Portal Accelerator & Adxstudio - How to force clear Cache?

Caching is an important part of all enterprise applications, they help deliver high-performance and scalability. 

For those of you that do not understand caching, in short the caching manager will cache objects in memory the first time they are requested, and reuse these to feed further requests. 

Both Microsoft Portal Accelerator and AdxStudio Portal use caching. Cache invalidation seems to be an issue that many are currently experiencing. There are some built in features such as the Web Notification URL in CRM, but recently I was asked if there was a method of forcing the cache to clear programmatically.

How to clear the Cache Example

21.         /// <summary>
22.         /// Removes all items, clears everything from the Cache
23.         /// </summary>
24.         public void ClearCache()
25.         {
26.             var cache = Microsoft.Xrm.Client.Caching.ObjectCacheManager.GetInstance(null);
27.             Microsoft.Xrm.Client.Caching.ObjectCacheManager.Clear(cache);
28.         }
29.  
30.         /// <summary>
31.         /// Removes an item from the cache
32.         /// </summary>
33.         /// <param name="item"></param>
34.         public void ClearCache(string item)
35.         {
36.             var cache = Microsoft.Xrm.Client.Caching.ObjectCacheManager.GetInstance(null);
37.             cache.Remove(item);
38.         }

CRM 2011 - How to use Wait/Timeout in Workflows?

One of the great benefits of Microsoft Dynamics CRM, is that is has built-in support for creating Workflows. Creating a workflow involves defining a sequence of steps that describes what the workflow process should do, and when it should do it.

Often you will need to pause the execution of a workflow until a specific condition is met. To achieve this you will want to use a Wait Condition, which can be broken down into the following:

1. Wait - use this to wait until a condition is met, examples of this could be when a Record Status changes, a field is updated or a value on a related Record is changed
2. Timeout - use this to wait until a specific date, a period of time or a date relative to a field in a record e.g. 5 days after the Record Created Date

Example Background

We want to use Workflows to create a phone call activity so that someone from our sales department can follow up on newly created leads. When a user completes the activity we want to track if the lead has been contacted. If the lead has not been contacted within 7 days, we want to re-assign the lead to the 2nd line Sales team. 

For simplicity we will create two workflows to achieve this.

Wait in a Workflow

When a lead is created, it will trigger a workflow to create an associated Phone Call activity and wait until the activity is complete, once complete the workflow will update the "Status Reason" field on the Lead as "Contacted".

Timeout in a Workflow

When a lead is created, the Workflow will pause for exactly 7 days from when the Lead was created, when the timeout is reached the workflow will check if the Lead's "Status Reason" field is set to "New", if yes then the Lead will be re-assigned to the "Sales 2nd Line" Team.

Hopefully Wait and Timeouts now make a little more practical sense.

CRM 2011 - How to create a Custom Workflow Activity?

When working with Microsoft Dynamics CRM, one of the most common tasks undertaken is to map real life business processes and to automate these within CRM. There are two main methods of creating processes that are triggered based on input or an event.

1. Plugins are the most popular choice for C# developers who are familiar with Visual Studio and the CRM Sdk. 
2. Workflows are another useful feature for creating asynchronous processes, which give none-programmers the ability to create simple but powerful components that do not require a software developer. 

The out-of-box Workflow functionality is somewhat limited, you are constrained by the features exposed by the Workflow creation wizard. 

Custom Workflow Activities

Can be used to enhance and provide solutions to functionality you currently cannot achieve solely by a CRM Workflow. Custom WF Activities are a perfect approach to creating reusable pieces of functionality that can be used by both Workflows and Dialog's.

They do however require programming knowledge such as C# .NET.

How to create a Custom Workflow Activity

Background

To help demonstrate the use of Custom Workflow Activities, the scenario is that when a new Contact record is created, you want the Parent Customer Account's marketing opt in/out values to be applied to the contact.

