Here's a new addition to MSCRM 4.0 that will be really nice for users. You can now add columns from related entities in Advanced Find. So, if you want to see the email of the Primary Contact in the Account list that is now possible. Please be sure to remember that you can add any field on a related entity, custom or system created but please be aware that the related entities will be from the lookup fields (fields with the magnifying glass) on the entity on which you are building your view. So, while I can see the email of the Primary Contact of an Account, I cannot show the email for Contacts in the Account view. Why? Because there will be multiple and the system won't know which one to display. Also, the system is limited to only be able to show one value for each row of a given column.
Just to show you, from Advanced Find, I choose "Edit Columns" and then "Add Columns". I can now click on the entity as a drop down and it will bring up all of the related entities and what field the relationship is through:
I choose "Primary Contact (Contact)" and then check the "Email" column, run my query and I get:
There it is. I'm really excited about this because this need was probably one of the largest requests that I got that turned into an SRS report. SRS reports are great, don't get me wrong, they just can't be maintained or written by typical users and the actions you could take from that report were limited in comparison to what you could do from the CRM grid.
Last thing, since you can do this in Advanced Find logically it would make sense that you could do this in the main System Views for any given entity. Well, that's just what you get. Your System Views that you create for your company can have these types of columns as well.
Did I mention that I'm excited for MSCRM 4.0?
David Fronk
Dynamic Methods Inc.
Just to show you, from Advanced Find, I choose "Edit Columns" and then "Add Columns". I can now click on the entity as a drop down and it will bring up all of the related entities and what field the relationship is through:
I choose "Primary Contact (Contact)" and then check the "Email" column, run my query and I get:
There it is. I'm really excited about this because this need was probably one of the largest requests that I got that turned into an SRS report. SRS reports are great, don't get me wrong, they just can't be maintained or written by typical users and the actions you could take from that report were limited in comparison to what you could do from the CRM grid.
Last thing, since you can do this in Advanced Find logically it would make sense that you could do this in the main System Views for any given entity. Well, that's just what you get. Your System Views that you create for your company can have these types of columns as well.
Did I mention that I'm excited for MSCRM 4.0?
David Fronk
Dynamic Methods Inc.
4 comments:
Have the added more filters to advanced find. There is no way to show customers who have NOT bought a product in a certain time period. Seems like this would be useful to manage churn, wouldn't MS?
Drew,
I agree, being able to search for a null sure would be nice. Unfortunately that doesn't look like it's going to make it into the latest release. If you submit a suggestion to Microsoft they're actually really good about putting in what the users want. For instance, the Many-to-Many relationship was one of the most requested enhancement by users so Microsoft stepped up and added that in.
I agree, it ought to be included but we can do our part by letting Microsoft know.
Thanks for reading and posting.
David Fronk
Dynamic Methods Inc.
there is a problem on activity advanced find. For example if you select email as a base entity and when you add column for email owner's territory-businessunit-no...etc fields on result grid of advanced find, you will see that all columns no display data. Do you have an idea
Seko
I haven't seen Advanced Find display no data before. However I have seen issues with being able to show certain fields from the activity entities or some related columns in general. The only thing similar I've seen is when I try to show a related column that was a decimal and when I ran the query in Advanced Find it would error on me. If I removed the column then Advanced Find would work. I could add other columns from the same entity but just not that one. I haven't found the reason as to why it's done it just yet. Your best bet would probably be to talk to Microsoft to see if they have a hotfix or can provide one for your issue. Since there isn't much we can do to customize the query or running of Advanced Find we're kind of stuck with our hands tied and need to see what Microsoft has to say.
David Fronk
Dynamic Methods Inc.
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