Microsoft CRM Customization – programming email activity attachment
 by: Boris Makushkin

Microsoft CRM is now on the scene and it is increasing its market share, due to Microsoft Business Solutions muscles and marketing strategy. It is tightly integrated with other Microsoft Business Solutions products such as Microsoft Great Plains, Solomon, Navision. Being relatively inexpensive in comparison to competitors, like Siebel, Oracle - Microsoft CRM opens you the door for worldwide operations automation. In this small article we would like to give you, software developer, some hints on Microsoft CRM customization.

Today's topic is Activity of email type programming - you usually deal with these customizations when you improve Microsoft Exchange CRM connector. How do you create email attachment - this is the main discussion topic. We’ll use C#.Net.

In Exchange handler/event sink you create Activity of email type in MS CRM and one of the tasks is transfer the attachment(s) from the body of the incoming email to the attachment(s) in the Activity. You can realize it through direct access to Microsoft CRM DB. Let’s see C# code:

1. First we are getting access to the letter via ExOLEDB:

CDO.Message   iMessage = new CDO.MessageClass();
CDO.IBodyPart iPrt;

iMessage.DataSource.Open(bstrURLItem, null, ADODB.ConnectModeEnum.adModeRead,

ADODB.RecordCreateOptionsEnum.adFailIfNotExists, ADODB.RecordOpenOptionsEnum.adOpenSource, "", "");

2. Next – we come through the attachment list, get their names and save their bodies into temporary catalogue:

   for(int i = 1; i ";
         strXml += "Activity 1";
         strXml += "" + attachmentNumber + "";
         strXml += "" + emailId.ToString("B") + "";
         strXml += "";

         // Create the activity attachment
         Guid attachmentId = new Guid(activityAttachment.Create(userAuth, strXml));
         log.Debug("Create Attachemnt ID: " + attachmentId.ToString("B"));

         UploadFileToDB(attachmentId, filename, filesize);

         return attachmentId;
      }
      catch (System.Web.Services.Protocols.SoapException e)   {
         log.Debug("ErrorMessage: " + e.Message + " " + e.Detail.OuterXml + " Source: " + e.Source);
      }
      catch (Exception e) {
         log.Debug(e.Message + "\r\n" + e.StackTrace);
      }

      return new Guid();
   }

5. Main problem, however is attachment body adding to MS CRM database. Main requirement is – attachment must be encoded as BASE64 stream and its length must be specified correctly together with Nine Type and file name of the file it will be knows as an attachment in activity. Let’s look at the C# code:

   public void UploadFileToDB(Guid attachmentId, string filename, long filesize) {
      string contentType = "application/octet-stream";

      try {
         Hashtable mimes = LoadMimeDB(Environment.SystemDirectory + "/Albaspectrum/ContentType.txt");

         if (mimes != null) {
            string tmpContentType = GetMimeType(mimes, filename);

            if (tmpContentType != null && !tmpContentType.Equals(""))
               contentType = tmpContentType;
         }

         byte[] memoryData = new byte[filesize];

         FileStream fs = new FileStream(filename, FileMode.Open, FileAccess.Read);
         BinaryReader reader = new BinaryReader(fs);

         reader.Read(memoryData, 0, (int)filesize);

         reader.Close();
         fs.Close();

         OleDbCommand command = conn.CreateCommand();

         command.CommandText = "UPDATE ActivityMimeAttachment SET FileSize = (?), MimeType = (?), FileName = (?), Body = (?) WHERE ActivityMimeAttachmentId = (?)";
         command.Prepare();
         command.Parameters.Add(new OleDbParameter("FileSize", filesize));
         command.Parameters.Add(new OleDbParameter("MimeType", contentType));
         command.Parameters.Add(new OleDbParameter("FileName", new FileInfo(filename).Name));
         command.Parameters.Add(new OleDbParameter("Body", Convert.ToBase64String(memoryData, 0, (int)filesize)));
         command.Parameters.Add(new OleDbParameter("ActivityMimeAttachmentId", attachmentId));

         log.Debug("Prepare to upload attachemnt " + attachmentId.ToString("B") + " in ActivityMimeAttachment");

         command.ExecuteNonQuery();

         memoryData = null;
      }
      catch (Exception e) {
         log.Debug(e.Message + "\r\n" + e.StackTrace);
      }
   }

6. File ContectType.txt is matching list of the files extensions and their mime-type in the following format:

asc    application/pgp-encrypted    Armored Encrypted file (PGP)
asd    application/astound    Autosave file (Word for Windows)
asm    PC ASM File
asn    application/astound    

etc.

Happy customizing, implementing and modifying! If you want us to do the job - give us a call 1-866-528-0577! [email protected]

About The Author

Boris Makushkin is Lead Software Developer in Alba Spectrum Technologies – USA nationwide Microsoft CRM, Microsoft Great Plains customization company, based in Chicago, Boston, San Francisco, San Diego, Los Angeles, Houston, Dallas, Atlanta, Miami, Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver, Moscow and Europe and internationally (www.albaspectrum.com), he is Microsoft CRM SDK, C#, VB.Net, SQL, Oracle, Unix developer.
[email protected]