Publish customizations

Applies To: Dynamics CRM 2013

Publishing customizations makes the Web application aware of changes to the data that affects the user interface.

When to publish customizations

Customizations are automatically published when new items are created or existing items are deleted.

You must publish changes after updating schema metadata or entities that affect the user interface. You can decide to wait and publish a set of related changes together.

Only published customizations are exported with a solution. You should always publish customizations before exporting a solution.

When you perform customizations that will appear in Microsoft Dynamics CRM for tablets, you should always explicitly publish your customizations to make sure that every item is synchronized with the CRM for tablets application.

Publishing programmatically

The following table lists the two messages that you can use to publish customizations.

When you use the PublishXmlRequest message, you specify which items you want to publish by using the ParameterXml parameter. ParameterXML must comply with the Publish request schema.

Retrieving unpublished metadata

If you want to create an application to edit customizable items in Microsoft Dynamics CRM, you must retrieve any unpublished definitions of those items. If a developer defines some changes but does not publish them, your application must be able to retrieve them to display them in the user interface.

Use the following two methods to retrieve unpublished metadata:

• RetrieveAsIfPublished parameter
  Retrieves entity, attribute, entity relationship, and option set data by using the following messages:

  • RetrieveAllEntitiesRequest

  • RetrieveAllOptionSetsRequest

  • RetrieveAttributeRequest

  • RetrieveEntityRequest

  • RetrieveOptionSetRequest

  • RetrieveRelationshipRequest

• RetrieveUnpublished Request
  Retrieves user interface items, such as form, template, visualization and Web resource definitions, by using the following messages:

  • RetrieveUnpublishedRequest

  • RetrieveUnpublishedMultipleRequest

See Also

Developers guide to customization for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013
Extend the metadata model
Publish request schema
Customize entity forms
Customize entity views
Customize global option sets
Change application navigation using the SiteMap
Customize commands and the ribbon
Open forms, views, dialogs and reports with a URL
Write code for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 forms
Web resources for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013
JavaScript libraries for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013