There And Back Again, A Tale Of Three Jobs, Six Months, And Never Leaving The Building

Ding!  My inbox announced another grand arrival of the third LinkedIn recruiter e-mail of the day, and it was only 10 am.  Most LinkedIn job opening blasts are for positions I’m not qualified for, in locations I do not want to move to, or involve travel, or I just plain am not interested in, but this one was a little different.  It felt like someone looked at my resume and created a position directly from it.  Doing a quick review I discovered that the two other job offers happened to be for the same exact position, but from two different recruiting firms.  I didn’t have any desire to leave my current company, but with a job description so specifically tailored to me, with some leadership opportunities I didn’t foresee myself having in the near future, I decided to investigate it a little further.
The next few weeks were a blur with phone/Skype interviews, lots of questions, weekend conversations with a potential new boss, and promises of exciting new experiences and leadership opportunities, I made the leap.  I didn’t have to leap very far though, the new company was in the same building, just one floor higher.  And so, with high expectations and the excitement that comes with a new start, I climbed the extra flight of stairs to my new job, my new cube, and my new co-workers.
I enjoyed the challenge of the new leadership opportunities (although not as much as I hoped I would) and really enjoyed what I got to work on, but that is where the positives of the new position ended.  I’m not going to go into the details here, but let’s just say that I was more than a little curious when 6 months later, an Allegient recruiter sent me an e-mail about a potential new position.  I had to stop and think, was it something I was interested in?   I don’t know if it’s most men, most developers, or just me, but I don’t have a strong grasp of what I’m feeling at a given moment in time.  When I come home from work and my wife asks, “How was your day”, or “How do you feel”, I have to stop and think about it, because I have no immediate feelings on either subject.  I’m a thinker, not a feeler.  So how do I compare the Apples of Oranges of being a consultant to being an employee?  This is when I bring in Scott Hanselman’s tried and true Dream Job Diagram:
I ran through a quick mental check list.  I felt like I was good at both positions and I knew that I would equally love what I would be working on.  I remember thinking to myself, “It really looks like its a tie… but if that’s true, why do I feel such a desire to go back?”  The “feeling” part of my brain responded immediately and rather unexpectedly with the answer, “It’s the people”.  For the past 6 months I had been working with extremely capable and competent people, but failed to enjoy actually working with them.  I realized that my Allegient Co-workers had made work fun and exciting, and something I would look forward to each day.  So the next day I called my boss and put in my two weeks notice and have yet to regret it since.
How about you dear reader?  Are you in your “Dream Job”, being paid to do what you love and are good at, surrounded by people that make it all the more enjoyable?  If you answered no, then do yourself a favor and checkout our current job postings.  The “feeling” part of your brain may just thank you later.   

How To Fix Workplace And Resource Center Icons In CRM 2015.1

CRM 2015 Update 1 removed the workplace and Resource Center from the site map.  It also replaced all the existing icons that were still in use.  By default this gives a very poor looking sitemap:


Here is how to update the icons to give a much more polished look:

1. Create or find the icons that you want to use.  The new CRM Icons are 85x71, so you’ll want to follow that standard for optimal display.  (You can download my icons here.  I made them myself.  Feel free to donate using the Donate button on the right.)
2. Upload the icons as web resources (The XrmToolBox has a great plugin for this, or you can do it manually).  Record the name you give for each icon.
3. Download and run the XrmToolBox.
4. Open the SiteMap Editor plugin, and login to the CRM instance to be updated.
5. Click the “Load SiteMap” button to load the site map from CRM.
6. -Optional- Click “Save SiteMap” to make a backup incase the changes made need to be reverted.
7. Click on the “Area (Workplace)” node and update the Icon path to the path of the appropriate web resource.
8. Click Save.
9. Click on the “Area (ResourceCenter)” node and update the Icon path to the path of the appropriate web resource.
10. Click Save.
11. Click “Update SiteMap” to push the changes.
12. Stop staring at the old nasty blown up 32x32 icons in your SiteMap.

