Kids, don't try this at home! : ASP.NET

Dynamics CRM SDK for the iPhone

gperera — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 21:01:00 GMT

About 3 months ago I wrote that we were working on making the Dynamics CRM SDK available to the iPhone via MonoTouch. We have finally completed porting the crm sdk to the iPhone.

If you look closely at the previous blog entry you'll notice we used a "CrmWebRequest" class to perform operations on the crm server, we decided to scrap that idea and make the code consistant, what this means for you is that the code you write is exactly the same for Windows and the iPhone, you can take existing code samples from msdn, forums, blogs ...etc and copy paste them directly into an iPhone project.

Click here to see the full screenshot.

SSRS Report Show Dynamics CRM Note Attachment

gperera — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 10:32:00 GMT

We've had couple of instances where we needed to embed existing image attachments in dynamics crm into sql server reporting services reports. Here are the steps you need to take in order to make it happen. It's pretty straight forward.

Create a new report
Add a new table
Drag an image control onto the table and place it into the column that you want, select 'Database' from the options
Click on the image -> go to the 'Properties' tab -> from the 'Value' dropdownlist select '<Expression...>' and use the following bit of code
```
=System.Convert.FromBase64String(Fields!documentbody.Value)
```
'documentbody' is the field from the FilteredAnnotation view.

EXAMPLE

RESULT

Enjoy!

Dynamics CRM 4 SDK for the iPhone via MonoTouch

gperera — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 22:35:00 GMT

We are working on a version of the Dynamics CRM 4 SDK that will work with the iPhone via MonoTouch. Here is a preview of it creating an account in Dynamics CRM using the MonoTouch C# library. We're creating this to speed up development of xRM solutions that can leverage the power of touch based mobile devices as well as the Dynamics CRM platform.

Challenges so far...

MonoTouch doesn't support web services natively yet, therefore we had to use the HttpWebRequest class to make raw calls to the crm web service. We also had to duplicate Request, Response, CreateRequest, CreateResponse, TargetCreateDynamic as well as all Dynamics CRM specific data types (CrmDateTime, CrmDateTimeProperty...etc).

Sample Code

// IFD not supported yet

CrmAuthenticationToken token = new CrmAuthenticationToken

    AuthenticationType = 0,

    OrganizationName = "MagnetismLimited",

    CallerId = Guid.Empty

};

CrmWebRequest sdk = new CrmWebRequest("http://virtualcrm03/mscrmservices/2007/crmservice.asmx",

    "MAGNETISM", "Administrator", "h3rew3g0", token);

// only difference here is that entity.Properties is an array instead of type PropertyCollection

DynamicEntity entity = new DynamicEntity("account");

entity.Properties = new Property[] {

    new StringProperty("name", accountName),

};

TargetCreateDynamic target = new TargetCreateDynamic { Entity = entity };

CreateRequest cr = new CreateRequest { Target = target };

CreateResponse response = sdk.Execute(cr) as CreateResponse;

Console.WriteLine(response.id);

Dynamics CRM SDK for the iPhone is still in its early stages, we plan to release a public beta by the end of October. If you'd like to be part of our test team please contact me.

Dynamics CRM 4 Mobile Express Released!

gperera — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 05:07:00 GMT

Mobile Express for Dynamics CRM is now available for free from Microsoft. You can download it from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=f592ec6c-f412-4fd5-9a80-cd3bcbd26d8b

Here it is running on the iPhone

Main	Accounts

Active Accounts	New Account

Dynamics CRM Workflow - Automatically Email any Report generated in CRM as a PDF attachment

gperera — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 03:43:00 GMT

Time for another Dynamics CRM goodie...

We try to automate as many things as we can, automatically sending invoices is one of them. Workflow as you know in Dynamics CRM is very powerful, specially the ability to create custom activities and hook into the pipeline. We took advantage of this, we created a custom workflow activity that takes in any entity, Email and a Report, automatically turn it into a PDF, attach it to the email and send the email.

Take a look at this 5 minute video to see how it works. If you're interested in using this in your organization contact me via this link.

