How to fix it.

If you are talking to a 7.1 deployment, and you want CRM to report the WSDL Info for a 7.1 compliant connection and generate a strong typed class, you would address the service as such via the CrmSvcUtil:

CrmSvcUtil.exe /url:”https://YOURORG.api.crm.dynamics.com/XRMServices/2011/Organization.svc?singleWSDL&sdkversion=7.1” /o:test.cs /n:test /u:ACCT@YOURORG.onmicrosoft.com /p:XXXXXXX

Notice that we added the ?singleWSDL&sdkversion=7.1 to the Url,  this tells CRM that you are asking for the 7.1 version of the WSDL..  that then allows the command to complete,  the right metadata to come down, and you to have a class created as ( in this case ) test.cs that has all your strongly typed objects in it. We will be updating the doc’s for the CrmSvcUtil soon to reflect this,  ( you can find those here )

Happy Crm’ing

At the tail end of the Extreme CRM conference in Madrid this last week ( 4/2015 ) I found myself sitting in a USD Training class, when a situation came up where a student had “broken” their deployment.  Suffice to say that a bunch of records had been corrupted in such a way that it made sense to dump the USD data in the org and start over. 

The easiest way that folks in the class came up with to fix this was to remove the USD solutions, which in turn removed the data for USD.  The downside of that is that it takes a while to uninstall / reinstall solutions. 

PowerShell to the rescue

As an odd happenstance,  I had built a PowerShell script a few weeks before to clean up USD environments that I use when testing builds of USD. I turned it into a demo to show at the Dynamics Technical Conference with the intention of blogging it ( yea I know, long time between posts… ).   And here I found an application for this.

So what does this script do?

As folks know (or may not know) we added a PowerShell cmdlet to CRM 2013 Sp1 ( 6.1) called Microsoft.Xrm.Tooling.Connector.Powershell. This cmdlet allows us to create an instance of the CrmServiceClient connector to CRM and use the functions of CRM from any given PowerShell script.  With that I took advantage of a little know feature of the CRM API ‘s Bulk Delete capability to send multiple queries on one bulk delete request.

With that, the Bulk delete items and some defensive scripting,  I end up with a script that will remove all the records from a USD configuration in one call to CRM

Run the command which prompts for login…

Answer the are you sure… really??????
THIS WILL WIPE OUT ALL OF YOUR USD CONFIG DATA WITH NO GOING BACK TO IT.

You were warned and said ok anyway….
Now you get to look at a status of this happening and contemplate if you picked the right environment while you wait….

annnd volia !  Empty USD Deployment

in this case, 1400 rows across 23 entities.  … total time to run … about 1 min.

So how do you do this?

First you need to get the CRM SDK for 2015,  I would recommend the 7.0.1 version or later as we solved a few issue with the –interactive flag of connector in later versions.  you can get that here

Once you have that downloaded.. locate the “bin” directory.. that’s usually <”yourInstallPath”>\SDK\Bin

In that directory you will find a script called RegisterXrmTooling.ps1.  You will need to run the script as an administrator in PowerShell so that it can do what it needs to do to register the connector.  When you register it from this directory, you will likely get a message that says “Did Not Find Microsoft.Xrm.Tooling.PackageDeployment.Powershell.Dll” that’s Ok for this task. you can ignore it.

Once you have registered, you should be good to go.. 

You can also use that script to unregister the addin’s by passing the –Uninstall switch to it.

You can get the script I use HERE.. *** No warrantees implied / treat it as samples and such ***

and be aware that THIS WILL WIPE OUT ALL OF YOUR USD CONFIG DATA WITH NO GOING BACK TO IT.

Happy CRMing and such.

To business,

Just the other day, I was doing some ad hoc testing on the new Plugin Registration Tool’s Service Buss endpoint configuration system and realized that the instructions in the CRM documentation and the tasks I needed to do were really confusing.  Confusing to the point where I ended up going over to the API/SDK PM and asking how to get this to work..  Now that’s not a good situation to be in.

After some discussion and going back and forth over the SDK Doc’s we came to the conclusion that really what was wrong was that terms CRM uses and Azure UX have changed over time between CRM and Azure.  Also, Azure is innovating their portal / management tools so quickly that its hard for our doc’s to stay 100% current.

So here, I will walk though setting up a service bus endpoint that CRM can talk to.   Start to finish.  ( This is as of Sept 2014 )

Configuring Service Bus endpoint to work with a CRM Plugin Step.

First you need to create your service bus endpoint to work with. 

Here is where I went wrong the first time.  The Natural instinct here is to go to the Azure Management Portal and create your service bus endpoint there, then try to configured ACS.  This will result in a service bus endpoint that you cannot easily integrate to CRM.  So.. RESIST the urge, leave the management portal out of it for now..

The proper way to do it is actually described in one of our walkthrough in the SDK,  here.   The confusing part about this walkthrough is that it is actually about configuration of the full Azure ACS Service to work with CRM vs. just setting up the a Service Bus Plugin endpoint.   So you only need part of it..

You will need to have the Azure PowerShell module,  if you don’t have it installed, this part will not work.  if you need to install it,  here is a link to walk you though that process :  How to install and configure Azure PowerShell.

Open up Windows PowerShell ISE ( or powershell of you like )

Next type the command :  Add-AzureAccount

This will pop a window that will walk you though Logging into your Azure Account.

*Important: If you have more the one Azure subscription,  Make sure your on the right subscription for the next part,  else your Service bus Endpoint may not get created where you expected it too.

