Sometimes, there is a need to find any dependencies for a solution in CRM. Some of the reasons include:

• You have installed a standard set of third party solutions at the start of development and need to see what is using each one at the end.
• You need to document the steps to be able to deploy your solution and need to list the solution dependencies.
• You need to remove a particular third party solution and need to determine the dependencies upon it (perhaps to document the process so that it can be removed from multiple environments).

To be able to see the dependencies, we can tap into a screen that is used to display the dependencies on a solution when we try to remove a solution.

The first thing we need to do is determine the GUID of the solution to be checked. This can be done by:

1. Go to Settings > Solutions and double click the solution in question
2. Click the Actions menu and then “Copy a Link”.

3. Paste the URL into Notepad. It will look something like:

https://<CRM-URL-HERE >/tools/solution/edit.aspx?appSolutionId=%7bB086F09C-5006-40B5-A330-446F3A1A7EA8%7d&id=%7bB086F09C-5006-40B5-A330-446F3A1A7EA8%7d

4. The GUID we need is the second one in the URL located between the first %7b and %7d (see the highlighted GUID above)

Now that we have the GUID of the solution, we use CRM’s URL for viewing the solution dependencies inserting the GUID from above into the appropriate place (see below):

https:///tools/dependency/dependencyviewdialog.aspx?objectid=&objecttype=7100&operationtype=dependenciesforuninstall

This will result in a display something like that seen below:

I hope this post has been helpful. Till my next post!

The post Solution Dependencies appeared first on Dynamics CRM Blog.

In a recent project, we needed to provide a page in the Adxstudio’s Customer Portal that will allow the customers to file cases. In Dynamics CRM, the customer field is a required field in a case. This means that a customer cannot submit a case if the customer field has no value. Thus, we cannot let the portal users edit or enter a value in the customer field just for them to submit a case. This will show the portal users the list of the client’s customers.

So what we did is to use the pre-populate function in the Adxstudio Entity Form Metadata.

Here’s how we did it:

1. Navigate to Portals > Entity Forms and open your entity form

2. Proceed to Entity Form Metadata tab and create a new Entity Form Metadata by clicking the plus sign. (See image below.)

3. Select Attribute in the Type field.

4. In the Attribute Logical Name, select the field you want to be populated upon loading the form. In our case, we needed to populate the Customer field as this is a required field when creating a Case.

5. Proceed to the Prepopulate Field section.

6. Tick Ignore Default Value.

7. Type must be Current Portal User. This means that the value that will be populated in the Customer ID will come from Current Portal user’s contact record in CRM.

8. From Attribute Value field will be the prepopulated value of the attribute we’ve selected. In our case, the value of the Customer field in our Case Entity form will be pre-populated by the Company Name (parentcustomerid) of the Current Portal User’s contact record.

9. Save the form.

Try creating a case in the Adxstudio’s customer portal and see the result.

Hope you find this informative when creating an Adxstudio entity form.

The post How to Auto-Populate Field in Adxstudio Entity Form appeared first on Dynamics CRM Blog.

During a recent demonstration I was preparing for a prospective client, I was given a requirement to show “tags” related to a particular forum thread to be shown in a new column in the forums home page.

As out of the box Adxstudio forum template was not providing this functionality, I had to edit the forum.aspx page found under MasterPortal/Areas/Forums/Pages/Forum.aspx. The out of the box forum page looks like the image below.

Steps to Show Forum Thread Tags

Given below are the steps I followed to add a column with tags associated with each thread in the forums home page.

1. I opened up the MasterPortal solution of Adxstudio in Visual Studio 2015. Usually, the solution is found at the below location.

“<adxstudio installed drive>\Program Filex(x86)\XrmPortals\<adxstudioversion>\Samples\”

2. Open the Forum.aspx found inside the folder “MasterPortal/Areas/Forums/Pages/”.

3. Navigate in the code to find the asp:ListView with ID “ForumThreads”, you’d be able to easily figure out this as the correct one to edit by inspecting the column headers in the List of forum threads (Thread, Author, Last Post, Replies).

Add the following <th> tag to the code after the <th> tag which creates the ‘Replies’ column.

<th class="tags">
<adx:Snippet SnippetName="Forum Thread Tag Heading" DefaultText="Tags" EditType="text" runat="server"/>
</th>

4. Now let’s find out the place where we need to create the column contents in the code.

5. Insert a new <td> tag with the following content.

<td>
       	<div>
			<asp:ListView runat="server" DataSource='<%# Eval("Tags") %>'>
				<LayoutTemplate>
					<ul class="tags">
						<li id="itemPlaceholder" runat="server" />
</ul>
</LayoutTemplate>
				<ItemTemplate>
					<li runat="server">
<asp:HyperLink CssClass="btn btn-default btn-xs" NavigateUrl='~/' runat="server">
							<span class="fa fa-tag" aria-hidden="true"></span>
								<%# Eval("Name") %>
                                        </asp:HyperLink>
</li>
</ItemTemplate>
</asp:ListView>
</div>
</td>

6. All done, now let’s compile the code and recycle the application pool in IIS to inspect the outcome.

6. Notice the newly created “Tags” column right after the “Replies” column.

I hope this gave you an idea on how to create a new column with Tags associated with an Adxstudio forum thread. I will meet you soon with another blog post with a new challenge I faced and I how I got through with it. Till then. Happy Coding!!!!

The post Adxstudio Portals: How to Show Forum Thread Tags against the Thread List appeared first on Dynamics CRM Blog.

Greetings, fellow CRM’ers!

This is the first part of a series I’ll be writing which aims to save people time with quick wins in regards to CRM, Adxstudio and ClickDimensions.  My reason behind writing this series is to pass on the knowledge of various small lessons I’ve learnt which could potentially save other consultants a lot of time. I plan for these to be succinct and valuable and act as a point of reference for future work.

