Migrating Data To CRM 3.0

It is possible to migrate data from and existing system to CRM database using SQL statements.

Although microsoft recommends us not to use direct SQL statements, this method is easy as we don't have write code to migrate data. But we need to be very careful when we are doing this as we need to populate the references before migrating data.

I don't know whether CRM 4.0 provide a method to insert data to custom entities. CRM 3.0 doesn't provide us this. That is the reason why we have to choose an alternative.

Truncating CRM tables

Is it possible to truncate CRM table data?

The answer is for some it's Yes. you can truncate the extensionbase tables in the CRM cause mostly they contain data and foreign keys. We can truncate these tables.

But we cannot truncate the base tables as they contain the references to other tables. You need to use the delete command to delete data in these tables.

Site map XML

Do you guys now where CRM stores the site map?

Recently I had to check orgnaizationbase entity in the CRM for some reason and i found that it contains a field named Sitemap in the table. When checked the data in this field i found that the current site map is being stored there.

So if anyone wants to check the site map you should check the organizationbase table in the CRM database.

String map entity

This table in the CRM is holding valuable information regarding all the pick lists that we add to CRM. it contains the attributename and the entity object type code with the values that we specify to the attributes.

But probably we don't think that doing a change that is not accurate here would cause the CRM to give the unauthorized access error. Well, it does. Recently we did some data insertions to a CRM server with wrong object type codes and it caused the system to give errors. What we didn't realise is that it caused the system failure. When we deleted those records from the string map entity(Luckily we knew the data we have inserted) CRM started working fine.This was a very good lesson for us and would be for you all out there.

NEW YEAR

It’s a new year. I haven’t been bloging for some time. There are some things that I want to publish here, but couldn’t do it as there was not much time for me. Hoping to publish more information regarding CRM 3.0 and CRM 4.0 in the future.

Hope that this New Year brings happiness and joy to all of you out there.

Retreiving Link Entitiy attributes from CRM 3.0

We have 2 methods to retreive information from CRM.

1. Using Fetch Statements
2. Using QueryExpressions

although we can use to join entities in queryexpression we cannot use it to retreive link entity attributes. we need to use Fetch statements to do this task.

Also if we are trying to retreive more then one link entities attributes from a fetch statement we need to use alias, else the fecth statements will not be executed properly. below you can find an example.

Hiding links from the left pane of an entity

When we log in to CRM what we see is the application navigation area. This can be modified using site map xml file. but the tricky thing is when it comes to entity navigation pane we cannot use the site map. we have to use the ISV.Config file or use javascripts at the from onload event.

For a project that we are currently doing we have used javascripts to hide the unwanted links when the entity form is loading. The thing is the links are getting hidden after the form is getting loaded, hence the user is able to see some of the items when the form is loading. But as people say something is better then nothing. this was a blessing in disguise to us.

Please keep in mind you need to get the id's of the the links that you need to hide after they gets rendered to the page. you can open up a new form with this facility by clicking ctrl+N button and a new page will be opened of the form with the view source functionality.

i was abled to find this solution from microsoft.crm developer community. i cant remember the link. but would like to say "thanks guys for publishing the solution".

you can use the following javascript to hide the unwanted links.
var LeftBar = new Array() ;
LeftBar [0] = "navHistory";
LeftBar [1] = "navContacts";
LeftBar [2] = "navMoreAddresses";
for (i=0;i
{
try
{
document.getElementById(myLeftBar[i]).style.display='none';
}
catch(err)
{}
}