One of my favorite sessions at a recent conference was on usability and productivity improvements for Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations. I was particularly interested in hearing about the new “Saved Views” functionality, because it fixes some challenges for users.
One of my jobs is to demonstrate Dynamics 365, and I love to show how you can personalize Dynamics AX and now Dynamics 365 F&O. But, what a demo doesn’t show is how problematic it is to get support when users hide fields, rename them and move them around.
Imagine calling the Help Desk and telling them you can’t save a form, only to learn that they can’t replicate the issue because your fields are in a different order, renamed or hidden. We make it a point to stress to our clients the importance of prohibiting all but select users from personalizing, but up until now, it’s been an either/or choice.
Enter in Saved Views. In Dynamics AX 2012, you could personalize a form and then save it with a name in a public view. You could then open that name when you logged in as another user and use that view. We lost that capability in Dynamics 365 F&O. Now, Saved Views is bringing it back with a roar! You will be able to name multiple views per form and list view as before. But taking it further, Microsoft will include preformatted Saved Views called Simplified Views that are associated to roles and tasks.
An example would be a list of “Delivered But Not Paid Purchase Orders” with just a subset of fields on it. Because Saved Views can be associated with security roles, new users or users whose roles have changed will have immediate access to the published Saved Views. Partners can create Saved Views that they deliver as part of the implementation. This new feature will also allow you to save queries, so you could save a view with “All Open Orders Due in a Week.” And yes, the plans are to enable you to make a Saved View a tile on a workspace.
You’ll be able to easily see that there are multiple views to choose from using a View Selector on the top and then see when a new view has been created or one has changed. If a user made changes to their own form, grid and fact boxes, but wants to check out the published views, there’s no need to worry about losing their own personalization―their changes will be saved as a “My View.” And in an answer to the support problem I stated above, users who do not have permission to personalize can still see and utilize the published views.
Saved Views is rolling out in a Platform Update targeted for March 2019. I can’t wait to try it!