D365 CE - Failure 0x80040203 AttributeId is null

Since I have seen this failure now in my last project and also got some questions from others in the past, I just wanted to document our root cause as well here. There are already posts out there but the one I found did not really explaining the issue itself my point of view.

In our scenario, we just enabled Virtual Entities for a PoC in one of our lower test environments (not in dev due to some infra topics) and added a lookup (n:1 Relation) to this Virtual Entity. Afterwards we decided to go without the Virtual Entities due to the current limitations and created a Lookup with same name but to a regular Entity. The problem was that the PoC was not reverted before we deployed the final solution in the test environment which caused this (not really helpful) error message "0x80040203 AttributeId is null".

Cheers

Online toolbox "msxrmtools.com"

Today i found a nice little helper. It provides metadata browser, FetchXML tester, Url QueryString Analyzer and other helpful features. And all of that without importing solutions to your organization or running local applications.

msxrmtools

Fetch XML sample

QueryString analyzer sample

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Enable Announcements in CRM 2013 / CRM 2015

By default, announcements are not available for the user in versions > 2011.

In Settings –> Announcements, it is still possible to configure them.

To show them in the basic navigation, you have to manipulate the SiteMap. I suggest to use XrmToolbox (SiteMap Editor).

You can also add the XML-Code manually.

1 <Group Id="MyWork" ResourceId="Group_MyWork"...>
2     ...
3     <SubArea Entity="businessunitnewsarticle" 
4         Id="nav_news" Url="/home/homepage/home_news.aspx" 
5         AvailableOffline="false" PassParams="false" />
6 </Group>

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Sonoma Microsoft CRM Dev Tools

Sonoma offers a new extension for Microsoft Dynamics CRM. It is provided as a Google Chrome-Plugin.

Dynamics CRM DevTools

 

Functionality

• Shows Form information (Id, Name, Type Code, Form Type, Is Dirty)
• Refresh current form
• Enable/Disable attributes
• Show hidden attributes
• Shows User information (Domain Name, User Id, Business Unit Id)
• Open Advanced Find
• Search for Attribute, User Id, Privilege Id (and navigate to the record)
• Set focus to a field
• Update attributes (testing)
• Execute Fetch XML Queries

Lets hope there will be a IE-Solution in the future too.

Cheers

CRM 2013 – Business Rules

One of the new pretty interesting Features of Microsoft Dynamics 2013 are Business Rules. The purpose of them is to allow non Developers to customize basic rules like

• Show and hide fields
• Set and reset “Business Required” for fields
• Show Error-Message
• Set specific Field Value
• Lock or unlock fields

on specific triggers/conditions. Also Basic-Formulas (+, –, *, /) are possible.

The UI looks nice and clean (a bit like IFTTT).

Example

Set “Approved by Manager” Field as Business Required when Budget Amount of Opportunity is more than 50000,00€.

Before:

Business Rule:

After:

Hint:

The Value for “Business Required” is not resetting automatically when Budget Amount is decreased to < 50000. An additional rule is required.

This feature will reduce the lines of JavaScript code in the future enormously.

cheers