How to: Consume MS CRM Web Services from C#?

Question

I have to Add, Update and make Inquiry (search) on an entity in MS CRM (Dynamics) Web Service using C#.

Now there are two entities Account and Contact in MS CRM both of them can be used for storing customer Information; which entity shall be used for above operation?

I am told that I have to use “CRMService” web service of MS CRM that will provide common methods for Create, Retrieve, Retrieve Multiple, Update, Delete and Fetch for every entity. Is there any web service called crmservice?

Question:

I have developed/deployed several web services, but I have never done anything over MS CRM. I am not sure how to jump-start the development?

Just thinking, I should create a project, add the web service link in to my VS2005 IDE, and call the web methods? Is that all? Wouldnt I be needing MS CRM SDK? And if yes, then which dlls I would be using? And then again, how to start using it?

Any help/links/pointers/diagrams/articles/etc would be highly appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

First, start here:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa613627.aspx

Add a reference to this asmx as usual in your VS project:

http:///mscrmservices/2006/crmservice.asmx

(use whatever is the appropriate URL)

And use that technet article has a guide to how to use the methods. This should be mostly all you need. If you have any other related questions, just edit and provide them in this question.

Answer 2

Yeah, following up on Bobby's points, you don't need the SDK to use the web service. It contains documentation, some dll's for use when coding plugins and some sample projects (which you could look at).

To work with the web service, you may be interested in LinqtoCRM (a project I started): http://codeplex.com/linqtocrm

Regarding accounts and contacts, usually you model your customer-companies as "accounts" and then create "contacts" attached to those accounts representing the actual people you talk to at those companies.