Our guest blogger is CRM MVP Jim Wang joining us from Reading England. Jim blogs regularly at Microsoft Dynamics CRM – Jim Wang’s technical blog [MVP].
CRM 4.0 doesn’t have many out-of-box user controls, such as multi-select picklists. The standard CRM picklist can only save one value in the database, it’s not easy to extend this functionality, in addition, you have to deal with the Advanced Find feature.
You can make a picklist multi-selectable by enable the picklist multiple attribute , e.g: crmForm.all.new_picklist.multiple = true; And then save the selected values somewhere else. However, it does not very impressive the user because the user has to use the CTRL key to select options, which is not user-friendly (Thanks for Alastair Westland (PM @ Parity) who work with me to improve the interface design:)
The script below will draw a checkbox style multi-select picklist control on the CRM form, and then get options from the real picklist attribute. So how to use it?
1. Create a standard picklist attribute with all options in CRM, put it on the CRM Form. e.g: new_picklist;
2. Create another nvarchar attribute in CRM to save the selected text, put it on the CRM Form and hide the label. e.g. new_picklistvalue;
3. Put the following script in the Form.OnLoad() event.
1: 01./*
2: 02.Checkbox style Multi-Select Picklist
3: 03.author: Jim Wang @ January 2009
4: 04.http://jianwang.blogspot.com
5: 05.*/
6: 06. 7: 07.// PL – the picklist attribute; PLV – used to save selected picklist values
8: 08.var PL = crmForm.all.new_picklist; 9: 09.var PLV = crmForm.all.new_picklistvalue; 10: 10. 11: 11.if( PL != null && PLV != null )
12: 12.{ 13: 13. PL.style.display = “none”;
14: 14. PLV.style.display = “none”;
15: 15. 16: 16. // Create a DIV container
17: 17. var addDiv = document.createElement(“<div style=’overflow-y:auto; height:80px; border:1px #6699cc solid; background-color:#ffffff;’ />’);
18: 18. PL.parentNode.appendChild(addDiv); 19: 19. 20: 20. // Initialise checkbox controls
21: 21. for( var i = 1; i < PL.options.length; i++ )
22: 22. { 23: 23. var pOption = PL.options[i]; 24: 24. if( !IsChecked( pOption.text ) )
25: 25. var addInput = document.createElement(“<input type=’checkbox’ style=’border:none; width:25px; align:left;’ />’ );
26: 26. else
27: 27. var addInput = document.createElement(“<input type=’checkbox’ checked=’checked’ style=’border:none; width:25px; align:left;’ />’ );
28: 28. 29: 29. var addLabel = document.createElement( “<label />”);
30: 30. addLabel.innerText = pOption.text; 31: 31. 32: 32. var addBr = document.createElement( ”
33: 33.”); //it’s a ‘br’ flag
34: 34. 35: 35. PL.nextSibling.appendChild(addInput); 36: 36. PL.nextSibling.appendChild(addLabel); 37: 37. PL.nextSibling.appendChild(addBr); 38: 38. } 39: 39. 40: 40. // Check if it is selected
41: 41. function IsChecked( pText ) 42: 42. { 43: 43. if(PLV.value != “”)
44: 44. { 45: 45. var PLVT = PLV.value.split(“||”);
46: 46. for( var i = 0; i < PLVT.length; i++ )
47: 47. { 48: 48. if( PLVT[i] == pText )
49: 49. return true;
50: 50. } 51: 51. } 52: 52. return false;
53: 53. } 54: 54. 55: 55. // Save the selected text, this filed can also be used in Advanced Find
56: 56. crmForm.attachEvent( “onsave” , OnSave);
57: 57. function OnSave() 58: 58. { 59: 59. PLV.value = “”;
60: 60. var getInput = PL.nextSibling.getElementsByTagName(“input”);
61: 61. 62: 62. for( var i = 0; i < getInput.length; i++ )
63: 63. { 64: 64. if( getInput[i].checked)
65: 65. { 66: 66. PLV.value += getInput[i].nextSibling.innerText + “||”;
67: 67. } 68: 68. } 69: 69. } 70: 70.} Cheers,
UPDATE: This technique is actually an unsupported customization. Implementing this will place your implementation in an unsupported state. Be sure to remove this customization before calling support for any issue.