Fixed bug with web file deployment in CRMQuickDeploy 3.5.3

Posted on September 24, 2018 by

The previous version of CRMQuickDeploy introduced a new feature where it was possible to use folders in the Visual Studio project to specify the targeted language for Portal web page deployment. This means that you no longer have to name the root and localised web pages differently in CRM in order for the tool to target the right record for deployment.

Unfortunately this introduced a bug for web file deployment. In the DeploymentSettings.xml deployment configuration file for web files, you need to specify the name of the targeted parent web page for the web files. When you enable the “Use Folders to Determine Web Page Language” feature, the name of the root and the corresponding localised web pages in CRM are typically the same. Web files however should be attached to root pages only, and the tool did not filter out localised web pages when searching for the parent page during deployment.

I however could not simply just add the filter to look for root web pages. This is because this would not work when targeting Portal v7.x. The ability to localise web pages (and hence the concept of root web pages) were introduced from Portal v8.x.

To continue to support all versions of Portal from v7.x onward, I have added a new configuration attribute to the DeploymentSettings.xml config file.

This attribute is targetPortalVersion7=”false|true” and can be placed on the root node of the configuration file, i.e. DeploymentSettings. This attribute is optional, and the default value is false.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<!-- targetPortalVersion7: Optional. Specifies whether the target Portal is v7.x. Default is false. This setting impacts how the parent web page is located for a web file. Localisation of web pages was added to Portal from version v8.x. This means there could be multiple web pages in the system with the same name (one is the root page, others are the localised pages). When this attribute is true, the tool will not look for root pages when retrieving the parent web page for a web file. When this attribute is false, only root web pages will be considered when retrieving the parent web page for a file. -->
<DeploymentSettings targetPortalVersion7="false">
	<WebFiles>
		...
	</WebFiles>
</DeploymentSettings>

Setting this attribute to false causes CRMQuickDeploy to apply a filter for root web pages when retrieving the parent web page for a web file deployment.

Configuration file update required for existing developers targeting Portal v7.x

Since the default value for this attribute (including when it is not present) is false, developers currently targeting Portal v7.x needs to update their DeploymentSettings.xml to set this attribute to true.

Download

You can download CRMQuickDeploy from the Visual Studio Marketplace.

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Posted in CRM, CRM Portal, CRMQuickDeploy | Leave a comment

Improved password management in new version of CRMQuickDeploy

Posted on September 24, 2018 by

In previous versions of CRMQuickDeploy, if your connection string requires a password, then the password needs to be specified as clear text in the connection string. While the password is not checked in to source control, and is not saved to disk in clear text, it can still lead to some pretty awkward situations.

With the latest version (3.5.3) of CRMQuickDeploy you now have the option of not specifying the password in the connection string. When a deployment is triggered, the tool examine the connection string to see if a password is required. If a password is required, and is not specified in the connection string, then a dialog is shown to prompt you to provide your password. The password that you provide is not written to any file and is cached for the remaining of the Visual Studio session.

The tool determines that a password is required if it encounters one of the following parameters in the connection string:

  • UserName
  • User Name
  • UserId
  • User Id

You can still specify the password in the connection string if you wish, although this is generally not recommended (unless you are using a dummy account for deployment). If you do this, CRMQuickDeploy will work as it always has been and you will not receive the prompt to enter your password on deployment.

Download

You can download CRMQuickDeploy from the Visual Studio Marketplace.

Posted in CRM, CRM Portal, CRMQuickDeploy | Leave a comment

Better support for localised Portal web pages in new version of CRMQuickDeploy

Posted on August 8, 2018 by

Background

When deploying Portal web pages, CRMQuickDeploy uses the web page’s name in CRM (and the filename of the project item) to identify the target web page for deployment. Since version 8 of CRM Portal however, we have the ability to localise web pages. This created a small problem for CRMQuickDeploy, since by default the name of the localised pages are the same as the name of the root page. Below is how the root and localised pages would look by default:

The workaround (before now)…

The way we have worked around this was to edit the name of the localised web pages to make them unique. We appended the language name to the name of each localised web page, e.g. Contact Us (English) and Contact Us (Spanish), and named our Visual Studio project items accordingly.

