In the past, I had written two blog posts about personalizations in Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Operations (at that time still called Dynamics AX). Some features are already enhanced and expanded in the past year. With the release of Platform update 5, Microsoft added the option to centrally upload a saved personalization file to multiple users at once. Before this update, each user had to import a smart personalization done by a user manually. In this post, I will guide you through the new options.
Create a personalization
As the personalization options have been evolved since I wrote the previous blog posts about personalization, I will show a small example to personalize a form. The Teams form will be taken as example. When you open the standard form, it looks like this:
We would like to include the Description in the list and also rename the Administrator field to Primary contact. As last change, I thought it would be a good idea to have the primary contact in the fast tab summary. You can see the result below.
We are very happy with this result. By the way: Did you know it was possible to include more fields in the overview list?
Now we would like to use this as a default for multiple users. To be able to distribute these personalizations, we have to export the changes to a file first. You can do it using the Manage drop down button and click Export. Then you can download the file with the form personalization.
Manage personalizations
Once you got the personalization file, the system administrator can distribute it to one, more or all users at once. To do so, you need to go to the menu path: System administration > Setup > Personalization.
On the form that opens, you have to perform 4 steps.
- (Optional) Provide a role to filter the user list with users assigned to a particular role. Otherwise the list with users will contain all users.
- Select one, multiple or all users which should get the personalizations pushed.
- Click Import to start selecting the file with personalizations.
- Click Browse to select the file with personalizations. After closing the file dialog it will directly start importing the file and distribute the personalizations to the selected users:
When the import is complete, the other users can directly benefit from the new enhanced lay-out.
There is more…
Using the main Personalization form, a system administrator would be able to delete all personalizations for all users with one action.
Another feature is removing individual personalizations from several users. Support for this can be found on the tab page Clear. You can select a form or workspace name. If the list with users is too large, you can filter users by role or using filter options on the User list. Then you can select one, multiple or all users and click the Clear button. Note that there is no support to delete personalizations from multiple forms together, unless you want to remove all personalizations as described above.
To prevent users from making personalizations, even restrict it per form, you can use the features available on the Users tab page.
That’s all for now. Till next time!
Image by Thomas Breher from Pixabay 
Great post again André! Thanks!
Hi André,
Thanks for sharing! Are you able to do the same with a custom workspace?
I’ve been trying to use this method to distribute a workspace to multiple users, but I get an error on import saying “Object ‘Query’ could not be created”
Or are there better ways to create workspaces (as a system user, not developer) for groups of users,
Hi Odd Sverre Volle,
Sorry for the late reply. I missed your comment. See my answer on the question from MC.
Hi Andre,
A great post indeed, thank you very much!
I think this is a great functionality, however, I only see the ‘System’ and ‘Users’ tab on the personalizations form, while I have a SysAdmin role. Do you know what the reason could be?
Furthermore, I wonder if this indeed works for a custom workspace (as ODD SVERRE VOLLE has asked). And if a workspace is connected to users in the specific role, what happens if users are added to or removed from that specific role? Will that also have consequenses for the availability of the workspaces for those users?
Thanks!
Hi MC,
Thanks for reading my blog. If you have an environment which is not running on Platform Update 5 or higher, this functionality is not available.
You can also distribute changes of a workspace as this is also a form. But not that this workspace often contains sub forms with e.g. lists, like ‘Customers over due’. If you change column settings on these sub forms, this is not part of the workspace configuration, but the (sub) form configuration.
Hi!
I am looking for the following functionality:
– Export multiple (personalized) forms in one oepration. The “Export” button is disabled once selecting multiple forms.
– Set a default personalization for a new user, i.e. a new user created in the system will get the default personalization
Any ideas on how this can be achieved or if there are any other solution to this?
Thanks for any help.
Br Andreas
Hi,
I am just looking at the enhancement at the moment and I was just wondering if you know what the impact to performance this is? Is there any recommended guidelines from Microsoft when to do these personalisations especially if there effect all users such as a label change. Is it best to do this out of hours?
Thanks for your help
Hi Nathalie,
Thanks for reading the blog. Applying changes is pretty fast. Users will need to login again to be able to see the changes pushed by the administrator. On loading forms there might be a very small penalty, but I don’t have any measurements done. At one customer they do have a few personalizations which are not noticed when loading the forms.
Hai,
How can I export multiple personalized forms from one user to import to other. Is there any option available?
Hi Sunil,
I haven’t looked at this option, but you could see if you can create a script of feature to be able to copy multiple personalizations at once.
Andre, if you make these personalizations and then take an upgrade/patch, are they still there or do we need to put a process is place to export all of the personalizations before an upgrade or patch? Just implementing now and trying not to have to do any custom code. We are talking specifically custom fields and moving fields in D365 F&O?
Hi jill,
Currently, I have no experience with an upgrade and personalizations. It is a great question. Possibly you can ask the same question on the Dynamics Community forum?
Hello Andre,
is it possible to hide custom fields using personalization ?
Regards,
Parag
Hi Parag,
Not sure if this question is related to custom fields created in Visual Studio or using the configuration option on runtime level.
If it is created in Visual Studio, then it is like any other standard field which can be hidden using personalizations.
Custom fields created via the personalization option, are not visible by default; unless you place them on forms also using personalization. If it had been made visible, then it can also be hidden again using the personalizations.
Hi Andre,
Is it there a way to set the personalization as the default setting for all new users?
I’ve tried it, and when I add a new user to D365, it doesn’t get the personailzation unless I manually assign it to him.
Thanks!
Hi Mercedes,
Thanks for reading the blog.
This is not possible. When you create a new user, you have to apply the settings manually. Or consider a customization to have the task automated based on certain conditions.
Hi,
I’ve got several problems with perzonalisation im- and exports..
Actually I got some errors like (i translate from german to english now):
“..TILE is invalid, The runtime security couldn’t be checked”
I can’t find nothing in Microsoft docs or google.. does anyone know something?
Thank you
Hi Cem,
Can you provide more information and reproduction steps? If you want to include screenshots, you can create a question on the Dynamics Community forum.