The solution offers two global actions, one to allow updating an entity without knowing its type a priori. The other allows updating the children of an entity whose type is not known a priori, starting with the name of the relationship.

The idea came from the need to perform updates on entity and/or children (link-entity) following a cloning operation done with the D365 Configurable Entity Cloner solution. In these scenarios, the type of the entity and children is not known a priori. So to avoid writing dedicated components for each scenario, I tried to develop generic components to perform field updates, in a configurable and entity type-independent manner.

• Update attributes on entity of any type.
• Update attributes on link-entity (children) of any type.

Dynamics 365 v9.2+

Build the project and deploy the assembly into your environment.

Updates attributes on entity.

Integrate the action Update Generic Entity where you want to trigger it (Workflow, Javascript function, etc.).

• RecordInfo:

  • "RecordId" as string
    • example D06F15DB-EEA5-4086-996B-47987DDB7628
  • "RecordUrl" (string)
    • example: https://myorg.crm.dynamics.com/main.aspx?etn=account&pagetype=entityrecord&id=%7B91330924-802A-4B0D-A900-34FD9D790829%7D

• EntityName: schema-name of the entity

  • required only when RecordInfo is a (string)RecordId
  • example: account

• UpdateInactive

  • false -> the entity is updated only if it is in an active state
  • true -> the entity is updated whatever its state is (active/inactive)

• AttributesNameValue: a string containing a sequence of Attribute-Name/Attribute-Value

  • format: jdm_field1=>val1<>jdm_field2=>val2<>jdm_field3=>val3...
    • <> is a separator for the different Attribute-Name/Attribute-Value pair
    • the value for the attributes is a normal string: it is parsed by the module to the proper attribute-type
    • to set a null value for an attribute, simply provide and "empty value":
      • example: jdm_field1=><>jdm_field2=><>jdm_field3=>val3

Updates attributes on link-entities.

Integrate the action Update Entity Children where you want to trigger it (Workflow, Javascript function, etc.).

• RecordInfo:

  • "RecordId" as string
    • example: D06F15DB-EEA5-4086-996B-47987DDB7628
  • "RecordUrl" (string)
    • example: https://myorg.crm.dynamics.com/main.aspx?etn=account&pagetype=entityrecord&id=%7B91330924-802A-4B0D-A900-34FD9D790829%7D

• RelationshipName: schema-name of the relationship

  • required
  • example: contact_customer_accounts

• UpdateInactive

  • false -> the link-entity is updated only if it is in an active state
  • true -> the link-entity is updated whatever its state is (active/inactive)

• AttributesNameValue: a string containing a sequence of Attribute-Name/Attribute-Value

  • format: jdm_field1=>val1<>jdm_field2=>val2<>jdm_field3=>val3...
    • <> is a separator for the different Attribute-Name/Attribute-Value pair.
    • the value for the attributes is a normal string: it is parsed by the module to the proper attribute-type
    • to set a null value for an attribute, simply provide and "empty value":
      • example: jdm_field1=><>jdm_field2=><>jdm_field3=>val3

Thanks to all who helped inspire this solution.

This project is licensed under the GPLv3.