https://alexanderdevelopment.net/tag/programming/Recent content in programming on Alexander DevelopmentHugo -- gohugo.ioen-usMon, 15 Jan 2018 14:58:00 +0000https://alexanderdevelopment.net/post/2018/01/15/connecting-to-an-on-premise-dynamics-365-org-from-python/Mon, 15 Jan 2018 14:58:00 +0000https://alexanderdevelopment.net/post/2018/01/15/connecting-to-an-on-premise-dynamics-365-org-from-python/I’ve previously showed how to access online and IFD instances of Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement from Python code. Because that sample code authenticated to the Web API using OAuth, it won’t work with on-premises instances. Recently I’ve been doing some work with Python and an on-premises Dynamics 365 organization, so I thought I’d share a sample that shows how to authenticate to the Web API using NTLM.https://alexanderdevelopment.net/post/2017/02/19/dynamics-365-and-python-integration-using-the-web-api-part-2/Sun, 19 Feb 2017 21:15:02 +0000https://alexanderdevelopment.net/post/2017/02/19/dynamics-365-and-python-integration-using-the-web-api-part-2/Last week I wrote a post that showed how to update Dynamics 365 data from a Node.js application using the Web API. Today I will share equivalent Python code. This code builds on my Dynamics 365 and Python integration using the Web API post from last year, so if you haven’t read that yet, please take a look before you proceed.https://alexanderdevelopment.net/post/2017/02/16/dynamics-365-and-node-js-integration-using-the-web-api-part-2/Thu, 16 Feb 2017 17:05:52 +0000https://alexanderdevelopment.net/post/2017/02/16/dynamics-365-and-node-js-integration-using-the-web-api-part-2/Last year I wrote a post that showed how to retrieve data from a Dynamics 365 Online organization in a Node.js application using the Web API. Today I will share sample code that shows how to update data from a Node.js application using the Web API. ####Updating a single property To update a single property on a record in Dynamics 365, you can make a PUT request to the Web API.https://alexanderdevelopment.net/post/2016/11/27/dynamics-365-and-python-integration-using-the-web-api/Sun, 27 Nov 2016 15:12:31 +0000https://alexanderdevelopment.net/post/2016/11/27/dynamics-365-and-python-integration-using-the-web-api/A few days back I wrote a post that showed an easy way to set up Dynamics 365 and Node.js integration using the Web API. Here is Python code that demonstrates equivalent functionality to query contacts and display their information: import requests import json #set these values to retrieve the oauth token crmorg = 'https://CRMORG.https://alexanderdevelopment.net/post/2016/11/23/dynamics-365-and-node-js-integration-using-the-web-api/Wed, 23 Nov 2016 16:17:09 +0000https://alexanderdevelopment.net/post/2016/11/23/dynamics-365-and-node-js-integration-using-the-web-api/I wrote a blog post in early 2015 that showed how to access the Dynamics CRM organization data service from a Node.js application. Today I will show an easy way to retrieve data from a Dynamics 365 Online organization in a Node.js application using the Web API. Unlike the CRM organization service, the Dynamics 365 Web API does not allow you to authenticate directly with a user name and password.https://alexanderdevelopment.net/post/2016/09/19/updated-solution-for-scheduling-recurring-dynamics-crm-workflows/Mon, 19 Sep 2016 21:07:07 +0000https://alexanderdevelopment.net/post/2016/09/19/updated-solution-for-scheduling-recurring-dynamics-crm-workflows/About three years ago I released an open source Dynamics CRM solution for scheduling and executing recurring workflows. My solution would execute a FetchXML query to return a set of records and then start a workflow for each of those records without requiring any external processes or tools. This is a generalized approach to solving a class of problems that includes the following scenarios:https://alexanderdevelopment.net/post/2014/12/13/console-application-for-moving-dynamics-crm-access-team-templates/Sat, 13 Dec 2014 00:00:00 +0000https://alexanderdevelopment.net/post/2014/12/13/console-application-for-moving-dynamics-crm-access-team-templates/When Dynamics CRM 2013 was released, I thought