Creating or Updating Custom Entites in MS CRM 4.0

Question

For a requirement i was asked to export information into a custom entity that was created in MS CRM 4.0. I am trying to do this programmatically and I have not found a single code that actually accomplishes this. I wrote code to check if a certain value for a field exists in the entity but creating a new entity seems to be a little bit of puzzle for me. Any help on this would be appreciated.

Answer 1

This is my experience when I had a similar requirement in MS CRM 3.0. I started using the CRM sdk to import data but found it was not easy.

Then I ended up using Scribe adapter for CRM. It is not free but will easily solve your problem for importing to custom entities. Will post some links on that. need to go through some old bookmarks.

Not sure if this feature exist out of the box for CRM 4.0.

Answer 2

Hi Gulzar

Thanks for the link. I was familiar with the Scribe Adapater. Catch is client wanted this import wizard inside MS CRM 4.0. In anycase i found the answer to my solution here. Thanks for you reply :).

Answer 3

Whats wrong with using the import from CSV function within MSCRM 4.0? It caters for custom entities (3.0 didn't) and allows good mapping functions and saving of the mappings?

Answer 4

To create a custom entity from code, you need to use the MetadataService web service. The 'CreateEntity' method is used to create custom entities.

The CRM SDK for v4.0 shows you how:

CreateEntity Message (MetadataService)

Answer 5

One product i have been using is DataSync from Simego (It has a plugin that supports MS CRM 4.0) http://www.simego.net/products/Data-Synchronisation-Studio