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Walkthrough: Create a UII Windows Forms Hosted Control

 

Applies To: Dynamics 365 (online), Dynamics 365 (on-premises), Dynamics CRM 2013, Dynamics CRM 2015, Dynamics CRM 2016

This walkthrough demonstrates how you can build a Windows FormsUser Interface Integration (UII) hosted control that interacts with Unified Service Desk and standalone or web external applications.

In this walkthrough, you’ll:

  • Create a User Interface Integration (UII) Windows Forms hosted control, Sample UII Windows Forms Hosted Control, which will display first name, last name, street address, and ID of a contact when you search for contacts, and click a contact name to open it in a session in Unified Service Desk. These values are displayed from the Unified Service Desk context.

  • Change first name, last name, or street address values in an external application and web application hosted in Unified Service Desk from the UII Windows Forms hosted control that we create. The external and web applications were created in earlier walkthroughs: Walkthrough: Create a UII Application Adapter and Walkthrough: Create a UII Web Application Adapter.

  • Notify changes to the Unified Service Desk context to update the values there.

In This Topic

Prerequisites

Step 1: Create a UII Windows Forms hosted control using Visual Studio

Step 2: Define the hosted control in Unified Service Desk

Step 3: Define UII actions for the external application and web application hosted controls in Unified Service Desk

Test the hosted control

Prerequisites

Step 1: Create a UII Windows Forms hosted control using Visual Studio

  1. Start Visual Studio, and create a new project.

  2. In the New Project dialog box:

    1. From the list of installed templates, expand Visual C#, and select Dynamics 365 SDK Templates > Unified Service Desk > UII Windows Forms Hosted Control.

    2. Specify the name and location of the project, and click OK to create a new project.

      Create a UII Windows Form hosted control

  3. In Solution Explorer pane, right-click the UiiWinformControl.cs file, and select Open to display the Windows Forms designer.

  4. In the designer, add the following controls from the Toolbox:

    Control type

    Name

    Text

    Label

    lblFirstName

    First Name

    Label

    lblLastName

    Last Name

    Label

    lblAddress

    Street Address

    Label

    lblID

    ID

    TextBox

    txtFirstName

    TextBox

    txtLastName

    TextBox

    txtAddress

    TextBox

    txtID

    Button

    btnUpdate

    Update values in hosted apps

    Button

    btnUpdateContext

    Update context

    This is how the controls should be laid out in the designer.

    Layout of the controls in your UII hosted control

  5. Double-click the Update values in hosted apps button (btnUpdate) to add the code for the click event for this button, and add the following code.

    private void btnUpdate_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
       // This is how you fire an action to other hosted applications. 
       // The DoAction() code in the other application or application adapter 
       // will be called.
       FireRequestAction(new RequestActionEventArgs("QsExternalApp", "UpdateFirstName", txtFirstName.Text)); // For the external application
       FireRequestAction(new RequestActionEventArgs("QsExternalApp", "UpdateLastName", txtLastName.Text)); // For the external application
       FireRequestAction(new RequestActionEventArgs("QsExternalApp", "UpdateAddress", txtAddress.Text)); // For the external application
    
       FireRequestAction(new RequestActionEventArgs("QsWebApplication", "UpdateFirstName", txtFirstName.Text)); // For the external web application
       FireRequestAction(new RequestActionEventArgs("QsWebApplication", "UpdateLastName", txtLastName.Text)); // For the external web application
       FireRequestAction(new RequestActionEventArgs("QsWebApplication", "UpdateAddress", txtAddress.Text)); // For the external web application
    }
    
  6. Go to the design view, double-click the Update context button (btnUpdateContext) to add the code for the click event for this button. Add the following code.

    private void btnUpdateContext_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
       // Get the current context and create a new context object from it.
       string temp = Context.GetContext();
       Context updatedContext = new Context(temp);
    
       // Update the new context with the changed information.
       updatedContext["firstname"] = txtFirstName.Text;
       updatedContext["lastname"] = txtLastName.Text;
       updatedContext["address1_line1"] = txtAddress.Text;
    
       // Notify Unified Service Desk of this new context information
       FireChangeContext(new ContextEventArgs(updatedContext));
    
       // Notify this UII hosted control about the change
       NotifyContextChange(updatedContext);
    }
    
  7. In the same file (UiiWinformControl.cs), update the override definition of the NotifyContextChange method to the following:

    public override void NotifyContextChange(Context context)
    {
       // Populating text fields from context information.
       txtFirstName.Text = context["firstname"];
       txtLastName.Text = context["lastname"];
       txtAddress.Text = context["address1_line1"];
       txtID.Text = context["CustomerID"];
    
       base.NotifyContextChange(context);
    }
    
  8. Save your project, and build it (Build > Build Solution). After the project builds successfully, an assembly (.dll file) is generated with the same name as your project name (in this case, UIIWindowsFormHostedConrol1.dll) in the /bin/debug folder of your project.

