Changing Relationship Lookup attribute name

If one would like to change a relationship lookup field name on a entity, then it is important to change the name of the relationship.

For example, We have an entity called “EntityA” and it has a N:1 relationship with “EntityB”, the lookup attribute is currently called “entityb_conntectedid” and we would like to change the lookup attribute to “entitybid”. Then you normally would remove the relation, and add a new one setting the new name “entityid” to the lookup attribute.

Then you have to change the “relationship name” from the generated name “new_new_entitya_new_entityb” to for example “new_new_entitya_new_entityb2”. Otherwise there will be a conflict when importing the customizations to a CRM system that contains the old attribute making it impossible to publishing the entity if the old field exists on a form.

In the upcoming version of CRM Customization Manager (v2.0) I’ve included a warning message if one tries to import a customization that has a different name of the lookup to the same relationship so one can spot this before CRM gets broken. Also if the relationship is exported CRM Customization Manager solves the problem.

If you already have imported the new relationship and cannot publish / import the Entity, you can fix it by editing the CRM database. Access the table “OrganizationUIBase”, filter it by the ObjectTypeCode of your custom entity, then removing all the references to the old attribute in the “FormXml” column.

Related errors:
Cannot Export Customizations From Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0

Update:
CRM Configuration Manager now handles this.