Level 300

Converting FetchXML ResultSet to a Business Entity Strong Type

Abe Saldana — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 00:02:00 GMT

Recurrently I have the same issue on how to get strong type CRM objects from a FetchXML resultset, so I was looking on the SDK documentation and found that there are new code samples on how to accomplish this behavior indirectly from a conversion process, the classes that will help you converting the Fetch to a QueryExpression are FetchXmlToQueryExpressionRequest and FetchXmlToQueryExpressionResponse the SDK give you a small taste of the functionallity, only giving you the return QueryExpression, this is the code from the SDK documentation

   1:  [C#]

   2:  // Set up the CRM service.

   3:  CrmAuthenticationToken token = new CrmAuthenticationToken();

   4:  // You can use enums.cs from the SDK\Helpers folder to get the enumeration for Active Directory authentication.

   5:  token.AuthenticationType = 0;

   6:  token.OrganizationName = "AdventureWorksCycle";

7:

   8:  CrmService service = new CrmService();

   9:  service.Url = "http://<servername>:<port>/mscrmservices/2007/crmservice.asmx";

  10:  service.CrmAuthenticationTokenValue = token;

  11:  service.Credentials = System.Net.CredentialCache.DefaultCredentials;

12:

  13:  // Create the request object.

  14:  FetchXmlToQueryExpressionRequest fetch = new FetchXmlToQueryExpressionRequest();

15:

  16:  // Set the Fetch Xml to be converted.

  17:  fetch.FetchXml = "<fetch mapping='logical'><entity name='account'><all-attributes/></entity></fetch>";

18:

  19:  // Execute the request.

  20:  FetchXmlToQueryExpressionResponse qe = (FetchXmlToQueryExpressionResponse) service.Execute(fetch);

So I created a helper class to enable the conversion and also to run the QueryExpression and return the BusinessEntity{} array.

   1:          public BusinessEntity[] Executefetch(string query)

   2:          {

3:

   4:              FetchXmlToQueryExpressionRequest request = new FetchXmlToQueryExpressionRequest();

   5:              request.FetchXml = query;

6:

   7:              FetchXmlToQueryExpressionResponse response = (FetchXmlToQueryExpressionResponse)service.Execute(request);

8:

   9:              BusinessEntityCollection items = service.RetrieveMultiple(response.Query);

  10:              return items.BusinessEntities;

11:

  12:          }

The implementation is so simple and easy to understand, you send the FetchXML and is converted to a QueryExpression and then the query runs and gets the related CRM strong type object back.

This is a sample code on how to use the ExecuteFetch method, the code will get all related records for a user with only the open and not started task records.

   1:          public void SampleCode2(CrmService service)

   2:          {

   3:              Guid userId = new Guid("{6997B343-7AA0-DD11-9FDF-001F29E24CD0}");

4:

   5:              string fetch1 = string.Format(@"<fetch mapping='logical'>

   6:    <entity name='task'>

   7:      <all-attributes />

   8:      <order attribute='scheduledend' descending='true' />

   9:      <filter>

  10:        <condition attribute='ownerid' operator='eq' value='{0}' />

  11:        <condition attribute='statecode' operator='eq' value='Open' />

  12:        <condition attribute='statuscode' operator='eq' value='2' />

  13:      </filter>

  14:    </entity>

  15:  </fetch>", userId.ToString());

16:

  17:              FetchHelper fHelper = new FetchHelper(service);

  18:              BusinessEntity[] Response = fHelper.Executefetch(fetch1);

19:

  20:              foreach (task myTask in Response)

  21:              {

  22:                  string subject = myTask.subject;

  23:                  string desc = myTask.description;

  24:                  string ownerName = myTask.ownerid.name;

  25:                  Guid activityId = myTask.activityid.Value;

  26:                  string creationDate = myTask.createdon.date;

  27:                  if(myTask.regardingobjectid != null)

  28:                  {

  29:                      string regardingId = myTask.regardingobjectid.Value.ToString();

  30:                      string regardingIdType = myTask.regardingobjectid.type;

  31:                  }

  32:              }

33:

34:

  35:          }

After all this the conversion code was so simple to put together and easy to read, I hope the following code snippet's will work for you, keep in mind that I just put the core of the code, CRM connection objects and class definition are not included you need to create those and then test the code

Abe Saldaña

CrmBuzz.net

Everything here, though, is my personal opinion and is not read nor approved before being posted. No warranties or other guarantees will be offered as to the quality of the opinions or anything else offered here.