Feel free to ask me questions in the comment section below if you require more assistance.

The Problem

When trying to use tooltips in Adxstudio, they do not work even though you have followed all the instructions on the bootstrap guideline.

The Resolution

Don’t panic! Just make sure you’ve followed these steps and you’ll be fine!

1. Place the tooltip.js file in the /js folder of your Adxstudio portal directory on your server (or in a folder on your Adxstudio online deployment) and reference it in code.

Adxstudio does not include this out of the box, so double check it’s there!

• Download the tooltip.js here.
• Reference it by placing the following code anywhere in the HTML of the page you want to use it on (or put it in the ADX header content snippet to be included on all pages).

Code

<script src="/js/bootstrap-tooltip.js"></script>

2. Initialise the tooltip code by including the following in the “Custom Javascript” in CRM of the section of the form you’d like to enable them on.

Code

$(document).ready(function() {
$("body").tooltip({ selector: '[data-toggle=tooltip]' });
});

Example

3. Add the attribute “date-toggle=tooltip” to the elements you’d like the tooltips to be enabled for. This part can be tricky as you will need to use the

   setAttributeNode()

     method and figure out the most efficient way to apply it to all the fields you’d like (i.e. through a loop). Here’s how I do it, but keep in mind this will add the tooltip to all input fields on the page.

Code

window.onload=function(){
$.each($('form').serializeArray(), function(index, value){
$('[name="' + value.name + '"]').attr('data-toggle', 'tooltip');
});
}

More info on how to use the 

setAttributeNode()

The Result

Tooltip before:

Tooltip after:

Enjoy!  Don’t forget to ask any question below if you get stuck.

Until next time.

Jeremy Desanker
@JDtheConsultant

The post Quick Wins Part 1: Bootstrap Tooltips in Adxstudio appeared first on Dynamics CRM Blog.

In one project, we had a requirement to pass a logged in user ID to a WCF service.  There are two ways to achieve this:

• .Net coding
• Using Liquid notation

In this blog, we will take a look at passing a user ID using Liquid notation which is much easier. This involves two steps:

• Assigning the logged in user ID to a hidden field
• Retrieving the value of the hidden field and passing it to the WCF service using JavaScript.

Assigning a Logged in User to a Hidden Field

This is done in the copy (HTML) section of the webpage. The liquid notation which gives the logged in user is “{{user.id}}”.

Passing the User ID to the WCF Service

In the Advanced section of the Web form, write the java script to extract the data from the hidden control and pass the value to the WCF service.

Conclusion

In this blog we saw how to pass a logged in user ID to a WCF Service from Adxstudio Portal. I hope this was helpful. Please drop in your comment.

The post Pass a Logged in User from Adxstudio Portal to a WCF Service appeared first on Dynamics CRM Blog.

In Adxstudio, copying a website from one environment to another is very easy. It is a two-step process:

• Copying the source website
• Deploying the copied website

Adxstudio has a utility which will help us copy and deploy the website. It is called Website Copy tool. It can be found in the utilities folder where Adxstudio is installed.

Copying the Source Website

Click on the Website Copy tool and it will open a wizard. The second screen will look like the one displayed below.

Now select the source website Microsoft Dynamics CRM server and click Next. In the next screen, you will be prompted to enter the discovery URL of the CRM server and also the authentication details. Next, it will ask you the destination details as given below. Select XML file and click next.

In the next screen, choose create website as shown in the image below.

The website will be compiled into an XML file.

Deploying the Copied Website

In this step, initiate the same tool and select the source as XML and it will ask you to give the destination details. Now select the destination as CRM server and give the connection details. The website will be copied to the new server.

Note: It is a good practice to create a backup of the destination server before doing the deployment.

Conclusion

In this blog, we saw how to copy a website from one server to another. I hope this was helpful. Please send me your comment.

The post Introduction to Adxstudio Website Copy Tool appeared first on Dynamics CRM Blog.

Recently, somebody asked me how to install ADXStudio, and I thought it good to put in all the steps in a blog. Here we go.

There are two ways to install ADXstudio.

• Cloud: In this scenario the website will be hosted on the cloud, and we won’t have control over the code.
• Local Installation: In this scenario, we host the website and we have complete control over the code.

In this blog, we will see how to install ADXstudio locally.  Following are the steps for this procedure.

• Download the latest version of ADXstudio from https://demo.adxstudio.com/
• Install the downloaded software and it will copy a set of files into your machine. Please note the location (by default it will be in C:\Program Files (x86)\Adxstudio).
• Log on to your Dynamics CRM Online account
• Click on Dynamics CRM Ribbon and then select Settings > Solutions.
• Click on Import Solution and then click on Browse.
• Navigate to the folder where ADXStudio files were copied upon installing ADXStudio.
• Select AdxstudioInstaller.Zip file and click on Next. Please take a look at the screen shot below for location of AdxstudioInstaller.Zip.

• Click on Import and finish the import process.

• Once the installation is over, you can see ADXSTUDIO INSTALLER on your solution screen as shown below.

• Next we go and download customer portal to our CRM Instance.
• Click on CRM Ribbon > Settings > Solutions and click on ADXSTUDIO INSTALLER. This will open another screen which will take you to ADXStudio installation page.
• Click on the left hand menu and select website gallery as shown in the image below.

• In the next screen, click on the Install button beside ADXStudio Portals customer portal as shown in the image below, and then click on the blue install button at the bottom of the screen.

• The wizard will import the required files to you Dynamics CRM Instance.
• When the import is complete refresh your Dynamics CRM screen and you can see a portals tab appear on the ribbon.
• Click on the Ribbon > Portals > Websites; you will see the website in your Dynamics CRM Instance.

