How to get data out of entity in script in CRM 2011

Question

I have 2 entities (for this example) in CRM 2011 - Account and Case. The Account holds all of our clients, the case holds individual work actions for an account. When a case is created one of the input fields is the Account.

What I would like to do is upon the user selecting the Account, execute some javascript to look up the account entity to display some additional information.

So far I have got the javascript working that triggers the onchange event of the Account field, and it correctly gets the selected Account, but I don't know what the next step is.

I'm new to CRM so don't really know if what I'm asking is actually sensible, if there is a better way then please let me know.

Thanks!

Answer 1

For the record, the way you were thinking about doing things would be completely supported, and TechHike's method is supported in CRM 4, not CRM 2011. Steps you would take:

1. Use CRM 2011's web resources to upload a script file that does what you want.
2. Use the form editor to make your javascript method from step one fire when the Account field changes on the form
3. Make a request to CRM's REST endpoint (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg334767.aspx) to retrieve the details of the account selected
4. Use the results to populate fields on the form, show a popup with details, etc.

There are plenty of examples of caling the REST endpoint from JavaScript in the SDK (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg309408.aspx). Good luck!

Answer 2

Matt's post above contains everything you need to know, but you might also find the blog post below useful. It basically describes the same scenario where you have a 1:n relationship (such as Case and Account) and details how you can pull information from a specified lookup (e.g. account), using the REST endpoint (as Matt has already mentioned) and display it on the form.

http://community.dynamics.com/product/crm/crmtechnical/b/crminthefield/archive/2011/02/07/showing-related-information-in-a-crm-2011-form.aspx

The blog post includes a link to download a CRM2011 solution already built to give you something to look at how they've achieved this (useful if you're new to CRM2011).

Answer 3

There are two ways to do this, and you may be best to do them both in parallel:

• on the Account > Case relationship edit the Mappings. When a user goes to an Account and uses the left navigation to look at Cases (or a grid of Cases on the form) then hits "Add New Case" they are creating a Case from inside the "context" of the Account. You can copy any fields you want to from the Account to the Case record at this point - the Mappings define what field from the Account are copied to which target field on the Case. This will always be the most robust, easiest way to do it but relies on the user starting in the right place.

• on the Case for you could also add an onChange script to the Parent Customer lookup to fetch the data from the parent record. I think Stephen's link is probably the best way to do this as it does not copy the fields but allows the user to see them anyway, which is better database design (from a purist standpoint) and means the user always sees current info about the Account rather than possibly out of date stuff. Alternatively if you actually need to copy some fields (maybe the customer's normal SLA say) so that you can use these in other such as scripts or workflows on the Case then have a look at this article: Disabling the selection of contacts for opportunities all the way Although this is about a slightly different topic, the script there fetches the Account details of the parent Contact - you want to fetch values from a parent (llokup) field so the approach is the same, just different in the detail

Answer 4

There are various ways to do this but I would recommend doing it the supported way, without javascript. This may not be as pretty but it is likely much easier. The scenario would be to add a left navigation link to the case entity that when clicked will update the content area to show the details of the account.

To add a link to the left navigation you will need to configure the isv.config file to have an extra link for the case entity.

Here's an example: http://support.sfusion.com/kb/hosted-microsoft-crm-4/how-do-i-modify-the-isv-config-file-in-microsoft-crm-4/

You can also lookup isv.config customizations in the SDK, found here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=82e632a7-faf9-41e0-8ec1-a2662aae9dfb&displaylang=en

Next you will need to create a custom aspx page in the ISV folder of the web server. This page will display all the information about the account that you want to show the user when the left navigation link is clicked. The ISV.config as an xml property that allows you to pass all the context params to your page on the querystring. Make sure when you create the link to turn on this attribute.

Now the only tricky part is that in the page you will need to use the CRM web service to display all the account details that you interested in showing the user. I won't do into details on this. You can find great tutorials on the web or in the SDK if you haven't done this before.