Next,  Use the following command to create the Azure Service Bus:

New-AzureSBNamespace <YourNSName> –Location <Azure Region to live in>

YourNSName is the name of your service bus endpoint,  in my case its CrmExampleSb

For Location,  Location can be any of the Azure Supported Regions, at the time of this post that list looked like:
Central US, East US, East US 2, North Central US, South Central US, West US, North Europe, West Europe, East Asia, Southeast Asia, Brazil South, Japan East, and Japan West.

In my case, I used “West US”

This results in some information about your service bus, including the keys you will need in later steps.

So this action creates the Service Bus endpoint, and the ACS service that you need integrate with CRM, all in one command.

Don’t close this window as you will need this information in a few min.

Now, We need to open up the Azure Management console as there is not a way currently via cmdlets to Create the queue

Open https://manage.azure.com

Navigate to the service bus area and you should see your newly created service bus namespace:

Step into your new Namespace here and goto queues:

Click the create a new queue button and ( in this case ) use the Quick Create:

In this case, I called my queue “OutChannel”

Ok, So now we are all set on the service bus side… now we just need to create our Plugin Step Registration to talk to it.

Creating an Azure Service Endpoint in the Plugin Registration tool

Start up the Plugin Registration tool, You can find that tool in the tools directory of the CRM SDK.

Using the Plugin Registration Tool,  Login to the CRM Deployment you want to set up the step in.

In my case, I am going to use CRM Online as that has all the CRM service side bits of the Azure interface preconfigured and ready to go.

Here I have started the Plugin Registration Tool and connected it to an organization called CvgUsdDemo

Now I want to click the dropdown button called “register” and then choose “Register new Service Endpoint”

That opens up my step registration form.

Here is where we use the information we created via Powershell and the Azure Management portal

Name is my name for the service endpoint for CRM.  This is what CRM will describe it as.
Solution Namespace is the Service bus endpoint name.  so in my examples here,  that would be CrmExampleSb
Path is the queue we created in the Management Portal,  so in my example here,  that’s outchannel
Contract is a bit tricky.  Depending one the type of item you put in the Service Bus your options here change.. in my case, I created a queue, which allows me to use either PresistentQueue or Queue for this field.  If I try to do something else, I will get an error.
Claim is really short hand for: add the user context info or not to the message on the service bus.

Now, I click Save and Configure ACS,

The Plugin Registration Tool does most of the heavy lifting here for configuring security and such.  however it does need a few things from you to do it.

This step requires information from 2 places,

First you will need to go to your CRM developer settings are to get the Certificate for CRM and the Issuer Name for the Certificate.  For CRM Online, this is all preconfigured for you when your CRM online instance is created, for CRM on premise, you will need to set this up in your deployment before you can do this next step. 

In the Plugin Registration Tool, we provide a link right on the Configure ACS page for you to get to this info in CRM

so in my case, This info looks like this:

The two things I need here are the Issuer Name, and the certificate.

1. Take note of the Issuer Name
2. Download the certificate to your workstation.

Second you will need the management key for the service bus,  the PowerShell command to create the service bus reported that key.

Back in the PowerShell output (from creating the service bus) that’s called the “defaultkey”

so populated,  my form looks like this:

Next, you push the configure ACS button.

You will get a warning here,

Click Yes and wait…

when complete.. you will see a report indicating that it worked or didn’t work..  in this case, working looks like this:

The final step, is to close this window and then click the Save and Verify Authentication button on the Service Endpoint Registration page.

it should take a moment to complete.. and when complete you should be presented with a screen like this: 

If you got here,  you are good to go.

Click Close, then save the Service Endpoint Registration.

Your new endpoint now shows in the “Registered Plugins and Custom Workflow Activities” list.

Creating an Step Registration for the new Service Endpoint in the Plugin Registration tool

Now you just need to wire the events you want to listen too the service endpoint.

Right Click on the Service Endpoint and choose “Register New Step”

That then opens this UX:

As you can see the event handler is already set to the service endpoint,  now all we need to do is configure the Message we care about and the entity to act on… so in my case,  Create of Account and post messages Async:

Then click “register new step” and volia ..

Any new Accounts will also get sent to the Azure Service bus queue we configured for that end point.

You can find more here

CRM TEAM BLOG: What’s Changing in the Next Release?

Head over and check it out.

Picking though the examples and documentation for UII to figure out how to setup your first ( or 10th ) hosted control, adapter, or CTI adapter is a bit of a pain. Not to mention a bit time consuming… most of the time in the CCF Days, I would just grab another control I had written and use it as the ‘boiler plate’ for doing what ever I needed to do.

As we put together internal and partner training for CCA\UII for CRM 4, I took the time to create a few project starters for things that I do a lot, such as Creating Hosted Controls, or Search controls and CTI adapters. Those of you that have attended the CCA training events will have seen one of them already as we use templates in module 3 of the training. 

I had made prior versions of these templates available to folks via a VSI file on sky drive,  the major issue with this delivery channel is that I don’t have a clear idea as to how valuable they are to folks or a means to keep folks up to date as a fix and publish updates.

To address that, I have made these solution starters available via the Visual Studio Gallery for folks to use, the limitation is that you must be doing development on Visual Studio 2010 or newer to utilize these templates.  This will also allow me to keep things up to date as necessary

You can download them from the Visual Studio Extensions manager by searching for UII , CCA or CRM or by clicking here.

