stefan-scheller.com

After searching hours and finding only parts of the puzzle – here is the quite easy solution for showing the time on the “Entered queue” time stamp of a queue view:

1. execute this script on you crm database:
update EntityView
set iscustomizable = 1 where name = ‘queueitem’

(of course unsupported by MS)

2. Go for Settings => Customizations
Search the now available queue item => go for Attributes => enteredon => change for “Date and Time”

Save, Publish => here we go:

Nice result, we can see the date and the time directly on the queue

More information about changing views you can find here:

- http://icu-mscrm.blogspot.com/2005/07/customizing-activity-views.html

- http://www.eggheadcafe.com/conversation.aspx?messageid=31293608&threadid=31293605

- http://blogs.inetium.com/blogs/vbullinger/archive/2007/10/18/modifying-queue-views-in-crm.aspx

The MS CRM date time data type can be defined during the customization as date only.

When you use the crm date pick control, the time will be set to the database as picked date with time 00:00:00 +/- the time zone off set as the time is stored as UTC.

Example: the stored time in the data base for picking the 2009-07-02 by the UI will be:

2009-07-01 22:00:00.000
(if your crm settings say that you live in a time zone with +2)

To run queries with correct results I found a efficient technique.

For Example I would  like to have all records modified for yesterday (2009-07-02).

Step 1: create a CRM date/time and subtract 24 hours:

CrmDateTime crmDate = new CrmDateTime(DateTime.Now.AddHours(-24));

Step 2: create a date/time variable – assign the date part of the CrmDateTime and adjust the offset

DateTime rightTime = crmDate.DateTime.Date – (crmDate.DateTime – crmDate.UserTime);

Step 3: call rightTime.ToString(“s”) 

will result  “2009-07-01T22:00:00″.

This is exactly what we need for your search criteria for example by query expression object.

This technique works for each time zone as we adjust the offset in step two.
(as users can have different time zone settings)

This post is about changing the activity preview in Microsoft Dynamic CRM to custom preview.
 

ASP.NET uses a feature for page processing, called HTTP modules. HTTP modules
participate in the processing of a request by handling application events.
A given request can flow through multiple HTTP modules.
So we are creating our own module and hook on the PreRequestHandlerExecute of the PageLiveCycle.

Creating HTTP Modules is an easy task . You simply need to
add a class that implements the System.Web.IHttpModule interface. You can then register your
module by adding it to the <httpModules> section of the web.config file of your CRM root.

Your web.config should have something like the following structure:

<system.web>
…
    <httpModules>
        <add name=”ExtensionModulActivity” type=”WebPages.HttpExtensionModul.ExtensionClass,WebPages.HttpExtensionModul” />
    </httpModules>
…   

Example Implementation for an http module – which is registering for the Event and filtering for the page we would like to change:

using System;

using System.Collections.Generic;

using System.Text;

using System.Web;

using System.Web.UI;

using System.Web.UI.WebControls;

namespace WebPages.HttpExtensionModul

{

    public class ExtensionClass : IHttpModule

    {

        public void Dispose()

        {

            ;

        }

        public void Init(HttpApplication app)

        {

            //register events

            app.PreRequestHandlerExecute += new EventHandler(this.OnPreRequestHandlerExecute);

        }

        public void OnPreRequestHandlerExecute(object o, EventArgs args)

        {

             HttpContext context = ((HttpApplication)o).Context;

             IHttpHandler handler = context.Handler;

             //Hookup into PreRender event of the Page

                 if (context.Request.AppRelativeCurrentExecutionFilePath.ToLower().EndsWith("preview.aspx"))

                 {

                     int type = (context.Request.QueryString["type"] != null) ? int.Parse(context.Request.QueryString["type"]) : -1;

                     Guid id = (context.Request.QueryString["id"] != null) ? new Guid(context.Request.QueryString["id"]) : Guid.Empty;

                     if (id != Guid.Empty && type == 4002 ) //4002 = email

                     {

                         context.Response.ContentType = "text/xml";

                         context.Response.Filter = new ActivityPreview(context.Response.Filter, type, id);

                     }

                 } 

        }

    }

}

Example Implementation of a stream class, to add the custom text

namespace WebPages.HttpExtensionModul

{

    public class ActivityPreview : MemoryStream

    {

        private Stream _stream;

        private long _position;

        private int _entityId;

        private Guid _objectId;

    public ActivityPreview(Stream stream, int entityId, Guid objectId)

    {

        _stream = stream;

        _entityId = entityId;

        _objectId = objectId;

    }

    public int EntityId

    {

        get { return _entityId; }

    }

    public Guid ObjectId

    {

        get { return _objectId; }

    }

    public override void Write(byte[] buffer, int offset, int count)

    {

        string html = System.Text.Encoding.UTF8.GetString(buffer, offset, count);

        html = "<preview>The new module works we can show here our custom text   </preview>";

        buffer = System.Text.Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(html);

        _stream.Write(buffer, 0, buffer.Length);

    } 

}

}

The good thing about this customisation that we do not change any CRM code or files, so even with the next CRM generation the code will probably work with little or no changes. And it is working directly with queue view, advanced find, history, activities view – anywhere the preview.aspx is originally requested.

The result – our own module is called as expected:

Attention: Check your sub applications after the http module is working, probably you have to remove the module there.
Just use <remove name=”ExtensionModulActivity”/>, here is a good post about removing.