Looking for PowerObjects? Don’t worry, you’re in the right place! We’ve been part of HCL for several years, and we’ve now taken the final step in our acquisition journey: moving our website to the HCL domain. Nothing else is changing – we are still fanatically focused on Microsoft Business Applications!

PowerObjects Blog 

for Microsoft Business Applications

|

Party List fields and how to filter Custom Activity records that use them using Advance Find

Post Author: Joe D365 |

A new feature in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 is the ability to create Custom Activity entities. You can create a custom activity entity by checking the Define as an activity entity field.

CRM Advanced Find

While working with a Custom Activity entity you may notice some fields of type Party List such as Customers, Partners, and Organizer (for more information please visit Party List Types).

CRM Party List

When added to the form you may notice that these fields look like Lookup fields but may function a little different. For example the Partners or Customer party list fields let you select multiple records of the same or different type.

You may also notice there aren't any 1:N relationships defined for these Party List fields. This is because these fields point to the Activity Party table. Anytime a record is added to the Party List fields an associated record is created in the Activity Party table.

You can use the Activity Party table to get a complete view of all the Part List participants.

To retrieve Custom Activity records for only a certain participant in a Party List you can use Advance Find. For example, the use of Advance Find will search for all records that have John Doe in the Customer Party List. From the Custom Activity select Activity Parties form the related list.

Then select Party (Contact) from the related list. Select the Full Name field and enter the name of the Contact then click the Results button.

That's all there is to it. No need to be a CRM Expert.

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.

6 comments on “Party List fields and how to filter Custom Activity records that use them using Advance Find”

  1. Hi Joe
    Plz suggest me
    can i add 2 Activitiy Parties in single View like Party(User) and Party(Account)
    Thanks in Advance

  2. Hi Joe,

    How can I add one extra party list field in a phone call entity in MS CRM 4.0. As you know there are existing party list in phonecall "To" -multi lookup,"form" - Single lookup,I need to add another party list like "To" which will accept multiple values or I need to turn "Form" as multi lookup. Can you please suggest me.

    Thanks
    Niloy

    1. Hi Niloy - Woah - crm 4.0? Time to upgrade - let us know if you need help 🙂 So we can't create a new party list, but we could create a new 'one to many' or many to many relationship and add the grid right on the main form. However - what is the business case for this on the phone call entity?

      1. Hi Joe,

        Thanks for your reply. Business case is,for a phone call there would be two type of attendees where user will select multiple users like (required attendees and optional attendees in appointment). We can not leverage "Appointment" because it is already in use.In phone call party list "to" serves the purpose of holding one type of multiple attendees,We need another such field in Phone call.Is there any way to achieve this?Users are reluctant to go for the Grid concept and creating attendee records going to another screen.

        Thanks
        Niloy

        1. Hi Niloy - Unfortunately there is no way to create a custom party list. Best bet is to look at how the appointment entity is being used and see if we can make a 'dual use' out of it. perhaps with an appointment type were ti is in person meeting or phone meeting? Or some other creative way....

          1. Hi Joe,

            Can we really create a new 'one to many' or 'many to many' relationship and add the grid in Phonecall. What I could see CRM allows me to create only (N:1) relationship against any activity and not the others.We can not bring that in a grid,it gives webpage can not be displayed error.

            Thanks
            Niloy

PowerObjects Recommends