How do you improve user experience in Dynamics CRM 2011?

Question

I know it's hard to, but how do you improve user experience in Dynamics CRM 2011 ?

• How do you design your forms ? Are your forms "full of iframes"? Do you hide all the fields then insert an iframe that hosts and exposes all the features?

• Do you try to mimic the default style of Dynamics CRM in the iframes (so that it integrates better with the user interface)?

• The Xrm.Page.data.entity.attributes allow installation of onChange() handlers. That's all as far as I know. How do you deliver good user experience by having almost no feedback from the user?

I hope these are common sense questions :) Thank you in advance!

PS: I'm kind of new in Dynamics CRM development and... how do you make an autocomplete text-field ?

Answer 1

You're going to constantly fight a battle between maintainability and customization. Sure, you can do lots of custom iframes, a javascript and everything else, but Dynamics CRM is a rapid application development platform. Making the most beautiful websites ever was not its intent. Allowing the people with the business knowledge to make changes and customization that are supported through multiple release cycles was. I would try to keep it as simple as possible.

As far as an autocomplete text field, use jquery to wire up some on change events and go from there.

Answer 2

With regards to mimicing the default style, I think you'll find the style guide in the SDK useful for matching particular colors and fonts, etc. You can find it in sdk\\resources\\styleguide:

As for improving the experience, I try not to fight what the CRM framework provides. I use the existing controls as much as possible and use supported javascript to smooth over the on-form details. If you have a specific requirement we can suggest solutions. The form events for onload, onsave, and onchange provide an acceptable level of feedback for almost all situations on a data form. What specific requirement do you have that requires more than those?

Hope that helps.