To Save or to Change the form

I’ve been doing this for so many times, I thought I’d share it with the new CRM customizers out there, as it’s a neat way of getting something done without delving too deep into development and plugins.

This approach uses JScript to capture the Save event on a form, and to divert it on a different course of action.

First off, let’s begin with the basics. A condition on the form will triggers this action. In most cases I want to allows the form save, but in special circumstances I want to block it and perform a different action. We’ll be doing this on the Contact form.

So let’s go ahead and add a Two Options field on the form. I named it “new_isspecialcustomer”.

The following function, associated with the OnSave event, checks for the value on my newly created field, and decides on the action.

function StopSave(context)

{

var _isSpecialSelection = null;

var _isSpecial = Xrm.Page.getAttribute("new_isspecialcustomer");

if(_isSpecial != null)

{

_isSpecialSelection = _isSpecial.getValue();

}

if(_isSpecialSelection == false)

{

alert("You cannot save your record while the Customer is not a friend!");

context.getEventArgs().preventDefault();

}

}

Good. I assume you know by now how to create a web resource, add the JScript function to it, etc…

So, the preventDefault() stops the Save. What the user sees is an alert like this:

and the form remains opened and unsaved.

As presented previously in another blog post (this one to be more precise), you can write a function as such to start a workflow:

function launchWorkflow(dialogID, typeName, recordId)
{
  var serverUri = Mscrm.CrmUri.create(‘/cs/dialog/rundialog.aspx’);

  window.showModalDialog(serverUri + ‘?DialogId=’ + dialogID + ‘&EntityName=’ + typeName +
    ‘&ObjectId=’ + recordId, null, ‘width=615,height=480,resizable=1,status=1,scrollbars=1′);

  // Reload form
  window.location.reload(true);
}

Now it’s starting to take shape. Now all we have to do is call this function from our previous one. Where you prevent the save, add a call to launchWorkflow. The parameters are as follows:

· GUID of the Workflow or Dialog

· The type name of the entity

· The ID of the record

And voila! Now you hijacked the save, performed your own actions, and didn’t have to fire up Visual Studio to write a plugin.

Just as a note, it’s probably more efficient to do this in a plugin, but I use this approach for a lot of quick demos I put together in a relatively short time. Gives a new meaning to the “Quick and Dirty” phrase.

Enjoy!