Summary

In this chapter, we explained the concepts, terminology, and processes related to customizing entities. Microsoft CRM stores data as entities, and each entity possesses multiple attributes that define its characteristics. The software uses three different types of entities: system customizable, system non-customizable, and custom. Every entity consists of multiple attributes, and Microsoft CRM supports two different types of attributes: system and custom. Only users with the correct security permissions, such as users with the System Administrator or System Customizer security roles, can perform customizations. After you complete your updates, you deploy your customizations to your users by a publishing process. If you need to copy your customizations from one system to another, Microsoft CRM allows you to export your customizations to an XML file that can be imported into a different system. Microsoft CRM also allows you to easily rename the default system entities to terms that better fit your business.

After explaining the basic customization concepts, we explored the details related to entity attributes. Each entity attribute consists of common properties (such as display name and schema name), in addition to properties unique to the data type of the attribute. You can modify existing attributes, in addition to creating or deleting new custom attributes.