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

|

How to Configure ‘I Follow’ Functionality for Custom Entities

Post Author: Joe D365 |

Regular readers of our blog are likely familiar with the concept of following records in Dynamics. But… what if you want to add this functionality to a custom entity that you created? In today’s blog, we will walk you through how to set this up in Dynamics 365.

In our example, we created a new entity called Funds and our client wants to be able to choose records – ad hoc – to follow as opposed to having a potentially large list of records with which to work. We have three funds currently (as shown below) but there will be plenty more added to the system. The client wants to follow the Fidelity fund and also be able to add other funds to a 'Funds I Follow' list in the future.

This is our snazzy new Funds entity with its 3 records:

Machine generated alternative text:
Dynamics 365
Home
C) Recent
Pinned
My Work
Activities
Dashboards
Customers
Accounts
A Contacts
Funds
CORE
CRM Hub
Show Chart New Delete
Active Funds
Fund Name
Barclays Mid Federal Bond ETF
Barclays Real Return Bond ETF
Joe CRM
Refresh
Email a Link
Firm
Barclays
Barclays
Fidelity
Search for records
Value
$560,000.00
ABC
Fidelity MSCI Europe Hi Qual Hdgd to CAD ETF
- 3 of 3 (0 selected)

We can see that the Funds entity has only two views currently:

Machine generated alternative text:
Show Chart New Delete
Active Funds
System Views
Active Funds
Inactive Funds
Barclays Mid Federal Bond ETF

When I Follow functionality has been enabled, the Funds entity will have the Follow/Unfollow command buttons and a couple of views automatically. The underlying technology for this is called Activity Feeds and we will need to navigate to the system settings and into Activity Feeds Configuration to enable this functionality. These are the steps:

Click on Advanced Settings:

Next, open Activity Feeds Configuration:

Now that we are in the Post Configurations view within the Activity Feeds Configuration settings, we need to refresh the view because our custom entity will not be in this view yet, so go ahead and click Refresh:

Now, locate the custom entity and click ACTIVATE and then OK:

Click Activate and then OK. Next, publish your solution that contains the custom entity by clicking Publish All.

Machine generated alternative text:
Confirm Post Configuration Activation
Are you sure you want to activate the selected 1 Post Configuration?
This will set the Post Configuration to the Active state.
Goal
Activate
Inactive
Cancel

Machine generated alternative text:
This site says...
You will need to publish the related entity for form wall
changes to take effect.
OK

And that’s it!! Now, when you go to the Funds entity you will see the Follow and Unfollow buttons, which will add a record (or remove it) from the Funds I Follow view:

Machine generated alternative text:
Show Chart
Ill Delete
Funds I Follow v
Fund Name
CD Refresh
Email a Link
Flow
Firm
Fidelity
Value
Fidelity VISCI Europe Hi Qual Hdgd to CAD ETF
Run Report v
Search for records
$560,000.00

Be sure to subscribe to our blog for more tips and tricks.

Happy D365’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.

PowerObjects Recommends