How to's - Detach an E-mail from a Queue

Abe Saldana — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 21:50:18 GMT

The E-mail to Case process one of the final steps is to make the e-mail not to display on the Queue, that is called detaching from the queue, this blog post is a follow up on one of the initial blog post on this new CrmBuzz URL, the original post was How to Detach an Email from a Queue? Summary..., so finally after some replies and follow up e-mails and questions I got the time to put in the details for one of most requested line:

returnStatus = emailDetach.EmailDetachFromQueue(EmailID, SourceQueueId);

The code snipped:

   1: public bool EmailDetachFromQueue(Guid EmailID, Guid SourceQueueID)

   2: {

   3:     bool returnvalue = false;

   4:     try

   5:     {

6:

   7:         DetachFromQueueEmailRequest detachEmail = new DetachFromQueueEmailRequest();

   8:         detachEmail.EmailId = EmailID;

   9:         detachEmail.QueueId = SourceQueueID;

10:

  11:         DetachFromQueueEmailResponse detachedEmailResponse = (DetachFromQueueEmailResponse)service.Execute(detachEmail);

12:

  13:         returnvalue = true;

14:

  15:     }

  16:     catch (System.Exception e)

  17:     {

  18:         returnvalue = false;

19:

  20:     }

21:

  22:     return returnvalue;

  23: }

The E-mail detach process will not give you too much information on the validity on the completion and you probably will need to validate making another call, so these are some of the steps for the e-mail to case (incident)

Validate E-mail content is not Spam or Duplicate
Create new Contact with E-mail address information

Create new Account with E-mail address information
Relate new Account with new Contact

Validate that E-mail is not relation to any Case (Incident)
Create new Case (Incident) with E-mail information
Detach E-mail from the Queue (Private or Public Queue)
Assign the new Case (Incident) to the User Private Queue (Incident Owner)

So these are the most common steps for converting an E-mail to a Case, I will be working on a similar process for Spam e-mails on MS Dynamics CRM 4.0 but in this version I will be using the Workflow's capabilities, stay tuned for more details on the new workflow E-mail to Case process.

Check the Articles soon you would find information related to SDK connectivity with CRM 4.0 On Premises and Online versions

Abe Saldaña

CrmBuzz.net

This all is undocumented and unsupported. Therefore you should only try these kinds of modifications if you feel comfortable working with this.
Everything here, though, is my personal opinion and is not read nor approved before being posted. No warranties or other guarantees will be offered as to the quality of the opinions or anything else offered here.

How to's - Getting your Lead Status and State

Abe Saldana — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 23:07:06 GMT

Working on the previous blog post I have to get some information on the Lead's status and state, just to validate that the lead was not already qualified or disqualified and then make the conversion to an Account and to a Contact, so I started to create a SDK generic library type of assembly with the most common things I will be using on a daily basis.

Working on a lead the first thing I will be doing is check if the lead remains Open [Status = 1 and State = 0 ] or that is not Qualified [ Status = 3 and State = 1 ] and if the lead is not Disqualified [Status = 4 (Most Common - Lost) and State = 2], here is some code to get the independent values:

Getting the Lead Status Information:

   1: public int getStatus(Guid leadID)

   2: {

   3:     int returnValue;

4:

   5:     try

   6:     {

   7:         lead leadInformation = (lead)service.Retrieve(EntityName.lead.ToString(), leadID, new AllColumns());

8:

   9:         returnValue = leadInformation.statuscode.Value;

10:

  11:     }

  12:     catch( Exception)

  13:     {

  14:         returnValue = -1;

  15:     }

16:

  17:     return returnValue;

18:

  19: }

Getting the Lead State Information:

   1: public int getState(Guid leadID)

   2: {

   3:     int returnValue;

4:

