Background
Each Dataverse table contains a primary name column. When displayed in a subgrid, clicking on the primary name column will navigate to the form so that the user can edit that row. Most subgrids in my application work this way.
The Problem
I have a Course form with a list of participants displayed in a subgrid. The subgrid displays each student's name (as a link) and the grade received in the course. There is no appropriate primary name column for this Participant table. To edit the participant record, the user must select the row in the subgrid, then click the subgrid's Edit button. As a result, this UI is different from all other subgrids in the application and I know that user's will click the student name to try to edit the participant record and be confused when they are presented with the student record.
Am I missing something? Is there a better way to handle this?
It's a common problem I face quite often. Here is usually what I would do.
Make sure the Primary Name Column always contains relevant information to the user to be able to quickly identify a record. Sometimes it requires copying information from one or multiple other columns into the primary column.
In your case that would probably means concatenating the student's name and grade.
How to do that?
Common to all solutions below
Use one of the following solution to copy the content of one or several fields into the primary column.
Make sure the solution you select also updates the content of the primary name column when one of the copied field is updated.
Remove or hide the primary column from the form, the name of the record will be displayed at the top of the form anyway and you probably don't want users to play with it.
Display the primary name column in every subgrid.
I would recommend not adding the fields copied into the primary column in the subgrids to avoid confusion.
Solution 1 - Classic Workflow
Create a classic workflow that runs when a record is created / updated
Pros:
Very quick to put in place
Runs synchronously (users will see the name updated in real-time)
Cons:
Not very practical if you need to add business logic (using different fields as source depending on a certain condition for example)
Solution 2 - Power Automate
Create a Flow that runs when a record is created / updated
Pros:
You can implement complex business logic in your Flow
Cons:
Runs asynchronously (users will have to refresh the page after the creation of a record to see the record's name)
According to Power Automate licensing that flow would certainly be considered as an "enterprise flow" and you are supposed to pay 100$ / month. That specific point must be taken with a grain of salt. I had several discussions with Microsoft about it and they haven't given me a clear answer about what would be considered an enterprise flow.
Solution 3 - Plugin
Create a plugin that executes when a record is created / updated
Pros:
You can implement very complex business logic in your Flow
It can run synchronously
Cons:
Pro-code (I put it as a con since Model-Driven App is a low-code / no-code approach but there is nothing wrong about pro-code per say)
Developing a new plugin for each entity where you need this logic is kind of overkill in my opinion. I would consider developing something very generic that would only require some sort of configuration when the logic needs to be applied to a new table.
Related
I'm using the Dynamics connector in Azure Data Factory.
TLDR
Does this connector support loading child records which need a parent record key passed in? For example if I want to create a contact and attach it to a parent account, I upsert a record with a null contactid, a valid parentcustomerid GUID and set parentcustomeridtype to 1 (or 2) but I get an error.
Long Story
I'm successfully connecting to Dynamics 365 and extracting data (for example, the lead table) into a SQL Server table
To test that I can transfer data the other way, I am simply loading the data back from the lead table into the lead entity in Dynamics.
I'm getting this error:
Failure happened on 'Sink' side. ErrorCode=DynamicsMissingTargetForMultiTargetLookupField,'Type=Microsoft.DataTransfer.Common.Shared.HybridDeliveryException,Message=,Source=,''Type=Microsoft.DataTransfer.Common.Shared.HybridDeliveryException,Message=Cannot find the target column for multi-target lookup field: 'ownerid'.
As a test I removed ownerid from the list of source columns it loads OK.
This is obviously a foreign key value.
It raises two questions for me:
Specifically with regards to the error message: If I knew which lookup it needed to use, how can I specify which lookup table it should validate against? There's no settings in the ADF connector to allow me to do this.
This is obviously a foreign key value. If I only had the name (or business key) for this row, how can I easily lookup the foreign key value?
How is this normally done through other API's, i.e. the web API?
Is there an XRMToolbox addin that would help clarify?
I've also read some posts that imply that you can send pre-connected data in an XML document so perhaps that would help also.
EDIT 1
I realised that the lead.ownertypeid field in my source dataset is NULL (that's what was exported). It's also NULL if I browse it in various Xrmtoolbox tools. I tried hard coding it to systemuser (which is what it actually is in the owner table against the actual owner record) but I still get the same error.
