Dynamics 365 CE: Switch UCI App from Single to Multi-session Navigation

There are several cool features in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Model-driven Apps that can be configured using App Designer. However, there are few features needs to be enabled in customizations.xml. This post is about switching your App from Single-session to Multi-session.

Multi-session apps allow user to launch several tabs (unlike single-session). Here is an example screenshot of Multi-session app:

Notice the navigation bar has only Home button and rest of the Navigation Items can be launched as individual tabs. This is useful when users need to work on multiple records.

Problem

Switch from Single-session to Multi-session UCI/Model-driven App.

Solution

Navigation Type cannot be changed from App Designer, we need to modify the customizations.xml to enable Multi-session app.

Here are steps to enable Muti-session navigation:

• Go to Advanced Settings -> Customization -> Solutions.
• Create a new Solution and expand to Model-driven Apps.
• Click on Add Existing button and select your existing Model-driven App:

• I prefer not to choose required components for this solution and then click OK.

• Now, click on Export Solution button and export the solution with default settings as “un-managed“:

• Download (save) the solution and extract the solution zip file.
• In the extracted folder, look for customizations.xml file and open in your favorite editor.

• Look for the <NavigationType> under <AppModules> section.
• Change the value of <NavigationType> from 0 to 1. Final XML looks like below:

• Save the customization.xml file and zip all the files (make sure all files are on the root of zipped folder).

• Import the zipped file as solution, back in CRM.

• Click Next and Import the solution.
• Finally, Publish the solution and refresh your App.

You should notice the Navigation is changed to Multi-session.

Result

Before we applied this configuration, we had Single-session Navigation as shown below:

After apply this configuration, you can notice the change as below:

You can read more about App settings here:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/customerengagement/on-premises/developer/entities/appmodule#BKMK_NavigationType

That’s it, Quite Easily Done!