Where to find values for Picklist Items

When I finally get to reporting, I will need this more, but I also need this for some other data import work I am doing.

Just discovered how to get the actual picklist int value when you know the name.  You have to look in the StringMap table and link it to the MetadataSchema.Entity table (which I still can't find in the SSMS object browser, but it must be somewhere) on the ObjectTypeCode in each one.


SELECT s.*, ' ', e.*
FROM StringMap s
INNER JOIN MetadataSchema.Entity e ON s.ObjectTypeCode = e.ObjectTypeCode

Found it on this blog:
http://extremecrm.net/2009/03/22/display-a-crm-40-picklist-display-value-in-report-or-query/

Speed up your CRM SDK imports and updates

I ran across this problem several weeks ago that an import of many thousands of records using the CRM SDK was taking forever, or timing out.  Luckily, there is a setting on the connection object that you can use to speed things up quite a bit.


CrmService crm = new CrmService();
crm.Credentials = System.Net.CredentialCache.DefaultCredentials;
crm.UnsafeAuthenticatedConnectionSharing = true;

This other blog post describes these setting in more detail.

http://billoncrmtech.blogspot.com/2008/10/blog-move-speed-racer-call-crm-at.html

This was also discussed at a CRM Optimization session at Convergence 2010 and the Microsoft Support people said that for bulk inserts/updates this is OK to use, just keep in mind the caveats of only authenticating once.  Probably fine for internal use on your network, but not for external internet connections, etc.

Color Coding your records

I've done this color coding with injected DHTML, but this other blog talks about using an IFRAME to do it.  I may have to take a look at this because I don't like the way mine gets resized.  I'm actually using color coding to show if a case is NEW, OPEN, or CLOSED, but I also use color in a field that has account and contact alerts in it.

http://businessnone.com/demo-tools/getting-customer-temperature/

Maybe an IFRAME works better?