Configuration: Advanced Lookups

Last week I came across a new way to configure lookup fields in Dynamics 365 called ‘Advanced Lookup’. This is actually something that needs to be enabled first, but once it is enabled this functionality will be available for most lookup fields in Dynamics 365. Advanced lookups allows users to get more information on the records they can choose from to populate in the lookup field. For example if a user opens the advanced lookup screen for the ‘potential customer’ field on the opportunity table, they will be able to see a list of records to choose from with multiple columns, a search box and even a button that allows them to create a new record. This can be very helpful for a user, because what if there are multiple account records in the system with the same name? Being able to see more information like city, state and phone number allows users to choose the correct account. Let’s take a look at how to enable this feature and get into more detail.

In order to turn on Advanced Lookups and administrator or user with the right access levels needs to navigate to the Power Platform Admin center. They need to open the environment for which this behavior should be enabled. In the environment page, they’ll need to navigate to ‘Settings’ and then select ‘Product’ followed by ‘Behavior’. On the right bottom side of the screen they’ll see a section called ‘Lookup Behavior’ which is where the functionality can be turned on/off. Set the ‘Enable advanced lookup in model driven apps’ slider to ‘On’. Below the slider they’ll see fields that read ‘Minimum number of characters to trigger typeahead search‘ and ‘Delay between character inputs that will trigger a search‘. The typeahead functionality filters the records that are shown based on the characters that are typed in, the second field puts in a delay between the typed characters. Don’t forget to click Save on the bottom right of the page!

In order to see how this works, you’ll have to refresh your browser first. When you click on a lookup field (after you the refresh) you’ll notice there the ‘Change View’ option that was there before has been replaced with the ‘Advanced Lookup’ option as shown on the image above. When a user clicks on ‘Advanced Lookup’ a window will pop open with a view of the lookup table. The Account lookup view will be loaded by default, but users can switch to a different view by clicking on the view switcher. You’ll also notice a search bar on the top left of the screen. This is where the typeahead functionality comes into play. When user start to type characters in the search field, the underlying records will automatically be filtered out even before a user clicks on the search button! Keep in mind users will still need to type in ‘*’ if they want to do a wildcard search. For example if a user is looking for ‘A. Datum’ but starts to type in ‘Datum’ the record will not be found. If the user types in ‘*Datum’ the record will show up.
You’ll also notice a checkbox on the right side of the window, which reads ‘only my records’ this allows users to very quickly filter the list of records to only show records that are owned by the user performing the search. And of course if a new record needs to be added that can be done by clicking the ‘+Add new’ button on the right side of the screen. Users can’t filter the columns in this screen, but they do have the ability to use the sorting functionality.

Another very nice feature that advanced lookup has is the ability to switch tables without leaving the screen. Ok what do I mean by that?! You might be aware that some lookup fields can have different record types (tables) populated in the field as a value. Think about party field types or customer data type fields (I.E The ‘Company Name’ field (parentcustomerid) of the contact table shown in the image above can have contacts or accounts populated in the field). When a user accesses the advanced lookup screen for such a field, they’ll notice they can very easily switch from the account table to the contact table and vice versa. I also tried this when creating an appointment from the quick create form and this gives you even more access to different tables!
If you want to make changes to the lookup views, maybe add additional columns or change the sorting options, you can do this the same way you always did. A lot of times admins don’t have a lot of columns on those views, because only a few columns were shown when clicking in the lookup field. Now that we have the ability to use advanced lookups I do think it’s worth adding some fields to the views!
All and all I think this is very nice functionality that was added without me even noticing! I think this will definitely help users be more productive, as they have more data available when needing to decide which record should be populated in a lookup field.

I hope you enjoyed this article! Be sure to check in again next week for a new article or subscribe here to never miss another post!