• The next step is to create a site in your local IIS.
• Open IIS and add a new site as shown below

• In the physical path, enter the path where the ADX files were copied initially when we installed ADXStudio. We need to specify the location of Master Portal, as shown in the screen shot below

• Click OK to close the wizard.
• Next, we need to specify theCRM instance to which this site should connect.
• Right click on the created site and in the quick menu, select Manage Website >Browse as shown in the screenshot below.

• The following screen will pop up.

• Please fill in the required fields and click on Check Connection. Once validated, the following screen will appear.

• Select the portal website from the Adxstudio Portals Website dropdown and click Apply.
• The connection string will be created automatically and stored in the App_Data folder of the physical path for the website. The password will be encrypted so it is safe. Given below is the location of App_Data folder.

• This concludes the Adxstudio installation and initial configuration of the portal.

I hope this blog was able to clearly discuss how to install and configure ADX Studio locally.

The post Adxstudio Installation and Initial Configuration of the Portal appeared first on Dynamics CRM Blog.

Hi folks!

I have been recently spending my time learning and studying the AdxStudio Portal and so today’s blogpost is about one of the cool AdxStudio features called Calendar View.

So this is about showing CRM records on the AdxStudio Portal in a Calendar view.  This could include, but not limited to, exposing entity records like appointments, service activity or any custom entity that has a start date field on it, to be shown on the portal in a Calendar view.

For today’s post, let’s try to expose the service activity records in CRM on our AdxStudio portal.

First, we create a simple Entity List record in CRM. Here we give it an appropriate name, select the entity (in our case, its Service Activity) and then choose a view that contains the record we want to display on our portal.

Next, let’s go to our AdxStudio Portal and expose this list. For this, we will begin with creating a child page that would display my service activities.

We login to our AdxStudio Portal as administrator. And click on New -> Chile Page option from the menu on the right.

We then fill up the form with appropriate values giving it a name, selecting the Parent page and also the entity list record from the drop down. And then save it.

As soon as we save the form, it gives us our new page with all the records from the service activity view.

But hang on! Didn’t we say that we needed it in a calendar view and not tabular view? Well, just one small configuration and it will be there.

For this we need to go back to our Entity List record that we previously created in CRM and go straight to the ‘Calendar View’ tab.

Tick the ‘Enabled’ checkbox.

Next we will do the mapping of our service activity fields. We will select the fields that holds the values for activity start and end dates, location, etc.

Because Service Activity is out of box entity so we have pretty much all the fields to map here. But all these fields are not mandatory to be configured to show the data in calendar view. At a minimum, a start date field is required in any entity for it be shown in a calendar view.

We save the above configuration, then go back to our AdxStudio portal and refresh our page. And voila! we have a calendar view on our page, without any code.

Isn’t this awesome. AdxStudio has a whole lot of such amazing features requiring no code.

Cheers!

The post AdxStudio: Configuring Calendar View on AdxStudio appeared first on Dynamics CRM Blog.

A recent requirement of a client was to host their Adxstudio portal as an Azure Web App. In this blog post we will go step by step to see how we can achieve this.

Create a new Azure Web App

We need an Azure web app created before we host anything, there are two ways of doing this: either you create an Azure web app using the Azure Portal, or create using Visual Studio. The steps below explains how to create a new Azure web app using the Azure Portal.

N.B: Creating a new Azure Web App using visual studio is covered under the section below “Publishing Adxstudio portal to Azure Web App”.

1. Login to your Azure Portal by navigating to https://portal.azure.com

2. Navigate to “App Services” and click on the “+ Add” to create a new Azure App.

3. Provide the web app name (adxstudiowebapp) and the region/resource group(Australia East) to host it, then click on “Create”.

4. Click on the refresh button to see your newly created web apps status.

That completes the first part of the task. Now we need to publish Adxstudio portal to the newly created Azure Web App.

Publishing ADXStudio portal to Azure Web App

1. Run Visual Studio 2015, and open the Adxstudio Portal solution found in the installed location of AdxStudio (example : “C:\Program Files (x86)\Adxstudio\XrmPortals\7.0.0021\Samples\ AdxstudioPortals.sln” )

2. Select the “MasterPortal” web project from the solution explorer, and click on “Publish MasterPortal” found under the “Build” menu.

3. Select “Microsoft Azure Web Apps” under the section “Select Publish Target”.

4. Provide your credentials to login to Azure, and click on the “Sign in” button.

5. If you are publishing to an existing Web App, select the web app you wish to deploy the Adxstudio portal to and click on the OK button.

If you wish to create a new Web App, click on the new button.

In the next wizard screen, provide a web app name, your desired app service plan, and click on the create button.

Visual Studio will start creating a new web app with your specifications and will move on to the next step which I explain to you below.

6. Click on the “Validate Connection” button to validate whether all the connection information is correct. If no connection validation error occurs, click on the “Next” button.

7. We will keep the default settings, therefore click on the “Next” button.

8. Click on the “Publish” button in the next screen. Visual Studio will start to build and publish the Adxstudio portal solution to the Web App in Azure.

9. Once you receive the publish successful message in the visual studio output window, we are ready to navigate to the web apps url.

10. Your newly setup Adxstudio portal hosted on Azure Web App should be now available.

If you require any further information, or you want me to cover a specific topic please contact me. Until the next time happy CRMing, people!

The post How to Host an ADXStudio Portal on Azure Web Apps appeared first on Dynamics CRM Blog.

Problem:  How do you create a Custom Page template using asp .net for an Adxstudio website?

Each Portal is unique in Look and feel and functionality. To match the look and feel and functionality, we need to either edit or add a new page template inside an Adxstudio website.

What is Page Template?

Page Template defines Layout and functionality of a web page. There are two choices for defining Page template in Adxstudio.