access teams were the new killer feature in that version, and I even developed custom workflow activity code to make managing access team membership easier by using connection records. I have thus far not had an opportunity to use access teams in a real project, so I was disappointed to read this blog post by Ben Hosking (AKA “The Hosk”) about how Microsoft doesn’t provide any out-of-the-box capabilities for moving access team templates between Dynamics CRM organizations.https://alexanderdevelopment.net/post/2013/10/24/unit-testing-custom-microsoft-dynamics-crm-code-part-7-web-requests/Thu, 24 Oct 2013 00:00:00 +0000https://alexanderdevelopment.net/post/2013/10/24/unit-testing-custom-microsoft-dynamics-crm-code-part-7-web-requests/One of the main points of all my unit testing posts is that unit tests should be written so that you can test your code without needing to rely on external resources, and, we’ve been able to use Moq as a stand-in for Dynamics CRM’s related services without too much trouble.https://alexanderdevelopment.net/post/2013/10/24/unit-testing-custom-microsoft-dynamics-crm-code-part-8-exception-raising/Thu, 24 Oct 2013 00:00:00 +0000https://alexanderdevelopment.net/post/2013/10/24/unit-testing-custom-microsoft-dynamics-crm-code-part-8-exception-raising/This is the final post in my series on unit testing custom Microsoft Dynamics CRM code in which I’ve been showing how you can unit test custom C# code that interacts with Microsoft Dynamics CRM using Visual Studio’s unit testing tools and Moq. We’ve looked at several different scenarios thus far, but none of them included the method under test throwing an exception.https://alexanderdevelopment.net/post/2013/10/21/unit-testing-custom-microsoft-dynamics-crm-code-part-6-plug-ins/Mon, 21 Oct 2013 00:00:00 +0000https://alexanderdevelopment.net/post/2013/10/21/unit-testing-custom-microsoft-dynamics-crm-code-part-6-plug-ins/In my last post, I showed how to unit test a Microsoft Dynamics CRM custom workflow activity using Visual Studio and Moq. In this post I will show you how to unit test a Dynamics CRM plug-in. For this example we’ll be using the sample FollowupPlugin class in the CRM 2011 SDK, but the principles I will demonstrate are applicable to any plug-in.https://alexanderdevelopment.net/post/2013/10/17/unit-testing-custom-microsoft-dynamics-crm-code-part-5/Thu, 17 Oct 2013 18:00:00 +0000https://alexanderdevelopment.net/post/2013/10/17/unit-testing-custom-microsoft-dynamics-crm-code-part-5/In the last three posts of this series, I showed how to unit test Microsoft Dynamics CRM C# interfaces code with mock objects using Visual Studio 2012 and Moq. In this post, I will show how to unit test custom workflow activities that are executed by Dynamics CRM processes. I will be using the regular expression validation custom workflow activity I showed in my “Using regular expressions in Dynamics CRM 2011 processes” post.https://alexanderdevelopment.net/post/2013/10/17/unit-testing-custom-microsoft-dynamics-crm-code-part-4/Thu, 17 Oct 2013 17:00:00 +0000https://alexanderdevelopment.net/post/2013/10/17/unit-testing-custom-microsoft-dynamics-crm-code-part-4/In parts two and three of this series, I gave an introduction to unit testing Dynamics CRM C# interfaces code with mock objects using Visual Studio 2012 and Moq, and I showed code samples for a couple of different scenarios. In this post I will show how to work with CRM metadata (optionset values, statuscode values, etc.https://alexanderdevelopment.net/post/2013/10/10/unit-testing-custom-microsoft-dynamics-crm-code-part-3/Thu, 10 Oct 2013 00:00:00 +0000https://alexanderdevelopment.net/post/2013/10/10/unit-testing-custom-microsoft-dynamics-crm-code-part-3/In my last post I gave an introduction to unit testing Dynamics CRM C# interfaces code with mock objects using Visual Studio 2012 and Moq. The sample code in that post was extremely simple, so I wanted to follow up with a more complex example that shows how to test multiple calls to the CRM web service instead of just a single one.https://alexanderdevelopment.net/post/2013/10/09/unit-testing-custom-microsoft-dynamics-crm-code-part-2/Wed, 09 Oct 2013 00:00:00 +0000https://alexanderdevelopment.net/post/2013/10/09/unit-testing-custom-microsoft-dynamics-crm-code-part-2/In my last post I explained why you should unit test your Dynamics CRM-facing code using frameworks to handle both testing automation and mock objects. In this post, I’m going to provide an overview of how to get started. As I mentioned last time, we’ll be using the unit testing tools included in Visual Studio 2012 for the unit testing automation and Moq for the object mocking.https://alexanderdevelopment.net/post/2013/10/02/unit-testing-custom-microsoft-dynamics-crm-code-part-1/Wed, 02 Oct 2013 00:00:00 +0000https://alexanderdevelopment.net/post/2013/10/02/unit-testing-custom-microsoft-dynamics-crm-code-part-1/When writing custom code that interacts with Microsoft Dynamics CRM, it is important to: Unit test your code Use an automated unit testing framework to automate your unit tests Write unit tests that do not depend on external resources such as a Microsoft Dynamics CRM application server or SQL Server Over the course of my next several posts, I’ll be showing you some best practices for unit testing Dynamics CRM-facing code using Visual Studio unit testing tools and the Moq object mocking library.https://alexanderdevelopment.net/post/2013/08/15/a-better-dynamics-crm-e-mail-editor-with-tinymce-updated-for-ie8-and-9/Thu, 15 Aug 2013 00:00:00 +0000https://alexanderdevelopment.net/post/2013/08/15/a-better-dynamics-crm-e-mail-editor-with-tinymce-updated-for-ie8-and-9/When I developed the JavaScript for my A Better Dynamics CRM E-mail Editor With TinyMCE post back in June, I tested it in both Chrome and IE10. Since then I have gotten a few reports of it not working in IE8 or IE9. Initially, I thought there might be a problem with the way the earlier versions of IE were handling the protocol-relative URLs to the TinyMCE CDN script, but it turned out that the script just wasn’t loading properly when the editor popup was initially launched.https://alexanderdevelopment.net/post/2013/08/05/diesel-xrm-service-wrapper-now-on-github/Mon, 05 Aug 2013 00:00:00 +0000https://alexanderdevelopment.net/post/2013/08/05/diesel-xrm-service-wrapper-now-on-github/Last week I wrote a post called “Introducing the Diesel Xrm Service Wrapper,” in which I presented a generic WCF wrapper for the Dynamics CRM Organization Service. Almost immediately I had several ideas about updates I wanted to make, so I’ve decided to host the project on GitHub. The project GitHub page is here, and you can find the code repository here.https://alexanderdevelopment.net/post/2013/07/31/introducing-the-diesel-xrm-service-wrapper/Wed, 31 Jul 2013 00:00:00 +0000https://alexanderdevelopment.net/post/2013/07/31/introducing-the-diesel-xrm-service-wrapper/In this post, I will present a generic Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) wrapper for the Dynamics CRM Organization Service that lets you turn any FetchXML query into a web service interface without needing to write any code at all. I call my solution the Diesel Xrm Service Wrapper after Diesel, my Great Dane.https://alexanderdevelopment.net/post/2013/07/24/data-snapshot-framework-for-dynamics-crm/Wed, 24 Jul 2013 00:00:00 +0000https://alexanderdevelopment.net/post/2013/07/24/data-snapshot-framework-for-dynamics-crm/Although Dynamics CRM offers several different ways to report on data stored in the system, there is no out-of-the-box mechanism for reporting on how data changes over time. That is to say, while you can easily report on how many active accounts are owned by a particular sales rep today, you can’t report on how the number of active account compares to last week, last month or even just yesterday.https://alexanderdevelopment.net/post/2013/07/09/a-better-dynamics-crm-e-mail-editor-with-markdown/Tue, 09 Jul 2013 00:00:00 +0000https://alexanderdevelopment.net/post/2013/07/09/a-better-dynamics-crm-e-mail-editor-with-markdown/Last month I wrote a post called A Better Dynamics CRM E-mail Editor With TinyMCE in which I showed how to create a better Dynamics CRM e-mail editing interface using TinyMCE. Since then I have done some work with Markdown, and I decided it would be an interesting exercise to make a Markdown-enabled e-mail