Microsoft Dynamics CRM Connector Release Notes - Mule 3

Fixed a null pointer exception error that occurred when using null with a query. (SE-18464)

The connector threw the following exception when testing the connection or at runtime after redeploying. (SE-16322)
org.mule.api.ConnectionException: Error when trying to access the service. This may be caused by incorrect credentials. Error details: org.apache.xerces.parsers.XIncludeAwareParserConfiguration cannot be cast to org.apache.xerces.xni. parser.XMLParserConfiguration.

Intermittently threw this exception: (SE-9115)

Concurrent error execution of the expression payload.next() failed. (SE-6909)

Error when calling a custom action. When calling a custom action, a ClassNotFoundException was displayed even for valid actions. Now the Warning is not displayed anymore in console. It is logged only in Debug mode.

Federated authentication with the Online Connection configuration for Dynamics 365 (Dynamics CRM 8.2)

New "Execute Multiple" operation available

Support efficient/compact data input at execute and execute multiple operations (using Map instances in addition to typed POJOs)

Support to use single transaction on multiple operations (Create, Update, Delete & Execute Multiple) for Dynamics CRM 2016 and later

New customizable metadata retrievers whom cache metadata for data sense as well as some operations (allowing to customize behavior)

Fix to execute operation to allow calling custom actions

Fix to support claims connection strategy on new CRM versions

Use GZIP compression for NTLM connection (through the Windows Anypoint Gateway)

Fix POJO to XML mapping when using the execute operation with defined organization request descendants

Fix parameters mapping issue when executing custom actions

Update to request/response types used at the execute operation to integrate properly with data wave component

Fix to XML parsing when executing custom action with parameters throwing 'A cycle is detected in the object graph'

Fix to request/response types used at the execute operation

Support GZIP encoding when retrieving multiple pages

Improvements on paging to avoid unnecessary fetch

Support to retrieve just one page by providing the page number at the retrieve multiple operation (or within the native query if that option chosen)

New supported request & response types for the Execute operation added

Fix to support paging a large result sets

Handling Owner data type properly when querying metadata for datasense.

Adding formatted values collection to the query results as metadata.

Fixed the ClassCastException during 'Test Connection' and metadata retrieval in Anypoint Studio.

Allow the ability to define a proxy configuration specific for the connector.

When inserting a list of entity references in a Party List data type, only the last entity reference was actually created. Now, all the entity references in the list are created.

An exception occurred against Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online when a token that was expired or about to expired had to be renewed. Now the token is renewed successfully.

Fixed an issue where the security token used to connect to CRM was not being renewed after expiring. Note: Supports Mule 3.7

Adds support for Party Lists

Adds the ability to configure HTTP receive timeout in global element configuration for long running or slow transactions

Adds support for Mule 3.7

Fixed an issue where the security token used to connect to CRM was not being renewed after expiring.

Supports Mule 3.6 (but not Mule 3.7).

Compatibility fix for Studio 5.1.2 due to library version conflicts

Moved connector into new Select category from Standard

An issue was identified where the format dates returned by the CRM Connector were unable to be interpreted by the batch watermark selector. This has been fixed by returning the date in a string format supported by the watermark.

The Execute operation has been extended to support all possible message types accepted by CRM. In order to provide in and out schema to DataSense, the messages are now exposed as POJOs.

The CRM Connector now offers a bulk version of Create, Update, and Delete that performs multiple operations in one web service call. This dramatically improves performance where a large volume of records are being acted upon (approximately 5x throughput). DataSense schemas for each operation provide easy mapping of records into the list based payload.

Leveraging the new bulk operations, the CRM Connector has also been made batch aware. This allows the batch scopes to be leveraged, with the commit step performing a bulk create, update or delete operation.

The Execute operation has been reworked to make it significantly easier to use. A small set of commonly requested Execute messages are now supported with DataSense schemas, no longer requiring custom crafting of bean definitions in the Mule project to invoke them. Note: The revised Execute operation is not backward compatible with the model used in previous CRM Connector versions, so flows utilizing the old model must be migrated.

The form of references has changed to address the case where field names or entity names contain underscore characters, which is common in the case of custom entities. The old notation previously used in a flow is recognized and honored, for example, fieldname_entityname reference, but from now on, express all new queries in the form fieldname referenceto entityname. For more information, see Entity Reference in the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Connector guide.

After you update your connector to 2.1.1, clear the DataSense metadata cache by right clicking the CRM connector project name in Package Explorer, and clicking DataSense > Wipe all project metadata cache:

Added support for Anypoint Studio 3.6 release, allowing the user interface for each supported authentication scheme to be specialized, and exposing only the configuration properties required for that scheme.

Improved the ability for single property override for Kerberos auto-configuration making it simpler to configure Kerberos authentication when not in the same subnet as the KDC.

Some association entities were missing from the list of available entities in the object browser. These entities are now included as expected.

Improved connection troubleshooting: The Test Connection functionality of the connector is now much more robust, and provides detailed and helpful error messages for the most common configuration or connectivity problems.

Kerberos auto-configuration: Configuration of Kerberos authentication is now much simpler for on-premises installations, with autodiscovery of KDC and SPN reducing the need to supply these details. Most installations now typically only require providing the domain account and a password to connect with.

Claims authentication: Support for claims-based authentication is now provided in the Dynamics CRM connector, allowing flexibility of authentication model choice for ADFS-enabled enterprises.

NTLM authentication: It is now possible to use NTLM authentication to connect to CRM via the Anypoint Gateway Service for Windows.

Improved DSQL support: DSQL has been improved to provide better translation to the native FetchXML format used by CRM, covering more operators and exposing more detailed view of the object graph to be returned in query builder. Support is provided for both in-built and custom entities.

More complete object model: The object model for CRUD of CRM objects is now more complete, allowing you to get deep visibility into the structure and properties of messages in and out of CRM. This is particularly helpful for reference fields, for example where one entity has a relationship with another entity.

CRM 2013 support: The Dynamics CRM connector now provides support for CRM 2011 + CRM 2013 On-Premises installs in a single unified connector. Simply drop the connector into your flow, and specify the connection details for your specific instance.