CRM 2011: How to Update record in a Create Plugin?

Question

I'm having serious problems in how to update the record that has just been created with some additional data.

Case: I have an sms activity. On create an sms record. A plugin fires to actualy send the sms. A third party sms provider takes cares of the sending and returns a status string. Based on these string, a status for the sms must be updated.

Here's some of my code:

public void Execute(IServiceProvider serviceProvider)
{
  IPluginExecutionContext context = (IPluginExecutionContext)
  serviceProvider.GetService(typeof(IPluginExecutionContext));

  IOrganizationServiceFactory serviceFactory = 
    (IOrganizationServiceFactory)serviceProvider.GetService(
      typeof(IOrganizationServiceFactory));
  IOrganizationService service = 
    serviceFactory.CreateOrganizationService(context.UserId);
  aContext orgContext = new aContext(service);

  Entity sms = (Entity)context.InputParameters["Target"];
  /// logic goes here

  sms.StatusCode = new OptionSetValue(statuscode); //statuscode is integer
  service.Update(sms);
}

I got a error in the plugin everytime i execute the plugin. Can someone help and explain me what i'm doing wrong here?

Thanks!

Answer 1

As your plugin is executed synchronously, it should be easy to update your entity if you use the Pre-operation stage of execution.

In this case, you can just do something like this:

Entity sms = (Entity)context.InputParameters["Target"]

// additional code to retrieve status

if(sms.Attributes.Contains("statuscode"))
    sms.Attributes["statuscode"] = new OptionSetValue(statuscode);
else
    sms.Attributes.add("statuscode", new OptionSetValue(statuscode));

In that way, you'll just add or update a key from the Attributes dictionnary, and it will be saved as if the value was coming directly from the form.