editor.https://alexanderdevelopment.net/post/2013/06/26/a-better-dynamics-crm-e-mail-editor-with-tinymce/Wed, 26 Jun 2013 00:00:00 +0000https://alexanderdevelopment.net/post/2013/06/26/a-better-dynamics-crm-e-mail-editor-with-tinymce/I think most people would agree the e-mail editing functionality in the Dynamics CRM web UI leaves a lot to be desired. One of the most embarrassing moments I experienced on a recent project was when I had to explain to the client the convoluted process that would need to be used to add a corporate logo to outbound e-mails.https://alexanderdevelopment.net/post/2013/06/03/creating-a-dynamic-dialog-launcher-menu-for-dynamics-crm-fetchxml-style-2/Mon, 03 Jun 2013 00:00:00 +0000https://alexanderdevelopment.net/post/2013/06/03/creating-a-dynamic-dialog-launcher-menu-for-dynamics-crm-fetchxml-style-2/Last month I wrote a post about how to create a web resource dialog “launcher” that you can embed in a CRM form (both classic and updated modes) with JavaScript and an OData query. In today’s post, I will show how to do the same thing using a FetchXML query. There are four changes you need to make to the web resource from the previous post.https://alexanderdevelopment.net/post/2013/05/19/scheduling-recurring-dynamics-crm-workflows-with-fetchxml/Sun, 19 May 2013 00:00:00 +0000https://alexanderdevelopment.net/post/2013/05/19/scheduling-recurring-dynamics-crm-workflows-with-fetchxml/In today’s post I will show how to set up a recurring process in Dynamics CRM that executes a FetchXML query to return a set of records and then starts a workflow for each of those records without requiring any external processes or tools. This is a generalized approach to solving a class of problems that includes the following scenarios:https://alexanderdevelopment.net/post/2013/05/17/creating-a-dynamic-dialog-launcher-menu-for-dynamics-crm/Fri, 17 May 2013 00:00:00 +0000https://alexanderdevelopment.net/post/2013/05/17/creating-a-dynamic-dialog-launcher-menu-for-dynamics-crm/I love Dynamics CRM dialogs. In fact, I think they are one of the best features of CRM 2011. What I don’t like about dialogs is how the user has to run them when working with a entity record. On a “classic” mode form, the user has to go to the ribbon, click start dialog and then find the dialog in a list.https://alexanderdevelopment.net/post/2013/05/01/updated-unit-testing-dynamics-crm-c-interfaces-code-using-nunit-and-moq-code-sample/Wed, 01 May 2013 00:00:00 +0000https://alexanderdevelopment.net/post/2013/05/01/updated-unit-testing-dynamics-crm-c-interfaces-code-using-nunit-and-moq-code-sample/Back in January, after I published my How to unit test C# Dynamics CRM interface code - part III post on how to use NUnit and Moq to test Dynamics CRM interfacing code, I uploaded my project files to the MSDN code gallery. Earlier this week I revisited my original solution while preparing a demo for some of my colleagues.https://alexanderdevelopment.net/post/2013/04/30/documenting-dynamics-crm-interfacing-code-with-doxygen/Tue, 30 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0000https://alexanderdevelopment.net/post/2013/04/30/documenting-dynamics-crm-interfacing-code-with-doxygen/In this post I will show how to document a Dynamics CRM 2011 custom workflow activity assembly and use Doxygen to generate a compiled HTML (CHM) help file. (Doxygen can actually generate documentation in a variety of different formats, but I’m partial to CHM files because they’re entirely self-contained.) For this example, I have a project that consists of these three C# files:https://alexanderdevelopment.net/post/2013/04/22/postingprocessing-json-in-a-crm-2011-custom-workflow-activity/Mon, 22 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0000https://alexanderdevelopment.net/post/2013/04/22/postingprocessing-json-in-a-crm-2011-custom-workflow-activity/With the proliferation of RESTful APIs, JSON is frequently used as a message format for interoperability. My MSDN “Posting/processing JSON in a CRM 2011 custom workflow activity” code sample shows how to POST JSON messages to a REST endpoint and process the response in a Dynamics CRM custom workflow