of the
Sometimes, good news sneaks into our world undetected. Big int as a separate data type has been available in Dataverse for about two years now.
A big int column can be defined in UI but is accessible via API only, i.e., it cannot be used in forms, views, or formula fields.
A lazy and probably not very reliable way to allow updates in UI is to create a text field then add an automated low-code plug-in on Create and Update:
Patch(
'Table',
ThisRecord,
{
'BigIntColumn': Value('BigIntTextColumn')
}
)
Use cases:
- Rollups where the int value may overflow. For example, total volume of file attachments across large number of records.
- Timestamps or the total number of postal stamps printed in the world since 18401 – whichever you prefer.
- Population of the Northern Hemisphere.
- My weight in µg (micrograms).
- External record identifiers (real case).
- Yes, ChatGPT and I did the numbers, it’s around 650 billions ↩︎
Do you know how to work with the metadata of this new type?
It seems to be missing in the reference.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/api/microsoft.xrm.sdk.metadata.integerformat?view=dataverse-sdk-latest
Hey Markus,
bigint has a separate metadata type,
BigIntAttributeMetadata:https://learn.microsoft.com/dotnet/api/microsoft.xrm.sdk.metadata.bigintattributemetadata?view=dataverse-sdk-latest
HTH
George
Does anyone know when it will be possible to show Big int on forms ?
No UI support, unfortunately. Best option would probably be building a PCF to work with those. Geniunly curious of a use case where bigint is needed on the form – care to share?
When our client insisted on having a whole number for the date + autonumbering format (e.g., 2025020400001) without having to store it as a string exceeding 64 bits.
We ended up opting for a string. This was necessary because the current support in the UI, as well as in some external tools, is still lacking for Int64 (long) when handling whole numbers.”
Also autonumbering system in dynamics only generate strings… And we didn’t want to reimplement a custom one, PCF,…
That’s not really a number, is it, so your choice of string storage is 100% correct!