1. Rewrite (.aspx Page) – This Template tells Adxstudio to go and look for the content inside ASP.NET application, which is similar to normal URL rewrite module.
2. Web Template – Web Template is a Liquid template where rendering logic has been defined within Dynamics CRM entity itself. It can be used to add dynamic content to pages, and to create a wide variety of custom templates.

Steps to Add New Rewrite (.aspx Page) Template

This involves the following steps

• Adding a new web page (.aspx)
• Creating Web Template Records inside CRM
• Using page template inside Adxstudio website

Adding a New Web Page(.aspx).

1. Open Visual Studio and open adx Sample Portal inside Adxstudio Sample Folder (portal  Installation path\Adxstudio\XrmPortals\7.0.0021\Samples\MasterPortal).

2. Open the ADX portal Solution. (The recommended approach is to an area folder in the solution and Put the registration file, and then create pages inside the Area/Pages Folder. But Pages can be added inside Pages folder also.

3. So Go Inside Pages Folder and add a Page with Master Page.

4. Select “WebFormsContent.master” as Master Page.

5. Remove Unnecessary Content block. The Recommended Approach is don’t hard code any content; all the content should come from Dynamics CRM. But for example we are using “Hello SMS Management and Technology”.
6. Import Namespace “Xrm.Web.Mvc.Html” in the Mark up as shown in the below image.

7. Change the code behind file and inherit from “PortalPage”. This is to access the Helper and other important property.

8. Clean and Build the solution.

Creating Web Template in CRM

1. Go to CRM -> Portal -> Website.

2. Select the Portal record and Page Template Section and Click on Add

3. Add a Page Template record with the following Details.

Using Page template inside Adxstudio Website.

1. Sign into the Adxstudio website as an Administrator.
2. Go to The workspace..
3. Click on the New Child Page.

4. Add a Child Page with the following Details and select Example Template as the Page Template

Clear the Cache in ADX Browser and the following Page will appear.

Note: If the content does not appear do the following steps and browse again

• Stop the ADX website and then Clean and Rebuild the Visual Studio solution.
• Do an “app pool reset” if required.
• Clear the Browser Cache as Adxstudio uses cache for faster rendering.

The post Create Custom Page Template in Adxstudio appeared first on Dynamics CRM Blog.

There are Multiple ways Adxstudio Portal can be deployed. Most commonly used are the following:

1. WebsiteCopy tool
2. Portal deployment with Configuration Migration tool
3. ALM Toolkit and PowerShell

In this blog, we will discuss about ALM Toolkit ways and automating ways.

Typically Deploying ADX Studio consists of three main steps:

1. Exporting data from source CRM instance.
2. Importing data into destination CRM instance.
3. Copying source file and dlls to the destination server.

Steps for First Time Deployment

1. Take a backup of target environment.
2. Delete the data from the website using the following steps.
   • This step is required because during Adxstudio installation, lots of configuration record has been created. We want to delete this so that the next incremental deployment will just be an update.

Find the below steps for deleting website data:

1. Portals>Websites > select and delete portal. Typically, deleting website should delete all records related to website, but somehow it does not delete that so follow the next two steps.
2. Portals >Web Forms > select and delete web forms.
3. Also delete entity form, entity list, web template.

Deployment Using ALM Toolkit and PowerShell Script

The initial part of this section of the blog, as well as steps 1-7, is taken from a Webfortis article which I find very helpful. Do check it out: Using the Adxstudio ALM Toolkit for Exporting and Importing Data.

The ALM Toolkit is a suite of tools that can assist in automated change management and deployment of a Dynamics CRM organization. One of the core components of the ALM Toolkit is its library of PowerShell Scriplets that perform CRM solution and data management functions, allowing you to manage change, create backup versions, isolate development environments, and deploy CRM solutions to multiple environments.

1. ADX studio ALM toolkit can be downloaded from here.
2. Install the ALM Toolkit with the default settings and let the wizard complete.
3. Once the installation is done, open Windows Powershell in Administrator mode. If you do not have Windows Powershell, you can install it here.
4. Navigate to the folder where the ALM Toolkit was installed. Generally it should be located in: Local Disk (C:) -> Program Files (x86) -> Adxstudio -> ALM Toolkit -> 1.0.00xx (depending on the latest version).
5. Copy the Adxstudio.Xrm.Powershell folder and paste it into your workstation folder.
6. In your workstation folder, create the following script files in a text editor of your choosing (notepad, notepad++, etc.). We will create one script to perform the correct Cmdlet function and another script to establish the CRM connection.
7. Copy and paste the following code in the text editor and save it as “GetExportConnection.ps1” in the workstation folder: The Task for this file is to Get Export Connection.

Write-Host "In GetDemoExportConnection"

	# Connection String for organizations using LiveID account login
	$orgConnection = Get-CrmConnection -ConnectionString  Url=”source org URL”; 
                                                        Username=username; 
                                                        Password=pawword;"
                                                             
	# import the ALM Toolkit module
	$scriptDir = Split-Path $MyInvocation.MyCommand.Path

	$modulePath = Join-Path $scriptDir "Adxstudio.Xrm.PowerShell\Adxstudio.Xrm.PowerShell.dll"
  
	# display the loaded modules  
	Get-Module
 
	# establish the connection  
$global:connection = $orgConnection # LiveID Connection

8. Create “ExportData.ps1” file as below. The task for this file is to export data from source environment. Inside the query, please give all the entities that need to be exported. Normally, these are all the entities prefix with “adx_”. List of this entities can be found below:

$scriptDir = Split-Path $MyInvocation.MyCommand.Path
# import the ALM Toolkit module  and Call Export Connection
Import-Module $scriptDir\Adxstudio.Xrm.PowerShell\Adxstudio.Xrm.PowerShell.dll
  
. $scriptDir\GetExportConnection.ps1
  
$org
# Setting Export Path
Write-Host $org
  
$exportPath = Join-Path $scriptDir "Data"
  
