I've resolved this problem in a complicated way and now I'd be delighted to see if there's a simpler solution.
Suppose that we have two custom entities, Alpha and Beta, each of which has a custom field called reference. If I place two lookups on a form, one for each of the custom entities, all's dandy as long as I don't require the lookup processes to depend on each other.
Now, what if I pick Alpha instance (call it a) first and then only want to see those Beta instances in the search box that share their owner with the selected a? That's easy, right? You just customize the filtration of the field.
But what if I want the selection of Beta instance to be predicated on the custom reference field?
Do I really have to declare a dynamical view to cheat myself around this part? It's so inconvenient and cumbersome...
You've done it the only way I was aware it could be done.
We can only hope it might be different in CRM 2013 i guess.
Related
Our plugin maintains some instance parameter values across many elements, including those in groups.
Occasionally the end users will introduce data that activates an unused Category,
so we have to update the document parameter bindings, to include those categories. However, when we call
doc.ParameterBindings.ReInsert()
our existing parameter values inside groups are lost, because our VariesAcrossGroups flag is toggled back to false?
How did Revit intend this to work - are we supposed to use this in a different way, to not trigger this problem?
ReInsert() expects a base Definition argument, and would usualy get an ExternalDefinition supplied.
To learn, I instead tried to scan through the definition-keys of existing bindings and match those.
This way, I got the document's InternalDefinition, and tried calling Reinsert with that instead
(my hope was, that since its existing InternalDefinition DID include VariesAcrossGroups=true, this would help). Alas, Reinsert doesn't seem to care.
The problem, as you might guess, is that after VariesAcrossGroups=False, a lot of my instance parameters have collapsed into each other, so they all hold identical values. Given that they are IDs, this is less than ideal.
My current (intended) solution is to instead grab a backup of all existing parameter values BEFORE I update the bindings, then after the binding-update and variesAcrossGroups back to true, then inspect all values and re-assign all parameter-values that have been broken. But as you may surmise, this is less than ideal - it will be horribly slow for the users to use our plugin, and frankly it seems like something the revitAPI should take care of, not the plugin developer.
Are we using this the wrong way?
One approach I have considered, is to bind every possibly category I can think of, up front and once only. But I'm not sure that is possible. Categories in themselves are also difficult to work with, as you can only create them indirectly, by using your Project-Document as a factory (i.e. you cannot create a category yourself, you can only indirectly ask the Document to - maybe! - create a category for you, that you request). Because of this, I don't think you can bind for all categories up front - some categories only become available in the document, AFTER you have included a given family/type in your project.
To sum it up: First, I
doc.ParameterBindings.ReInsert()
my binding, with the updated categories. Then, I call
InternalDefinition.SetAllowVaryBetweenGroups()
(after having determined IDEF.VariesAcrossGroups has reverted back to false.)
I am interested to hear the best way to do this, without destroying the client's existing data.
Thank you very much in advance.
(I'm not sure I will accept my own answer).
My answer is just, that you can survive-circumvent this problem,
by scanning the entire revit database for your existing parmater values, before you update the document bindings.
Afterwards, you reset VariesAcrossGroups back to its lost value.
Then, you iterate through your collected parameters, and verify which ones have lost their original value, and reset them back to their intended value.
One trick that speeds this up a bit, is that you can check Element.GroupId <> -1. That is, those elements that are group members.
You only need to track elements which are group members, as it's precisely those that are affected by this Revit bug.
A further tip is, that you should not only watch out for parameter-values that have lost their original value. You must also watch out for parameter-values that have accidentally GOTTEN a value, but which should be left un-set.
I just use FilteredElementCollector with WhereElementIsNotElementType().
Performance-wise, it is of course horrible to do all this,
but given how Revit behaves, I see no other solution if you have to ship to your clients.
I have a requirement to add fields onto a form based on data from another set of entities. Is this possible using an event script or does it require a plugin?
Given that I understand your assignment correctly, it can be done using JavaScript as well as a plugin. There is a significant difference that you need to take into consideration.
Is the change to the other entities to be made only when an actual user loads a form? If so, JS is the right way.
Or perhaps you need to ensure that those values are written even if a console client or system process retrieves the value of the primary entity? In that case, C# is your only option.
EDIT:
Simply accessing the values from any entity in the onload event can be done using a call to oData. I believe someone else asked a similar question recently. The basic format will look like this.
http://Server:Port/Organization
/XrmServices/2011/OrganizationData.svc
/TheEntityLogicalNameOfYoursSet()?$filter=FieldName eq 'ValueOfIt'
Some extra remarks.
If you're targeting on-line installation, the syntax will differ, of course, because the Schema-Server-Port-Organization are provided in a different pattern (https, orgName.crm4.something.something.com etc.). You can look it up on Settings.
