jbmurphy.com

I wanted to create some crm activities based on data in a spreadsheet. Looping thorough the csv file would be easy, the challenge came when I wanted to create new activities in Microsoft CRM 2011, specifically appointments. Below is a PowerShell function that I pieced together to create a new activity if you know GUIDs of the contacts for the regarding, required fields. This is a more fleshed out function compared to this

FUNCTION JBM-CRM-CreateActivityODATA {
PARAM([string][parameter(Mandatory=$true)][ValidateSet("Email", "PhoneCall", "Appointment")]$EntityType,
    [string][ValidateSet("crmserver.company.com", "dev-crmserver.company.com")]$ServerName="crmserver.company.com",
    [string][ValidateSet("CRMOrganizationName")]$OrganizationName="CRMOrganizationName",
    [string][parameter(Mandatory=$true)][ValidateScript({ $_ -match("^(\{){0,1}[0-9a-fA-F]{8}\-[0-9a-fA-F]{4}\-[0-9a-fA-F]{4}\-[0-9a-fA-F]{4}\-[0-9a-fA-F]{12}(\}){0,1}$")})]$OwnerGUID,
    [string][ValidateScript({ $_ -match("^(\{){0,1}[0-9a-fA-F]{8}\-[0-9a-fA-F]{4}\-[0-9a-fA-F]{4}\-[0-9a-fA-F]{4}\-[0-9a-fA-F]{12}(\}){0,1}$")})]$RegardingGUID,
    [ValidateScript({-not @( $_ | where {$_ -notmatch("^(\{){0,1}[0-9a-fA-F]{8}\-[0-9a-fA-F]{4}\-[0-9a-fA-F]{4}\-[0-9a-fA-F]{4}\-[0-9a-fA-F]{12}(\}){0,1}$") }).Count})]$ReqiredGUIDs,
    [string]$Subject,[string]$Description,[datetime]$ScheduledStart,[datetime]$ScheduledEnd,[string]$Location
    )

Function CreateActivityParty{
    PARAM($ActivityId,$ParticipationTypeMask,$EntityType,$GUIDs)

    foreach ($Id in $GUIDs){
    $activityParty = @{}
    write-host $Id
    $activityParty.Add("PartyId", @{Id= $Id;LogicalName= "contact"})
    $activityParty.Add("ActivityId", @{Id= $ActivityId;LogicalName= "$($EntityType.ToLower())"})
    $activityParty.Add("ParticipationTypeMask" , @{ Value=$ParticipationTypeMask })
    $json=new-object System.Web.Script.Serialization.JavaScriptSerializer
    $activityPartyData=$json.Serialize($activityParty)
    $activityPartyData

    $url="http://$ServerName/$($OrganizationName)/xrmservices/2011/OrganizationData.svc/ActivityPartySet"
 
    $http_request = New-Object -ComObject Msxml2.XMLHTTP
    $http_request.open('POST', $url, $false)
    $http_request.setRequestHeader("Accept", "application/json")
    $http_request.setRequestHeader("Content-Type", "application/json; charset=utf-8")
    $http_request.send($activityPartyData)
    $http_request.statusText
    $results=$http_request
    }
}

$assembly = [Reflection.Assembly]::LoadWithPartialName("System.Web.Extensions")
$activityObject = @{
ActivityTypeCode=$EntityType
Subject=$Subject
Description=$Description
ScheduledStart=$($ScheduledStart.ToUniversalTime().ToString("yyyy-MM-ddTHH:mm:ssZ"))
ScheduledEnd=$($ScheduledEnd.ToUniversalTime().ToString("yyyy-MM-ddTHH:mm:ssZ"))
Location=$Location
RegardingObjectId=@{
Id= $RegardingGUID
LogicalName= "contact"
}
}

$json = new-object System.Web.Script.Serialization.JavaScriptSerializer
$activityData=$json.Serialize($activityObject)


$url="http://$ServerName/$($OrganizationName)/xrmservices/2011/OrganizationData.svc/$($EntityType)Set"
 
