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In Dynamics CRM 2013 I use standard activities and custom activities. For all of them I have custom field Account which I automatically fill in with account (if it is possible) from Regarding object. Is there a way to display this field on general activities views (not for particular activity)? May be there is a way to add custom fields directly to Activity entity?

Vadim Kotov
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Natasha
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    You cannot add custom fields to system entities like activities. Can you elaborate on your custom activities? – Zach Mast May 02 '14 at 19:56
  • @Zach your comment says all, it is not possible to add a custom field shared by all activity-type entities. Nothing to elaborate more I suppose, move your comment as answer :) – Guido Preite May 02 '14 at 22:31
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    I know that there is no possibility to add them but maybe you know some workarounds to solve this problem. The only thing I need is to show this field in view. – Natasha May 03 '14 at 05:37

2 Answers2

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Adding fields to the "All Activities" view

There are a number of system entities in CRM for which you cannot add custom fields or relationships. These include the base activity entity, templates and reports as well as many other tables.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg334739.aspx

I am not aware of any way for you to extend your base activity view to include custom columns. However, you could achieve similar functionality using a custom application that runs within an iframe or popup in CRM. Since you asked for potential workarounds I figured I would post some more information about how you might do this. This is NOT out of the box stuff and would require a CRM developer to implement.

Relating fields and entities to non-customizable entities:

One solution that I have worked with in the past for associating reports with other entities is to create a custom report entity that is linked to the system reports by GUID. When a system report is created, plugin logic creates a custom report with the same GUID, and this custom report then contains the custom relationships you need. Unfortunately while this then gives you tools to use within plugin or custom application code it doesn't directly give you useful relationships within CRM.

Zach Mast
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  • Of course you can add custom fields to all sorts of system entities including activities, but not to some specific restricted ones, including ActivityPointer. – AdamV May 05 '14 at 21:50
  • I do not believe you can add custom fields to the base activity entity in CRM 2013. If you can in fact do this, please give us instructions for you how you achieve it since this will answer Natasha's question. – Zach Mast May 06 '14 at 13:44
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    I think we are confusing terminology here. There are various individual entities such as Phone Call, Task, Email (and optionally some custom entities) that are grouped together as "activities", and the wording of the question suggests Natasha has already modified some of these by adding a custom lookup field. She wants to include this in the view for the Activity entity (best referred to by the schema name of ActivityPointer for clarity and non-ambiguity). This cannot be easily achieved. Whatever the question, your answer that you cannot add custom fields to system entities is simply not true. – AdamV May 06 '14 at 22:14
  • @AdamV, could you share your solutions (except creation new activity and duplicate information about all activities that exist in system)? – Natasha May 07 '14 at 12:45
  • I have updated my response to be more clear regarding which system entities cannot be customized. I believe my answer is correct that you cannot add custom columns to the "All Activities" view. – Zach Mast May 07 '14 at 13:56
  • Zach's edited answer is much clearer now and removed the ambiguity in areas that were off topic for the question in any case. I have reversed my previous vote. – AdamV May 07 '14 at 15:33
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Since Activity is collection of Phone Call, Task, Email, Appointment, Fax .. etc activities, you need to add the custom field on each (you)required entity.

If you've regarding field filled with Account entity then use jscript to get Account name from regarding object on form load.

if(Xrm.Page.getAttribute("regardingobjectid")!=null) {
 if(Xrm.Page.getAttribute("regardingobjectid").getValue()[0].entityType =="account") { // This works for Account Entity only
Xrm.Page.getAttribute("cust_field").setValue( Xrm.Page.getAttribute("regardingobjectid").getValue()[0].name);
}

}

Thanks,

M2012
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