‘Start Menu’ style navigation for CRM2013

When Windows 8 didn't have a 'Start Menu' there was so much fuss that we saw it return with Windows 8.1 (sort of). If you miss the navigation style of CRM 2011 you might find my CRM 2013 Start Menu solution very helpful.

The solution provides a 'Start menu' on most screens that provides drop down menu with a security trimmed sitemap and a link to Advanced Find from wherever you are (very useful!):

It also provides form navigation when you are on a record form – this is similar to the way the navigation would have looked in CRM2011:

The solution is a SparkleXRM sample if you are interested – I'm going to do a post soon on the techniques I've used to provide client side metadata caching.

Installation

1. First you'll need to install SparkleXRM 0.1.4 or later
2. Then you can install the Start Menu Managed Solution (be sure to leave the activate checkbox checked upon import of the solution)

Localisation

Any language resources that are accessible via the SDK will be automatically used but the resources in the sitemap are not all accessible to code and so if you want to provide translations you just add a new web resource with the name - /dev1_/js/QuickNavigationResources_LCID.js. You can use the QuickNavigationResources_1033.js one as a template to translate. If you do create a translation, please let me know so we can add it to the solution.

Known Issues

1. There is a short delay on first use as the site map is cached
2. When a user doesn't have access to some elements of the sitemap, the links are removed, but if all subareas are removed, the parent group isn't.