I also notice there's a record with the same PK value in systemuser table
So the same record is in two tables, but how do I tell the dynamics connector which one to use? and why does it even care?
EDIT 2
I was getting a similar message for msauto_testdrive for customerid.
I excluded all records with customerid=null, and got the same error.
EDIT 2
This link appears to indicate that I need to set customeridtype to 1 (Account) or 2 (Contact). I did so, but still got the same error.
Also I believe I have the same issue as this guy.
Maybe the ADF connector suffers from the same problem.
At the time of writing, #Arun Vinoth was 100% correct. However shortly afterwards there was a documentation update (in response to a GitHub I raised) that explained how to do it.
I'll document how I did it here.
To populate a contact with against a parent account, you need the parent accounts GUID. Then you prepare a dataset like this:
SELECT
-- a NULL contactid means this is a new record
CAST(NULL as uniqueidentifier) as contactid,
-- the GUID of the parent account
CAST('A7070AE2-D7A6-EA11-A812-000D3A79983B' as uniqueidentifier) parentcustomerid,
-- customer id is an account
'account' [parentcustomerid#EntityReference],
'Joe' as firstname,
'Bloggs' lastname,
Now you can apply the normal automapping approach in ADF.
Now you can select from this dataset and load into contact. You can apply the usual automapping approach, this is: create datasets without schemas. Perform a copy activity without mapping columns
This is the ADF limitation with respect to CDS polymorphic lookups like Customer and Owner. Upvote this ADF idea
Workaround is to use two temporary source lookup fields (owner team and user in case of owner, account and contact in case of customer) and with parallel branch in a MS Flow to solve this issue. Read more, also you can download the Flow sample to use.
First, create two temporary lookup fields on the entity that you wish to import Customer lookup data into it, to both the Account and Contact entities respectively
Within your ADF pipeline flow, you will then need to map the GUID values for your Account and Contact fields to the respective lookup fields created above. The simplest way of doing this is to have two separate columns within your source dataset – one containing Account GUID’s to map and the other, Contact.
Then, finally, you can put together a Microsoft Flow that then performs the appropriate mapping from the temporary fields to the Customer lookup field. First, define the trigger point for when your affected Entity record is created (in this case, Contact) and add on some parallel branches to check for values in either of these two temporary lookup fields
Then, if either of these conditions is hit, set up an Update record task to perform a single field update, as indicated below if the ADF Account Lookup field has data within it
Title basically sums it up.
I have an Account screen, with a sub-grid of Opportunities (by the "parentaccountid" field of Opportunity). When I click + Add New on that Opportunity grid, it autofills parentaccountid on the new record form. That's normal.
BUT I also have 5 other Lookups to Account on Opportunity, with different/specific meanings. What's weird is that it's setting ALL of those Lookups to the Account record I started at (Account record that had the Opportunity subgrid where I clicked +).
Is this expected behavior?
Anyway to change this?
I'd expect CRM to only autofill the field that defines the association for that subgrid (i.e. only auto-fill parentaccountid in this case, leave the other 5 Account lookups blank)
I never experienced this, but I believe this is due to some OOB relationship mapping according to a community thread. Read more
Try to find the mapping under N:1 relationships, and if possible remove the mappings. Otherwise you may need to use the Business rule, script or plugin to remove the auto-mapped values.
Edit:
This explanation makes sense and it is expected behavior as per product deisgn.
Since there is an out of the box parental relationship (opportunity_customer_accounts), all those additional account lookups are automatically mapped to that same "parent" (accountid field), and, since they have already been mapped automatically, you can't map them to another field
I am using a SP2010 custom list as a weekly time sheet for an organization of about 50 employees and 8 managers to use. To create an item, an employee enters client, project, activity type, week ending, and hours in the default view. Now I want to create another view that is restricted to managers. Ideally, I want SP2010 to know who the manager is, and restrict the items they can see to be only those items created by their employees.
I tried the following with no luck.
There is a user information list created by IT that includes all the members of my organization. I added the Manager's Name to every item.
I re-purposed the Modified By column appeared in my custom list when I created that list.