Change Log:

Ver 2.0 – 6/15/12

• Updated Default sizing on WPF Controls to use “design” sizing vs actual sizing in the templates.
• Agent Desktop Template :
  • Major updates to the connection manager in the agent desktop to support office 365 and token renewal  - in general this can be patched into your desktop by copying the CrmConnect folder to your project from a new desktop project built from the template. ( Updating namespaces as necessary )
  • Added sorting of organizations when choosing orgs.
  • Added a cancel link on the splash screen.
• CTI Starter Solution
  • Added all created projects to a sub solution folder to support multiple CTI projects in one base solution.

What templates are provided

I am providing 8 project templates and 6 item templates for use with UII

Project and Item Templates:

• UII Application Adapter Control
  • This provides a base project template for creating an application adapter
• UII Web Application Adapter Control
  • This provides a base project template for creating an web adapter. Note: this is not a HAT control,  the Web Application Project type creates a HAT control
• UII Windows Form Hosted Control
  • This provides a base project template for creating an winform hosted control with the session, doaction handlers, and context handers prewired.
• UII WPF Hosted Control
  • This provides a base project template for creating an wpf hosted control with the session, doaction handlers, and context handers prewired.
• UII Windows Form Customer Search Control
  • This provides a base project template for creating an winform hosted control with the session, doaction handlers, context, session creation, and search logic handers prewired. It also supplies a base customer payload class.
• UII WPF Customer Search Control
  • This provides a base project template for creating an wpf hosted control with the session, doaction handlers, context, session creation, and search logic handers prewired. It also supplies a base customer payload class.

Project Only Templates:

• UII Baseline Agent Desktop
  • As the name implies, it is a baseline agent desktop shell, with 5 hosting areas, a hidden area , a CrmConnection manager, about window, and splash screen.  It supports all methods of login to CRM including federated.   This desktop is functioning standalone, and provides code level documentation as to what it is doing.
• UII CTI Starter Solution
  • This solution lays out all the base components necessary to create a CTI adapter for UII.
  • Within this solution:
    • The BaseCitConnector project is the communication layer for talking to the downstream CTI solution. This control is setup to talk to the CTI solution via polling, however it can be adapted to whatever you need.
    • The BaseCitDesktopManager is the Interface layer that UII uses to manage events between UII and the BaseCTIConnector, it is also the control that instances the AgentState and CallState Manager Classes in the next assembly.
    • The BaseCtiStateManagers are the translators for CTI => CCA and places where you can add extended functionality beyond the core control set we offer.

How to install it.

You can download them from the Visual Studio Extensions manager by searching for UII , CCA or CRM or by clicking here.

When you begin the install you will be presented with a window that looks like this:

You will notice that the message “This extension does not contain a digital signature” is present.

This is normal, as I have not signed this package.

Push Install to complete the install,  after which you will be presented with a dialog that looks like this:

You can verify that everything went fine by opening up VS and Clicking the “New Project”. Under Visual C# you will see a area called UII

In that section you will see 10 project templates that looks like this ( if you also have HAT Installed, otherwise you will see only 8 )

Important Notes..

I have provided the templates in Visual C# only. You will not find them in the VB.net area of Visual Studio

All of the templates configured with “local” references to the UII framework directory, which means you will need to update the References Paths to point to the UII Install Directory \ Framework directory.

To Do that,

Right click on the project in the solution explore and choose “properties”:

then choose the “Reference Paths” from the project areas:

Next, Click the … button next the folder box, and Navigate to your UII Install Directory. If you used the default install that’s going to be C:\Program Files\Microsoft Uii\Framework

Once you have selected the folder, click “Add Folder” under the Folders box.

That should fix all the reference problems and you should be good to go.

I hope folks find this useful, Please post comments on the Gallery site , MSDN forums , codeplex or as comments here.

Happy coding.

Audit events shipped with UII

These are events that are installed by default… by default they are all disabled.  To enable, you need to flip the bits in the UII Options entity to 1 for the events your interested in.

Flag Name	What it does
AuditFlagAction	Raised when an action is called on a hosted control
AuditFlagAgentState	Raised when the CTI State of an agent changes
AuditFlagHostedApplication	Raised when a hosted application changes or is loaded
AuditFlagInteraction	Can be raised by a developer code as necessary
AuditFlagLogin	Raised when a UII Login or Logout event occurs
AuditFlagSession	Raised when a session is changed, loaded or closed.
AuditFlagWorkFlow	Raised when the onboard workflow system is used with state information on the workflow

So that’s great,  Now how to I add my OWN events.

Adding an audit event to catch the desktop shutdown.

Lets say I want to log the desktop shutdown,  as you can see that’s not covered in the out of the box list.  Lets add it.

Right Way vs Just getting it done…

First thing to do is add a new value to the UII Options table,  lets call this value "AuditFlagDesktopShutdown”.
Goto Settings –> UII Options.  Press the new button and add the entry as it appears below.

Ok now to our Agent desktop code,

In the agent UiiServices class,  locate the method “BeforeDesktopClose”

Add this code to it

   1: // Generally this part is done in your desktop setup,  I'm doing it here for readability 

   2: // this is the name of my config key.

   3: string myKey = "AuditFlagDesktopShutdown";

   4: // this gets the current value from the UII Options entity

   5: string sValue = ConfigurationReader.ReadAppSettings(myKey);

   6: // this sets the audit state for that key

   7: AuditLog.SetAuditFlag(myKey, sValue);

   8:  

   9: // This part occurs at the time of the event. 

