Resizing windows

If you have a lot of data on an entity form, then you sometimes do want to force the page to open in full screen mode. There's a small javascript which will allow you to do this. Just add these two lines of code to the form onload of your entity form:

window.moveTo(0,0);
window.resizeTo(screen.availWidth, screen.availHeight);

Also, when you open a custom page you can also set the window size by using the same javascript function. In your code you can use the following function in the Page.OnLoad() to set the window size to match your requirements:

private void SetWindowSize(int iWidth, int iHeight)
{
StringBuilder sbResizeScript = new StringBuilder();
sbResizeScript.Append("\n");
ClientScript.RegisterClientScriptBlock(this.GetType(), "ResizeScript", sbResizeScript.ToString());
}

Happy resizing!

Stopping and continuing a save event

For some customizations you do need to stop the form onsave event, perform some business logic and continue the save event. An example would be that in specific conditions are met when a record is saved, then a popup will need to be shown. After filling in data in the popup and pressing a continue button on the popup, then the save operation would need to continue. The SDK helps in this situation. Look at the following page for more information. MSDN SDK: OnSave Event

On that page you will see that you can stop the onsave event by setting the 'event.returnValue = false'. Don't forget to follow that line with a 'return false'. This will cause the save procedure to stop right at that point. Otherwise statements after that will still be executed.

To call the save event from your javascript code, you can use the javascript functions crmForm.Save(); and crmForm.SaveAndClose(). By looking at the 'event.Mode' you can determine which event was executed before. If the code is 1, then it is a crmForm.Save(); or it is 2 for a crmForm.SaveAndClose(). There's only one small issue. There can be other save events as well. There's the 'save and new', 'save as completed', and also the 'send' for emails. Below is a list of save events with the corresponding javascript functions to call. Once again, this is not documented in the SDK, so this might change with a hotfix or new version.


Save
Code: 1
Function: crmForm.Save();


SaveAndClose
Code: 2
Function: crmForm.SaveAndClose();


Send
Code: 7
Function: send();


SaveAsCompleted
Code: 58
Function: SaveAsCompleted();


SaveAndNew
Code: 59
Function: crmForm.SubmitCrmForm(59, true, true, false);

Good luck!

Import CSV file to DataTable

I'm preparing a demo right now and for this I'm importing a CSV file to CRM. Especially the piece around the import of data from a CSV file to a DataTable is very generic. I'm sharing it with you guys for if it does make sense for you to use this as well.

class CSVReader
{
public System.Data.DataTable GetDataTable(string strFileName)
{
System.Data.OleDb.OleDbConnection conn = new System.Data.OleDb.OleDbConnection("Provider=Microsoft.Jet.OleDb.4.0; Data Source = " + System.IO.Path.GetDirectoryName(strFileName) + "; Extended Properties = \"Text;HDR=YES;FMT=Delimited\"");
conn.Open();
string strQuery = "SELECT * FROM [" + System.IO.Path.GetFileName(strFileName) + "]";
System.Data.OleDb.OleDbDataAdapter adapter = new System.Data.OleDb.OleDbDataAdapter(strQuery, conn);
System.Data.DataSet ds = new System.Data.DataSet("CSV File");
adapter.Fill(ds);
return ds.Tables[0];
}
}

You can then use this class together with a code like this:

private void YourFunction()
{
CrmService service = new CrmService();
service.Credentials = System.Net.CredentialCache.DefaultCredentials;

CSVReader reader = new CSVReader();
DataTable dt = reader.GetDataTable("C:\\CoffeeContacts.csv");
for (int i = 0; i < dt.Rows.Count; i++)
{
DataRow dr = dt.Rows[i];

account acc = new account();
acc.name = dr["Company"].ToString();
service.Create(acc);
}
}

ForceSubmit in ASP.Net

Today I've been working on a simple IFrame. This IFrame shows 3 dynamic picklists and the data in these picklists is coming from crm. Since some clients are a bit slow, I would like the picklists to be disabled while the postback is being performed. This is easily done with this script:

function disableFields(field1, field2){
field1.disabled = true;
field2.disabled = true;
}

<asp:DropDownList ID="ddl1" runat="server" AutoPostBack="true" onchange="disableField(form1.ddl2, form1.ddl3);">
<asp:DropDownList ID="ddl2" runat="server" AutoPostBack="true" onchange="disableField(form1.ddl1, form1.ddl3);">
<asp:DropDownList ID="ddl3" runat="server" AutoPostBack="true" onchange="disableField(form1.ddl1, form1.ddl2);">

This works perfectly, but... After a postback, the values of the selected picklists are gone! This seems like the same behavior as the disabled fields in CRM. In CRM you can solve this by setting the attribute ForceSubmit to true on the attribute, but I did not know of such an attribute.

Apparently there is such behaviour built into ASP.NET 2.0. In order to enable the submission of disabled form elements, you need to put this line in the Page_Load:

Page.Form.SubmitDisabledControls = true;

For more information on this attribute, check MSDN

Happy disabling!