Deploying Custom Workflow Activities - Add authorizedType

This is the first of an intended two posts about registering custom workflow activities, and regards the initial deployment; a subsequent post will address updates and versioning issues.

The CRM 4.0 SDK gives a reasonable overview of registering a custom workflow activity, covering the following steps:

1. Building / Deploying a plugin registration tool
2. Registering the assembly
3. Adding referenced assemblies to the GAC
4. Stopping and restarting the CRM Async Service

However, one important point is omitted - adding your activity classes as an authorizedType within the web.config file. Workflow in CRM 4.0 uses the Windows Workflow Foundation (WWF) which, as a relatively new .Net technology, includes a reasonable security model to reduce the risk of malicious code being deployed within it.

The security model in WWF will only allow a permitted list of classes to be called as custom activities. In CRM 4.0 this list is stored in the web.config file in the root of the CRM website, and looks like this:

<System.Workflow.ComponentModel.WorkflowCompiler>
<authorizedTypes>
<authorizedType Assembly="System.Workflow.Activities, Version=3.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35" Namespace="System.Workflow.Activities" TypeName="IfElseActivity" Authorized="True"/>
<authorizedType Assembly="System.Workflow.Activities, Version=3.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35" Namespace="System.Workflow.Activities" TypeName="IfElseBranchActivity" Authorized="True"/>
</authorizedTypes>
</System.Workflow.ComponentModel.WorkflowCompiler>

For your custom activity to be permitted, you have to add an entry as an element; for example:

<authorizedType Assembly="MyAssembly, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken="7766554433221100" Namespace="MyActivities" TypeName="*" Authorized="True"/>

Note that I've used an asterisk (*) to indicate all classes in the given namespace and assembly are permitted; you could reference an individual class if you prefer. Also note that the assembly is referenced by the strong name, as the assembly has been digitally signed when it was compiled.

This raises the question 'what happens if you don't do this step?' If you don't, you can deploy the workflow plugin, and use it in a workflow rule, but you get an error when you try to publish the workflow rule. Unfortunately the message you get is unhelpful; it's a variation of 'An unexpected error has occurred'. If you dig deeper, and enable tracing on the server, you do get a useful message in the w3wp log, such as the following:

Workflow compilation failed:WF363: Type MyActivities.Demo, MyAssembly, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken="7766554433221100 is not marked as authorized in the application configuration file.

Once you find it, this message is pretty useful, as it tells you most of the problem, and also references the assembly in exactly the same way as you need to in web.config

Report Wizard: Query execution failed for data set 'DSMain'

There is a problem with the CRM 4.0 Report Wizard that can result in an error like the following:
An error has occurred during report processing.Query execution failed for data set 'DSMain'.The column 'accountid' was specified multiple times for 'account0'. The column 'accountid' was specified multiple times for 'opportunity1'.

Explanation of the problem
The ultimate cause is how the Report Wizard stores the Filtering Criteria for reports based on the account entity. The Report Wizard stores the query for any criteria as a combination of all fields in the account entity, and all fields in the related primary contact. When the report is run, the SQL query attempts to use the results of the following (or similar) as a table alias:

select DISTINCT account0.*, accountprimarycontactidcontactcontactid.* from FilteredAccount as account0 left outer join FilteredContact as accountprimarycontactidcontactcontactid on (account0.primarycontactid = accountprimarycontactidcontactcontactid.contactid) where (account0.statecode = 0)

This returns two fields called accountid (one from the account entity, and one from the contact), which breaks the main SQL query for the report, and gives the error above.

Resolution
The way to resolve this is to ensure that, when you create the report with the Report Wizard, you do not specify any criteria for the account entity. This will cause the Report Wizard to store the query as solely against the account entity. Once you’ve created the report, you can happily edit the default filter to whatever you want, and the report will work fine – the key factor is not having any criteria when you first create the report.

Unfortunately there’s not an easy way to fix existing reports with this problem – it should be possible to edit the data in the DefaultFilter column in the reportbase table, but this is unsupported. I’d suggest in this scenario that you’re best off recreating the report from scratch

SQL Server: The instance name must be the same as computer name

This is something I’ve posted about on newsgroups, but one of my colleagues encountered it recently, and I think it deserves a blog entry.


The CRM Environment Diagnostics Wizard may throw the error ‘The instance name must be the same as computer name’. The most common cause of this is if the SQL Server has been renamed after SQL Server was installed. The reason is that, at installation time, SQL Server stores the computer name in a system table, sysservers. This information is not updated when the computer is renamed, and the error from the CRM Environment Diagnostics Wizard indicates that the entry in sysservers does not match the current computer name.


You can diagnose and resolve this by using some SQL system stored procedures. One of them lists the data in sysservers, the other 2 allow you to modify the data to reflect the current machine name.


To check if this is the issue, use SQL Management Studio (or Query Analyzer for SQL 2000) to execute the following query:
sp_helpserver
This will return output like the following:
Name,network_name,status,id,collation_name,connect_timeout,query_timeout
ORGNAME,ORIGNAME,rpc,rpc out,use remote collation,0,null,0,0


If the value in the name column does not match the current computer name, then you have to use the following SQL stored procedures to fix the problem. Note that sp_helpserver normally returns one record, but can return more records if you have configured linked servers. If this is the case, it is the row with id=0 that matters.


To change the information you have to first remove the incorrect record, then add the correct one, with the following queries:
sp_dropserver ‘ORIGNAME’ -- where ORIGNAME is the name returned by sp_helpserver
sp_addserver ‘CURRENTNAME’, ‘LOCAL’ – where CURRENTNAME is the current computer name



If you use named instances, refer to them in the form SERVERNAME\INSTANCENAME. It may then be necessary to restart SQL Server after these changes, but I'm not sure of this. It can't harm though if you can.



There is a KB article about this here. This descibes a similar solution, but be warned of a couple of minor issues with the solution - it fails to specify that quotes are required around the parameters to sp_dropserver and sp_addserver, and I have a feeling (though can't provide concrete evidence) that running sp_helpserver is more reliable than select @@servername.

Excel Data Type issues with OLEDB and SSIS

I recently met an annoying issue when reading Excel data in SSIS. The issue was when a column contained a mix of data-types – in this case string and numeric information. The problem comes from the fact that Excel does not have a concept of column data-types, and the issues in SSIS come from the way the OLE-DB provider for Excel attempts to resolve this.

I found the information I needed in an excellent blog post here, and I won’t repeat the content here. One additional point that is specific to SSIS is how to add the IMEX extended property to the connection string. In Visual Studio 2005 (I’ve not checked other versions) you can only do this by editing the ConnectionString property directly in the Properties window – the dialog box doesn’t offer this option. See the image below.