Form and view customizations
Part 3 of "11 things to know about customization"
Published: March 26, 2007
One of the most fundamental customization capabilities is selecting the fields to display in the forms that users see and how lists of records are shown to users.
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Publishing
“I can’t see my customizations.” This is a common complaint 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.
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.
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 select control that displays different system views that are available. Each of these views has different filter criteria or present different columns of data.
As the System Administrator or Customizer, you control the views that are available to all users. You can set the query criteria, select which columns to include, and define a sort order. Users can create their own personal views by saving Advanced Find queries. Therefore, you should make sure that they know how to do this and focus on customizing views that the whole organization needs.
Views provide an easy way retrieve a list of records. But they do not provide aggregations. If you have to see calculated totals, averages, or sums, look into creating a report instead. If users have 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 Look for 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 Help users find information faster by customizing Quick Find.
