Chapter 10: Client-Side SDK

Overview

In Chapter 5, "Entity Customization: Forms and Views," we explained how to perform basic form customizations on each entity. You can easily add fields, tabs, and sections to a form by using the Web-based administration tool, without having to do any programming. However, if you want to set up more complex form customizations than the Web-based administration tool allows, Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 offers a rich, client-side programming model.

In the context of Web-based applications, client-side refers to code that executes on the user's Web browser. For Microsoft CRM specifically, the client-side customizations take place primarily on an entity's form. Microsoft CRM includes a software development kit (SDK) that explains the supported methods you can use to create custom client-side scripts that tap into form and field events, such as onLoad, onSave, and onChange. This chapter examines these advanced form programming techniques. We will also review the use of IFrames within the Microsoft CRM forms and the ISV.Config file and how you can use these two features to extend the Microsoft CRM interface with your own custom Web pages. In addition, we'll supply numerous examples on how you might implement some customizations that these powerful client-side customizations allow.

Because of the nature of the client-side programming model, this chapter contains a significant amount of dynamic HTML (DHTML) and scripting code. However, even if you're not an expert with these technologies, hopefully this chapter will help you understand the types of client-side customizations possible within Microsoft CRM.

We created the samples in this chapter so that you could deploy them to your own Microsoft CRM deployment. You can download all of the sample code directly from the download site mentioned in the book's Introduction. We will also provide references to additional information regarding client-side scripting syntax and methods later in this chapter.