Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2016 SDK Update

Microsoft just released version 8.0.1 of the CRM 2016 SDK. Here is what’s new for developers

• CRM Online features now available for on-premises organizations
• Introducing the Web API
• Organization data service (OData v2 REST endpoint) deprecated
• CORS Support added
• Form script support for keypress events and auto-completion feature
• CRM for phones and tablets enhancements
• Knowledge management enhancements
• Solution enhancements
• Service Level Agreement enhancements
• Upload and manage document templates
• XRM Tooling controls now support OAuth authentication and connection strings
• New entities in CRM 2016
• New messages in CRM 2016
• New privileges in CRM 2016

CRM Online features now available for on-premises organizations

New features that were added to Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online 2015 Update 1 are now available for on-premises organizations. One exception is the integration with Parature which is only available for CRM Online. For a summary of new features included in that release, see What’s new for Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online 2015 Update 1
Why a new API?
The Web API makes it easier to create applications across a wide variety of platforms, devices, and programming languages. The Web API will provide parity with the existing organization service (SOAP endpoint). You will be able to do anything using the Web API that you can do using the organization service, with a few differences. You won’t have to download any Microsoft Dynamics CRM SDK assemblies. You can perform all operations using HTTP requests with the Web API located at [organization uri]/api/data/v8.0/. The Web API implements OData version 4.0, an open standard for data access. For the list of third-party libraries that support OData, version 4.0, see http://www.odata.org/libraries/.

Use the Web API for integrations and modern applications. For code that will run in the context of a plug-in, you’ll continue to use the classes defined in the SDK assemblies to use the organization service. More information: Use the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Web API

Authentication using the Web API
To manage authentication, you can use the Web API from inside the CRM web application using JavaScript and HTML web resources without any code to authenticate, just as you can today with the organization (SOAP) or organization data service (Odata v2 REST) endpoints.

When you use the Web API to access CRM Online or Internet-facing deployment (IFD) web services from your own applications, you must first register your app with the Active Directory for your organization. Then you can use the Azure Active Directory Authentication Library (ADAL) to manage OAuth 2.0 authentication with the CRM web service identity provider. To access an on-premises CRM deployment from your own applications, you’d use your Windows network credentials to authenticate with the web services.

Web API Discovery service
To maintain parity with the Discovery service on the SOAP endpoint, we’ve added a Discovery service to the Web API. This service enables you to determine, at run-time, the organizations that the signed-in user belongs to. You can retrieve information about those organizations like the organization service URL, the CRM release version, and more. A new feature of the Web API Discovery service is the ability to filter the returned list of organizations by using OData filter parameters. The Discovery service is supported by all CRM deployment types. More information: Discover the URL for your organization using the Web API

Organization data service (OData v2 REST endpoint) deprecated
The new Web API provides better capabilities over the organization data service introduced with Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011. We recommend any new code for this version use the Web API instead of the organization data service, so we’re deprecating the organization data service with this release. The organization data service, also known as the REST endpoint or the OData endpoint, will remain in the application for the foreseeable future to support backward capability. For information about using this deprecated endpoint, see the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2015 SDK: Use the OData endpoint with web resources.CORS support added

CORS Support added
The Web API supports client-side cross-origin web resource requests when called using OAuth token authentication. This is accomplished by using a compatible implementation of cross-origin resource sharing (CORS). This Web API capability safely works around browser restrictions imposed to prevent cross-site scripting security issues. More information:Use OAuth with Cross-Origin Resource Sharing to connect a Single Page Application to Microsoft Dynamics CRM

Form script support for keypress events and auto-completion feature
When a user presses keys in a number or text control, use the new getValue method to retrieve the value of a control. You can use this value to configure interactive experiences, such as data validation when a user types in a field, by configuring function handlers for keypress events using the new Keypress methods. In addition, you can use the new Auto-completion methods to configure the auto-completion feature for text controls in forms. These new methods aren’t supported for CRM for phones or CRM for tablets.

More information: Xrm.Page.ui control (client-side reference)

• CRM for phones and tablets enhancements
  Web resources and IFRAMEs
• Form script support for new custom controls
• Open records in CRM mobile client with a URL

Web resources and IFRAMEs

The ability to create web resources and IFRAMEs for use with CRM for tablets is now fully supported in all CRM for tablets forms: iOS, Android, and Windows 10. More information:Create web resources and IFrame content for use with the CRM for tablets client

Form script support for new custom controls
Use new custom controls to configure a visually modern and richer experience for your users in CRM for phones and CRM for tablets. More information: TechNet: Use the form editor

The new custom controls support the same client APIs as the CRM controls, except for the Auto-completion methods, getValue, Keypress methods and Lookup control methods and events. For the complete list of the client APIs supported by CRM controls, see Xrm.Page.ui control (client-side reference).

