Create simple forms in CRM

Posted by Matt Pfountz

This tip is designed to help make CRM easier for non-technical users.

Make CRM less daunting with this quick tip

The out-of-the-box account form contains more than 50 fields and several subgrids — and the average user only cares about a third of those fields.
​
For example, a person in service will probably want to see recent cases and interactions with a customer. A person in marketing will probably want to see marketing lists, campaigns and products a customer owns.
While it is possible to design one form that contains all of this information, it has several disadvantages:

• A form with a lot of information on it loads slowly
• It requires the user to scan a lot of screen space and potentially scroll up and down to find the information they are looking for
• It can become quite inefficient and detract people from using the system

One thing you can easily do to help users quickly find what they need is to create a form for each department in your organization that contains only the information that they care about.

Click here for a free guide that outlines 15 ways to improve your CRM user adoption

Creating and assigning custom forms is quick and easy but not necessarily intuitive. The user must first design the form and then they must assign the form to the appropriate group of users.

Creating the form

Navigate to the account list and then click the ellipse and choose “customize entity.” This will bring us into the customization area for the account. You will need to have system customizer or system administrator in order to make the changes to do this.

Click on the forms section and click new and main form to Crete a new form

Remove the fields that you are not interested in by dragging them off of the form.  Add the fields that you care about by dragging them onto the form.  Once you have a simple version targeted at a department, click “save as” and name your new form.

Assigning the form

After your form is created, you need to assign it to security roles.  Select the form that you just saved from the forms customization area and click “enable security roles.”  Select the roles that you want to use the new form and click OK.  You may also need to un-assign existing forms from security roles.  By default, the main forms are assigned to everyone.

If a user has more than one form assigned to them, they will be able to select the form that they want to use.  Once they select it, the system will remember their default form and it will allow the user to always use their customized form.

---

Another quick tip for non-technical CRM users: URL addressable views.These are essentially bookmarks directly in your preferred browser that take you to the exact view you need in CRM.
​
For more useful hints and tricks to improve your CRM adoption, check out our free guide to CRM user engagement.