Monday, July 18, 2011

Plugin Registration Rules in CRM 2011

I wrote this post a while back but never published it! With the introduction of Sandbox in CRM 2011, plugins can be registered in CRM Online in isolation, which introduces a whole new set of validation and rules for registering plugins. I have created the following decision graph which can be helpful in understanding the plugin registration process and limitations on the CRM server:
image

Additionally, there are these general rules that apply to all plugins:
  • Plugin assemblies must have a strong name (either fully signed or delay signed).
  • The strong name of a plugin assembly (and its types) excluding the version build and revision numbers must be unique in the CRM organization.
  • Workflow custom activities are not supported in sandbox mode (isolation).
  • Sandboxed assemblies can only be registered in Database.
  • Only sandboxed assemblies can be registered in CRM Online.

4 comments:

  1. Thanks a lot for the great post.
    Job Gonzalo.

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  2. Thanks for the post! What does "Is FQN trusted" mean in detail? Anybody?

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    Replies
    1. This means whether the Fully Qualified Name of the plugin is trusted. There is a table in MSCRM_CONFIG called PluginPublishers. You can assign trust levels to specific plugins here. If your trust level is 1 (trusted) then you can register this plugin outside of sandbox without having to be a deployment manager. By default only Microsoft plugins are trusted (e.g. ActivityFeeds plugins anybody can register). However, I don't think there is a supported way to add your custom plugins to this table.

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  3. It is the fully qualified name of the assembly. If I recall correctly only Microsoft signed assemblies are trusted.

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