Write-Host $exportPath
# Create Query to Export Data
$queries = @"
<queries>
  <fetch mapping="logical">
    <entity name="adx_accountaccess">
      <all-attributes />
    </entity>
	</fetch>
  <fetch mapping="logical">
	<entity name="adx_ad">
      <all-attributes />
    </entity>
	</fetch>
   
</queries>
"@
 
# import the ALM Toolkit module 
Import-Module ./Adxstudio.Xrm.PowerShell/Adxstudio.Xrm.PowerShell.dll
# Export CRM Configuration Data Based on Query

Export-CrmContent -Connection $connection -OutputPath $exportPath -ExcludeMetadata -Uncompressed -ContentFetchXml $queries

9. Create file “GetImportConnection.ps1”. The task for this file is to create connection for the destination import

Write-Host "In GetImportConnection"  

# Connection String for organizations    
$orgConnection = Get-CrmConnection -ConnectionString   "Url=URL; 
                                                        Username=userID; 
                                                        Password=password;"                                                         
# import the ALM Toolkit module  
$scriptDir = Split-Path $MyInvocation.MyCommand.Path
$modulePath = Join-Path $scriptDir "Adxstudio.Xrm.PowerShell\Adxstudio.Xrm.PowerShell.dll"

  # display the loaded modules
  Get-Module

  # establish the connection  
$global:connection = $orgConnection # LiveID Connection

10. Create “ImportData.ps1” file. The task for this file is to import data to destination organization.

# initialize the $connection  
$scriptDir = Split-Path $MyInvocation.MyCommand.Path
Import-Module $scriptDir\Adxstudio.Xrm.PowerShell\Adxstudio.Xrm.PowerShell.dll
. $scriptDir\GetImportConnection.ps1
  
 # Get Data in Data Folder
$sourcePath = Join-Path $scriptDir "Data"
  
Write-Host "Importing Data"
# Import Data For the Organization
Import-CrmContent -Connection $connection -InputPath $sourcePath -Force -UpdatesEnabled

11. Create “CopyFiles.ps1” file. The task for this files is to copy files needed for deployment.

# This File copies Source Files to the Web Site Deployment Files From Source to Destination
# Source Root Location in Source Code
Write-Host "Copying Files"
$FileSourceRoot = "C:\Projects\Adxstudio\XrmPortals\7.0.0021\Samples\MasterPortal"
# Destination Root Location in the Deployment
$FileDestinationRoot="\\ServerName\C$\CopyFolder\ADX_studio_destination\Adxstudio\XrmPortals\7.0.0021\Samples\MasterPortal"
#Array of Areas That Needs to Be copied
$arrayAreas = @("List Of Files Need to be copied")
Write-Host "Copying Areas"
for ($i=0; $i -lt $arrayAreas.length; $i++) {
	$absSourcePath= $FileSourceRoot + $arrayAreas[$i]
	$absDestPath= $FileDestinationRoot + $arrayAreas[$i]
	# Force Copy The files into the Server
	Copy-Item $absSourcePath -Destination $absDestPath -Recurse -Force
	}

12. Create file “CallPowershellScripts.ps1” . The task for this file is to call all subsequent PowerShell files.

# Setting Execution Ploicy as remote Signed In
#Set-ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned
Get-ExecutionPolicy
# Copy Files From Source to Destination Folder
$scriptDir = Split-Path -Path $MyInvocation.MyCommand.Definition -Parent

.$scriptDir\CopyFiles.ps1
# Export Data From CRM
.$scriptDir\ExportData.ps1
# Import Data From CRM
.$scriptDir\ImportData.ps1

13. Create “Application.bat” file and write the below code on that file.

PowerShell.exe -File "CallPowershellScripts.ps1"
Pause

Once this is done, click on the application.bat file  for Adxstudio Portal. That will do the following:

• Export the configuration data from source environment.
• Import the data into the destination environment.
• Copy the necessary files from local folder to the server.

Note:

• Always refresh cache on the target environment.
• Don’t add “Web Form Session” entity for the export.
• Make sure customization in source and destination environment are the same.

The post Adxstudio Deployment Using ALM Toolkit and PowerShell appeared first on Dynamics CRM Blog.

Having a hard time viewing your design changes in the Adxstudio Portal at once? Not being able to see theming effects after multiple cache deletion or manually recycling the application pool? ADX has a solution for you! They have provided a JavaScript Bookmarklet to aid users to easily refresh the website with your latest updates or changes. See steps below on how to use it.

ADX Cache Invalidate Javascript Bookmarklet

javascript:var url=document.location.protocol+'//'+document.location.host+(document.location.host.indexOf("demo.adxstudio.com")!=-1?document.location.pathname.split("/").slice(0, 3).join("/"):"")+'/Cache.axd?Message=InvalidateAll&d='+(new Date()).valueOf();var req=new XMLHttpRequest();req.open('GET',url,false);req.send(null);window.location.reload(true);

Add Bookmarklet in Microsoft Edge

According to IT World in this post, Microsoft Edge has no bookmarklet support. Thus, as seen on the post, there is a way to manually install this on Microsoft Edge.

1. Given that your Favorites Bar is shown, bookmark any random page which will serve as your placeholder. Click on the Star icon and enter your preferred bookmark name. Under Save in, select Favorites Bar option.

2. Navigate to the folder below to view the bookmark file.

C:\Users\{username}\AppData\Local\Packages\Microsoft.MicrosoftEdge_{random strings}\AC\MicrosoftEdge\User\Default\Favorites\Links

3. Copy the JavaScript Bookmarklet for ADX Cache Invalidate.
4. Right-click on the shortcut file and click on Properties.
5. Replace the contents of the URL box with the JavaScript bookmarklet you have previously copied.
6. Click OK to apply updates.

