What’s Changing in the Next Major Release

[Applies to: Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011]

This topic contains information about changes that may affect your organization when you upgrade to Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 or Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online Fall ‘13. You can use this information to plan for the upgrade. For information about changes to supported system requirements, see What’s changing in the Implementation Planning Guide.

In This Topic

Removal of the 2007 Endpoint and Legacy Features

Removal of JavaScript Form Scripting Support for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Objects and Functions

Changes to the Document Object Model (DOM)

Removal of Some Ribbon Controls

Microsoft Lync Presence Not Supported in Some Places

Removal of Workplace and Personalization Options for New Customers

Duplicate Detection during Record Create and Update Operations Not Supported

Read-Optimized Forms Discontinued

Get Started Pane Discontinued

Removal of the 2007 Endpoint and Legacy Features

The 2007 service endpoint was deprecated in the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 release. Extensions that use the 2007 endpoint will not be supported and will not work in the next major release of Microsoft Dynamics CRM. Note the following more detailed information:

• Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online customers using the Microsoft account identity provider can continue to use extensions that require the 2007 endpoint after upgrade. However, prior to the transition of your organization to Microsoft online services (MOS), you will need to upgrade or remove those extensions that require the 2007 endpoint. For more information about this transition, refer to the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Transition Center.

• Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online customers using the Microsoft online services (MOS) identity provider will see no change in service. The 2007 endpoint has not been supported in organizations using the MOS identity provider.

• When Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 on-premises and IFD customers try to upgrade their server to the next major release of Microsoft Dynamics CRM, the upgrade process will detect extensions that are using the 2007 endpoint or legacy Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 features. If any of these extensions are found, the Environmental Diagnostic Wizard will report an error and you will not be able to continue the upgrade until those extensions are removed or upgraded to use the 2011 endpoint.

The following legacy Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 features will be removed or will no longer be supported in the next major product release:

• ISV folder support for custom web applications

• Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 plug-ins

• Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 client-side scripting

• Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 custom workflow activities

In addition, the Solution Down Level tool will be removed from the Bin folder of the SDK package and no longer be available. Due to improvements to the solution framework this tool is no longer needed.

For information about upgrading your code, see Upgrade Your Code from Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 to Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011.

Form Script developers who used the 2007 endpoint for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 scripts should upgrade their scripts to use the REST or SOAP endpoints for web resources. For more information see: Use Web Service Data in Web Resources (REST and SOAP Endpoint)

Removal of JavaScript Form Scripting Support for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Objects and Functions

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 exposed global functions and form objects to form scripting with JavaScript. These scripting objects and functions were deprecated in the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 release and will be removed in the next major release. All form scripts for the next release should use the Xrm.Page and Xrm.Utility object models. For more information see Upgrade Scripts to Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 and Use the Xrm.Page Object Model.

Changes to the Document Object Model (DOM)

The next release of Microsoft Dynamics CRM will make many changes in the Document Object Model (DOM). Writing JavaScript code that modifies the DOM is not supported and you should expect that any scripts written using Microsoft Dynamics CRM application page DOM elements will break.

Removal of Some Ribbon Controls

The following ribbon controls are no longer supported and will not work in the next major release:

• <ColorPicker> (RibbonDiffXml)

• <ComboBox> (RibbonDiffXml)

• <DropDown> (RibbonDiffXml)

  If you have used the DropDown control you should convert it to use the FlyoutAnchor control instead.

• <Gallery> (RibbonDiffXml)

• <GalleryButton> (RibbonDiffXml)

• <InsertTable> (RibbonDiffXml)

• <MRUSplitButton> (RibbonDiffXml)

  If you have used the MRUSplitButton control you should convert it to use the SplitButton control instead.

• <TextBox> (RibbonDiffXml)

The jewel will not be visible. The jewel is the blue tab with the label File that appears on the far left of the ribbon. The jewel is also displayed on the entity form. The jewel provides a <Menu> (RibbonDiffXml) element with the Id Mscrm.Jewel.Menu. Any custom commands added to the jewel should be moved to a different location.

See Define Ribbon Controls for more information.

Microsoft Lync Presence Not Supported in Some Places

Microsoft Lync presence will not be supported on the updated user interface entity forms and in Activity Feeds. Lync will continue to work in grids and subgrids. For more information, see: Updated User Experience for Sales and Customer Service and Product Update Functionality and Activity Feeds Entities.

Removal of Workplace and Personalization Options for New Customers

In the next release the Workplace area in the navigation will not be present at all for new organizations. However, organizations upgrading from Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 will retain their existing workplace areas but users will no longer have the option to personalize what is displayed there within the Personal Options. Whatever personal option settings people had at the time of the upgrade will persist. The <Group> (SiteMap)IsProfile attribute will no longer allow groups to be options that users can select to include in the workplace.

Duplicate Detection during Record Create and Update Operations Not Supported

Duplicate detection during create and update operations will not be supported for Microsoft Dynamics CRM updated user interface entities. Duplicate detection of individual records won’t be supported for custom entities as well. However, to detect duplicates in bulk, you can use the BulkDetectDuplicatesRequest message and the RetrieveDuplicatesRequest message. For more information, see Detect Duplicate Data in Microsoft Dynamics CRM. For information about updated user experience, see Updated User Experience for Sales and Customer Service and Product Update Functionality.

The following table contains a list of the updated user interface entities available in the next major release of Microsoft Dynamics CRM. These entities will not have duplicate detection support during record create or update operations:

Read-Optimized Forms Discontinued

Read-Optimized Forms will not be included in the next release. We found low adoption rates for this feature and changes introduced for updated forms address many of the same issues targeted by the read-optimized presentation.

Read-optimized forms include system settings where an organization can choose to enable this feature and personal options that allow people to select whether they prefer to view read-optimized forms by default. These settings will be removed and everyone will see editable forms by default.

Get Started Pane Discontinued

The Get Started pane will not be included in the next release. The Get Started pane provides links to user assistance content within Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011. This content can be customized using steps described in Create Custom Get Started Pane Content.

Due to the significant changes coming in the next release for the updated user interface, and to enable a tablet experience, we determined that the Get Started pane was not providing enough value for the amount of space it occupies in the user interface. The information presented there can be discovered in the improved Customer Center site, which is available in the application.

See Also

Other Resources

Software Development Kit for Microsoft Dynamics CRM

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011
Send comments about this topic to Microsoft.
© 2013 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.