For my current project I have to add a record to a database when a custom workitem changes to specific states. For this you can build a TFS plugin which fires at the WorkItemChanged Event. However our company policies don't allow us to build these plugins because it is processed for each workitem in all projectcollections. This action is only needed for a few team projects.
My question: is it possible to create some clientside plugin(perhaps a VS plugin) which fires an action on this event instead? Or is there someway to create another sort of listener to this event?
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated, thanks in advance.
Instead of having TFS drive the alerts for you, you can implement a polling based alert system.
I would create a simple work item query that selected the work items you were interested in and sorted by the Changed Date column. Then I would write a simple program that used the TFS SDK to run this work item query and notify based on the results, keeping a high water mark between polls. (The TFS SDK samples has an example of running a work item query.)
Note that this polling-based approach has advantages over setting up a SOAP listener regardless of your corporate policy. The SOAP-based alerts system that TFS uses was developed for communication between components of the TFS infrastructure. It's expected that the SOAP endpoint you configure is high availability - if your machine goes down, the SOAP service crashes or your IP address changes, you'll start seeing TFS complaining in the event log. I filled up the event log on my TFS server before I switched to a polling based model for a similar alert system.
In the end I created a custom control for in the WorkItem editform. Within this control I could implement all the required logic for creating the database record.
So instead of setting the combobox state to the onhold state, there now is a button which does exactly the same, executes my custom coding and thus adds a record to our database.
Related
Wondering if anyone can help a total newbie to Dynamics 365. Have started working on an existing implementation of Dynamics 365 (on premise) and am told by current developers that under no circumstances can I amend a column in a table for one of our entities directly on the DB. I am simply wanting to default an INT column to value 1.
They tell me "Dynamics is a black box and you will be breaking the law if you amend directly". This can't be true can it?
Thanks for any advice you can offer.
Building on what Josh said, it is true that the Dynamics SQL database is a black box. Everything must be done through the API with the exception of creating custom indexes on tables and reading from the "Filtered" views.
(And with the new T-SQL endpoint in preview for the online product, you're able to run SQL select queries against an online org.)
The reason for this that all events in Dynamics go through the "platform" via messages. For example, you might have plugin or workflow automation that triggers on the Update of an Account. When the platform receives the "Update" message for an Account, it searches for subscribers to that event and runs any subscribed processes. If you write a change directly to an Account record in SQL, you deprive the platform of the opportunity to run its processes for that event.
And it is good to note that Microsoft uses the same event framework for internal events. So, if you say, "Well, I have no custom plugins or workflows running on the Update message for Accounts so I can edit Accounts directly in SQL." By doing so you'd still risk breaking an internal Microsoft process that triggers on that event.
In a nutshell the platform's need to process ALL events is why direct updates to the database are unsupported. If you do them, Microsoft will refuse to support your system.
Another consideration is that if you ever want to move to the Dynamics Online, writing to the database isn't even possible, so you'd have to redo any automation that relied on that. This is another reason why everyone generally accepts the need to customize their system in the supported way.
Do people occasionally do unsupported things, with good justification? Yes, perhaps most commonly in making unsupported changes to the UI. Even so, writing directly to the database is among the highest offenses to be avoided.
Back to your scenario... it can be jarring to discover that the SQL database is off limits for any direct writing or schema changes. Fortunately Dynamics provides many other automation "hooks" including client-side JavaScript, Business Rules, Power Automate Flows, workflows, and plugins (synchronous and asynchronous).
To set a default value in the UI, the options include a Business Rule and JavaScript. To set a default value in the database, a synchronous workflow or plugin would do the trick.
The Developer Guide is a good place to start.
This would be considered an “unsupported” customization by Microsoft. If it breaks something in the logic of the app, Microsoft won’t help you fix it. If you ever move to Online instead of On-premise, you won’t have this ability. The current developers are battle-hardened and are trying to help you. This is a very bad idea - better would be to create a plug-in on Create of that entity that sets up default values for null fields. This way your logic is in the app with all the other custom logic and is supported.
I'll try to explain my goal as good as I can;
I want to trigger a script whenever there is a new computer added to a Organizational Unit.
To do this i need to activate the logging of this event under the local security policy/audit policy. I guess my question is, do I need to do this on all the domain controllers, or is it enough to do it one just one?
Also, is it possible to see the event from a member server with the Management Tools pack installed? As I don't want to put too much work on the Domain Controllers.
Here is the Microsoft article that gives 4 ways of tracking changes in Microsoft Active-Directory. You will find everything you need from configuring the eventlog to receiving notifications by way of different kind of polling.
I have a business LS web application which I update from time to time.
I do the update by simply using the deploy wizard and everything is working great.
My problem is handling all my users that opened my system in their IE and left it open through my deploy process.
Since they have the old web application is opened on their browsers, and I have deployed the new version to the server, I can see errors occuring in certain situations.
Is there a way to make sure all users with the application opened will be forced to refresh the web application page? Maybe remotely disconnect all currently connected users?
There is no built in way of doing this. You will need to write a custom solution. Someone in the MSDN Forums has written a class to do this for OOB apps.
You should be able to reuse the timer part of that class. I'm not sure if the UpdateAvailable method will work for Web-based applications or not. You'll have to experiment with that.
Alternatively, you can create a custom notification system. Insert a message to your users into a table in your database from the administrator account. Have a timer on the user account check the table every so often. If it finds a new message, display a notification to the user.
Then you can use either an HTTP Response Header or an ASP method to log the users out as described in this Microsoft Support article.
I can't find much about this online so I was wondering if someone knew here.
Is SSRS 2005 if a user creates a subscription, will other users be able to view and edit those subsciptions? If not, is it possible to make subsciriptions visible to everyone?
Thanks
Quick answer is no.
Long answer is:
AFAIK, there is no site-wide subscription management functionality. The best you can do within Report Manager is site-wide schedule management, which allows admins to set up schedules at preferred times and let users choose those schedules when creating their subscriptions.
Our solution for controlling/centralising subscriptions was to set up a generic Windows user, log in to Report Manager and use that user to create all subscriptions. This means that all requests for subscriptions go through the IT department (+ or - depends on your situation. We didn't want users creating subscriptions themselves). All users who know the generic username/password can manage subscriptions in one place. Not ideal but it works for us.
Another option is that all the data for subscriptions is held on the Server, either in the Reporting Services database or in the Jobs themselves. If you are brave you can delve in and set up some sort of interface to access this.
This is definitely an area in which I find SSRS lacking.
Update:
You live and learn. I've just found that (provided you have sufficient privileges) if you open a report, then go to the subscriptions tab, you can view and edit any subscriptions that are set up on this report by any user. Still not ideal as you don't get an overview of the subscriptions across the system but better than the bleak picture I painted previously!
Is there a way to track user activity in Microsft Dynamics CRM? The end result would be a list of users, showing a datetime for each access into CRM, and possibly what modules are being accessed.
Also, is there a way to tie users to database connections, as is done in AX?
Why do you want to do this? The reason I ask is because there are many different ways to log user access depening on purpose.
Detailed access logging can be performed by IIS (web log).
Logons are also tracked in the Event Log->Security log.
Changes to entities can be tracked by implementing an audit log using workflows (or buying a third party component to do this).
The third option is to write a .NET plugin that logs whatever you want on whatever event you want on the entities you choose. Lookup plugins in the Microsoft CRM SDK for more information on how to do this.