Under The Hood

Report2Pdf
This class does the heavy lifting, it has a method called Download, connects to the report server, configures the parameters and renders the report as a PDF then returns a byte array.


public class Report2Pdf

    public static byte[] Download(string rsUrl, string rseUrl,

        System.Net.NetworkCredential credentials, string report,

        Report2PdfParameter[] inputParameters, string culture)

Workflow Activity
Straight forward, read the configuration data, makes a call to the Report2Pdf.Download method, creates an activitymimeattachment then executes a SendEmailRequest.

byte[] data = Report2Pdf.Download(config.Url, config.ExecutionUrl,

    new NetworkCredential(config.UserName, config.Password, config.Domain),

    report.Location, rps.ToArray(), config.Culture);

LINQ and Dynamics CRM
Thanks to Amanda and the team at XrmLinq for giving us access to their library. This has made data access so much easier. Something that would take atleast 10-20 lines of code and a lot of effort messing around with FetchXml has now been reduced to 3 lines and LINQ!


var config = (from c in xrm.ReportServerConfigurations

              where c.ReportServerConfigurationId == report.ConfigurationId

              select c).SingleOrDefault();

Dynamics CRM 4 - Progress Bar

gperera — Tue, 05 May 2009 09:27:00 GMT

I was browsing the dynamics forums the other day and saw a post asking about the progress bar in CRM, we created one awhile back, here it is for anyone else that's looking for something similar.

Click here to download a working sample.

What you'll need

jQuery 1.3.2
step.gif
statusbar.gif - You can get this from the /_imgs/ folder in CRM

crmprogressbar.js
function crmProgressBar(id) { this.bar = $("#" + id); this.bar.css({ 'height': '23px', 'width': '357px', 'background': 'transparent url(img/statusbar.gif) no-repeat' }); this.bar.find("div").css({ 'height': '19px', 'width': '1px', 'background': 'transparent url(img/step.gif) repeat-x', 'position': 'relative', 'top': '2px', 'left': '3px' }); this.step = function(percentage) { var width = parseInt((percentage / 100) * 351); if (width > 351) { width = 351; } this.bar.find("div").css({ 'width': width + 'px' }); } }
Example

Create a new html file
Create a new javascript file and copy the above code into it
Include a reference to the jQuery javascript library
Include a reference to the javascript in your html file
Add a "div" tag to the html file and give it an "id"
Add another "div" tag inside the "div" you created in step 4. and put a blank space
To initialize the progress bar; create a new variable to hold the progress bar, then create a new instance of the progress bar by specifying the "id" of the div you created in step 4.
eg: var progressBar1 = new crmProgressBar("id-of-div");
To step/increment the progress bar use the step() instance method
eg: progressBar1.step(10); // will increment to 10%;

<div id="p1"> <div>  </div> </div> <script type="text/javascript"> var i = 5; var cpb = null; $(document).ready(function() { cpb = new crmProgressBar("p1"); increment(); }); function increment() { if (i <= 100) { i += 5; cpb.step(i); setTimeout(increment, 1000); } } </script>

Web Form to Dynamics CRM 4

gperera — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 11:38:00 GMT

We've decided to release another component we've been using internally. This little webcontrol allows you put pass data from a Web Form to Dynamics CRM 4.

How does it work?
Create a UserControl to layout the form.

<%@ Control Language="C#" %>
Topic:
<asp:TextBox ID="topic" runat="server" /><br />
First Name:
<asp:TextBox ID="firstname" runat="server" /><br />
Rating:
<asp:DropDownList ID="rating" runat="server">
    <asp:ListItem Text="Hot" Value="1"></asp:ListItem>
    <asp:ListItem Text="Warm" Value="2"></asp:ListItem>
    <asp:ListItem Text="Cold" Value="3"></asp:ListItem>
</asp:DropDownList>
<br />
<br />
<asp:Button ID="submit" runat="server" Text="Add to CRM" />

Next we add the Web2EntityControl into our .aspx page and configure the connection settings (Url, Username, Password, Domain ...etc of CRM) as well as Mappings.
For example:
Which field in Dynamics CRM should the topic field (from above) map to?

