For a while now we've been trying to find some way of logging plug-in exceptions on CRM Online (and I've also seen a number of posts on the CRM Developer forums asking if this is possible).
Logging exceptions that originate from CRM plug-ins presents a number of problems, especially in CRM online. First of all, plug-ins in CRM online are sand-boxed, so you do not have access to the file system or event log. The CRM SDK offers a tracing service that can be used, but this only displays tracing information to the end user. No permanent log of the exception is recorded.
The logical solution is to just write all exception messages to a custom CRM entity (The SDK even mentions this idea). But this is also problematic because synchronous plug-ins are run inside of a database transaction. So if your plug-in runs into an exception the transaction will get rolled back, including rolling back the creation of any Error Log record you created while handling the exception.
Ideally, we want all of the operations of the plug-in to be inside the database transaction, but the creation of the errorlog record to NOT be part of the transaction (so that any changes made by the plug-in are rolled back, but an admin can still read the error message afterwards). This can be achieved in an on-premise CRM installation by just creating a new OrganizationService proxy from scratch, instead of using the one provided by the plugin context. But again, this doesn't work in CRM Online because of the sandbox restrictions (when running in partial trust you cannot make WCF calls or use the libraries included in the CRM SDK for connecting to CRM online).
Fortunately, there is a different way to connect to CRM online while in partial-trust, and the answer comes from this post on Dimaz Pramudya's blog.
There is a sample on how to achieve this using Passport authentication in MSCRM SDK. ... it failed miserably in shared hosting environment which runs Medium or High trust level.
What I wanted to share today is an alternative way to get the Windows Live Id ticket that works virtually on any environment. This method uses the RPS (Relying Party Suites) authentication option for Windows Live.
This post is over a year old, and only describes connecting to the CRM 4.0 webservicce, but it will still work with CRM 2011 online.
Dimaz has created two c# classes; LiveIdTicketAcquirer and CrmOnlineQueryManager, which together can be used to connect to CRM online from within a CRM plug-in. And this new connection will not be part of the database transaction, which means it can be used to write our error log messages back to a CRM entity.
In the following code sample I am using the CrmOnlineQueryManager to log an exception to a custom entity called "new_error":
public class TestPlugin : IPlugin
{
public void Execute(IServiceProvider serviceProvider)
{
try
{
throw new Exception("Testing Error logging");
}
catch( Exception ex)
{
CrmOnlineErrorLogger.LogError(ex);
throw;
}
}
}
class CrmOnlineErrorLogger
{
const string username = "myLiveId";
const string password = "myPassword";
const string organization = "myOrgName";
public static void LogError(Exception ex)
{
CrmOnlineQueryManager queryManager = new CrmOnlineQueryManager();
var crmService = queryManager.Connect(username, password, organization);
DynamicEntity entity = new DynamicEntity();
entity.Name = "new_error";
StringProperty exceptionType = new StringProperty() { Name = "new_exceptiontype", Value = ex.GetType().FullName };
StringProperty details = new StringProperty() { Name = "new_details", Value = ex.Message + ": " + ex.StackTrace };
entity.Properties = new Property[] { exceptionType, details };
crmService.Create(entity);
}
}
When I run this plug-in, the thrown exception rolls back the update I was making, and I see the expected error message:
But I also see a log of the exception in my custom "Errors" table:
So now we can do error logging on CRM Online. Of course, this is just a proof of concept. There's a few more steps we would need to take before using this in a production environment..
The code for this proof of concept can be found Here.
~Erik Pool
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
public class TestPlugin : IPlugin
{
public void Execute(IServiceProvider serviceProvider)
{
try
{
throw new Exception("Testing Error logging");
}
catch( Exception ex)
{
CrmOnlineErrorLogger.LogError(ex);
throw;
}
}
}
class CrmOnlineErrorLogger
{
const string username = "magiccrm@hotmail.com";
const string password = "p@ss1word";
const string organization = "crmNAorg613b0";
public static void LogError(Exception ex)
{
CrmOnlineQueryManager queryManager = new CrmOnlineQueryManager();
var crmService = queryManager.Connect(username, password, organization);
DynamicEntity entity = new DynamicEntity();
entity.Name = "new_error";
StringProperty exceptionType = new StringProperty() { Name = "new_exceptiontype", Value = ex.GetType().FullName };
StringProperty details = new StringProperty() { Name = "new_details", Value = ex.Message + ": " + ex.StackTrace };
entity.Properties = new Property[] { exceptionType, details };
crmService.Create(entity);
}
}
One of the new features in CRM 2011 is the ability to finally define multiple forms for a single entity. CRM allows you to determine which form a user sees in two ways:
However, what if you want to determine which form a user sees based on some other criteria? There are a few things you can do…
Fortunately, there’s an easy way around these issues. It doesn’t seem to be documented in the SDK yet, but CRM saves the Id of the last form that a user viewed using the UserEntityUISettings entity, and any UserEntityUISettings record can be easily updated to set the Last Viewed form for a specific user:
//retrieve the user UI settings for a specific user and a specified entity:
QueryExpression query = new QueryExpression(UserEntityUISettings.EntityLogicalName);
query.Criteria.AddCondition("ownerid", ConditionOperator.Equal, userId);
query.Criteria.AddCondition("objecttypecode", ConditionOperator.Equal, entityObjectTypeCode);
EntityCollection UISettingsCollection = service.RetrieveMultiple(query);
if (UISettingsCollection.Entities.Count > 0)
{
//update the last viewed formId:
UserEntityUISettings settings = (UserEntityUISettings)UISettingsCollection[0];
settings.LastViewedFormXml = "<MRUForm><Form Type=\"Main\" Id=\"f5cfab6a-d4c2-4519-b68f-6e7485432e29\" /></MRUForm>";
service.Update(settings);
}
The next time the user opens any record for the specified entity, they will view the form that is specified in the LastViewedFormXml. No need to specify a formId in the URL, and no need to redirect the user to a different form in JavaScript.
