Blog Post: Scheduled custom notifications for Dynamics CRM 2011

The closest thing that Dynamics CRM 2011 has to a notification is the concept of Announcements. There are some drawbacks to Announcements, most important being that they cannot be scheduled. Also, can we expect the user to keep going back to the Announcements page each time to see the latest? I think not :)

There are a few options that are available in the webosphere that could help. In this post, I am going to talk about a solution to have custom html notifications which can be scheduled to fire only at the appropriate time, as well as provide options on how to display the notification.

Business Case:

User should see the notification only between certain date/times, with the content of the notification itself coming from an html web resource. Options are needed for scheduling and to define how the notification would display. If more than one notification is valid, the order of the notification alert should be configurable.

Design:

We will be creating a new entity call "Notifications" that is visible from the Settings area. The notification record will have details of the start and end time/ duration (if applicable). The order of display is determined by the ordinal value

Implementation Details:

1. Create a new custom entity called "Notifications". Add the following fields:

Field Name	Type	Required (Y/N)	Description
Name	Text	Y	Name of the record
Start Date/Time	DateTime	Y	Start date and time for notification
End Date/Time	DateTime	Y	End date and time for notification
Duration	Number	Y, unless Always in selected as Recurrence	Duration of notification in minutes
Modal dialog or New Window	Boolean	Y	Shows the alert as modal dialog, or as a new window
Recurrence	Drop Down	Y	Contains values Always, One Time, Daily and Weekly
Recur Every	Drop Down	Y, If weekly is selected	Contains values with days of the week
Web Resource	Text	Y	URL for the html page
Ordinal Value	Number	N	Defines order of notification

2.  Add javascript that will enforce the required fields in the Notifications record

//function to set the value of Recur Every fields as required if Weely is selected as the transfer reason. Fires on onchange of Recurrence, and onload of form
function setReqFields() {
    var rc1 = Xrm.Page.getAttribute("new_recurrence").getValue;
    if (rc1 != null) {
    var recurrence = Xrm.Page.getAttribute("new_recurrence").getSelectedOption().text; 
        if (recurrence == "Weekly") {
            Xrm.Page.getAttribute("new_recurevery").setRequiredLevel("required");
        } else {
            //set recur every field to not required
            Xrm.Page.getAttribute("new_recurevery").setRequiredLevel("none");
        }

        //duration is required unless recurrence is of type Always
        if (recurrence != "Always") {
            Xrm.Page.getAttribute("new_durationinminutes").setRequiredLevel("required");
        } else {
            //set recur every field to not required
            Xrm.Page.getAttribute("new_durationinminutes").setRequiredLevel("none");
        }
    }
}

//function to get values from the crm Notification entity - onload of Phone call form

function getNotifications() {

    var formType = Xrm.Page.ui.getFormType();
    //notification only for updates
    if (formType == 2) {
        var serverUrl = Xrm.Page.context.getServerUrl();
        var today = new Date();
        var jsonText = JSON.stringify(today);
        jsonText = jsonText.replace(/\"/g, '');
        //alert(jsonText);
        //The XRM OData end-point
        var ODATA_ENDPOINT = "/XRMServices/2011/OrganizationData.svc";

        var odataSetName = "new_notificationSet";

        //get all notifications that have the end date greater than current date
        var odataSelect = serverUrl + ODATA_ENDPOINT + "/" + odataSetName + "?$orderby=new_OrdinalValue&$filter=new_EndDateTime gt datetime\'" + jsonText + "\'";

        //alert(odataSelect);

        $.ajax({
            type: "GET",
            contentType: "application/json; charset=utf-8",
            datatype: "json",
            url: odataSelect,
            beforeSend: function (XMLHttpRequest) { XMLHttpRequest.setRequestHeader("Accept", "application/json"); },
            success: function (data, textStatus, XmlHttpRequest) {
                //alert(data.d.results.length);

                if (data.d.results && data.d.results != null) {
                    for (var indx = 0; indx < data.d.results.length; indx++) {

                        //alert("Name – " + data.d.results[indx].new_name);

                        notificationName = data.d.results[indx].new_name;

                        //get notification values
                        var recurrence = eval(data.d.results[indx].new_Recurrence.Value);
                        var windowType = eval(data.d.results[indx].new_NotificationDisplay.Value);


                        var webresource = data.d.results[indx].new_Webresource;

                        var startDate = data.d.results[indx].new_StartDateTime;
                        startDate = startDate.replace(/\//g, '');
                        startDate = startDate.replace("Date(", '');
                        startDate = startDate.replace(")", '');
                        var sd = new Date(Number(startDate));

                        var endDate = data.d.results[indx].new_EndDateTime;
                        endDate = endDate.replace(/\//g, '');
                        endDate = endDate.replace("Date(", '');
                        endDate = endDate.replace(")", '');
                        var ed = new Date(Number(endDate));

                        var duration = data.d.results[indx].new_DurationinMinutes;
                        var de1 = new Date(Number(startDate));
                        var durationEnd = de1.setMinutes(de1.getMinutes() + Number(duration));
                        var de = new Date(Number(durationEnd));


                        //recurrence - change the option set values based on yours
                        if (recurrence == 912630000) {
                            //alert("always");
                            always(sd, ed, today, windowType, webresource);
                        }
                        else if (recurrence == 912630001) {
                            //alert("one-time");
                            notification(sd, today, de, windowType, webresource);
                        }
                        else if (recurrence == 912630002) {
                            //alert("daily");
                            sd.setFullYear(today.getFullYear());
                            sd.setDate(today.getDate());
                            sd.setMonth(today.getMonth());

                            de.setFullYear(today.getFullYear());
                            de.setDate(today.getDate());
                            de.setMonth(today.getMonth());

                            notification(sd, today, de, windowType, webresource);
                        }
                        else if (recurrence == 912630003) {
                            //alert("weekly");
                            //get last character of the option set
                            var recurEvery = eval(data.d.results[indx].new_RecurEvery.Value).toString();
                            recurEvery = recurEvery.charAt(recurEvery.length - 1);
                            if (today.getDay().toString() == recurEvery.toString()) {
                                //alert("call weekly");
                                sd.setFullYear(today.getFullYear());
                                sd.setDate(today.getDate());
                                sd.setMonth(today.getMonth());

                                de.setFullYear(today.getFullYear());
                                de.setDate(today.getDate());
                                de.setMonth(today.getMonth());

                                notification(sd, today, de, windowType, webresource);
                            }
                        }


                    }
                }
            },
            error: function (XmlHttpRequest, textStatus, errorThrown) { alert('OData Select Failed: ' + odataSelect+" Error thrown: "+errorThrown+" Status: "+textStatus); }
        });

    }
}

function notification(startDate, todayDate, durationEnd, windowType, webresource) {
    if (todayDate.getTime() > startDate.getTime() && todayDate.getTime() < durationEnd.getTime()) {
        if (windowType == 912630000) { //modal window
            var myWin = window.showModalDialog(webresource);
        }
        else if (windowType == 912630001) { //new window
            var myWin = window.open(webresource, 'Notification');
            myWin.focus();
        }
    }

}

function always(startDate, endDate, todayDate, windowType, webresource) {
    if (todayDate.getTime() > startDate.getTime() && todayDate.getTime() < endDate.getTime()) {
        //alert("always");
        if (windowType == 912630000) { //modal window
            var myWin = window.showModalDialog(webresource);
        }
        else if (windowType == 912630001) { //new window
            var myWin = window.open(webresource, 'Notification');
        }
    }

}