Dynamics CRM use of dialog to reduce clicks

Nothing irks me more than unnecessary clicks when things should go faster!

One example is when populating addresses on an order or quote in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011/2013/2015. The out-of-the-box Look Up Address button on the Order & Quote form does not provide a complete list of addresses associated with an account. CRM only displays the addresses added to the customer addresses entity, and does not display the shipping or billing address on the account which means more clicks to get to the information.

The screenshot below displays an account record with a Shipping Address (Address1), Billing Address (Address2) and additional address which is shown on the grid. When you use the out-of-the-box Look Up Address button on the Order, it will bring up only one address instead of three and that one address is from the customer address entity as shown below:

To get round this without using any code, create a simple dialog and get all the addresses associated with an account in a dialog. Below are the steps to create a dialog which provides this functionality to the Order record and this can also be created for any other.
Go to Settings > Process > Click on New NOTE: You need to have system Administrator role to perform the following actions
Create a Dialog for Order entity.

In the Dialog, go to the Steps tab and click Add Step and choose Query CRM Data.
In this section, query Addresses entity and choose the Parent (Account) as the linked entity.

NOTE: choose any account in the lookup - because we will add a dynamic variable in next steps.

Also select the address fields to show on the dialog in the Edit Columns section.

NOTE: to show your address values in a specific order, delete all the columns first and then add the columns one by one so that the XML order in the Modify Query Variables is in sequence.

 

On the Modify Query Variables Tab, select the Account as a variable instead of a hard-coded GUID as shown below:

In the Dialog Process form, add a Page and then a Prompt and Response.

This page will help the users select which address fields they want to populate on the order from.

Select from 3 options: Bill To, Ship To, or Both.

Add another page to the Dialog and select the Prompt and Response to this page as shown below.

This Page will display all addresses related to the account in a picklist and users can select the one they want to use to populate the order. In the Provide Values

section, select Query CRM data as shown in the screen shot below.

Add a check condition to see whether the users selected Bill To, Ship To or both as shown below.

In each of the if conditions you can add a step to update the order and depending on which fields users wants to update link those with the address values from one

of the responses user had selected on the second page 

Once all the steps are completed, save the dialog.( Don’t forget to activate it)

To see it in action, go to the Order form, click Start Dialog, select the Dialog created and you will see the first page asking which address fields you want to update.

 

On the next page, you will the 3 addresses are displayed, which are related to the account on the order form (instead of the one in the out-of-the-box Look Up Address functionality). Select the address you want to choose, click Next and then Finish.

  To see the address on the form refresh the page. This simple set-up will save you more clicks in the long run. Use this Dialog to get addresses from the Accounts which are connected to other Accounts or Contacts using connections, or address from Parent Accounts etc.