activity.https://alexanderdevelopment.net/post/2013/04/21/sending-sms-messages-and-making-robocalls-from-dynamics-crm/Sun, 21 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0000https://alexanderdevelopment.net/post/2013/04/21/sending-sms-messages-and-making-robocalls-from-dynamics-crm/In this post I will show how to send SMS messages and make automated phone calls from Dynamics CRM using Tropo, a cloud voice and SMS messaging API. Tropo is not the only player in this space, but I think it has the best set of features, and it’s completely free to use in development.https://alexanderdevelopment.net/post/2013/02/27/displaying-dynamics-crm-fetchxml-results-xslt/Wed, 27 Feb 2013 00:00:00 +0000https://alexanderdevelopment.net/post/2013/02/27/displaying-dynamics-crm-fetchxml-results-xslt/Last week I wrote a post that showed how to retrive the raw SOAP response from a Dynamics CRM query in C#, but I didn’t show how to do anything useful with it. In today’s post I will show a practical example of how to execute a FetchXML request against a Dynamics CRM instance, capture the raw SOAP response and transform it with XSLT for display in an ASPX page.https://alexanderdevelopment.net/post/2013/02/21/accessing-raw-soap-requests-responses-from-dynamics-crm-web-services-in-c/Thu, 21 Feb 2013 00:00:00 +0000https://alexanderdevelopment.net/post/2013/02/21/accessing-raw-soap-requests-responses-from-dynamics-crm-web-services-in-c/One of the things I have always found frustrating about WCF is that it effectively hides the actual SOAP message XML requests and responses in web service calls. From a Dynamics CRM perspective, I can think of at least three good reasons it would be nice to be able to access the raw XML generated and consumed by clients built with the SDK:https://alexanderdevelopment.net/post/2013/02/17/misadventures-with-crm-2011-web-services-and-adfs/Sun, 17 Feb 2013 00:00:00 +0000https://alexanderdevelopment.net/post/2013/02/17/misadventures-with-crm-2011-web-services-and-adfs/I think the Dynamics CRM 2011 SDK is swell for interoperability, but I wanted to get a closer look at how the actual web service calls work, so I decided to access the sandbox CRM instance my company provides using a WSDL-based proxy as described here. Because the SDK has several examples for connecting to CRM instances using different kinds of authentication in the SDK\SampleCode\CS\WsdlBasedProxies directory, I figured this would be a piece of cake.https://alexanderdevelopment.net/post/2013/02/11/displaying-fetchxml-results-with-xslt-on-the-client-side-in-a-dynamics-crm-2011-web-resource/Mon, 11 Feb 2013 00:00:00 +0000https://alexanderdevelopment.net/post/2013/02/11/displaying-fetchxml-results-with-xslt-on-the-client-side-in-a-dynamics-crm-2011-web-resource/A few weeks back, I wrote a post that showed how to retrieve and display FetchXML using jQuery in a Dynamics CRM web resource. In that example, I used jQuery’s each() method to iterate through each result and append them to an HTML element on the page. Using each() is a good approach if you need to actually do something with each row, but if you just want to display data, XSLT is a much easier way to do it.https://alexanderdevelopment.net/post/2013/01/27/better-line-charts-in-dynamics-crm-2011-part-ii/Sun, 27 Jan 2013 00:00:00 +0000https://alexanderdevelopment.net/post/2013/01/27/better-line-charts-in-dynamics-crm-2011-part-ii/In part I of this series, I showed how to query Microsoft Dynamics CRM for aggregate data using FetchXML and then pass the results to Flot to generate a line chart. In this second part, I will expand on that to show how to query for and chart multi-series data. For my example today, I will be creating a chart that shows the number of contacts created by date and state (address, not statecode).https://alexanderdevelopment.net/post/2013/01/24/better-line-charts-in-dynamics-crm-2011-part-i/Thu, 24 Jan 2013 00:00:00 +0000https://alexanderdevelopment.net/post/2013/01/24/better-line-charts-in-dynamics-crm-2011-part-i/Earlier this week I posted an entry about using FetchXML and JQuery in a Dynamics CRM 2011 web resource. The reason I first started looking at those two together was that I wanted to see if I could generate better