Form and view customizations
Part 3 of "11 things to know about customization"
Published: January 1, 2008
Fundamental customization capabilities include selecting the fields to display in the forms and how lists of records are displayed.
On This Page
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Forms |
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Views |
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Publishing |
Forms
In Microsoft Dynamics CRM, you can design how your forms look by selecting different tabs, sections, and fields. The user interface lets you add, remove, and rearrange these elements to design forms that fit the business. You can also reference Help if you need specific instructions for designing the forms.
Access the Form Customization page
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In the Navigation Pane, click Settings, click Customization, and then click Customize Entities.
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Double-click the entity you want to customize.
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Under Details, click Forms and Views.
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Double-click Form.
Views
Views are a type of predefined query that are available to all users. They are available almost everywhere you see a list of records. You will usually see a drop-down list that displays system views that are available. Each of these views has different filter criteria or presents different columns of data.
Open the View Customization page
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In the Navigation Pane, click Settings, click Customization, and then click Customize Entities.
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Double-click the entity you want to customize.
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Under Details, click Forms and Views.
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Double-click the view you want to customize, or click New to create a new view.
Note
In Microsoft Dynamics CRM you can now include fields from related entities in views.
In previous versions of Microsoft Dynamics CRM you could only include the primary attribute of related entities in views. This meant that you could only include the name of the account that represented the parent customer of a contact. Now you can include additional account fields from the parent customer in contact views.
Personal views
As the system administrator or system customizer, you control the views that are available to everyone. You can set the query criteria, select which columns to include, and define a sort order. By default, everyone can create their own personal views by saving Advanced Find queries. Therefore, you should make sure that everyone knows how to do this and focus on customizing views that the whole organization needs.
Views or reports?
Views provide an easy way to retrieve a list of records. But they do not provide aggregations. If you have to see calculated totals, averages, or sums, create a report. If someone has the necessary permissions, they can export the results of a view to Microsoft Office Excel as a dynamic worksheet or PivotTable and configure a report that uses aggregated fields.
Quick Find view
A feature in views that is sometimes overlooked is the ability to specify which fields will be searched in the Search for records box. Microsoft Dynamics CRM includes a text-based search that can help users quickly find records, and the Quick Find view controls which fields are included in that search.
For more information, see Find information faster by customizing the Quick Find view.
Publishing
“I can't see my customizations.” This is a complaint sometimes seen on the Microsoft Dynamics CRM newsgroups. Most of the time, someone forgot to publish their customizations. The form and view customization process requires that you publish the entity so that customizations become available to users.
The publishing step lets you develop and preview a set of related customizations in a production environment without interrupting users. As soon as you have the customizations the way that you want them, remember to publish the entity. Customizations will be visible when users next open Microsoft Dynamics CRM or press F5 to reload the application.
Use one of the following methods to publish customizations:
