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Dynamics 365 Community / Forums / Microsoft Dynamics CRM (Archived) / Creating custom views ...
Microsoft Dynamics CRM (Archived)

Creating custom views filtering across entities

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Posted on by MRWilson1980 275

Hello,

I have added a custom attribute to several different activities for the purpose of categorizing them uniformly.  i.e. Phone Calls, Emails, Faxes, Letters and a few others all have a pick list attribute called "Activity Category" that allows our users to categorized them for reporting/tracking purposes.  I'm currently trying to build a view that will display all contacts that have an activity with a particular category.  The issue that I'm running into is that there doesn't seem to be a way to filter across entities using an OR clause.  So only contacts that meet all the criteria of the filter of displayed instead of contacts that meet any of the criteria, which is what I'm going for.  Does anybody know if there is a way around this without writing custom code as I'm more of an system administrator then a developer?

Thanks,
Matt

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  • Frank Hermes Profile Picture
    Frank Hermes on at

    You are right, the joining of entities in the advanced find lacks some features. I would write a report that has some union selects in the dataset. Take the account overview report as an example: the dataset history and activities give you a hint how to do it.

  • Suggested answer
    Thymio Barbatsis Profile Picture
    Thymio Barbatsis 10 on at

    Microsoft Dynamics has a rich interface with a lot of options for customization. The out-of-box configuration is ideal for most businesses, but lacks global search functionality. In order to search across multiple entities you can purchase a solution from The Marketplace or develop your own solution. Most of the documentation I’ve come across describes creating a custom entity which links to each of the other entities you would like to query. While this is a solid option, it requires a lot of setup and if you want it to be easily configurable for a non-developer, you will have to build code for a GUI. The other option is to purchase a solution from the Marketplace. The solutions that are out there have implemented the custom entity method. That means that you will have to click into that Custom Global Entity to be able to search. This may slow down some users if they are working primarily out of Leads/Contacts/Accounts/Opportunities/Etc.., because they have to click into this entity to search from it. I’m going to show you how to enhance the built-in Quick Search of an entity to look up records across your organization so your users don’t have to leave the entity they work out of.

    Who is this for?

    • Organizations that start their business process from the Lead Entity
    • Businesses that have all users take inbound calls and need to locate the
      owner of a record to transfer the call

     

    Customize Quick Find Functionality – LEAD ENTITY

    Step 1. Navigate to Lead
    Step 2. Click the Customize Tab on The Toolbar
    Step 3. Click System Views to Open the Views of That Entity (Leads)
    Step 4. Double Click “Quick Find All Leads”
    Step 5. Click “Edit Filter Criteria: Under the ” Common Tasks” Pane on the Right
    Step 6. Clear the Default Filter

    When you qualify a lead, it creates an Account/Contact/Opportunity. Each of the entities references the originating lead. Since the lead is never actually removed/deleted from Leads it is possible to search through the organization to find out basic information, like; Owner, Name, Phone, etc. When a user takes a phone call and needs to find out who owns the record in order to transfer the call to the appropriate agent/user, they can now use the Lead Quick Find search bar to lookup a client even if they are no longer in leads. This simple change opens the ability to query ALL leads regardless of status.

    Step 7. Click “Save and Close”
    Step 8. Publish All Customizations

    Summary

    Now you can use Leads search box to lookup customers even if they have been converted and determine owner, contact info or anything else you want to see. This provided a solution for businesses that have their users take inbound calls and need the ability to lookup who owns the record so they know where to transfer the call. You can tweak the Quick Find in each of the entities to not only change the Filter Criteria, but also update which fields in the entity are queried. Since you can reference lookup fields in the find filter, you can effectively search across the organization in cases where a relationship has been established with an entity. Since the out-of-box configuration builds the relationship for qualifying leads, you can effectively search across the org from leads or backwards from opportunities.

    Thymio Barbatsis
    Solution Architect | Company Built, Inc.

    Get PDF Version w. Pictures HERE

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