This is going to be a short blog post – but I think it is important nonetheless. Within Dynamics CRM, the Navigation Pane has a number of items on it as illustrated in the following:
You can customize the contents of the Navigation Pane in Microsoft Dynamics CRM by editing the Site Map. There are a lot of things you can do with the native XML code within the Site Map. Some of the things you can do by editing the Site Map include:
- Reorder the Items listed in Areas
- Add or Remove Entities in the Areas
- Change the Names of Areas in the Navigation Pane
- Add Areas to the Navigation Pane
For example, a client with whom I recentlyworked wanted to expand functionality around Project Management. We created some custom entities for them to try out as illustrated in the following:
Now in the course of this modification, I went through the following steps:
- Created a Solution, which contained my MS Dynamics 2011 Site Map
- Exported my Solution
- Unzipped my export file
- Opened the Customizations.xml file
- Edited the XML to reflect the changes that I needed to see in my Navigation Areas
- Re-Imported the Solution
So what did I forget? Anything? The answer is: “An Original”. Without an original file to reference, I could get into a situation where I need to get back to the “original” or some other point in the configuration process. I haven’t had it happen a lot of times, but when it does happen it can be painful.
A very good consulting practice is to constantly make “Original” and periodic time-stamped “Backups” of any customized code elements in an implementation. This would include any significant changes in Web Resources and JavaScript as well. For my Commercial Insurance project, I went back and exported my “Original” Site Map one more time and created a file structure to reflect it, as follows:
It sounds simple – which it is – but it can save you a lot of headaches if you at least make a few “Original” copies.
Good luck in your 2011 Implementations!
by Customer Effective, A
