By Christian Waters, Director, Delivery at TrueNorth

The legacy web client for Dynamics 365 was deprecated in September 2019, and was replaced by the Dynamics 365 Unified Interface. This brings a consistent design across all devices and all platforms accessing the Dataverse that underpins both Dynamics 365 and Power Platform.

Here I’d like to share with you a few of the new features that may not be immediately obvious, but which make a real difference to ease of navigation and productivity.

Quick create

The Quick Create command makes it fast and easy to enter a new record into the system, while maintaining your current context. The command is located on the nav bar, so it’s always available whenever you need to enter new information into the system:

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With Quick Create, you need to complete only a few fields. Later, when you have more time or more information, you can fill in more details. As you would expect, Quick Create forms can be customised to meet your requirements:

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Multiple-entity quick find (categorized search)

To start a categorized search, select the Search icon next to the Quick Create button in the top nav bar. Type your search words in the search box, and then select Search. Categorized search returns results grouped by entity types, such as activities, accounts or contacts:

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Recent and pinned

New users often find it initially overwhelming to navigate between multiple records and views. Using the Recent and Pinned features can ease these frustrations and can also improve productivity for experienced users.

The Recent list at the top of the left hand navigation bar presents a list of recently accessed records and views; very handy for toggling backwards and forwards between a couple of accounts and a view of cases, for example:

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Items on the Recent list can also be Pinned. Pinned items remain in the list until ‘unpinned’. This is very useful for pinning a frequently accessed account, or for pinning a set of current urgent cases for quick and easy access:

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Record set navigation

This tip streamlines the navigation between records in a view, without having to close each record in turn and navigate from the view.

Open a record from a view and click the Open Record Set button. This presents a representation of the original view to the left of the main form, with the current record highlighted. Click on a record in the list to switch between records:

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Further reading

Microsoft has published a couple of useful guides for users:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-platform/admin/about-unified-interface
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powerapps/maker/data-platform/data-platform-intro

To find out how we can help you get the most from your Dynamics 365 invstment, click here.

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