   5:     try

   6:     {

   7:         lead leadInformation = (lead)service.Retrieve(EntityName.lead.ToString(), leadID, new AllColumns());

8:

   9:         returnValue = ((int)leadInformation.statecode.Value);

10:

  11:     }

  12:     catch (Exception)

  13:     {

  14:         returnValue = -1;

  15:     }

  16:     return returnValue;

  17: }

Note: the Lead State value is returned un-boxing the object value from the enum CRMSDK.LeadState

Well that is good to pull the value from the lead, but as part of the conversion process I needed to change the status from Open to Qualified, so I needed to have the Update Method and handle the validation for the update, the lead status is handle not from the Service.Update but the state is managed by the SetStateLeadRequest object, here is the code for updating the Status

   1: public bool UpdateStatus(Guid leadID, int Stateparam, int Statusparam)

   2: {

   3:     bool returnValue = false;

4:

   5:     try

   6:     {

   7:         SetStateLeadRequest leadUpdateRequest = new SetStateLeadRequest();

8:

   9:         leadUpdateRequest.EntityId = leadID ;

10:

  11:         leadUpdateRequest.LeadStatus = Statusparam;

12:

  13:         LeadState valueState = (LeadState)Enum.ToObject(typeof(LeadState),Stateparam);

  14:         leadUpdateRequest.LeadState = valueState;

15:

  16:         SetStateLeadResponse stateSet = (SetStateLeadResponse)service.Execute(leadUpdateRequest);

17:

  18:         int resultStateCode = getState(leadID);

19:

  20:         if (resultStateCode == Stateparam)

  21:         {

  22:             returnValue = true;

  23:         }

24:

  25:     }

  26:     catch(Exception)

  27:     {

  28:         returnValue = false;

  29:     }

30:

  31:     return returnValue;

32:

  33: }

After all this the conversion code was so simple to put together and easy to read, I hope the following code snipped's will work for you, keep in mind that I just put the core of the code, CRM connection objects and class definition are not included you need to create those and then test the code

Abe Saldaña

http://crmbuzz.net
Everything here, though, is my personal opinion and is not read nor approved before being posted.

No warranties or other guarantees will be offered as to the quality of the opinions or anything else offered here.

Converting a Lead to Contact and Account

Abe Saldana — Wed, 28 May 2008 09:36:57 GMT

Working on a special project, I have to recreate the Lead conversion and make some other customizations on the Accounts and Contact relationship, the first code I was looking was the conversion using the Relationship mapping, I found some code regarding the related request/response, but looking under the SDK documentation finally find some code hints that I can use for the conversion.

The following is the code for converting a source entity to a target entity, taking in consideration the relationship mapping using the TargetRelatedRequest and response classes (CRM 3.0 SDK)

/// <summary>

///  Convert to Contact, Convert/Create first the Contact then the Account

/// </summary>

public Guid ConvertLead2Contact(Guid leadIdvalue)

InitializeFromRequest requestObject = new InitializeFromRequest();

requestObject.EntityMoniker = new Moniker();

requestObject.EntityMoniker.Id = leadIdvalue;

requestObject.EntityMoniker.Name = EntityName.lead.ToString();

requestObject.TargetEntityName = EntityName.contact.ToString();

requestObject.TargetFieldType = TargetFieldType.All;

InitializeFromResponse responseObject = (InitializeFromResponse)service.Execute(requestObject);

contact returnContact = (contact) responseObject.Entity;

    // You need to create the new created Contact Entity

    Guid returnContactId = service.Create(returnContact.Entity);

return returnContactId;

/// <summary>

/// Convert Lead to Account, Convert the Account after the Contact.

