of the
All entities in CRM have status and status reason fields. Status is either Active or Inactive (system entities, in fact, can have more than that but that’s not the subject of this tip), while status reason can hold multiple customizable values for each status. For example, if we have a custom entity Project, we’d want to specify the reason why the project was deactivated:
Since forever we’ve been using the behavior of these fields where, if Inactive status has more than one value, CRM would prompt users to select the status reason when deactivating the records:
However, CRM Online 2015 Update seems to have changed the behavior. In the list view it continues to prompt users to select the status reason; in the form view it silently deactivates the record without any prompts. Some say “behavior”, I call a bug. Build 7.1.1.3138 to blame (YMMV). The only quick workaround that come to mind is to remove Deactivate from the command bar and tell users to use a list view for a time being.
Actually CRM 2013 RTM did exactly the same thing. That’s why the lab showing how to use status reasons in the customization course instructs the student to do the deactivate step from the list, not the form (but lots of students get it wrong because when it says “Select the record…” they double click to open the record. It seemed better to avoid the path to the bug than to try and document something that would later be fixed.
This was fixed in CRM (2013) Online update 2, and some on-premises SP but I forget which. Looks like a regression.
I first reported this on Connect during RC1 stage of 2013:
https://connect.microsoft.com/site687/Feedback/Details/801001
Of course, this item was almost immediately marked as “Closed” before anyone else could notice it, report that they could also reproduce it and vote it up (which is why it made it to RTM and had to be fixed later).
Funny – I just struggled w this today – and even on a project entity 🙂
When editing status reason field, there is at new button where you now can specify what status reasons can change from/to. I.e. you can specify ‘gave up’ can follow ‘active’, and when you set this you get the old behaviour.
Have a look at the status reason field.
I’m aware of the status reason transitions, curious why would enabling them help. Does look like a regression issue but good to know the workarounds!