Customize CRM for tablets

 

Applies To: Dynamics CRM 2013

One of the principles behind Microsoft Dynamics CRM for tablets is that you can design once and deploy everywhere. This means that you can customize the application for your requirements and find them in any client you use to access data. You will see that there isn’t a single place where you customize just the CRM for tablets client, but rather that the CRM for tablets client adapts to the changes you apply to other customizable areas of the application. This topic will highlight which areas may be used to customize CRM for tablets.

In This Topic

Sales dashboard for CRM for tablets

Form customizations for CRM for tablets

Entities displayed in CRM for tablets

Change navigation options for CRM for tablets

Change commands for CRM for tablets

Form script differences for CRM for tablets

Publishing customizations for CRM for tablets

Business rules are cached

Sales dashboard for CRM for tablets

When people first open CRM for tablets, they will see the Sales Dashboard. You cannot change this to be a different dashboard. You can edit the sales dashboard as you would any dashboard, except any web resource or IFRAME elements added to the dashboard will not be displayed. More information:  Manage dashboard components 

Form customizations for CRM for tablets

CRM for tablets uses the same main form definition for each entity. The form presentation is different to be optimized for presentation on a tablet. Any IFRAMEs or web resources included in the form will not be displayed. The following diagram shows how the form is presented:

More information: da3ac59a-5413-46cb-b355-1987e42e3853#BKMK_CRMforTabletsPresentation

CRM for tablets does not provide the capability to switch between forms. If you have more than one main form for the entity, the one displayed will depend on the form order set and which security roles have been assigned to the form. More information: da3ac59a-5413-46cb-b355-1987e42e3853#BKMK_MultipleForms 

Entities displayed in CRM for tablets

Only certain system entities are visible or can be used with CRM for tablets. The following table shows the entities displayed in CRM for tablets.

Account	Appointment	Competitor	Connection
Contact	Lead	Note	Opportunity
Opportunity Product	Phone Call	Task

Note

The Connection entity is only available as part of the Stakeholders and Sales team on the Opportunity form.

Except for the Activity, Connection, and Note entities, each of these entities can also be disabled so they won’t appear in CRM for tablets or they could be set as read-only.

Records for the following entities are only available in read-only forms.

Case	Email	Email Attachment
Product	Team	User

Case, Email and Product entities can be set so they aren’t visible in CRM for tablets.

You can edit these system entities and enable custom entities to be displayed in CRM for tablets. The entity options are CRM for Tablets and Read-only in CRM for tablets. More information: 02ba7668-028c-4886-9f05-9116a605f3c8#BKMK_EnableDisableOptions

To enable a custom entity to be visible or used with CRM for tablets you must set the entity options CRM for Tablets. If you want it to be visible but read-only you must use the Read-only in CRM for tablets option. More information: 02ba7668-028c-4886-9f05-9116a605f3c8#BKMK_EnableDisableOptions 

Change navigation options for CRM for tablets

CRM for tablets uses the same sitemap data to provide navigation options as the web application except that it is optimized for presentation using a tablet.

If an entity is enabled for CRM for tablets and appears in the navigation bar for the web application, it will also appear on the navigation bar in CRM for tablets.

A grouping within an Area on the web client will be ignored. The CRM for tablets app will show the entities as a flat list. An entity may be added to multiple groups on the web client. CRM for tablets will display a flattened list and will not show any repeats. Your Microsoft Dynamics CRM security role is respected so you won’t see an entity unless you have read access to that entity.

The order of the items in the nav bar is determined by the order in the site map. If there is a duplicate, the first instance will be the only one shown.

Custom entities will use a fixed custom entity icon.

 

See Change application navigation using the SiteMap for more information.

Change commands for CRM for tablets

CRM for tablets uses the same ribbon data to provide commands as the web application except that it is optimized for presentation using a tablet.

Note

Icons configured for commands will not be displayed and labels that are too long will be truncated.

More information:Customize commands and the ribbon

Form script differences for CRM for tablets

Scripts written for forms used in the web application in should also work with CRM for tablets but there are some differences. As a rule, methods that are not valid within CRM for tablets will not throw errors, but they will also not return any values. Developers can use the following conditional statement to separate code that will not work correctly using CRM for tablets.

if (Xrm.Page.context.client.getClient() != "Mobile")
{
    //Code that should not run in CRM for tablets can be included here

}

The following list should help you understand what to expect. For specific details see the developer documentation topics within the Client-side programming reference.

• Using window.alert, window.confirm, window.prompt or any other code that blocks code execution while waiting for a user’s response will not work as expected or will display an error. These methods should not be used in scripts that will be used in CRM for tablets.

• Because tabs displayed in CRM for tablets cannot be expanded or collapsed, code to expand or collapse them will not work and code that is configured for event handlers using these events will not be executed.

• Because web resources and IFRAMES in forms are not displayed in CRM for tablets any of the methods provided to interact with them will not work and code that is configured for event handlers using these for the events called when these items load will not be executed.

• Because CRM for tablets does not provide the ability for a user to switch to different forms, those methods that enable this in the web application will not work.

• Any methods that allow for showing or navigating to related entities in the web application will not work.

• Methods that would refresh the command bar, get dimensions of the view port, or close a form window will not work.

Publishing customizations for CRM for tablets

When you perform customizations that will appear in CRM for tablets, you should always explicitly publish your customizations to make sure that every item is synchronized with the CRM for tablets application.

Business rules are cached

For CRM for tablets, the definition of the business rules are downloaded and cached when CRM for tablets opens. Changes made to business rules are not applied until CRM for tablets is closed and re-opened.

See Also

Video: Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 for Tablets - Customizations
What's new for customization
Customization overview
Create and edit metadata
Create and design forms
Create and edit views
Create and edit processes
Create and edit business rules

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