How To Display A Web Resource In CRM 2015 Without Loosing Column Width

I was recently adding JavaScript to display an iFrame when the fields required by the web resource had been populated on the form.  I noticed that the width of the iFrame was getting squished when it was being displayed:

Default:



After calling setVisible():



It took some time stepping through the CRM libraries to figure out what was going on, but I believe it to be a bug within CRM (having the same issue?  Upvote this ticket!)  By default, CRM will attempt to update the CSS Table-Layout of the control when setting it’s visibility.  The fix is unsupported, but resolves the re-sizing issue.  After setting the visibility, check to see if the control is an iFrame, and the visibility is true.  If so, update the css of the parent table to be “fixed” *UPDATE 7/14/2015* Also need to set the height if there is a data-height attribute specified.

if (controlName.indexOf("IFRAME") >= 0 && visibility) {
    // https://connect.microsoft.com/dynamicssuggestions/feedback/details/1541195
    // THIS IS A FIX FOR A BUG WITH CRM WHEN SETTING IFRAMES AS VISIBLE.
    var ctrl = $("#" + controlName + "_d");
    ctrl.parents("table").last().css("table-layout", "fixed");
    var height = ctrl.attr("data-height");
    if (height) {
        // Set the height if defined
        ctrl.css("height", height + "px");
        ctrl.css("padding-bottom", "0");
    }
}

How To Ignore Mismatch Processor Architecture Warnings In Unit Test Assemblies With Faked Assemblies

I was attempting to cleanup the warnings in our solution build and ran into this one:

There was a mismatch between the processor architecture of the project being built "MSIL" and the processor architecture of the reference "Microsoft.TeamFoundation.WorkItemTracking.Client.DataStoreLoader", "x86". This mismatch may cause runtime failures. Please consider changing the targeted processor architecture of your project through the Configuration Manager so as to align the processor architectures between your project and references, or take a dependency on references with a processor architecture that matches the targeted processor architecture of your project. [C:\_Dev\Current Sprint\Xrm.Common.Tests\obj\Debug\Fakes\xrmt\f.csproj]    Xrm.Common.Tests

Researching the error on the web I found that I should be able to use the ResolveAssemblyWarnOrErrorOnTargetArchitectureMismatch Project property to ignore the warning.  I added the property to my Unit Test project and it didn't do anything.  After searching for another 20 minutes I ended up re-reading the warning, and noticed that it was referencing a csproj file other than the one that VS was showing as containing the warning. 
A couple more tests and I finally found that you can include MSBuild properties in the Fakes csproj by using the Compilation Element:

<Fakes xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/fakes/2011/">
  <Assembly Name="Xrm.Common"/>
  <Compilation>
    <Property Name="ResolveAssemblyWarnOrErrorOnTargetArchitectureMismatch">None</Property>
  </Compilation>
</Fakes>

Problem Solved!

Now on to clearing out the rest of the warnings...

How to Import a Solution With a Custom Action and a Plugin Step Registered Against the Custom Action in CRM 2013 SP 1 UR 1

This is a very specific bug that was fixed with CRM 2013 SP1 UR 2.  But if you aren't there yet, here is the issue and the steps to fix it:

Issue:

Attempting to import a Solution with a Plugin Step(s) registered against Custom Action results in the following import error: "sdkmessage with Id = {Guid} Does Not Exist"

Cause:

When CRM 2013 SP1 UR 1 (could be earlier versions as well) imports a Custom Action it is imported as a workflow and the XML in the customizations.xml file looks something like this:

