Customization of the Alphabet Bar for the CRM Grids

Starting with the Update Rollup 15 the Alphabet Bar displayed by the standard CRM Application Grid can be customized to better reflect the needs of the CRM users.

The customization is at organization level meaning that all the users accessing this CRM organization will be presented the same changed Alphabet Bar.

The steps needed to implement a modified Application Bar:

1. Extract and configure the Microsoft.Crm.SE.OrgDBOrgSettingsTool.exe as described in the
KB 2479288 - A new tool that retrieves and changes the Organization level settings in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 configurations is availableKB 2479288 - A new tool that retrieves and changes the Organization level settings in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 configurations is available

2. The tool allows either retrieving all customizable settings for a certain CRM organization or modifying those settings by supplying the name of the setting that needs to be modified and the new value. The setting controlling the customization of the Alphabet Bar is called "JumpBarAlphabetOverride".

3. To actually run the tool please open a command prompt in the folder where the tool and the asociated files are stored and execute
Microsoft.CRM.SE.OrgDBOrgSettingsTool.exe Update MyOrganization JumpBarAlphabetOverride "NewAlphabetBarDefinition"
4. To reset the Alphabet Bar to the default definition please run the same command but pass an empty string as definition.
Microsoft.CRM.SE.OrgDBOrgSettingsTool.exe Update MyOrganization JumpBarAlphabetOverride ""

The Alphabet Bar definition

The Alphabet Bar definition is a comma separated list of label and the search values to search for when the label is clicked.

The default definition for the US English CRM version (LCID 1033) is 
(#:0|1|2|3|4|5|6|7|8|9),(A:a),(B:b),(C:c),(D:d),(E:e),(F:f),(G:g),(H:h),(I:i),(J:j),(K:k),(L:l),(M:m),(N:n),(O:o),(P:p),(Q:q),(R:r),(S:s),(T:t),(U:u),(V:v),(W:w),(X:x),(Y:y),(Z:z)
There cannot be any spaces between character sets.

Example 1
To have the label character displayed as "A" return results for multiple versions of "a" you could replace (A:a) in this string with (A:a|ä|á|æ|ã).
Each character after the ':' separated by a '|' will be searched on for the jump condition.

To update the organization settings you would then need to run the tool with these parameters.

Microsoft.CRM.SE.OrgDBOrgSettingsTool.exe Update MyOrganization JumpBarAlphabetOverride "(#:0|1|2|3|4|5|6|7|8|9),(A:a|ä|á|æ|ã),(B:b),(C:c),(D:d),(E:e),(F:f),(G:g),(H:h),(I:i),(J:j),(K:k),(L:l),(M:m),(N:n),(O:o),(P:p),(Q:q),(R:r),(S:s),(T:t),(U:u),(V:v),(W:w),(X:x),(Y:y),(Z:z)"

Example 2
It is also possible to extend the list of labels and values pairs so if there is a need to have multiple jump points for each letter.
So besides the label character displayed as "A" it is possible to have a range of additional label - search value pairs that cover just a subset of the "A" range.

To achieve this you could replace in the Alphabet Bar defintion the
(A:a)
with
(A:a),(Aa-Am:aa|ab|ac|ad|ae|af|ag|ah|ai|aj|al|am),(An-Az:an|ao|ap|aq|ar|as|at|au|av|ax|ay|az).

In this way you can filter to all the items that are corresponding to "A", only the items in the "Aa-Am" range or only the items in the "An-Az" range.

Microsoft.CRM.SE.OrgDBOrgSettingsTool.exe Update MyOrganization JumpBarAlphabetOverride "(#:0|1|2|3|4|5|6|7|8|9),(A:a),(Aa-Am:aa|ab|ac|ad|ae|af|ag|ah|ai|aj|al|am),(An-Az:an|ao|ap|aq|ar|as|at|au|av|ax|ay|az),(B:b),(C:c),(D:d),(E:e),(F:f),(G:g),(H:h),(I:i),(J:j),(K:k),(L:l),(M:m),(N:n),(O:o),(P:p),(Q:q),(R:r),(S:s),(T:t),(U:u),(V:v),(W:w),(X:x),(Y:y),(Z:z)"

Default language bar definitions for further languages

Thanks,

Danny Feiler