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MS CRM 2011 REST Service – Merge Operations to Update

The Microsoft CRM REST Service is a service that can be interrogated to determine the range of operations and their parameters. The standard set of operations includes operations for updating objects. These update operations require the user to supply all data elements in the object. Often you may want to pass just a few data elements and only update these, leaving all others with their original values. To facilitate this Microsoft recommend that you modify the message to use a non-standard update replacing POST with MERGE.

To avoid the user having to make extensive changes to the service as received from Microsoft after interrogation, Codeless Platforms have produced a pre-modified service configuration file. This file contains some corrections to the Link/Unlink operations and also provides new functionality.

The existing Update POST operations are still present but now there are new operations which begin with the verb MERGE. Merge operations are similar to UPDATE operations but they update only the fields passed across without destroying any current data.

Importing the service description (.TCWX)

To prepare for this solution you will need to know the correct URL for your MS CRM 2011 REST service and the relevant username/password and domain. The URL is of the form: –

http://YourCRMServer/YourCRMCompany/XRMServices/2011/OrganizationData.svc.

  1. Obtain the new Service Configuration (tcwx) file from the Codeless Platforms web site: Click Here (Note that this will only work with the web service connector build 618 (Service Release 2) or later.)
  2. In Taskcentre, expand the System -> Tools -> Execute tree and double-click the Web Service Connector tool to open the global configuration.
  3. Click the Import button and find the Service Configuration file which you downloaded.
  4. A dialog will appear requesting the prerequisites for this service as noted above. Fill these in and click OK. After the service has loaded, UPDATE and MERGE operations will be available for use.
    If you do elect to open the service definition, beware that this takes some time to view and save.