Bring it all to one screen

One of the advantages of CRM 2011 now is the removal of tabs. Everything is in one screen, and with a little bit of scrolling you can get to all your data. Or can you?

Scenario: From an account, I want to see everything related to that account. Simple enough to achieve in CRM 2011.

Solution:

If you look at the OOTB Opportunities, you have a view into Quotes. We can achieve the same look as follows:

Go to Settings > Customization > Customizations > Customize the System

Expand Entities and the entity to customize, let’s pick on the Account for this demo.

Select Forms, and open the main form (you can do the same on any custom form, and you can target forms to roles, but that’s another blog post).

You can either insert a new Section, or select an existing Section. From the Insert tab, you insert a One Column Tab (this is to give you a full width view to reduce the amount of scrolling right-left).

With the tab selected, click on the Insert Sub-Grid.

In the Sub-Grid window that opens up, Give it a Name (this is not a label, do not use spaces). You can change the label and display it if you want to.

Now this is the important piece. In the Data Sources, Records should be left at Only Related Records. Select the related entity that you want to show on the Account form, let’s say Invoices. Also select a default view. I would strongly recommend customizing a view specifically for this purpose, and be mindful of the number of columns to display, to avoid scrolling.

The other options are self-explanatory.

Now on the Account entity we can see the related Invoices. Do the same for Opportunities, or anything else you want to bring to the user’s fingertips.