by Gustaf Westerlund | Sep 12, 2014
We are all new to stuff sometimes and I am currently quite new to Resco.NET and the JavaScript API it has. There is quite a lot of information and examples on Resco’s site regarding this but you know how it is when you get going, you’re always looking for something that just isn’t there. Today I thought I was missing some vital part of how to parse the data, turned out I was addressing the fields incorrectly, so I thought I’d share it with you in case you ever got into the same spot.
Well, my current Customer likes the Resco mobile client a lot. They like the ability it has for configuration and the fact that it is so configurable and even has API:s allowing us to make custom webpages for them that they can take offline, as Resco does support full offline.
Back to my problem, I was trying to show some data from the account entity on the html-page and as I had previously tried this, I had no problems with the name field. However, when I tried retrieving a field that we had created, let’s call it “Type” I looked in the list of fields in Woodford as I thought this was their view of the fields and hence how I was to address it. The name it showed was the weird REST-endpoint name with Camel-case “crmk_Type“, but I didn’t Think to much about this and used it in my code. The result was that I just got “undefined” as the returned value from the Resco JavaScript Bridge. It took me quite some time and a very helpful support guy at Resco before I opened the form editor in Resco and noticed that the field name set there was the normal name, used in the database/soap webservice, “crmk_type“. Upon noticing this, I tried the lowercase version and it worked like a charm.
My conclusion is hence that the field names that are to be used in the Resco JavaScript bridge are the lowercase field names, not the Camel case versions, despite the fact that these are the once that you see in the Field list in Woodford. Also, make sure the field that you are addressing has been included in the the field list. This might be changed in the future. If so, I hope to be able to write an update on the subject.
Here is a link to the Support page at Resco.NET where you can download the bridge file and also at the far bottom, go to the reference pages for the Bridge. http://www.resco.net/mobilecrm/support.aspx
Gustaf Westerlund
MVP, CEO and owner at CRM-konsulterna AB
www.crmkonsulterna.se
by Gustaf Westerlund | Apr 30, 2014
I have recently been working on a Proof-of-concept for a customer with the Resco.net mobile platform. It is the first time I have been working deeply with it and I really like it. The woodford customization tool is very powerful and easy to use. It also allows customizers to add custom components such as offline html and js-components that can be used to extend the built in functionality where the standard forms do not meet the customer’s requirements.
In this case my customer wanted me to prove that it was possible to create an overview screen for an account showing lots of related information on a single screen. As Resco does not intrinsically support subgrids, like Microsoft Dynamics CRM does, you have to create this with a custom html which loads this data from the offline Resco storage. In theory this shouldn’t be too hard. It proved to be a bit more of a challenge, especially since the Resco Woodford manual contained some errors why I thought it might be a good idea to publish an example of how a complete code example of how to fetch a list of accounts wrapped in a working html-page that can just be copy-pasted into a file and tested out. This was one of the issues I had as just getting a simple base-line to work from was quite a lot of work.
So, without any more bells and whistles, here is the code:
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Account List</title>
<script type=”text/javascript” src=”JSBridge.js”></script>
<script type=”text/javascript”>
function writeError(text) {
var error = document.getElementById(“errortext”);
error.innerHTML = error.innerHTML + “
“ + text;
}
function callbackAccountsLoaded(res)
{
writeError(“In callbackAccountsLoaded”)
writeError(res);
}
function callbackAccountsFailure(res)
{
writeError(“callbackAccountsFailure”)
writeError(res);
}
function onAccountLoad() {
try {
writeError(“Start!”);
var account = new MobileCRM.FetchXml.Entity(“account”);
account.addAttribute(“name”);
account.filter = new MobileCRM.FetchXml.Filter();
account.filter.where(“statuscode”, “eq”, 1); // which have “Active” status
var fetch = newMobileCRM.FetchXml.Fetch(account);
writeError(“Sending”);
fetch.execute(“Array”, function (res) { callbackAccountsLoaded(res); }, function (err) { callbackAccountsFailure(err); }, null);
}
catch (e)
{
errortext(“Error: “ + e.message);
}
}
</script>
</head>
<body onload=”onAccountLoad();“>
<div style=”height:300px;“ id=”errortext”></div>
</body>
</html>
Some of the important points here are:
1. account.filter.where needs to be used instead of using account.where directly as indicated in the example in the Woodford manual. It also needs to be instantiated with the “MobileCRM.FetchXml.Filter();”
2. The fetch.execute is referencing two callback functions, one for success and one for failure. Make sure these references exist and have the correct number of arguments.
3. I have not found any decent way of debugging javascripts within Resco. I would be more than happy to be corrected here. Using alerts will not work on all platforms (Resco indicates alerts do not work on Windows 8 RT for instance). Hence I have created the errortext-method which outputs text in a log-file manner to a div at the end. Make sure that the height is enough.
4. To be able to load information on the currently edited object, if the iFrame is shown in the context of an account for instance, then MobileCRM.UI.EntityForm.requestObject() has to be used.
5. The first parameter of fetch.execute indicates how the result is to be formatted. In this example I have chosen “Array”, but there are other choices like “JSON” and “XML” as well. Please refer to the Woodford manual for more information on this.
6. Do try to use try-catch around a lot of this as any errors will otherwise just not show when run. If there is an error, you can display the message and at least get an idea of what was wrong.
7. When developing, I like to use Windows 8/8.1 and maybe a CRM Online/IFD environment as that will allow me to install the Windows 8 version of the Resco CRM to try it out. The different platform clients for Resco are 95% identical, some UI differences and I have seen some other differences as well, but in general, it will speed up development a lot and you will only have to do the final development tests on the iPad/Android device.
If I get a lot of interest in this, I will publish more on this subject. As mentioned earlier, I havn’t found that much community content on Resco, the mobile client I currently feel is the premier choice, as the Microsoft Mobile client is a bit simpler in its design, features and also customizabilities.
Gustaf Westerlund
MVP, CEO and owner at CRM-konsulterna AB
www.crmkonsulterna.se
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