I had a small one line change request for a CRM 2013 implementation
Replace Assign functionality with will show users of the current users team.
I thought it would be easy to write a technical specification for this requirement.
First thoughts
Assign form is a special CRM form, I know this cannot be edited or manipulated (in a supported way).
This was much trickier than I initially thought it would be. As an added bonus finding what users are in a team is not straight forward and you have to use a link entity when you do it in an advanced find.
Here are my thoughts of possibles solutions
Method 1
Create a new form to replace the Assign form.
Work
- Create ASP page to include a filter lookup to CRM
- Interact with CRM SDK to retrieve rows and update values
- Ribbon button change
Pro’s
It would offer the functionality required
Con’s
It would take quite a bit of effort for a seemingly small change
Method 2
Open a standard lookup form, calling the lookup form in CRM and filter it
I researched this idea (which I found very difficult to find on the internet)
I go this page
HowTo: Open standard lookup window and get selected record(s)
CRM 2013 Open lookup as dialog in Custom HTML
This method wasn’t suitable because it’s unsupported and I couldn’t see how to filter the lookup.
Method 3
Using a dialog to first return the a list of teams the user is a member.
The user would select a team, press next
This would then return a list of users
Work
Create a dialog
Create custom workflows 1. retrieve the users team, 2. Retrieve users in team.
A ribbon button could call the dialog (This can be done using the Ribbon workbench Create a Dialog Short-Cut Ribbon Button)
Pro’s
It should deliver the functionality required
Con’s
Dialog’s are not the quickest
There is still quite a bit of work, two custom workflows and a dialog
Method 4
The easiest solution would be to add a user lookup on the form and if the set a value I could trigger a plugin or workflow to assign the records.
The lookup would need be filtered to the team.
I had heard CRM 2013 had prefilters, which allowed you to add filter to a lookup. When investigating this it turns out you cannot create a filter with a linked entity and can only filter on values which exist on the SystemUser (user) entity.
This excellent blog post
CRM 2013 Using addCustomFilter() to get Filtered Lookup Field based on Linked Entity
Mentions the problem and you can get around it by using the addcustomview but this means you have to create a whole view.
Instead I tried out the functionality in Miss Dynamics CRM blog and use the addCustomFilter()
I thought I would try this out because I had not yet used the AddCustomFilter() solution and this seemed the easiest and quickest
First I created a view in the Advanced find (Why the advanced find is a CRM Developers best friend)
I then got downloaded the Fetch XML and put it into the FetchXML Builder
I could then get the guids, Aileen Gusni mentioned some workarounds in her blog to get AddCustomFilter() to work you could use OData to retrieve the data you needed and
var Hosk = Hosk || { __namespace: true };
Hosk.Functions = Hosk.Functions || { __namespace: true };
Hosk.Functions.HoskTest = Hosk.Functions.HoskTest || { __namespace: true };
; (function () {
this.formLoad = function () {
addEventHandler();
};
function addEventHandler() {
// add the event handler for PreSearch Event
Xrm.Page.getControl("hosk_userassignid").addPreSearch(addFilter);
};
function addFilter() {
//create a filter xml
var filter =
"<filter type='and'>" +
"<condition attribute='systemuserid' operator='in'>" +
"<value>{9fed63fe-c0cc-e411-80c7-000c292122be}</value>" +
"<value>{cba24eea-bacc-e411-80c7-000c292122be}</value>" +
"<value>{2ed69167-0bcf-e411-80c7-000c292122be}</value>" +
"<value>{92c6d456-7bdf-e411-80c8-000c292122be}</value>" +
"</condition>" +
"</filter>";
//add filter
Xrm.Page.getControl("hosk_userassignid").addCustomFilter(filter);
}
}).apply(Hosk.Functions.HoskTest);
The code work, I had filtered the User lookup to those records.
The filtering kept true even when you clicked look up more records.
The next step I could retrieve the data from an OData call and Dynamically create the line
“<value>{cba24eea-bacc-e411-80c7-000c292122be}</value>” +
Then have a workflow/plugin to assign the records
Work
new field
Javascript change to add filtering
plugin/workflow to assign records.
PRO’s
The quickest solution in time to create and running time
Con’s
It’s different from the current assign button, this may confuse users
The option chosen was….
After spending time thinking about the problem and coming up with some choices the customer decided they didn’t want it.
This is something which happens to developers, one day you can create a change and the next day a customer decides they don’t want it and you have to take it out.
The customer didn’t want the change but I did get to investigate some CRM functionality I hadn’t used yet.
If you have a better solution please leave it in the comments.
Hosk's Dynamic Blog 