Today I was working at a custom front end application for Microsoft Dynamics CRM, a project I have been blogging about before. The goal of that project is to create a client portal showing information directly from the CRM. I am going to describe to you the 3 steps you need to take to implement your own front end for Microsoft Dynamics CRM.

I assume you have Microsoft Dynamics CRM up and running and that you are writing a web application using any framework you want. At Liones we using a proprietary framework called Lynkx.

Step 1: First Contact

The first step to building a custom front end for MS Dynamics CRM is connecting to the Web service. I am not going to bother you with the exact how and why, you can read it for yourself in this MSDN article.

After adding the web reference I recommend that you write a life cycle manager for it. If anyone is interested in the code, just ask me then I will post it here.

Step 2: Shape your Tools

The next step is to create your tools: write a framework to handle CRUD operations. I suggest that you make it dynamic so you will be able to CRUD all entities with just a handful of operations. I implemented 2 types of retrieve methods: RetrieveSingle and RetrieveMultiple. I like to keep my code as flexible as possible, so I externalized my retrieve queries as Fetch XML (an XML representation of a CRM query).

Next thing I did was to create an adapter class around the BusinessEntity class, which is the base class for all CRM entities. The adapter class implements the IDictionary interface so I can access all entities in a uniform way. This is ideal in my situation because the Lynkx framework is a weak typed dynamic framework. I am willing to share the code, just ask me.

Step 3: Building your Application

Now that you have your tool belt strapped on, go implement your application! Write Fetch XML queries and combine the CRUD methods you have in your tool belt. By writing Fetch XML queries, I do not mean that you actually write them from scratch: use tools like FetchXML Wizard, which will really speed up your work!

That is it for now; I hope this article helped you on your way to become a good CRM developer.