Open records in CRM mobile client with a URL
With the new application handler protocol in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2016, you can use URLs to directly open records in CRM for phones and CRM for tablets. You can also open an empty form for creating an entity record. To use this feature, you have to install CRM for phones or CRM for tablets on your mobile device. More information: Open forms, views, and dashboards in CRM mobile client with a URL

Knowledge management edit and search enhancements
The CRM Service module gets a boost in this release with the addition of powerful knowledge management capabilities. In addition to rich text, the new KnowledgeArticle entity supports multimedia data like pictures and videos. Articles have a lifecycle where they proceed through a publishing workflow.

Discover the answers to your questions using full text searches of knowledge base records for topics and products using the FullTextSearchKnowledgeArticleRequest message. This message provides systematic access to a keyword based search index of the article content. Use this message to access that search content and provide search results to customers and partners.

To support the knowledge management capability, new privileges named Publish Knowledge Articles and Approve Knowledge Articles were added. The Customer Service Representative and Customer Service Manager roles have these privileges, and a new Knowledge Manager role has been added.

For the CRM web client, the client-side form programming API has been updated to include additional properties in the object returned from the getSelectedResult function call. All other client APIs and events, which were supported by the knowledge base search control in the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2015 release, continue to be supported.

For the new interactive service hub client, only the getSearchQuery and setSearchQuery methods are supported for the knowledge base search control.

For more information about the client-side APIs supported by knowledge base search control, see Knowledge base search control (client-side reference). For more information about knowledge management, see Knowledge management entities.

Solution enhancements
Previously, when an entity was added to a solution and that solution was exported, the entity and all of its assets were exported in that solution. This included attributes, forms, views, relationships, visualizations, and any other assets packaged with the entity. All objects were exported regardless of whether the developer actually wanted to ship the object. This process potentially carried dependencies or modified unintended objects on the target deployment.

Now,a developer or other application customizer can create and publish solution patches that contain subcomponents of entities, as compared to publishing the entire entity and all of its assets. The original solution and multiple released patches can be rolled-up at a later time into an updated version of the original solution, which then can replace the original solution.

Service level agreement enhancements
Service level agreements (SLAs) in CRM have been enhanced in the current release.

Manually apply SLAs to incidents (cases): You can now manually apply an SLA to a case by updating the case record, and specifying an active SLA in the new attribute, Incident.ManualSLA, for the case record.
Programmatically activate or deactivate SLAs: You can now use the UpdateRequest message to activate or deactivate an SLA record. You must activate an SLA record after creating it for the SLA record to be applied to cases. You typically deactivate SLAs during maintenance activities or when you’re importing cases and you don’t want the SLAs to apply to the cases.

Note
You can also use the UpdateRequest message to activate and deactivate automatic record creation and update rules (ConvertRule) and routing rule sets (RoutingRule). This wasn’t possible in the earlier versions.

The SLA, ConvertRule, and RoutingRule entities are still for internal use only. Other SDK messages, except for the Update message, are still not supported for these entities. More information:Service entities (contract, incident, knowledge article, queue, calendar, entitlement, slakpiinstance)
Upload and manage document templates
You can now create document templates for Microsoft Excel or Microsoft Word to have a standardized representation of your CRM data. These templates can be used by your team members to generate Excel or Word documents with up-to-date CRM data for analysis and reporting purposes. Use the SDK to programmatically upload and manage document templates.
XRM Tooling controls now support OAuth authentication and connection strings
Microsoft.Xrm.Tooling.Connector is the primary interface to CRM for all tooling and Unified Service Desk operations. It is also provided as part of the Microsoft Dynamics CRM SDK to developers who want to build CRM connected Windows applications. Developers can use this updated API to allow the OAuth 2 protocol to be used to authenticate with CRM web services. Adding OAuth enables multi-factor authentication for improved security and access to CRM.

XRM tooling now also supports connection strings, which allow for the use of SQL-like connection strings in the CrmServiceClient class.

New entities in CRM 2016
The following table lists new entities included in this release.

New messages in CRM 2016
The following table lists new messages included in this release.

New privileges in CRM 2016
The following privileges are new or changed in this release. For an overall view of how the security role editor maps to privilege names in this SDK, see Security role UI to privilege mapping.

* This privilege is one of the following: Create, Read, Write, Delete, Append, AppendTo, Assign, or Share.

Download Microsoft Dynamics CRM Software Development Kit (SDK) for CRM Online and on-premises CRM 2016 [https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=50032]

The post Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2016 SDK Update appeared first on Cup of dev - A blog for developers by Morne Wolfaardt.