UX decision - customise Account or create new entity?

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I need to make a design decision building a Dynamics CRM platform. I work in the financial sector and the department I work with deal with different types of company. To model this in CRM I can either extend the Account entity, or create new entities for each of these 'roles'. They want to be able to create and update records from one screen including name and address information, notes as well as role specific information. They need to be able to merge records. There are no security requirements to restrict access between users who manage different roles. There is potential to use email integration and Marketing Lists in the future. The options are:

Customise the Account entity to add role specific fields and use security roles to control forms, including the merge dialog
Create new entities with name and address fields that will synchronise to the account entity. Add reverse lookups to the Account entity

Currently there are 3 roles and each role has 5 or so role specific fields and 3 role specific related entities. Coming from a development background, my instinct says create a new entity as this will prevent the Account entity becoming bloated. But from a UX perspective this will mean in some areas users will be working with two entities which seems like poor UX design. I'm sure this is one of the first decisions all CRM consultants have to make. What are your experiences? What would you recommend here?

Also - What courses, books or videos would you recommend for UX design for Dynamics CRM?

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Aric Levin - MVP 30,190 Moderator on at

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RE: UX decision - customise Account or create new entity?

Hi,

I think the question would be more of a relationship question. Do the additional fields that you want to add have a 1 to 1 relationship with account? If so, I would probably keep everything in the account entity and manage the forms via security roles.

Although you do see some places in Dynamics where 1:1 relationships have different entities (such as between user and mailbox), their logic is complete separate. If the related fields are not related to account in any way, you can keep them separately. I don't foresee any issue either way. It is a matter of personal preference.

You should also consider future needs such as reporting and display of data in views/forms of the related data.

My recommendation would be to keep it in the same place (also from UX design), unless you end up with a huge amount of data in the account entity.

Not much to say from UX design. Your customization of look and feel on the CRM side are limited, so you just want to make sure you get as much as possible real estate on the form visible to the user.

Hope this helps.

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ashlega 34,477 on at

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RE: UX decision - customise Account or create new entity?

I'd second Aric.. In general, users get confused when multiple screens start popping up because of those lookups, so, from the UX standpoint, the preference is, usually, to have all that data on one screen.

As for having multiple forms, another option might be to hide/show form tabs/sections/fields using javascripts. This often works better, especially if you have some roles that should have access to different forms. Switching forms from javascript does not create the best experience (not that it does not work, though).

Also, having that data stored in different entities will complicate reporting (including charts, dashboards, SSRS, and Advanced Find). You'll have to traverse the relationships correctly, you'll have top explain them to the users willing to create their own reports, and, besides, there are some platform limitaitons for what you can do with the fields from the related entities when building reports/charts/views/etc.

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Community Member on at

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RE: UX decision - customise Account or create new entity?

Thanks Aric & Alex. This definitely makes sense. I'll keep the UI simple. No need to over engineer it!

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