Microsoft Dynamics CRM (Archived)

M-M relation in a custom view

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Posted on by Community Member

I dded couple of m-m relations for many entities. How can i choose them to set them in a column in a custom view?

When i try to add a column to my saved view i can't find m-m relations entities.

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CRM Project Guy on at

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Hi Shahd, if you are using the out of the box many to many functionality this does have some limitations.

Have you tried creating a custom many to many relationship by creating a custom entity to act as a "bridge" between the two things you want to link.

E.g.

I want to link contacts and courses as a many to many so I create an entity called course attendances with a lookup field to contacts and a lookup field to courses. This can be displayed as a sub grid on either side of the relationship plus it has the added advantage that I can track the attendees attendance status and dietary requirements etc on the custom entity which is something I can't do with an out of the box many to many .

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Iain Wicks

Actually i don't know if you get my point exactly, so i will explain more.

I created a custom saved view for accounts, and i created a custom entity called "Business Type". I created a m:m relation between the account and the business type, so i can specify the business type(s) for each account.

What i want is: to add "business type" as a column to my saved view, so it appears next to the account name, country, .......

So it becomes easier to know what are the business types for each account without needing to enter inside each account.

I wish this explanation explains my point.

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CRM Project Guy on at

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Hi Shahd , it does explain it thanks.

But as explained before this is not possible with a view and a out of the box many to many.

If you create the custom entity for business types you could create a view on that entity that shows all the account fields and a row for each business type

Hope that helps

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Community Member on at

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Hi Iain, i just tried to add "accounts" column to a custom view in the business type entity, but it is not available in the list even it's searchable.

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SrinivasCh 572 on at

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There are two types of Many to Many relationships: Native and Manual.

The main difference between the two is that a when you create a Native Many to Many relationship, an intersect entity is automatically created for you.

For example, when you create a new Many to Many relationship between a “Course” entity and the “Contact” entity, an intersect entity will be created which has links to both the Course and Contact records. This intersect entity cannot be customized and is not available for use within workflows.

A Manual Many to Many relationship is actually two One to Many relationships. In this case, you actually create the intersect entity yourself.

For example, to create a Manual Many to Many relationship between a “Course” and “Contact” entity:

1. Create a new “Course Attendee” entity in CRM.

2. Create a new One to Many Relationship from “Course” to “Course Attendee”.

3. Create a new One to Many Relationship from “Contact” to “Course Attendee”.

The advantage of a Manual Many to Many relationship is that we can customize the intersect entity to track attendance information which can then be available within workflows.

For example, we can add Attended and Date Attended field to the “Course Attendee” entity so we can track if a particular Contact attended a Course. If the Course spans over multiple time periods, we can also track the date that the Contact attended the Course.

In your example, you are using automatic N:N relationship becuase of which you are not able to add "business type" to saved view. You have to follow manual N:N relationship to see the data in custom view.

Hope this helps !!

Regards

Srini Ch

Mark your question as answered, if you get answer :) :)

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CRM Project Guy on at

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Srini has explained what I was trying to say but in a much Clearer way

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Community Member on at

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Thank you Srini, it helps.

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Community Member on at

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Thank you Iain

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Community Member on at

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Actually i reached the step of making the entity i want appears in the form or the saved view. But still it is not exactly the targeted point...i chose m:m relation from the beginning because each account has many business types...

So even when i created m:m relation manually... and followed your previous steps, still can only choose one business type per account as it is a lookup field ..

Is there a way that multiple business types can be shown on my saved view?

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SrinivasCh 572 on at

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N:N means

1. Each Account has different business types

2. Each business type belongs to different account.

let us say you have created a intersect entity called "AccountBusinessType"

You can add records into this entity with account and business type details.

Account and business type shows up subgrid where you can see related records.

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