CRM 2015 – how to find Statecode value

Someone asked me how to find the StateCode value on a custom entity today, so the first thing I did was to search the Hosk CRM Blog.

A lot of people get confused between Status Reason and State code, if you do then read this blog post

CRM 2013 – Understanding Status and Status Reason – think before deleting them

quick guide

StateCode = Status
- controls if the record is active/inactive

StatusCode = Status Reason
- Status reason is linked to the state and gives the ability to different status reasons to a status.

CRM Developers point of view

Status and Status reason are both optionsets. Option set have an int value and a text value. The text value is meta data and the int value is held in the database on the database field.

Default entities have two status values

State

Active = 0
Inactive = 1

Status reason have different default values

Status Reason

Active = 1
Inactive = 2

Out of the box entities State and Status Reason

Out of the box entities can (and often do) have more than two Status Reasons where as custom entities can only have two States. Microsoft often bend the rules for the default entities because they have created functionality which needs the default entities to behave in a certain way.

It’s useful to know how custom entities work so you can then appreciate how the default entities work and have been changed. This knowledge will help you work on the default entities because you can take advantage of the added functionality and extra status values.

Below are two examples of the extra status’s for default entities

E.g. Case/Incident

Active
Cancelled
Closed

Lead

0 : Open
1 : Qualified
2 : Disqualified

You can see the full list of default entities and their Status and status reasons

Default status and status reason values

Looking at the list gives you an insight to the number of default entities which make up the out of the box CRM functionality. It will give you an idea of how each entity works and the flow of it.

State and Status reason have different default values

The key piece of information is State and Status Reason have different values and this can be confusing, usually it goes down the lines of

I know State or Status Reason Active = 0 but which one is it.

A quick way to confirm what the Status or Status reason is, is to do an advanced find and use Status or Status Reason in a conditional. If you then click the download Fetch XML button you can see the values being used

So you know Active Status (statecode) have the value of 0

No Magic Numbers

Magic numbers in development is when developers use number values for status or any option sets but give no indication what the values mean. This makes reading/understanding the code difficult and extremely frustrating because you often have to go and look up the values.

Wiki gives a good description of Magic numbers in code

here is a good explanation on stackoverflow – What is a magic number, and why is it bad?

Below you can see an example of magic number being used in code, what status is number 6! If you are lucky the developer will add a comment

if (incident.StatusCode.Equals(6))
{
//do something incident cancelled
}

The use of Option set enums makes this much easier to understand. I believe code should be self documenting through the use of well named variables, methods and classes.

if (incident.StatusCode.Equals(incident_statuscode.Canceled))
{

//do something incident cancelled

}

Don’t be lazy, create the Option Set enums and make your CRM code more readable. I have written a blog on why you should create Enumerations for optionsets.

CRM 2013 – Create Enumerations for option sets

There is a great tool to help you called

CRM Early Bound Generator

I reviewed the tool in the link below

CRM 2013 Tool – CRM Early Bound Generator