Integration of CRM.Designer & Aurea CRM.Web

CRM.Designer holds the configuration of CRM.Web and allows the administrator to add customization to change the look and feel of the application.

Aurea CRM.Web setup consists of the Aurea CRM.Web application framework which is composed by a set of DLL’s and ASPX pages, and the UPDATE_DEFAULT configuration. Together they form the Aurea CRM.Web application. The CRM.Designer database stores the UPDATE_DEFAULT configuration, and the Aurea CRM.Web application framework connects and accesses it online.

If you want to change the contents or functionality of info area views, navigation, processes, texts or many other areas of the application, you must define your configuration derived from the default and implement your changes in the database with CRM.Designer.

How does it work?

Aurea CRM.Web needs online access to the CRM.Designer database using ADO.NET for MS SQL. The connection string is read from the settings.xml file stored on update.configuration/OleDbDsn. Aurea CRM.Web reads the necessary data from the CRM.Designer database and caches it in its application cache.

The update.Configuration.dll reads data from the CRM.Designer database and converts it into XML. The XML files are converted into local objects which are used to control Aurea CRM.Web interface.

Checking XML files

To check the XML files, you need to specify the XMLFilePath entry in the settings.xml file pointing to a valid directory on your system, with appropriate rights for the ASP.NET user and set the WriteToFile entry to true.


            <update.configuration>
            [...]
            <WriteToFile>true</WriteToFile>
            <XMLFilePath>C:xml</XMLFilePath>

The XML files are then written to this file path.

Using Debugging Mode

In a debugging mode, you can set the <ConfigurationFromDB> entry to false. The result is an offline mode where Aurea CRM.Web uses the XML files instead of the CRM.Designer database. All functions that write data to CRM.Designer, e.g., list settings, does not work.

Using Cache Invalidation

Aurea CRM.Web caches data from the CRM.Designer database. Because of that, modifications of configuration units made in CRM.Designer are not immediately visible to web clients. To ensure that all web clients get the current content, restart the application by recycling the application pool, or restarting the web server using iisreset.

Alternatively, you can select menu item Invalidate Cache ID_NET_INVALIDATECACHE to invalidate all configuration units cached on the server. For further information, see Invalidate Cache. The next time a client requests a configuration unit, it receives the most recent version.

By default, invalidating the cache is also reload Aurea CRM.Web in the browser. To prevent it set the parameter ResetSession of menu action ID_NET_INVALIDATECACHE to 0. However, this does not invalidate the configuration units cached on the client, e.g., Web Configuration parameters.

For some configuration unit types, such as list fields, queries, analyses, and Web Configuration parameters the server-side cache is invalidated automatically.

Working with Customer Admin Mode

Customers using a SaaS environment can set up a special Customer Admin Mode allowing administrative users of Aurea CRM.Web, to perform small customizations themselves. In this scenario, CRM.Designer is accessed from within Aurea CRM.Web. See Customer Admin Mode for further details.