Pro-grammatically create Document location records in SharePoint Online from Dynamics Customer Engagement Online without using native integration

Hi Folks,

Have you ever got a requirement to specifically create records in SharePoint without using the out of the box CRM-Sharepoint integration, then your were at right place and this post is going  absolutely help you with your requirement.

With the out of box integration, we will be able to create records in SharePoint when we navigate to OPEN LOCATION under Document Associated grid. But this adds record GUID to name of the record being created. But in our case, we only want the document location record to be created  with the name of the record. Please use the below code…all you need is Tenant ID, Resource ID, Client ID, Client Secret and your SharePoint domain and URL.

This approach uses Access token approach using the SharePoint based Add-in.

Steps to create SharePoint based Add-in. Navigate to below URL…

Ex: [Site Collection URL]/_layouts/15/AppRegNew.aspx

At this point, you’ll need to fill in the following details,

Once you have filled in all the below details, hit Create to register the add-in

Register SharePoint Add-in

• • You will be navigated to a page displaying the details of your add-in. Save Client Id & Client Secret for future references(Don’t forget this step as you won’t be able to navigate to this page to view details later)                                  SharePoint Add-in Identifier

  • Grant permission to an add-in

    Now that the identifier is created, we need to grant the necessary permission for it to perform any action. In this example, I’ll demonstrate how to grant full control access on a Site Collection.

    • Navigate to
      [Site Collection URL]/_layouts/15/AppInv.aspx

      

    • Enter your Client Id value in the App Id option and hit the Lookup button. Details of your add-in will be displayed automatically.
    • Now this is crucial, you need to give permissions to your app. In the option, Permission Request XML, let’s write the below XML code to grant our add-in full control on the given site collection.
    • Just hit the Create button. You will now be prompted to trust the add-in for all the permissions that it requires.                                      Trust SharePoint Add-In
    • Hit the Trust It to grant the requested accesses. You can navigate to the following URL to also confirm that the permission has been assigned to the add-in.
      [Site Collection URL]/_layouts/15/appprincipals.aspx

      

  • Now once you have created the app in SharePoint, you need to get the access token to perform CRUD Operations in SharePoint using REST API.
  • For testing purpose, you can use either POSTMAN or a console application…I have written the approach in both the ways.
  • For retrieving Tenant ID firstly using postman..
  • Perform a GET Request to the following URL..
  • [Site Collection URL]/_vti_bin/client.svc
  • After entering the above URL in the text-box in the URL text-box. We will get the Unauthorized exception on accessing the information. Because SharePoint Online is very much secured and that doesn’t allow anonymous users to access the information for their site. The below is the error message response, after sending the request. Highlighted is your Tenant ID..note it down..
  • Instead you can use the below C# code to get the Tenant ID details:public string GetTenant(string stGetTenantDetailsUrl)
    {
    WebRequest myWebRequest;
    string tenantID = string.Empty;
    string resourceID = string.Empty;
    string accessToken = string.Empty;myWebRequest = WebRequest.Create(stGetTenantDetailsUrl);
    myWebRequest.Method = “GET”;
    myWebRequest.Headers.Add(“Authorization”, “Bearer”);
    WebResponse myWebResponse = null; ;
    try
    {
    myWebResponse = myWebRequest.GetResponse();
    return tenantID;
    }
    catch (System.Net.WebException ex)
    {
    //get the Web exception and read the headersstring[] headerAuthenticateValue = ex.Response.Headers.GetValues(“WWW-Authenticate”);
    if (headerAuthenticateValue != null)
    {foreach (string stHeader in headerAuthenticateValue)
    {
    string[] stArrHeaders = stHeader.Split(‘,’);
    //loop all the key value pair of WWW-Authenticate
    foreach (string stValues in stArrHeaders)
    {if (stValues.StartsWith(“Bearer realm=”))
    {
    tenantID = stValues.Substring(14);
    tenantID = tenantID.Substring(0, tenantID.Length – 1);
    }
    if (stValues.StartsWith(“client_id=”))
    {
    //this value is consider as resourceid which is required for getting the access token
    resourceID = stValues.Substring(11);
    resourceID = resourceID.Substring(0, resourceID.Length – 1);
    }
    }}

    }

    return tenantID;//your tenant ID
    }
    }

  • Next step is to get the Access token..from Postman..
    

                                       Generate the Access Token

    In response header, we will get WWW-Authenticate as one of the header and that contains the necessary information required for next step. The realm value contains the tenant id for the SharePoint Online site and clientid value contains the resource information (we’ll use it later).

    • After getting the Tenant ID, we have to form a URL with the below format
      https://accounts.accesscontrol.windows.net/<TenantID>/tokens/OAuth/2 for requesting the access token.
    • Apply the below configurations in header
      Method = POST
      Headers

    Key	Syntax	Value
    Content-Type	application/x-www-form-urlencoded	application/x-www-form-urlencoded

    Body

    Key	Syntax	Value
    grant_type	client_credentials	client_credentials
    client_id	ClientID@TenantID	4b4276d0-74cd-4476-b66f-e7e326e2cb93@10267809-adcb-42b6-b103-c7c8190b3fed
    client_secret	ClientSecret	nuC+ygmhpadH93TqJdte++C37SUchZVK4a5xT9XtVBU=
    resource	resource/SiteDomain@TenantID	00000003-0000-0ff1-ce00-000000000000/spsnips.sharepoint.com@10267809-adcb-42b6-b103-c7c8190b3fed

    • After applying the configuration, click Send button. That will returns the response with the Access Token.