$http_request = New-Object -ComObject Msxml2.XMLHTTP
$http_request.open('POST', $url, $false)
$http_request.setRequestHeader("Accept", "application/json")
$http_request.setRequestHeader("Content-Type", "application/json; charset=utf-8")
$http_request.send($activityData)
$results=$http_request
$ActivityId=$($json.DeserializeObject($results.responseText)).d.ActivityId

# Set Required Attendees
CreateActivityParty -ActivityId $ActivityId -ParticipationTypeMask 5 -EntityType $EntityType -GUID $ReqiredGUIDs
# Set Orgaizer
CreateActivityParty -ActivityId $ActivityId -ParticipationTypeMask 7 -EntityType $EntityType -GUID $OwnerGUID
}

I wrote about how to retrieve records from CRM 2011 via oData. I wanted to wrap that up in a function that I can use to do a quick search:

Function JBMURPHY-CRM-SearchEntity{
PARAM([parameter(Mandatory=$true)][ValidateSet("Contact", "Account","SystemUser")]$EntityType,[parameter(Mandatory=$true)]$SearchString,[parameter(Mandatory=$true)]$SearchField,$FieldsToReturn)
$assembly = [Reflection.Assembly]::LoadWithPartialName("System.Web.Extensions")
$baseurl="http://crmserver.company.com/Organization/xrmservices/2011/OrganizationData.svc"
$urlparams="/$($EntityType)Set?`$filter=substringof('$($SearchString)',$($SearchField))"
$url=$baseurl+$urlparams
$Count=0
while ($url){
    $webclient = new-object System.Net.WebClient
    $webclient.UseDefaultCredentials = $true
    $webclient.Headers.Add("Accept", "application/json")
    $webclient.Headers.Add("Content-Type", "application/json; charset=utf-8");
    $dataString=$webclient.DownloadString($url)
    $json=new-object System.Web.Script.Serialization.JavaScriptSerializer
    $data=$json.DeserializeObject($dataString)
    foreach ($result in $data.d.results){
            $Count=$Count+1
            write-host -NoNewline "$Count. "
            foreach ($field in $FieldsToReturn){
            write-host -NoNewline "$field : "
            Write-Host -NoNewline $result."$field"
            Write-Host -NoNewline ", "
            #write-host "$($result.FullName) , $($result.EMailAddress1)"
            }
            Write-Host
    }
    if ($data.d.__next){
        $url=$data.d.__next.ToString()
    }
    else {
        $url=$null
    }
}
}

And to use this function:

JBMURPHY-CRM-SearchEntity -EntityType Account -SearchField Name -SearchString “Sard” -FieldsToReturn Name,AccountId

Big thanks to @JLattimer. He helped me figure our the error in my SOAP envelope.

In my last post, I was trying to retrieve FullName from Crm 2011’s web services via PowerShell. Below is the code to do that.

$xml = "<?xml version='1.0' encoding='utf-8'?>"
$xml += "<soap:Envelope xmlns:soap='http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/' xmlns:xsi='http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance' xmlns:xsd='http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema'>"
$xml += "<soap:Body>"
$xml += "<Retrieve xmlns='http://schemas.microsoft.com/xrm/2011/Contracts/Services'>"
$xml += "<entityName>contact</entityName>"
$xml += "<id>12345678-1234-1234-1234-123456789012</id>"
$xml += "<columnSet xmlns:q1='http://schemas.microsoft.com/xrm/2011/Contracts' xsi:type='q1:ColumnSet'>"
$xml += "<q1:Columns xmlns:c='http://schemas.microsoft.com/2003/10/Serialization/Arrays'>"
$xml += "<c:string>fullname</c:string>"
$xml += "<c:string>telephone1</c:string>"
$xml += "</q1:Columns>"
$xml += "</columnSet>"
$xml += "</Retrieve></soap:Body></soap:Envelope>"

$url="http://crmserver.company.com/Organization/XRMServices/2011/Organization.svc/web"

