A short, slick yet very powerful functionality comes in the Avatar of Rapid View Forms. So what exactly is this Rapid View Form in CRM 2011, what is its business utility and how does it work? Let us delve a bit into it…

The rapid view forms are read-only forms that can be configured like any other form in Microsoft Dynamics CRM to display any record in the system. There is no default ribbon that appears with read-only forms. The biggest benefit of these forms is that information loads up super quickly in a read only format and there is no processing delay in the background. Try it out to believe this!

We see a lot of business utility being derived out of this feature. Think of a Call Center serving millions of customers. In this industry every second counts as that enables you to serve an additional customer. This feature can be a great utility as call center agents may primarily be focused on reading, interpreting and communicating information with customers. Of course, if they need to update information they can always switch back to the update mode to edit a record. But in bulk of the cases, they will save those additional seconds without the need of a small wait time for page to download. Think of retail kiosks or bank tellers where the users are more involved in carrying out transactions for customers by referring to their information stored in the system. Think of all the managers in different organizations whose primary responsibility may be reviewing information and providing feedback. Well, the list goes on. This utility can be a super nice tool to return back those additional seconds to business and like they say every second counts!

Okay, so now let us look at how this functionality works and few scenarios around it.

Firstly, an administrator can navigate to Settings - Administration - System Settings and then click on Customizations Tab, as shown below. You will notice that an additional option called Form Mode is available. By default the form mode will be pre-selected as Edit. This is basically the normal mode in which CRM exists for you.

Now, let us select the option Read-Optimized, as shown below and click ok:

Once you take the above action, open any existing record in CRM. I am going to show you an example of Accounts Entity, as shown below. You will notice a read-only record that loads superfast in front of you. Now if you have the requisite access, you can click on the Edit button, highlighted in yellow, to toggle to the original record and update information on it.

Well, the fun doesn't stop here. There is also an option available for users under their personal options to control the implementation of Rapid View Forms if the Administrator chooses to allow the same. All you need to do is navigate to File à Options and then check the General Tab, as shown below. By default the option will be Organizational default which would have been defined by an administrator as discussed above. Now the user has the option to flip it to a Read Form or an Edit Form depending on his business need. The change incorporated by the user will override the organizational setting and reflect only for this particular user.

The other small thing to mention is that Administrators can choose to disable the access of Individual users to edit the settings for rapid view forms as shown below. They just need to uncheck the box highlighted below in yellow and click ok:

The implication of the above action from administrator will be, in personal options an end user will no longer see the option to set read only forms, as shown below:

We are super excited with this small new functionality. To learn more reach out to the CRM Experts at PowerObjects.

Happy CRM'ing!