Importing customizations error

In one of my previous blog’s I mentioned some tips before you could export/import customizations. If you haven’t read it, it’s here.

One of the points I mentioned was - to publish both the entities together when you created a relationship between them. In case you published only one of the two and engage yourself in export/import operations, it would export the customizations, but while importing it display’s a failure message:

Failure:
new_account_contact : Invalid Argument.

new - is the prefix
account - is entity1
contact - is entity2; Just to make it clear to the new comers.

Looking at the error above one is pretty convinced that the error has occurred between a relationship, as you can see two entities involved; exact failure error message not mentioned. This happens when you don’t publish both the entities together when you create a relationship between them. Sometimes not doing this may fume your brains.My personal comment on this- if CRM does not allow importing customizations when there is an un-published relation, it should have checked before exporting the customizations. Sometimes software developers do get silly. I being a developer have experienced.
Expect a patch probably?

Avail the latest SDK 4.0.3

Haven't written much, infact anything about the previous two SDKs. Reason being this blog wasn't live then. Moving forward, you can download the latest Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0.3 SDK. Click here to download the SDK. Find more here.

Waiting for further releases? Me too. Come back to find more.

Error while importing customizations

Many a times I have come across forums and discussions about customization import errors. I tried to find out the reason and came to a full stop with a solution.

Let me share it with the readers:

1. Always publish the customizations without fail.
2. When you are creating a relationship between two entities, remember to publish
both those entities.
3. Its a good practise to publish all customizations before performing
export/import job.
4. Its always a good practise to export all customizations and import only those customizations that you require.
5. If you have 2 entities in relation and would want to retain the relation while export/import, you must export/import both those entities together at once, or you'll have relationship breakup.

These are a few tips to avoid errors while importing customizations that I too came across and thougth to put it on my blog for good. Any more points to look forward for, let me know "for good". Come back to know more common errors and their solutions.

Importing data in CRM

Heylo! Used a tool to import data into CRM.
Pretty good tool to use.

1.You'll need the view of the entity you want to import data on.

2.Export the view as .csv

3.Enter data into it

4.Import it back into CRM using the CRM import tool

Simple tool at use and performs the task promptly. The screenshots and in depth explaination of the tool is here and the tool can be downloaded from MS CRM Data Import Tool.

Enjoy your weekend.

Disable a Crm Form field

Many blogs have this content on how to disable a crmForm field. I am not sampling code for how to disable a field but two different views of a disabled field and its code.

Does the below shown crm field appear disabled? Yes. Well, this is how you can achieve it at run time.

Code 1:
crmForm.all.prefix_entityname.Disabled = true;


Does the below shown crm field appear disabled? If your say is no. You are of course right. It does not look disabled, indeed it is.

And this is how you achieve it.

Code 2:
crmForm.all.prefix_entityname.disabled = true;

So, disabling a crmform field can take two different views as shown above.
Carefully admiring the code you will notice the difference.
Code 1: Capital D, Disabled
Code 2: Small Letter d, disabled.

Happy disabling crm form field.