Home / Business & Management / Business Technology / Dynamics 365: Using Power Platform Applications / Forms Overview
Forms Overview
Microsoft Dynamics 365 and the Power Platform
Let’s have an overview now of the different form types available to us and our model driven applications. Dynamics 365 users create, read, and update records by using forms. A form contains the components that a user can read or interact with and controls how these components are arranged and displayed. The final layout of a form that is displayed to a user depends on how the form is structured. It’s important that the forms created are designed to allow people to find information easily and enter information easily if needed. Keep in mind there are three categories of people using the form.
Those that just want to read information, those that need to add it or edit information, and finally those that need to do all of those. They need to read and they need to add or edit information. The first type of form is our Main form, and as you can imagine, it is the form that is the primary vehicle for users to interact with the data. Main forms provide the widest range of options and are available for our model driven apps. One of the primary design objectives for Main forms is that you design them once and deploy them everywhere.
The same form that you design for a model driven app, or the Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement application, is also used for Dynamics 365 for Outlook and for tablets. The advantage to this approach is that you don’t have to integrate changes into multiple forms. As you can see here by the image this form contains lots of different data and lots of different opportunities for our users to interact with that data. Contained within this Main form is our Quick View form. I’ve highlighted it here for us in red. Let’s drill down into some more details about that Quick View form. So our Quick View form appears with the Main form to display additional data for a record.
A Quick View displays that reference data that’s been placed there by a lookup field. The entity that is the target of the lookup must have a Quick View form enable before one can be added to the form. So in our example here this came from the hosted account form. This is a Quick View of the contact record. We need to make sure that our contact entity has a Quick View form that’s been configured. It’s really a form within a form that we see. So the goal is to offer our users read-only details in the context of that related record. In our case, that primary contact as related to that account.
Here we have the standard lookup that is already on our account form for the primary contact. Once that has been input then we have the other items that will be displayed for us. So we have the lookup is the top part of the control and then beneath that we have the form components. So we’re showing read-only email and read-only business phone number. Another type of form that we have available that can be launched from this Main form from the browser, from any subgrid that we see, is our Quick Create form. Notice here on our Main form that we’ve clicked that ellipsis there on that subgrid and it’s offered us the ability to add a new contact from here.
When we do that, this is our Quick Create form. It’s used in Power Apps, web application, it’s used in Dynamics 365 for Outlook and for tablets. With the Quick Create form your app can have streamlined data entry experience with full support for the logic that’s been defined by form scripts and business rules. In Dynamics 365 Quick Create forms appear when you select that create button in the navigation bar or when you choose to add a new record from a lookup or a subgrid. The Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement mobile app will use Quick Create forms for creating new records. If an entity already has a Quick Create form configured for it the mobile app will use that form.
If an entity doesn’t have on configured already it will generate a Quick Crate form for creating the records in that mobile application based on the Main form definition. For a frame of reference here on the sample on the page we launched this from an account form. So you can see that common data that came from that account to our new pending contact has already been mapped. Things like our account name, location, and phone number information. We can then as a user input additional information to complete the creation of this record. So when this record has been created it will maintain that relationship to the originating entity that’s been launched.
So once we create that record it will maintain that relationship to the entity of origin when it’s been launched from there. It’s possible to launch these Quick Creates independent of any related item. It can be launched from the navigation bar. And in that case, it won’t come along with any relationships or any mapped data, it will be an entirely new form. Another form type that we have here is a Card. You’ll see we’re looking at a dashboard here. And we’ve got it highlighted in red. We have the active cases all on that left hand side and that one 3D printer not working item is a Card form.
A Card can be placed on the record of a related entity or on an interactive dashboard. Starting in an interactive dashboard we see the left column feed of these active cases. Each of these cases we see are being displayed in a Card form. So looking into more detail on our Card form– on that left hand side we can see a vertical blue bar. That’s been configured to be that colour based on the status reason for the case. So for our status reason the case is in progress so it is blue. From the originating dashboard there were other cases available, those were on hold. That red stripe was because they were on hold.
We have more details on this case available to use like priority and type of case, name, and description. This is just enough information for us as we are viewing the dashboard. And as always, if we need more we can click into the item and it will go down into the full record. Additional details that are available to us, additional options that are available to us from the Card, can give us some additional information. So when we click on that arrow and expand that area on the card we see information about the underlying customer and the product that’s the target of this case. Then if we click on the ellipses we’re offered these additional actions that we can take.
In the previous activities for this week, we went through Other Entity Fields & Configure Model-Driven Apps.
In this step, we go through a video showing the different types of forms available within model-driven applications.
Dynamics 365 users create, read, and update records by using forms. A form contains the components that a user can read or interact with and controls how these components are arranged and displayed.
Join the discussion
Dynamics 365 provides form types that allow users to perform tasks in a consistent manner. Can you recall what the three categories of people using forms are? Can you envisage who might need to just read a form?Use the discussion area below to let us know your thoughts. Try to respond to at least one other post and once you’re happy with your contribution, click the Mark as complete button to check the Step off. Now let’s turn our attention to Form Elements.
This article is from the online course:
Dynamics 365: Using Power Platform Applications
Created by
This article is from the free online
Dynamics 365: Using Power Platform Applications
Reach your personal and professional goals
Unlock access to hundreds of expert online courses and degrees from top universities and educators to gain accredited qualifications and professional CV-building certificates.
Join over 18 million learners to launch, switch or build upon your career, all at your own pace, across a wide range of topic areas.