Here is a sample configration

<magnetism:Web2EntityControl ID="leadform" runat="server" SkinPath="~/lead.ascx"
    Async="true">
    <Settings Url="http://virtualcrm/mscrmservices/2007/crmservice.asmx" 
        Domain="MAGNETISM" OrganizationName="Demo" UserName="Administrator" 
        Password="itsasecret" EntityName="lead" />
    <Mappings>
        <magnetism:Mapping CrmFieldSchemaName="subject" CrmFieldType="NVarChar"
        ControlID="topic" ValuePropertyName="Text" />
             
        <magnetism:Mapping CrmFieldSchemaName="firstname" CrmFieldType="NVarChar"
        ControlID="firstname" ValuePropertyName="Text" />
        
        <magnetism:Mapping CrmFieldSchemaName="leadqualitycode" CrmFieldType="Picklist"
        ControlID="rating" ValuePropertyName="SelectedValue" />
    </Mappings>
</magnetism:Web2EntityControl>

This form is mapped to the Lead entity (EntityName="lead")
Topic textbox is mapped to the "subject" field in Dynamics CRM
First Name textbox is mapped to "firstname" field in CRM
Rating dropdownlist is mapped to "leadqualitycode" picklist in Dynamics CRM

This control works with On-Premise, Partner Hosted & IFD installations. This works really well for data entry forms, we use it on our Contact Us page as well as client contact us pages and hand the data through to leads or cases depending on the customer query.

If you'd like a copy contact me.

Enjoy!

Dynamics CRM 4 Visio Stencils

gperera — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 04:38:00 GMT

We have decided to release the Visio Stencils we've been using for Dynamics CRM 4 projects, find out more about them here.

Sneak peak of the shapes you can use on Create/Update (eg: Popup windows)

Here is the Account screen duplicated with the stencil set. You'll notice subtle differences, but to the client it looks like the real thing.

Enjoy

CRM 4 Activity Direction Indicator (experimental)

gperera — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 04:40:00 GMT

I've been trying to change the icons under History for each entity to show the direction of the email or phone call.

Using Fiddler I found out that areas.aspx was responsible for rendering the grid when you click on History, then when you click on the Refresh button or create a new Activity it automatically refreshes the grid, that call is made into the AppGridWebService.asmx which returns the formatted html of the grid.

Unfortunitely I'm not sure how I can hook into the .asmx and modify the returned html.

Leaving AppGridWebService.asmx aside for now, areas.aspx was easy to hook into, here is the result.

1st Phone call: an outbound call which is displaying the custom outbound phonecall image.
2nd; an inbound call, lastly the email is an outbound email with a custom icon.

To hook into areas.aspx create a new HttpModule then on BeginRequest

HttpApplication app = sender as HttpApplication;

// make sure we're hooking into the correct page

if (app.Request.AppRelativeCurrentExecutionFilePath.ToLower().Contains("areas.aspx"))

    if (app.Request.QueryString["tabSet"] != null)

        // check we're hooking into the history page only

        if (app.Request.QueryString["tabSet"].ToLower().Equals("areaactivityhistory"))

            app.Response.Filter = new DirectionFilter(app.Response.Filter);

DirectionFilter will manage replacing of icons. Inherit from Stream and implement the various properties/methods, most important is the Write(...) method.

string html = System.Text.Encoding.UTF8.GetString(buffer, offset, count);

// find the activity type code

int index = html.IndexOf(ACTIVITY_TYPECODE);

while (index > 0)

    int typeCode = 0;

    if (int.TryParse(html.Substring(index + 7, 4), out typeCode))

        Guid activityId = new Guid(

            // look back 44 chrs, from 'otype=' (36=guid, } encoded=6, space and "=2 == 44)

        html.Substring(index - 44, 36));

        switch (typeCode)

            case 4210: // phone call

                html = Replace(sdk, html, index, activityId, "phonecall", "ico_16_4210_1.gif");

                break;

            case 4202:

                html = Replace(sdk, html, index, activityId, "email", "ico_16_4202_1.gif");

                break;

            default:

                break;

    index = html.IndexOf(ACTIVITY_TYPECODE, index + 1);

buffer = System.Text.Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(html);

_stream.Write(buffer, 0, buffer.Length);

Constants
const string ACTIVITY_TYPECODE = "otype=\"";
const string ACTIVITY_IMAGE = "src=\"/_imgs/ico_16_";

Replace function
Activity image is couple of columns away from the "otype=" attribute
IsOutgoing is not important, it's just connecting to CRM and making a RetrieveRequest to find out the direction of the activity.

