December 2012 Service Update features two new interesting capabilities:
- Custom Activities support for Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online
- Executing multiple requests with the ExecuteMultipleRequest class
These capabilities allow important improvements to the Asynchronous Batch Process Pattern solution described here.
So what’s new?
The lack of Custom Activities support in Online deployment required the usage of a Plugin component to perform the Target Records query and implementing the Action Workflow to each result record.
With December 2012 Service Update Custom Activities support for Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online, a Custom Activity can now replace the Plugin component. This implementation renders the Asynchronous Batch Process Pattern solution simple and robust.
The new ExecuteMultipleRequest class allows sending a bulk of requests to the Organization service in one request, instead of a stream of separate requests. This feature is now used in the Asynchronous Batch Process Pattern solution In order to apply the Action Workflow Rule to multiple Target Records in a single request and to improve the solution’s performance.
I will make the new and improved solution available for download soon.
