Customizing Service Activities Form Duration Listbox - CRM 4

ricardo.talbot

When entering / editing service activity, data entry is facilitated through the use of a listbox that contains preset durations ranging from 1 minute to 3 days.

A user asekd for some more values in the listbox. However, the CRM entity customization utility does not allow changes to that field because it is placed in a locked section.

Is there a way to momentarily unlock the section? If not, does anyone on this forum know about a workaround?

Thanks in advance,

Ricardo.

ianlcy

No idea on how to amend it due to the limitation as you stated.

Can try using js to hide the default section, and create a new similar section for user to input / edit, provided some func to sync both sections. Agree?

ricardo.talbot

Thanks for the tip, "ianlcy". All forum members who responded suggested using js, so I guess I'll have to brush up my js notions ;-)

Thanks, I'll look into it.

In the meantime, can you recommend a "Dynamics CRM 4 Scripting for Dummies" website or book?

Thanks again,

Ricardo.

ricardo.talbot

Tried scripting the addition of a new option, and something interesting happened: it works with a field that is not located within a locked section, but if you try to read the properties of a filed located in a locked section (as is the case with the Duration field), you get an error message that says the object is Null

Any other ideas, anyone?

ianlcy

Hi there, you are welcome, I'm normally just googling around when out of idea.

I've not customize this portion before so not sure about the solution, but can try to provide some possible way to code it.

Due to limitation of "locking" on the UI, therefore we need to create a "buffer area" for user input. Noticed that UI scheduleduration is actually pointing to DB scheduledurationminutes which is in int format, so logically the buffer_scheduleduration should be in picklist provided those options which needed by your client, then a onchange func to convert picklist value into minutes then only set it into scheduledurationminutes.

If this way not works, there is another option to pass in value using plugin. Again you need to use the buffer area for storing pre-process data, convertion happen upon onsave in plugin...