If you work with a Dynamics 365 v9 environment, you may notice that Microsoft has worked hard to simplify the default account form. In the past, there were many fields that were rarely used, so simplifying the form is a great thing. But some people may argue that they may have gone too far, as some frequently used fields are not displayed on the form by default. If you are a new CRM configurator, you need to know about these fields and form components are available so you don’t create unnecessary custom fields.

• Account number: A text field and is frequently used when integrating Dynamics 365 with your ERP or financial system.
• Address 2: Dynamics 365 includes 2 addresses on the account entity (and as many as you want more via the “more addresses” entity). By default, only address 1 is displayed. If you have two primary addresses for your customers (such as mailing and street address), add address 2 and define for which purpose each address should be used (such as street address in address 1 and mailing address in address 2).
• Relationship Type (customertypecode): Option set used to classify companies based on the type of relationship that they have with you. Need to identify whether a company is a customer, prospect, competitor, or vendor? Use relationship type and update the option set with the appropriate values.
• Category: Option set capturing whether the customer is “standard” or “preferred”
• Classification: Option set indicating the potential value of the customer account based on the projected return on investment, cooperation level, sales cycle length or other criteria.
• Modified By and Modified On: System fields indicating who last updated the record and when it was updated. If this is important detail to see on the record, you may want to add these fields to the form footer.
• Status and Status reason: indicate the status (active/inactive) of the record. Typically users can tell if an account is active or inactive based on whether the record is editable; however, if you integrate your accounts with another system (like ERP) or you don’t grant users security permissions to update records, they may see active records on read-only forms, so adding the Status or Status Reason to the account form may be helpful in identifying the active state of a record.
• Bonus: Bing map control–it’s still there, you just need to add it to the form if you want to display it on the form.

While this tip is simple, it serves two purposes:

For new CRM administrators and configurators, you need to be aware that these fields exist so you can take advantage of them if you need them. Between relationship type, category, and classification, there should be little need to create new categorization fields for companies.

For seasoned professionals with Dynamics CRM environments configured years ago with overly complicated account forms, you may want to consider resetting your account form to the default configuration when you upgrade to v9, and only add the additional components that you need to have on the form.

Cover photo by Julia Janeta on Unsplash