Add Bookmarklet in Google Chrome

1. Under Options, go to Bookmarks and select Bookmarks Manager (Ctrl + Shift + O).

2. On the Name field, type in your preferred Bookmark name then paste the JavaScript Bookmarklet on the URL.  This would automatically appear on the Bookmarks bar and is now ready to use.

This helped me a lot in my previous task by letting me save time and effort on clearing cache, re-opening the browser window, and restarting the Application Pool. With just a click away, I am able to view my changes. Who doesn’t want that?

If you find this blog helpful, kindly share or comment below

The post ADX Cache Invalidate appeared first on Dynamics CRM Blog.

This blog will discuss the procedure on how to create an Adxstudio portal website using IIS Manager. The procedure I followed has already been provided by Adxstudio (link). But since this an additional knowledge on my part, I might as well share the steps on how I did it.

Before we proceed with the steps in creating Adxstudio portal website, you may need to download and install the latest release of Adxstudio Portals 7.0 on your local computer. In this demo, I used 7.0.0022 version.

Another thing to do is to install the Community Portal, or any other portal you would like to use, by following the steps discussed in this link.

Steps to create AdxStudio Portal website using Local IIS Manager

1. Locate the AdxstudioPortals.sln found inside the 7.0.0022 you’ve just installed.

Usually, you can find it here: C:\Program Files (x86)\Adxstudio\XrmPortals\7.0.0022\Samples\

2. In the Solution Explorer, click on the config to view.

2. Edit the Connection String.

Note: The connection string format I used is for a Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online site. Other connection string formats can be found here.

4. Add the Default portal you are going to use. For this demo, I’m going to use the Community Portal.

Note: Be sure that you have already installed the portal you are going to use in Dynamics CRM.

4. Save the web.config file.
5. Open the IIS (Internet Information Services) Manager.
6. Right click on Sites then select Add Website.

4. Fill in the fields:

Site Name: [Any reference name]

Physical Path: C:\Program Files (x86)\Adxstudio\XrmPortals\7.0.0022\Samples\MasterPortal

Port: 8080 or any port number

Host Name: (Optional) You may leave it blank or you may use <name>.local.adxstudio.com to apply an ideal name for your site instead of using localhost.

9. Browse your portal website and see if it works.

There are other ways to host Adxstudio portals. One of them is to use the free hosting offered by Adxstudio. Another one is to host via Azure subscription. But since I’m on “training mode”, I prefer the local IIS.

Hope you find this informative. Feel free to comment below.

The post Create Adxstudio Portal Website Using Local IIS Manager appeared first on Dynamics CRM Blog.

This guide aims to provide a step by step “how to” for setting up a new ASP.NET MVC area in the MasterPortal project in the same style as other vendor provided MVC areas. A prerequisite to this guide is to have the “Basic Portal” already installed.

 Note: For more information on how to install the “Basic Portal”, please refer to the following Adxstudio Portals Installation Instructions.

The MVC area to be created will:

1. Contain an example page that includes a Content Snippet
2. Adhere to the guidelines provided in the following Adxstudio ASP.NET MVC Supoort

It is important to note that using ASP.NET MVC has some drawbacks when compared to using ASP.NET Web Forms – the technology Adxstudio Portals is primarily built on. It is for this reason MVC is not usually the recommended approach for building new pages.

An example of one drawback is an inability to control content access via Web Page Access Control Rules, as these records require Web Pages and Web Pages require Web Templates which are not supported using MVC.

With that said, let’s begin!

1. Right click on the areas folder > Add > Controller.

2. Give the area the name “COE”.
3. Open the file named “COEAreaRegistration.cs” in the root of the newly created directory.
4. Add the highlighted yellow text and comment out the existing map route as shown below.

using System.Web.Mvc;
 using Adxstudio.Xrm.Web.Mvc; 

namespace Site.Areas.COE
{
    public class COEAreaRegistration : AreaRegistration
    {
        public override string AreaName
        {
            get
            {
                return "COE";
            }
        }

        public override void RegisterArea(AreaRegistrationContext context)
        {
            //context.MapRoute(
            //    "COE_default",
            //    "COE/{controller}/{action}/{id}",
            //    new { action = "Index", id = UrlParameter.Optional }
            //);

           context.MapSiteMarkerRoute(
           "COEActions",
           "Home",
           "COE/{controller}/{action}/{id}",
           new { action = "Index", id = UrlParameter.Optional }); 

        }
    }
}

5. Add the following folders to the new COE area (right click, add folder):
   1. Css
   2. Js
   3. ViewModels
6. Right click on the folder named Controllers then Add>Controller.
7. Choose the “MVC 5 Controller – Empy” and press “Next”.
8. Give the controller the name “COEExampleController”.
9. Right click on the folder Views > Shared > COEExample and then select Add > New Item.
10. Select the item “Web Forms Master Page (Nested)” and give it the name “COEMaster.master”.
11. When asked to select a master page select [root] > MasterPages > Default.master
12. For the master page that has just been created “COEMaster.master”, comment out everything in the code behind files, i.e. “COEMaster.master.cs”& “COEMaster.master.designer.cs” or remove the two files entirely.
13. Replace the contents of “COEMaster.master” with the following:

<%@ Master Language="C#" MasterPageFile="~/MasterPages/Default.master" Inherits="System.Web.Mvc.ViewMasterPage" %>

<asp:Content runat="server" ContentPlaceHolderID="Head">
	<%--<link rel="stylesheet" href="<%: Url.Content("~/Areas/COE/css/coe.css") %>">--%>
	<asp:ContentPlaceHolder ID="Head" runat="server"/>
</asp:Content>

<asp:Content runat="server" ContentPlaceHolderID="MainContent">
	<asp:ContentPlaceHolder ID="AccountNavBar" runat="server"/>
	<div class="page-content">
		<asp:ContentPlaceHolder ID="PageCopy" runat="server"/>
		<asp:ContentPlaceHolder ID="MainContent" runat="server"/>
	</div>
</asp:Content>

