Registering Plugins on Many-to-Many relationships CRM 4.0

Im taking a step back in time today, back to 2009 and a problem that has arisen again for me today. Im trying to register a “Add” plugin event against a custom many-to-many relationship. Out of the box this isnt supported in CRM 4.0 (apparently it was omitted before release due to more testing needed).

There is a work around that has been out there for while from Aaron Elder I wanted to share.

Step 1) Backup up your CRM Database

Step 2) Run the following SQL script against your MSCRM database

-- ============================================================================
-- Enable Associate and Disassociate Plug-in Events Script v1.0
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
-- (c) 2009 Aaron Elder
-- ============================================================================
-- DISCLAIMER:
-- This script is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
-- ============================================================================
-- While this is obviously "unsupported", I think the fact that these events
-- are not available is a bug and hopefully it will be fixed in a rollup.
-- ============================================================================

USE AscentiumCrmDev_MSCRM
GO

-- Find the deployments SDK Filter ID for the
-- Associate and Disassociate Entity SDK Messages
DECLARE @DisassociateEntitiesFilterId uniqueidentifier
DECLARE @AssociateEntitiesFilterId uniqueidentifier
SET @DisassociateEntitiesFilterId = (SELECT SdkMessageId FROM SdkMessageBase WHERE [Name] = 'DisassociateEntities')
SET @AssociateEntitiesFilterId = (SELECT SdkMessageId FROM SdkMessageBase WHERE [Name] = 'AssociateEntities')

-- Enable the Associate and Disassociate Filters to be valid for custom processing
-- Custom Processing means "you register plug-ins against it"
-- Note: We only do this for the "generic" (OTC == 0) case, just to be safer
UPDATE SdkMessageFilterBase SET IsCustomProcessingStepAllowed = 1
       WHERE SdkMessageId = @DisassociateEntitiesFilterId AND PrimaryObjectTypeCode = 0

UPDATE SdkMessageFilterBase SET IsCustomProcessingStepAllowed = 1
       WHERE SdkMessageId = @AssociateEntitiesFilterId AND PrimaryObjectTypeCode = 0

Step 4) Recycle the CRMAppPool for CRM and open up your Plugin registration tool.

Step 5) Register a Step with the message “AssociateEntity” or “DisassociateEntity”. As expected the many-to-many bridge tables are not exposed in the entity list, so you just leave this blank.

Step 6) Now the obvious issue here is ALL many-to-many relationships in your CRM system will trigger off this plug-in as it cannot be entity specific. I did some digging and the easiest way to limit this to a single relationship is to check the Target input parameters. Typically you would be looking for entity name in the context – this does not exist for many-to-many. The next best thing is the relationship name which can be found here:

string relationshipName = context.InputParameters.Properties[“RelationshipName”];

Do a comparison to the name of your many-to-many relationship and proceed with your custom code if a  match is found.

From what I can see, CRM 2011 also supports the AssociateEntity and DisassociateEntity messages, so while this might be unsupported, atleast Microsoft have continuity in CRM 2011. I stress the code above is unsupported, use at your own risk.

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