“Let him who would move the world first move himself” – Socrates

Rounding out this personalization series, let’s take a look at the move and hide features.

I think these two features should be more widely utilized. D365 forms are designed for multiple personas / business processes. Decluttering forms for specific personas by moving less frequently used fields farther down the form or hiding them completely is an easy way to increase day-to-day efficiency, as well as simplify the training/change-management process.

Move a Field

Open the personalization toolbar Ctrl+Shift+P and select the Move button. Click on the Field, Field Group, or FastTab to be moved. From there, drag with the cursor or use the Arrow Keys to indicate where the form element should go. I find using the arrows a bit easier to control. An orange indicator line displays where the form indicator will go, and Enter will set the field in its new location. Close the personalization toolbar to view the result.

Moving the Responsible field group to the end of the General FastTab.
Note the highlighted indicator line.

Result after closing the personalization toolbar.

Move can also be used to adjust the column order on a listpage.

Hide a Field

The hide feature works similar to the move feature. Hide can be applied to Fields, Field Groups, or FastTabs, as well as Tabs, Groups, or Buttons in the form’s header ribbon. It can be done through the personalization toolbar, or by right-clicking, selecting personalize, and then selecting Hide for the desired form element.

Right-click, Personalize, and Hide the Project team and scheduling FastTab.

The FastTab disappears from the form.

But Where Do Hidden Fields Go?

Dust. Wind. Dude. …Woah.

No, the fields aren’t lost forever. Using the Personalization toolbar, click on the hide button to reveal which form elements have been hidden through personalization.

Some parts of the Projects form are hidden, but which ones?
I don’t have a photographic memory.

Open Personalization toolbar and selecting Hide
What was hidden is now revealed.

In 1955, Bernard Heuvelmans created a new field: Cryptozoology – the study of imaginary animals.

Create a New Field

As mentioned previously, when adding a field through personalization users also have the option to create a new field. After opening the personalization toolbar, selecting Add a field, and choosing the desired location for the added field, users are prompted to select from an existing field or Create new field.

In the Create new field area, users can define

• The table where the new field should be added
• The new field’s prefix (all fields added through personalization end in _Custom)
• The field’s data type (Text, Number, Decimal, DateTime, Date, Picklist, Checkbox)
• The field’s label
• The field’s help text (what displays when the hovering the cursor over the field)

Example of new Picklist field creation

Example of new Checkbox field creation

Example of new Example fields displayed on Customer form

Additional Considerations:

In a few clicks, a new field can be created and added to a form – saving hours of developer time, code promotion, and testing over the standard approach of doing this through development. That’s good. But with the ease of creating a new field, don’t neglect thinking through the below – which could save headaches associated with implementing any new field – whether through personalization or development.

Access

Who needs to see or edit the new field? From what forms? Personalization can add the new field to the saved view, but the new view(s) will need to be published to the desired users or roles.

Data Migration

How will the current data for this field be loaded in D365? Who will do it? In System administration, there is a form to manage Custom fields. Here, a custom field can be added to a data entity for data migration. The Custom fields form is also where field values like picklist options or the length of a text field can be updated.

Reporting

Does this custom field need to be added to any reports? It is easy to add a custom field to a listpage using personalizations. Visibility on the listpage is frequently enough, and Ctrl+Shift+E can be used to quickly export listpages to excel.

Custom Example field on Customer Listpage

If the new field needs to be added to a formatted report, or to a data model for consumption in PowerBI or another reporting solution, you may need additional developer assistance.

Testing

One last thought about creating a new field through personalization – it doesn’t follow the standard QA->UAT->Production path of regular code promotion. A new field can be created as a test in a test environment, but at showtime a user has to create the new field directly in the production environment. This is probably fine for fields that are “just extra attributes”, but probably not fine for fields related to a company’s core business. If additional methods or logic need to be applied to a field, it is probably better the field be created through development.

“When he went out to plough his fields…his heart would fill with joy.”

How Much Land Does a Man Need? | Leo Tolstoy

D365 contains thousands of related tables with an almost innumerable number of fields – some say D365 has almost as many fields as this blog has fans. But sometimes a user just needs one more field.

Users access this table data through forms. Frequently, a form’s standard view will not contain every single field of related table data. Did you know the customer table (CustTable) has 203 different fields? Add a field allows additional table information to be presented on a form.

Add a Field

Use Ctrl+Shift+P to bring up the Personalization Toolbar and click on Add a field. Once Add a field is selected, click on the part of the form where the new field should go.

A new “Add columns” area will pop up on the right allowing the user to select which field (or fields) to bring into the form. Did you know that 3 of the 203 fields on the Customer Table are notes fields?

The selected field(s) will now display on the form.

If the field isn’t positioned quite where intended, the Move button ca be used to fine-tune the location of the new field.

Add a Field, Again!

It is generally bad database design to represent the same field twice on the same table, but not necessarily bad form design. For example, it may make sense to have customer currency in the sales demographics FastTab, and terms of payment in the Payment defaults FastTab. It might also be helpful to have this information closer to the top of the form. Add a field could be used to bring those fields onto the general FastTab in addition to their standard locations.

Add a Custom Field

Observant readers will notice the “Add columns” area also includes a “Create new field” button. Links below are included to outline that functionality – I’ll add my own opinions on the pros and cons of adding custom fields through personalization in a later post.