Microsoft Dynamics CRM - Forms

In the last two chapters, you studied about creating new entities, creating new records and types of fields available in CRM. In this chapter, you will be learning to add new fields on CRM forms.

Out of the 11 types of data fields studied in the previous chapter, you will be using three types of fields on your employer - Option Set (Dropdown), Multiple Lines of Text and DateTime. The Option Set field would be used to store the employer type, Multiple Lines of Text will be used to store brief description of employer and the DateTime field would be used to store date when the company was started. Note:You already had a Name field on your form which was a Single Line of Text type.

Adding Fields on Form

Step 1 − Click the top ribbon button followed by Settings option. Click Customizations option from the Customization section (Refer screenshot below).

Step 2 − Now click the Customize the System option.

This will open the DefaultSolution window. You will learn more about CRM Solutions in the next chapters but for now you will be using the default CRM Solution.

Step 3 − Expand the Entities option from the left panel.

Step 4 − From the expanded entities, select Employer. This will open the details of the entity on the right window. Expand Employer option from the left panel and you will be able to see Forms, Views, Charts, Fields, and other several options.

Step 5 − Click Fields. It will open a grid showing all the fields that came by default when you created this entity.

Step 6 − Click the New button. In the new window that opens, enter the following details −

Display Name − Employer Type

Name − This field will be populated automatically based on the display name you select. However, if you would like to change it, you can do so.

Data Type − Option Set. As soon as you select the Data Type as Option Set, it will show you the Options panel. Clicking the plus(+) icon creates a new option set item with default Label as Item and default Value as 100,000,000. You can change the label of this item to add four options representing employer types: Private, Government, Multinational and Public.

Step 7 − Click Save and Close from the top ribbon. You have successfully created Employer Type field.

Step 8 − Similar to what you just did for adding Employer Type field, add three other fields as described and shown in the following screenshots −

Number of Employees − This will be a Whole Number field.

Founded On − This will be a DateTime field.

Employer Description − This will be a Multiple Lines of Text field.

Step 9 − Now add these new fields on the employer form. For this, click Forms from the left navigation under Employer entity. This will show you two forms with name Information. By default, CRM creates two forms – Main and Mobile-Express. Click on the Main form.

Step 10 − You can see the newly added fields in the Field Explorer panel on the right.

Step 11 − Drag and drop these fields in the General tab.

Step 12 − Click Save and then click Publish.

Step 13 − You can now create employer records with the updates fields. Navigate to CRM Home → Sales → Employers → New. The new form which will open this time will contain all the new fields that you added in this chapter. You can fill in some details and click Save and Close.

Conclusion

In this chapter, we learnt working with CRM forms and how to customize them by placing various types of fields in them. We also learnt to add as many fields as we want on any form and arrange them using various tabs and sections as per the business requirement.