Why advanced find is an awesome tool in Dynamics 365

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Advanced find is like a swiss army knife, it helps you get to the data you need without navigating the GUI, it gets you where you need to be at twice the speed.

New users view it as a simple search tool but can help in many different ways.

To an experienced developer it’s one of the key weapons in the armoury which when used correctly can save you loads of time and make your life easier.

The advanced find can

  • Avoid navigating the GUI or speed it up
  • Export and import data
  • Used to bulk update records
  • Create views of the data you need
  • See the output of the System
  • Used to verify customisations are working

What is advanced find?

Advanced find is a tool which allows you to create queries against the Dynamics database. It allows you to select the fields you want to see in the results and filter the query with conditions.

You can then save this advanced find query as a personal view

The Advanced find is a lot more than just a query tool because in many situations it can

  • Save you time
  • help you understand
  • view field values and related entity field values
  • speed navigation

The reason advanced find is useful is a database full of useful data with a user interface on top to make it easy for users to view

  • view the data using a web browser
  • validate the data input
  • organise the data into forms etc
  • Add security
  • organise using the data
  • Development to automate adding/viewing data

The GUI (website) has functionality for validating and displaying the data. This is useful but Developers want to navigate quickly and get to certain records.

The advanced find lets you search with filter conditions to allow you to only bring back the records you are interested in.

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Ben "The Hosk" Hosking
The Dynamics 365 information hub

Technology philosopher | Software dev → Solution architect | Avid reader | Life long learner