A Devotee of Dynamics CRM: Open Silverlight application on click of custom ribbon button in CRM 2011

In this post we will see how we can open a Silverlight application on click of a custom button in CRM 2011.

First of all create a Silverlight web application which you want to execute on button click in CRM application.

Compile your Silverlight Application. In the web project of your application you will find a ClientBin folder. When you compile your application a xap file is created under the ClientBin folder. Create a webresource of type xap and upload the xap file created under ClientBin folder.

Now second step is to embed the Silverlight application in an html file. Create an html file within your Silverlight application web project and add this code.

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" >
 
<head>
    <title>ExpenseNote</title>
    <style type="text/css">
    html, body {
        height: 100%;
        overflow: auto;
    }
    body {
        padding: 0;
        margin: 0;
    }
    #silverlightControlHost {
        height: 100%;
        text-align:center;
    }
    </style>
    <script type="text/jscript" src="../../ClientGlobalContext.js.aspx"></script>   1:  
   2:     <script type="text/javascript" src="../JavaScripts/Silverlight.js">
   1: </script>
   2:     <script type="text/javascript">
   3:       function onSilverlightError(sender, args) {
   4:         
   5:             var appSource = "";
   6:             if (sender != null && sender != 0) {
   7:               appSource = sender.getHost().Source;
   8:             }
   9:             
  10:             var errorType = args.ErrorType;
  11:             var iErrorCode = args.ErrorCode;
  12:  
  13:             if (errorType == "ImageError" || errorType == "MediaError") {
  14:               return;
  15:             }
  16:  
  17:             var errMsg = "Unhandled Error in Silverlight Application " +  appSource + "\n" ;
  18:  
  19:             errMsg += "Code: "+ iErrorCode + "    \n";
  20:             errMsg += "Category: " + errorType + "       \n";
  21:             errMsg += "Message: " + args.ErrorMessage + "     \n";
  22:  
  23:             if (errorType == "ParserError") {
  24:                 errMsg += "File: " + args.xamlFile + "     \n";
  25:                 errMsg += "Line: " + args.lineNumber + "     \n";
  26:                 errMsg += "Position: " + args.charPosition + "     \n";
  27:             }
  28:             else if (errorType == "RuntimeError") {           
  29:                 if (args.lineNumber != 0) {
  30:                     errMsg += "Line: " + args.lineNumber + "     \n";
  31:                     errMsg += "Position: " +  args.charPosition + "     \n";
  32:                 }
  33:                 errMsg += "MethodName: " + args.methodName + "     \n";
  34:             }
  35:  
  36:             throw new Error(errMsg);
  37:         }
  38:     
</script>
</head>
<body>
    <form id="form1" runat="server" style="height:100%">
    <div id="silverlightControlHost">
      <object data="data:application/x-silverlight-2," type="application/x-silverlight-2" width="100%" height="100%">
          <param name="source" value="../XAP/ExpenseNote.xap"/>
          <param name="onError" value="onSilverlightError" />
          <param name="background" value="white" />
          <param name="minRuntimeVersion" value="4.0.50826.0" />
          <param name="autoUpgrade" value="true" />
          <a href="http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=149156&v=4.0.50826.0" style="text-decoration:none">
               <img src="http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=161376" alt="Get Microsoft Silverlight" style="border-style:none"/>
          </a>
        </object><iframe id="_sl_historyFrame" style="visibility:hidden;height:0px;width:0px;border:0px"></iframe></div>
    </form>
</body>
</html>

Note:

1) In the source parameter specify the path of your xap webresource correctly.
Here name of the webresource is ink_/XAP/ExpenseNote.xap and so the value for source is “../XAP/ExpenseNote.xap”, a relative path.

2) Also add the SilverLight.js file as a webresource. You can find the Silverlight.js file in sdk in the Silverlight example projects.

Now create a webresource and upload this html file. We have named this html webresource as CreateExpenseNote.html.

Now we need to open this html file on click of a button.

For this we will create a button. You can create button using the Visual Ribbon editor. To use Visual Ribbon Editor refer this link http://ankit.inkeysolutions.com/2012/01/crm-2011-how-to-use-visual-ribbon.html

In the Visual Ribbon Editor define the action for the button as given below:

In Action you can either directly specify a URL which will be accessed on button click or you can specify a javascript function which is defined within a webresource of type javascript file. In this example we would be using a javascript function defined within a webresource.

Here OpenSilverLightControl is the function that contains code to open the CreateExpenseNote.html file and OpenExpenseNote.js is the webresource within which the function is defined.

function OpenSilverLightControl()
 {
var serverUrl = Xrm.Page.context.getServerUrl();          window.showModalDialog(serverUrl+'/WebResources/ink_/html/CreateExpenseNote.html', " ","dialogWidth:800px ; dialogHeight:600px; center:yes;resizable:yes");
}

So on button click the CreateExpenseNote.html file which embeds the Silverlight application, is displayed as a ModalDialog .

7 comments:

Unknown28 May 2012 at 00:29
Good article.
i have a question regarding Silverlight and CRM.

I have created a Silverlight app sourcing data from CRM and updating CRM.
When using in IE and clicking on the icon, opens a new window and the user is already logged into CRM.
However via an outlook online, clicking the icon requires the User to log into LiveID (sometimes multiple times).

Do you have any suggestions or thoughts?
Unknown31 May 2012 at 04:03
Excellent article. Many useful tips on Silverlight and Ribbons.

Congratulations,
Adriano Zanini
Anonymous6 June 2012 at 07:15
Hello Ankit,

One of my friend needs to enter in the world of Dynamics CRM.
Need your guidance on how to start it.

Plz reply

regards.
darksander13 June 2012 at 04:35
Hi,
It's not working for me. Where did you get the folder structure from? ink_/html, ink_/XAP (I presume ink_ would be new_ in case i havent change de prefix, correct?). Is it default structure?

Thanks,
Sander

Saturday, 26 May 2012

Open Silverlight application on click of custom ribbon button in CRM 2011

7 comments: