Bring your code 2 life

After migration of CRM 4.0 to CRM 2011 the resource strings in site map of the settings area are not updated correctly (yellow marks): IS: < group id ="Business_Setting" > < group id ="System_Setting" > < group id ="Customizations" > < group id ="ProcessCenter" > SHOULD BE: < group descriptionresourceid ="Menu_Label_Business" id ="Business_Setting" resourceid ="Menu_Label_Business" > < group descriptionresourceid ="Menu_Label_System" id ="System_Setting" resourceid ="Menu_Label_System" > < group descriptionresourceid ="Homepage_SystemCustomization" id ="Customizations" resourceid ="Homepage_SystemCustomization" > < group descriptionresourceid ="Menu_Label_ProcessCenter" id ="ProcessCenter" resourceid ="Menu_Label_ProcessCenter" > Through a new solution ex...

During a project I created a very complex custom newform.aspx / editform.aspx. Usually a custom RenderingTemplate uses the < SharePoint:ListFieldIterator ID="ListFieldIterator1" runat="server"/> control to automatically iterate all fields belonging to that list. But if you use field controls yourself, the ListFieldIterator is so smart not to render that field again. In my case I had to use the same field two times in different views in a multipage tab strip scenario. Within the first view I used this tag: < SharePoint:TextField ID="TextFieldViewA" runat="server" FieldName="TestField" /> In the second view this one: < SharePoint:TextField ID="TextFieldViewB" runat="server" FieldName="TestField" /> When rendering the custom page, SharePoint will only respond to changes on the second field. Somehow SharePoint uses the latest control in the control collection to update and persi...

In this blog I want to talk about my recent experiences with displaying values from a SPFieldCalculated field with datatype "DateTime" in another Web control (asp textbox or label). My first approach was this: // Get calculated due date field values and set them in the textboxes SPFieldCalculated cf3Due = (SPFieldCalculated)SPContext.Current.ListItem.Fields[ "Due date" ]; DueDateField.Text = cf3Due.GetFieldValueAsText(SPContext.Current.ListItem[ "Due_x0020_date" ]); Later I figured out that using the first approach will not correctly apply timezone and region settings to the current datetime values. My next approach solved my issue with displaying the right datetime in the right timezone. But it took me several hours to find out this freaking solution. System.Globalization.CultureInfo ci = null ; SPRegionalSettings regSettings = null ; var user = SPContext.Current.Web.CurrentUser; // Always perform a Null-Check on SPUser.RegionalSettings ...

In my code-behind I tried to set the CssClass property of a Microsoft.SharePoint.WebControls.BooleanField field during Page_OnLoad. During a debug session I could find out, that this control's CssClass property is "ms-input" by default. I overwrote it by different class name. This field gets rendered on the page like this: <TD class="ms-formbody No-Borders" vAlign=top align=middle><SPAN dir=none><INPUT id=ctl00_m_g_6796b238_94c6_47ff_bf38_ca66daa7a0d5_ctl00_AlertFormContent1_ConfirmationField_ctl00_BooleanField title="Quality Confirmation" type=checkbox name=ctl00$m$g_6796b238_94c6_47ff_bf38_ca66daa7a0d5$ctl00$AlertFormContent1$ConfirmationField$ctl00$BooleanField><BR></SPAN></TD> As you can see SharePoint actually does not render any CSS class style on this input field type. I am wondering why the CssClass is available and set by a default value although it does not get rendered. I would like to know why...

Today I found a nasty bug with the AdvancedSearchWebpart: I put the wepart on a standard web part page: Then I went into edit mode and deselected the other search text box fields so that I only have the first one "All of these words": Then I entered a search string "test" to see what's happening: The result was this:  I turned on the debugger to find the place where the error appeared: It crashed in the method "ComposeTextSectionQuery" because the hidden fields won't be rendered and therefore the attempt to access "elements.PhraseQueryTextBox.value" will result in the error mentioned above. I thought this was fixed with MOSS2007 already. Is Microsoft going steps backward with SP2010? I hope this will get fixed soon!

Today I had this situation: I created a new account I saved the new account I started a workflow I hit F5 to refresh the window to see the changes in my newly created account. Issue: Instead of getting the form of my newly created account the refresh gave me another new empty account form! So what the heck is happening here? After some research with the IE8 Developer Tool I found out that the entity window are actually two windows: The main entity window with the ribbon bar The inner window (IFrame), which actually includes the entity's edit form and JavaScript handlers/event code. The main window has the following URL: http://mucdevcrmdb01:22222/MyCompany/main.aspx?etc=1&extraqs=%3fetc%3d1&pagetype=entityrecord The inner window (IFrame): http://mucdevcrmdb01:22222/MyCompany/userdefined/edit.aspx?etc=1&id=%7b717BBB91-B59C-E011-8A01-00155D59091B%7d&pagemode=iframe&sitemappath=Workplace%7cMyWork%7cnav_activities Issue/Bug: After creating a new ent...

In this blog I will show you all the steps it took for me to migrate an CRM 4.0 organization to CRM 2011: 1. Created backups of my CRM 4.0 organization DB and report server DB 2. Imported backups on target environment / SQL Server 3. Connected report server instance to my imported CRMReports DB 4. Restored the SSRS encryption key (you need a password for your encryption key file) 5. Within the CRMReports DB in the table "Key" I deleted multiple entries so that it should look like this: 6. Started the Deployment Manager: 7. Started to import organization: 8. Selected my restored CRM 4.0 organization DB 9. Finished auto-mapping of AD-users and replaced one of the old CRM administrator accounts with my current new administrator account (might not be important for you). 10. Clicked next and started the migration. 11. Error appeared: 12:42:11| Error| Exception occured during Microsoft.Crm.Tools.Admin.OrganizationUpgrader: Fehler bei der Aktion Microsoft.Crm.Tools.Ad...