using a button to hide an entire section from MSCRMBLOG.net. I am thinking of a great way to use this method to hide several 1-many sections that are linked in an IFRAME.

I have been looking for a script that will hide the entire left navigation bar in MSCRM 4.0. for a custom entity. I found this forum response here and it works well!

document.all.crmNavBar.parentElement.style.display = "none";
document.all.tdAreas.colSpan = 2;

Here are a couple of great scripts for formatting phone numbers in CRM 4.0 that were posted as a responses to the East Region Microsoft CRM Blog.

/* This code formats the phone number, allowing up to a 5 digit extension to be displayed on the same line. The following code example shows how to format basic U.S. phone numbers. This method supports 7-digit and 10-digit numbers, for example, (410) 555-1212.*/

// Get the field that fired the event.
var oField = event.srcElement;

// Validate the field information.
if (oField.DataValue != "undefined" && oField.DataValue != null)
{
// Remove any nonnumeric characters.
var sTmp = oField.DataValue.replace(/[^0-9]/g, "");
// If the number has a valid length, format the number.
switch (sTmp.length)
{
case "4105551212".length:
   oField.DataValue = "(" + sTmp.substr(0, 3) + ") " + sTmp.substr(3, 3) + "-" + sTmp.substr(6, 4);
   break;
case "5551212".length:
   oField.DataValue = sTmp.substr(0, 3) + "-" + sTmp.substr(3, 4);
   break;
case "41055512121".length:
   oField.DataValue = "(" + sTmp.substr(0,3) + ") " + sTmp.substr(3,3) + "-" + sTmp.substr(6,4) + " ext." + sTmp.substr(10,1);
   break;
case "410555121212".length:
   oField.DataValue = "(" + sTmp.substr(0,3) + ") " + sTmp.substr(3,3) + "-" + sTmp.substr(6,4) + " ext." + sTmp.substr(10,2);
   break;
case "4105551212123".length:
   oField.DataValue = "(" + sTmp.substr(0,3) + ") " + sTmp.substr(3,3) + "-" + sTmp.substr(6,4) + " ext." + sTmp.substr(10,3);
   break;
case "41055512121234".length:
   oField.DataValue = "(" + sTmp.substr(0,3) + ") " + sTmp.substr(3,3) + "-" + sTmp.substr(6,4) + " ext." + sTmp.substr(10,4);
   break;
case "410555121212345".length:
   oField.DataValue = "(" + sTmp.substr(0,3) + ") " + sTmp.substr(3,3) + "-" + sTmp.substr(6,4) + " ext." + sTmp.substr(10,5);
   break;
}
}

—-

/* This code formats the phone number, The following code example shows how to format basic U.S. phone numbers. This method supports 7-digit and 10-digit numbers, for example, (410) 555-1212.*/

// Get the field that fired the event.
var oField = event.srcElement;
// Validate the field information.
if (oField.DataValue != "undefined" && oField.DataValue != null)
{
// Remove any nonnumeric characters.
 var sTmp = oField.DataValue.replace(/[^0-9]/g, "");
// If the number has a valid length, format the number.
 switch (sTmp.length)
 {
   case "4105551212".length:
     oField.DataValue = "(" + sTmp.substr(0, 3) + ") " + sTmp.substr(3, 3) + "-" + sTmp.substr(6, 4);
     break;
   case "5551212".length:
     oField.DataValue = sTmp.substr(0, 3) + "-" + sTmp.substr(3, 4);
     break;
 }
}

Menoo te Koppele has posted an article on free CRM Auditing, I have not reviewed these tools but they seemed to be priced well.