Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Feature – Dynamic Lookups

Vitalii Symon, 12 November 2010

Today I’ll step you through another simple but very useful CRM2011 feature – dynamic lookups.

One of the main points of the CRM dynamic interface (which can be built and customized easily with minimal set of skills and that’s why so easy to use) is lookup control. Establishing relationships between entities, both system and custom, was easy already in CRM 4.0 but CRM 2011 has introduced more flexibility for filtering related records.

If you go to customize tab of the entity (which is really quick and easy to access now, no need to navigate to settings) and will click the ‘form’ icon on the ribbon, you’ll get this form designer:

Double click on any lookup field to get its properties to edit and scroll to ‘related records filtering’ and select property to filter entity by.

For example, try to do this procedure with an account entity and set properties as shown on the form above.

Save the form and publish customizations. This will allow filtering records in much more intelligent way than before and you can be confident that users will see only related records and will not need to look over thousands of records for appropriate one.