Solution

1. Open Visual Studio 2010 
2. Create a new Project using the Workflow > Activity Library template

3. Delete the .xaml file, as you will not need this

4. Add a new Class to the project, this will be your Custom Workflow

5. Add the following code to your Class

12. public class MyCustomWFActivity : CodeActivity
13. {
14.     public MyCustomWFActivity()
15.     {
16.         
17.     }
18.  
19.     [Input("Parent Account")]
20.     [ReferenceTarget("account")]
21.     public InArgument<EntityReference> ParentAccount { get; set; }
22.  
23.     [Output("Email")]
24.     [DefaultAttribute("true")]
25.     public OutArgument<bool> Email { get; set; }
26.  
27.     [Output("Phone")]
28.     [DefaultAttribute("true")]
29.     public OutArgument<bool> Phone { get; set; }
30.  
31.     [Output("Fax")]
32.     [DefaultAttribute("true")]
33.     public OutArgument<bool> Fax { get; set; }
34.  
35.     [Output("Mail")]
36.     [DefaultAttribute("true")]
37.     public OutArgument<bool> Mail { get; set; }
38.  
39.     [Output("Bulk Email")]
40.     [DefaultAttribute("true")]
41.     public OutArgument<bool> BulkEmail { get; set; }
42.  
43.     protected override void Execute(CodeActivityContext context)
44.     {
45.         try
46.         {
47.             //-----------------------------------
48.             // Workflow Context & Service Objects
49.             //-----------------------------------
50.             IWorkflowContext wfContext =
51.                 context.GetExtension<IWorkflowContext>();
52.             IOrganizationServiceFactory serviceFactory =
53.                 context.GetExtension<IOrganizationServiceFactory>();
54.             IOrganizationService service =
55.                 serviceFactory.CreateOrganizationService(wfContext.InitiatingUserId);
56.  
57.             //--------------------------
58.             // Obtain the Input Argument
59.             // Account EntityReference
60.             //--------------------------
61.             var parentAccountRef = ParentAccount.Get<EntityReference>(context);
62.  
63.             //---------------------------
64.             // Retrieve the Account based
65.             // on the EntityReference Id
66.             //---------------------------
67.             Entity account =
68.                 service.Retrieve(parentAccountRef.LogicalName,
69.                 parentAccountRef.Id,
70.                 new Microsoft.Xrm.Sdk.Query.ColumnSet(true));
71.  
72.             if (account != null)
73.             {
74.                 //---------------------------
75.                 // Set Output Argument Values
76.                 //---------------------------
77.                 this.Email.Set(context, ((bool)account.Attributes["donotemail"]));
78.                 this.BulkEmail.Set(context, ((bool)account.Attributes["donotbulkemail"]));
79.                 this.Phone.Set(context, ((bool)account.Attributes["donotphone"]));
80.                 this.Mail.Set(context, ((bool)account.Attributes["donotpostalmail"]));
81.                 this.Fax.Set(context, ((bool)account.Attributes["donotfax"]));
82.             }
83.         }
84.         catch (SoapException se)
85.         {
86.             //Log Errors
87.         }
88.         catch (Exception ex)
89.         {
90.             //Log Errors
91.         }
92.     }
93. }

• Workflow Activity Class will inherit CodeActivity
• InArguments - define the input parameters that are passed in
• OutArguments - define output parameters, these are passed back to the calling process
• Both In and Out Arguments can have default values, a good way to ensure that parameters are not left empty

6. Right click on the Project, select Properties and create a strong name key file. Similar to plugins, custom workflow activities need to be signed.

7. We need to register the assembly, this will be done using the plugin registration tool as follows:

8. Now that we have the assembly registered, we can create a Workflow to consume the functionality we have defined in our custom activity.

9. To create a workflow, follow these steps:

10. We want this workflow to execute on create for the Contact entity, select Contact from the entity drop-down and enter in a process name.

11. First thing we want this workflow to do, is execute our Custom Activity. We have registered the assembly earlier using the Plugin Registration Tool, it should automatically appear in the Add Step drop-down.

12. Click on the Set Properties button

13. Here we need to provide an input value for the InArgument we defined in our Custom Activity. This value needs to be dynamically set at run-time, so we select the Parent Customer field from the Form Assistant.

14. Next we want to add an Update Record step, to update the Contact record

15. Scroll down to the Preferences section and select each of the marketing fields and using the Form Assistant, select the corresponding value for each field.

16. Add a Stop Workflow step, set it to Succeeded.

17. Make sure you have selected the "Record is created" checkbox, this will ensure that the workflow will only execute when a new Contact is created. Then Save and Close.

18. The workflows needs to be activated, select the newly created workflow and click on the Activate button. On the popup window, click on the OK button.

19. Open a Account record, change some of the marketing fields and save the record.

20. Create a new Contact record, and select the previously edited Account record. Now Save and Close.

21. Re-open the newly created Contact and you will notice that the marketing fields on the Contact record now match those from the Parent Account.

That's it, hope you enjoyed the article :)