14. Right click the Views > COEExample folder and select Add > Web Form with Master Page; give it the name “COEExampleView.aspx” and press the “Add” button.
15. For the master page select [root] > Areas > COE > Views > Shared > COEMaster.master.
16. For the “COExampleView.aspx” file that has just been created, comment out everything in the code behind files, i.e.: “COExampleView.aspx.cs” & “COExampleView.designer.cs”or remove the two files entirely.
17. Replace the contents of the “COEExampleView.aspx” file with the following:

<%@ Page Language="C#" MasterPageFile="../Shared/COEMaster.master" Inherits="System.Web.Mvc.ViewPage<Site.Areas.COE.ViewModels.COEViewModel>"%>

<asp:Content ContentPlaceHolderID="AccountNavBar" runat="server">
</asp:Content>

<asp:Content ContentPlaceHolderID="PageCopy" runat="server">
	<%: Html.HtmlSnippet("Account/SignIn/PageCopy", "page-copy") %>
</asp:Content>

<asp:Content ContentPlaceHolderID="MainContent" runat="server">

    Enter text here

    <%: Html.SnippetLiteral("TestCOE", "TestCOEDefault") %>

</asp:Content>

18. Right click the folder named ViewModels > Add > NewItem.
19. Add a class file with the following (Note: we won’t be using this view model any further in this guide):

namespace Site.Areas.COE.ViewModels
{
    public class COEViewModel
    {
        public string x { get; set; }
    }
}

20. Copy the contents of web.config file from [root] > Areas > Accounts > Views and paste it over the contents of the web.config file in [root] > Areas > COE > Views (this will allow the ViewModel to operate correctly as it contains the appropriate references).
21. Open the file COE > Controllers > COEExampleController.cs.
22. Update it to return the “COEExampleView” as follows add the adx attributes as follows:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Web;
using System.Web.Mvc;
using Adxstudio.Xrm.Web.Mvc;


namespace Site.Areas.COE.Controllers
{
    [PortalView]
    public class COEExampleController : Controller
    {
        // GET: COE/COEExample
        public ActionResult Index()
        {
            return View("COEExampleView");
        }
    }
}

23. In CRM, create the following Content Snippet:

24. Run the portal project.
25. You should now be able to navigate to: http://<server:port>/COE/COEExample and see the end result.

If you have any comments or suggestions on ways to improve this guide, please comment below as I’d love to hear your feedback. I also recommend you look at the MasterPortal project, in particular the Ideas area for more examples on how MVC can be used in Adxstudio Portals.

The post Using MVC in Adxstudio Portals v7.0.0022 appeared first on Dynamics CRM Blog.

When you create an AdxPortal on the server and try to access from outside, you may be presented with the below screen where you can’t access the site. In this blog, I will discuss how to configure public access to Office 365 Portal from Azure server.

You may have to open a port using ‘Windows Firewall with Advanced Security’ from within the server.

Steps to Configure Public Access to Office 365 Portal from Azure Server

1. In Windows Firewall with Advanced Security, select ‘Inbound Rules’ > ‘New Rule’.

2. Next, select Port.

3. Next, give it a port number that you have used in the server for the AdxPortal.

4. Select where the rule applies.

5. Next, give it a name and click Finish.

6. Once you enable the above steps and refresh the Portal screen, you many find the below screen. Wait for 10 seconds and refresh again and you are ready to go.

I hope this has been helpful. If you have questions, let me know in the comments section below, and I’d be glad to answer them.

The post Configure Public Access to Office 365 Portal from Azure Server appeared first on Dynamics CRM Blog.

A recent project that I worked with had a requirement to integrate Facebook authentication in Adxstudio. Since this was something that I did for the first time as well, I thought of sharing my experience with the rest of the Adxstudio developers out there. If you follow the steps given below, I you’ll never get lost (let me know if you do).

Steps to Integrate Facebook Authentication

1. Navigate to https://developers.facebook.com/apps/, click on “My apps” and select “Add a New App”.

2. Click on the “Website” option in the next screen.

3. Provide a brief description about the website and click on “Create New Facebook App ID” button.

4. Provide the contact email and a category for the app and click on “Create App ID” button.

5. Provide the URL of your site in the configuration wizard, then click on the “Next” button.

6. Navigate to https://developers.facebook.com/apps/ and click on the App you created.

7. Copy the App ID and create/set settings entity record “Authentication/OpenAuth/Facebook/AppId” with the value you copied.

8. Copy the app secret from Facebook app dashboard and create the site setting entity record “Authentication/OpenAuth/Facebook/AppSecret” with the value you copied.

9. In the Facebook app dashboard navigate to “App Review” and click on the toggle button to make the app live.

10. Recycle/restart the Adxstudio portal application pool; now you are able to test the Facebook integrated authentication.

To test your integrated Facebook authentication, navigate to your Adxstudio portal. The first signs of success is that you will see a button to login with Facebook in the sign in form.

If you come across any challenges during configuration, please feel free to contact me via the comments section below.

The post Integrate Facebook Authentication with Adxstudio Portals appeared first on Dynamics CRM Blog.

In this blog post, I will walk you through a step by step guide on how to integrate Google authentication with an Adxstudio web application.

Please note that you need to have a registered Google account as a prerequisite to use this guide.

Steps to Integrate Google Authentication with Adxstudio Portals

1. Navigate to the Google API page. Under social APIs, click on “Google+ API”.

2. Click on the “Enable” button.

3. In the Google Developers Console, click on “Credentials”.

4. Provide the project name, agree on the terms and conditions, and click on “Create”.

5. Click on “Create credentials” and choose “OAuth client ID”.

6. Click on “Configure consent screen”.

7. Provide the “Product name shown to users” and click on “Save”. (You can fill in other information which is optional.)

8. Select “Web Application” from the option buttons. Provide a name for your web application, then provide “Authorized JavaScript origin” with the URL of your web application. Next, provide “Authorized redirect URI” with your web application’s URL suffixed with “signin-google” and click on “Create” button.

