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Add Column vs New Table on Product Entity

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Posted on by crham

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We have a few pieces of data for the Product entity that we want to bring in from our quoting software.

My question is: What are the pros/cons/gotchas/etc. to compare adding that data as new columns to the Product entity vs. creating a new Table and creating a relationship.

I am not asking from a database design perspective but rather to find out if there are any specific reasons for MS Dynamics 365 why I should use or stay away from one of the options.

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Amit Katariya007 10,409 Super User 2025 Season 2 on at

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You can add new fields on the product form, But also you can create a separate new entity when you wanted to associate multiple records with single product record(Like price list item).

For example A single product can have Names as per the different language. So in that case New entity will be a good option. because user can change the name manually as well as we can associate multiple records with a single product record.

Thank you,

Amit katariya

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crham 390 on at

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Thanks for responding...I've been extremely disappointed with the lack of activity on this community.

However I was more asking about pros/cons of going either direction.

For example, I don't want to add fields to the entity only to find out 6 months from now that it was a bad choice because of x...or I should have used a separate table because of the benefits of y.

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Amit Katariya007 10,409 Super User 2025 Season 2 on at

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If you have more requirement in the future then you can go ahead with the separate entity. Because there is no generalize solution to add fields on the Product entity.

Personally I have used a separate entity for the Product language which I have mentioned in above example. Also there are some fields which I have added directly on the Product entity.

So try to get more information about the requirement then decide. Also In my scenario we did not provided any privilege's to users for edit product record. And edit was only possible using the APIs.

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Guido Preite 54,086 Moderator on at

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"Thanks for responding...I've been extremely disappointed with the lack of activity on this community."

You got a reply in less than 12 hours. The members of this community do not offer a SLA on questions, you know, people are here on their free time.

Regarding your questions, you can find suggestions for both options and are both valid, but you know what is nice? nobody force you to stay in one path once you selected it, you can create a new table or drop the table and migrate the data any time you want, it may requires additional work but you are not locked in.

hope it helps, hopefully I replied in a reasonable time according to you.

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crham 390 on at

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"You got a reply in less than 12 hours. The members of this community do not offer a SLA on questions, you know, people are here on their free time."

Of course. I've been a part of other development communities and usually get several answers within a few hours (often regardless of time of submittal). I figured Dynamics had a very large community and on some of my posts I may have 1 response, and read other peoples posts that have had 0 responses...just surprised at that, that's all.

...no your information did not help, but thank you for posting a reply

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