I know it's hard to, but how do you improve user experience in Dynamics CRM 2011?
How do you design your forms? Are your forms "full of iframes"? Do you hide all the fields then insert an iframe that hosts and exposes all the features?
Do you try to mimic the default style of Dynamics CRM in the iframes (so that it integrates better with the user interface)?
The Xrm.Page.data.entity.attributes allow installation of onChange() handlers. That's all as far as I know. How do you deliver good user experience by having almost no feedback from the user?
I hope these are common sense questions :)
Thank you in advance!
PS: I'm kind of new in Dynamics CRM development
and...
how do you make an autocomplete text-field?
You're going to constantly fight a battle between maintainability and customization. Sure, you can do lots of custom iframes, a javascript and everything else, but Dynamics CRM is a rapid application development platform. Making the most beautiful websites ever was not its intent. Allowing the people with the business knowledge to make changes and customization that are supported through multiple release cycles was. I would try to keep it as simple as possible.
As far as an autocomplete text field, use jquery to wire up some on change events and go from there.
With regards to mimicing the default style, I think you'll find the style guide in the SDK useful for matching particular colors and fonts, etc. You can find it in sdk\resources\styleguide:
As for improving the experience, I try not to fight what the CRM framework provides. I use the existing controls as much as possible and use supported javascript to smooth over the on-form details. If you have a specific requirement we can suggest solutions. The form events for onload, onsave, and onchange provide an acceptable level of feedback for almost all situations on a data form. What specific requirement do you have that requires more than those?
Hope that helps.
Related
I'm using TestComplete to automate an application called Genie. It's a clinical System. But, Testcomplete is not showing the objects. Any idea what could be the issue?
Tried object explorer, but objects are not displayed.
Looks like the application uses dynamic id so, object explorer is not of any help. Do you have any idea, if this application can be automated at all?
There are a few ways of seeing if TC will have better visibility into an application. Enable MSAA, Enable Text Recognition, and if those don't provide more visibility, you may have to use the new OCR functionality.
Good Luck testing! If none of these help, please reach out to your sales rep and setup some time for a screen share.
Currently, I have a ASP.net 3.5 web application for which I currently am working on the UI.I have been out of touch of doing web ui's for a while.
When i last did UI related work (way back in 2007), i used the Ajax Control Toolkit - specially the extenders like MaskedEdit Extender etc for implementing a lot of the UI functionality i.e restricting the user from entering incorrect data / formatting etc.
Question 1:-
Is there a newer / better / easier way of implementing the functionality similar to the extenders provided by AjaxToolkit that someone would recommend?
Question 2
Also, my current application needs to support multiple cultures in terms of the number / date formatting. In my experience with Ajax extenders, for eg in MaskedEditExtender, I would have to specify the Mask explicitly which defeats the whole purpose of it being able to switch formats depending on the currently selected culture. Is anyone aware of the latest / greatest way in terms of controls etc that I can achieve this?
Note: I am open to lightweight 3rd party controls that could help me do this but would prefer not to touch heavycontrols like infragistics / telerik kinds mainly due to their learning curve / cost.
I currently use Devexpress in the office and at home i use jQuery. Microsoft suggest instead of using the AJAX Toolkit that you use jQuery. This seems to be the best way to go.
jQuery Toolkit for ASP.net is supposed to be quite easy but i find that jQuery UI does everything that you need it to do and doesn't have too much of a learning curve. Using jQuery is much more straightforward than neat javascript and is a useful skill in today's climate.
A combination of:
web services (asmx or mvc)
jQuery ajax
jQuery UI
Along with the plethora of jQuery plug-ins available would be my recommendation for both light weight, and a good abundance of supporting help as well as plug-ins and very active development.
IF you need a bit more you should look a the http://www.obout.com/ controls as an option.
I'm a junior VB.net developer with little application design knowledge. I've been reading a lot of material online regarding different design patterns, frameworks, and methodologies. It's become a bit confusing for me.
Right now I'm trying to decide on what language would be best suited to convert an existing VB6 application (with SQL server backend.) I need to update the UI and add more user functionality and reporting capabilities. Initially I was thinking of using WPF and attempting the MVVM model for this big project. Reports would be generated from SSRS.
A peer suggested using ASP.net and I don't have enough experience to determine what would be better. The senior programmers here are stuck on using VB6 and don't have any input on what to use. They are encouraging me to use the latest technologies.
This application would be for ~20 users in a central location. Ideally I would stick to a Microsoft .net language. Current interface is similar to a datagrid table where the user would click in to see the detail of each record. They would need to have multiple records open at any given time.
I look forward to all the advice I can get.
EDIT 2010/04/22 2:47 PM EST
What is your audience? Internal clients within an intranet
How complex are the interactions you expect to implement? not very... displaying data from SQL server to UI. Allow user updates to said data. Typically just one user modifying a record.
Do you require near real-time data updates? no
How often do you expect to update the application after the first release? twice/year
Do you expect a well-defined set of client platforms? Yes, windows xp environment, potentially upgrading to Win7. Currently in IE.6 moving to IE7 or 8 within a couple of months.
Do users need access from anywhere? No, just from their PC.
What would be wrong about building a simple ASP.Net application in VB.Net using Gridviews for allowing the data access and manipulation? Seems like a simple ADO.Net trial application if you aren't familiar with it in the beginning you will be by the end. CRUD applications are pretty common so it shouldn't be too hard to build it and then refine it as more requirements become apparent.
Sounds like you need to use a web-based solution--this eliminates alot of your potential distribution woes with multiple users. You could use silverlight, but if you are locked into SSRS, this might not be the way to go.
I am looking at doing some serious MS Outlook extensibility, going beyond the concept of e-mail, but still in the realm of messaging.
As such, I will need to be able to make Outlook aware of a new 'Account Type' (i.e., it currently only understands POP, Exchange, etc).
Can anyone point me to an area of the API that may facilitate this functionality, if it exists...?
Thanks
Adam,
reading your question about having a new provider you would have to look at creating a new Mapi provider. This is a pretty complicated area a place to start would be MSDN
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc979221.aspx also look for the pdf book "Inside mapi" on the internet
There may be other ways to look at the problem though using Addins for outlook that would extend the UI using panes and form regions etc. or and older technique is to use subclassing and hooking.
Marcus
Our business is looking to automating Dynamics CRM hosting. We've been looking at the options. At the moment, it seems like HMC/MPS would be useful. However, from the looks of it, the frameworks are nearing end of life and are also. HMC/MPS also seems to be based around exchange. Would it make sense to use HMC/MPS to provision CRM or is there another framework. Would we be better off talking directly with the Active Directory and CRM Deployment Service APIs?
I work for EMS-Cortex and this is what we do. Please have a look at our website www.ems-cortex.com and if you are interested get in touch.
Please remember HMC/MPS has been cancelled, and if you invest in it now you are investing in technology which will have disappeared in about 12 months.
Kind Regards
Daniel Thurston