$http_request = New-Object -ComObject Msxml2.XMLHTTP
$http_request.Open('POST', $url, $false)
$http_request.setRequestHeader("SOAPAction", "http://schemas.microsoft.com/xrm/2011/Contracts/Services/IOrganizationService/Retrieve");
$http_request.setRequestHeader("Content-Type", "text/xml; charset=utf-8");
$http_request.setRequestHeader("Content-Length", $xml.length);
$http_request.send($xml);
$http_request.responseText
[ xml ]$results=$http_request.responseXML.xml
$ns = New-Object Xml.XmlNamespaceManager $results.NameTable
$ns.AddNamespace( "b", "http://schemas.microsoft.com/xrm/2011/Contracts" )
$ns.AddNamespace( "c", "http://schemas.datacontract.org/2004/07/System.Collections.Generic" )
$FullName=$results.selectSingleNode("//b:KeyValuePairOfstringanyType[c:key='fullname']/c:value/text()",$ns).Value
$Telephone=$results.selectSingleNode("//b:KeyValuePairOfstringanyType[c:key='telephone1']/c:value/text()",$ns).Value

I don’t know what I am doing wrong. All I am trying to do is to query  CRM 2011 via PowerShell and SOAP. The following PowerShell script should return the Contact’s full name, but I get nothing. Any ideas??

Here is the PowerShell:

$xml = "<?xml version='1.0' encoding='utf-8'?>"
$xml += "<soap:Envelope xmlns:soap='http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/' xmlns:xsi='http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance' xmlns:xsd='http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema'>"
$xml += "<soap:Body>"
$xml += "<Retrieve xmlns='http://schemas.microsoft.com/xrm/2011/Contracts/Services'>"
$xml += "<entityName>contact</entityName>"
$xml += "<id>12345678-1234-1234-1234-123456789012</id>"
$xml += "<columnSet xmlns:q1='http://schemas.microsoft.com/xrm/2011/Contracts' xsi:type='q1:ColumnSet'>"
$xml += "<q1:Attributes>"
$xml += "<q1:Attribute>fullname</q1:Attribute>"
$xml += "<q1:Attribute>telephone1</q1:Attribute>"
$xml += "</q1:Attributes>"
$xml += "</columnSet>"
$xml += "</Retrieve></soap:Body></soap:Envelope>"

$url="http://crmserver.company.com/Organization/XRMServices/2011/Organization.svc/web"
$http_request = New-Object -ComObject Msxml2.XMLHTTP
$http_request.Open('POST', $url, $false)
$http_request.setRequestHeader("SOAPAction", "http://schemas.microsoft.com/xrm/2011/Contracts/Services/IOrganizationService/Retrieve");
$http_request.setRequestHeader("Content-Type", "text/xml; charset=utf-8");
$http_request.setRequestHeader("Content-Length", $xml.length);
$http_request.send($xml);
$http_request.responseText

And here is the response:

$http_request.responseText

<s:Envelope xmlns:s="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/">
<s:Body><RetrieveResponse xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/xrm/2011/Contracts/Services">
<RetrieveResult xmlns:a="http://schemas.microsoft.com/xrm/2011/Contracts" xmlns:i="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
<a:Attributes xmlns:b="http://schemas.datacontract.org/2004/07/System.Collections.Generic">
<a:KeyValuePairOfstringanyType>
<b:key>accountid</b:key>
<b:value i:type="c:guid" xmlns:c="http://schemas.microsoft.com/2003/10/Serialization/">12345678-1234-1234-1234-123456789012</b:value>
</a:KeyValuePairOfstringanyType>
</a:Attributes>
<a:EntityState i:nil="true"/><a:FormattedValues xmlns:b="http://schemas.datacontract.org/2004/07/System.Collections.Generic"/>
<a:Id>12345678-1234-1234-1234-123456789012</a:Id><a:LogicalName>account</a:LogicalName>
<a:RelatedEntities xmlns:b="http://schemas.datacontract.org/2004/07/System.Collections.Generic"/>
</RetrieveResult>
</RetrieveResponse>

I just don’t know what I am doing wrong. Why won’t the code return “fullname”, it is in the columnSet.

Update-2012-05-08:I have posted my question here, no answer yet

Update2-2012-05-05: I have posted and received and answer here on stack overflow. Big thanks to @JLattimer