Creating left navigation menu items (Links) to other entities on an entity form in Microsoft CRM 4

This is a short and quick post. If you have an entity and you want to add a link to the left hand side navigation menu of its form, then you can do this by one of two things:

1) Using ISV.CONFIG if this link is to an external website, application, etc.. This was discussed in more details in my post on using and editing ISV.CONFIG file

2) Creating a 1:N relationship between this entity and the entity you want to have a link for on the left menu bar.

So for example, if you want to have a link to all projects associated with an account in the account form, you will need to create a relationship between them. i.e. When you open an account form, you want to have a link to projects on the left handside navigation menu of the account form. To do this, you go to customisations, Account entity and in there, create a new 1:N relationship with your required entity (custom entity Project in this case). Create the relationship with Account as the primary entity and Project as the related entity. Save and publish the account form.

Now when you go and open any account record, you will see a link – submenu – item called projects on the left hand side of the Account form. If you click on it, it will allow you to add existing Projects (project records or whatever entity you selected) or you can create new project record.

You can of course apply this to any combination of entities whether customisable or custom.

To rename the left hand side menu navigation bar items, you can have a loo at my other two posts about renaming and hiding these items.

Thanks.

Hiding Left Navigation Menu Items in an Entity Form using Javascript in Microsoft CRM 4

This is just a follow on from my previous post (http://www.mohamedibrahim.net/blog/2009/07/30/renaming-left-menu-items-leftnav-entity-microsoft-dynamics-crm-4/). In this post, I explained how to rename left menu items in an entity form using javascript.

These links are created when a new N:1 relationship is created between two entities. The primary entity in this relationship will get a new left navigation link everytime a new N:1 relationship is created.

We have discussed in the previous post that the code to rename left menu navigation items (links to other N:1 entities) is:

var navItem = document.getElementById(’leftNavMenuItemID’);
navItem.innerHTML = navItem.innerHTML.replace(’>CurrentLinkValue’,’>NewLinkValue’);

So for example:

var navLeftItem = document.getElementById(’navContactsMenuItem’); // this will look for the element contact in the left menu of an account form
navLeftItem .innerHTML = navItem.innerHTML.replace(’>Contacts’,’>Employees’); //This will rename Contacts to Employees in the Account form

Now, to Hide specific links in the left menu, you can use the following script:

// Hide left menu navigation links on an entity form
var navLeftItem = document.getElementById(’navContactsMenuItem’);
navLeftItem .style.display = ‘none’;

This script will be in the OnLoad event of the form of the entity that you want to hide links created on the left handside of this entity form.

Renaming Left Navigation Menu items (leftnav) of an Entity in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4

I will try to make this as simple and straight to the point as possible.

This post is to explain how to to change the name and rename one or more of the left menu items – leftnav – items of an Entity, for example the Account entity or the Contact entity or any other Custom entity. In summary, this should be done using a script in the onload event of the entity form and apparently can NOT be done using the Isv.Config file.

So for example, when you open an account record, on the left hand side of the Account form you will have the left navigation list of entities which are: Activites, History, Sub-Accounts, Contacts, Relationshiips, Workflows, Opportunities, Leads, Quotes, Orders, Invoices, cases, contracts, marketing lists and campaigns.

To rename any of these entities or any other custom entity has a 1:N relationship with the Account entity, you will need to put some javascript code (or script really) in the OnLoad event of the Account Form. This code will look for the name of the left navigation item (link to an entity) and rename it to whatever you want. You can not do this in ISV.CONFIG as you can only add new links to ISV.CONFIG but you can not edit already existing left menu items in this file as they don’t exist and are not displayed.

So, in the OnLoad event of the entity that you want to rename its left navigation menu items, you will need to put the fulling code (or something like it):

var navItem = document.getElementById(‘leftNavMenuItemID’);
navItem.innerHTML = navItem.innerHTML.replace(‘>CurrentLinkValue’,’>NewLinkValue’);

This code will look for the menu item that has an id (‘leftNavMenuItemID’) in your chosen entity form and replace its current link name to a new link name.

So for example:

var navItem = document.getElementById(‘navContactsMenuItem’);
navItem.innerHTML = navItem.innerHTML.replace(‘>Contacts’,’>Employees’);

If you input this code in the OnLoad event of the Account entity Form, this code will look for the “Contact” entity link in the left navigation and rename it from Contacts to Employees.

You can apply the same to any other entity either it is a customisable (system) or custom entity. You will need to use a HTML tool such as Microsoft’s Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar to find out the ID of the navigation item that you want to rename (‘navContactsMenuItem’).

Please let me know if you have a question or if you want me to clarify more.

