Dynamics 365 Tips and Tricks – Use PCF controls

If you customize Dynamics 365 or model driven Power Apps, you should use PCF controls to surface data or simplify data entry. Here are a few of our favorites…

What is a PCF control?

Let’s start with defining a PCF control. PCF stands for PowerApps Component Framework. PCF is a new way to create custom controls for model-driven apps. More info at Microsoft Docs.

Where can you get a PCF control?

PCF.Gallery is the best site that we have found to discover PCF controls for our clients. We have a set of favorite controls, let’s walk through a few.

Address Autocomplete by Andrew Butenko

This control uses the Google Places API to lookup addresses while you type them in. Start filling in the street address, and the very responsive control looks for addresses throughout the US and the world to find the exact address and fill in the fields on your form. The control autocompletes Street, City, State, Post Code as well as country, county and latitude and longitude. Using this control ensures a higher level of data quality in your application.

Find out more here

Colorful Optionset by Diana Birkelbach

For years Dynamics 365 developers could set a color for each choice in an optionset (Choice) field, but there was not much you could do with these colors.

By implementing the Colorful Optionset PCF control, Choice fields now show a colorful dot next to each choice which makes it easy to quickly see the value selected. We have some clients who have multiple choice fields in a selection, all using the same set of global choices. Being able to quickly scan through this section by looking at the color of the dot makes it easy to differentiate between values selected.

Find out more here

Lookup Dropdown PCF by David Rivard

Sometimes an optionset isn’t the best method to allow users to select from a number of choices. Optionsets can be difficult to manage – there is no easy way to deactivate values and adding new values requires a system administrator.

That’s why we like creating Lookup fields with a selection of choices and allowing users to append the lookup values to their parent record. But the appearance left something to be desired.

This PCF control changes the appearance of the lookup to that of a choice field, with the option of having a graphic or emoji as part of the selection list.

Find out more here

How can we help?

If you have questions about utilizing PCF controls, contact the experts at enCloud9.

In addition, we’d love to hear about your business and discuss how our custom Microsoft Dynamics 365 solutions can work with your business and its specific needs.

From platform selection to licensing to implementation and go live, we guide you every step of the way. Once you are live, enCloud9’s Dynamics 365 Management Services support your users and keep your system up-to-date and running smoothly. To learn more, contact us today.