Specifically, I renamed the Modified By column which is a Person or Group type to Manager's Name and changed the value of Show Field: to Manager's Name. I would have rather not done it this way, but I couldn't figure out how I add a list column that is a Person or Group type, and allows you to pick a column to populate with the value I needed.
I saved the view settings and I could see the Manager's Names in the first column for their specific employees. So far so good!
Then I re-edited the view and created a filter that shows items when Manager's Name is equal to [ME].
I saved the view setting and this time I could not see any employee list items which made sense since I am not a people manager.
I had a colleague who is a people manager try it out and he saw no items for his employees, yet I know there are a dozen or so, and they showed up in #4.
I changed the filter to look for his name specifically, and he still could not see his employees, although I could.
So I figured it must be a permission level issue since his permission level was Contribute and mine is Full Control.
I bumped him up to Design level, and he could see his employees as long as I hard-coded his name in the filter for the view.
Do someone knows how to do this easily?
From what I have learnt, there are differences in creating lists and libraries.
A library does not seem to have the functionality displaying group fields in the correct format, whereas a list does. So if you want to create a view for managers / employees then you need to do it in a list, with the manager and employee both as columns in the view.
Just ensure that the employees and managers do not have access to edit their views.
How to do databse driveen jsp page,
Suppose i have 5 text fields,if user wants to put one of the form field as select box.JSp should identify and return the select box if it define in db as select box.
I dont know how to achieve this,can anyone suggest this.
Regards,
Raju komaturi
There are multiple tasks if you want to do this completely. The world at large has not gone this way and so there are not many tools (if any) for this. But basically here are the main ideas.
1) You want a "data dictionary", a collection of meta-data that tells you what the types and sizes of each column are, and the primary and foreign keys are.
2) For your example of "knowing" that a field should be a drop-down, this almost always means that column value is a foreign key to another table. Your code detects this and builds a listbox out of the values in the parent table.
3) You can go so far as to create a complete form generator for simple tables, where all of the HTML is generated, but you always need a way to override this for the more complex forms. If you do this, your data dictionary should also have column descriptions or captions.
There are many many more ideas, but this is the starting point for what you describe.
I have a custom entity in Microsoft CRM (4.0). The user has to input records however usually they have a batch of 20+ records that are almost the same apart from 2 or 3 fields which need changing. I know I need to write some custom code to enable this functionally. However can anyone recommend any methods to do this.
Ideally there should be a button that will save and create a copy as a new entity.
My Current way of thinking is to pass all the details as part of the URL and use javascript to strip them out on the page load event. Any ideas welcome.
Thanks
Luke
I found the answer here:
http://mscrm4ever.blogspot.com/2008/06/cloning-entity-using-javascript.html
I've used it and it appears to work well.
Since there are numerous fields, but only certain fields values are different, then i am thinking to set the default value to all the fields, so that users just need to alter those values when needed.
In my approach, i will hook a javascript function on load of the form data entry screen and use XmlHttp approach/Ajax approach to hook to the custom web service to pull/retrieve the default values of each fields. Or you can set those values at the javascript function itself, but the drawback of this, it's difficult to customize later. So i will choose the approach to hook to the custom web service and retrieve those value from some application parameter entity.
Your idea of providing a "clone" button is also a great idea, which means that it will duplicate all the attributes of the previous record, into a new record, so that it will save time for data entry person to customize the different value
EDIT
Since you would enter records in batch mode, how about customizing .ASPX screen to enter records. By customizing through .ASPX screen, you can use a tab , so that users can browse through tabs, to customize the value/attribute of each record.
There will be a "save" button as well as "clone" button to clone some common attribute or value.
I would create a custom web service that would accept the entity type and the ID of the record I'm cloning. Your "Save and Clone" button would call the service, and the service would handle the details of retrieving the current record and deciding which fields to set on the new record. The service creates the record, and sends the Guid of the record back to your button, which then opens up the newly created record.
This way, you avoid the messiness of setting/getting values in JavaScript and tying which fields to set/retrieve directly to your OnLoads, as well as avoiding the possibility of query string that's too long.
The service could easily be sufficiently generalized so that all you'd have to do is add your button to any entity, and it would work, assuming you'd set up your service to handle that particular entity.
One possible downside is that since the clone record button would actually create the record, the user would be forced to delete the cloned record if they decided they didn't want to clone the record after all.