Over View
Before we get into explaining how to customize entities in Microsoft CRM 3.0,
we want to remind you why you'll need to customize your system. Let's assume
your company is considering implementing Microsoft CRM and you've installed the
trial version of the software. As soon as you show the company owners or
executives the user interface and they look at one of the default forms (like
the Account form shown in Figure 4-1), the first words out of their mouth will
be something like "That's not the information we track about our customers. We
would never use the Shipping Method and Freight Terms fields. And where do we
enter the SIC Code and the number of employees each customer has? Also, we
don't call customers Accounts; we refer to them as Companies."
Ah-ha! It took only one meeting before users started demanding customizations
to the Microsoft CRM system to better match your business's needs. However,
within just a few minutes (literally) and without a single line of programming
code, you could customize Microsoft CRM so that your new form looks like Figure
4-2.
Implementing this type of customization in other CRM vendors' applications
might take weeks of coding and testing. It might not even be possible to change
some of the key system terminology, such as renaming Account to Company. The
Microsoft CRM customization model will make these and other types of
customizations seem almost trivial to you.
As we said earlier, Microsoft CRM offers an incredible number of system
customization opportunities, and—without any programming expertise—you can
complete most of them through a Web-based interface. In fact, Microsoft CRM
offers so many customization features that we have to break the entity
customization explanation into separate articles:
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Customization Concepts
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Entity Attributes Customization
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Forms and Views
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Relationships, Custom Entities, and Site Map
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