Control Async Workflow Retries

The Dynamics CRM Async Server is a great mechanism to host integrations to external systems without affecting the responsiveness of the user interface. Once such example is calling SharePoint as I describe in my series – SharePoint Integration Reloaded. A draw back of this approach (compared ... [More]

SharePoint Integration Reloaded – Part 3

In Part 1 and Part 2 of this series we have discussed how the new server-to-server integration with SharePoint works under the covers. In this post I'll show you how to integrate with SharePoint directly from a sandboxed workflow activty/plugin rather than relying on the out of the box integration. ... [More]

Polymorphic Workflow Activity Input Arguments

I often find myself creating 'utility' custom workflow activities that can be used on many different types of entity. One of the challenges with writing this kind of workflow activity is that InArguments can only accept a single type of entity (unlike activity regarding object fields). The followin... [More]

Monitor, Monitor, Monitor

I once heard someone say that "the great thing about Dynamics CRM is that it just looks after itself" Whilst CRM2013 is certainly very good at performing maintenance tasks automatically, if you have a customised system it is important to Monitor, Monitor, Monitor! There are some advanced ways of set... [More]

Real Time Workflow or Plugin?

I have been asked "should I use Real Time Workflows instead of Plugins?" many times since CRM2013 first introduced this valuable new feature. Real Time Workflows (RTWFs) certainly have many attractive benefits over Plugins including:

Uses the same interface as standard workflows making it very qu... [More]

Using the CRM 2013 Developer Toolkit to target CRM 2011

If you find yourself constantly juggling multiple development environments, you'll no doubt come up against the issue of the Developer Toolkit only supporting a single installation – either for CRM 2011 or CRM 2013. To overcome this, I have been using the CRM 2013 version again CRM 2011 with ... [More]

How to change process and stage programmatically

Scenario UPDATE: With CRM2015 - the new client side process API should be used to set the current step. The following approach should be only used for setting the process to the first step. If you have more than one Dynamics CRM 2013 Business Process Flow for a given entity users can easily change... [More]