MSCRM in Scotland

Adding a Value to a Picklist

I have had cause to add values programmatically to a picklist in the contact entity. It is a custom picklist whose values change depending on actions on another entity. I struggled to pull together all the elements that I needed for this solution from areas on the net so I thought I would post this in case anyone faces a similar problem.

For a new picklist item you need a string to appear in the dropdown box and an integer that represents the choice in the entity.

This is the code I used:

    public void addCourse(string course)
    {
        if (!inPicklist(course))
        {
            InsertOptionValueRequest request;
            int lastValue = 0;
            Option newCourse = new Option();
            LocLabel label = new LocLabel();

            newCourse.Label = new CrmLabel();
            newCourse.Value = new CrmNumber();
            foreach (Option o in _picklist.Options)
            {
                int thisValue = o.Value.Value;
                if (thisValue > lastValue) lastValue = thisValue;
            }
            newCourse.Value.Value = lastValue + 1;

            label.Label = course;
            newCourse.Label.LocLabels = new LocLabel[] { label };
            newCourse.Label.LocLabels[0].LanguageCode = new CrmNumber();
            newCourse.Label.LocLabels[0].LanguageCode.Value = 1033;
         
            request = new InsertOptionValueRequest();
            request.EntityLogicalName = ENTITYLOGICALNAME;
            request.AttributeLogicalName = LOGICALNAME;
            request.Label = newCourse.Label;
            request.Value = newCourse.Value;

            InsertOptionValueResponse response =
                       (InsertOptionValueResponse)_metadataService.Execute(request);
            publishChange();
        }
    }

The important thing to note is that you cannot edit the picklist directly. It is a concept I forget and struggle with sometimes when working with metadata that it exists in both a published and unpublished state. We use the InsertOptionValueRequest method to alter the picklist, adding an unpublished option to the list. If it were just to stay at that then the value would not appear until the next time someone published the entity, although you could see the value in the entity design screens. For clarity my two constants above that are declared elsewhere in the code are:

ENTITYLOGICALNAME = "contact";
LOGICALNAME="new_course"; //the list I want to change

The very last line of my codeblock then forces the publication of entity.

private void publishChange()
{
 CrmService.PublishXmlRequest request = 
    new CrmService.PublishXmlRequest();

 request.ParameterXml = @"<importexportxml>
                            <entities>
                               <entity>contact</entity>
                            </entities>
                            <nodes>
                            <securityroles>
                            <settings>
                            <workflows>
                         </importexportxml>";


 CrmService.PublishXmlResponse response =
    (CrmService.PublishXmlResponse)_crmService.Execute(request);
}

For performance I had put this code into a DLL in the GAC (it contains a library of actions I wanted in a single place) and is called by asynchronous process in a plugin. Having said that the action that fires it will be infrequent and may not actually happen once the system is provisioned and goes live. But either way I hope that I have mitigated any lag when the user clicks the Save button.