Transcript of Video
In this video, we're going to show you how you can add extra attributes or fields into Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online. So you might've gone through and you've been editing or changing the forms and changing the layout and changing the views but you might find that there is particular pieces of information that you want to store about your customers and you want to be able to add that information into Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online. That's what the purpose of this video is for on how you can actually go and do that.
In this particular case we're going to go into the System Settings area, go into Customization, and we're going to go into Customize Entities. So, in a previous video we worked on the Company records so it used to be called Accounts, we renamed it to Company. And now what we want to do is we want to go in and add some extra fields or attributes into this particular record type. So I'm going to click on the Attributes section, and then I'm going to go in and I'm actually going to click New to add a whole new attribute or field into the system.
So, I need to give it a Display Name. In this particular case, we're going to add a field called Customer Classification. Now there's all kinds of types of information we can store. In this particular case, so we have different types. Nvarchar is what we term a text or a string field so if I wanted to store a name or something along those lines.
In this case we want to use a picklist and a picklist gives us the ability to define a limited set of values that the user can pick. So we might want to set out for our Customer Classification gold, silver, and bronze classifications. So I click Add and add Gold. I click Add again and I'm going to add in the second value, which is going to be Silver, click OK, and then I'm going to add in a third one which is Bronze. Click OK and now I'm done with that.
The other thing that I can also do, the Requirement Level sets whether or not it is mandatory for the user to fill this in. I click Save and Close, and that's now going to go and create that attribute or field into the system. What I want to do now is I want to add another new attribute into the company record. Once again, I give it a Display Name and in this one we're going to set up a field called Fiscal Year Start Date. I'll pick the type of information that we want to store and in this case it's going to be a date or time.
So I pick datetime from the type and I can also nominate the format to be I only want to store a date or I want to store a date and a time. In this case a date will be fine, I'm going to set a Requirement Level here of Business Recommended. That means that it highlights the field, but it doesn't make it mandatory, it allows the user to save without filling in that field. Click Save and Close to create that attribute. And then finally we're going to add in one more example attribute into this company record type.
Go into the Display Name and we're going to nominate whether or not this is a referenceable customer for us. So we just want a tick box or a yes/no. We set that in Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online by referring to a type of bit and a bit just recognizes whether it's yes or no and as you'll see it automatically defaults that to be the two values and my default value I'm going to set is no, so by default the user would have to tick this to set it to be yes.
I'm going to leave the constraint level or Requirement Level as no constraint which means it is completely optional for that field to be filled in on the form. I'll Save and Close that, it will go and create that attribute so now we've added three new attributes or fields into our system.
I'm now going to go back to my Forms and Views section, double-click on the Form, and what I want to do is I want to go and add these new fields into my form so it's made available for our users. So I'll click on the Account information section, move to the right of the screen where I'll click on the Add Fields, and all I simply have to do now is go and tick the fields that I've added in. So I'll scroll down, I'll find the first one which was Customer Classification, I'll tick that so we want that one. I'm also going to find the Fiscal Year Start Date and tick that field, and then finally tick the Referenceable field.
I'll click OK and those three fields are now going to be added to my form. Very, very simple – there they are on the form there. I can move them around using the arrow keys if I want to. I'm happy with that so I'm going to go ahead and Save and Close that. Once again I will Save and Close the Company record type, and once again the only thing left for me to do is go into More Actions and click on Publish All Customizations and this will now make those fields and that form available for my users.
So just to show what that looks like now, I'm going to go into the Sales area, I'm going to go into Companies and when I click New, we'll see in a second that those fields are now available. So there's my Customer Classification drop-down, or picklist as we refer to them, there's the Fiscal Year Start Date which is setting a date or a time so I can set that maybe to 1st of July, 2008, and then finally the Referenceable, so if I click yes that now means this customer would be what we would refer to as a referenceable customer.