We'll leave html encoded, we could use HttpUtility.Decode to avoid having to use "ACTIVITY_IMAGE = "src=\"/_imgs/ico_16_""

private string Replace(CrmService sdk, string html, int currentIndex, Guid activityId, string entity, string outgoingImage)

    int imgIndex = html.IndexOf(ACTIVITY_IMAGE, currentIndex);

    if (imgIndex > -1)

        // connect to crm, check activity directioncode

        if (IsOutgoing(sdk, entity, activityId))

            // remove the existing image if its outgoing

            html = html.Remove(imgIndex, ACTIVITY_IMAGE.Length + 9); // ico_xxxx.gif" = 9 chars

            // replace with the newone

            html = html.Insert(imgIndex, string.Format("src=\"/_imgs/{0}\"", outgoingImage));

    return html;

Please note this is experimental, if you'd like the code so you can play around with it flick me an email. Looking forward to hearing comments on how we can get the Refresh icon to retain the changed icons.

CRM 4 Incremental Numbering for any Entity

gperera — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 10:12:00 GMT

UPDATE 08/01/2009
- Project is now on CodePlex (http://www.codeplex.com/crmnumbering/)

MYOB can only take 8 characters and accountants don't like seeing cryptic Invoice Numbers that CRM generate, so we ended up writing a custom plugin that automatically incremented each invoice. Keeping extensibility in mind we made it work with any customizable entity. Here is how we did it.

We created a simple organization owned entity that held the type of entity you wanted to increment, the property/field you wanted to increment and the current/starting position.
The field to increment must be of type integer.

Next we wrote a plugin that hooked into the Pre-Create event synchronously, check the target, get the incremental settings for this entity, make sure the property specified is not in the property bag, increment the current number and update our custom entity with the newest number.

public void Execute(IPluginExecutionContext context)

    if (context.InputParameters.Properties.Contains("Target") &&

        context.InputParameters.Properties["Target"] is DynamicEntity)

        DynamicEntity entity = context.InputParameters.Properties["Target"] as DynamicEntity;

        // simple query to get incremental settings for this entity

        IncrementalNumbering setting = GetSettings(context, entity.Name);

        // system generated, if its assigned ignore this record

        if (setting != null && !entity.Properties.Contains(setting.PropertyName))

            int next = setting.CurrentPosition + 1;

            CrmNumberProperty increment = new CrmNumberProperty(setting.PropertyName, new CrmNumber(next));

            entity.Properties.Add(increment);

            // keep track of the latest id inside the custom entity

            setting.Increment(context, next);

GetSettings call above finds the matching setting, if it finds one it calls overloaded constructor below passing it the Dynamic Entity which then convert the CRM specific types into basic .NET types.

Here is the IncrementalNumbering class.

public class IncrementalNumbering

    public class Fields

        public const string Id = "mag_incrementalnumberingid";

        public const string EntityName = "mag_entity_schema_name";

        public const string PropertyName = "mag_property_schema_name";

        public const string CurrentPosition = "mag_currentposition";

    public IncrementalNumbering() { }

    public IncrementalNumbering(DynamicEntity entity)

        this.Id = (entity.Properties[Fields.Id] as Key).Value;

        this.EntityName = entity.Properties[Fields.EntityName].ToString();

        this.PropertyName = entity.Properties[Fields.PropertyName].ToString();

        this.CurrentPosition = (entity.Properties[Fields.CurrentPosition] as CrmNumber).Value;

    public void Increment(IPluginExecutionContext context, int next)

        using (ICrmService service = context.CreateCrmService(true))

            this.CurrentPosition = next; // set before calling ToDynamic

            TargetUpdateDynamic target = new TargetUpdateDynamic();

            target.Entity = this.ToDynamic();

            UpdateRequest request = new UpdateRequest();

            request.Target = target;

            service.Execute(request);

    // include rest of the fields, but leave it for now

    public DynamicEntity ToDynamic()

        DynamicEntity entity = new DynamicEntity(IncrementalNumbering.SchemaName);

        PropertyCollection properties = new PropertyCollection();

        properties.Add(new KeyProperty(Fields.Id, new Key(this.Id)));

        properties.Add(new CrmNumberProperty(Fields.CurrentPosition, new CrmNumber(this.CurrentPosition)));

        entity.Properties = properties;

        return entity;

}
}

Here is the result

Bit of a hack with converting between CRM and .NET types, keep an eye out for another post where I'll be showing you how to wrap CRM entities so that you're only working with .NET types. If you want the full sample including code; send me an email.

