Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 Upgrade – Form Header - Header Tile Conditions

Colin Maitland, 05 November 2013

When upgrading your customised forms from Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 to Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 one of the considerations is the number and type of items that are displayed in the Form Header of the upgraded forms and the style resultantly selected by Microsoft Dynamics CRM for the display of these items. Depending on whether or not certain conditions are met, the upgraded Form Header will be displayed in either ‘compatibility view’ or will display Header Tiles.

The following image is a screenshot of a customised Contact Information Form Header in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011. This Form header displays the following five fields: Preferred Method of Contact, Business Phone, Home Phone, Owner and Address 1: City.

The following image is a screenshot of this Contact Information Form Header after it has been upgraded from Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 to Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013.

It is immediately apparent that the upgrade has introduced some changes to this Form Header. These include the addition of the Contact image field prior to the Name field; changes to the font type, size and colour; and the display of the Business Required, ‘*’, indicator for the Owner field.

However, what is not immediately apparent however, is that Header Tiles are not being used to display these fields in the Form Header.

Header Tiles are new in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 but are only displayed if certain conditions are met! One of these conditions is that there must be no more than four fields in the Form Header. The following image is a screen shot of the upgraded Form Header after one of the number of fields to display has been reduced from five to four.

In order for Header Tiles to be displayed in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 Form Headers the following conditions must be met.

  •  You can’t have more than four fields or multiline fields.
  •  You can’t’ use web resources and inline frames. Note: Web resources include resources such as images.

When you customise forms in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 the following information is displayed in design view for the Form Header if one of these conditions has not been met.

If the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 form meets these conditions, then when upgraded to Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013, Header Tiles will be used instead of ‘compatibility view’ for displaying the fields in the Form Header.

In conclusion:

It is recommended that you review the Form Header of the forms you are upgrading. Where required, decide whether or not you want these to be displayed using Header Tiles instead of in ‘compatibility view’ when the conditions listed above have not been met.

A consideration is whether or not you want to alter your customisations, where required, to make use of the new Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 user interface style for the look, feel and functionality of the Form Headers. The aim here is to ensure consistency of the user interface throughout your entire Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 application. There may be a few forms that display fields in the Form Header in ‘compatibility view’ any many others that display the fields in the Form Header using Header Tiles.

You may also need to consider your organisation’s Business Requirements. There may be Business Requirements that require the content displayed in Form Headers to be such that the conditions for the Header Tiles to be displayed are not met. It may be possible in these cases to meet those Business Requirements by other means.

Finally, when continuing to customise Microsoft Dynamics CRM, either before or after upgrading to Microsoft Dynamics CRM, avoid breaching these conditions required for the display of Header Tiles in order to provide the best possible overall Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 user experience.