looking line charts than are available out of the box (spoiler alert: I did).https://alexanderdevelopment.net/post/2013/01/21/fetchxml-jquery-in-a-dynamics-crm-2011-web-resource/Mon, 21 Jan 2013 00:00:00 +0000https://alexanderdevelopment.net/post/2013/01/21/fetchxml-jquery-in-a-dynamics-crm-2011-web-resource/Over the weekend I started looking at a hobby project that involved querying and working with aggregate data from Dynamics CRM 2011 inside a hosted web resource using jQuery. Initially had I planned to use the OData/REST endpoint since that is much sexier than SOAP lately, but after a quick web search I realized that OData doesn’t support “group by” queries, so that left me looking at FetchXML.https://alexanderdevelopment.net/post/2013/01/16/dynamically-setting-field-requiredlevel-attributes-in-dynamics-crm-2011/Wed, 16 Jan 2013 00:00:00 +0000https://alexanderdevelopment.net/post/2013/01/16/dynamically-setting-field-requiredlevel-attributes-in-dynamics-crm-2011/One of the things I like best about the Dynamics CRM 2011 form object model is that it exposes the requiredlevel attribute for form fields, so you can dynamically set fields as required or not in response to user actions. This is great if you have different types of a single entity and business rules dictate that you must capture different data values for each type.https://alexanderdevelopment.net/post/2013/01/13/how-to-unit-test-c-dynamics-crm-interface-code-part-iii/Sun, 13 Jan 2013 00:00:00 +0000https://alexanderdevelopment.net/post/2013/01/13/how-to-unit-test-c-dynamics-crm-interface-code-part-iii/In parts one and two of this series, I gave an introduction to unit testing Dynamics CRM C# interfaces code with mock objects using NUnit and Moq, and I showed code samples for a couple of different scenarios. In this post I will show how to work with CRM metadata (optionset values, statuscode values, etc.https://alexanderdevelopment.net/post/2013/01/09/how-to-unit-test-c-dynamics-crm-interface-code-part-ii/Wed, 09 Jan 2013 00:00:00 +0000https://alexanderdevelopment.net/post/2013/01/09/how-to-unit-test-c-dynamics-crm-interface-code-part-ii/Earlier this week I wrote a post that gave an introduction to unit testing Dynamics CRM C# interfaces code with mock objects using NUnit and Moq. The sample code in that post was extremely simple, so I wanted to follow up with a more complex example that shows how to test multiple calls to the CRM web service instead of just a single one.https://alexanderdevelopment.net/post/2013/01/06/how-to-unit-test-c-sharp-dynamics-crm-interfaces-code/Sun, 06 Jan 2013 00:00:00 +0000https://alexanderdevelopment.net/post/2013/01/06/how-to-unit-test-c-sharp-dynamics-crm-interfaces-code/A while back I wrote a post that gave a high-level overview of some of the tools I had used at a previous job to do unit testing of Dynamics CRM interfaces code, but I didn’t get into the why or how. Here is an introduction to unit testing Dynamics CRM code using an automated unit testing framework and a mock object framework.https://alexanderdevelopment.net/post/2012/12/29/simple-c-class-to-populate-datatable-from-fetch-xml/Sat, 29 Dec 2012 00:00:00 +0000https://alexanderdevelopment.net/post/2012/12/29/simple-c-class-to-populate-datatable-from-fetch-xml/I’ve typically preferred to access Dynamics CRM data using SQL queries, so I have never worked much with FetchXML. I’ve recently started working on a bit of a hobby project where it makes more sense to populate a datatable from using FetchXML than to use a SQL query, but unfortunately I have encountered three differences between FetchXML and direct SQL that I don’t particularly like:https://alexanderdevelopment.net/post/2011/03/21/dynamically-setting-field-requirement-levels-in-microsoft-dynamics-crm/Mon, 21 Mar 2011 00:00:00 +0000https://alexanderdevelopment.net/post/2011/03/21/dynamically-setting-field-requirement-levels-in-microsoft-dynamics-crm/In Dynamics CRM you may have a field you want to be required some of the time, but not required, or maybe not even enabled, the rest of the time. In this post I’ll show you how to dynamically enable/disable and set/unset the required attribute of CRM form fields using JavaScript.