{Dynamics 365 + Editable Grids} Rearrange columns on the fly and maintain view groupings and switch display mode in Dynamics 365 editable grids.

Editable grids are here and how and it’s WOW. Probably the most awaited feature of the Dynamics CRM since its inception. The entire community is going gaga over it and why not?

No this is not a blog post which tells you how to enable and configure editable grids. There has been lot of great posts already floating in the community and I will not add on top of that. Rather I would like to focus on two new cool features that has accompanied editable grid but are somehow hidden from its limelight. In case you are not aware of the editable grid feature in Dynamics 365, you can visit the below link to get acquainted with it.

https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/lystavlen/2016/10/30/editable-grids-is-here/

So let us talk about these small and yet handy new features.

Column Re-arranging on the fly in Views

Now this is cool. When I first saw this, I am like finally! Now I can view the columns in order of my preference rather than some default ordering set up by my system customizer while not creating a view for myself.

For e.g -  I have enabled editable grid for my account entity and currently in the “Active Accounts” view, the column “Address 1 City” is after the “Main Phone”.

Well I do not like that. I want it to be displayed right after my account name column. Then go ahead. Simply drag the column and drop it before the “Main Phone” column.

And voila it is done.

Now that was easy! But it will go away if I move away from Accounts, view something else and come back? Well the good news is, in the same session it maintains your preferences. So if you move to Opportunities grid and come back to “My Active Accounts” view, you would still see your address1 city column displayed before the Main Phone column.

Same way, your grouping on the views is maintained in the same session.

In the below screenshot, I have grouped ‘My active Accounts’ with group by = “City”. Now when I moved to contacts and came back, the grouping is maintained.

Wondering if you need to refresh your CRM page for some reason, will your choice of grouping be still maintained? The answer is big “YES”.

So editable grids are great. But what I want to fall back temporarily to the default non-editable view without changing it through customizations. Well all you need to do is choose an option from the ribbon menu.

As shown in the above screenshot, select Read-Only Grid from the Show As menu and you are done.

 

Hope this helps! Stay tuned for more update on the amazing Dynamics 365 features.

 

Debajit Dutta (Dynamics MVP)

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