While I do appreciate having the ability to create a ‘Quick View’ form to display one or more Parent fields on another form, the truth is, the appearance of the Quick View form leaves something to be desired. It takes up a good chunk of extra space compared to just being able to see the content of one or more fields as they would normally appear on the form. See how to display parent entity fields using calculated fields in Dynamics 365:
I’d rather use that wasted space to show another field or two on that same portion of the screen . . .
Let’s Go Crazy!!
Why not create a Calculated field that will look up a field value from a Parent entity instead of creating that Quick View?
As an example, we often want to display the ‘Product ID’ of an Existing Product on one or more of the various ‘Opportunity / Quote / Order / Invoice’ Product forms.
Navigate to the default solution or to your own solution and to the appropriate child entity. In this case, I’m adding the new field to the ‘Order Product’. Select a Data Type of ‘Single Line of Text’ and a Field Type of ‘Calculated’:
Since the field I wish to display on the Order Product form is part of the ‘Product’ entity, when I click on ‘Edit’ to configure the calculated field, in the ‘ACTION’ area I’m going to select the lookup field associated with the ‘Existing Product’:
Then, as soon as ‘productid’ is displayed in the form ‘work’ area:
- I add a period immediately after the ‘id’
- When I do that, D365 displays a list of fields in the ‘Product’ entity for me to choose from
- Scroll down until you find ‘productnumber’ (Product ID) and select it
The ‘formula’ in the work area is completed by D365 – it adds‘productnumber’. Now save your calculated field:
We’re Almost There . . .
All you need to do is to position the calculated field onto the Order Product form:
The user gets to see the Product ID / SKU without that content taking up any extra space or ‘disturbing’ the format of the surrounding fields:
Who knew???
