User Review
( votes)I have spent quite a few years in the Dynamics CRM domain and have come across more than a few clients requesting to Customize the dialog box that appears when a user clicks on the Opportunity Close button.
This is essentially a way to capture the information when the Opportunity is being closed. If it is won, then the user may want to update what was the Actual Revenue, when was it closed, and any other comments.
In case of this being lost then What is the reason (Cancelled, out-sold), when was it closed, who was the Competitor it was lost to, any comments, etc. This information that is captured through this dialog box helps the Sales staff make better decisions as they can see some offerings or reps who aren’t performing well.
Up until now, there was no supported way to change the options on this window, however, with the recent update of Dynamics CRM, Microsoft has made it possible to make changes to it. Well, kind of.
Before you get all excited about this feature, I want you to bring to your attention the first limitation of this possibility and that is, it’s not possible to make changes to the Opportunity close dialog on the standard UI.
Microsoft’s official page gives the below disclaimer:
This limitation hardly surprises me. Microsoft is planning to let go of the Standard Interface completely pretty soon, so why would they want to enable it anyway. If your client is still using the Standard interface then they will have to wait until they are ready to switch(or are forced to switch by Microsoft).
Anyways, Let’s talk about The “How” Part Of This Feature:
The first step to enable customizations of the Opportunity close form is to go to the System Settings of your CRM instance and enable this particular option as shown in the screenshot here:
Once you have enabled it, go to your solution and add an existing entity called “Opportunity close” (Add both the available forms for this entity to your solution):
You can see in the screenshot, that there are Forms for this entity that can be customized. So, you can remove a certain field and add custom fields to it to change the Opportunity close Quick Create form (since that is the form that opens up in the Unified interface if you click on the Opportunity close button).
You can also add certain validations to it, e.g., if you want that the user should enter the comments for sure before they close the opportunity. You cannot Delete out-of-the-box fields for this entity.
Of course, there are some gotchas to make sure that the data is accurately captured and shown to the users:
- If an attribute needs to be captured on Opportunity close, that belongs to the Opportunity entity, you need to add that attribute on both the entities (Opportunity and Opportunity close) and sync it between the two entities (using custom logic) to keep the data in sync. And make sure it is read-only on the Opportunity entity so that it is not updated once the opportunity is closed.
- Since the users can see the Opportunity close entity records (which uses the Information form of this entity, as shown in the screenshot above), you want to make sure to add to the Information form, any custom field that you added to the Quick Create form.
And that’s all you need to know about this particular customization.
Try this customization feature for your client and share your experience with us. If you want to know more hacks in the Dynamics 365 solution, connect with us.
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