What's new for customization

Article
05/31/2016

Applies To: Dynamics CRM 2013

There are a lot of changes in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 and Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online. You have a new user experience and new features. Because Microsoft Dynamics CRM is a metadata driven application, many of the new experiences leverage existing metadata and you should expect any existing supported customizations to upgrade. This topic introduces some of the new features and how some existing features have changed.

In This Topic

Updated entities

Ribbon changed to command bar

Form customization changes

New forms
Business process flows
Business rules
Quick create form
Quick view forms
Autosave
Customizable tooltips

Images

Updated entities

In Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 and Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online, 29 system entities, as well as all custom entities, have been updated to provide an improved user experience. More information: Updated entities

These entities are the ones that are most commonly used by people who use the application to do their work, especially for sales and marketing activities. There are many other entities that weren’t updated, but these aren’t used as frequently or are focused on managing services.

Ribbon changed to command bar

For Updated entities and custom entities, the ribbon interface has been replaced with a command bar. The ribbon is still used for Entities using classic forms and for list views in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 for Microsoft Office Outlook. The command bar is based on the same ribbon data and the process to edit the command bar is described in the Customize commands and the ribbon topic in the Microsoft Dynamics CRM SDK.

Form customization changes

As part of the changes to provide an updated user experience, there have been significant changes to forms for the Updated entities.

New forms

To improve user’s experience the layout for forms have changed. We know that people upgrading from earlier version have spent a lot of time customizing their forms and we did not want to arbitrarily force your custom forms into a new layout. We added new forms for all the entities that have been updated. These new forms include a three column layout that demonstrates the kind of experience people have told us that they want. If you upgrade from the previous release, you’ll find your existing Information main form and a new main form named after the entity. The new form for the Account entity is Account, the new form for the Opportunity entity is called Opportunity, and so on. When you upgrade you can edit this new form and choose Bring in another form from the ribbon. This will append the Information form to the bottom of the new form and you can drag and drop the parts of your original form into the new form so that you can take advantage of the new layout and features. More information: Create and design forms

Business process flows

At the top of updated forms you can see a process flow control that provides a guide for people to get work done. The process flow control provides a streamlined experience that ties data entry with stages in the lifecycle of the record. The business process flow can span multiple entities to create an experience where people focus on getting work done rather than what type of record they need to create. To get the process flow control in a form you have to enable the entity for business process flows and then design a process for it. More information: Business process flows, Video: Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 Business Process Overview

Business rules

Use business rules to apply form logic without writing JavaScript code. Business rules provide a simple declarative interface to implement and maintain fast changing, commonly used business rules that will be applied to main and quick create forms for both the web application and CRM for tablets. More information: Create and edit business rules

Quick create form

There is a new type of form called Quick Create. This form is launched when people click the Create icon in the navigation bar. This form is optimized for rapid creation of new records. Like main forms, the quick create form supports form scripting, but it doesn’t support web resources or IFrames. More information: Create and edit quick create forms, Video: Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 Customization New Features - Quick Create Forms

Quick view forms

These forms allow you to show fields and lists in a form from a record that is related to the current record. For example, if you want to see details for the account record that is linked to an opportunity, you can add a quick view form that exists for the account entity and display the information in the opportunity form. This data can include any fields from the account entity as well as lists showing any records related to the account. More information: Create and edit quick view forms, Video: Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 Customization New Features - Quick Forms

Autosave

Any of the updated forms now have autosave enabled by default. With auto save enabled there is no save button displayed in the command bar on the form. Records that have changed data are automatically saved every 30 seconds or when people navigate to a new record. Because this new behavior may conflict with people who have custom code that doesn’t account for it, autosave can be disabled at the organization level. There is no option to disable autosave at the entity or form level, but a small script can be added to the OnSave event of a form that will disable it on the form level. More information: Manage auto-save

Customizable tooltips

The description text set for fields is now displayed as tooltips when you place your cursor over the labels for fields. Set the description text to provide guidance for people in your organization. More information: Create and edit fields, Video: Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 Customization New Features - Customizable Tool Tips

Images

Certain system entities and all custom entities can have an image attribute. This attribute is designed to allow a record to store a single image that can be displayed in entity forms that are enabled to display it. For more information about how to enable this image, see Image fields. For information about how to enable entity forms to display the image, see d53fed89-9cbc-4f1d-b5ef-044bfd34b02f#BKMK_FormProperties. More information: Video: Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 Customization New Features - Image Data Type

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What's new for customization

In This Topic

Updated entities

Ribbon changed to command bar

Form customization changes

New forms

Business process flows

Business rules

Quick create form

Quick view forms

Autosave

Customizable tooltips

Images

See Also

Additional resources