/// </summary>

public Guid ConvertLead2Account(Guid leadIdvalue, Guid primaryContactId)

InitializeFromRequest requestObject = new InitializeFromRequest();

      requestObject.EntityMoniker = new Moniker();

      requestObject.EntityMoniker.Id = leadIdvalue;

      requestObject.EntityMoniker.Name = EntityName.lead.ToString();

      requestObject.TargetEntityName = EntityName.account.ToString();

      requestObject.TargetFieldType = TargetFieldType.All;

InitializeFromResponse responseObject =

    (InitializeFromResponse)service.Execute(requestObject);

      account returnAccount = (account) responseObject.Entity;

if(primaryContactId != null)

    If(primaryContactId != Guid.Empty)

// relationship with the Contact

returnAccount.primarycontactid =

CrmTypes.CreateLookup(EntityName.contact.ToString(),primaryContactId);

    // You need to create the new converted Account

    Guid returnAccountId = service.Create(returnAccount.Entity);

      return returnAccountId;

Notes:

I assume you already created or added the CRM Web Service reference and created the CrmService object (service) in your project. Also I'm using the CrmTypes class to help create CRM type objects

The Lead status is not change using the TargetRelatedRequest I will post another article where is going to guide you and have code snippets to check the value, Qualify, Disqualify and Reactivate the Lead.

Hope this article will help.

Abraham Saldaña

http://crmbuzz.net

How to call my web service using Javascript?

Abe Saldana — Fri, 18 May 2007 22:16:02 GMT

This is a new code sample for calling a web service using Javascript/Jscript, but specially to call my web services on the same server that MSCRMServices is located.

The difference on this sample code is that I'm enabling the web service call using the RemoteCommand functions available under the following folder Inetpub\wwwroot\_controls\RemoteCommands\RemoteCommand.js, also Ronald Lemmen have a good blog on how to call internal CRM SDK services, but in this case I will be calling My special web service that will give me a True/False value for a specific Case, the process will validate if the Case have any Open Activities (Any Type of Activity)

The code is simple to implement, there is 3 sections for the sample

The Case OnLoad event change
The General definition for calling my Web Service, Global.js modifications
The web service that will process the Case Activities

So lets see the Case OnLoad Code

if(crmForm.FormType == CRM_FORM_TYPE_UPDATE)

{

// crmFormSubmit.crmFormSubmitId.value is the Case ID sent as part of the querystring

var caseid= crmFormSubmit.crmFormSubmitId.value;

var iscaseValidforclose = IncidentValidForClose(caseid);

if (iscaseValidforclose == false)

{

alert("\r\n Please Close all Open Activities,\r\n\r\nBefore Resolving the Case!\r\n");

}

This is the Global.js code that will make the web service call

// IncidentValidForClose

// Web Service Call

// Abe Saldana

// This all is undocumented and unsupported.

// Therefore you should only try these kind of modifications

// if you feel comfortable with this.

function IncidentValidForClose(caseid)

{

var isIncidentValidForClose;

isIncidentValidForClose = true;

try

{

// Calling the Local Web service located on the following

// folder \Inetpub\wwwroot\MSCRMServices\CRMcustom\CRMCustom.asmx

var oCommand = new RemoteCommand("CRMCustom","IncidentValidForClose","/MSCRMServices/CRMcustom/");

// Passing the parameters

oCommand.SetParameter("CaseID",caseid);

// Making the call

var oResult = oCommand.Execute();

if (oResult.Success)

{

// Success Return Value

isIncidentValidForClose = oResult.ReturnValue;

alert("caseid: " + caseid + "Response: " + oResult.ReturnValue.toString());

}else

{

// Failed response or Default response

alert("caseid: " + caseid + "Response: " + oResult.ReturnValue.toString());

}

}catch (e)

{

alert(e.description);

isIncidentValidForClose = true;

}

return isIncidentValidForClose;

}

The web service code is located on a zip file plase follow the installation instructions to have a successful installation also make the correct Web.config changes for your environment, code is available here

Download the CRMCustomWS.zip file with the sample code.

You can copy and past the functions as the code for the Case OnLoad event. if you copy and past the last function on the Global.js make sure to change the reference to the web services to "/MSCRMServices/" and change to any SDK method call you want to make.

So I will use this blog to say: "Thanks to Ronald Lemmen for his code and detail information on how to acomodate these JScript calls"...

Abe Saldana.

This all is undocumented and unsupported. Therefore you should only try these kind of modifications if you feel comfortable with this.
Everything here, though, is my personal opinion and is not read nor approved before being posted. No warranties or other guarantees will be offered as to the quality of the opinions or anything else offered here.