The 'Retrieve' method does not support entities of type 'activityparty'.

[d4hines]

Hello all,
I've got code that is passing tests perfectly locally using fake-xrm-easy, but failing when running in the CRM.

Here's the error message:

Plugin Trace:

[Microsoft.Xrm.Sdk.Workflow: Microsoft.Xrm.Sdk.Workflow.Activities.RetrieveEntity]
[RetrieveEntity]



Error Message:

Unhandled Exception: System.ServiceModel.FaultException`1[[Microsoft.Xrm.Sdk.OrganizationServiceFault, Microsoft.Xrm.Sdk, Version=8.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35]]: The 'Retrieve' method does not support entities of type 'activityparty'.Detail: 
<OrganizationServiceFault xmlns:i="http:https://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns="http:https://schemas.microsoft.com/xrm/2011/Contracts">
  <ErrorCode>-2147219456</ErrorCode>
  <ErrorDetails xmlns:d2p1="http:https://schemas.datacontract.org/2004/07/System.Collections.Generic" />
  <Message>The 'Retrieve' method does not support entities of type 'activityparty'.</Message>
  <Timestamp>2018-08-08T16:01:19.1878484Z</Timestamp>
  <InnerFault i:nil="true" />
  <TraceText>[Microsoft.Xrm.Sdk.Workflow: Microsoft.Xrm.Sdk.Workflow.Activities.RetrieveEntity]
[RetrieveEntity]
</TraceText>
</OrganizationServiceFault>
   at Microsoft.Crm.Extensibility.OrganizationSdkServiceInternal.Retrieve(EntityReference entityReference, ColumnSet columnSet, CorrelationToken correlationToken, CallerOriginToken callerOriginToken, WebServiceType serviceType, Boolean checkAdminMode)
   at Microsoft.Crm.Extensibility.InprocessServiceProxy.RetrieveCore(String entityName, Guid id, ColumnSet columnSet)
   at Microsoft.Xrm.Sdk.Client.OrganizationServiceProxy.Retrieve(String entityName, Guid id, ColumnSet columnSet)
   at Microsoft.Crm.Workflow.Services.RetrieveActivityService.<>c__DisplayClass1.<RetrieveInternal>b__0(IOrganizationService sdkService)
   at Microsoft.Crm.Workflow.Services.ActivityServiceBase.ExecuteInTransactedContext(ActivityDelegate activityDelegate)
   at Microsoft.Crm.Workflow.Services.RetrieveActivityService.RetrieveInternal(String entityName, Guid entityId, String[] attributes)
   at Microsoft.Crm.Workflow.Services.RetrieveActivityService.ExecuteInternal(ActivityContext executionContext, RetrieveEntity retrieveEntity)
   at Microsoft.Crm.Workflow.Services.RetrieveActivityService.Execute(ActivityContext executionContext, RetrieveEntity retrieveEntity)
   at System.Activities.CodeActivity.InternalExecute(ActivityInstance instance, ActivityExecutor executor, BookmarkManager bookmarkManager)
   at System.Activities.Runtime.ActivityExecutor.ExecuteActivityWorkItem.ExecuteBody(ActivityExecutor executor, BookmarkManager bookmarkManager, Location resultLocation)

I'm not sure what would be involved in patching this, but it would have been nice to get this error message locally as well as on the server.

Also, does anyone know a workaround for this? I don't understand why I can't retrieve a particular entity, so I'm not really sure how to proceed.

Thanks a ton!

[jordimontana82]

Hi Daniel,

Thanks for raising this issue... indeed, if CRM is giving that error we should then introduce the same in FakeXrmEasy.

ActivityParty is meant to be used as an intersect entity between the activity (email, phonecall, etc) and the recipients so maybe it's forcing to retrieve entity records against the activity entity first (just guessing here... I've personally never had to query activity party records directly..)

[d4hines]

Hi Jordi,
Thanks for the response. After some further experimentation today, it seems that there were two critical factors, One was the ReferenceTarget attribute on the OutArgument. It seems that a workflow activity cannot return an ActivityParty as an output, so I had to change:

[Output("Party Entity Reference")]
[ReferenceTarget("contact")]
public OutArgument<EntityReference> ReferencedEntity { get; set; }

to

[Output("Party Entity Reference")]
[ReferenceTarget("contact")]
public OutArgument<EntityReference> ReferencedEntity { get; set; }

The second issue was I also had to remove any direct retrievals of the ActivityParty entity.

For anyone struggling to query the ActivityParties, the only way to access was it was:

phonecall.GetAttributeValue<EntityCollection>(prop)?.Entities.FirstOrDefault();

where prop is the
name of the attribute referencing the activity party (e.g. "to", "from", etc.)

[jordimontana82]

Thx for the update Daniel, so maybe I'll leave this a new feature, i.e. Raise an exception whenever a retrieve is made against the activity party entity directly. It would be nice to raise an exception if someones tries to return an activity party as an OutArgument too