Perhaps it should go without saying and I'm sure you realize it but for completeness' sake, TheEntityLogicalNameOfYours needs to be substituted for the actual name (unless that is your actual name, in which case I'll be worried, haha).
If you're new to this whole oData thingy, keep asking. I got the impression that the info I'm giving you is appreciated but not really producing "aha!" experience for you. You might want to ask separate questions, though. Some examples right off the top of my head.
a. "How do I perform oData call in JavaScript?"
b. "How do I access the fetched data?"
c. "How do I add/remove/hide a field programmatically on a form?"
d. "How do I combine data from...?"
Folks!
In my recent project I’ve faced with the situation when I need to develop “tricky” Custom Field Type (CFT) for Share Point 2010. That CFT must behave like an Out-Of-The-Box Lookup Field, but it must point to couple of different locations. For example, the Lookup field can be pointed to the web A, list B in the web A and to the some field in the list B – let’s call that like a Location, but my field must be able to point to many Locations at the same time. In addition to that main requirement, my CFT must be sortable, filterable and represent an ability to search by EQUAL using CAML, like a Lookup field. Does anybody faced with such tasks? SharePoint masters, please, instruct me with the RIGHT path!!!
I am trying to create a N:1 relationship off another entity to Order Product. It is not an option in the pick list. I then tried to go to Order Product and create a 1:N relationship and it also does not allow it.
I am sure this is by design from Microsoft, but is there a way to achive this? I perfer not to to a 1:N or N:N as a work around since it will create grids on the form (and that does not make much sense from a UI perspective when there will only be one record).
Thank for the help!!!!
I am going to add a single line of text field and format it as a url. Then link it to the related entity by dynamically populating a URL to the entity. It is a work around but of all the possible scenarios its the best for my situation
We faced the same problem during building a solution for a client. It was a heavy restriction so in the end we just created our own order product entity and linked it via a one to many to order.
This gave us complete control over it and could add relationships as we wish.
This came at a cost unfortunately as you lose the auto calculation on order for example. This wasn't an issue however as we didn't need it or any of the price list functionality.
If this is an option for you I'd recommend doing it this way.
I think that everybody had to face the same problem in his CRM life.
For CRM, the entities, salesorderproduct... are entities used only to enumerate the products of the entity related in its name, and you can not do almost nothing, that's another problem with a workaround, that I'll try to explain, just to see if this could be the solution to creating relations with them, but I don't think so.
The problem is that you can not use the assign functionality as in other relations to copy data from one entityproduct to the lower-level entityproduct when you create custom fields, and you want to copy throught the entire workflow of sales section. In this case, there is no option to enter the "Assign" window (I use Assign because I have always worked in Spanish) and create the field mappings between them.
This could be done by searching the GUID of the "Assign" window, and copyign into any of the URLs of the "Assign" window, the window showed up, and you could do your custom mappings.
I hope this could help, although this question is too old, so I hope other that arrive here, could see more opinions :)
See you
I'm creating a Book store in Magento and am having trouble figuring out the best way to handle the Authors of a Book (which would be the product).
What I currently have is an Attribute called "authors" which is multi-select and a thousand [test] values. It's still manageable but does get a little slow when editing a product. Also, when adding an option/value to the authors attribute itself, a huge list is rendered in the HTML making this an inefficient solution.
Is there another approach I should take?
Is it possible to create an Author object (entity type?) which is associated to a product through a join table? If yes, can someone give me an explanation about how that is done or point me to some good documentation?
If I'd take the Author object approach, could that still be used in the layered navigation?
How would I show the list of all books for a single author?
Thanks in advance!
PS: I am aware of extensions like Improved Navigation but AFAIK it adds something like attributes to attributes themselves which is not what I'm looking for.
For Googlers: The same would apply for Artists of a music site or manufacturers.
If you create an author entity type, you'll just increase your work trying to add it to layered navigation, and I don't see a reason why it would be faster.
Your approach seems the best fit to the problem, given the way Magento is set up. How are you going to display 1,000 (which presumably pales in comparison to the actual list) authors in layered navigation?
Depending on the requirements, you could go the route of denormalizing the field and accepting text for it. That would still allow you to display it, search based on it, etc, but would eliminate the need to render every possible artist to manipulate the list. You could add a little code around selecting the proper artist (basically add an AJAX autocomplete to the backend field) to minimize typos as well.
Alternatively, you could write a simple utility to add a new artist to the system without some of the overhead of Magento's loading the list. To be honest, though, it seems that the lag that this has the potential to create on the frontend will probably outweigh the backend trouble.
Hope that helps!
Thanks,
Joe