Issue with CRM Portal v9…

The above workaround was a bit annoying but it worked well and did not take up too much time. It recently came to my attention however that CRM Portal v9 (i.e. the cloud version) automatically reverts the name of the localised web pages back to be same name as their root pages.

Yes, in CRM Portal v9, you can edit and save the name of the localised web pages. However, if you later on reopen the localised web page record in CRM’s web client, then the form automatically reverts the name back to be the same as the root page. This means that the workaround described above is no longer viable.

Improved web page language targeting in CRMQuickDeploy

To address this issue I have released a new version of CRMQuickDeploy that allows you to define the target language for web pages by placing the Visual Studio project items into a folder. The name of the folder is the name of the target language.

So for the above example, the structure of the Visual Studio project would look like this:

Under this approach, English\Contact Us.html for example would be deployed to the Contact Us web page where the language of that page is set to English. Note that only the immediate parent of the VS project item is used to determine the target language.

Enabling web page language targeting

To prevent this new approach from breaking your current project structure, this new feature of web page language targeting must first be enabled in Visual Studio. You can do this by going to Tools \ Options \ CRMQuickDeploy \ Deployment Options and set Use Folder to Determine Web Page Language to True.

When this option is enabled, each web page must be placed in a folder (underneath the PortalWebPages folder). The name of the immediate containing folder will be used as the target language for its children web pages.

Download

You can download CRMQuickDeploy from the Visual Studio Gallery.

So there you have it…

This new feature allows you to target web pages more efficiently, and works against both on-cloud and on-prem (v8) CRM Portal.

As always, would love to hear from you with feedback and suggestion!

Posted in CRM, CRM Portal, CRMQuickDeploy | Leave a comment

How to set value for date-time field by JavaScript in CRM Portal

Posted on July 24, 2018 by

Date-time fields in CRM Portal is a bit tricky when it comes to setting value dynamically using JavaScript. Behind the scene there are two HTML input fields that we need to worry about.

First is the field that actually contains the value that will be submitted to the server. This field has the CRM attribute name as its HTML ID. This field is not displayed on the page. The second is the field that holds the display value and enables the date-time picker. Below is what the HTML of these fields would look like:

We’d need to set both of these fields in order for the date-time field to work correctly.

The trick is the value that you set for these fields need to be in a particular format. For the submit field, the value should be a UTC date-time string in the format 2018-07-24T02:13:36.0000000. Note that the fractional second part (the last part) requires 7 digits.

For the display field, the value should be a local date-time string in the format determined by the current page (based on the page’s localisation). You can find this format in the data-date-format attribute of the HTML element for the display field.

Luckily CRM Portal uses moment.js by default and we have access to this library on our pages. This makes converting and formatting date-time easy. Below is the complete code to set value for a date-time field. Please review the inline comments.

//fieldId: ID (CRM attribute name) of the field we are setting.
//dateValue: The date-time value to set to. This should be of type Date. 
function setDateTimeFieldValue(fieldId, dateValue) {
	//Get the submit field
	var $submitField = $("#" + fieldId);

	//Get the display field
	var $displayField = $submitField.nextAll(".datetimepicker").children("input");

	//Get the display date format
	var dateFormat = $displayField.attr("data-date-format");

	//Set the submit field. Remember this needs to be in UTC and the format must be exact.
	$submitField.val(moment.utc(dateValue).format("YYYY-MM-DDTHH:mm:ss.SSSSSSS"));

	//Set the display field using the page's date format
	$displayField.val(moment(dateValue).format(dateFormat));
}
Posted in Adxstudio, CRM, CRM Portal | 3 Comments

Introducing VSTS Quick Reply: a Chrome extension that helps you collaborate quicker in VSTS discussion

Posted on July 7, 2018 by

Teams often leverage the discussion feature, in particular the ability to @mention team members, in VSTS for work items to collaborate on requirements, tasks and bugs. In large teams it is common to @mention several team members on messages to ensure that the relevant people are involved in the discussion.