  10: // this creates the data payload for the audit event,

  11: Microsoft.Uii.Common.Entities.LogData data = new Microsoft.Uii.Common.Entities.LogData()

  12: {

  13:     Action = "DesktopShutdown",

  14:     ActionData = string.Format("Desktop Shutdown event at {0}", DateTime.Now.ToString())

  15: };

  16: // this raises the audit event. 

  17: AuditLog.Log(myKey, data); 

This code is broken into two parts. The first part is the setup and registration of the audit key in the desktop. Where the call to ConfigurationReader.ReadAppSettings is reading the key from the UII Options entity.

The set command registers it with UII for future use.  as such you only need to do this part once at the start of your desktop normally.  Once this is done, UII will respect the audit setting and either log or not log the event based on the setting.

The second part is where the actual log event occurs.

Once that is done you can use an Advanced find to locate the and see the UII Audit entity in CRM.

For clarity sake,  my UII Options entity looks like this :

Happy Coding.

So the challenge…

My scenario calls for using the product’s with Opportunities and Quotes to support the forecasting and quota modules,  however I don’t have any complexity in my product catalog. Its is a flat list of products with flexible pricing and quantity support.  I do not need more then one pricelist, nor do I need multiple Unit specifications.

to support this,  lets say we have defined a product called PROD001,  PROD001 is on the Default Price List, with a Price List Cost of $10.  It is also associated to the Primary Unit, with a default quantity of 1.  

The Product looks like:

The Primary Unit looks like:

Remember that Default Unit “owns” the Primary Unit…

And on the Default Price List I have a Price List Item

Which looks like :

Now I want to create a Opportunity….  Using the default functionality; I go to Sales, Opportunities, and click “New”,  I populate the Topic and Customer and click save…
Now I navigate to the Line items area..

My view looks like this:

On the Ribbon, I click “Add New Opportunity Product”…

I am promptly given an Error:

Ok, So I need to:

1. Click the search box next to Price List ( or type it in if I know the name ).
2. Choose the Default price List in the Lookup.
3. Click Save.
4. THEN save the form

All to get me this view:

That’s a lot of work for a field I didn’t care about…

So now Im ready to add a product,  Once Again I click “Add New Opportunity Product”…

I click the search button on the existing product and Select PROD001

Now I have this..

Ok, so I can see by the Red * that I need a Unit and a Quantity to proceed.

So again.. I need to Click the Search button and Populate the unit, then key the quantity I'm interested in..  THEN hit save.

The net result is I get back to this:

Looking back at the overall flow here,  Iv got perhaps 3 save’s and 9+ clicks I need to do to enter information that is repeated every time and my user doesn't really care about anyway…   Not a good situation…

Solving for Required, but Ignored fields. 

The obvious answer is to remove them from the form, however that not going to work as they are required for the “normal” function of CRM. 

After giving this a bit of though I came up with a solution that prepopulates most of this “Extra” information from defaults, which allows you to hide the fields in question and still leverage the core features of CRM’s product / Opportunity and Quoting modules.

While I could hard code in ID’s or names to a Onload JavaScript for the various forms,  I want to give the developer and user the flexibility to configure the default pricelist, and the relationships for the Product / Unit and quantity that will auto populate.   My thinking here is while these fields are not necessary in the day to day operations, they can be used to speed data entry and reporting.

So the plan was to be able to create a relationship such as :

• PROD001 (Product)
• Primary Unit  ( Unit Relationship )
• Quantity: 1
• PROD002 (Product)
• Batch (Unit Relationship )
• Quantity: 10
• Default ( PriceList)
• PriceList Item for PROD001
• Product : PROD001
• Amount: $10
• PriceList Item for PROD002
• Product : PROD002
• Amount: $15

and so on..   This way the user can set the default quantity behavior for any given product by adjusting the default Unit on the product.
Note:  the relationship from the PRODUCT to the UNIT is the determining relationship in this process, not the relationship on the pricelist,

What I chose to do was to create a JavaScript module that did the following:

On Create Opportunity and Quote:

If the Price List is not populated already, Use a hint key to populate the Price List from the system.. by default its going to look for a pricelist that starts with “Default”

On Add Product to Opportunity Product or Quote Line Item

Use the default association between Product, Unit, and Unit quantity to populate the appropriate fields on the form.
this allows the user to configure the default unit and quantity numbers on a per product bases. IE: Each / Batch / etc..

JavaScript vs a Plugin,
I did consider using a plugin to associate the default pricelist with an Opportunity or Quote, but decided to keep it all in the front end for now.

This functionally drops 9 or so Clicks and 3 save actions along the way… which balances things out a bit.

You can find the Managed and Unmanaged solutions that contains the JavaScript web resource to do this job here.
There are 2 web resources in the solution,

• mattb_ProductViewSettings
• mattb_ProductViewSettings_UnCompressed

They are both the same file,  one is minimized, one is not.

Additionally I have provided the opportunity, quote, opportunity product, and quote line item form event updates as part of the solution.
When in doubt, use the managed solution.

Warnings:

Note: If you import the Managed solution and maintain the existing customizations ( Don’t step on the forms there if they are customized ), you will need to add in these events by hand.

If you don’t know if your opportunity / quote forms are customized… use the managed solution … 

You can always copy the JavaScript code out of the mattb_productViewSettings_UnCompressed in the managed solution and add it to a web resource in your solution.

As provided, the JavaScript will look for any pricelist that begins with the word “Default”,  and if there is more then one, use the first one in runs into.
To change that, open the web resource and locate the line :

   1: DefaultPriceListStartsWith: "Default",

Then change the world Default to whatever you want the default price list to be..