  <Workflows>
    <Workflow WorkflowId="{cf3d243d-e065-4da1-b882-adfecdb6fe9d}" Name="DDLCustomAction">
      <XamlFileName>/Workflows/DDLCustomAction-CF3D243D-E065-4DA1-B882-ADFECDB6FE9D.xaml</XamlFileName>
      <Type>1</Type>
      <Subprocess>0</Subprocess>
      <Category>3</Category>
      <Mode>0</Mode>
      <Scope>4</Scope>
      <OnDemand>1</OnDemand>
      <TriggerOnCreate>0</TriggerOnCreate>
      <TriggerOnDelete>0</TriggerOnDelete>
      <AsyncAutodelete>0</AsyncAutodelete>
      <SyncWorkflowLogOnFailure>1</SyncWorkflowLogOnFailure>
      <StateCode>1</StateCode>
      <StatusCode>2</StatusCode>
      <CreateStage>40</CreateStage>
      <RunAs>1</RunAs>
      <SdkMessageId>{63d9c5b6-74b8-e411-80ef-000d3a100fad}</SdkMessageId>
      <UniqueName>DDLCustomAction</UniqueName>
      <IsTransacted>1</IsTransacted>
      <IntroducedVersion>1.0</IntroducedVersion>
      <IsCustomizable>1</IsCustomizable>
      <PrimaryEntity>none</PrimaryEntity>
    </Workflow>
  </Workflows>

Notice the SdkMessageId and UniqueName.  When this gets imported, CRM only uses the UniqueName, it doesn't use the SDK Message Id, it actually creates a new SDK Message Id.  This is the bug.  If you're just importing a Custom Action, no issues, but when you attempt to import a Plugin Step registered against the Custom Action, the Id's won't match up:

  <SdkMessageProcessingSteps>
    <SdkMessageProcessingStep Name="Xrm.Plugins.Merge: new_DDLCustomAction of  any Entity" SdkMessageProcessingStepId="{0f4fdb54-72b8-e411-9c1a-005056827e6d}">
      <PluginTypeName>Xrm.Plugins.Merge, Xrm.Plugins, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=0c1faab69f9562d5</PluginTypeName>
      <AsyncAutoDelete>0</AsyncAutoDelete>
      <InvocationSource>0</InvocationSource>
      <Mode>0</Mode>
      <Rank>1</Rank>
      <SdkMessageId>{63d9c5b6-74b8-e411-80ef-000d3a100fad}</SdkMessageId>
      <EventHandlerTypeCode>4602</EventHandlerTypeCode>
      <Stage>40</Stage>
      <IsCustomizable>1</IsCustomizable>
      <IsHidden>0</IsHidden>
      <SupportedDeployment>0</SupportedDeployment>
      <IntroducedVersion>1.0</IntroducedVersion>
      <SdkMessageProcessingStepImages />
    </SdkMessageProcessingStep>
  </SdkMessageProcessingSteps>

Notice there is no UniqueName, just the SDK Message ID.  This is why the "sdkmessage with Id = {Guid} Does Not Exist" error is getting created. 

Workaround:

There is a workaround if you're unable to upgrade to UR2, update the GUIDs in the solution to match the newly created Id.

1. Import just the Custom Action Process if it doesn't already exists. This will create the SDK Message Id.
   



2. Get the newly created Id.  (There are multiple ways, this is the easiest universal way I could think of) do an advanced Find on Sdk Messages, where the Category Name is "CustomOperation".
   
   
   


3. Locate the Custom Action that you want, and use the debugger tools (F12) to get the actual html itself for the action.  In it you can find the GUID: 

   <a tabindex="0" title="new_DDLCustomAction" class="ms-crm-List-Link" id="gridBodyTable_primaryField_{8DEDACA9-F32C-4F90-BF6E-A87464C70F72}_1" href="#" target="_self">new_DDLCustomAction</a>



4. Do a search and replace in the customizations.xml for the current SdkMessageId listed (in my example it would be "63d9c5b6-74b8-e411-80ef-000d3a100fad") and replace all with the newly created Guid ("8DEDACA9-F32C-4F90-BF6E-A87464C70F72").



5. Rezip your solution.

That's it, your import will work just fine.  The biggest headache is you'll need to do this for each and every org that you import it in, making it a nasty fix if you have multiple environments / org.