Sam Jones CRM Corner

How to hide buttons on CRM Forms

One of the most common operations we do is to hide certain buttons within the CRM using DHTML. This ought to have been relatively easy and using CRM3 it was. You simply used the following :

document.getElementById('[yourcontrolnamehere]').style.display = "none";

Unfortunately, things have changed in CRM 4 and not for the better. In CRM 4.0 there is some auto-incremented number or randomly generated number that gets placed at the end of all of the ElementId's on a page. Which means that the code used for CRM 3.0 will break.

Recently, due to some operational reasons, my client wanted to disable the 'Convert Campaign Response' button on the Campaign Response Form.

So, there are a number of ways this can be achieved. First of all, we need to know the actual name of the control we are about to hide. I find that the IE Developer ToolBar is one of the very best methods of achieving this. You can download the tool bar from HERE . When you have downloaded and installed the toolbar, you will be able to use it to find the actual name of the control inside CRM.

1) Navigate to the form you wish to check

2) Press F11 and then the Toolbar Icon

 

3) Click 'Find' and then 'Select Element By Click'

4) Select the button that you want to hide.

This handy little tool gives you the names of all elements on the page and now, all you have to do is hide them. There are a number of solutions out there.

Solution Number One

var Hide = function(menuItem){

if (document.getElementById(menuItem) != null)

{

document.getElementById(menuItem).style.display = "none";

}

}

var RemoveSpacerAfter = function(menuItem){

if (document.getElementById(menuItem) != null)

{

var item = document.getElementById(menuItem);

if (item.nextSibling != null)

item.nextSibling.style.display="none";

}

}

Hide('_MBConvertResponse');

RemoveSpacerAfter('_MBConvertResponse');

 

Solution Number Two

//Get all of the List Elements

var lis = document.getElementsByTagName('LI');

var i = 0;

//Loop through the list items

while (i < lis.length) {

//Don't worry about any list item that doesn't have the title you are looking for.

if (lis[i].getAttribute('title') == 'View directions to this account.')

{

//Replace the DHTML with blank tags to hide the button

lis[i].outerHTML='<SPAN></SPAN>'

}

i = i + 1;

}

You can also delete menu options from the Actions menu on any entity. Here's the same code again but removing the 'Delete  Case' menu item from the Actions Menu

//Get all of the List Elements

var lis = document.getElementsByTagName('LI'); 

var i = 0;

//Loop through the list items

while (i < lis.length) 

{ 

//Don't worry about any list item that doesn't have the title you are looking for.

if (lis[i].getAttribute('id') == '_MIonActionMenuClickdelete112')

{ 

//Replace the DHTML with blank tags to hide the button

lis[i].outerHTML='<SPAN></SPAN>'

}

i = i + 1;

}

 

 Item Names

Item names are also fairly easy to figure out. You can view them by opening the relevant form, pressing Ctrl-N and then 'View', Source. Here are some basic ones that are much the same for all entities.

Actions Menu

Add Activity = _MIlocAddActTo4401

Add a Note = _MIlocAddObjTo5

Attach a file = _MIlocAddFileTo5

Delete Account = _MIonActionMenuClickdelete1 (Entity: Contact would be 2)

Mail Merge = _MIonActionMenuClickwebmailmerge1 (Entity:Contact would be 2)

Sharing = _MIonActionMenuClickshare1

 

General Buttons

Jewel Button = ms-crm-Menu-JewelButton

Save = _MBcrmFormSave

Save & Close = _MBcrmFormSaveAndClose

Print = _MBcrmFormPrint

 

A word of explanation for the Delete menu item. The number at the end of the id is in fact the ObjectTypeCode for the entity. So, the name of the delete button for the Accounts entity has the number 1 appended, contacts has the number 2 and so on. Once you have the hang of the naming conventions, it is pretty easy to guess what any given button or menu item is likely to be called. Once you have this information, you can view the source, search for the value and then confirm the correct information prior to applying the javascript.

“The path is not of a legal form” while installing the Dynamics CRM Outlook client

I was installing the Data Migration Wizard on a Client Server. After selecting the install directory, I received an error message saying “The path is not of a legal form”.

This path is not of a legal form

However, the specified folder was “C:\Program Files\<an install directory>” and it was present on the C drive. After a few searches on the Web, I found someone having a similar issue while installing the CRM Data Migration Manager.Their solution was to update manually the registry.

Key: [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\
Installer\UserData\S-1-5-18\Products59DD8CB00184F24E99A62CF4D6109FA\InstallProperties]

Name: InstallLocation
Set the Data value to “C:\Program Files\Microsoft Dynamics CRM”

After this modification, setup continued without an error (this was empty on my installation).

