Different SiteMap voor Outlook

Hello,

yesterday a customer had a request to change the Sitemap on their Outlook clients, but not change the SiteMap on the web.

After a little research I found this could easily be accomplished by using the SiteMap Editor in the XrmToolbox.

The Customer wanted one group with only a couple of items in their, as their sales representatives don't need the full blown menu. This would confuse them and would only make them search longer for the option they want.

So I decided to add an extra Area, of which the SubArea's will only be seen on the Outlook clients:

In XrmToolbox you have the option to easily select the clients on which to SubArea's need to be shown. By doing this you can easily modify the SiteMap. Make sure you also select the "Availble Offline" option, otherwise, when the Outlook client goes in Offline mode, the menu will dissappear.

In orde to only show this newly made Area on the Outlook client and not show all the other Area's, I had to modify all the other SubArea's to only show on the Web client:

When you do this for every SubArea in an Area, the Area will not be shown anymore and we are only left with our custom Area: Web users happy, Outlook client users happy! :)

Unfortunately I cannot share a screenshot of the final result, but as soon as I have access to the Outlook client again, I'll share it.

Create Appointment via REST

Here is a short piece of Javascript code on how to create an appointment in CRM 2013 through REST.
I'm using CRMRestKit library to simplify the code.

Generate a note with a PDF attachment from a CRM report

Hi guys,

it's about time to make another entry on my blog.
I have been struggling for almost 2 days to get this to work and I finally got it.

A customer of ours had a requirement to generate a report to PDF, save the report to an entity and afterwards, make a mail with the attachment.

This blog is about the first part: generating the report and save it as a note attachment.

First I Googled for a starting point. I found this one:
http://xrmmatrix.blogspot.sk/2011/06/creating-report-as-pdf-attachment-in.html

This solution made use of a html web resource. In short: you put the code in a html web resource, and place the web resource on the form. The solution shows a button to trigger the generation of the report and also makes use of an unsupported VB script.

I wanted to do the same, but without the button, without the VB script and during the OnSave of the form.

There were a couple of problems to start with: the VB script needed to be converted to JavaScript and has to work in most modern browsers (IE, Chrome, ...)

Since I'm still pretty new to CRM and web development, I'm sure there are still a couple of things that can be done better. For instance: now I provide the report name and report id hardcoded in the script. I want to modify this a bit so I only have to provide the report name and the id is retrieved from the system.

Another thing I'm not sure about: to make it work in most browsers I detect if the script is being run in Internet Explorer or something else. In IE we can use responseBody from the XMLHttpRequest. In other browsers there is no responeBody propertie for the XMLHttpRequest. In the IE method I'm making use of the VBArray function to convert the response, but I'm not 100% sure if this is comptable with every IE version.

Anyway, long story short, here is my modified code. Enjoy:

Training

Up until now I have studied and passed 2 CRM courses & exams:

• Microsoft Dynamics 2013 Applications
• Microsoft Dynamics 2013 Customization and Configuration

Now I am reading MOC 40372A Microsoft .NET Fundamentals. Although a lot of terminology is repeating stuff, I still come across some very new stuff. Like any new programming language, it's a matter of getting your hands dirty and do the actual coding before some concepts really start to sink in. Reading the MOC is good to know what is possible and how it's done, but you programmers out there surely know what I mean with needing to get some decent hands on experience. Practice makes perfect, right? :)

This is actually the first MOC I'm reading digitally. I had a PDF of the previous courses and was able to print them. The .NET Fundamentals course is a course offered trough Skillpipe and it's actually pretty good. You've got options to mark text and make notes and share these notes with  other students who are in the same "class". A colleague of mine is also reading this MOC and he is able to do the same. 

One downside of this system is that you don't have any reference of your progress. You are able to see which lesson or chapter you're reading, but the pages aren't numbered. When you're reading a real book you immediately see/feel how far you progress trough. This takes getting used to.

I went trough 3 chapters in 2 days and I hope to finish this course by Thursday (a total of 4 days).

And use the 5th day of the week to do some exercises.

Next week I have an instructor led training of C#: MOC 20483 - Programming in C# with Microsoft Visual Studio 2012

After that, it's back to self studying: MOC 475A: HTML 5 Application Development Fundamentals and after that it's back to CRM: MOC 80295: 

Extending Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 + certification.

So a lot to cover in just a couple of weeks, but I'm excited. Finally I'm diving into the .NET world! A couple of years back I already took an evening class of C#, but I never used it since and it all faded...

So I'm really happy to finally use .NET in a professional matter.

Time for something else...

Hi folks, this is my first blog post ever, so bear with me... :)

I work in a big Belgian IT company. We have about 1200 employees and deliver all kinds of IT services, going from hardware to software. You name it, we've got it! :)

I started working there back in 2001. I still remember this very clearly. September 1st was my first day at a customer after months of training. Back then I used to develop in OpenEdge Progress.

Everybody still knows exactly where he was on 9/11 when the planes crashed into the WTC in New York. Well, I was at work at that customer...

I've worked full time with this customer for 5 years before I moved back to the office to do some customer support. This was all in function of a self developed ERP system. I slowly moved from supporting customers to doing installations, some reporting, business intelligence, ... I love the more technical aspect of the work.

After 10-years, and doing installations blindfolded, it was time for me to do something else... An opportunity came along to switch to the Microsoft Dynamics AX unit of our company. Up until then I haven't done any object-oriented programming. Dynamics AX was an excellent opportunity for me to get some hands-on experience. Especially when it was in a project with the customer I have worked with at the start of my career. I knew this customer very good so this was a bonus.

So X++, Dynamics AX's own programming language, was my first OO-language. It took some time to get a feeling with how to use this, and I'm sure I'm still learning new stuff everyday, but it was a major step up from OpenEdge Progress. Don't get me wrong, I loved to work in Progress, and Progress nowadays also does OO, but I had a feeling that if I wanted to extend my IT-career for some decades to come, I needed to do something else, and so I did.

After 2 years working in the AX-unit, another opportunity came along. Due to too little work in the pipeline and because of this, too much people in our unit, some of us were asked if we were interested in switching to something else within the company. I had a few conversations with some people and was told the Microsoft Dynamics CRM unit was actively looking for consultants. I had a meeting with a manager of the CRM unit and he convinced me. I believe this is another step forward in my career.

This is the point where I am today. Since September 1st, exactly 13 years after my career started at this company, I'm in a new unit and am studying hard to tackle the technical hurdles CRM covers.

I already have two Microsoft exams done: Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 Applications and Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 Customizations & Configuration.

Next up is a MOC of the .NET fundamentals. After that there is a 5 day C# course. After that there is HTML5 and JavaScript. This is a lot to cover in only a couple of weeks. The real experience will come when I'm doing the real work on projects. Looking forward to that.

I've started this blog because of several reasons: I was thinking of doing a blog for some time now, but didn't know about what I should blog. So this new move in my career was an excellent opportunity: let others view/read the perspective of a CRM-newbie, but well-seasoned IT consultant. Let people know I am struggling with along the way and how I deal with these hurdles.

So, take a subscription on this blog and ride with me!

Until next time!