For Opportunity and Quote, the form properties are wired to events as such :

Where mattb_ProductViewSettings has been added to the forms library collection and the Onload event has been wired to the MattB.ProductViewSettings.OppQuoteDefaultPriceList method of the mattb_ProductViewSettings.

For the Line item forms.,

The Form properties are set to:

and the properties on the “product” field have been set to:

So in text: 
mattb_ProductViewSettings has been added to the forms library collection of the Quote Line Item and Opportunity Line Item, Then I viewed properties on the Existing Product field, selected events, and added MattB.ProductViewSettings.ProductDefaultUom to the OnChange event

with that done,

When I create a new opportunity,  the Price List is auto populated and saved on the first save, which I need to do to activate the line items area.

And when I click “Add New Opportunity Product”  and select a product

Unit and quantity auto populate… 

Also because Unit is driving the base quantity, if I choose a product with a different unit:

It populates the updated quantity based on the unit associated.

There we go… a bit of prepopulating to help get things moving a bit faster and save some mouse clicks and key strokes.

Enjoy!.

How to stop the CRM Popup alert when you grab a window and re-host it to another tab, while suppressing the OnNewWindow event is a common issue that developers working with CCA have..

If you tried to suppress a CRM popup and redirect it… you've probably seen this message a few times:

So how do you get rid of it?

The 2 approaches I'm going to describe here work for CRM 3 and 4.0 and CRM 2011.

The most common and direct method is to modify the CRM server side javascript lib that generates the alert.
However, I’m not going to name which JavaScript file it is or were it is as its highly unsupported to do so, and you should avoid doing that if you can.
In short; Please do not do this.
If you do choose to ignore this warning and go there, be aware that patches and updates to the CRM 2011 platform will most likely overwrite the file you changed and you will find that you need to make a manual update every time.

The way the CCA MCS team does this allows CRM to continue without server side changes and works for CRM UI elements hosted inside UII via a WebApplication adapter.

So how do we do it?
We overwrite the in-memory copy of the JavaScript method that generates the popup alert, which is effectively doing the same thing as the server side change, however it only impacts CCA , this approach was developed by a peer of mine in MCS.

This is updated from the prior post and I'm updating his new approach here with his permission.

To do it, First you need a web application adapter, you can start one using the Visual Studio templates provided (CCA R1/CRM4 here) (CCA R2/CRM2011 here) , or if you already have one, you can use it.

Setting up the event hooks:

In your web application adapter you need to override the Initialize method and add in a new event hook for Document complete, this event hook is a lower level event hook then what you would get with the Adapters version of Document complete and should only be used for this purpose.

Code:

   1: public override bool Initialize()

   2: {    

   3:     bool bRlst = base.Initialize();    

   4:     this.Browser.DocumentComplete += new EventHandler<Controls.DocumentCompleteEventArgs>(Browser_DocumentComplete);

   5:     return bRlst;

   6: }

This will set up our event direct connection to the IE Instance’s Document completed event, at a lower level then what CCA works with normally.

Updating the function on the fly.

Next we need to build out the event handler we created, which will be called when any part of the document raises a document complete event and overwrite the in memory version of the CRM handle popup blocker error function.

That event will look like this:

   1: void Browser_DocumentComplete(object sender, Controls.DocumentCompleteEventArgs e)

   2: {

   3:     IWebBrowser2 browserFrame = e.pDisp as IWebBrowser2;

   4:     if (browserFrame == null)

   5:         return;

   6:     try

   7:     {

   8:         ((mshtml.HTMLDocumentClass)browserFrame.Document).parentWindow.execScript("handlePopupBlockerError=function(url) {}", "javascript");

   9:     }

  10:     catch{}

  11: }

When this event is called it will run a JavaScript command that will overwrite the in memory handlePopupBlockerError function, have it do ‘nothing’

The net result is that you will not get the popup blocker alert from CRM.

Few cautionary notes: ( disclaimers )

Changing the behavior of CRM is an unsupported modification.. so if you encounter errors in CRM, make sure disable this event and validate that the error is still there prior to calling support on it.

Future updates may change the name of the method that we update here. While that is unlikely, this is an unsupported on the fly modification. The CRM team makes no guarantee the method name will not change.

This has been used and works successfully on CRM 3, 4 and 2011.

Lets talk about History for just min.

There are several ways to do authentication from client applications that have existed since RTM,  as a general rule, they are either done using the simple constructor on the proxy, or the IServiceConfiguration interface.  

What I call simple constructor approach provides two constructors,  one for the Discovery Service Proxy, and one for the Organization Service Proxy
For the Discovery Service Proxy, the simple constructor requires you to know a lot about the server connection up front, the same is true for the simple constructor for the Organization Service Proxy 

You need to know what the URL of the service you want to connect too is,  you need to know the user and device credentials, the home realm URI, and the right parameters to use with the right settings for the type of auth you want.

Seems simple,  what's going on there behind the scenes though is pretty complicated and fairly time consuming.  In short, for each type of of Service Proxy,  the SDK is calling the WCF MEX service on CRM to get the WSDL to build the proxy for the type of server connection,  then wiring up that proxy and returning it to the caller.   Notice I didn’t say “Authenticate” there…  Authentication happens the first time to you try to do something with the newly created service proxy.