Enjoy!

CRM 4 Custom Workflow to Validate NZ Bank Account/IRD Number

gperera — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 06:06:00 GMT

Recently we created a payroll solution which integrated with Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4, part of that was to validate the Bank Account and IRD Numbers.

Here's a screenshot of a sample workflow. You can download the code from here.

Solution contains a Util.cs class which you can use on your other projects to validate New Zealand Bank Account & IRD numbers as well as 3 workflow activities:

- BankAccountNumberValidator.cs
Validates the bank account number and returns true/false (IsValid property)

- CleanBankAccountNumber.cs
Given a bank account number it cleans and formats it to xx-xxxx-xxxxxxx-xxxx

- IRDNumberValidator.cs
Validates the ird number and returns true/false (IsValid property)

Enjoy, keep and eye out for more CRM goodies...

CRM 4 Preview view render custom content

gperera — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 03:50:00 GMT

We needed to display related entities in the preview view of a custom entity grid, there is no supported way of doing this, so we created a httpmodule, trapped the calls to \_grid\preview.aspx and altered the rendered html.

Here is a snippet of code. You can download the skeleton solution from here.

private void context_BeginRequest(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    if (_isEnabled)
    {
        HttpApplication app = sender as HttpApplication;
        if (app.Request.AppRelativeCurrentExecutionFilePath.ToLower().EndsWith("preview.aspx"))
        {
            int type = (app.Request.QueryString["type"] != null) ? int.Parse(app.Request.QueryString["type"]) : -1;
            Guid id = (app.Request.QueryString["id"] != null) ? new Guid(app.Request.QueryString["id"]) : Guid.Empty;
 
            if (type > 0 && id != Guid.Empty)
            {
                app.Response.ContentType = "text/xml";
                app.Response.Filter = new PreviewFilter(app.Response.Filter, type, id);
            }
        }
    }
}

PreviewFilter.cs

public class PreviewFilter : Stream
{
    private Stream _stream;
    private long _position;
 
    private int _entityId;
    private Guid _objectId;
 
    public PreviewFilter(Stream stream, int entityId, Guid objectId)
    {
        _stream = stream;
        _entityId = entityId;
        _objectId = objectId;
    }
 
    public int EntityId
    {
        get { return _entityId; }
    }
 
    public Guid ObjectId
    {
        get { return _objectId; }
    }
 
    public override void Write(byte[] buffer, int offset, int count)
    {
        string html = System.Text.Encoding.UTF8.GetString(buffer, offset, count);
 
        html = "<preview>Hello World!</preview>"; // enjoy!
 
        buffer = System.Text.Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(html);
        _stream.Write(buffer, 0, buffer.Length);
    }
}

Compile, copy to the \bin\ directory on the server, open up web.config and add it to the HttpModules section.

CRM 4 FilteredViews, LINQ & WCF

gperera — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 08:20:00 GMT

We decided to use FilteredViews instead of FetchXml for an internal project, but we ran into couple of problems. You can't access data from the FilteredViews using ASP.NET since it runs under NETWORK SERVICE (by default (app pool)), FilteredViews filter the data by Users.

If you set the <identity> settings on the WCF service you'll notice it has no effect, you need to tell WCF to run in asp compatibility mode, check this link for more details.

Impersonation needed for FilteredViews
- EXECUTE AS doesn't work, some forums suggested we enable DB_CHAINING, TRUSTWORTHY & grant NETWORK SERVICE Impersonate for each User, we decided to take a different route since these database changes are unsupported by Microsoft.

- Configuring the Application Pool to run as a different user gave a "Service Unavailable" error, changing the User that runs when an anonymous request comes into IIS didn't seem to work either.

Solution
web.config
<authentication mode="Windows" />
<identity impersonate="true" userName="..." password="..."/>
<system.serviceModel>
<serviceHostingEnvironment aspNetCompatibilityEnabled="true"></serviceHostingEnvironment>
</system.serviceModel>

*.svc.cs
Set this attribute on your service class
[AspNetCompatibilityRequirements(RequirementsMode=AspNetCompatibilityRequirementsMode.Allowed)]

That'll allow you to use FilteredViews in your asp.net application, as you can see there are downsides to this solution. Impersonating username/password is inside the web.config file (unencrypted), only allows us to filter by that user.