T-SQL Date and Time Functions

Introduction

Date and time values are highly used in database applications. They involve sales, time sheets, taxes, overtime work, etc. Based on this usefulness, their operations are supported by various libraries you will be using when developing your application. Without being the most elaborate on this issue, Transact-SQL provides its own level of support for date and time values.

Before using a date or a time value in a calculation, remember that you must first get it one way or another. You can define a date or a time constant in your application. An example would be '1992/10/28'. You can declare a DateTime or a SmallDateTime variable and initialize it as you see fit. You may get a date or a time from another function. As the last alternative, you may get a date or time from another application or from a user. Once you have an appropriate date, you can use it.

The Current System Date and/or Time

One of the ways you can assist the user with date and time is to get the current date or the current time. For example, if you create a time sheet, when the user starts using it, it would be convenient to fill part of the time sheet with such predictable values.

To get the current date and the current time of the computer that a user is using, you can use the GETDATE() function of Transact-SQL. Its syntax is:

GETDATE()

This function simply returns the current date and time of the operating system.

Date/Time Addition

One of the primary operations you may want to perform on a date or a time value would consist of adding a value to it. To support this operation, Transact-SQL provides the DATEADD() function. Its syntax is:

DATEADD(TypeOfValue, ValueToAdd, DateOrTimeReferenced)

The third argument to this function is the value of a date or a time on which the operation will be performed. It can be a constant value in the form of 'year/month/day' for a date or 'hour:minutes AM/PM' for a time.

The second argument is the value that will be added. It should be a constant integer, such as 8, or a floating point value, such as 4.06.

When calling this function, you must first specify the type of value that you want to add. This type is passed as the first argument. It is used as follows:

• If you want to add a number of years to a date, specify the TypeOfValue as Year or yy, or yyyy (remember that SQL is case-insensitive). Here is an example:

  DECLARE @Anniversary As DateTime;
  SET @Anniversary = '2002/10/02';
  SELECT DATEADD(yy, 4, @Anniversary) AS Anniversary;
  GO

  

• If you want to add a number of quarters of a year to a date, specify the TypeOfValue as Quarter or d, or qq. Here is an example:

  DECLARE @NextVacation As DateTime;
  SET @NextVacation = '2002/10/02';
  SELECT DATEADD(Quarter, 2, @NextVacation) AS [Next Vacation];
  GO

  

• If you want to add a number of months to a date, specify the TypeOfValue as Month or m, or mm. The following example adds 5 months to its date:

  DECLARE @SchoolStart As DateTime;
  SET @SchoolStart = '2004/05/12';
  SELECT DATEADD(m, 5, @SchoolStart) AS [School Start];
  GO

  

In the same way, you can add values as follows:

 

Type of Value Abbreviation As a result Year yy A number of years will be added to the date value yyyy quarter q A number of quarters of a year will be added to the date value qq Month m A number of months will be added to the date value mm dayofyear y A number of days of a year will be added to the date value dy Day d A number of days will be added to the date value dd Week wk A number of weeks will be added to the date value ww Hour hh A number of hours will be added to the time value minute n A number of minutes will be added to the time value mi second s A number of seconds will be added to the time value ss millisecond ms A number of milliseconds will be added to the time value

 

Date/Time Subtraction

Another regular operation performed on a date or a time value consists of getting the number of units that has elapsed in the range of two dates or two time values. To support this operation, Transact-SQL provides the DATEDIFF() function. Its syntax is:

DATEDIFF(TypeOfValue, StartDate, EndDate)

This function takes three arguments. The second argument is the starting date or the starting time of the range to be considered. The third argument is the end or last date or time of the considered range. You use the first argument to specify the type of value you want the function to produce. This argument uses the same value as those of the DATEADD() function:

 

Here is an example that calculates the number of years that an employees has been with the company:

DECLARE @DateHired As DateTime,;
	@CurrentDate As DateTime;
SET @DateHired = '1996/10/04';
SET @CurrentDate  = GETDATE();
SELECT DATEDIFF(year, @DateHired, @CurrentDate)
       AS [Current Experience];
GO

This would produce:

CRM Form Types

 

Is the user creating a new record?
crmForm.FormType == 1

Is the user updating an existing record
crmForm.FormType ==2

Is the user unable to update this record?
crmForm.FormType == 3

Is this record deactivated?
crmForm.FormType == 4

Is the user using the Quick Create form?
crmForm.FormType == 5

Is the user using the Bulk Edit form?
crmForm.FormType == 6

What is the unique ID for this record?
= crmForm.ObjectId

What type of record is this?
= crmForm.ObjectTypeCode

What type of record is this (Entity Name)?
= crmForm.ObjectTypeName

Is the user using the Outlook Client?
crmForm.IsForOutlookClient==true

Is the user using the Outlook Light Client?
crmForm.IsForOutlookLightClient == true

Is the user working On line?
crmForm.IsOnline==true

Have any fields in this form been changed?
crmForm.IsDirty==true