From a time perspective,  that’s a pretty heavy operation.  One of the worst things that can happen here its to create, use, destroy , recreate , etc...
For performance, you really need to hold on to the constructed proxy and use it for the life of your connect.   The other challenge here is that you don’t have visibility to what is taking up time in this operation… is it the WSDL create? or the Auth? or the proxy Generation ? or perhaps the call to CRM itself.

In the RTM Release,  we were also provided the IServiceConfiguration interface.. which provided us with a more component based capability to set up the Proxy, Authenticate, and create the Discovery Service or Organization Service proxy.  Using the IServiceConfiguration Method, via the ServiceConfigurationFactory.CreateConfiguration method, we can setup the Proxy, then manage authentication,  then create the proxy we wish with the preconfigured IServiceConfiguration interface.

Now, the sticky part in the IServiceConfiguration interface is authentication.  there are several different ways to do it, based on the authentication type you need and the CRM Server type you are connected too.

There are several examples in the CRM SDK that cover this process.

Microsoft.Xrm.Sdk.Client.IServiceManagement

The new IServiceManagment interface provides a us the same ability of the IServiceConfigurationmethod, with a much more straight forward and easy to use authentication process,  Additionally it fully supports OSDP ( that’s CRM on Office 365 ) via the authentication process, without having to do anything “special”, and allows for a fairly easy centralization of proxy generation for the CRM connection.

This authentication data is wrapped up nicely in a new class called AuthenticationCredentials and a method on the IServiceManagement interface called Authenticate.

With the release of the service management interface,  I moved much of my code over to use it in order to streamline the CRM connect process in my environment,  however in testing I was challenged with Delegated Claims authentication.

Using Delegated Claims Auth and the IServiceManagement interface.

In an attempt to be clear:
I had an on premise CRM instance that was configured for claims… lets call it crm.contso.com.  It is also configured to accept authentication for users in the Fabrikam.com domain. 

Now,  in the IServiceConfiguration interface, I would need to write code to deal with this using the cross domain auth process, using the HomeRealm URI to access the correct auth store.   The code that supports that , of course, was unique and different then using the code to hit windows live, IFD or AD.

Using the IServiceManagement interface, I set up my code to look a like this:

Where userCredentials is myuser@fabrikam.com + the password,  and homeRealm pointed at the ADFS Auth service for Fabrikam.com

   1: AuthenticationCredentials authCred = new AuthenticationCredentials();

   2: authCred.ClientCredentials = userCredentials;

   3:  

   4: if (servicecfg.AuthenticationType == AuthenticationProviderType.LiveId )

   5:     authCred.SupportingCredentials = new AuthenticationCredentials() { ClientCredentials = deviceCredentials };

   6:  

   7: // Claims 

   8: if (homeRealm != null)

   9:     authCred.HomeRealm = homeRealm;

  10:  

  11: // Deal with an incorrect configuration here. 

  12: // Home Realm should not be used if the Service Identifier and the homeRealm are the same thing. 

  13: if (homeRealm != null && homeRealm.ToString() != servicecfg.PolicyConfiguration.SecureTokenServiceIdentifier)

  14:     authCred.AppliesTo = new Uri(servicecfg.PolicyConfiguration.SecureTokenServiceIdentifier);

  15:  

  16: // Run Authentication 

  17: // Failure will generate Exceptions 

  18: authCred = servicecfg.Authenticate(authCred);

As the Homerealm is provided , I set the AppliesTo property of the AuthenticationCredentials class to it.  That will tell the authentication method to authenticate against Fabrikam’s ADFS system.

Next I get the Security Token and pass it to the Proxy Constructor that I want.. in this case the discovery server:

   1: SecurityTokenResponse AuthKey = authCred.SecurityTokenResponse;

   2: DiscoveryServiceProxy proxy  = new DiscoveryServiceProxy((IServiceManagement<IDiscoveryService>)servicecfg, AuthKey);

This call generates a a MessageSecurityException exception.  But why ?

Well,  going back over the SDK docs and other sample code… I was unable to come with an answer,  I had even tried to use the sample code provided in the SDK to do this.   Still no luck.

Reach out internally I found out that there is one extra step that needs to be done to make delegated claims auth work.

In sum,  what needed to be done was to check the IServiceManagement PolicyConfiguration.SecureTokenServiceIdentifier against homeRealm, if they were different, I needed to execute a second auth on the IServiceManagement endpoint using SecurityTokenResponse of the auth against Fabrikam.

once I had done that… it worked.. so it ended up looking like this:

   1: AuthenticationCredentials authCred = new AuthenticationCredentials();

   2: authCred.ClientCredentials = userCredentials;

   3:  

   4: if (servicecfg.AuthenticationType == AuthenticationProviderType.LiveId )

   5:     authCred.SupportingCredentials = new AuthenticationCredentials() { ClientCredentials = deviceCredentials };

   6:  

   7: // Claims 

   8: if (homeRealm != null)

   9:     authCred.HomeRealm = homeRealm;

  10:  

  11: // Deal with an incorrect configuration here. 

  12: // Home Realm should not be used if the Service Identifier and the homeRealm are the same thing. 

  13: if (homeRealm != null && homeRealm.ToString() != servicecfg.PolicyConfiguration.SecureTokenServiceIdentifier)

  14:     authCred.AppliesTo = new Uri(servicecfg.PolicyConfiguration.SecureTokenServiceIdentifier);

  15:  

  16: // Run Authentication 

  17: // Failure will generate Exceptions 

  18: authCred = servicecfg.Authenticate(authCred);

  19:  

  20:  

  21: // If is Federation and HomeRealm is not null, and HomeRealm is Not the same as the SecureTokeServiceIdentifier 

  22: // Run Seconday auth to auth the Token to the right source. 

