Clone a Record with a Notification Message

Trying to find the right words for a title to convey succinctly what I am trying to say is not my strong suit…

Within my organisation we occasionally have the need to create repeating records on an annual (or more frequent) basis, e.g. SWOT Analysis, Anti-Money Laundering checks, etc.  In order to preserve the original record we will lock it after a certain period of time to prevent changes being made, and therefore encourage the users to create a new record instead to record any updates.

To make it as easy as possible for the users to maintain the records, we wanted to add a simple notification to the record with an option to Clone the existing record.

The functionality above was really easy to implement using the Notify.js solution created by Paul Nieuwelaar of Magnetism Solutions Limited. (Incidentally, Paul also created the Process.js and Alert.js solutions which I would also highly recommend).

Paul’s documentation is really clear, so even a coding novice like me could put it to use really quickly.  In order to add the Clone function, I found a script posted by Neeraj Agrawal on the Dynamics 365 blogs; the script uses entity mappings from a 1:N entity relationship to make cloning the record simple.

All that was left to do was to combine the code and add it to my form.  The code I used is below (though please excuse the wordpress formatting!):

function addLockedNotification()
{
var daysSinceCreation = Xrm.Page.getAttribute("hr_dayssincecreation").getValue();
var recordStatus = Xrm.Page.getAttribute("statecode").getValue();

if (recordStatus == 1){Notify.remove("locked");}

else if (daysSinceCreation > 5)
{
Notify.add ("This record is locked. To update the SWOT Analysis, please Clone this Record", 
"INFO", 
"locked", 
[ 
{type: "button", text: "Create Clone", callback: function clone() {
var entityId = Xrm.Page.data.entity.getId();
var entityName = Xrm.Page.data.entity.getEntityName();
var clone_params = {};
var options = { openInNewWindow: true }; // to open record in new window
clone_params["hr_previousswotanalysis"] = entityId 
clone_params["_CreateFromId"] = entityId;
clone_params["_CreateFromType"] = Xrm.Page.context.getQueryStringParameters().etc;
Xrm.Utility.openEntityForm(entityName, null, clone_params, options);
} 
}, 
{type: "link", text: "Not now", callback: function () {Notify.remove("locked");}}
]
);
}
}
}

As you’d expect with code from a random blog on the internet, no warranty is expressed or implied, use at your own risk, etc.