Customizing an Article Form in Dynamics CRM 2011

Paul Nieuwelaar, 28 March 2011

In Dynamics CRM 4.0, there was no way of customizing the Article form. The only customization options you had for Articles was Creating Article Templates, which was limited, as it only affected the actual content of the Article. However in Dynamics CRM 2011 you can now fully customize the Article form, just like any other entity in the system.

If you need to make customizations to the Article form, you can easily just click on the Customize tab of an open Article, or go through Settings, Customizations, and then Customize the System, as with any other customizable entity.

This means you can change the positioning of fields on the Article form, or ever add your own fields to the Article form as required. When customizing the Article form you will notice that most of the default fields (such as Title and Subject) are locked, and therefore cannot be removed from the form. However you can still move these fields around the form, and even add your own fields to the top of the form.

For the purposes of this example I will add a lookup field to the Article form called ‘Article Type’ which looks up Article Templates. This field would be used to determine which Article Template an Article was using. To do this you simply customize the Article form, and create a new lookup field to Article Templates. Then position it on the form where you want it to appear.

Once you’re finished you will end up with Articles that are even more powerful, and an Article form that works how you want it to, not the other way around. Stay tuned for my next blog post where I will be showing how you can easily email an Article to a customer straight from within outlook.