  23: SecurityTokenResponse AuthKey = null;

  24: if (servicecfg.AuthenticationType == AuthenticationProviderType.Federation &&

  25:         homeRealm != null &&

  26:         !string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(homeRealm.ToString()) &&

  27:         (homeRealm.ToString() != servicecfg.PolicyConfiguration.SecureTokenServiceIdentifier))

  28: {

  29:     // Relaying Auth to Resource Server

  30:     dtAuthQuery = DateTime.UtcNow;

  31:     // Auth token against the correct server. 

  32:     AuthenticationCredentials authCred2 = servicecfg.Authenticate(new AuthenticationCredentials()

  33:     {

  34:         SecurityTokenResponse = authCred.SecurityTokenResponse

  35:     });

  36:     logEntry.Log(string.Format("{0} - Authenticated via {1}. Auth Elapsed:{2}", LogString, servicecfg.AuthenticationType, dtAuthQuery.Subtract(DateTime.UtcNow).Duration().ToString()), TraceEventType.Verbose);

  37:     AuthKey = authCred2.SecurityTokenResponse;

  38: }

  39: else

  40: {

  41:     logEntry.Log(string.Format("{0} - Authenticated via {1}. Auth Elapsed:{2}", LogString, servicecfg.AuthenticationType, dtAuthQuery.Subtract(DateTime.UtcNow).Duration().ToString()), TraceEventType.Verbose);

  42:     AuthKey = authCred.SecurityTokenResponse;

  43: }

  44: DiscoveryServiceProxy proxy = new DiscoveryServiceProxy((IServiceManagement<IDiscoveryService>)servicecfg, AuthKey);

That allowed me to auth across claims realms, create the proxy I was interested.

Helper method to build the Discovery Service and Organization Service Proxies Supporting all current forms of CRM 2011 auth. 

I have wrapped up the code I used to do this into a helper method supporting both the Organization and Discovery server proxy's is here,  it will also appear in the update to the UII Solution Starters Agent desktop starter code once I release the update to that. ( soon )   .. as with all code .. use at your own risk..

/// <summary>

/// Creates and authenticates the Service Proxy for either the discovery server or organization service for CRM

/// </summary>

/// <typeparam name="T">Service Management Type</typeparam>

/// <param name="servicecfg">Pre-created Service Configuration object</param>

/// <param name="ServiceUri">URL to connect too</param>

/// <param name="homeRealm">HomeRealm URI</param>

/// <param name="userCredentials">User Credentials object</param>

/// <param name="deviceCredentials">Device Credentials object</param>

/// <param name="LogString">Log Preface string. </param>

/// <returns></returns>

private static object CreateAndAuthenticateProxy<T>(IServiceManagement<T> servicecfg,

    Uri ServiceUri,

    Uri homeRealm,

    ClientCredentials userCredentials,

    ClientCredentials deviceCredentials,

    string LogString)

{

    LoginTracer logEntry = new LoginTracer();

    DateTime dtConnectTimeCheck = DateTime.UtcNow;

    object OutObject = null;

    if (servicecfg == null)

    {

        logEntry.Log(string.Format("{0} - attempting to connect to CRM server @ {1}", LogString, ServiceUri.ToString()), TraceEventType.Verbose);

        // Create the Service configuration for that URL

        servicecfg = ServiceConfigurationFactory.CreateManagement<T>(ServiceUri);

        if (servicecfg == null)

            return null;

        logEntry.Log(string.Format("{0} - created CRM server proxy configuration for {1} - duration: {2}", LogString, ServiceUri.ToString(), dtConnectTimeCheck.Subtract(DateTime.UtcNow).Duration().ToString()), TraceEventType.Verbose);

    }

    else

    {

        logEntry.Log(string.Format("{0} - will use user provided {1} to connect to CRM ", LogString, typeof(T).ToString()), TraceEventType.Verbose);

    }

    // Auth

    logEntry.Log(string.Format("{0} - proxy requiring authentication type : {1} ", LogString, servicecfg.AuthenticationType), TraceEventType.Verbose);

    // Determine the type of authentication required. 

    if (servicecfg.AuthenticationType != AuthenticationProviderType.ActiveDirectory)

    {

        // Connect via anything other then AD. 

        // Setup for Auth Check Perf. 

        DateTime dtAuthQuery = DateTime.UtcNow;

        AuthenticationCredentials authCred = new AuthenticationCredentials();

        authCred.ClientCredentials = userCredentials;

        if (servicecfg.AuthenticationType == AuthenticationProviderType.LiveId)

            authCred.SupportingCredentials = new AuthenticationCredentials() { ClientCredentials = deviceCredentials };

        // Claims 

        if (homeRealm != null)

            authCred.HomeRealm = homeRealm;

        // Deal with an incorrect configuration here. 

        // Home Realm should not be used if the Service Identifier and the homeRealm are identical. 

        if (homeRealm != null && homeRealm.ToString() != servicecfg.PolicyConfiguration.SecureTokenServiceIdentifier)

            authCred.AppliesTo = new Uri(servicecfg.PolicyConfiguration.SecureTokenServiceIdentifier);

        // Run Authentication 

        // Failure will generate an exception. 

        authCred = servicecfg.Authenticate(authCred);

        // If is Federation and HomeRealm is not null, and HomeRealm is Not the same as the SecureTokeServiceIdentifier 

        // Run Seconday auth to auth the Token to the right source. 

