What is the suggested approach to build custom UI views by querying web services in Dynamis CRM 2013?

Question

This could have been already discussed but in context of Dynamics CRM 2013, I am wondering what is the recommended and easiest approach (mine is a on-premise deployment) :

Problem :

May be a known pain point with 2013 - Users want to see 'All Activities' of a Company and related Contacts, Child Companies but excluding few activities (like campaign emails).

Solution :

Thinking to create a custom form or a web resource which can use CRM web services to query for this data and make it part of the Company form.

Question is :

What is an easy way to do a custom page where I can use CRM web services to query for all activities data and filter campaign emails and display it like a grid ? I see two options :

1. Develop a separate aspx web application(using SDK binaries as references and crm web services) and host that outside of CRM (in IIS) and use that url in an IFrame within company form.
2. Develop this as a html webresource (with a grid) and somehow make crm web services call from java script and display as a web resource (If so, is this easy in CRM 2013, since web api is only present in 2016 ?)

Or something else ? (like a SSRS report may be but I think it will be too slow)

Many thanks for your advise on this.

Thank you.

Answer 1

I work for an organization where most of the times requirements is like yours, so i have already done a separate aspx web application like your option 1.

Following are the few things to keep in mind:

If you go with Option 1 and develop a custom aspx web application and host it in IIS, it will be alot easier to maintain in future and easy to customize based on new requirements. If you have any new requirements like this in future, it will be easy to add a new aspx WebForm to the existing site and refer that new url. You can have common classes for Connection and authentication stuff in your web-application, which is almost re-usable. I have used the same approach as described here: Best Practices for Working with Custom ASP.NET Pages and Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011

In case of Option 2, i have tried this once but it is a bit more complex than the Option 1 because it involves more JavaScript code than C#. It is difficult to maintain although will be a bit-fast than the Custom Web App, but not re-usable code in case new requirements. Also Queries in C# (QueryExpression) is way more easy to write than writing Odata Queries in JavaScript.

Thanks.