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If a Microsoft Dynamics CRM form doesn’t meet your business requirements, you can customise it by adding new fields. Here we show you how to create and add a new field to the main form to address a specific business scenario.
Before creating a new field you need to give it a name and decide what type of data you want to capture in this field.
Hobbies – this will be a free text field. This could contain a lot of data.
Xmas Card – this will be a yes/no field
Reports To – this will be a look up to an existing contact
Next Call Date – this will be a date and time field
There are two steps in creating a new field and entering data to that field.
Please note, in this example, we are adding new fields to the contact so it is the contact entity that we will customise.
Tip: It might be simpler to edit the existing fields on a form, therefore, before adding a new field check the system for one you could utilise. Microsoft Dynamics CRM has many fields on the default entities that are not displayed on the form by default.
4. To create a new field select New
| Field | Description |
|---|---|
| Display Name | This is the display name that is shown in forms and views |
| Field Requirement | Optional – Does not need to contain data in order to be saved as a record. Recommended – Displays a blue cross by the field and does not need to contain data to be saved as a record. Business Required – Displays a red asterisk by the field. Must contain data to be saved as a record. |
| Name | This is the system name of the field |
| Searchable | Yes – Allows user to search on fields No – Does not allow user to search on fields |
| Auditing | If auditing is enabled on your system this option will allow you to turn off or on auditing for this field. |
| Description | Internal description of the purpose of the field |
| Data Type | See Data Types Below |
| Field Type | See Field Types Below |
| Field | Description | Available Field Data Type |
|---|---|---|
| Simple Field | Contains data that is not based on a formula. | Single Line of Text, Option Set, Two Options, Image, Whole Number, Floating Point Number, Decimal Number, Currency, Multiple Lines of Text, Date and Time, Lookup |
| Calculated Field | Contains calculations that use fields from the current entity or related parent entities. | Single Line of Text, Option Set, Two Options, Whole Number, Decimal Number, Currency, Date and Time |
| Rollup Field | Contains an aggregate value computed from the records related to a record, or a value computed over a hierarchy. | Whole Number, Decimal Number, Currency, Date and Time |
| Field Data Type | Description |
|---|---|
| Sinle Line of Text | There is 4000 characters limit in this field however you can set a maximum length to less than this. This field has several format options that will change the presentation of the text. These options are Email, Text, Text Area, URL and Phone. |
| Multiple Lines of Text | When you add this field to the form you can specify the size of the field to up to 1,048,576 characters of text. |
| Option Set | This field provides a set of options. Each option has a number value and label. When added to a form this field uses a select control and only one option can be selected. |
| Two Options | This field provides two options. Each option has a number value of 0 or 1 corresponding to false or true value. Each option also has a label so that true or false values can be represented as “Yes” and “No”, “Hot” and “Cold”, “On” and “Off” or any pair of labels you want to display. |
| Whole Number | Integers with a value between -2,147,483,648 and 2,147,483,647. You can restrict the maximum or minimum values in this range. |
| Floating Point Number | Up to 5 decimal points of precision can be used for values between -100,000,000,000 and -100,000,000,000 in this field. You can specify the level of precision and the maximum and minimum values. |
| Decimal Number | Up to 10 decimal points of precision can be used for values between -100,000,000,000 and -100,000,000,000 in this field. You can specify the level of precision and the maximum and minimum values. |
| Currency | Monetary values between -922,337,203,685,477 and 922,337,203,685,477 can be used in this field. You can set a level of precision or choose to base the precision on a specific currency or a single standard precision used by the organisation |
| Data and Time | This field has format options to display Date Only or Date and Time. |
| Image | Each entity that supports images can have one image field. When an entity has an image field, it can be configured to display the image for the record in the application. |
| Lookup | A field that allows setting a reference to a single record of a specific type of entity. |
5. Enter the details of your new field and click Save and Close. This has now added your new field.
| Form Type | Description |
|---|---|
| Main | Used in the web application, Dynamics CRM for Outlook and CRM for tablets. These forms provide the main user interface for interacting with entity data. |
| Mobile | Used for the Microsoft Dynamics CRM for phones pages. This simplified form is designed to be used for mobile devices. |
| Quick Create | Used in the web application, Dynamics CRM for Outlook and CRM for tablets. These forms provide a basic form optimized for creating new records. |
| Quick View | Used in the web application, Dynamics CRM for Outlook and CRM for tablets. These forms appear within the main form to display additional data for a record that is referenced by a lookup field in the form. |
2. In our example we will be customizing the Main form. By default all entities have only one Main form.
3. Click on the form to open. This will open the form in design view.
4. Select your field from the Field Explorer on the left and drag and drop it to a position on the form:
Tip: You can change the position of existing fields on the form by dragging them into a new position.
5. Select Save and Close
You must publish your customisations, otherwise the changes are not updated in the system. To do this select Publish All Customizations whilst in Customizations.
6. Repeat the process to create new fields for any customisable entity in the system.