Microsoft Dynamics 365 & Dynamics CRM Blogs by Gayan Perera | Magnetism Solutions | NZ (Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch & Dunedin)

Keep your Dynamics CRM Extensions on Fire

Gayan Perera, 03 September 2010

If you’re creating web applications using asp.net or you’re a user that is using ISV extensions you might be aware of the spin up delay. This delay has considerable impact on user experience when it comes to ISV extensions in Dynamics CRM. The delay is caused by the asp.net runtime serializing Micro
Read the full article here
5 Syntax Changes in Dynamics CRM 2011 Plugins

Gayan Perera, 04 October 2010

There are number of changes between Dynamics CRM 2011 SDK and CRM 4 SDK. Let’s take a look at what has changed between plugins. * 1. The IPlugin now resides in Microsoft.Xrm.Sdk namespace instead of Microsoft.Crm.Sdk public class ClassName : Microsoft.Crm.Sdk.IPlugin public class ClassNa
Read the full article here
A bit of Syntatic Sugar for Dynamics CRM 2011 LINQ

Gayan Perera, 11 October 2010

We've been using XrmLinq for our Dynamics CRM 4.0 developments and we've gotten use to that syntax, the new LINQ provider in Dynamics CRM 2011 is a bit different but thanks to extension methods and generics we can make it look the same as XrmLinq. The main reason for this is to port existing&nb
Read the full article here
Please CRM 2011 Sir, Format My Phone Number

Gayan Perera, 14 October 2010

At Magnetism, we try to make things really easy for Dynamics CRM users, like formatting the address, automatically populating suburb, city, postal code, country by using ajax suggestions, so that the user can go through their daily activities without having to worry about keeping CRM data clean. Esp
Read the full article here
Dynamics CRM - Programmatically Block Outbound Emails

Gayan Perera, 15 October 2010

Time for another crm goodie... We've been working on a little project that needed blocking of certain outbound emails, with the Dynamics CRM plugin architecture this made it very very simple. For whatever reason, if you want to block outbound emails from Dynamics CRM programmatically, hook into
Read the full article here
Open Sesame! - Dynamics CRM 2011 Solution File

Gayan Perera, 18 October 2010

I like breaking into things to see what they look like on the inside, on a rainy day like today with not much to do I decided to see what the solution export file is made of. The exported zip file is similar to the Microsoft Office files, inside the zip file there is [Content_Types].xml which is ex
Read the full article here
Account Credited $1,000,000! Thanks CRM 2011 and SMS

Gayan Perera, 25 October 2010

Not real dollars but close enough with Dynamics CRM 2011 custom activities! I must say I'm liking these solution packages, it makes it so much easier to bundle and deploy custom add-ons. In Dynamics CRM 2011, when you create a new entity you have the option of making it a custom activi
Read the full article here
Instant Tax, Just Add a CRM 2011 Plugin

Gayan Perera, 01 November 2010

October 1st is the day here in New Zealand where the G.S.T (Goods and Services Tax) changed from 12.5% to 15%. If you're using Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 or are about to implement CRM 2011 then this is a good opportunity for you to future proof your system. We've seen many implementations of Dynami
Read the full article here
What’s this word “Can’t” I hear all the time…

Gayan Perera, 08 November 2010

Lately I’ve been hearing this word “It can’t be done” or “It’s not possible” all the time and it’s getting annoying, these words/phrases are poison to developers, especially young people who are just starting their career, when all they hear is “can’t / not possible” it conditions them to think that
Read the full article here
Dynamics CRM 4.0 - Progress Bar

Gayan Perera, 15 November 2010

I was browsing the dynamics forums the other day and saw a post asking about the progress bar in CRM, we created one awhile back; here it is for anyone else that's looking for something similar. Click here to download a working sample. What you'll need • jQuery 1.3.2 •&nbs
Read the full article here
Programmatically Registering Plugins in Dynamics CRM 4.0

Gayan Perera, 22 November 2010

The plugin registration tool is great when you want to quickly register, change and test plugins, but if you have an automatic build/testing environment you need some way of creating a new CRM organisation, importing customizations, register custom plugins/workflows and run your tests. Below you’ll
Read the full article here
3, 2, 1, Action! All records on all the pages in 4 grids

Gayan Perera, 29 November 2010

* You have a workflow, you have 5000+ records, and you do an advanced find, it brings back the records only to find that you can run the workflow on a maximum on 250! (With unsupported customizations you can increase this limit but let’s stay out of that space for now) If it’s a one off you can manu
Read the full article here
Enter your NZ bank account number below, not a scam, I promise!

Gayan Perera, 06 December 2010

At Magnetism we try to minimize data entry as much as possible, it makes everyone happy. While working on a lending application we found that the clients’ application required the customers’ bank name and the branch name. If the customer is anything like me I wouldn’t have a clue where my branch wa
Read the full article here
Spying on Dynamics CRM Plugin Messages

Gayan Perera, 13 December 2010

Finding out what information gets handed to you via the IPluginExecutionContext is not easy, most of the time you’ll hook up a remote debugger or write to a log file to find out which is tedious and time consuming to setup. To help you, we’ve created an application that you can run on your desktop,
Read the full article here
Putting a clock to the face in a Dynamics CRM Record

Gayan Perera, 27 December 2010

This is an enhancement to the blog post that was written last week about how to put a face to the name in a Dynamics CRM records. As you can see from the above image we also added the option to see the local time of a contact in CRM. If you’re working with people around the globe it’s useful
Read the full article here