MS CRM :: When is ‘Secondary Entity’ required
The following 2 messages require the ‘Secondary Entity’ to be specified while registering a step in Plugin registration:
- SetRelated
- RemoveRelated
These two methods were extensively used in Dynamics CRM 4.0, but they were deprecated from Dynamics CRM 2011 onwards; although you can still use them in 2011 and 2013.
What are the supported ‘Secondary Entities’
Following is the table depicting the out-of-the-box ‘Primary Entity’ and ‘Secondary Entity’ that are supported for both ‘SetRelated’ and ‘RemoveRelated’ messages:
| Primary Entity | Secondary Entity | Supported Relationships |
|---|---|---|
| Invoice | Contact | contactinvoices_association |
| Lead | Account | accountleads_association |
| Lead | Contact | contactleads_association |
| Opportunity | Account | opportunity_customer_accounts |
| Opportunity | Contact | opportunity_customer_contacts |
| Opportunity | Competitor | opportunitycompetitors_associationor |
| Product | Lead | leadproduct_association |
| Product | Competitor | competitorproduct_association |
| Quote | Contact | contactquotes_association |
| SalesLiterature | Competitor | competitorsalesliterature_association |
| SalesLiterature | Product | productsalesliterature_association |
| SalesOrder | Contact | contactorders_association |
You can also find this entire list in the Dynamics CRM SDK,
What does ‘SetRelated’ and ‘RemovedRelated’ do
These two messages are basically triggered when a primary entity record is associated/dissociated with/from the secondary entity record via the relationships supported, details of which are mentioned above. So, if you’re planning to execute some business logic on association of the above mentioned entities, you can register the plugin against the ‘SetRelated’ message. The ‘RemoveRelated’ works for dissociation of the entity records from each other.
From Dynamics CRM 2011 onwards, the ‘SetRelated’ and ‘RemoveRelated’ have been succeeded by the ‘Associate’ and ‘Disassociate’ messages respectively.
