Not Seeing a Custom Form in Dynamics 365 CRM? How to Fix It

If a user is unable to see a certain form in Dynamics 365 CRM, there are a few common causes of the problem. In many cases, ordinary users may have trouble accessing forms, even though the system administrator themselves may not.

The most common time when these problems appear is after a client does an ISV update or form customization in their Dynamics 365 environment, but accidentally misses a step in the deployment.

This is because each form has many different layers of security privileges to manage in order for it to appear in the user interface. I’ll show you how to manage these to let everyone on your team access the forms they need.

I’ll also address other errors you could encounter that would appear similar and show you how to fix those as well.

Table of Contents

• Context: How Dynamics 365 Form Access Has Changed
• Fixing Form Access in Dynamics 365 CRM Applications
• Troubleshooting & Error Messages
  • “The Record You Are Trying to Access Does Not Have a Form to Display.”
  • “This is a System Entity That Does Not Have a Main Form.”
  • “Record Form Is Not Available.”

Note: There are now five different Dynamics 365 apps that serve various CRM needs, including Dynamics 365 Sales, Dynamics 365 Customer Service, and more. You may also see these products referred to as “Customer Engagement” or “CE” apps.

Context: How Form Access Has Changed in Dynamics 365 CRM

Let’s start with some context. Years ago, if a user could access a contact, for instance, in CRM, they would be able to see every form for that contact based on your security settings.

Since around 2020, in the newer app-base model of Dynamics 365, you could have a contact visible from several different apps – the Dynamics 365 Sales or Customer Service app for example. And you could have specific form for that record in each app. So users may be able to access the record from different apps via different custom forms.

During an ISV update or a deployment of a customization form, if someone from your organization forgets to enable the custom form or the security role for the app, ordinary users could run into this problem. However, a system admin may still be able to see all the custom forms.

The good news is that in this situation, the form and the data will still exist. Nothing has been lost, but the user doesn’t currently have access to it.

Fixing Form Access in Dynamics 365 CRM Applications

The 3 things to check to resolve this form access problem are:

1. Updating security access for the form.
2. Enabling the form on the unified interface app you are trying to access the form from.
3. Changing form order on the entity.

Below, we’ll review each option and how you can update the items.

Updating Security Access for the Form

Every main form for every entity has security roles to enable in order for users to be able to access the form for the entity. If the user does not have the right security role, the user will not see the form in the system.

Check the user’s security roles to see what roles are assigned:

Open the solution for the entity that contains the forms and check the form to see what security roles are enabled:

 

Some forms can be checked off for all roles, but custom created forms will only have a handful of security roles enabled for access. If the user trying to access the form does not have the security role that’s enabled on the form, the user cannot access the form.

Encore’s Best Practice Recommendation for Form Security

If the access to the form requires a security role or grants unnecessary security privileges for users beyond just the form, it may be best to create a custom security role. This role should have no additional privileges other than access to custom forms in an instance.

So, you’ve now updated the user security roles and enabled the proper security roles on the forms. If you still do not see the form in your system, what’s the next fix to try?

Updating the Unified Client Interface App

The second thing to try is the layer of form access within the model-driven app that you are using to access the system, like the Sales Hub or the Customer Service Hub.

Each model-driven app has enabling privileges for each component for any user that is accessing the system. This could be the reason the user still does not have access to the form after updating the security roles.

Navigate to the model-driven apps of your system in the solution. Change the view from the new design to the “classic” design using the “Switch to classic” option. This will give you access to open the App designer to enable or disable specific forms per app:

Find the entity the user does not have access to. The model-driven app controls the different components per entity. If the form is not checked off for the app, then no user will have access to it.

Check the custom form off for the app and then users should have access to it.

Form Order on the Entity

Lastly, if the user goes to a record of that entity and still does not see the form, yet you followed the previous steps, it is most likely due to the form order of the entity. The form order controls which form is shown as the default.

Now, you may not want your custom form as the default form for the entity, and if that is the case, then I would instruct your users to change the form type to get to the custom form.

However, there are instances where you might want to make the custom form the default.

To do this, go to the solution forms again from the solution:

Select the custom form and move the form to the top to make it the default form for users to access:

This should now resolve all form access issues in your Dynamics 365 CRM environment.

Troubleshooting & Error Messages

“The Record You Are Trying to Access Does Not Have a Form to Display.”

You most likely encountered this error when an upgrade/update has occurred in your D365 environment and the update removed the forms for the data table.

As mentioned before, this does not mean that the data has been deleted, as long as the entity/table exists in the system. This just means that there is currently no form to display the data. Your system administrator or Microsoft Dynamics 365 Partner should be able go through the necessary steps to resolve this error.

“This is a System Entity That Does Not Have a Main Form. Opening a Record Form for This Entity Is Not Supported.”

This is a very similar issue to the above error, caused by a similar type of deployment. How this error differs is that there are other forms to access the data in the table, but the “Main” form type is missing/removed. Your system administrator or Dynamics Partner should be able go through the necessary steps to resolve this error.

“Record Form Is Not Available.”

This error is a little more specific to an end user. This error happens when the customization we mentioned above for enabling/disabling has only one form enabled for the app you use to access the system. Then, as part of a deployment, upgrade, or update, that form gets disabled from the list of forms for that app.

As with the errors above, the data is still available, but the form to access the data is not. Your system administrator or Dynamics Partner should be able go through the necessary steps to resolve this error.

Keep Your Team Focused and Productive in Dynamics 365 CRM

Dynamics 365 CRM applications have a wide range of functionality and customization options to help your team better focus their attention, manage relationships with customers, and spend more time on high-value work.

If you’re looking for Dynamics 365 CRM support, training, implementations, or integrations, to help you better leverage all the options in the system, you may be curious to learn more about our work as a Dynamics 365 CRM Partner, or to view our full archive of D365 CRM training articles.