The "Tiedot" Bug

"Tiedot" is a Finnish word that means "Information", it is used inside Dynamics CRM as the default name for the two standard forms (Main and Mobile) when a new entity is created.

This is pretty obvious if the base language for the organization is Finnish, but some days ago I discovered a bug regarding the default form names, the base language for the organization was English, the Finnish language pack was NOT installed, but form name and description were in Finnish.




After a while I found that this bug is caused by the Current Format selected under System Settings, if for example you choose a different language (without installing the language pack)


You will end up with a localized form name and description: (信息 for Simplified Chinese)



My suggestion is to keep inside the development environment the same Current Format as the base language, especially when the customer will use multiple languages.



I created also a Connect feedback: https://connect.microsoft.com/dynamicssuggestions/feedback/details/902012/bug-form-name-and-description-depending-on-current-format-and-not-on-base-language

LCID JavaScript Helper Library

Xrm.Page object provides two methods to get the relevant language used inside Dynamics CRM:

• Xrm.Page.context.getUserLcid() - returns the LCID value that represents the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Language Pack that is the user selected as their preferred language
• Xrm.Page.context.getOrgLcid() - returns the LCID value that represents the base language for the organization

The value returned is the lcid decimal value, there is not a built-in function to return the culture name ("en-US" for LCID 1033) or the language region ("German (Germany)" for LCID 1031).

The attached library provides an easy way to get the culture name and the language region from the decimal lcid value, it contains two methods:

• LCIDUtils.getCultureName(lcid)
  returns a string with the culture name of the selected lcid value

  var userLcid = Xrm.Page.context.getUserLcid(); 
  var userCultureName = LCIDUtils.getCultureName(userLcid); 
  alert("User Culture name is: " + userCultureName);
  

• LCIDUtils.getLanguageRegion(lcid)
  returns a string with the language region of the selected lcid value

  var orgLcid = Xrm.Page.context.getOrgLcid(); 
  var orgLanguageRegion = LCIDUtils.getLanguageRegion(orgLcid); 
  alert("Organization Language Region is: " + orgLanguageRegion);
  

The library can be downloaded from Technet Gallery:
http://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/scriptcenter/LCID-JavaScript-Helper-7cfb0829

Note: The culture name and language region mappings come from this MSDN page: National Language Support (NLS) API Reference (Windows 7)

CRM Reports and Barcodes

Yesterday I saw a question on MSDN Dynamics forum: How to rotate an image in SSRS
The asker needed to generate barcodes inside a CRM Online report and shared this link:
Free Reporting Services Barcodes
The idea is to create a bitmap representing the barcode using the font text, in order to keep the aspect consistent between the preview and the exported report.
However he wanted to know how to rotate the bitmap and although I'm not a big fan of SSRS, the question was interesting so I checked the code.
I have some experience with Image Processing (years ago I created this ugly and nowadays outdated software) so I recognized the System.Drawing namespace and its methods.
So I thought: well, if we can use FillRectangle, DrawString and similar, probably RotateFlip will work too. I suggested the following code and it worked:

newBitmap.RotateFlip(System.Drawing.RotateFlipType.Rotate270FlipNone)

Moral of the story: even if the reports for CRM Online have limitations, sometimes we can count on the .NET framework to solve our requirements.

Retrieve the members of a specific Team

The code to retrieve the members of a specific Team is quite easy, it's a standard QueryExpression, but contains a linked entity with a condition inside, it's good as start point for similar queries.

// Id of the specific Team
Guid teamId = new Guid("DAC1F09E-02EF-E311-A2AB-D89D67630DBC");
// main query returing users
QueryExpression userQuery = new QueryExpression("systemuser");
// take all columns
userQuery.ColumnSet = new ColumnSet(true);
// this is the intersect condition
LinkEntity teamLink = new LinkEntity("systemuser", "teammembership", "systemuserid", "systemuserid", JoinOperator.Inner);
// this is the condition to use the specific Team
ConditionExpression teamCondition = new ConditionExpression("teamid", ConditionOperator.Equal, teamId);
// add the condition to the intersect
teamLink.LinkCriteria.AddCondition(teamCondition);
// add the intersect to the query
userQuery.LinkEntities.Add(teamLink); 
//get the results
EntityCollection retrievedUsers = service.RetrieveMultiple(userQuery);
// fetch the results
foreach (Entity user in retrievedUsers.Entities)
{
    // Id of the user
    var userId = user.Id;
    // FullName of the user 
    var userFullName = user.Contains("fullname") ? user["fullname"].ToString() : "";
}

Dynamics CRM Tools and Utilities from Codeplex

I just discovered Curah!, a free service provided by Microsoft to share links with the possibility to add a comment or a description.
For my first Curah I decided to share a list of tools and utilities for Dynamics CRM available on Codeplex, you can find it here:

http://curah.microsoft.com/70730/dynamics-crm-tools-and-utilities-from-codeplex

Introducing the International Availability Map

Microsoft offers several online services and the most important for me is Dynamics CRM Online (obviously). CRM Online is not available everywhere (for example South Africa or China) and Microsoft published a list here to indicate the international availability, not only for Dynamics CRM but for other services as Azure and Office 365.
However a list of countries doesn't give the idea of the current worldwide situation, so I created three maps to visualize the data.
You can find the maps here (Dynamics CRM Online, Azure, Office 365) http://www.crmanswers.net/international-availability-map

The revamped Plugin Registration Tool

One of the suggestions I always give when a user has issues with the Plugin Registration Tool is to download first the latest CRM SDK.
The reason is simple: a new rollup installed or a CRM Online update can easily bring some changes with the previous versions of the tool, but if we use the latest version we can hope that the Plugin Registration Tool will work as expected.

Of course I never follow my suggestions, so it took me 2 weeks from the release of the latest CRM SDK (6.1) to discover the new Plugin Registration Tool!


It's easy to spot the switch from the ugly Windows Forms to WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation).

More important is the new position inside the SDK. Now the Plugin Registration Tool is located inside the folder SDK\Tools\PluginRegistration and not anymore inside the folder SDK\Bin.

Another change is the .NET framework required to run the tool, now you must have 4.5 installed:


But the main change is how the connection is handled, in the previous versions was necessary to insert the mysterious discovery url:


The new version is more user-friendly:


First it is necessary to specify the Deployment Type, between On-Premises, Online and Office 365.
For On-Premises is possible to specify the Authentication Source between Active Directory and Internet-facing deployment(IFD) and to use or not the default credentials.
For Online and Office 365, the user can select the Online Region (there is also the option Don't Know)


The functionality of the Plugin Registration Tool is still the same (register and update the plugins, install the profiler, ...) only the Properties box is positioned at the bottom (it is useful to check the assembly version)


A big welcome to the new Plugin Registration Tool!