While there is an extensive set of fields out-of-the-box for managing a broad range of business processes, sometimes there is a need for a company to track additional information in the system. To accommodate this need, you can create custom fields to tailor the application to fit your business, provided you have permissions to the feature.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Human Resource allows you to add and manage custom data fields across a wide range of forms, without requiring any coding or development effort. In today’s post, we will review this new feature.

Creating custom fields

Navigate to the form where the new field is needed.

In my case, I took an example of Workers form

Click on any Worker’s name and It will open the form in detailed view.

Note: You can also add a custom field on the list page

Open the personalization toolbar by selecting Options, and then Personalize this form

Click on + Add a field and Create a new field

Click the Create new field button above the list to initiate the process of creating a custom field. This will open the Create new field dialog box.

If you do not see the Create new field button, you do not have the necessary permissions to use this feature.

1. Select the database table where this field should be added. Note that only tables that support custom fields will appear in the drop-down list. See the section below for technical details on supported tables.
2. Select the data type for the new field. The available data types are checkbox, date, date time, decimal, number, picklist, and text.
   1. If you choose the text data type, you can also specify the maximum length of the text that can be entered in this field.
   1. If you choose the picklist data type, you can also select the set of valid values for the field.
3. Provide a name, label, and help text for the field. The name corresponds to the physical field name in the database, whereas the label and help text are the text used to represent this field in the user interface.

If this is the only field that you need to create for this form, click Save.

If you need to create additional fields, click Save and new and go back to start. Note that there is currently a limit of 20 custom fields per table

Leaving the Create new field dialog box will return you to the Insert fields dialog box.

Any custom fields that were just added will be automatically marked in the field list to be inserted into the form.

Click Insert to insert the marked fields into the selected region of the form.

You have to save this view with a new view or an existing view.

Refresh the form to see the newly created workers form.

Now we can see the worker number field in the workers form

Now, you can insert or edit the value for the custom field.

Expose custom field in Dataverse

First, check whether dataverse integration in ON

Go to System Admin > Links > Integration > Dataverse configuration

Go to System Admin > Links > Setup > Custom Fields

Select Table lookup and select the entity.

Select the table and It will show the newly created custom field.

Edit the form, select the entities, and enable the field where you want to make this field available for dataverse and D365 HR entities.

Click on Apply changes button.

It will display a message box and If will take up to 5 min to display the custom field in CDS.

Expose custom field in Dynamics 365 HR entities

First, Go to Data Management > Data entities

Select the entity where it enabled via custom field setup

In this case, I will use EmployeeV2 entity. Click on Modify target mapping

Click on Generate mapping to enable a custom field in the entity.

You can see, the new custom field been added and you can use it for import and export.

Click on Yes to generate mapping

Verify custom field in Dataverse

Login to Web.powerapps.com

Select the right environment for dataverse

Go to Data > Tables > Worker entity

Below, you can see the custom field is created.

Verify data in Dataverse

To Verify data in Dataverse, It can be done in many ways

1. Go to Workerentity and check for Data tab
2. Export the data and check for Worker number
3. Edit the data in Excel and check for Worker number

Deleting custom fields

In some rare cases, you may decide that a custom field is no longer needed. When this occurs, a system administrator can choose to delete the field from the Custom fields page.

To do this, ensure the correct field is selected, click Delete, click Yes to confirm the deletion, and finally click Apply changes.

Sharing custom fields with other users

After you have created a custom field and exposed it on a form, you might want to provide this updated page view that includes the new field to other users in the system. This can be accomplished in two different ways using the personalization capabilities of the product:

• The recommended route is through the system administrator, who can push a personalization to all users or a subset of users.
• Alternatively, you can export your changes (called personalizations), send them to one or more users, and have each of those users import your changes.

The Manage option on the personalization toolbar enables you to export and import personalizations.

Export the personalization created for the custom field.

The best way is to have your system administrator manage this.

Go to System Admin > Links > Setup > Personalization

Select specific use(s) by their security role or simply for All users, and then either ‘Select an existing personalization to apply for those users”, or they can also import a personalization file for those user(s).

Summary

In this way, we can create a custom field in Dynamics 365 HR and used it for integration or export to other systems. If you like this article, feel free to share it with others who might find it helpful! If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to me.