Microsoft Dynamics CRM Append v/s Append To

Many of us gets confused with "Append" and "Append To" privileges for any security role. 

"Append" and "Append To" basically deal with the entities that are parties to a 1:N relationship or N:1 relationship to make it more clear just read below example.


1. Login to CRM as administrator and open salesperson security role and set access level for "Append" and "Append To" to none for opportunity, account and contact entity and then save it.

2. Now Login to CRM as salesperson and create new opportunity and you will now notice both contact and account look ups are locked.

3. To enable the look ups at opportunity update "Append" and "Append To" privileges for account, contact and opportunity entity in salesperson role by logging in to CRM again as administrator.

• first update the opportunity "Append" privilege to user level so that any other entities can append to opportunity (like in our case we have contact and account) and save the role.

now if you look at opportunity via logging in to CRM as salesperson you will notice look ups are still locked because till now we have only allow opportunity entity to have relationships with other entities so that salesperson can linked up any other entity record to opportunity which were created by him/her.

4. Now we need to update "Append To" privilege of account entity to user access level so that salesperson can link up account entity records to other entities records.

now if you open opportunity via logging in to CRM as salesperson you will see account look up is unlocked.

5. To unlock contact look up as well update "Append To" privilege of contact entity to user access level so that salesperson can link up contact entity records to other entities records.

now you will see contact look up on opportunity also get unlocked.

 So "Append" privilege goes with the entity that you are currently working with. We are trying to append a record. This normally works with a child entity.

"Append To" privilege goes with a parent entity. Where a child entity has a look up for the parent entity and if they want to select a record from the parent entity then we should have append to privilege on the parent entity.

Hope above example help you understand "Append" and "Append To" better. :)

Show User Images from Active Directory thumbnailphoto to SharePoint, Outlook & Lync

Many a times it is required to sync user images from one central source. In a corporate Active Directory is the best source to keep all user images also along with his credentials and other properties.

thumbnailphoto attribute is where normally we put the binary data of images.

Now the first challenge is how to update images in this attribute manually for so many users. This problem is solved by a free tool called as

CodeTwo Active Directory Photos

You can download this tool from

http://www.codetwo.com/freeware/active-directory-photos-thanks

Necessary documentation for this tool can be found with the installer. its very simple to use and can update bulk images stored in a folder.

Now once you have uploaded all the images in this attribute, Outlook and Lync will automatically start showing you the user images in some time.

Now another challenge is how to make these pictures sync with SharePoint Intranet portals.

For that we need to do following steps

STEP 1 : Check if Forefront Identity Manager Service is up and running

STEP 2 : Map thumbnailphoto attribute with picture user profile property


STEP 3 : Now run full crawl

STEP 4 : Once full crawl is done then run this command in SharePoint 2013 management shell as administrator 

Update-SPProfilePhotoStore -MySiteHostLocation <http://mysites address>


Wait for couple of minutes and check your SharePoint Site

Deleting number of sub sites recursively in SharePoint

Deleting number of sub sites recursively in SharePoint

(Enter the Text File Path that contains Name of Sites to be cleared)

function RemoveSPWebRecursively($web)

{

    $subwebs = $web.Webs

    foreach($subweb in $subwebs)

    {

        RemoveSPWebRecursively($subweb)

        $subweb.Dispose()

    }

    Remove-SPWeb $web -Confirm:$false

}

Write-Host

Write-Host

write-host "Enter the SharePoint Site URL : "

[string]$URL = Read-Host

[string]$WebURL =  $URL.Trim()

$objSite = Get-SPWeb $WebURL -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue

if($objSite -eq $null)

{

               Write-Host

               Write-Host "Site URL not correct or Site does not extsts. Re-run the script with correct URL." -foregroundcolor Red

               Read-Host

}

else

{

        Write-Host

        Write-Host

           write-host "Enter the Text File Path that contains Sites list to be deleted : "

        [string]$FilePathTmp = Read-Host

        [string]$FilePath =  $FilePathTmp.Trim().Replace('"','')

        $Projects = Get-Content -Path $FilePath

        if($Projects -eq $null)

        {

            Write-Host

               Write-Host "Sorry! Unable to get contents from file." -foregroundcolor Red

               Read-Host

        }

        else

        {

            Write-Host

            write-host  "["  $Projects.count  "] Project(s) found in file. " -foregroundcolor Green

            Write-Host

            $TotalInFile=$Projects.count

            $TotalInWeb =$objSite.Webs.Count

            [int]$TotalDeleted=0

            if( $Projects.count -gt 0)

            {

                foreach ($ProjectSite in $Projects)

                {

                    if($ProjectSite -ne $null)

                    {

                        [bool]$SiteFound =$false;

                       

                        $ProjectSite=$ProjectSite.Trim()

                        for ($i = 0; $i -lt $objSite.Webs.Count; $i++)

