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How to Customize Sorting Priority in System Views and Personal Views in CRM 2011

Post Author: Joe D365 |

You can do a lot with views in Dynamics CRM, and we've got several posts on these features already. You can create and hide shared views, deactivate and remove system views, or quickly sort your view with filtering. But what if you're tired of looking at a view and finding the list sorted by "Date" instead of by "Company Name" or "Revenue" or any other column that you would prefer instead? Good news! Any user of CRM can customize how their personal views appear.

There are two ways to change personal views: Option one is simply clicking on the column heading you would like to sort by, thereby sorting the column in ascending or descending order. This needs to be done every time you enter the view. Who has the time or patience for that? Every single time?! Not this guy. There's got to be a better way.

The most effective way to do this is to customize the view. This can be accomplished with a few easy steps:

  1. Find the view you would like to customize.
  2. Click the Customize tab, then select View at the top of the screen: customize sorting priority for views in CRM 2011

    (It is important to note that a user with System Administrator rights can make changes to the company-wide System View. To do this, instead of selecting "View," select "System Views" in the top ribbon, and then select which system view to make changes to on the popup that follows. The following steps remain the same from there.)

  3. This will open a popup giving you customization options for the view.
  4. Select "Configure Sorting":

  5. Another popup will appear, giving you sort options based on the columns in the view.
    1. The first selection is your first sorting priority – in this case revenue.
    2. The second selection determines how to sort the view in the event of duplicate values, customer, user, etc.
    3. Click OK after making your selections.

  6. After clicking OK, click "Save and Close" on the popup, then click "Publish Entity" on the ribbon at the top:

  7. Refresh your browser window, find the view again, and you are all set – no more annoying sort results, and a much more efficient way of viewing your data – the way you want it!

It is small customizations like this one that make use of Dynamics CRM even more valuable, and why Dynamics CRM continues to be the best CRM system on the market. Keep checking back for more tips and tricks on Dynamics customizations, or let us know how we can help!

Happy CRM'ing!

Joe CRM
By Joe D365
Joe D365 is a Microsoft Dynamics 365 superhero who runs on pure Dynamics adrenaline. As the face of PowerObjects, Joe D365’s mission is to reveal innovative ways to use Dynamics 365 and bring the application to more businesses and organizations around the world.

One comment on “How to Customize Sorting Priority in System Views and Personal Views in CRM 2011”

  1. Joe, I'm a new user of Dynamics CRM 2011. Could you give me a way to sort a view on a field that isn't part of the main entity? If not, could you explain why this isn't possible? For example, the Account Name might be "John Smith - 2013" and I'd like to list all 2013 accounts by the last name of the account holder while also viewing whether or not the account is current or past due. The Account Name and payment status might be on the Account entity but the last name of the account holder would be on the Person entity. I can get all of the information on the screen but can't sort by the last name...

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