VSTS however currently does not have a “Reply all” feature, which means you have to manually @mention each member in the previous message when replying to a discussion post.

I have developed a simple Chrome extension, VSTS Quick Reply, to help with this. This simple extension adds a Reply and Reply All links to each discussion message that have been posted against the current work item. When clicked, these links add all the @mentioned users and/or the original poster of the selected message to your new message entry textbox so that you don’t have to manually type them again.

Currently this extension only supports VSTS. You can install this extension from the Chrome Web Store.

That’s it! I hope this simple extension can give you a small productivity boost when collaborating in VSTS. I would love to hear from you with feedback and suggestions!

Posted in TFS, VSTS | 5 Comments

How to get current user info in VSTS web by JavaScript

Posted on June 28, 2018 by

I have been exploring extending the VSTS web interface and I needed to get the display name of the current user in JavaScript. It turns out there is a JavaScript variable that is available on all pages, namely __vssPageContext. This variable contains many contextual information. I was able to get what I needed from __vssPageContext.webContext.user:

Posted in TFS, VSTS | Leave a comment

Getting VSTS user ID by display name using REST

Posted on June 28, 2018 by

I have been exploring the VSTS REST API lately. While there are quite a few services that require the user ID as parameter, it isn’t very obvious how you can obtain that user ID for a given user in the first place.

For my requirement I needed to get the user ID for a given user by their display name. The only way I have found to achieve this (via REST) is to use the Graph service, which is still in preview. The steps are described below.

First, we need to call the List all users service (https://[account].vssps.visualstudio.com/_apis/graph/users). This will return a list of all users. Each user record has the following structure:

{
	"subjectKind": "user",
	"domain": "Windows Live ID",
	"principalName": "[value removed]",
	"mailAddress": "[value removed]",
	"origin": "msa",
	"originId": "[value removed]",
	"displayName": "[value removed]",
	"_links": {
		"self": { "href": "https://[account].vssps.visualstudio.com/_apis/Graph/Users/msa...[value removed]" },
		"memberships": { "href": "https://[account].vssps.visualstudio.com/_apis/Graph/Memberships/msa...[value removed]" },
		"membershipState": { "href": "https://[account].vssps.visualstudio.com/_apis/Graph/MembershipStates/msa...[value removed]" },
		"storageKey": { "href": "https://[account].vssps.visualstudio.com/_apis/Graph/StorageKeys/msa...[value removed]" },
		"avatar": { "href": "https://[account].visualstudio.com/_apis/GraphProfile/MemberAvatars/msa...[value removed]" }
	},
	"url": "https://[account].vssps.visualstudio.com/_apis/Graph/Users/msa...[value removed]",
	"descriptor": "msa...[value removed]"
}

Using the displayName property we can locate the user record that we are after. We then need to invoke the service identified by the _links.storageKey property to retrieve the ID for this user. The URL of this service looks like this (value has been changed):

https://[account].vssps.visualstudio.com/_apis/Graph/StorageKeys/msa.XWI1NTUyXYZtMTzyZi09OTZhXYZmMDktXYkwZjA9NzQxZTK9

The above service returns a structure as follow:

{
	"value": "[GUID]",
	"_links": {
		"self": { "href": "https://[account].vssps.visualstudio.com/_apis/Graph/StorageKeys/msa...[value removed]" },
		"descriptor": { "href": "https://[account].vssps.visualstudio.com/_apis/Graph/Descriptors/[GUID]" 
		}
	}
}

The ID of the user can be found in the value property.

So there you have it…

Unfortunately currently it requires two calls to get the ID of a user given their display name. This might change in the future though as Microsoft’s documentation is indicating that the ability to search for user by UPN or display name is coming soon to the Graph service.

Posted in TFS, VSTS | Leave a comment