                        {

                            $subSite = $objSite.Webs[$i];

                            if($subSite -ne $null)

                            {

                              if($subSite.Title -eq $ProjectSite)

                              {

                                $SiteFound =$true;

                                write-host "FOUND Project Site : " $ProjectSite -foregroundcolor Yellow

                                if( $subSite.Webs.Count -gt 0)

                                {

                                    RemoveSPWebRecursively $subSite

                                }

                                else

                                {

                                    Remove-SPWeb $subSite -Confirm:$False

                                }

                                $TotalDeleted=$TotalDeleted + 1

                                write-host "Project Site : " $ProjectSite " deleted successfully" -foregroundcolor Green

                                break

                              }

                            }

                            else

                            {

                                write-host "Site was NULL at : " $i -foregroundcolor Red

                            }

                        }

                        if($SiteFound -eq $false)

                        {

                            write-host "NOT FOUND Project Site : " $ProjectSite -foregroundcolor Red

                        }

                    }

                }

                <#

                foreach($subSite in $objSite.Webs)

                      {

                    foreach ($ProjectSite in $Projects)

                    {

                        if($ProjectSite -ne $null)

                        {

                            $ProjectSite=$ProjectSite.Trim()

                            if($subSite.Title -eq $ProjectSite)

                            {

                                write-host "Found Project Site : " $ProjectSite -foregroundcolor Green

                            }

                        }

                    }

                             $subSite.Dispose()

                      }#>

                Write-Host

                Write-Host "Sites Deleted Sucessfully....." -foregroundcolor Yellow

                Write-Host

                Write-Host "Total Sites Found in File to be deleted :  " $TotalInFile -foregroundcolor Green

                Write-Host "Total Sites Found in Web Application :  " $TotalInWeb -foregroundcolor Green

                Write-Host "Total Sites Deleted :  " $TotalDeleted -foregroundcolor Green

                Write-Host

                Write-Host "Press Enter to exit." -foregroundcolor Yellow

                   Read-Host

            }

            else

            {

                Write-Host

                Write-Host "No Sites list found in file.... Press Enter to exit." -foregroundcolor Red

                   Read-Host

            }

           

        }

        $objSite.Dispose()

}

Remove all items from a List in SharePoint through PowerShell

We can use below script to clean data from multiple lists in a SharePoint site. This could be very helpful while developing solutions in SharePoint as we may need to clean the data many times during development. This script requires path to a text file which contains the list names ( each name should be in a new line ).

Copy paste below script in a text file and rename the file extension to - *.ps1 

Write-Host

Write-Host

write-host "Enter the SharePoint Site URL : "

[string]$URL = Read-Host

[string]$WebURL =  $URL.Trim()

$objSite = Get-SPWeb $WebURL -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue

if($objSite -eq $null)

{

               Write-Host

               Write-Host "Site URL not correct or Site does not extsts. Re-run the script with correct URL." -foregroundcolor Red

               Read-Host

}

else

{

        Write-Host

        Write-Host

           write-host "Enter the Text File Path that contains Name of Lists to be cleared : "

        [string]$FilePathTmp = Read-Host

        [string]$FilePath =  $FilePathTmp.Trim().Replace('"','')

        $ListNames = Get-Content -Path $FilePath

        if($ListNames -eq $null)

        {

            Write-Host

               Write-Host "Sorry! Unable to get contents from file." -foregroundcolor Red

               Read-Host

        }

        else

        {

            Write-Host

            write-host  "["  $ListNames.count  "] List Name(s) found in file. " -foregroundcolor Green

            Write-Host

            if( $ListNames.count -gt 0)

            {

                [bool] $found=$false

                foreach ($ListName in $ListNames)

                {

                    if($ListName -ne $null)

                    {

                        $list = $objSite.lists | where {$_.title -eq $ListName}

                        if($list -ne $null)

                        {

                            $found=$true

                            Write-Host $ListName " Found ...." -foregroundcolor Green

                            Write-host "---- List $($list.title) has $($list.items.count) entries"

                            $items = $list.items

                            foreach ($item in $items)

                            {

                                $list.getitembyid($Item.id).Delete()

                            }

                            Write-Host "---- List " $ListName " cleared successfully...." -foregroundcolor Green

                        }

                        else

                        {

                            Write-Host

                            Write-Host $ListName " NOT FOUND in current site...." -foregroundcolor Red

                        }

                    }

                }

                if($found -eq $true)

                {

                    Write-Host

                    Write-Host "Lists Cleared Sucessfully.... Press Enter to exit." -foregroundcolor Yellow

                       Read-Host

                }

            }

            else

            {

                Write-Host

                Write-Host "No List Name found in file.... Press Enter to exit." -foregroundcolor Red

                   Read-Host

            }

           

        }

        $objSite.Dispose()

}