In this chapter we are going to use Microsoft CRM 2011 web services to create a custom web application. We will learn different ways of accessing Microsoft CRM 2011 data in web applications. We will learn how to create entity records from a custom web application. We will also learn how to create an editable grid for an associated entity.
We will cover the following topics in this chapter:
- Application development for Microsoft CRM 2011
- Early bound classes
- Late bound classes
- Microsoft CRM 2011 web services
- Creating editable grid views for Microsoft CRM 2011
- Deploying custom web applications to Microsoft CRM 2011
- The testing application
Microsoft CRM 2011 provides a rich API and web service support to enhance its capabilities. We can develop a rich application using different methods for Microsoft CRM 2011. We have the following options to use:
- Early bound classes
- Late bound classes
- Using REST
- Using SOAP
We can develop a custom web application or Silverlight application to create, edit, or display Microsoft CRM 2011 data. We can also develop an HTML web resource to manipulate Microsoft CRM 2011 data.
If you want to develop a custom portal to expose Microsoft CRM 2011 data, we have the option of using existing portal accelerators or we can develop our own custom portal.
Tip
You can check Microsoft Pinpoint (http://dynamics.pinpoint.microsoft.com/en-US/home) for the latest portal released for Microsoft CRM 2011.
Microsoft CRM SDK comes with rich documentation and with portal development tools that we can use to create a tightly integrated application with Microsoft CRM 2011.