From the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Blogs: Alternate Keys; Debugging Tablet App; Record-Level Restrictions; Decompile DLLs

A selection of the latest insight from the Dynamics CRM blogs:

• Utilizing Alternate Keys in Dynamics CRM Integrations
• Dynamics CRM App for Tablet Issue on Instances Upgraded from CRM 2011
• Dealing with record level access restriction with Dynamics CRM
• CRM 2015 - How to Decompile a Plugin Assembly (DLL)

Utilizing Alternate Keys in Dynamics CRM Integrations

On the PowerObjects blog, JoeCRM talked about one of the challenges of integrating external data with Microsoft Dynamics CRM. The problem is that when you update a record via the API, you have to know the GUID (globally unique identifier) of the record.

Now since alternate keys have been introduced in the CRM 2015 Online Update 1 release, you can use a unique value in your data set as a key for updating records as part of an integration.

This will work as long as the data type is an integer (whole number), a decimal number, or a string (single line of text). In his blog post, Joe shows you how to utilize these alternate keys in your integrations.

"Say you have a scenario where you have an external system that you want to integrate to your Account entity, and the system uses an email address as its key. You need to define the email address on the Account entity as an alternate key to make the integration easier to write and run faster."

To do this, follow the steps