We need to talk about......D365 Forms.....Embedded Record Editor.

Today I want to talk about an interesting piece of functionality added as part of the recent Release Wave 1 of 2022 changes that Microsoft and that is the ability to now edit a child record from the parent record screen.

To present this functionality to users, first we need to configure the interface slightly and in the below example, we are going to present the Primary Contact on the Account form for editing.

Firstly, we want to create a section on the form to store the editor. Somewhere high and visible to the user will work best,

To this section we will add the Primary Contact lookup. This acts as the link between the parent and child record, in this case, the Account and the Contact,

Once we have placed the Primary Contact lookup on the form, we need to edit the Controls currently set on it. To do this, double click or select Properties from the ribbon

We need to add the Form Component Control initially and then in the "Forms" variable below we need to create a little XML script. The script itself is very simple,

<QuickForms><QuickFormIds><QuickFormId entityname="Contact">3038cbf9-727a-eb11-b1ab-000d3a7ec735</QuickFormId></QuickFormIds></QuickForms>

The portion you will need to edit is the "entityname=" to match the correct entity you are working with AND the ID that follows it. This is the ID of the form you wish to load into the component.

Once we are happy with the changes made the Primary Contact lookup field, we do a simple Save & Publish and then refresh our Account Form and we can now the Primary Contact directly within the Account Form.

So we can now see the Embedded Editor on the right hand side of the Main Account form, and below a user making changes to the Primary Contact record directly, without leaving the Account screen.

Hope you all enjoyed this post on the what is really a neat way of allowing users to make changes to child records without leaving the main parent record screen. Really useful in the above scenario where we had an Account with a Primary contact, but this functionality could be reused anywhere that we see parent and child records and can be configured in a few quick and easy steps. Take Care, Speak Soon!