How to Set Your Own Default Views in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011

This is simple but huge. New to Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011, every user can set his or her own default view for every entity. That means whenever you navigate to an entity you commonly access, you don’t have to wait for the system default view to load and then choose another view. It’s a move in the right direction toward an interface that conforms to the user rather than the other way around. This is just one of the new personalization features in Dynamics CRM 2011. Used in conjunction with setting your own home page and creating your own personal views, setting your default views can save lots of navigating time and make your work more comfortable.

We will demonstrate this by setting My Open Leads as the default view for the Lead entity.

Note: This task requires no extra permissions beyond those found in all default security roles. It is available in all deployments of Dynamics CRM 2011, including CRM Online.

1.  Navigate to the Leads entity located in the Marketing module in the left navigation pane. In this example, All Leads is currently set as the default view. Next, we choose the view we wish to set as our default view by opening the dropdown menu listing all available views. To open the dropdown menu, click the arrow next to All Leads. Then we will select the My Open Leads view.

2. A highly touted improvement to Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 is the Microsoft Office Fluent user interface, especially the context-sensitive ribbon. The ribbon intuitively organizes and presents the commands most relevant to your current task. Now that we have opened our desired default view, we simply click on the Set As Default View button, logically located in the View tab of the ribbon. It’s pretty straight forward.

From now on, whenever we select the Leads entity, we will immediately be presented with the My Open Leads view. We can change our default view whenever we want and how often we want as well, and other users can set their own defaults. It’s personal!

If you wish to improve your fluency in Dynamics CRM 2011, you might be interested in xRM.com’s formal CRM Online training. You may also find our CRM Success Portal, which hosts numerous xRM.com produced Microsoft CRM Online tutorial videos, to be quite helpful. To learn more about CRM Online, we invite you to discover the xRM process.