~Erik Pool
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
//retrieve the user UI settings for a specific user and a specified entity:
QueryExpression query = new QueryExpression(UserEntityUISettings.EntityLogicalName);
query.Criteria.AddCondition("ownerid", ConditionOperator.Equal, userId);
query.Criteria.AddCondition("objecttypecode", ConditionOperator.Equal, entityObjectTypeCode);
EntityCollection UISettingsCollection = service.RetrieveMultiple(query);
if (UISettingsCollection.Entities.Count > 0)
{
//update the last viewed formId:
UserEntityUISettings settings = (UserEntityUISettings)UISettingsCollection[0];
settings.LastViewedFormXml = "<MRUForm><Form Type=\"Main\" Id=\"f5cfab6a-d4c2-4519-b68f-6e7485432e29\" /></MRUForm>";
service.Update(settings);
}
Recently Microsoft posted the latest CRM 2011 virtual machine to partner source. Information about the VM as well as where to download are available here:
http://blogs.technet.com/b/dutchpts/archive/2011/05/25/microsoft-dynamics-crm-2011-virtual-machine-available-for-partners.aspx
To run the VM it currently requires you to boot to VHD or to have HyperV installed. For the road warriors like me neither of these options are optimal. I really want to be able to fire up the image from my laptop while still having my email and host machine. So what do you do?
Currently I am using VirtualBox to bridge this gap and it works quite well. VirtualBox gives me the capability to run the image, do snapshots, and still give me access to my host OS. With the latest CRM 2011 image however, it seems a lot of people (including me) are having issues booting the VM using VirtualBox. The most common behavior is the VM goes into a blue screen of death boot loop. Thankfully, this issue is easy to fix but a bit kludgy.
VirtualBox by default mounts the VHD as a SATA controller. HyperV however builds its bootable VHDs on IDE controllers. Because of this, the image BSODs when attempting to launch. To remedy this problem is simple but will require you to remount the VHD as an IDE controller. Please see below for steps in how to do this.
After creating your virtual machine in VirtualBox your VM's settings should look like this:
To remount the VHD as IDE you will need to "Remove Attachment" (Note: Removing the attachment does not delete the VHD, it only deletes the reference to it.)
After you have finished removing the SATA controller navigate to IDE Controller and select "Add Hard Disk".
Choose an existing disk and navigate to where your VHD is located. Your end result should look similar to this:
When finished click "OK".
After this your VM should now fire up without the boot loop!
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
A few years back, my friend Marco posted a way to leverage CRM's in-line alert display to show a custom error message leveraging the default error window. Wondering if this approach would work on 2011, I found that the Notification area still exists in 2011 and there are some methods exposed via the HTC file that allow for easy manipulation.
The following code is, technically, unsupported and there are no guarantees that this code won't change in the future, but it works. If you add the following code to a web resource and then tie the set_alert function to the onchange event of a field, you can see it operate. The second call will wipe out the displayed notifications.
var mep=1;
function set_alert()
{
var notificationsArea = document.getElementById('crmNotifications');
if (notificationsArea == null)
{
alert('div not found');
return;
}
if (mep==1)
{
notificationsArea.AddNotification('mep2', 2, 'source', 'Warning message');
notificationsArea.AddNotification('mep3', 3, 'source', 'Info message');
notificationsArea.AddNotification('mep1', 1, 'source', 'Critical message');
mep=2;
}
else
{
notificationsArea.SetNotifications(null, null);
mep=1;
}
}
When you have multiple notifcation messages, they will be sorted by the severity as shown here.
Matt Parks
The Microsoft CRM web-services normally give you pretty good error messages when you make an invalid request, but occasionally you will get this error message: “Generic Sql Error”. These errors pop up enough that they’ve become a fairly common question on the CRM development forums. The usual responses are to either enable CRM tracing or use SQL Server Profiler to get a better error message. I find that the CRM trace logs don’t always give you anything better that the same generic error message the SDK provides, so SQL profiler is probably the better option. However, if you don’t have experience using the SQL Profiler it can be hard to find the actual error message in the vast amount of data it provides. These are the steps I take to get to the bottom of most CRM “generic SQL” errors using the SQL Profiler:
~Erik Pool
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
