I have been infected with the Program Management cold (again). I suspect our competitors are placing germs in our building's air conditioner. The following post is taken from a reply I sent on an internal CRM mailing list - regarding the method to programmatically modify picklists. I thought it might be useful to a broader audience. Please excuse it's sketchy nature. Remember - blogs are inspirational not instructional.

 

Here is the methodology for getting to the account picklists (but it works with pretty much any entity).

 

ExportXmlRequest exportRequest = new ExportXmlRequest();

exportRequest.ParameterXml = @"<importexportxml>

                                          <entities>

                                                <entity>account</entity>

                                          </entities>

                                          <nodes/>

                              </importexportxml>";

 

ExportXmlResponse entities = (ExportXmlResponse)service.Execute(exportRequest);

 

 

Now you will have string containing the Account ImportExport.xml. Load this into a XML document.

 

Now parse throught the Attributes element looking for picklist attributes:

            <attribute PhysicalName="PreferredContactMethodCode">

              <Type>picklist</Type>

              <ValidForCreateApi>1</ValidForCreateApi>

              <ValidForUpdateApi>1</ValidForUpdateApi>

              <ValidForReadApi>1</ValidForReadApi>

              <DisplayMask>ValidForAdvancedFind|ValidForForm|ValidForGrid</DisplayMask>

              <Description>Preferred contact method for the account.</Description>

            </attribute>

 

The actual picklist values are in the FieldXml element (not in the attributes - this is the trap for young players).

            <field name="preferredcontactmethodcode" requiredlevel="na" defaultvalue="1">

              <displaynames>

                <displayname description="Preferred Method of Contact" languagecode="1033" />

              </displaynames>

              <options nextvalue="7">

                <option value="1">

                  <labels>

                    <label description="Any" languagecode="1033" />

                  </labels>

                </option>

                <option value="2">

                  <labels>

                    <label description="E-mail" languagecode="1033" />

                  </labels>

                </option>

                <option value="3">

                  <labels>

                    <label description="Phone" languagecode="1033" />

                  </labels>

                </option>

                <option value="4">

                  <labels>

                    <label description="Fax" languagecode="1033" />

                  </labels>

                </option>

                <option value="5">

                  <labels>

                    <label description="Mail" languagecode="1033" />

                  </labels>

                </option>

              </options>

            </field>

 

Now you can edit these values here and then re-import the data back to CRM the ImportXml and Publish web service messages.

 

Hint: don’t get distracted by the languagecode …. these are not the droids you are looking for.