Thanks,

Mohamed Ibrahim

Setting up Microsoft CRM Internet Facing Deployment IFD with Multiple organisations

You can always setup Microsoft Dynamics CRM with Internet Facing deployment IFD either using the IFD tool by Microsoft or using the manual hard coding in the config files. I have recently used the IFD tool to do so and after I managed to get everything sorted, an important question came to mind which is: How can we setup Microsoft Dynamics CRM with Internet Facing deployment and at the same time allowing the external (Internet) access to all the CRM server organisations. So for example, if you have 3 CRM organisations (organizations) and you expose your Dynamics CRM server to external access via the Internet, you will usually have one domain name and one IP address for this server. So www.yourcrmserverdomain.com points to an IP address of 91.91.91.91 and this IP address is the real IP address of your Microsoft Dynamics CRM server. How can you make this point to different organisations all setup on the same server and the same CRM server.

I did search quite a lot on google, I have to say to find the answer as I was away from my server to try it myself one and I could not find a post or an article discussing it. This is probably because it is either too simple for everyone (although it didn’t seem that simple to me) or may be because I am useless in searching using the right keywords.

Anyway, the answer I found was very simple, although it might seem to some people (like me) as a potential issue because you have one server in IIS and you don’t have clear folder categorisation for each organisation to allow you to point different domains to different folders in the same CRM IIS node. Simply all you need to do is to direct the user to the server URL and then follow this with the organisation name.

So to point your external CRM users to organsiation 1, point these external users to go to www.yourcrmserverdomain.com/organisation1. And for example, for Organisation 2, www.yourcrmserverdomain.com/organisation2, and so on.. The default organisation can be accessed directly by using your CRM server URL (for ex: www.yourcrmserverdomain.com) or by the url www.yourcrmserverdomain.com/organisation1 (in case the default organisation is called organisation1). Both will work

Substitute the domain name, organisation 1 and organisation 2 with your actual domain and organisation names.

Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions.

Thanks,

Mohamed

Microsoft CRM 4.0 IFD Internet Facing Deployment (IFD) Internal Network address and subnet mask list of IP addresses.

Hi,

I have been working on setting up a test Microsoft dynamics CRM server on a server at home with Internet facing deployment. I wanted to try to see how CRM hosted will work. I have been through few issues that thankfully I managed to resolve them all. I will write another post specifically focusing on the deployment and IFD but for now, I want to focus on a quick issue that I had.

After the Microsoft Dynamics CRM was setup fine, I used the IFD tool (available free on Microsoft downloads website) to allow the Internet facing feature for the CRM server. On the IFD tool there is a list of machines that you can tell the IFD tool about. This is called “IFD Internal Network Address and Subnet Mask”.  The first thing that came to mind on seeing this is that it is for the internal computers that are allowed access to the server. Reading through the IFD documentation, I found out that it is actually the opposite. This list of machines IPs is the list of IPs for computers which are not allowed access to the Dynamics CRM server from the Internet (IFD). i.e. Any computer with an IP in this list, it will only be allowed to connect to the CRM server internally but if you attempt to access CRM Server externally from this machine, it will not even get to the authentication form.

So assume you added to this list in the IFD tool a computer with IP 192.168.1.88.

If you attempt to connect with this machine to the Dynamics CRM server using the internal address for example: http://localhost/CRM/, this will work find.

But if you attempt to connect from this machine to the CRM server using the external address: http://www.yourcrmserverdomainname.com/ then this will NOT work.

I would refer to this list as the internal addresses banned from accessing the dynamics CRM server externally.

I had this issue and I was trying to access the CRM server externally with another machine at home but I wasn’t able to and then I found out that I should actually remove this machine’s IP address from the list in order to be able to access it.

Hope this will ever help someone!

Mohamed Ibrahim

SAP and Microsoft Dynamics CRM Integration using SCRIBE

Few months ago, I was asked to research the possibility of integrating two systems for a client using SCRIBE Software specifically. The two systems are Microsoft CRM and SAP. I have done an intensive research in the subject and I have come up with a 9 pages document detailing the answer.

The quick answer is yes. SCRIBE is a good application that can be used to provide an integration between Microsoft Dynamics CRM and SAP.

If you want the report I created studying the strength of SCRIBE and the possibility of using it to do such integration, please request it via a comment on this page and I will email you the document. I will also email you a technical specification document that SCRIBE has sent me which details such integration. This technical document is not publicly available on their website as far as I know but you can always request it directly from them.

My technical report/document also has some examples of case studies in which Microsoft CRM system has been integrated successfullywith SAP. It also lists some white papers and technical documents/documentation that has covered the subject in general and the specific integration between SAP and CRM using SCRIBE.

The document does not include any reference to the client, the exact project specification or any information that could be confidential. It’s just simple facts and findings on SCRIBE and the possibility of using it for SAP and CRM integration.

*****  Updated 18/02/2010:

The document is now available on Scribe Insight blog as a guest blog post: http://blog.scribesoft.com/2010/02/guest-post-crmsap-integration-using-scribe.html  .. 

I can still send you the document if you want, just request it via a comment below please.

****** Mohamed Ibrahim Mostafa