Create and edit entities

Applies To: Dynamics CRM 2013

Entities define the types of records people can use in a Microsoft Dynamics CRM organization. In the CRM application, you can edit customizable system entities and create, edit, and delete custom entities.

In This Topic

Types of entities

Create entities

Edit entities

Edit system entity messages

Delete custom entities

Set managed properties

Types of entities

Before creating or editing entities you should understand that there are different types of entities. Once a custom entity is created these types cannot be changed. The two major divisions are based on entity ownership and whether the entities are activity entities.

Entity ownership

There are four different types of entity ownership. When you create a custom entity the only options are user or team owned or organization-owned, but you should be aware that other entities have different ownership types.

The custom entities that you create, and most customizable system entities, are either organization-owned or user or team owned.

Activity entities

An activity can be thought of as any action for which an entry can be made on a calendar. An activity has time dimensions (start time, stop time, due date, and duration) that help determine when the action occurred or will occur. Activities also contain data that helps determine what action the activity represents, for example, subject and description. An activity can be opened, canceled, or completed. The completed status of an activity will have several sub-status values associated with it to clarify the way that the activity was completed.

Activity entities can only be owned by a user or team, they can’t be owned by an organization.

There are 15 system entities that represent activities as shown in the following table.

You can create new custom activity entities. For example you might create a custom activity entity to record instant message communications. Creating an activity entity is different from creating a non-activity entity because you don’t specify a primary field. All activity entities have a Primary Field set to Subject and other common fields that are defined by the Activity entity. This allows all types of activities to be shown in a view where just the common fields are displayed.

To create a custom activity entity, select Define as an activity entity. After you select this, you’ll see that Display in Activity Menus is selected. This setting allows people to choose to create this type of activity in the activity menus. This isn’t selected for activities that are typically associated with specific events and created behind using code or by a workflow. After you save the entity, you can’t change these settings.

Create entities

Before you create a custom entity, evaluate whether using an existing entity will meet your requirements. More information: 88b18946-474c-4c94-8e4c-27532f930757#BKMK_CreateNewOrUseExistingMetadata

Part of the name of any custom entity you create is the customization prefix. This is set based on the solution publisher for the solution you’re working in. If you care about the customization prefix, make sure that you are working in an unmanaged solution or the default solution where the customization prefix is the one you want for this entity. For information about how to change the customization prefix, see ece68f5f-ad40-4bfa-975a-3e5bafb854aa#BKMK_SolutionPublisher.

For step-by-step instructions to create an entity, see Create a new entity.

The minimum required fields to create a custom entity are:

To create an activity entity, select Define as an activity entity before you save the entity. More information: Activity entities

Under Areas that display this entity, choose which of the areas available within the navigation bar you want this entity to be available from. This isn’t required, but if you need people to be able to discover the entity easily, choose one of these. Making changes here updates the data that defines the navigation pane. You can’t change the settings for system entities. However, you can edit this data to modify where each entity is displayed and how it is displayed by editing the sitemap.

There are a number of options that are set by default. If you’re not sure you want these for your custom entity, disable them before you save. You can always choose to enable them later, but certain options can’t be disabled after they are enabled. Notes, Activities, and Connections are enabled by default and can’t be disabled later. For more information about available options, see Edit entities.

Each custom entity has a primary field. This is defined in the Primary Field tab. This field is used when records for the entity are displayed in a list. The primary field is typically a link that opens the record. This field must be a Single Line of Text field with the format of Text. When creating the entity the only value that can’t be changed later is the Name. By default the Display Name is “Name” and the Name is your solution publisher customizations prefix, an underscore, and “name”. If this isn’t what you want, change this before you create the entity. After you save the entity, you can’t edit the primary field values from the Primary Field tab for the entity. You must locate this field in the entity fields. You’ll be able to edit it there like any other single line of text field.

People with the system administrator or system customizer security roles can see all new custom entities. This allows you to test your custom entities before showing them to people who will use the system. Before people with other security roles can see these entities, you need to edit the security roles and grant access to other users so that they can see them. When the custom entity is created it will be included on the Custom Entities tab for each security role. You must provide at least user-level read access to the custom entity before people will be able to see it in the application.