  9. Copy this file to your Unified Service Desk client application installation directory (typically C:\Program Files\Microsoft Dynamics CRM USD\USD). This file is required for testing, and eventually using this control from your client application.

    Tip

    Note the name of the class that is used to build your UII hosted control in the UiiWinformControl.cs file. In this case, it’s UiiWinformControl. You’ll need this information in the next step.

Step 2: Define the hosted control in Unified Service Desk

To host the UII Windows Forms hosted control in Unified Service Desk, you’ll have to define and configure it.

  1. Sign in to Microsoft Dynamics 365.

  2. On the nav bar, choose Microsoft Dynamics 365 > Settings > Unified Service Desk.

  3. On the Unified Service Desk page, click Hosted Controls.

  4. On the Hosted Controls page, click New.

  5. On the New Hosted Control page, specify the following values:

    Field

    Value

    Name

    UIIWindowsFormHostedControl

    Display Name

    Sample UII Windows Forms Hosted Control

    USD Component Type

    CCA Hosted Application

    Hosted Application

    Hosted Control

    Application is Global

    Selected

    Display Group

    MainPanel

    Adapter

    Use No Adapter

    Assembly URI

    UIIWindowsFormHostedControl1

    Assembly Type

    UIIWindowsFormHostedControl1.UiiWinformControl

    Note

    Assembly URI is the name of your assembly and the Assembly Type is the name of your assembly followed by a dot (.) and then the class name in your Visual Studio project. In this example, the name of the assembly is UIIWindowsFormHostedControl1 and name of the class is UiiWinformControl, which is the default class name when you create a UII Windows Forms hosted control.

    New hosted control in Unified Service Desk

  6. Click Save to create the hosted control.

Step 3: Define UII actions for the external application and web application hosted controls in Unified Service Desk

The adapters for the external standalone and web applications expose the following three actions: UpdateFirstName, UpdateLastName, and UpdateAddress. These adapters and the hosted controls for the external standalone and web applications were created in the earlier adapter walkthroughs (Walkthrough: Create a UII Application Adapter and Walkthrough: Create a UII Web Application Adapter).

To update information in the external applications from within the UII Windows Forms hosted control, you’ll have to define three UII actions with the same name as defined earlier in the adapters for each of the external applications. In the earlier adapter walkthroughs (Walkthrough: Create a UII Application Adapter and Walkthrough: Create a UII Web Application Adapter), you defined the following two hosted controls in Unified Service Desk to display the external applications within Unified Service Desk: QsExternalApp and QsExternalWebApplication. In this step, you’ll add three UII actions for each hosted control.

Important

If you have already added the UII actions as part of step 3 in Walkthrough: Create a UII WPF Hosted Control, you don’t have to perform this step again. You can proceed to the next section for testing your hosted control.

  1. Sign in to Microsoft Dynamics 365.

  2. On the nav bar, choose Microsoft Dynamics 365 > Settings > Unified Service Desk.

  3. On the Unified Service Desk page, choose Hosted Controls.

  4. On the Hosted Controls page, search for the QsExternalApp, and open it for editing.

  5. On the QsExternalApp page, click the down arrow next to the hosted control name, and then click UII Actions.

  6. On the next page, click Add New UII Action.

  7. Type the name as UpdateFirstName, and click Save & Close. This will add the action in the previous page.

  8. Similarly, add the following two actions: UpdateLastName and UpdateAddress. All the three actions become available for the QsExternalApp hosted control.

    Available UII actions for a hosted control

  9. Follow steps 4 through 8 to create three UII actions with the same names for the QsExternalWebApp hosted control.

Test the hosted control

Before you test the UII Windows Forms hosted control, ensure that your sample web application is running so that it renders within Unified Service Desk.

  1. Run the Unified Service Desk client to connect to your Dynamics 365 server.

  2. On successful sign in, you’ll see three hosted controls: Sample UII Windows Forms Hosted Control, Sample External Web Application, and Sample External Application.

    Sample hosted controls available

  3. Choose Search, and then choose Contacts. Choose any of the contacts to display the contact details in a session. This also displays the first name, last name, street address, and ID of the currently displayed contact record in all the three sample controls as shown in the following illustration.

    Sample controls in USD with contact information

  4. Change the values in Sample UII Windows Forms Hosted Control, and click Update values in hosted apps to update the values in the other two external applications.

    Sample controls with updated values

  5. In Sample UII Windows Forms Hosted Control, click Update context to update the context information in Unified Service Desk.

    Values updated in the USD context

See Also

Use UII hosted controls with Unified Service Desk
Walkthrough: Create a UII WPF Hosted Control

Unified Service Desk 2.0

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