Disassociate Two Entity Instances in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Using VB.NET

Dissassociate requests are kind of like the "unfriend" in Facebook, you are breaking off a relationship that is defined within CRM between two entities.

This illustration shows you how to Disassociate two entities in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 using the disassociate request against a known relationship.   This example will be given in VB.NET with the DisassociateRequest message against the CRM 2011 organization service.  In this example we are simply disassociating a contact from an account as it's parent customer using the existing "contact_customer_accounts" relationship in CRM.

You can find the relationship schema name to use in the request by going to settings - customization - your entity - relationships.  Here is an example of where to find it.

Ok, here is what the code looks like!

In VB.NET:

Dim req As New DisassociateRequest()

'Target is the entity that you entities are associated to.
req.Target = New EntityReference("account", New Guid("063DE6F9-2E6B-E111-B3CA-1CC1DEF1B5FF"))

'RelatedEntities are the entities you are breaking the main entities association to (can be more than 1 depending on type of association)
req.RelatedEntities = New EntityReferenceCollection()
req.RelatedEntities.Add(New EntityReference("contact", New Guid("C81416E4-9089-E111-ACD4-1CC1DEF1B5FF")))

'The relationship schema name in CRM you are using to disassociate the entities. 
'found in settings - customization - entity - relationships
req.Relationship = New Relationship("contact_customer_accounts")

Dim resp As DisassociateResponse = DirectCast(service.Execute(req), DisassociateResponse)

I hope this helps!