When a new entity is created, a number of metadata and supporting system records are created for it. You continue editing the entity by working with these.

Edit entities

You can edit any custom entities that you create. System entities or managed custom entities may have limitations about changes you can make.

System entities are any entities that are included with Microsoft Dynamics CRM. Managed custom entities are entities that have been added to the system by importing a managed solution. The degree to which you can edit these entities is determined by the managed properties set for each entity. Any properties that can’t be edited will be disabled. To view the ece68f5f-ad40-4bfa-975a-3e5bafb854aa#BKMK_ManagedProperties for an entity selected in the solution explorer, click the Managed Properties button in the menu bar.

When you edit entities you can make the following metadata changes:

• Edit the entity fields More information: Create and edit fields

• Edit the entity relationships More information: Create and edit entity relationships

You can also make changes to records that support the entity:

• Forms More information: Create and design forms

• Business Rules More information: Create and edit business rules

For your custom entities you can change the Areas that display this entity, but for system entities or managed custom entities you will find that the options are disabled.

Change the name of an entity

Use the Display Name and Plural Name properties to change the name of the entity in the application. However, the name of many system entities may also be used in other text in the application. To locate and change text where this name was used, see Edit system entity messages.

Change the icons used for custom entities

By default, all custom entities in the web application have the same icons. You can create image web resources for the icons you want for your custom entities and set them using the Update Icons button on the toolbar. There are two sizes of icons:

• Icon in Web Application This icon should be 16x16 pixels.

• Icon for Entity Forms This icon should be 32x32 pixels.

Both icons should be no larger than 10 KB. PNG format files with transparent backgrounds are recommended. More information: Change entity icons

Entity options that can only be enabled

The following table lists the options that you can enable for an entity, but after these items are enabled, they can’t be disabled:

Enable or disable entity options

The following table lists the entity options that you can enable or disable at any time.

Edit system entity messages

The default display name of some system entities are used in user interface text and error messages in CRM. If you change the display name, you should also update any messages that use the default display name. For example, if you change the display name from “Account” to “Company,” you could still see an error message using the old name.

In the solution explorer, below the entity, if you see a Messages node you can edit certain text that includes references to the original entity display name. Editing this text is straightforward. Open the message to see a form with three fields:

Some of the message text may have placeholders in them. These placeholders are numbers with brackets on either side. For example: {0}. These placeholders allow for text to be inserted in the message. If you edit messages, make sure that you keep these placeholders.

Delete custom entities

As someone with the system administrator security role, you can delete custom entities that aren’t part of a managed solution.

Before you can delete a custom entity, you must remove any dependencies that exist in other solution components. For example, if another entity has a lookup field on a form that uses this custom entity, you must first remove that field from the form before you can delete the custom entity. This also applies to views defined for other entities that include a reference to this entity. If you try to delete the entity and any dependencies are discovered, the deletion won’t be allowed. Click or tap Show Dependencies on the menu bar to help identify any dependencies that you have to remove before the entity can be deleted.

The only way to recover data from an entity that was deleted is to restore the database from a point before the entity was deleted.

Set managed properties

ece68f5f-ad40-4bfa-975a-3e5bafb854aa#BKMK_ManagedProperties only apply when you include an entity with a managed solution and import it into another organization. These settings allow a solution developer to have some control over the level of customization that they want to allow people who install their solution to have. To set managed properties for an entity, select the entity and click Managed Properties on the menu bar.

The Can be customized option controls all the other options. If this option is False, none of the other settings apply. When it is True, you can specify the other customization options.

Entities have more managed properties than any other type of solution component. If the entity is customizable, you can set the following options:

• Display name can be modified

• Can Change Additional Properties

• New forms can be created

• New charts can be created

• New views can be created

Except for Can Change Additional Properties, these options should be self-explanatory. The Can Change Additional Properties property simply means anything not covered by the other options. If you set all the individual options to False, you might as well set Can be customized to False.

See Also

Create and edit metadata
Create and edit fields
Create and edit entity relationships
Create and edit global option sets

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