How Plug-ins Is Advantageous For Microsoft Dynamics Crm Team?

By Author: Dharmesh Aegis
Total Articles: 105
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Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 supports the extension of the platform through the integration of customized business logic, which is known as plug-ins. Plug-in helps in executing a run-time environment that is much richer and offers access to new product capabilities.
There is one method of customizing the functionality of the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 is by integrating custom business logic. Through this type of extension capability, CRM solutions team can add new data processing features to the product. Although Microsoft Dynamics CRM does not extend support to plug-in, it does offer the functionality of the produce through the usage of workflows.
How Plug-ins are different from Callouts?
Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 offers business logic extensions that provide more capabilities and run-time information in plug-in code. Certain modifications in the architecture of Microsoft Dynamics 4.0 took place so that the plug-ins could capitalize on the capabilities of the new platform.
What is truly an advantage with Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 is that it is backwards compatible with the callout programming ...
... model. The existing callouts should continue to operate fully along with new plug-ins, which are developed along the way.
The difference between the new plug-in programming model and the earlier callout model are as follows:
Registration: Callouts are registered through the editing of an XML configuration file stored in a particular folder on the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 server. This implies that it is a static registration method. On the other hand plug-ins are registered dynamically through a new registration API and therefore no IIS reset is needed. The SDK provides sample tools along with source doe.
Context: Callouts are designed to receive a basic amount of data at run-time when the user initiates an operation in Microsoft Dynamics CRM whereas plug-ins get a large amount of information at run-time.
Supported Message: Microsoft Dynamics CRM team can execute callouts only in response to a subset of messages that the Microsoft Dynamics CRM platform processes. The same is not the case with plug-ins, which can execute in response to most messages that the Microsoft Dynamics CRM processes.
Execution mode: As part of the main execution thread of the platform, callouts are executed synchronously. The overall system performance can deteriorate if callouts perform a lot of processing. Plug-ins is designed to execute both synchronously as well as asynchronously.
 Plug-in Capabilities
Identifying and preventing Infinite Loop:

The Microsoft Dynamics CRM possesses the capability to eradicate a plug-in that runs an operation causing the plug-in to execute repeatedly thereby resulting in negative performance.
Plug-ins can receive expanded information during run-time:

Some of the information that is passed to plug-ins includes custom data, information included in the request and response messages that the system processes and snapshots of entity attributes.
Execution dependency:

Plug-ins can be registered in a way that makes them dependent with other plug-ins. Dependency brings an order during execution where one plug-in must run to completion before another plug-in executes.
Database Deployment:

Plug-ins can be deployed to the Microsoft Dynamics CRM database as well as to on-disk and GAC deployment. When a plug-in is deployed to a database, it allows automatic distribution of the plug-in to numerous Microsoft Dynamics CRM servers in a data center.
These are just some of the benefits of using plug-ins as part of CRM solutions and not to forget plug-ins can also be deployed to Microsoft Office Outlook through Microsoft Dynamics CRM with offline access and execute while Outlook is in the offline mode.
For More Info:- Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 || Microsoft CRM Solutions