The new UI in Microsoft Dynamics 2013 comes with a lot of handy new features and one of these worth exploring a little further is the introduction of the Quick features including the Quick create and Quick View forms.
The Quick Create button is located at the top right hand corner of the navigation bar and allows the user to access a list of records that you can “quickly” create without having to leave the record or view you are on. Once you select the record type you want to create, a stripped down form for the record will appear allowing the user to enter the most relevant info, hit save, and move on. For Example, let’s say you are on an account reviewing their order history and you get a phone call from a contact that is not related to the account you are working with. Leveraging the “Quick create” you can quickly add this person’s most critical contact information into CRM without leaving the record you are currently on.
So how do you enable a record for this feature? Well it’s pretty simple. It’s built into the customizations UI you are already used to using. The Quick create function can be enabled on a record by checking the “allow quick create” box under “Data Services” from the entities customization main page. Once it’s enabled, you can then create and use your quick form just like you would create any other form for the record. Simply create a new form with type of “quick create”. You are somewhat limited in the amount of space you have on this form (only one tab and one section) because the whole point is to enter just the most critical pieces of info and move on, but it will always include mandatory fields which is a helpful tip.
This same functionality can be leveraged from the record itself such as an account record. Let’s say you want to add a Phone call activity for later in the afternoon that is also associated with the account record you are working on. When you choose to add an activity from the social pane that is embedded in the record, a mini form will appear for you to create the phone call and it will automatically be associated to the record you are on. This quick feature, however, is hard coded only for the existing activity records in CRM and doesn’t apply to custom activities after you create them.
If you are on the main view for customizing a record you may also notice a new form type called the “Quick Form” form. This form can be embedded as a sub form onto the main form of another related record. What’s the advantage? Well, using these Quick Form views, you can see just a few pieces of critical data for the related record without having to actually open the whole record or duplicate the data on the record it’s related to. So from an account, I can view the related contact Quick View form, get the correct phone number for that contact, and make a call.
The new “Quick” features in Dynamics CRM 2013 enable users to get the information they need and use it as efficiently as possible and they add another layer of usability to the software that drives productivity and ultimately User Adoption.
So the mini forms on the social pane is hard coded and could not be changed? Please tell me this is not the case!
We are planning to move to CRM 2013 and it is a must-have requirement that we can add some custom fields to this form. The reason that is important is that when you click on the phone number on the contact form we fire up Lync which calls the number - and CRM show just this mini form. This is a great feature but if you are not able to modify this mini form - it is useless for us (and for many others).
Thanks
Thomas