Adding custom fields

As mentioned in the video I recently created (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxnOdPWMYw8), since platform update 13, authorized Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations users can create and manage custom fields without requiring development effort. Although this is documented really well in the Docs page at https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/unified-operations/fin-and-ops/get-started/user-defined-fields I figured I’d put together some additional findings.

What does this look like in SQL

Even though we don’t have access to SQL in Production, I think it’s still interesting to see what happens with these custom fields. In the video, I added the DCO_Custom field. If we open up SSMS, we can see this actually adds the field to the ContactPerson table in SQL. Interestingly enough, it’s not normalized (like you may be familiar with seeing picklist values in D365 for Sales data.) Additionally, our field was created as a picklist. There were some new tables added to handle this additional metadata – SysCustomFieldPicklist and SysCustomFieldPicklistValues. Querying these shows the expected combinations of which tables include which picklists and then which values each picklist has.    

Findings

Interesting, though not as much if you think about the overall blueprint of the Dynamics products, D365FO now has the ability to add custom fields just like D365 for Sales and CRM had. The platforms are getting closer and closer to being in sync, and this is just one more change showing it.