How to Fix Missing Menus in the Dynamics 365 Unified Interface

Summary

• Some custom entity views and subgrids missing the Menubar in when being added to Model Driven Power Apps in the new Unified Interface.
• Resolution is to Edit Ribbon and Publish.
• Following post describes symptoms and resolution steps.

Moving to the new Unified Interface

If you have been keeping up with the fast pace of updates coming to the Power Platform and Dynamics 365, you are probably very aware of the new Unified Interface. This new user experience provides a much easier, faster and modern experience across browsers, tablets and mobile devices. The great thing is that if you are using Dynamics 365, you can begin to roll out the new Unified Interface for specific users/workloads while continuing to use the “classic” interface for those who are not ready to change.

On one of my current projects I am creating a series of role based “Apps” in the new Unified Interface for specific user groups. This particular project has been using Dynamics 365 since version (CRM) 4.0. There are many “xRM” applications built on this platform.

I have discovered an issue where many of the views for custom entities do not display the main menu (aka ribbon) on the various views or sub-grids in the new Unified Interface, where they do appear in the classic UI.

Within Dynamics 365 there is a simple application to track Travel Claims. A user will track details around a particular work trip, and also create records to track meal reimbursement for each day. After the user fills out the information, they will generate an expense report for reimbursement.

Travel Claim in Dynamics 365 “Classic” Interface

I created a new Unified Interface app for the Corporate group. I added the Travel Claim and Meal entities to the new solution. When I published the App, I noticed that I was missing the “+” button from the sub-grid. I have also noticed that on other custom entities I was missing the menu bar. Without that button, users are unable to add Meals to their Travel Claim.

Travel Claim in Dynamics 365 Unified Interface, missing “+” button.

To resolve I went to investigate the “Ribbon” configuration for my custom entity to ensure that there were no enable rules or other things setup that may make it disappear. While you could examine the customization.xml file, a better option is to use the Ribbon Workbench.

A good practice when using the Ribbon Workbench is to create a solution with only the entities added for which you want to modify the menu. The new PowerApps Maker experience now allows you to create solutions and add sub-components easily. Every day there are fewer reasons to continue to use the old Solutions Explorer under Settings in Dynamics 365.

Creating Solution in PowerApps

Once the solution is created, add the affected Entity. With recent updates to the PowerApp’s solution interface, you can add an entity and specify only the components you need to modify or update. For the case of the Ribbons/Main Menus, we won’t select *any* components.

Adding the Meal entity to the solution

We should now have a small solution with just the affected entity.

Solution with Meal entity. Note that the “new_” wasn’t me!

We finally can load the Ribbon Workbench in the XrmToolBox and load our solution. Notice that there are no “enable” or “display” rules applied to that entity.

I then hit “Publish”. This part is a mystery as to why this actually fixes the issue. I examined the customization XML both before and after I applied this and found no differences.

I navigate to my entity record in the Unified Interface App and the “+ Add New Meal” button (as well as other options) appears.

Conclusion

The new Unified Interface is the future of Dynamics 365 and Model Driven PowerApp applications. I find the interface cleaner, faster and overall easier to use. What is great is that the new UI can be used in parallel with the classic interface.

If you find that you are missing the menu bar in either a view or a sub-grid, I hope that these steps also resolve the issue.

Photo by NeONBRAND on Unsplash

Nick Doelman is a Microsoft Business Applications MVP and is working at converting legacy and classic Dynamics 365/CRM solutions to the new interface and using all the great new features of the Power Platform. Please follow Nick on Twitter @readyxrm