MS CRM 2011: Jscript Upgrade plan from v4

Since i'm going through a few upgrades, I will be sharing with you my wonderful experience. First, we will start with our beloved jscript, which should work until the next rollup upgrade, so it is better to invest some time now and fix it all, then spending sleepless nights later. What do you need to analyze a Jscript? You will need a one blond girl and a jscript expert. Preferably  thejscript expert, who has a knowledge of all customizations implemented as well as new features that can be replaced by old ones. Why a blond girl? Developers are also human beings, they need attention and a cup of coffee brought by a cute blond girl can cheer them up before such an important task as an upgrade. Here we go

Jscript Analysis Steps

1.       Export Jscript with a tool.

http://blogs.infinite-x.net/free-utilities/

2.       Sort out JS by size and type to see the effort. JScripts that are on change are usually the shortest.

3.       Make a list of all jscript codes.

 Example:

Entity	Attribute	Event	Comment
account		onload	SW filtered lookup - replace w/ OOB; user role web svc call
account		onsave	Minor - account name validation
account	new_slcustomertype	onchange	Minor
account	customertypecode	onchange	Minor
account	address1_postalcode	onchange	Yahoo Web svc call to populate City/State from Zip - Remove

4.       Verify that there are no unsupported customizations present.

5.       Identify what base xml or current customizations can be replaced by native CRM features

Pay attention to:

o    filtered lookups

o    field level security scripts 

o    forms with sub-grids

o    custom audit

6.       Create a list of unsupported customizations and plan to migrate your scripts from using crmForm to Xrm.Page.

You can read more about migration at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg509046.aspx

7.       Convertor jscripts, using the tool below.

http://crm2011scriptconvert.codeplex.com/

Dev Upgrade JS Process

Remove jscript -> Upgrade Dev -> Bring back converted Jscript  -> Clean -> Test

Cleanup:

-          Remove duplicated functions and use library to call one function at each entity.

After a trial upgrade test every entity.

Resources:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg554717.aspx
http://blog.sonomapartners.com/2011/04/upgrading-to-crm-2011-our-story.html
http://weblogs.asp.net/pabloperalta/archive/2010/11/01/step-by-step-installing-crm-2011-on-premise-and-migrating-from-dynamics-crm-4-0-32-bits-on-premise.aspx
http://crmentropy.blogspot.com/2011/10/upgrade-crm-4-to-2011-for-itdiots.html