NEIL PARKHURST

This morning I made a quick change to my USD interface to include a multi entity search capability, here is how I did it.

I already had a search menu that looked like this ….

So I could search for Accounts, contacts and leads already. Plus, I had added an advanced find search for when all else fails! Selecting any of these options already opened a search tab and when I click on a contact, lead or account a session opens.

Tip: You can see how I created the advanced find search here.

But I wanted more! So I added a multi entity search option. As shown below ….

Selecting my new option would open the search tab but this time navigate to the CRM multi entity search option.

Note: As I had already created hosted controls, actions and window navigation rules needed to open accounts, contacts or leads from my search tab all of that continued to work without any change! If you haven’t already got these, you will need to create them!

Tip:
In my interface I will create sessions if account, contact or lead is clicked. But if anyone selected another entity this will open within the search tab. For me this worked fine! As I already had browser style navigation on my search tab. So the operator is allowed to view records other than contact, lead and account. And afterwards will press the back or home buttons to return to the initial search.

The steps involved were as follows;

1. Create a webresource for my menu icon.
   
2. Create an action.
   
3. Create a toolbar button.
   

Step One – Create a webresource for my menu icon.

I wanted an icon in my toolbar menu so I found an icon I liked. (I got mine from the CRM 2016 SDK, you may find one you prefer elsewhere!)

Next I simply created it as a webresource in the customizations area of CRM. Calling it “new_SearchWidgetViews_16”

Step Two – Create an Action

Next I needed an action to load the multi entity search in my search tab. My action is shown below;

Step Three – Create a toolbar button.

Finally, I needed to create a toolbar button that would use my new webresource and action. I simply added a new button to my already existing search toolbar. The button looked like this.

Hopefully you will see that this is a really simply change that you can adapt for your own purposes. Enjoy. J