Custom activities

In Microsoft Dataverse, you can create custom activities to support the communication needs of a business such as instant messaging (IM) and Short Message Service (SMS). To create a custom activity in Dataverse, create a custom table, and specify it as an activity table using the EntityMetadata.IsActivity property.

However, unlike other custom tables, you can’t specify a primary column for a custom activity because, by default, each custom activity must have a primary column named ”Subject”.

When you create a custom activity, all the properties and privileges of the activitypointer table are inherited for the custom activity. Further, all the activity party types become available for the custom activity, and as a result the corresponding properties are also inherited.

You can create 1-to-Many (1:N) relationships for a custom activity just like any other activity, and also update the existing relationships.

Privileges and access rights

You require the same set of Dataverse privileges and access rights to work with custom activities as those required to work with custom entities. For more information about custom tables, see Customize table definition.

Creating a custom activity

To create a custom activity, set the values of the properties listed in the following table.

Property name	Value	Notes
EntityMetadata.IsActivity	true	Specify the custom table as an activity table.
EntityMetadata.IsAvailableOffline	true	A custom activity table must have offline availability.
EntityMetadata.IsMailMergeEnabled	false	A custom activity table cannot have mail merge enabled.
EntityMetadata.OwnershipType	OwnershipTypes. TeamOwned or OwnershipTypes. UserOwned	A custom activity table can be either team-owned or user-owned.
EntityMetadata.ActivityTypeMask	0 - None or 1 – Communication Activity	(Optional) Specify whether a custom activity should appear in the activity menus in the web application. - Specify 0 (None) to hide it from appearing in the activity menus. The custom activity will appear in the associated grids of only those entities with which it is associated (has relationship). - Specify 1 (Communication Activity) to make it appear in the activity menus. If you do not specify this property, the custom activity is created with the default property value: 1. That is, the custom activity is available in the activity menus. Moreover, ActivityTypeMask can be set at the activity creation time only, and once set, cannot be modified.
CreateEntityRequest.HasActivities	false	A custom activity table must not have a relationship with activities.
CreateEntityRequest.HasNotes	true	A custom activity table must have a relationship to notes.
CreateEntityRequest. PrimaryAttribute	SchemaName is “Subject”.	The schema name of the PrimaryAttribute for all activities must be “Subject”.

Example

The following sample shows how you can create a custom activity.

String prefix = "new_";

String customEntityName = prefix + "instantmessage";

// Create the custom activity table.
CreateEntityRequest request = new CreateEntityRequest
{
    HasNotes = true,
    HasActivities = false,
    PrimaryAttribute = new StringAttributeMetadata
    {
        SchemaName = "Subject",
        RequiredLevel = new AttributeRequiredLevelManagedProperty(AttributeRequiredLevel.None),
        MaxLength = 100,
        DisplayName = new Label("Subject", 1033)
    },
    Entity = new EntityMetadata
    {
        IsActivity = true,
        SchemaName = customEntityName,
        DisplayName = new Label("Instant Message", 1033),
        DisplayCollectionName = new Label("Instant Messages", 1033),
        OwnershipType = OwnershipTypes.UserOwned,
        IsAvailableOffline = true,

    }
};

_serviceProxy.Execute(request);

//Entity must be published

See also

Activity tables
ActivityPointer (activity) table