Customization articles

Getting started

11 things to know about customization

The first article in a series of articles that describe some basic customization features and concepts. This article has links to the rest of the articles in the series.

Security and customization

Customization advantages

Form and view customizations

Personal customizations

Entity customizations

Transportable customizations

Report customizations

Workflow customizations

Client extension features

Form scripting customizations

Supported customizations

Customization examples

Importing Outlook contact data that includes categories

You can import Outlook contact data that contains data in the Categories field into Microsoft Dynamics CRM.

Tailor activities to match your employees' tasks

Find out how activities are stored, displayed, and entered in Microsoft Dynamics CRM, so that you can customize them to match the tasks of your employees.

Add a lookup field to connect two types of records

Make it convenient for users to connect information in Microsoft Dynamics CRM by adding a lookup field that references another entity.

Default values of Status and Status Reason attributes

If you are planning customization of Microsoft Dynamics CRM, deciding when workflow rules are needed, or migrating data from a previous customer relationship management (CRM) system to Microsoft Dynamics CRM, then you can use the Status and Status Reason reference information in this article in your planning process.

Speed data entry by setting default values

Help people speed data entry and improve accuracy by adding default values to your forms. Even if you've never written code, you can use JScript to make simple customizations that reduce typing and errors.

Display a SharePoint document library in a Microsoft Dynamics CRM form

Customize a Microsoft Dynamics CRM form to display a SharePoint document library.

Find information faster by customizing the Quick Find view

Customize the Quick Find view to search on the data that is most relevant.

State your terms: Use your organization's nomenclature

Change the names of entities in Microsoft Dynamics CRM so that they match the nomenclature used in your organization.

Edit your Site Map

The Microsoft Dynamics CRM application navigation can be customized using the Site Map. Learn how to edit this XML document using schema validation.

Configure fields

All fields in Microsoft Dynamics CRM share some common configuration tasks. This article describes how to: add fields to a form, change field labels, make a field required, disable a field, prevent a field from being removed, control whether a field can be used in Advanced Find, move or remove a field, change the width, add scripts, or set the IME mode of fields.

Using workflows to automate common business tasks

You can use the links in this article to go to helpful and needed content about using the workflow feature for your sales, service, and customization tasks in Microsoft Dynamics CRM.

Blog posts

Backing up your Customizations

It's a good idea to back up (export) your customizations on a fairly regular basis - after you create or alter any of your entities, workflows, etc. This is a very simple process that can make your live easier in the future.

Improving your Searches

It's not uncommon for customers to tell me that they would like to be able to search on more fields (attributes) than those set by default. For example, when searching Microsoft Dynamics CRM for a contact, you may want to search by company name rather than just the person's name. It's pretty easy to add any field you would like to the search parameters.

Adding LinkedIn Contact Searches

LinkedIn is fairly popular business networking tool that allows you make connections and take advantage of relationships based on those connections. You can send messages and request to many connections. Since these relationships exist across multiple companies with individuals you've never had contact with, they provide you with a market to search for new customers, new employers/employees, and new business partners. Since you probably have lots of your contacts in your CRM system, its likely you might want to add them as LinkedIn Contacts. Doing so will give you the view into other relationships they might have as well as you can make a connection to them that will extend past your CRM.

Teaming with Microsoft Dynamics CRM

Microsoft Dynamics comes with teaming model that is built in. It supports all of the security roles and process management features.There are many aspects of teaming in a CRM system.

Integration of Document Management Services with Dynamics CRM Online

Adding documentation management services to Dynamics CRM Online is fairly simple customization that can really enhance your CRM Online application. By modifying the site map, you can add links and references to other web applications. The user can use these web applications without the experience of having to change to another application.

Calculate Opportunity Age with Jscript

Ever wonder how old that opportunity it is. Here's some script that will display a the age of an opportunity when you open it.

Changing the window size for CRM forms

Recently a customer asked me how to open the Accounts form in a larger window. It's a simple matter of a little bit of JavaScript that I was lucky enough to locate the answer in Ronald Lemmen's blog .

Adding Activities to the Contact form in an iFrame

I came across the details on how to do this when reading a blog posting from Matt Wittemann a couple years back. I still use it and thought you might be interested. Another capability to demonstrate the flexibility of the configuration options of Microsoft Dynamics CRM.

Customizing the CRM Lookup Return Field

As you all know a CRM lookup only displays its related entity primary field. Although this can not be changed using existing customizations; in most cases that suffices. However, there are occasions where you want to display another information in order to avoid opening the related entity form.

Implementing Approval Verification Processes

In business processes, there are sometimes scenarios in which certain steps require approval, authorization or verification from specific users to move forward. Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4 can be customized to implement such Role based or User dependent processes. One such example could be the requirement of authorization if opportunity is of more than 10K USD. I will be suggesting few options for implementing such a feature.