As most CRM consultants know, only activity records (Phone Calls, Tasks, Appointments, Emails, etc) entered in the Lead stage will transfer when the Lead is converted to an Account, Contact and Opportunity. The notes will not transfer. Whether this was by design or a design flaw is something the CRM nerds can debate about. For now, lets look at a solution.
The following is a solution I built that will allow users to be able to view notes entered in the originating Lead record in the resulting Account, Contact or Opportunity records.
Basically, I added a tab on the evolved entity forms that will show the "originating lead" notes.
Original Lead Note
Opportunity Showing Lead Note
Implementing the Solution
To put this solution together, you should be comfortable with CRM 2011 field and form editing, solutions, Iframes, web resources and JavaScript. Having a bit of knowledge on OData and REST endpoints can't hurt. The CRM SDK is good resource to get up to speed.
Form Customization
The first thing to do is create a place to view the Lead notes.
On the Account, Opportunity and Contact Forms (you can put this on all 3 or just the entity where you want to see the lead notes) add a Tab called "Lead Notes" and on the tab place a section and an IFrame.
For the IFrame, enter in a name like IFRAME_LeadNote (you will need to remember this for later for the JavaScript code) and for now, put in "about:blank" for the URL. We will programmatically change these when the tab is selected.
In my solution, by default I am keeping the Lead Notes tab collapsed and triggering the code when the tab is expanded. Feel free to trigger on the onload event if you want to have immediate visibility.
Repeat creating the Tab, Section and IFrame for the Account and Contact forms if you wish.
If you haven't (and why not?) download the CRM 2011 SDK
Add the following jscript web resources to your solution from
\sdk\samplecode\js\restendpoint\javascriptrestdataoperations\scripts\
json2.js
sdk.rest.js
Eventually, your web resources should look something like this:
Many times there will not be any Lead notes to display or the Account, Contact or Opportunity records may not have evolved from a Lead. We want to show friendly message that there are no lead notes. I created a simple HTML web resource that gets displayed when there are no notes to show.
The display will look something like this:
Enter the following and save it as an HTML file, then load it into your solution as a HTML web resource.
<HTML><HEAD><TITLE>No Lead Notes to Display</TITLE></HEAD>
<BODY style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #f6f8fa" contentEditable=true>
<STYLE type=text/css>
.style1
{
font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
font-size: small;
}
</STYLE>
<P class=style1>No Lead Notes to Display</P></BODY></HTML>
We now need to enter a script that will do the following;
When the "Lead Notes" tab is selected:
- Check to see if there is an originating lead.
- Check to see if the originating lead has any notes.
- If so, point our IFrame to the Lead's notes.
Here is the JavaScript. I used the REST endpoint to see if notes exist for the lead. For more info on how that works, refer to the CRM SDK:
function leadNotes()
{
//This Function builds proper URL for Iframe (IFD/OnPremise)
function prependOrgName(sUrl)
{
return (IS_PATHBASEDURLS && ORG_UNIQUE_NAME.length > 0) ? ("/" + ORG_UNIQUE_NAME + sUrl) : sUrl;
}
//Get some values from CRM Foom
var Primary = Xrm.Page.data.entity.attributes.get("originatingleadid");
var IFrame = Xrm.Page.ui.controls.get("IFRAME_LeadNote");
var NoNotesMsg = Xrm.Page.context.getServerUrl() + "/WebResources/rxrm_noleadnotes";
//Check if this record was created from a lead
if (Primary.getValue() != null)
{
//Get GUID of lead record
var GUIDvalue = Primary.getValue()[0].id;
//Use SDK rest library to see if any notes exists for the related lead
SDK.REST.retrieveMultipleRecords("Annotation","$select=AnnotationId&$filter=ObjectId/Id eq guid'" + GUIDvalue + "'",
function (results)
{
var firstResult = results[0];
if (firstResult != null)
{
//If notes exist for related lead, show them in custom IFrame
IFrame.setSrc(prependOrgName("/_controls/notes/notesdata.aspx?id=") + GUIDvalue + " &ParentEntity=3&EnableInlineEdit=false&EnableInsert=false");
}
else
{
//If no notes, display a friendly message
IFrame.setSrc(NoNotesMsg);
}
},
errorHandler,
function ()
{
//OnComplete handler
}
);
}
else
{
//If record did not come from a lead, display a friendly message
IFrame.setSrc(NoNotesMsg);
}
}
function errorHandler(error)
{
alert(error.message);
}
Save and add the script to the web resources.
You now will need to add the JavaScript libraries to the corresponding Account, Contact and Opportunity forms. (json2, SDK.rest and the new lead notes script)
To tie this all up, you now need to trigger the "leadNotes" function from "TabStateChange" when the Lead Notes tab is selected on the CRM form:
Repeat for each entity, publish and test!
Note that you will not be able to add notes to the Lead entity, just view them.
You will want to make sure that your users have at least read access to Leads in their security roles in order to view the notes.
Like all things, I assume no responsibility for any of the code or suggestions here.
Cheers!
Nick