        SecurityTokenResponse AuthKey = null;

        if (servicecfg.AuthenticationType == AuthenticationProviderType.Federation &&

                homeRealm != null &&

                !string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(homeRealm.ToString()) &&

                (homeRealm.ToString() != servicecfg.PolicyConfiguration.SecureTokenServiceIdentifier))

        {

            logEntry.Log(string.Format("{0} - Initial Authenticated via {1} {3} . Auth Elapsed:{2}", LogString, servicecfg.AuthenticationType, dtAuthQuery.Subtract(DateTime.UtcNow).Duration().ToString(), homeRealm.ToString()), TraceEventType.Verbose);

            logEntry.Log(string.Format("{0} - Relaying Auth to Resource Server: From {1} to {2}", LogString, homeRealm.ToString(), servicecfg.PolicyConfiguration.SecureTokenServiceIdentifier), TraceEventType.Verbose);

            dtAuthQuery = DateTime.UtcNow;

            // Auth token against the correct server. 

            AuthenticationCredentials authCred2 = servicecfg.Authenticate(new AuthenticationCredentials()

            {

                SecurityTokenResponse = authCred.SecurityTokenResponse

            });

            logEntry.Log(string.Format("{0} - Authenticated via {1}. Auth Elapsed:{2}", LogString, servicecfg.AuthenticationType, dtAuthQuery.Subtract(DateTime.UtcNow).Duration().ToString()), TraceEventType.Verbose);

            AuthKey = authCred2.SecurityTokenResponse;

        }

        else

        {

            logEntry.Log(string.Format("{0} - Authenticated via {1}. Auth Elapsed:{2}", LogString, servicecfg.AuthenticationType, dtAuthQuery.Subtract(DateTime.UtcNow).Duration().ToString()), TraceEventType.Verbose);

            AuthKey = authCred.SecurityTokenResponse;

        }

        if (typeof(T) == typeof(IDiscoveryService))

            OutObject = new DiscoveryServiceProxy((IServiceManagement<IDiscoveryService>)servicecfg, AuthKey);

        if (typeof(T) == typeof(IOrganizationService))

            OutObject = new OrganizationServiceProxy((IServiceManagement<IOrganizationService>)servicecfg, AuthKey);

    }

    else

    {

        // Create the proxy here... we except out here if Auth Fails. 

        if (typeof(T) == typeof(IDiscoveryService))

            OutObject = new DiscoveryServiceProxy((IServiceManagement<IDiscoveryService>)servicecfg, userCredentials);

        if (typeof(T) == typeof(IOrganizationService))

            OutObject = new OrganizationServiceProxy((IServiceManagement<IOrganizationService>)servicecfg, userCredentials);

    }

    logEntry.Log(string.Format("{0} - service proxy created - total create duration: {1}", LogString, dtConnectTimeCheck.Subtract(DateTime.UtcNow).Duration().ToString()), TraceEventType.Verbose);

    return OutObject;

}

To use it to create a connection to a discovery server :

   1: object objectRlst = CreateAndAuthenticateProxy<IDiscoveryService>(null, discoveryServiceUri, homeRealmUri, clientCredentials, deviceCredentials, "DiscoverOrganizations");

   2: if (objectRlst != null && objectRlst is DiscoveryServiceProxy)

   3:     discoveryServiceProxy = (DiscoveryServiceProxy)objectRlst; 

To use it to create a connection to Live’s Organization service,  You call it as such:

   1: object oProx = null;

   2: oProx = CreateAndAuthenticateProxy<IOrganizationService>(null, oOrgSvc, null, userClientCred, DeviceCredentials, "ConnectAndInitCrmOrgService");

   3: if (oProx != null && oProx is OrganizationServiceProxy)

   4:     prox = (OrganizationServiceProxy)oProx;

Hope this helps someone else along the way.

I found this post by Gareth Tucker that covers the kinks in the initial setup process for CCA. 
Thanks Gareth for getting this posted!

Running the CCA RI tool on Non English Systems.

There is one additional point when installing CCA to Non English System.   The RI tool has a hard coded process that is looking for the role name “CSR Manager”, as you might imagine,  that name does not exist on a non-English CRM system.

So to fix that,   You will find that hardcoded value in the RIConfigLoader project, in the ConfigureCcaHostedApps.cs file..

Open that file up and press Ctrl-G on your keyboard,  and goto line number 388

here you will find the offending code…

   1: try

   2: {

   3:     // Assigning the Role with a name [CSR Manager] to the team with specific Guid.

   4:     RIScenarioCreator.AssignRoleToTeam(orgService, EscalationTeamId, "CSR Manager");

   5: }

   6: catch (ApplicationException ex)

   7: {

   8:     throw (new ApplicationException(Properties.Resources.ErrorCreatingEscalitionTeam, ex));

   9: }

As you can see the “CSR Manager” string..   Change this to the CSR Manager role name in your system’s language and you should be good to go.

Compile and Run it.

Running the CCA RI Tool more then once on the same system.

So, if you are here, looking at the error above,  you have probably run into the error:
---------------------------
Error
---------------------------
There was an error while creating Escalation Team.
Unable to assign the Specified Role
---------------------------

Simply put, the RI tool doesn't like to be run more the once on the same system.. this is due to the the fact its not compensating for a partial install.

Fixing it is pretty simple,  You need to remove the Escalation Team from CRM,

Delete that and the RI should run again.

MattB.