    

    You can use the below C# code to generate access token

    public string GetAuthorisationToken(string stGetAccessTokenUrl, string stSiteDomain, string tenantID, string resourceID, string stClientID, string stClientSecret)
    {

    string accessToken = string.Empty;
    stGetAccessTokenUrl = string.Format(stGetAccessTokenUrl, tenantID);

    WebRequest request = WebRequest.Create(stGetAccessTokenUrl);

    request.ContentType = “application/x-www-form-urlencoded”;
    request.Method = “POST”;

    string postData = “grant_type = client_credentials” +
    “&client_id =” + WebUtility.UrlEncode(stClientID + “@” + tenantID) +
    “&client_secret =” + WebUtility.UrlEncode(stClientSecret) +
    “&resource =” + WebUtility.UrlEncode(resourceID + “/” + stSiteDomain + “@” + tenantID);

    byte[] byteArray = Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(postData);
    // Set the ContentType property of the WebRequest.
    request.ContentType = “application/x-www-form-urlencoded”;
    // Set the ContentLength property of the WebRequest.
    request.ContentLength = byteArray.Length;
    // Get the request stream.
    Stream dataStream = request.GetRequestStream();
    // Write the data to the request stream.
    dataStream.Write(byteArray, 0, byteArray.Length);
    // Close the Stream object.
    dataStream.Close();

    try
    {
    using (WebResponse response = request.GetResponse())
    {
    dataStream = response.GetResponseStream();
    // Open the stream using a StreamReader for easy access.
    StreamReader reader = new StreamReader(dataStream);
    // Read the content.
    string responseFromServer = reader.ReadToEnd();
    // Clean up the streams.
    reader.Close();
    dataStream.Close();
    //Get accesss token
    accessToken = “access_token\”:\””;
    int clientIndex = responseFromServer.IndexOf(accessToken, StringComparison.Ordinal);
    int accessTokenIndex = clientIndex + accessToken.Length;
    accessToken = responseFromServer.Substring(accessTokenIndex, (responseFromServer.Length – accessTokenIndex – 2));

    return accessToken;

    }
    }
    catch (WebException wex)
    {
    HttpWebResponse httpResponse = wex.Response as HttpWebResponse;
    createlog(_service, “Error occured” + wex.ToString());
    throw new InvalidPluginExecutionException(“Exception occured while retrieving Access Token” + wex.ToString());

    }

    }

    Once we are received the access token, you were all set and we got the authorization to access the SharePoint data based on the permission applied in Grant Permission of Add-In .

    So now we would implement our logic to create folders in plugin…make sure we should be passing the Access token received while accessing share point.

    public void CreateFolder(string sharePointSite, string token, string library, string folder,Guid entityID)
    {
    string result = string.Empty;
    StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
    sb.Append(sharePointSite);
    sb.Append(“_api/web/GetFolderByServerRelativePath(decodedUrl='”);
    sb.Append(library);
    sb.Append(“‘)/Folders”);
    Uri uri = new Uri(sb.ToString().Replace(“{“, “”).Replace(“}”, “”));
    HttpWebRequest wreq = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create(uri);
    wreq.Headers.Add(“Authorization”, “Bearer ” + token);
    wreq.Method = “POST”;
    wreq.ContentType = “application/json”;
    string postData = “{‘ServerRelativeUrl’:’folder’}”;
    postData = postData.Replace(“folder”, folder);
    byte[] byteArray = Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(postData);
    wreq.ContentLength = postData.Length;
    Stream dataStream = wreq.GetRequestStream();
    dataStream.Write(byteArray, 0, byteArray.Length);
    dataStream.Close();
    WebResponse wresp = null;
    try
    {
    wresp = wreq.GetResponse();
    using (wresp = wreq.GetResponse())
    {
    dataStream = wresp.GetResponseStream();
    StreamReader reader = new StreamReader(dataStream);
    string responseFromServer = reader.ReadToEnd();
    reader.Close();
    }
    }
    catch (WebException wex)
    {
    HttpWebResponse httpResponse = wex.Response as HttpWebResponse;
    createlog(_service, “Error occured” + wex.ToString());
    throw new InvalidPluginExecutionException(“Exception occured while creating record” + wex.ToString());
    }
    }

• You can place the Client ID, Client Secret, Sharepoint domain name in Unsecure configuration in Plugin for easier movement of code to other environment.
• Entire code is available here…you can grab it…
• Hope this helps some one looking out integrating Dynamics CRM Online with SharePoint online without relying on out of box integration between Dynamics CRM & SharePoint.
• Hope you enjoyed this post…please post your valuable comments..

Cheers,

PMDY

Author: Pavan Mani Deep Y

Technology geek who loves sharing my leanings, quick tips and new features on Dynamics 365 & related tools, technologies. An Azure IOT Enthusiast.... View all posts by Pavan Mani Deep Y