I have been working with a client that I had implemented last year and one of their original requirements was to populate fields on a form with values from fields already filled in on related entities. We all know that if two entities are related, as in Account and Contact, you can map fields from one to the other and the values will be transferred from the parent to the child if you create the child record under the parent record. However, what if you still want certain values to be inherited from other records no matter how you create the child record or if the relationship is not parent/child? For example, I want the Contact record to inherit values from the Account record I select in the Account lookup on the Contact form when I create a new Contact. This can be done by implementing some code via an onChange event on the Account lookup field. Since you need to actually send a query to retrieve these values, this requires some advanced java script techniques such as building an XML query, creating an Active X object and parsing the object to retrieve the values you need for your form. There are several examples on how to do this type of functionality floating around on various places on the web, but I always have a hard time finding them when I need to go back for reference, so I thought I would post a comprehensive example here. You can use this and apply it to any entity that is related to another entity. I will over-comment the code to explain what is going on, but you can remove later if you wish. This example will retrieve the Telephone and Owner fields from the Account and set them to the respective fields on the Contact.
/* ————————————————————————————————
Begin.
Retrieves the Telephone and Owner field values from the Account record
based on the Account selected
————————————————————————————————–*/
// Get the data value of the Account lookup after the Account is selected
var AccountLookUp = crmForm.all.parentcustomerid.DataValue;
if (AccountLookUp != null && AccountLookUp != “undefined”)
{
// Get the value for the accountid from the array and set it to a variable
var AccountID = AccountLookUp[0].id;
//alert(AccountID);
/*————————————————————————————————
Build your query XML that you will use to create the ActiveX object. This is using standard SDK protocol. In this example I just retrieve all of the fields from the Account. You can vary your query to only retrieve certain fields or to pass other parameters. Check with the SDK to see examples of how to build your query in this way. Here, I am just retrieving all Account fields based on the AccountID of the Account selected
————————————————————————————————–*/
var Accountxml = “” +
“<?xml version=\”1.0\” encoding=\”utf-8\”?>” +
“<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\”>” +
GenerateAuthenticationHeader() +
” <soap:Body>” +
” <RetrieveMultiple xmlns=\”http://schemas.microsoft.com/crm/2007/WebServices\”>” +
” <query xmlns:q1=\”http://schemas.microsoft.com/crm/2006/Query\” xsi:type=\”q1:QueryExpression\”>” +
” <q1:EntityName>account</q1:EntityName>” +
” <q1:ColumnSet xsi:type=\”q1:AllColumns\” />” +
” <q1:Distinct>false</q1:Distinct>” +
” <q1:Criteria>” +
” <q1:FilterOperator>And</q1:FilterOperator>” +
” <q1:Conditions>” +
” <q1:Condition>” +
” <q1:AttributeName>accountid</q1:AttributeName>” +
” <q1:Operator>Like</q1:Operator>” +
” <q1:Values>” +
” <q1:Value xsi:type=\”xsd:string\”>” + AccountID + “</q1:Value>” +
” </q1:Values>” +
” </q1:Condition>” +
” </q1:Conditions>” +
” </q1:Criteria>” +
” </query>” +
” </RetrieveMultiple>” +
” </soap:Body>” +
“</soap:Envelope>” +
“”;
//alert(Accountxml);
/*————————————————————————————————
Create the ActiveX object. Once again, this is standard protocol. Notice the
last two lines that pass our Query XML that we created above.
————————————————————————————————*/
var xmlHttpRequest = new ActiveXObject(“Msxml2.XMLHTTP”);
xmlHttpRequest.Open(“POST”, “/mscrmservices/2007/CrmService.asmx”, false);
xmlHttpRequest.setRequestHeader(“SOAPAction”,”http://schemas.microsoft.com/crm/2007/WebServices/RetrieveMultiple”);
xmlHttpRequest.setRequestHeader(“Content-Type”, “text/xml; charset=utf-8″);
xmlHttpRequest.setRequestHeader(“Content-Length”, Accountxml.length);
xmlHttpRequest.send(Accountxml);
// Set the XML response to a variable that can be parsed later.
var resultAccountXml = xmlHttpRequest.responseXML;
//alert(resultAccountXml);
/*————————————————————————————————
Create a container for the “nodes” retrieved. Essentially, these are just the
fields that are returned in the XML result.
————————————————————————————————*/
var entityNodes = resultAccountXml.selectNodes(“//RetrieveMultipleResult/BusinessEntities/BusinessEntity”);
// Loop through the collection of returned entities.
// Note that the query above limits the result to a single entity, so you will only find one
// node. To be more specific, it could be 0 nodes as well, if you don’t have access to accounts
// or your system is empty.
for (var i = 0; i < entityNodes.length; i++) {
// Access the current array element
var entityNode = entityNodes[i];
// Attributes are child nodes of the BusinessEntity node. Use selectSingleNode to return
// the first occurrence of a named node. The selectNodes method we used before returns all
// matching nodes, but as an attribute name only occurs once, selectSingleNode is easier to use.
// Use the same namespace alias (q1) you have specified in the query.
var TelephoneNode = entityNode.selectSingleNode(“q1:telephone1″);
var OwnerNode = entityNode.selectSingleNode(“q1:ownerid”);
// Always check for null values. If an attribute is set to null, it is not contained in the
// resulting XML. And accessing accountidNode.text when accountidNode is null leads to
// a runtime error.
var Telephone = (TelephoneNode == null) ? null : TelephoneNode.text;
var Owner = (OwnerNode == null) ? null : OwnerNode.text;
// alert(Telephone);
// alert(Owner);
}
// Set the values retrieved from the Account to the corresponding fields on your Contact form.
crmForm.all.telephone1.DataValue = Telephone;
crmForm.all.ownerid.DataValue = Owner;
}
/* ————————————————————————————————
End.
————————————————————————————————–*/
If you are not a hardcore code writer like me, then keep these things in mind when building your own code:
1) Most of the code above is standard, and you are simply plugging in variables along the way. So, follow the variables as they are created and see where they are plugged in.
2) The syntax for the Query XML, ActiveX Object and Node parsing is all standard protocol. There is no need to tweak this (although calling the web service could change over time and versions), except to pass your specific variables.
3) Debug using alert() along the way to track your variables and make sure they are being assigned properly. I left the ones I typically use in my example above.
Note: Certain parts of the code above have been copied from other sources and I left the whole comments intact. I would like to give credit to the original author(s), but I don’t know who they are. So, thanks to whoever posted the original examples!
