INTRODUCTION:

If you’ve tried to save a form customization or workflow step recently in CRM 2011 (Post UR 12) or CRM 2013 using Google Chrome or a Chromium based browsers and suddenly realized that your changes weren’t being saved, you’re not alone.

google-chrome


Several months ago the folks at chromium.org started talking about removing a feature that has existed since 1997 in most popular browsers and with the latest version of Google Chrome (Version 37) the feature has been disabled by default.

The feature is a javascript function called showModalDialog that allows sites to open a window that forces users to interact with that window and that window alone until it is dismissed.

The drawbacks of this feature are documented here so I won’t go into them. However, if you are married to Chrome and don’t want to switch back to IE, for the time being, when working with MS Dynamics CRM there is a temporary workaround that you can employ until Microsoft releases an update to restore compatibility.

Please Note: This fix requires changes to be made to the Windows registry on a client machine and should only be done if you are comfortable making changes in the registry. The steps are below.

regedit

Step 1: Open the Registry Editor by going to Start->Run and typing ‘regedit’.

Step 2: In the Registry Editor navigate to HKLMSoftwarePoliciesGoogleChromeEnableDeprecatedWebPlatformFeatures (note: if you don’t have any preexisting policies for Chrome you’ll need to create the ‘Google’, ‘Chrome’and ‘EnableDeprecatedWebPlatformFeatures’ keys under the policy node)

Step 3: Create a new String value under the key with name = ‘1’ and value = ‘ShowModalDialog_EffectiveUntil20150430’

Step 4: Open Google Chrome and navigate to chrome://policy/ from the addres bar.

Step 5: You should see a policy that looks like the following. If you don’t see it try clicking the ‘Reload Policies’ button. If it still doesn’t show up go back and verify you set the registry entry correctly.

policies


CONCLUSION:

The showModalDialog javascript function had its place and function for a long time but these days there are ways to achieve the same functionality in modern browsers, that don’t necessarily block all other windows, which is much more friendly way to achieve the same result.

The workaround in this article is only temporary and it’s obvious from the name of the policy setting when it’s likely to expire. However, it should give Microsoft enough time to prioritize and release a fix for some of the features it breaks in CRM.

Thanks to Cobalt’s Brian Webb for the additional research and links below.

Issues Identified to Date:

CRM 2011

  • Export to Excel is not working
  • System settings are not saved
  • Form editor doesn’t accept the changes

CRM 2013

  • When you try to add an existing entity to a solution it crashes.
  • Try to an export a solution nothing happens.

Links:

  1. Issue discussed and Chromes reasoning: http://blog.chromium.org/2014/07/disabling-showmodaldialog.html
  2. Describes a possible work around:  http://blog.chromium.org/2014/07/disabling-showmodaldialog.html

“In order to give these sites more time to update, we have added a temporary Enterprise Policy setting to re-enable showModalDialog  (see below or follow link). In May 2015 this setting will be removed and showModalDialog will be completely removed from Chromium.”

  1. Sums up why Microsoft was not aware of this issue: http://www.crmanswers.net/2014/09/the-browser-compatibility-cake-is-lie.html

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