9. You will be provided with a client ID and a secret to use while configuring Adxstudio portal.

10. Navigate to the Adxstudio Site Settings entity.

11. Create/set setting entity record “Authentication/OpenAuth/Enabled” with a value of “True”.

12. Create/set setting entity record “Authentication/Registration/ExternalLoginEnabled” with a value of “True”.
13. Create/set setting entity for “Authentication/OpenAuth/Google/ClientId” with the client ID you received in step 7.
14. Create/set setting entity for “Authentication/OpenAuth/Google/ClientSecret” with the client secret you received in step 7.
15. Restart the application pool of your Adxstudio web application and navigate to the URL of your Adxstudio web application. You will now see a button which will take you to Google’s authentication. You can now verify whether the integration is working by clicking on the “Google” button.

You will be presented with the below notification. If you click on the “Allow” button, you will be redirected to the Google sign in page.

I hope this becomes handy when you come across a requirement to configure Google authentication with Adxstudio. If you come across any difficulties, I’m happy to help leave a comment and I will get back to you as soon as possible.

The post Integrate Google Authentication with Adxstudio Portals appeared first on Dynamics CRM Blog.

To display a Dynamics CRM contact image in the Portal profile, you need to create a Gravatar account first then upload your primary image from there. Some users or customers may find this process tedious and this may not leave a good impression. Another downside is that your image from Gravatar is not synced to the Contact record in Dynamics CRM. Some customers may find this questionable.

So, to sync contact image to the Portal, we need to apply some custom development in the AdxstudioPortals solution.

Here’s how I did it:

1. Open the AdxstudioPortals solution thru Visual Studio.

2. Navigate to MasterPortal > MasterPages > Profile.master.

3. Comment this line that links the profile photo to the user’s Gravatar account.

4. Replace it with the img tag (I’ll explain the src function later).

5. To create the ContactImage function, navigate to master.cs.

6. Create the function ContactImage.

7. Retrieve the entityimage field of the contact entity.

8. Convert the image value to its equivalent string representation.

Here’s the full code I’m using

9. Run your code and check if it works.

This custom feature is nice to have and may leave a good impression to your customer as it implies that all data in the portal is synced to its contact record in Dynamics CRM.

In the next blog, we’ll talk about how to change the photo from the portal and apply it to the contact record.

Hope this helps. Leave a comment if you have any questions or clarifications.

The post Sync Dynamics CRM Contact Image to Dynamics CRM Portal Profile appeared first on Dynamics CRM Blog.

Adxstudio uses caching to enhance performance. This caching mechanism sometimes gets in our way.

During a recent Adxstudio implementation, I came across a situation where a custom asp.net user control does not reflect the latest changes made to a collection of entity records.

As a resolution, we introduced a few lines of code to override Adxstudio default implementation.

Disabling Cache on a Single Page

Implementation of this requires you to insert the below code in to the Page_Load method of the user control (.ascx) or the Aspx page that you wish to disable caching.

#region Page_Load
protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
Response.Cache.SetCacheability(HttpCacheability.NoCache);
Response.Headers.Add("Cache-Control", "no-cache, no-store");
Response.Cache.SetExpires(DateTime.UtcNow.AddYears(-1));
}
#endregion

Now it’s time to try running your web page to see whether the page brings back fresh data from the CRM on every page load.

Note: Until now this has not caused any issues to our solution. But I advise, that you use this resolution with caution and a good amount of testing.

Disabling Caching of the Header Section

During the same implementation of Adxstudio, we noticed that the header section of the Adxstudio portal does not refresh unless we clear the cache manually. Fixing this was fairly easy, and the only thing that we had to do was insert a new site setting record to the Adxstudio portals “Site Setting” entity.

1. Navigate to Site Settings entity found under the “Portal”

2. Create a new Site Setting record with the value “Header/OutputCache/Enabled” and set the value field to “false”

3. Clear the cache manually once for the site settings to be reloaded. Read more about manual cache clearing at https://community.adxstudio.com/products/adxstudio-portals/documentation/developers-guide/cache/cache-invalidation-utility/

Now you’d be able to test the caching functionality of the header section of the portal, it will get refreshed every time the page loads.

I hope that this post will help you when you come across the same requirement as I did or similar. Until the next blog post from me. Happy CRMing…

The post Two Scenarios of Disabling Cache in Adxstudio appeared first on Dynamics CRM Blog.

As you may be aware, Adxstudio users are actually contacts in Dynamics CRM. When you install Adxstudio on to your CRM instance, it creates additional contact forms that let you maintain your users. In this blog, we will discuss the following:

• Creating New Users
• Changing the password

The simple way to create a user is to go to Sales > Contacts, then click on New. It will open the default form. Now change the form to Contact: Portal Contact.

Enter the first name and all mandatory fields, then save. Now scroll down to the section called Web Authentication. This is the section that will allow you to specify the user name with which the user can log on to Adxstudio.

Enter the Username and tick the Login Enabled check box. Save the changes.

Next, we have to give a web role for this user. Go to related entities and select Web Roles.

Add a suitable web role and save. Now the last thing to do is to set the password. To do this, go to Sales > Contacts. Select the user whose password you want to modify. Click on Change Password in the ribbon.

A new form will pop up which will allow you to enter the new password.

Click on Next and then finish. You are good to log into ADX portal using the created user.

In this blog, we saw how to create and maintain adxstudio users.  I hope this was helpful. Let me know and send in your comment.

The post Create and Maintain Adxstudio Users appeared first on Dynamics CRM Blog.