Check out LinqtoCRM on codeplex, this tool will be great once all the LINQ funtionality is implemented.

Working with Dynamic Controls

gperera — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 01:56:00 GMT

I wanted to find a better way to work with dynamic controls. This is what I was doing before.

Control c = this.wrapper.FindControl("dynamictextbox");
TextBox tb = c as TextBox;
if (tb != null)
{
    Response.Write(tb.Text);
}

as you can see doing this for multiple dynamic controls gets a bit tedious, specially if you need to access the same control from different methods, so after some refactoring and with the help of generics this is what I came up with.

public T FindControl<T>(Control container, string id) where T : Control
{
    return (container.FindControl(id) as T);
}

pretty simple, takes the id of the control you want to find and the control it's in, casts it to the type you specify and returns. This is how you would use this function:

TextBox tb = FindControl<TextBox>(this.wrapper, "dynamictextbox");

we still haven't solved the issue of using this control within multiple methods, so what we should do is create a property.

private TextBox _dynamicTextBox;
public TextBox DynamicTextBox
{
    get
    {
        if (_dynamicTextBox == null)
        {
            _dynamicTextBox = FindControl<TextBox>(this.wrapper, "dynamictextbox");
        }
        return _dynamicTextBox;
    }
}

Now you can use this like any other control.

Response.Write(this.DynamicTextBox.Text);

Storing ViewState in SQL

gperera — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 01:52:00 GMT

The new adapter architecture of ASP.NET v2.0 allows you to do some amazing things, We'll use this new feature to store viewstate in sql.

Firstly you must add the special folder App_Browsers to your project, then create a new .browser file and add the following

<browsers>
  <browser refID="Default">
    <controlAdapters>
      <adapter 
          controlType="System.Web.UI.Page"
 
          adapterType="Sample.Web.UI.SqlPageAdapter" />
    </controlAdapters>
  </browser>
</browsers>

by doing this we are telling the runtime to use Sample.Web.UI.SqlPageAdapter instead of the default System.Web.UI.Page

Then we create a new class called SqlPageAdapter that inerits from PageAdapter and override the GetStatePersister method, by default PageAdapter returns PageStatePersister, we will return our own class (SqlPageStatePersister).

namespace Sample.Web.UI
{
    public class SqlPageAdapter : PageAdapter
    {
        public override PageStatePersister GetStatePersister()
        {
            return new SqlPageStatePersister(Page);
        }
    }
}

in our SqlPageStatePersister class we override the Load and Save methods. In ASP.NET v1.1 we only had to worry about viewstate, but now there is control state, so we need to serialize/deserialize both, we can do this by using the StateFormatter.

IStateFormatter isf = this.StateFormatter;
Pair p = new Pair(this.ViewState, this.ControlState);
string encoded = isf.Serialize(p);

encoded is a Base64 encoded string.

Next we need a key that saves/loads viewstate on each postback. To do this we can store a uniqueidentifier in a hidden field on the page.

private Guid GetViewStateKey()
{
    string key = this.Page.Request.Form["__VIEWSTATEGUID"];
    if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(key) || key.Length < 1)
    {
        return new Guid();
    }
    try
    {
        return new Guid(key);
    }
    catch (FormatException)
    {
        return new Guid();
    }
}

Then on the save method we check if the hidden field exists on the page, if not we add it to the page using:

this.Page.ClientScript.RegisterHiddenField("__VIEWSTATEGUID", GetViewStateKey().ToString());

Now on our Load method we make another call to the GetViewStateKey() method, use this key to retrieve the base64 encoded viewstate, deserialize into a Pair then assign the Pair.First to ViewState and Pair.Second to ControlState. (we assigned ViewState to first and ControlState to second in our Save method).

IStateFormatter isf = this.StateFormatter;
Pair p = (Pair)isf.Deserialize(dr["Value"].ToString());
 
this.ViewState = p.First;
this.ControlState = p.Second;

assume dr is a SqlDataReader. Thats it!

If you have lots of controls on a page with viewstate enabled, specially datagrids this will reduce the page size considerably, but your pages will be slightly slower because you are hitting sql all the time, so do some tests and find out if viewstate on the page is better or sql is better.

Enjoy